One Crew. One Impossible Heist. One chance. Twelve soldiers stand against an entire army, desperate to change the tide and steal a circlet to end the war and subsequently the suppression of Grisha. Do you think they can pull it off? It all comes down to the choices they make. Each decision has a chance to make or break the heist.
[ MOBILE NAVIGATION ]
It is with a heavy heart we've come to the conclusion to place Do Skorogo on an indefinite hiatus. While this roleplay means a lot to us and we've treasured seeing our vision of this world come to light through the players who decided to join us on this journey, we decided that for now, it would be best to close Do Skorogo. We simply just don't have the ability to maintain this world at the moment and give it the justice it deserves. Maybe, hopefully, in the future things can be different. But, for now, we must sadly say a temporary goodbye.
Thank you to everyone who gave us a bit of their time and enjoyed writing in the world with us! You made this brief experience magical and we are appreciative towards you for it. We wish you all the very best!!
Hi everyone!
It's been a bit quiet on the main, but we just wanted to give you all a quick update. With the holiday season coming up, we've decided that for the rest of December, we will have a month of light activity and no activity checks to be fair to everyone's busy schedule. We have a bunch of fun memes and tasks planned, and we hope you're all keen to see those come out!
So, if you've been eyeing this roleplay, this is a perfect time to join up and take some of our characters! We'd love to see our open characters taken up, so come check us out!
— Do Skorogo Admins
would jessica henwick or havana rose liu work for svetlana?
hi there! whilst jessica henwick wouldn't be my favourite alternate faceclaim for svetlana, she would be acceptable with the right application. please do note, based on our reservation for svetlana yesterday, we might be holding acceptances for her in little under an hour!
YOU HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF IGOR LAZAREV.
Welcome to Do Skorogo RPG! Please make sure you scan over the CHECKLIST, send in your account to the main in the next 24 hours, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST.
IGOR LAZAREV
marlon teixeira — male, bisexual — thirty y.o.
written by alex —— she/them, 22
Timezone and activity level: BRT. Hard to say. 6/7 out of 10, perhaps? I'm always around at night during the weekend and Sundays when I'm free from ✨ adulthood ✨. I might, however, take a day to answer the dms or just a couple of hours. This serves as a warning: it's not that I'm ignoring you, I'm anxious the same. On Saturdays, however, I arrive home later than usual, so it's an only to-go-bed day.
Anything else: I painted a bit of Argun's scenario to explore the social damage caused by mining and exploration and the non-stop cycle of poverty and violence. I hope that it doesn't miss your idea of Drezna's worldbuilding. And I'm sorry I was exhausted when I finished this, so I stopped editing *waves hand * somewhere.
Rambling: Why did I choose him, you ask? *Heavy sigh* Oh, boy. My little self realised on a rainy afternoon that crafting characters was a good way to play and understand how different psyches worked. Big me never abandoned that silly game. Igor is now one of the most challengings characters I have put thought and craft upon. I found strangely endearing how easy yet troubling it was to shape him to explore harsh themes — the nature of violence, the social impact of mining, poverty, abandonment and so much more. He isn't a full plate of possibilities, he is a whole feast. And, yes I could've added more, I still hold sideways notes, but I think 5k words is more than enough.
i. if there's something to be gained, there's money to be made. seven new ways that you can eat your young: a biography.
To be born in Argun is by itself a death sentence. You don't dream of ever escaping a life ingurgitated by twelve to sixteen hours of workload, you wait for hamstrung fate to hit you, and — damn — it hits you just fine. You can try, though, to avoid yourself from being spent, choking in the mines and the fabrics, breathing toxic vapour while your kids play with mercury; arsenic under their fingertips. They say that Argun is a bitch who births her youths and sells them to be cannibalised by the rich or butchered by the wars over resources. Wars, those, geared like clockwork by an underground lorded by money laundry, smuggling, drug dealings and extortion. You can try your luck there, exchanging the grime on your hands for blood in your soul. You might end up dead in some alleyway with a bullet between your eyes, that's a risk. In the end, no one cares. You shouldn't either.
The boy is born hungry. It's violence who births him, famine the one to raise him. He bites his tongue from a young age, he yells at the sky and the only answer is an echo. Second of three siblings, their mother is a ghost, their father is a drunkard. They are strangers to Igor, but he loves them the same. Or tries to. Or wants to. Igor doesn't know the difference, he never learns to. He grows up with an absent father who leaves on a winter day, a mother that's always tired, a belly that's always empty and hands that are always clenched, eager to beat another kid who taunts him and his brother in the streets of Argun's periphery. His house is hardly a house. It's a cramped cubicle and a bed he shares with his siblings. They raise each other as kids can. Yura, Igor and baby Mila. They are their own family, their own world, their own parents and their own children; three small bodies curling around the other to battle the bitter cold. Igor is nine when he starts accompanying his mother and brother to the mines, then twelve when she dies coughing blood. There's no money to pay for a healer's services, hardly a penny for a warm meal, and they have to work to keep themselves off the streets. Just children. It makes no difference: you have hands to work, the mines want you. And children are easy to work with. They don't complain because they are too scared of your raised hand, and they aren't clever enough to form a syndicate, are they?
