Father Pavel's page

Predictive Combat Active:
Tough: +3, Fort: +6, Ref: +7, Will: +8
Attack Bonus: +3 (+5 Melee/+11 Unarmed), +13 Grapple
Attacks: Martial Insight +11 (DC 18)
Defense: +11 (Dodge: +8/Flat-footed: +3), Knockback: -1
Initiative: +6

Adrenal Surge Active:
STR: +4 (18), DEX: +4 (18), CON: +5 (20), INT: +1 (12), WIS: +5 (20), CHA: +4 (14)
Tough: +5, Fort: +9, Ref: +10, Will: +8
Attack Bonus: +3 (+9 Unarmed), +13 Grapple
Attacks: Unarmed +9 (DC 19)
Defense: +8 (Dodge: +5/Flat-footed: +3), Knockback: -2
Initiative: +4

Predictive Combat and Adrenal Surge Active:
STR: +4 (18), DEX: +4 (18), CON: +5 (20), INT: +1 (12), WIS: +5 (20), CHA: +4 (14)
Tough: +5, Fort: +9, Ref: +12, Will: +8
Attack Bonus: +3 (+5 Melee/+11 Unarmed), +15/19 Grapple
Attacks: Martial Insight +11 (DC 20)
Defense: +11 (Dodge: +8/Flat-footed: +3), Knockback: -2
Initiative: +8

Pavil grew up in a Siberian gulag. While he couldn’t quite remember if he had been born there after his mother was brought in while pregnant, if he had been brought as an infant with his mother, or even if he had potentially been fathered by a guard, though that one seemed unlikely as most of the stories had his mother at least being pregnant before her arrival. She had apparently been brought in during one of the political purges that had occurred in the mid-eighties, during the lead up to the final collapse of the USSR. He wasn’t sure where she had been from, but again the stories seemed to agree that it was an Eastern Bloc country, and not a USSR territory itself. Either she, her husband, or someone related to one or the other must have pissed off someone in power, or simply made an acceptable scapegoat for one, in the long run, the particulars don’t matter much.

He lived in an all women’s camp until he was about 7-8, by which point the harsh conditions had already killed his mother and swallowed up all but her first name, Marya. The group had bound together to care for him, just like many other orphans. And just like all the other boys, he was shipped to the men's’ camp as soon as he was old enough to cause trouble. Boys introduced to a men’s labour camp or prison, where the inmates have neither seen a woman in years, nor have the prospect of seeing one for many more, are in instant danger, and their transition to a male camp usually marked the turning of a merely bad life into a truly horrible one. Many didn’t survive. Of those that did, they usually found a protector, found a way to exploit the commodity they possessed, or found a niche that enabled them to survive. Pavil suffered all the same traumas inflicted on the other boys, but was one of those that found the will to live. He had a talent to finding information it seemed, and he was able to play the trade of information and secrets to his advantage, making sure that the secrets of those who wronged him always seemed to get out at the worst possible times.

By the time he approached his early teens, he discovered another talent; fighting. At 12 or 13 years of old he killed a would be rapist with his bare hands, beating the man to death in the camp yard. Such events were not exactly rare, but the sight of a boy, half the size of his opponent, breaking and killing a full grown man in the full view of witnesses struck a chord with many, including the guards. Thereafter, he found himself in the guard’s goodbooks, receiving better quality food, and more of it, both of which were massive luxuries in a place where death by starvation was both a genuine risk and a daily occurrence. It turned out of course that they weren’t doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. There were more than two dozen gulags spread out across the Siberian wilderness, and far from being an optimum posting for a soldier, they were more like… being posted to Siberia. To entertain themselves, the guards organized fights, both within their camps for small time events and to identify new talent, and between camps for bragging rights and prestige. The fights also brought with them a flow of black market goods, which both the guards and the prisoners viewed as essential for survival in the wilderness.

Pavil found himself being entered in fights soon after. The fights were fairly informal, having no real rules other than that the two men were shoved into the ring without any weapons, and that the winner was determined when one gave in, was knocked out, or was dead. Death was rarely the goal, though death matches were occasionally scheduled. More often, they were just a side effect of men with compromised health, a sheer desperation to win, or completely accidental. The ring itself was often made from whatever was convenient. It the audience could be up above the fight, that was preferred, but if not, they’d just form a circle with the fighters in the middle. Most often, the ring would be a pit hastily dug in the ground with an excavator, or a ring of cargo shipping containers placed to form a square. The fights were cruel, brutal, often short, and occurred in any weather the guards could muster up the energy to watch.

