![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Application for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hadriel
Mar. 23rd, 2016 10:26 pmPLAYER
Player name: Kira
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
narwa
Characters currently in-game: N/A
CHARACTER
Character Name: Muscovy Maglorion Prochainezo (the nation that will once become Russia)
Character Age: 500-ish, looks to be ~7
Canon: Axis Powers Hetalia
Canon Point: During the Tartar Yoke, late 1300s | Eachdraidh, early November 2701 | Ataraxion, two months after the end of the game
History: Link to the Wikipedia page of real world "Russia" as it pertains to Muscovy, but as I'm apping the Hetalia nation, I feel like that isn't sufficient.
Hetalia nations show up as a precursor to the idea of their existence appearing, simply coming into being without parents and often without any blood relatives at all. Their people don't even have to consider themselves "one people", or "primarily this nation's people", though the existence of a nation usually indicates some form of cultural proximity between its people, or points towards an eventual/technical unification. Like most nations, we don't actually know when Russia shows up first according to Hetalia, but it is possible to assume from real world history that he must have been around since at least the late 800s. He has changed name a few times and at the time that I take him from would think of his sister, the Kievan Rus, if someone called him Russia; to make things more simple (he's still in the process of unification and even then names are wonky) I'll have him listen to Muscovy, which is currently the strongest power in the region that is his.
Born in the vast northern land of the most eastern part of Europe, the first thing that Muscovy can remember is the cold. The next is the presence of his sisters. He has vague memories of meeting Sweden when he was really small, when he first came into being. Then, in his early years, he lived alone but frequently spent time with his sisters ...until the Golden Horde started to invade, and the Tatar Yoke began. Currently, he lives under Tartar's rule, dependent but with relative freedom: He can walk around as he pleases, and only gets occasional, devastating visits to his land from his oppressor when he doesn't pay his tributes.
Despite already being a couple of hundred years old, he has never travelled to a place farther away than his immediate neighbours' houses (with the exception of Tatar's house), and hasn't met a lot of nations. It is shown that he knows his sisters, Mongolia, Mongolia's aftereffect aka the Golden Horde/Tartar, Denmark, Sweden, the Teutonic Order, General Winter (technically a personification of Russia's tendency to win wars by the enemy not being to able to deal with the Russian winter) and Lithuania personally. He has probably heard about most of the other European nations, but I would doubt that he has met many, if any, of the canon ones. Headcanon dictates that, through Mongolia, he also knows China (who was Mongolia's dependent for a while and whose lands border Mongolia's).
Personality: Upon meeting him first, Muscovy looks like a nice child: friendly, happy, although maybe a little bit shy and socially awkward. That is, until you have talked with him for a while and noticed that his opinion on certain subjects is a bit ...unique, and that includes his way of interacting with others. Or until you pay closer attention to his smile. It seems just a bit too ever-present, and combined with the way that it sometimes doesn't match the tone and subject of the conversation at all, it can seem creepy. It's also kind of empty sometimes, even when it reaches his eyes. Which it usually does.
Because he grew up in a place where he was alone, lonely, cold, constantly hurt by one invasion or another, starving, scared, and abandoned when he needed someone, he seems to have a lot of screws just a little bit (or not such a little bit) loose in his head. He's had his own share of insane, cruel, or just ruthless and paranoid bosses, and on top of all that, he is General Winter's favourite... They have a pact, but, while nobody knows what exactly that entails, we can state two things: The General gets full rein of Muscovy every year, and in turn keeps his enemies at bay... as much as he sees fit. All he seems to do is to ensure that Muscovy stays alive - no less, but not much more, either.
His sisters don't exactly help his mental state. While they are very caring and provide all the warmth that the young nation gets, and while he truly loves them and they love him back, his big sister is also the one that told him to “make Rus' strong” ...probably the beginning of his quest for strength and power. This can be seen as the origin of his somewhat violent demands for other nations to “be one with” him. His belief that you can only be friends with others if you are strong dates back to before 1368 (when Lithuania still lived alone - see the strip where they first meet), and probably goes much, much further back. Other reasons for this belief than just Ukraine's words could be his general situation growing up, and things like these: Sweden, who helped him pull himself together when he was very young and become a nation, later came back to bully him together with Denmark, like everyone else - really, Muscovy at this point seems to be constantly bullied by almost everyone that he meets, his sisters and Lithuania excluded. No matter how hard he tries to make friends, he just can't - at one point we see him trying to befriend a hamster in his desperation and getting rejected by it.
Russia's "cruelty of a child", which Muscovy can display as well and that he is not aware of at all and will keep when growing up is not more than that yet, mostly because he simply has no means to really be cruel to anyone yet. He does, however, show those tendencies already, along with an distorted view of how to care about someone: After the Teutonic Order fell into a frozen lake and Muscovy (despite the other boy having bullied him before) pulled him out which was no easy task, Muscovy doesn't see to him getting warm or makes sure that he has no water in his lungs, and he doesn't detain him or walk away either: He puts his hands around the German nation's neck and chokes him while scolding him about not listening to Muscovy's advice to not walk on that lake. Because people will only listen to you if you accompany your words with force of some kind (his sister said that showing your breasts is also an option, but he wasn't convinced by that). And from experience he assumes that that goes for all kinds of contexts.