Igor grows eating grime and rage, pursing his lips, biting so hard that it bleeds. But the hand of his brother on his shoulder tells him to calm down. Igor lost his childhood, but Yura never had one. He is tough like stone, but also reactionless. When the men punishes them for working wrong, he bends his head and accepts it like a rock against violent waves. Never bending, but also never moving. Igor, however, burns like new fire. Yura is the first victim to be slaughtered at the altar of Igor's wrath, the first one that Igor calls a weakling coward for not fighting back, for not wanting more than that life. Igor was never much of a son. He was never much of a brother either. It's between constant fighting that they carve their path into teenagerhood, and Mila is caught between the crossfire of her brothers' ego — the counsellor and the destroyer.
But even when he hates Yura, he loves him. For what can Igor be if not a brother — Gorya, as he is called by his siblings — even when he misses every point of it? Can one be blamed for trying? He was. Judged and condemned.
He is barely seventeen when the underground calls him for the first time. He learns about deals being whispered in corners, alleyways and dirty gambling houses. He has the rage they need, and the power as well. Suddenly, the siblings have enough money through Igor. And of course Yura suspects his brother of disappearing and returning with money, missing work days. He wants to know the source, so he presses Gorya against the wall and demands answers. When Igor sends him a big go fuck himself, Yura tells him how tired he is. Igor sees disappointment, but not surprise in his brother's eyes. He hates how much it affects him, how much it condemns him as the worst of the sinners. So he answers him with the only thing he knows: violence. If Yura wants to remain sucking those motherfuckers balls, then fine! He can fucking choke there in the mines. Igor is out of that shit.
And Yura chokes. (Am I my brother's keeper?)
Igor is not far when the mine with his brother collapses, crushing twenty seven workers, including Yura. He remembers the yelling, the cloud of dust, the attempt of digging with bare bare hands. He remembers someone holding him by the shoulders, saying, “it's done, lad. I'm sorry”. He shakes the hands off and takes a step back, staring powerless. Yura is left unburied to rot in the mine and inside Igor. The heavy scent of decadence smells of shame. Grieve would unite some siblings, strengthening bonds between them. For Igor and Mila, Yura's death only tears them asunder. They are children forced into adulthood, and no one ever taught them how to properly grief.
To Igor, he will never regret not being kinder to his brother, because he cannot afford the guilty choking him. So he closes his heart, and doesn't look behind. He promises himself he will not be like his family. He will not be nobody. He swears an oath. He will not die as what he is now, buried under the ashes and dirt of the Argun mines, he will not let it poison and consume him to death like it did to his mother and brother. Instead, he poisons himself with a new thing and calls it power. In some ways, it is an escape, and he knows it, but ignores it. The jurda parem frees him from the feeling of helplessness. He feels attuned, powerful like god, and he begins to crawl. Argun's criminal underground gives him what he needs: money. It doesn't matter to Igor the business — smuggling of resources, extortion or debt collecting. He doesn't ask much either, just how much one is willing to pay. Soon, he is willing to paint houses. See, when he was young he thought that house painters painted houses. Well, they do, but with blood. It's a fancy name, because no matter how into the shit your hands are, you always want fancy names, as fancy as the cologne and the clothes you wear to get into the skirts of your business partner's wife after dinner, to cover the rotten smell of your decaying soul. Call him what you want, though, he doesn't care — but you can use “hired assassin”. That works just fine. They need him to scare their enemies in the mob conflicts regarding the South. People get killed in ugly ways.
Igor is made of storm, one that burns red and consumes. One you cannot stray your attention from. He is an asset, a war dog, and they deal with him like stock. That drags attention, a name one should never get themself involved too, but Igor is so drunk, so high with new-found power, he doesn't even hesitate in scratching the itch. The name is a family. And the family is Lyktin. Because money always speaks louder than whatever is happening around you, and they are still willing to use unstable grisha in their ranks to accomplish the mission, to spill the blood, so it doesn't stain their expensive silk. It is only when Azor burns, and they are too scared of retaliation that they cut ties.
We begin from here.
ii. born in the valley of the dead and the wicked.
He left his sister with enough money for the winter, and unspoken words of sibling love never shed. It's funny how brothers will overlook their sisters. In Igor's mind Mila is always the small girl hiding behind him, a child he needs to say: stay close, you don't want to stray away. She grows unnoticed, and noticing this she grows a survivor. Because Igor is not the only Lazarev born with a storm between the ribcage, and the fire that missed Yura forged them both. She, however, refuses to consume her own skin. She grows when Igor is away, missing for days, sometimes weeks, doing whatever the “job” is. Oh, she is not innocent. She knows the money is dirty. Soon, Mila has to bury another brother. First Yura, then Gorya. The young man before her in that chilling afternoon is not her big brother.