Pavil made a name for himself. He was “transferred” from camp to camp, and sometimes back to his home camp, in order to meet challengers, and win his camp prestige, his guards money, and his fellow prisoners a little extra food, a sip of vodka, or just a looser rein in the prison yard. To ensure his health, he was eventually given the best food available, better than the guards in most cases, and whatever other modest items might be considered luxuries in the Siberian winter. As a person who killed without thought on a regular basis, and received anything he asked for, he developed something of a distorted view of the world, human beings, and the value of life in general. Many of the things he did in those days were motivated not by survival, but to making the most he could of his own life, regardless of how it impacted others, the results of which was often not pretty. It became common for the prisons to transfer him around, as even the guards found him so intimidating that they were not sure how to handle him, and disagreements had in the past led to injuries or even death to the guards involved. Though they must have thought of killing him off, his having become so difficult to handle, the prestige he brought the prison that held him kept the prison administrators from ever doing so.

However, the system could not last forever. With increasing openness to the west, the questions regarding the oft-forgotten prisons of Siberia were becoming more and more difficult to ignore. What crimes were the prisoners being held for? What sort of representation had they received at trial? Had they received trials? And of course, most importantly, what were the conditions like in these prisons, and how were they being treated? Was there anything to the rumours of gulag-like death camps, where prisoners were starved and/or worked to death? What about the rumours that the prisoners were political detainees, and not criminals at all? What about the rumours of fighting rings and death matches? Any of these would be a massive violation of human rights, and a major stain against any democratic society in the new, modern Russia.

The panic that followed in the wake of the decision to open the prisons to foreign review resulted in massive and immediate changes that needed to be instituted, and most of all, it meant that all sorts of embarrassing past practices were going to have to be eliminated, and any evidence of those practices completely purged. While some of the small time elements of the fighting rings, within camps at least, could be left in place to serve as the source of the rumours, and be blamed on junior administrators or even influential prisoners, all of the upper tiers of the operation would have to be wiped out all together. Naturally, like most bits of information in the prison, Pavil seemed to know about the purge before it even happened. Reluctantly, he left.

Walking away from a prison camp in the remote Siberian wilderness is not an easy task, but Pavil was able to use what remained of his influence to secure maps, provisions, and even some contacts. After a long, grueling journey, he made it out of Russia. With Spetnaz still looking for him throughout the former Soviet and Bloc countries, no documentation or ID to speak of, and only a limited understanding of how the outside world even operated, he had no choice but to find a place to lie low for a while in order to learn. He managed to gain entry to a small parish mission in rural Romania, where all new acolytes were required to spend their first year in silence. The site was an ancient 12th century church, and the monks spent most of their time maintaining the old structure, doing simple subsistence farming, and studying religious texts. For someone used to violence and vice, the shift in his world was dramatic. There were only a half dozen other monks, in addition to the priest that looked after the old cathedral. Given that the only speaking allowed was in confession, and that the only reading available was religious texts and commentaries, he ended up spending a lot of time contemplating religion and spirituality; concepts that he had heard of, but had never even really acknowledged before.

When his year was up, he felt compelled to confess his true history and many crimes. To his surprise, the order did not turn him over to Russian authorities, call the E.U., or Interpol. They told him they believed that his change of heart was genuine, and that they wanted to help him find a way to make up for his past wrongs. They told him that they believed there was something special about him, a gift that would allow him to serve God and his fellow man. They used contacts within the church to have him moved out of the country, and an identity constructed. It would be hard to call it a false identity, as he had never had a confirmed identity before this point. He eventually made his way to a seminary, where he was able to devote more time to study, and learn more about the modern world. He was eventually ordained, and given a posting in America. A run down district known as the Fens, in a troubled place called Freedom City.

Complications:

Enemies:
Fame:
Honour: Pavel is a Priest of the Christian Church, a calling he takes extremely seriously. He is terrified of falling short of the standards he has set for himself. He always does his best to try and balance the concerns at play in any situation, the law of the land, God’s law, and all of the grey areas that lay in the interpretation of each. He is also aware that when things get heated, he tends to react on instinct, and another fear is killing someone he does not intend to kill.
Justice: While mercy and forgiveness are the Christian way, Pavel himself is often tempted to take a starker stand on good and evil, and ensure that people who do bad things do not get away to do them again. This can lead him to overstep himself, and to have difficulty giving up the pursuit.
Guilt: Before his opportunity to learn of another way of doing things, Pavel was not a very nice man, and he has a lot to make up for. Though his faith tells him anyone can be forgiven, he struggles with wondering if anything he can accomplish with the rest of his life can truly compensate for all of the things that came before. Were an opponent to play to his guilt, it could make an effective psychological weapon.
Obsession:
Phobia:
Prejudice:
Reputation:
Responsibility:
Temper:
Warrant/Bounty: Despite the rulings of the international courts, Pavel is still considered a wanted fugitive in the Russian Federation. Although the warrants issued in that country have not been recognized by the majority of western nations, and have been declined as invalid by Interpol, the opinions of the international community cannot interfere with the legal proceedings inside a sovereign nation, and so within Russia, he is still a wanted man. Arresting him inside the U.S.A. would be completely illegal of course, but they might still pay handsomely were an independent agent able to deliver him to an extradition friendly country.
Shepherd: Pavel takes his duty as shepherd over the Fens as a literal responsibility in addition to a spiritual one. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.

Cyrillic
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й
К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф
Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я

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