Another thing that is already there at this age is his tendency to just watch - peer out from behind trees, stand in the snow, and not talk to the person, just watch them, often with a smile on his face. Observing those that he became interested in. If he isn't strong enough yet to be their friend, he can at least feel close to them by watching them (this is called stalking normally) - and also it will tell him lots of things that will be useful once he is stronger (than them) and working on becoming their friend, right?
Inventory:
- Clothes: A red, medieval-ish tunic with a yellow-white Fëanorian star on the chest; a standard-issue Tranquility jumpsuit with matching boots, a tanktop, socks and knickers; a tattered scarf.
- a set of six red-painted tin knight figurines, obviously meant to be children's toys. If he gives them the command súgradh, they will grow to realistic size, voiceless fire-phantoms, who will follow his orders and commands. However, they can only retain this shape for approximately an hour before becoming toys again.
- A set of daggers from Maglor, another dagger that Rey gave him.
- Two fairies: Sketto, female, about 30cm tall, and Pityo, male, about 20cm tall. They are winged humanoids, can only hold one emotion at once and have the intelligence of an average dog or cat.
- Two warding stones.
- A harp his size.
- A music box that plays Frere Jacques.
- A recurve bow, reinforced with metal, and arrows to go with it (clearly made by different hands of varying skill).
- A backpack containing yarn, knitting needles, wool and a stick, a small multipurpose knife; three spoons, a fork, a soup ladle, two steak knives, a plastic cup, a plastic bowl and an iron bowl; medical herbs, some modern medicine like painkillers, a small set of medical equipment including suturing needles and thread, bandaids, bandages, antiseptic spray and wipes, and so on.
- A large, rectangular, very sturdy tarp.
- A leakproof and sturdy plastic container to keep water or another liquid in.
- One silmaril.
- The nauglamir.
- Galadriel's sword.
- A gun.
- An enchanted locket, another similar device, a handheld techy communication device and a shard of a Harry-Potter-two-way-mirror. All four communication devices are technically intact but obviously can't connect to their networks.
Abilities:
Nation abilities
☀ Since they are neither born nor die, but instead simply show up and go away – presumably to heaven-, nations have a connection with death and injuries much different from humans. They cannot be killed; they can be injured, and can suffer, and can even stay injured for a while (how long seems to depend on their political circumstances). They do form scars, but at the same time they have been shown to still run around normally with for example arrows stuck int heir heads. It's not clear what happens if they are beheaded, but for all other cases we can assume that their healing rate is vastly accelerated until their body reaches the point where they can continue functioning.
☀ Related with the above, nations do not get ill the way humans do. They catch colds from bad economies, but they don't catch colds from being in the cold for too long, things like that.
☀ Related to the above as well, a very long life. Nations can be around as long or short as humans identify as their people, their political nature (like borders and name) only have a minor influence (see Poland, who did not exist on maps during the partitions, and Ladonia, who is an internet-nation), and they even seem to be able to change people as long as there is a connection between the old and the new ones (see St.Maria/Teutons/Prussia, who went from being a monastic order to being a nation state). At the same time the continuation does not have to mean much if there is a major shift of culture and identity – ancient Greece and modern Greece are different characters. The oldest living nation is China at four thousand years. Their ageing process is also different from humans and seems to be dictated by political factors like power and independence, though the more we approach modern day, the faster the ageing process seems to go: Sealand is only in is sixties and already looks twelve, all the older nations took several centuries to get to that point and America needed a century or two for it.
In game, that means that Muscovy is significantly older than he looks, but in a lot of ways still has the emotional maturity of his apparent age, and that no matter how long he'll stay he won't grow older.
☀ Nations are shown to be generally stronger and more enduring than normal humans of the same stature. Generally, a nation's strength, agility and endurance seems to be connected to political and economical factors much more strongly than to their physique, see for example Chibitalia vs Italy, who is stronger as a child than as an adult.
Muscovy-specific abilities
☀ He can withstand cold to a much higher degree than most other nations, certainly more than a human would. That doesn't mean that he likes it, but he can't freeze to death and doesn't get cold easily in general.
☀ He has a pact with General Winter. The exact nature of it is unclear, but General Winter comes upon his call and attacks his enemies with cold, snow and ice (this attack notably often doesn't work on nations that are used to cold winters, and the General is not entirely dependable - in 1000 years he has sided with Russia's enemy at least two (though brief and non-lifethreatening) times); in return, he is allowed to take control of Muscovy's place for a number of months every year, which hurts Muscovy himself (due to his people starving/dying/it being cold and lonely/Muscovy starving/etc). [As per mod decision, General Winter would not be accessible to him in Hadriel.]