He is leaving that hellhole some fucker called Argun, and he wants her to come with him. She asks, For what? This? And she motions him. He is as high as the sky above. She isn't scared. She made up her mind. She'll stay, she'll accept Vihren's marriage proposal, she'll grasp the bit of life she has and knows, the bit of control. Igor argues he can offer her that, but Mila knows this isn't true. So she asks him to leave, never to come back. Because she is tired. She doesn't love Vihren, but he is a rock she can lean on, while Igor is… Igor. And she is Mila. Third daughter. Overlooked. “Do us both a favour, Igor. Leave.” And Igor does. That flicker of consciousness in his eyes understands that, saints, he is the monster under his baby sister's bed. He wants to tell her so many things. But the only love he can give her is a distance between them. The love he offers her is a regret, a begging for an apology never uttered.
iii. miscellaneous.
I'll pinpointing that he started to abuse parem around his nineteen or twenty due proximity to illegal markets existing in Argun, which gives him around a decade of addiction. The fact he is alive is, to me, a miracle, really; especially given how much parem harms the grisha organism.
For Igor, parem is control. He hadn't trained on his Grisha side, and he was forced to hide his identity and not to use Small Science. We know that this makes the individual weak and susceptible, and I suspect that not only physically but mentally as well, which makes him specifically susceptible. The jurda parem offered him understanding by sharpening his perception of the odinakovost and etovost at once. It's almost funny having Igor trying to explain how he understands air pressure and air molecules without knowing the proper terms or the science behind it. Without the parem, the withdrawal symptoms make him almost blind. He is quite unable to make use of his powers without the drug. So he needs parem to access the Small Science. Without it, he is afraid he is nothing. It's a spiral that only decays.
( DISCLAIMER: MENTION OF REAL LIFE DRUGS! ) / My headcanon is that parem works the same way as an opioid and kicks like a stimulant (e.g. Adderall). However, the withdrawal is very similar to heroin. I don't remember if Leigh Bardugo actually mentions that parem causes tolerance, but I'll just assume it does because, well, drugs are like that. ( END! )
He is terrified of dying during withdrawal and he is terrified of not being able to use Small Science without parem. Those are the main reasons he hadn't tried to quit.
You catch small details about Igor's past. His accent is Southern, and he speaks like an Argun worker. His hands are calloused, which implies heavy hand working. Perhaps Sasha offered to tailor it, but Igor refused. He wants to remember something. Other than that, everything is dark to the crew. And if you're clever, you'll leave it like that.
I attempt to expand his fighting style in the Para Semple, but let me just add a few unnecessary notes. Bruised knuckles, broken nose. Igor is talented when it comes to the art of breaking people's bones. It's scary to see him fighting, like watching a hurricane bursting through the door, unstoppable in its way of destruction. Dreadful, for lack of a better word. He is Grisha, afterall, and he knows how to merge his skills in hand-to-hand combat, originating a style that is both swift and brutal. Given that Igor isn't a big fan of flying (haha, jokes on you), it's mostly likely that, under parem, he uses his sharpened air control to make himself lighter and faster (if you read Mistborn, picture Kelsier's fighting style). However, he is also addicted to the pain. Whenever the opportunity comes, he goes bare handed till the person is bleeding, disfigured face, on the floor.
Aslı could take a break from having to mend Igor.
02.
PLOT POINTS
There is a fortune teller. There are three cards on the table. The Fool reversed, The Devil, The Judgment. What it has passed, what it is, and what it's yet to come. He, a sky red with the blood spilled, something not worthy of saving. Do not bury him, let the carrion birds have their share. Sing with the world the tune of relief. The scourge is dead. It was, and is no more.
i. a manifesto on how to domesticate dogs.
“Sir, he's a good dog, and a fair dog; can there be more said?” — William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act I, Scene I)
It is wise to say that Igor has been using repression as a coping mechanism his entire life. Boy, youth and man. Most of what he feels and thinks happens out of a conscious mind, to the point he is unaware of himself as a functional person. The only thing he allows himself to show is his anger because it is linked to his survival instincts. Since he has been in survival mode for so long, he only knows anger. Other than that, Igor can be very well compared to a wrathful spectrum haunting the living. However, labelling him as an “angered person” role isn't reducing him to a two-dimensional character. Actually, it's the beginning of his depth.
Igor is such a hard character to deal with, and I find myself carrying a heavy burden of development to be worked upon. First, we have his arrogance. Then we have his hunger for power. At least, we have his addiction. I always start by thinking about “what came first?” the answer? None of those. Fear came first. For what is arrogance if not the response one has to feeling cornered his whole life. Igor, however, is not justified by it. He is someone to be pitied, but never justified. I'll have him regret his sins or I'll throw him straight to hell.