☀ He is good at stalking people. Canon doesn't specify why, but we frequently see him only be noticed after he seems to already have been there, watching the person, for a long time. Animals seem to have a slightly easier time picking up his presence, but honed battle skills or such seem to have no influence on if a person will notice him. He only can be noticed by either looking at him directly or if his presence intensifies because he has strong thoughts or emotions. So it isn't invisibility at all, simply being completely unnoticeable. Figuring into this, he also seems to be able to walk perfectly silently when he wants.
☀ In Eachdraidh, Muscovy learned a good deal about healing. This on the one side is an extensive knowledge of herbs and techniques for treating injuries and sicknesses in humans/humanoids, animals (primarily horses) and some magical beings (primarily fairies). It also included minimal healing magic - he's basically able to locally speed up healing processes a bit (he mostly uses it to stabilize a bone that was just set, or close a bleeding wound until it's not dangerous anymore, but these acts are all pretty exhausting, take a while and don't do terribly much). In Ataraxion, he trained the magic that he already had further so that he can now stave off infections, speed up healing for a limited amount of time significantly enough to for example close a surgery wound in under thirty seconds and similar feats, though he is still unable to do things that a body would not technically be able to do itself - he can't let a human finger grow back in, though he would be able to reattach a human finger if the wound was still fresh. He also learned how to use modern medicines and some high-tech instruments, though he will not be bringing any of those instruments with him, and very little of those medicines.
☀ Furthermore, in Eachdraidh he learned how to shoot a bow, how to play the harp and how to fight with a set of daggers. He's on quite a high level with the blades at this point (even higher and more varied since he was also taught by Firo and Rey in Ataraxion, so he has a wide variety of styles) and good with the bow (he also taught himself how to build new arrows). In Ataraxion, he learned how to shoot a rifle and a handgun.
☀ Him playing his harp sounds nice for his apparent age (...which is 7, so that doesn't mean much), but it's not concerto quality or anything.
☀ In Eachdraidh, he added more languages to the ones that he already spoke: Sindarin and some Noldorin Quenya.
☀ In Ataraxion, he added survival skills in the jungle to the survival skills that he already had. Essentially, he is now able to survive on his own in both an arid, cold climate and a very hot, humid one, as long as it is essential untouched nature.
Flaws:
The thing with Muscovy is, that as a nation, he is firmly aligned with order, as chaos means anarchy and that is incredibly painful to a nation. A duty to his people to do his best for them (whatever that is) and obedience towards his boss's orders are also "racial" traits, and Muscovy is one of the nations who obey more firmly and with less questioning than others. Muscovy's actions are dictated by a system of thinking that he won't easily deviate from - certain things are done because they are done and happen because they happen, and no matter if you like that or hate it that's how things are. He wants to get stronger, but only to rise within that system. True change to Muscovy is a terrible, unwelcome thing. He's among the nations who are the most resistant to change, the most likely preserve how things were way past what is healthy or easily fall back on or quietly continue practices even when on the surface a radical change has taken place.
He is by nature no force of chaos. Nor is he evil: His largest goals are to not get hurt and to have friends. Those two wishes motivate his interactions with others more than anything else, and the second one is basically a non-romantic version of Love Conquers All. He likes (almost, it's debatable with Poland) everyone and wants to be closer to them, always hoping for the best and trying his best to make it happen. And he wants them to be happy and from personal experience he has concluded that people are happy when they are around people, so everyone moving in together sounds like the perfect solution for both of these problems to him. And love justifies all means, right?
And that is where both his loathing of chaos and his wish for happiness have the potential to lead to much suffering and sadness in all situations where he has power enough to apply force to bring forward his own understanding of how things would work correctly to enable everyone's wellbeing. Because a lot of the times, people are very silly. They will believe silly things, or do silly things, and you just need to stop them from doing that or teach them to not do or believe them, right? And violent or manipulative methods are perfectly acceptable to do so. Because everyone who has the strength to use them and needs to use them uses them, so they are just how things are; no matter on which end you are, this state of being will be accepted/perpetuated. When things just are one way or the other, then that is how they are right. This have been Muscovy's experience from a very young age, and thus become an inherent part of his system of thinking, which, as stated above, he won't easily deviate from, among other things because change means chaos and chaos means greater suffering.
So while he loathes chaos and evil, the way in which he tries to keep the order of things and make everyone be happy can make him act in ways that others would easily perceive as evil or chaotic (because his logic/system of thinking can be very ...special, see the example with throttling someone he just saved from drowning to teach him to not get himself into that kind of danger again).
CR AU
Previous Games and Time:
Eachdraidh, October 2014 - April 2015
Ataraxion, April 2015 - March 2016 (Game closing), he's taken from roughly two months after the Tranquility fell off the cliff.
Previous Development:
Muscovy has been in two worlds before Hadriel. One resembled his home somewhat: A premodern world ruled by the Faerie courts, full of beings and magics that at least in spirit resembled the folklore and imagined reality that had surrounded Muscovy when growing up. Just that now that he could directly interact with those faerie beings and magics, he learned better how to deal with his fear of them: If the danger is real, you can learn tactics and methods to avoid or contain it and maybe nick some of their power...
Which he did, to a degree: He found two different traditions to learn some healing magic from and ended up having two fairies as pets. And he found a place to settle into in this world, at least until it dissipated around him, that with time came to feel much more secure and comfortable than what he had known at home: He was taken in by Maglor, who at that time had a solid family and following surrounding him and who ...had no ulterior motives in taking care of him. No services or good or power that he wished to gain from having Muscovy as his underling, in return for the protection that he provided - not surprising, since Maglor's perception was not that of a liege and a lord or a territory and an empire, but that of an adult fostering a child out of pity. The clash of perceptions came to a head when Muscovy ultimately demanded that his status as a dependant of Maglor would be made official. To Muscovy, this was about the protection that the public status of being considered a declared part/territory of a fairly powerful (if no longer influential) family would give him: Do not harm me, or their wrath will come upon you. To Maglor, it was binding himself to a cursed bloodline when he would have given his love freely without such connection. Muscovy won the clash and was, in essence, adopted.. He began to refer to Maglor as "my lord father" to mark this.
But something with Muscovy's perception of the bonds between someone powerful and someone much less powerful changed. Or rather, his concept of such dynamics started to allow for exceptions. He had long since come to believe that to be friends with someone, he had to be stronger, because they would keep the connection as long as they wanted, hurt him in the process for their own good and then leave. Now friends, he thought, would not leave each other or hurt the other except for the hurt person's own good. So to establish a friendship, he would have to be the one to enforce the rules in it, since nobody else would do so. But now he learned that there were others - Maglor, and later he also added John to that - who were much stronger than him but would not abuse that strength against him. Whom he could count as friends of some kind - who would not truly leave him of their own choosing and who would not hurt him for their own gain just because they could. He even began to have high hopes with Maglor: After all, the Elf was immortal, though ill, so they could technically stay together forever...
And then Maglor vanished. In short succession, he was handed down to Galadriel and Aragorn by Maglor's will, until each of them vanished as well, and after that he never attached himself to another person again while he was in Eachdraidh. Instead, he took care of himself, and if he needed a responsible adult to point to he had John's permission to use his name. Obviously he was a lot less well off during this time than he was during his time with Maglor or his successors, but he wasn't completely alone - he now had two fairies with him as pets and also tentatively broadened his circle of friends, this time ones who were not much more powerful than him, but definitely not weaker, either.
And then he was very abruptly dumped on a spaceship called Tranquility.
Here he encountered Galadriel again, who did not remember him but easily accepted him into her care, under the condition that he not wear Maglor's family crest anymore. He did so and lived with her and Luthien (until she vanished) in a treehouse in the oxygen gardens of the ship all the months until, after a battle, it crashlanded on a jungle planet and had to be evacuated. His relationship with Galadriel was, while he trusted and respected her, not of the same close connection as he had had with Maglor. She truly was his lady aunt, not his lord father. But by the perception changes that he had undergone in Eachdraidh he knew her to be one of the exceptions that would not abuse the power held over him and not hurt or demand things of him unduly, and it was a good relationship. Yes, it also retained a strong pragmatic impetus (when he helped Galadriel save herself from a danger that the ship threw at her and endangered himself in the process, he later explained to her that her not being there as guardian anymore would have made his situation as a young child without a powerful adult next to him precarious as well. But the same had applied to his relationship with Maglor, and when he found a new adult again in Rey (and to a lesser degree in Firo) the consideration of a visibly powerful person to back him up so that nobody would start something with him, the unspoken threat enough, was still a strong consideration). But that doesn't invalidate that he genuinely cared about all his long-term "guardians".
During this time, Muscovy comparatively quickly made new friends: The other children on board, and also one adult: Firo. He also had his first encounters with Rey, but they took longer to grow on one another. While none of the friends that Muscovy made during this time were close enough for him to have been distraught upon their departure (only Maglor achieved that during his whole time in the two games, and in his case it was also the loss of the first person that Muscovy had ever fully trusted to only want his best - he loves his canonical sisters, but he knows their first priority are their own people and not him, so he cannot fully trust them there), he cared about them. And he came to the point where he would usually approach them if he saw them instead of staying in a distance and simply watch them, as he does with people most of the time because it is safer and because it will let them participate in their liveliness without disrupting and potentially ending it, or having them cast him away from it. So this was a different kind of trust in friends that he achieved.
And then the ship crashlanded, and soon after Galadriel disappeared. And Muscovy returned to looking after himself, this time without any adult to point to if someone asked. It was the worst time to suddenly be without a guardian: Nobody knew what was edible, for a while the supply of non-acidic water was very small and there was a lot of chaos and insecurity. But he got through it, and because it was a tropic jungle, the lack of a place to stay was a constant source of insecurity but not a true issue. During this time, him and Rey grew to be friends.