In one of my first drafts, I wrote:
“He is shaped out of contradictions that make him a hypocrite. He is both the knife that stabs and the victim, he doesn't know better and is too blind to see it. He oversees the damage he causes to himself. He is a shell of a person on the inside, but that emptiness doesn't make him numb. On the contrary, it fuels him with anger. He rather channels everything against the world than to admit that he is the one to be guilty. Worse, that he cannot do it. Shifting blame with a closed fist, because Igor cannot acknowledge that he is ashamed of himself, of that little perhaps he crushed long ago that might be true. Perhaps you're just some dumb country boy. He denies this shred of conscience so hard that it doesn't even exist to him. He made himself blind. That's why he hates Aslı so much, because she is there to remember the shame he ignores. And he cannot acknowledge that; acknowledging is to admit that he isn't enough to save himself, and he needs to be enough. He cannot be wrong. He will not be wrong.”
When we start, we have an Igor that never had to deal with other emotions he swept under the rug at a very young age. They are too complicated for a young boy trying to survive in a world out of his control. Grief, shame, regret, all of that is pushed away and locked in the darkness. Easy that way. It doesn't bite him, it doesn't exist to him. In his mind, he has everything under control, because God forsake him to have something out of control in his life. That possibility is his own personal hell. It makes sense when you imagine him as a boy helpless and hopeless. He grasps control, clings to it, and is mad when he cannot have it. So Igor doesn't want power, not truly, he wants control. But it's difficult to draw a line between one and another. Things blurry when you are particularly dense and with a poor emotional intelligence as Igor. He needs to be above to guarantee no one will ever step on him again. So I want to explore this dynamic of power / control and how damaging it is to Igor, especially because it's intimately connected to his abuse of parem. What scares me is what he will do with it. Will he give up this power haunt? Will something change at all? What if it does? What if it doesn't? In the end, I want all of that to be shoved against his face. I want him to acknowledge the helplessness, the hopelessness and how, deep down, he didn't escape any of it.
It's, yes, of my intentions to have Igor going through withdrawal. That, however, would require a lot. I don't take the theme lightly, and I know how difficult it can be in real life. Igor's addiction is tied not only with his hunger for power, but also old fears he never acknowledged, fears that come from his childhood. He spent his early years feeling cornered, helpless and hopeless, and all of sudden he could do something about it. In a way, he had always been scared of death in a sense that you cannot control it. Yura's death affected him at that exact point. Igor saw his mother die, his father leave, his brother die and he couldn't do anything about it. Nothing. He couldn't even convince Mila to stay by his side. Because he was just an Argun's boy. He refused to die like that, simply like that. Igor needs to let it go in order to get better. I think this is the key to his redemption. You see, I enjoy Igor and Anton's connection because I see that in another life Igor would be just like Anton; carefree, eager to live. In this, however, he seeks power because he cannot find control. Perhaps meeting with death the same way Anton met will perhaps help him to get free, to see the world through new eyes. Perhaps. Jurda parem's withdrawal is extremely violent to the point that in the canon saga only Nina survives. There are accounts of people in Drezna who survived? Would Igor be one of them? What would be a Squaller's unnatural power? Hm, we shall see those things if everything goes well.
ii. he who walks a fine line between god and animal.
The Minotaur, the infamy of Crete. When King Minos triumphs over Athens, he demands that Athens youths and maiden to be sacrificed to the monster in the Labyrinth, a place built so no one could escape.
Kyra comparing Igor to the Minotaur was so fucking clever, especially when you understand the mine shafts with the Labyrinth and how they forged both a monster of their own. Because isn't it unfair? Was Minotaur born a monster or created as such? He had a name, he was loved, then he was taken, was denied his humanity and then slayed by an arrogant boy. Who's the monster, Theseus?
I want so bad to work on Igor's relationship with his hometown. Because Igor's hate doesn't start with a person, a class or a king. His hate starts, first, with a place. One he escaped from, but one who never left him. One that beckons him to return. I like to play with the idea that Igor and Argun are a single entity. Igor is Argun's prodigal son. He left home with a self-made oath of never coming back, and he spent himself outside in the world. And even so, the more the time passes, the more he feels this pull of Argun beckoning him. He is Argun personified. They are something to be explored, utilised, then discarded. Someone so used to the grime, the violence, the neglect, and the blood that it grew numb. So if he is supposed to make amends with his past, he needs to go back. The South is calling, baby.
Simplifying! I am chewing my fingers out in excitement when it comes to the possibility of a Southern rise. And could cry tears of blood when it comes to Sofiya and Igor being so deeply connected to it. My tragic children of the South, doomed by narrative before they're even born. One made by legacy, the other made by circumstances. Let Sofiya raise the South, but let Igor be its monster. The monster of Creta / The monster of Argun. Point the difference!