But then there was a stampede, right through the camp, and afterwards Muscovy decided that he didn't want to sleep on the ground anymore. Through his failed attempts to build himself a treehouse, Rey and Firo learned that he was not only without an adult but also without a place to stay with, and he was offered to live with them.
And then they became a little family. Well, something like that. But Rey did eventually adopt Firo's last name to distinguish herself from the briefly before arrived Star-Wars!Rey, who also had only a first name, and Muscovy, upon figuring that out, became a Prochainezo too, considering it a sign of formal belonging similar to Maglor's family crest. And then a while after, him and Rey realized that somehow, she had come to fill the position of a mother to him (Firo he considers his big brother, but not all things have to line up neatly). His emotional relationship to them is... undefined. He cares a lot for them, and he trusts Rey completely and Firo mostly (he just thinks that Firo has very silly ideas sometimes): Both for them to only want his best and not abuse their position of trust and relative power over him, and to not leave. And for Rey specifically to, due to her position, be the head of the household and make decisions and interpretations that he will accept.
Here, another change to his perception of friendship happened. He pushed the idea of "absolutely not leaving one another" into the family category, in a slow but certain process that at least in part was based in discussions with Firo about the nature of family (while he always considered family to be the relationship that nothing can severe, those discussions added to it that family has little to nothing to do with blood relation, and some other thoughts). So when he found out that all three of them were immortal, them not being friends but family seemed obvious to him.
So his idea about friendship developed roughly to the point where: Relationships between two people are normally defined through power dynamics, and the same goes for friendships. And many people mostly or only seek their own good when they are stronger. But he's not the only one who would want to use his power to make the weaker person happy, and those people who want his best he can make friends with even if they're stronger or equally strong (if they're weaker it doesn't matter because he means well and he can force them to behave). If a friendship is forever, then that is family. (Both friendships and family relationships can be impacted by one higher priority that might turn the stronger person against the weaker, like a nation's people or Maglor's oath to recover a set of gemstones. But as long as that isn't in the picture, the trust needs to be justified).
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: TDM goodness!
Player name: Kira
Contact:
Characters currently in-game: N/A
CHARACTER
Character Name: Muscovy Maglorion Prochainezo (the nation that will once become Russia)
Character Age: 500-ish, looks to be ~7
Canon: Axis Powers Hetalia
Canon Point: During the Tartar Yoke, late 1300s | Eachdraidh, early November 2701 | Ataraxion, two months after the end of the game
History: Link to the Wikipedia page of real world "Russia" as it pertains to Muscovy, but as I'm apping the Hetalia nation, I feel like that isn't sufficient.
Hetalia nations show up as a precursor to the idea of their existence appearing, simply coming into being without parents and often without any blood relatives at all. Their people don't even have to consider themselves "one people", or "primarily this nation's people", though the existence of a nation usually indicates some form of cultural proximity between its people, or points towards an eventual/technical unification. Like most nations, we don't actually know when Russia shows up first according to Hetalia, but it is possible to assume from real world history that he must have been around since at least the late 800s. He has changed name a few times and at the time that I take him from would think of his sister, the Kievan Rus, if someone called him Russia; to make things more simple (he's still in the process of unification and even then names are wonky) I'll have him listen to Muscovy, which is currently the strongest power in the region that is his.
Born in the vast northern land of the most eastern part of Europe, the first thing that Muscovy can remember is the cold. The next is the presence of his sisters. He has vague memories of meeting Sweden when he was really small, when he first came into being. Then, in his early years, he lived alone but frequently spent time with his sisters ...until the Golden Horde started to invade, and the Tatar Yoke began. Currently, he lives under Tartar's rule, dependent but with relative freedom: He can walk around as he pleases, and only gets occasional, devastating visits to his land from his oppressor when he doesn't pay his tributes.
Despite already being a couple of hundred years old, he has never travelled to a place farther away than his immediate neighbours' houses (with the exception of Tatar's house), and hasn't met a lot of nations. It is shown that he knows his sisters, Mongolia, Mongolia's aftereffect aka the Golden Horde/Tartar, Denmark, Sweden, the Teutonic Order, General Winter (technically a personification of Russia's tendency to win wars by the enemy not being to able to deal with the Russian winter) and Lithuania personally. He has probably heard about most of the other European nations, but I would doubt that he has met many, if any, of the canon ones. Headcanon dictates that, through Mongolia, he also knows China (who was Mongolia's dependent for a while and whose lands border Mongolia's).
Personality: Upon meeting him first, Muscovy looks like a nice child: friendly, happy, although maybe a little bit shy and socially awkward. That is, until you have talked with him for a while and noticed that his opinion on certain subjects is a bit ...unique, and that includes his way of interacting with others. Or until you pay closer attention to his smile. It seems just a bit too ever-present, and combined with the way that it sometimes doesn't match the tone and subject of the conversation at all, it can seem creepy. It's also kind of empty sometimes, even when it reaches his eyes. Which it usually does.
Because he grew up in a place where he was alone, lonely, cold, constantly hurt by one invasion or another, starving, scared, and abandoned when he needed someone, he seems to have a lot of screws just a little bit (or not such a little bit) loose in his head. He's had his own share of insane, cruel, or just ruthless and paranoid bosses, and on top of all that, he is General Winter's favourite... They have a pact, but, while nobody knows what exactly that entails, we can state two things: The General gets full rein of Muscovy every year, and in turn keeps his enemies at bay... as much as he sees fit. All he seems to do is to ensure that Muscovy stays alive - no less, but not much more, either.
His sisters don't exactly help his mental state. While they are very caring and provide all the warmth that the young nation gets, and while he truly loves them and they love him back, his big sister is also the one that told him to “make Rus' strong” ...probably the beginning of his quest for strength and power. This can be seen as the origin of his somewhat violent demands for other nations to “be one with” him. His belief that you can only be friends with others if you are strong dates back to before 1368 (when Lithuania still lived alone - see the strip where they first meet), and probably goes much, much further back. Other reasons for this belief than just Ukraine's words could be his general situation growing up, and things like these: Sweden, who helped him pull himself together when he was very young and become a nation, later came back to bully him together with Denmark, like everyone else - really, Muscovy at this point seems to be constantly bullied by almost everyone that he meets, his sisters and Lithuania excluded. No matter how hard he tries to make friends, he just can't - at one point we see him trying to befriend a hamster in his desperation and getting rejected by it.
Russia's "cruelty of a child", which Muscovy can display as well and that he is not aware of at all and will keep when growing up is not more than that yet, mostly because he simply has no means to really be cruel to anyone yet. He does, however, show those tendencies already, along with an distorted view of how to care about someone: After the Teutonic Order fell into a frozen lake and Muscovy (despite the other boy having bullied him before) pulled him out which was no easy task, Muscovy doesn't see to him getting warm or makes sure that he has no water in his lungs, and he doesn't detain him or walk away either: He puts his hands around the German nation's neck and chokes him while scolding him about not listening to Muscovy's advice to not walk on that lake. Because people will only listen to you if you accompany your words with force of some kind (his sister said that showing your breasts is also an option, but he wasn't convinced by that). And from experience he assumes that that goes for all kinds of contexts.
Another thing that is already there at this age is his tendency to just watch - peer out from behind trees, stand in the snow, and not talk to the person, just watch them, often with a smile on his face. Observing those that he became interested in. If he isn't strong enough yet to be their friend, he can at least feel close to them by watching them (this is called stalking normally) - and also it will tell him lots of things that will be useful once he is stronger (than them) and working on becoming their friend, right?
Inventory:
- Clothes: A red, medieval-ish tunic with a yellow-white Fëanorian star on the chest; a standard-issue Tranquility jumpsuit with matching boots, a tanktop, socks and knickers; a tattered scarf.
- a set of six red-painted tin knight figurines, obviously meant to be children's toys. If he gives them the command súgradh, they will grow to realistic size, voiceless fire-phantoms, who will follow his orders and commands. However, they can only retain this shape for approximately an hour before becoming toys again.
- A set of daggers from Maglor, another dagger that Rey gave him.
- Two fairies: Sketto, female, about 30cm tall, and Pityo, male, about 20cm tall. They are winged humanoids, can only hold one emotion at once and have the intelligence of an average dog or cat.
- Two warding stones.
- A harp his size.
- A music box that plays Frere Jacques.
- A recurve bow, reinforced with metal, and arrows to go with it (clearly made by different hands of varying skill).
- A backpack containing yarn, knitting needles, wool and a stick, a small multipurpose knife; three spoons, a fork, a soup ladle, two steak knives, a plastic cup, a plastic bowl and an iron bowl; medical herbs, some modern medicine like painkillers, a small set of medical equipment including suturing needles and thread, bandaids, bandages, antiseptic spray and wipes, and so on.
- A large, rectangular, very sturdy tarp.
- A leakproof and sturdy plastic container to keep water or another liquid in.
- One silmaril.
- The nauglamir.
- A gun.
- An enchanted locket, another similar device, a handheld techy communication device and a shard of a Harry-Potter-two-way-mirror. All four communication devices are technically intact but obviously can't connect to their networks.
Abilities:
Nation abilities
☀ Since they are neither born nor die, but instead simply show up and go away – presumably to heaven-, nations have a connection with death and injuries much different from humans. They cannot be killed; they can be injured, and can suffer, and can even stay injured for a while (how long seems to depend on their political circumstances). They do form scars, but at the same time they have been shown to still run around normally with for example arrows stuck int heir heads. It's not clear what happens if they are beheaded, but for all other cases we can assume that their healing rate is vastly accelerated until their body reaches the point where they can continue functioning.