However, despite assuming the skin of a monster, I want him to do it with control of himself. I want him to find true purpose in a rise, I want him to care about the youth sacrificed in that place like he once was. Perhaps he is both the Minotaur and Theseus. Let him go back like Theseus went inside the Labyrinth: to save the youth from the slaughter. However, let him also be the monster of the elites' nightmares, he is destined to be it both ways. I'll always let Igor's end open because I really think he might end up dead. Both Theseus and the Minotaur are murdered. Why would this boy have a different destiny (*cries*)?
03.
CHARACTER EXPANSION
(01) How far would you go for your crew?
Reaches him when he's halfway to filling his cup: a question shaped by a raspy cadence, marred by both pain and smoking. The man is called Mikhail Voronin, or so he had been told. The woman, sharp-eyed Sofiya, spoke about a big plan without more details, convinced that she could arrange a meeting. That was the reason for Igor to be there, this and the promise of a free drink. The man would be paying, obviously. It has been a pleasant meeting since. As pleasant as men who barely know each other can be while talking business, to say the least. Settled in a gambling house clouded by the pungent scent of cheap nicotine and spilled ale, he could hardly ask for more. “How far, you ask,” Igor echoes, chuckling with a taint of scornfulness. He sets the bottle aside and leans over the same table, resting elbows on the wood and interlocking his fingers. “Well, the filth doesn't scare me, if that's what you're asking. You know my terms,” he says, looking into the man's eyes without fearing the consequences. There is something there under the calm, controlled demeanour. Igor can almost taste the sharp bitterness and burning rage in the way Mikhail gazes back at him. Igor feels a wicked smile creep to the corner of his lips. Good, he thinks. I can work with that. “So, Voronin, do we have a deal?”
(02) What would you do if you got your hands on the circlet?
He toys with the crude idea. A thought lurking in the back of his head, sweet as the taste of parem lasting heavy on his tongue. He asks it casually to Octavia as they stand on the rooftop in the aftermath of the mission and wait for Mikhail to arrive, but the answer doesn't come. It rarely does. Nastia is nowhere to be seen, so she's stuck with Igor, and the silence lingers. He can feel a bitter laugh. She despises me, he thinks. Good. It means she isn't dumb. He knows what the others would do, or think he does. Destroy, handle it to Mikhail, or hide perhaps if the destruction isn't possible; throw it into the sea. All so eager to dispose of such an asset, and Igor is supposed to be the mad one. He fetches cigarette and lighter from the right pocket of his coat, hands shaking all the way over. And then I'll kill the person who tries to take the crown from me, but that's left unspoken, vanishing like the blown smoke after a long drag. “I have been working for them my entire life,” he answers his own question to Octavia, and it's like talking to a ghost. He can pretend he is speaking to Mila or dead Yura, it would sound the same. “No matter how much they say they sympathise with the Grisha, in the end it's us who do their work, to raise them to the top, to get their revenge. I had enough of this bullshit for a lifetime.” The circlet would put an end to this. No more serving. No more submitting.
04.
PARA SEMPLE
Disclaimer: Description of violence, death.
Guns raised, the henchmen attempted to put him down, for that's what souls do when facing the devil. They meet their fate faster than a calm summer day turns into a midnight of storms, for the things behind Igor's eyes show them no mercy. They shoot, but the bullets are repelled to the side when he forces the air surrounding him to bend. The very world seems to crackle, seethe, shiver under his command. Then it starts. He plays with them like a dog plays with its hunted food, tossing it between the paws until it grows bored enough to finish the prey on clenched jaw, sharp teeth
He finds it amusing. No, not that crude. Not yet. But see, there is something very laughable about touching divinity, about being above, about holding a man's destiny in the flip of a hand.
They had taught him the first lesson every Grisha must learn: to be Grisha is to be like. Like calls like, they said. He was born a Squaller, he heard the storm within his bones from a young age and learned to call the wind like one calls an old friend. He was every bit of those things. He was the wind, and the storm, and the breeze sneaking through the crack of the window. For that, he should be proud. Well, Igor could spit on that. Parem made things clearer. No, he wasn't like the air. He was his ruler. The winds were his and so was the storm. To him the breath belongs, and if he wants to deny it to people, who'll hold him back? No one. When he raises a hand, it moves. When he calls, it obeys. When he says don't, it dares not to provide the men with their precious breath. It is terrified of him.
That is amusing.
The first man dies as quickly as the bullet leaves the gun barrel when Igor pulls the air from his lungs. He hears the sound of ribcage's bones cracking, and it's not pleasant. The second is thrown across the room. Igor pushes the pressure. The air explosion shoves the man in the opposite direction. He hits the glass window and the ground outside the warehouse welcomes him gladly. Then comes the third, and the fourth. In the fifth, Igor grabs him by the arm, twisting it behind the yelping man's back. He wiggles pathetic like a fish, but Igor holds him tightly, using him as a shield when the sixth attempts to shoot him, emptying the poor gun's barrel. Then another air explosion and they topple back, cursing Igor's mom.