☀ Related with the above, nations do not get ill the way humans do. They catch colds from bad economies, but they don't catch colds from being in the cold for too long, things like that.
☀ Related to the above as well, a very long life. Nations can be around as long or short as humans identify as their people, their political nature (like borders and name) only have a minor influence (see Poland, who did not exist on maps during the partitions, and Ladonia, who is an internet-nation), and they even seem to be able to change people as long as there is a connection between the old and the new ones (see St.Maria/Teutons/Prussia, who went from being a monastic order to being a nation state). At the same time the continuation does not have to mean much if there is a major shift of culture and identity – ancient Greece and modern Greece are different characters. The oldest living nation is China at four thousand years. Their ageing process is also different from humans and seems to be dictated by political factors like power and independence, though the more we approach modern day, the faster the ageing process seems to go: Sealand is only in is sixties and already looks twelve, all the older nations took several centuries to get to that point and America needed a century or two for it.
In game, that means that Muscovy is significantly older than he looks, but in a lot of ways still has the emotional maturity of his apparent age, and that no matter how long he'll stay he won't grow older.
☀ Nations are shown to be generally stronger and more enduring than normal humans of the same stature. Generally, a nation's strength, agility and endurance seems to be connected to political and economical factors much more strongly than to their physique, see for example Chibitalia vs Italy, who is stronger as a child than as an adult.
Muscovy-specific abilities
☀ He can withstand cold to a much higher degree than most other nations, certainly more than a human would. That doesn't mean that he likes it, but he can't freeze to death and doesn't get cold easily in general.
☀ He has a pact with General Winter. The exact nature of it is unclear, but General Winter comes upon his call and attacks his enemies with cold, snow and ice (this attack notably often doesn't work on nations that are used to cold winters, and the General is not entirely dependable - in 1000 years he has sided with Russia's enemy at least two (though brief and non-lifethreatening) times); in return, he is allowed to take control of Muscovy's place for a number of months every year, which hurts Muscovy himself (due to his people starving/dying/it being cold and lonely/Muscovy starving/etc). [As per mod decision, General Winter would not be accessible to him in Hadriel.]
☀ He is good at stalking people. Canon doesn't specify why, but we frequently see him only be noticed after he seems to already have been there, watching the person, for a long time. Animals seem to have a slightly easier time picking up his presence, but honed battle skills or such seem to have no influence on if a person will notice him. He only can be noticed by either looking at him directly or if his presence intensifies because he has strong thoughts or emotions. So it isn't invisibility at all, simply being completely unnoticeable. Figuring into this, he also seems to be able to walk perfectly silently when he wants.
☀ In Eachdraidh, Muscovy learned a good deal about healing. This on the one side is an extensive knowledge of herbs and techniques for treating injuries and sicknesses in humans/humanoids, animals (primarily horses) and some magical beings (primarily fairies). It also included minimal healing magic - he's basically able to locally speed up healing processes a bit (he mostly uses it to stabilize a bone that was just set, or close a bleeding wound until it's not dangerous anymore, but these acts are all pretty exhausting, take a while and don't do terribly much). In Ataraxion, he trained the magic that he already had further so that he can now stave off infections, speed up healing for a limited amount of time significantly enough to for example close a surgery wound in under thirty seconds and similar feats, though he is still unable to do things that a body would not technically be able to do itself - he can't let a human finger grow back in, though he would be able to reattach a human finger if the wound was still fresh. He also learned how to use modern medicines and some high-tech instruments, though he will not be bringing any of those instruments with him, and very little of those medicines.
☀ Furthermore, in Eachdraidh he learned how to shoot a bow, how to play the harp and how to fight with a set of daggers. He's on quite a high level with the blades at this point (even higher and more varied since he was also taught by Firo and Rey in Ataraxion, so he has a wide variety of styles) and good with the bow (he also taught himself how to build new arrows). In Ataraxion, he learned how to shoot a rifle and a handgun.
☀ Him playing his harp sounds nice for his apparent age (...which is 7, so that doesn't mean much), but it's not concerto quality or anything.
☀ In Eachdraidh, he added more languages to the ones that he already spoke: Sindarin and some Noldorin Quenya.
☀ In Ataraxion, he added survival skills in the jungle to the survival skills that he already had. Essentially, he is now able to survive on his own in both an arid, cold climate and a very hot, humid one, as long as it is essential untouched nature.
Flaws:
The thing with Muscovy is, that as a nation, he is firmly aligned with order, as chaos means anarchy and that is incredibly painful to a nation. A duty to his people to do his best for them (whatever that is) and obedience towards his boss's orders are also "racial" traits, and Muscovy is one of the nations who obey more firmly and with less questioning than others. Muscovy's actions are dictated by a system of thinking that he won't easily deviate from - certain things are done because they are done and happen because they happen, and no matter if you like that or hate it that's how things are. He wants to get stronger, but only to rise within that system. True change to Muscovy is a terrible, unwelcome thing. He's among the nations who are the most resistant to change, the most likely preserve how things were way past what is healthy or easily fall back on or quietly continue practices even when on the surface a radical change has taken place.