No, she didn't sell her body at night. He is sure of that.
The last man tries to crawl away for his dear life. Igor sniffs, clenches his wrecked fists, and goes after him. He almost feels pity. Even the devil agrees that one should die on their feet, but there is no time for pleasantries. The order had been clear: no witnesses. The money was good. No questions. The whole place smells of butchering. It's something that sticks to the nostrils. Something you get used to. Something that adorns every dream, every nightmare. He presses his foot against his ribs and flips him up, forcing him to face up, then he sees his face.
The eyes that glance up at him are too young, almost childish, twisted with a fear that cuts through Igor. He freezes, the air stills with him. Suddenly, he hears his heart thrumming in his ear. The boy moves his hands, and Igor can smell grisha in him. Training heartrender, perhaps. Too scared of the killing to even concentrate. Yes. But, no, he never related. Instead, he grabs the boy by the collar and pulls him, pressing him against the wall where he looks into his eyes. “How old are you, boy?” He is too frightened to do anything but, maybe, piss himself. Igor doesn't have time. He slams his hand on the wall, too close to the boy's head. He winces, shutting eyes, pursing lips. “Answer the damn question!”
“Sixteen!” he yells against Igor's face.
Parem is a shroud swaddled around the mind that doesn't numb the thoughts, but it takes away attention from the small details that don't matter. The answer washes him like winds sweeps smoke, and suddenly he is aware. “Sixteen…”
You're not supposed to be here.
But he is. Because money always speaks. Louder than beating parents and the rumbling of the little brothers' empty stomachs. Louder than anything. And they are stock in this world. To those who can pay.
The boy says no other word, nor does Igor. They stare at each other and Igor sees before him a mirror. In the end, it's the boy who asks with trembling lips. “Are you going to kill me?”
The order had been clear.
05.
EXTRAS
pinterest / playlist
“You will always be a monster - there is no turning back from it. But what kind of monster you become is entirely up to you.” — Julie Kagawa, The Eternity Cure (Blood of Eden)
“It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.” — William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act III, Scene IV)
“Violence is the divine force that everyone tries to use for his own purposes and that ends by using everyone for its own—the Dionysus of The Bacchae.” — René Girard, Violence and the Sacred
“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. — Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
“Perplexed is a soft word, charming. A dog turning its head to the side when it doesn’t understand what you mean when you say I love you. I was perplexed, and by this I mean I was stuck in the space between terror and awe. I wasn’t confused; I wasn’t weighing the options. I was startled by the incomprehensible—” — Richard Siken, On Perplexity: Chrysanthemum
SAWYER (LOST) — Yea, it's the “I'm sorry you had a bad childhood, but you kind suck right now. Please, put your shit together and act decent”. Also this. Sawyer, despite his false confidence, is full of self-loathing and has problems connecting to people. Guess who is the same?
KELSIER (MISTBORN) — Igor doesn't have Kelsier's wits, but he has Kelsier's violence. Both are also very impulsive idiots with power and will to kill god. It's also the older brother (Yura/Marsh) who strongly disagrees with the younger brother's (Igor/Kelsier), uh, ruthlessness.
JAIME LANNISTER (ASOIAF) — I don't remember if that's actually something stated in the book or just one headcanon of mine bc I read ASOIAF a long time ago, but Jaime Lannister ain't kind smart, but dude can and will kill. This match with Igor. Awkward silence. Yes, yes, and the redemption arc! Bah! Besides, both view themselves as a “necessary evil”.
VI (ARCANE) — Fists. Just fists. You can't take both down, they'll always rise up to kick your ass. They also have this rage since a young age, a calling for violence. Vi, however, grows to be a protector and a defender — she bleeds so you don't have to. Perhaps, only perhaps, Igor will grow to be one as well. Also the “too hungry/angry to be polite” trope.
What are you? a knife.
What kind of weather are you? a storm.
Let me fucking destroy you by giving you a reality check. you're an asshole who prides themself for it and it's not okay.
How would I write you as a book character? the side character that is very dear to the narrator but doesn't know it.
What's your literary archetype? the siren.And this.
do members have to apply for their second characters?
hi there! members will still have to apply for their second characters just so we can see their vision and characterisation for the character they are appyling for, but they won't need to do a para sample because we'll already know how they write.
Hi everyone!
This is just a note to let you all know that we've decided to allow players to take on a secondary role if they wish to. Please note, though, that we will be more concerned about the level of your activity if you do decide to take on a second character and will ask you not to pick a character directly tied to yours.
— Do Skorogo Admins.
MIKHAIL’S INSIGHT REPORT: A shadow who ripples like sails in the wind. The fist that does not smash skulls, but clenches it behind their back and bites their tongue where a snake would strike. The Captain. Infamous, yet mysterious. An unknown figure that is only known well by their crew who keep their mouths shut aside from minor details – dark brown, almost black locks, bronzed skin, a crooked nose that looks like it has taken a punch, and a voice that always carries a bite despite its foreigner sound. There isn’t much left to go by. We’ve only been able to glean a slight pattern in their ship routes, and all signs seem to point to the source material from Svetlana being correct that they would make an appearance around this time in The King’s Hoard. Going to send the entire crew to cover all possible sightings. Can’t miss this opportunity. They could be the key to [report ends here].
War never begins how you imagine it. It doesn’t start with the glint of steel; the screech of swords colliding and the splattering of crimson on ice. It starts with a whisper, and with reality biting them all as a piffling spy of Svetlana’s network whispers salient information. Minute intel that wouldn’t raise concern to most, but does to her. It isn’t every day a wolf is fed an opportunity, after all, and here she is presented a feast arriving shortly from the sea. So, she is quick to dismiss the spy with an impertinent wave but slow to give breath to this newfound knowledge. She isn’t one to leap at the first sound of a gunshot. She takes it all in measured strides. She tasks a myriad of spies with affirming this new tidbit of information and finding out more instead. Because if this meant they would be averting their gaze from the south, she needed more – a location, timeframe, documentation, details, and, more importantly, a name.
It isn’t until the fourth day that she hears anything, and by the fifth day, she finds herself heaping several documents into her arms and heading towards The Shattered Cup, towards Mikhail, to dump the contents of her arms onto his desk where she knew he would be at still. He was, and he is not even mildly taken aback by the sudden clutter on his desk. He instead riffles through the mess with a puzzled look not entirely sure what he is looking at. It just looks like a convoluted mess of ship schematics, trade routes, lodgers, cargo lists, and scribbles of her thoughts everywhere. Scribbles that become less of a puzzle, and more of repeating words and phrases.
The Captain. The King’s Hoard. Stowaways.
Not all their treasure is gold…
The scribbles are enough to begin piecing it together; to see what she sees. To understand her days of work in mere seconds, and flipping through pages with more diligence, and more attention to detail, before placing the documents down except for the cargo lists and lodgers. One list detailing the shipment of vegetables from the King’s Hoard to Tahelka as well as a name being added to the lodger in the midst of travel – a Kingsley. The name isn’t familiar to him, nor to Svetlana when he asks, but it does give him momentary pause as to why its sudden appearance and oddity when the ship normally harbors only its crew. He doesn’t linger on it long, however, when he comes across the final report. A letter written by the captain addressed to a merchant by the name of Ruslan Lyktin.
‘ When the rising tide settles. On the fifth night. I will be on the horizon. I have something aboard that might pique your interest. ’
“When did you receive this.” He asks, his response almost immediate upon reading the brief letter. He doesn’t bother to ask if it was coded. The letter was stated plainly enough to know it wasn’t. “This morning,” she says, her response just as fast before she circles the desk and comes to rest at his right, pulling out a sheet of the ship's most recent cargo list. He doesn’t hesitate, taking the sheet and quickly reading through it. Another long list of food, vegetables, and plants from the South. Again. With hardly mentions of anything notably gold or meant for those with elevated taste. His thoughts race – a million different thoughts circumnavigating: what could be aboard that would pique the interest of a Lyktin, and why now? There aren’t moments to spare now for his reflection. Instead, he stacks the sheets, carefully, almost organized, before glancing back towards her, “we need to go.”
There wasn’t time to spare for second thoughts nor hesitations. The letter dictated their timeline, and it was a very narrow window. So, he slips the sheets of paper into an envelope with care, before rising to meet her gaze, almost toe to toe with the briefest of touches to her shoulder. “How quick can you gather everyone?”
~
The answer to his question: an hour, unsurprisingly. Some being easier to locate than others. But, when they are all accounted for, he does not spare a second for pleasantries. He is cursory, focused, and remarkably snippy towards any interruptions where before he might have considered their opinions with high regard. But not now. This morning is the time for them to listen, without snark, and reserve concerns for a later moment; perhaps in the days to come when they are traveling.
“ We’re leaving for King’s Hoard. Now. Pack light, and efficiently, with the intent of reconnaissance that leads to capturing a target – a captain. Based on a letter received this morning by Svetlana, they will be arriving in three days with something aboard for a Lyktin. As well as possible other information to be gained.” He doesn’t divulge. He keeps further knowledge close to his chest, to Svetlana’s, as it might be nothing. Or it might be something major. An indeterminable factor, for now, until they know more. “We don’t have too many specifics to track this person down, so it won’t be an easy feat. But if we are to have a chance, we have to go now. So, stop lingering and go gather what you can. There will be carriages ready within the hour.” And when there isn’t immediate movement, he motions towards the door with louder emphasis. “Go, now.”
When they do start to file out, however, he is quick to turn to another figure. “Varyis, stay back,” he says, gesturing for them to come closer and holding his tongue for the second the door clicks shut leaving him with only them and Svetlana. “You're leaving now. With Svetlana. A pack travels slower and I need both your eyes and ears there as soon as possible. Nobody can sniff out a very cold trail better.” He looks to Svetlana then, a tense nod, before continuing. “Your carriage is ready. Get there tonight. Svetlana will fill you in on the way on what to look for, and I want to know everything as soon as the rest of us arrive. Got it?” When he receives Varyis' nod in return, he lets them go without another word. He returns to his desk, waiting until the door clicks shut once more before retrieving a key from his pocket to unlock an unnoticeable compartment in his desk.
~
One day passes, and another bleeds well into the afternoon before they draw near. There wasn’t much discussion from the Volki on the way here aside from a brief discussion on how they would arrive. One that had a simple answer: they would divide. The carriages were to be left in the woods when they were two hours away from arriving at Svel, and they would then split into groups of two to make their way towards the city. A tactic they often used to be more inconspicuous in their arrival to a new city. And while it wouldn’t be an easy journey by any means, they all knew they would be capable of making it to their rendezvous point – an inn located nearest to the markets; the king’s hoard. They would all arrive at different intervals until they all convened, Varyis and Svetlana included, to discuss their next plan of action.
There isn’t time spared for goodbyes either. When they abandon the carriages, they all simply disappear like ghosts carried by the bitter wind.
~
“There are three possible meet-up points,” Varyis informs them, their voice hushed in the corner booth of the inn bathed in more shadows than candlelight. “We know the ship the captain will be on will arrive in the Harbor on the east side of the city. We also know the King’s Hoard is a wide open space where plenty could be traded near unsuspecting eyes. But,” They pause, moving their finger to a tavern on the map sprawled out before all of them. “We found out Lyktin has been frequenting the Seven Heads tavern in the South side of the city.” Mikhail looks at each point, at the distance of all of them from each other. “So we have to spread out then.” He says, speaking what everyone was thinking. “We have to divide into three groups or more to cover more ground. So, if one area fails, there is still opportunity in another.” Mikhail has his obvious thoughts on groups, but he doesn’t voice them. He would allow them to decide, knowing they knew each other's strengths and weaknesses.
“We have one day left before the captain arrives,” he focuses on instead. “Pick your area to cover and learn it tomorrow. As well as any additional intel that might be helpful.” His tone grows more serious, less light, then as he eyes each of them for a fleeting moment. “Expect little sleep tomorrow because the captain can arrive at any moment the following day. It could be before the sun rises, in the middle of the day, or at night. We don’t have the luxury of specifics, but you’ve spent long enough training to know to keep your head on a swivel. This is a needle in the haystack,” his fingers curl ever so slightly on the edges of the map. “Find it.”
IN CHARACTER INFORMATION:
THE HARBOR: This location is heavily occupied by ships that are docked for trade and will be littered with crew members as well as those who take care of the docks. None of them are fond of strangers, or curious eyes who wander into places they shouldn’t. Those who choose to explore here have been told to look for a ship with the symbol of a skull that has an octopus’ arm going through an eye and out the mouth. This is ‘The Captain’s’ ship.
THE KING’S HOARD: This location is a popular space for everyday trade and selling of wares. It is known to have guards always nearby, but it doesn’t stop the ever-wandering hands from pilfering what does not belong to them. So, people are alert here, but they don’t always see everything. Especially the more shady kind of dealings that occur in broad daylight. It is common for Lyktin, or his men, to make deals here.
THE SEVEN HEADS TAVERN: This location isn’t for the brazen. It isn’t for those who draw the eye. It is meant for the meek; for those only looking for a drink, no trouble, and to share information without worry of who might hear. There is a strict no-fighting policy, and secrets shared here are to go to the grave. They don’t trust outsiders here and they won’t be keen to grant any newcomers entrance.
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION:
This is a two-part plot drop. We will release the second half and conclusion of this plot drop when we feel we’ve spent an adequate amount of time exploring it with threads, tasks, self-para’s, etc. There could possibly be a reward for having the most replies for this plot drop.
Starters should be kept within the timeframe of this plot drop. We ask that you try not to make any starters for the previous event. However, threads from the previous event are encouraged for you to continue or finish up.
Characters in this plot drop are limited to exploring the moments prior to leaving Rysk, the journey from Rysk to Svel, and searching for the Captain as well as exploring Svel.
In-game, Svetlana is made aware of the captain on SEPTEMBER 28TH. She brings the attention of her discoveries to Mikhail on the morning of OCTOBER 3RD. Svetlana and Varyis arrive in Svel that same night. The Volki travel for a day and well into the next before arriving in Svel on OCTOBER 4TH. The 5TH DAY OF OCTOBER is a free day to be spent exploring Svel to grow familiar with the buildings and people Finally, the 6TH DAY OF OCTOBER should be spent trying to track down the captain.