He is by nature no force of chaos. Nor is he evil: His largest goals are to not get hurt and to have friends. Those two wishes motivate his interactions with others more than anything else, and the second one is basically a non-romantic version of Love Conquers All. He likes (almost, it's debatable with Poland) everyone and wants to be closer to them, always hoping for the best and trying his best to make it happen. And he wants them to be happy and from personal experience he has concluded that people are happy when they are around people, so everyone moving in together sounds like the perfect solution for both of these problems to him. And love justifies all means, right?
And that is where both his loathing of chaos and his wish for happiness have the potential to lead to much suffering and sadness in all situations where he has power enough to apply force to bring forward his own understanding of how things would work correctly to enable everyone's wellbeing. Because a lot of the times, people are very silly. They will believe silly things, or do silly things, and you just need to stop them from doing that or teach them to not do or believe them, right? And violent or manipulative methods are perfectly acceptable to do so. Because everyone who has the strength to use them and needs to use them uses them, so they are just how things are; no matter on which end you are, this state of being will be accepted/perpetuated. When things just are one way or the other, then that is how they are right. This have been Muscovy's experience from a very young age, and thus become an inherent part of his system of thinking, which, as stated above, he won't easily deviate from, among other things because change means chaos and chaos means greater suffering.
So while he loathes chaos and evil, the way in which he tries to keep the order of things and make everyone be happy can make him act in ways that others would easily perceive as evil or chaotic (because his logic/system of thinking can be very ...special, see the example with throttling someone he just saved from drowning to teach him to not get himself into that kind of danger again).
CR AU
Previous Games and Time:
Eachdraidh, October 2014 - April 2015
Ataraxion, April 2015 - March 2016 (Game closing), he's taken from roughly two months after the Tranquility fell off the cliff.
Previous Development:
Muscovy has been in two worlds before Hadriel. One resembled his home somewhat: A premodern world ruled by the Faerie courts, full of beings and magics that at least in spirit resembled the folklore and imagined reality that had surrounded Muscovy when growing up. Just that now that he could directly interact with those faerie beings and magics, he learned better how to deal with his fear of them: If the danger is real, you can learn tactics and methods to avoid or contain it and maybe nick some of their power...
Which he did, to a degree: He found two different traditions to learn some healing magic from and ended up having two fairies as pets. And he found a place to settle into in this world, at least until it dissipated around him, that with time came to feel much more secure and comfortable than what he had known at home: He was taken in by Maglor, who at that time had a solid family and following surrounding him and who ...had no ulterior motives in taking care of him. No services or good or power that he wished to gain from having Muscovy as his underling, in return for the protection that he provided - not surprising, since Maglor's perception was not that of a liege and a lord or a territory and an empire, but that of an adult fostering a child out of pity. The clash of perceptions came to a head when Muscovy ultimately demanded that his status as a dependant of Maglor would be made official. To Muscovy, this was about the protection that the public status of being considered a declared part/territory of a fairly powerful (if no longer influential) family would give him: Do not harm me, or their wrath will come upon you. To Maglor, it was binding himself to a cursed bloodline when he would have given his love freely without such connection. Muscovy won the clash and was, in essence, adopted.. He began to refer to Maglor as "my lord father" to mark this.
But something with Muscovy's perception of the bonds between someone powerful and someone much less powerful changed. Or rather, his concept of such dynamics started to allow for exceptions. He had long since come to believe that to be friends with someone, he had to be stronger, because they would keep the connection as long as they wanted, hurt him in the process for their own good and then leave. Now friends, he thought, would not leave each other or hurt the other except for the hurt person's own good. So to establish a friendship, he would have to be the one to enforce the rules in it, since nobody else would do so. But now he learned that there were others - Maglor, and later he also added John to that - who were much stronger than him but would not abuse that strength against him. Whom he could count as friends of some kind - who would not truly leave him of their own choosing and who would not hurt him for their own gain just because they could. He even began to have high hopes with Maglor: After all, the Elf was immortal, though ill, so they could technically stay together forever...
And then Maglor vanished. In short succession, he was handed down to Galadriel and Aragorn by Maglor's will, until each of them vanished as well, and after that he never attached himself to another person again while he was in Eachdraidh. Instead, he took care of himself, and if he needed a responsible adult to point to he had John's permission to use his name. Obviously he was a lot less well off during this time than he was during his time with Maglor or his successors, but he wasn't completely alone - he now had two fairies with him as pets and also tentatively broadened his circle of friends, this time ones who were not much more powerful than him, but definitely not weaker, either.
And then he was very abruptly dumped on a spaceship called Tranquility.
Here he encountered Galadriel again, who did not remember him but easily accepted him into her care, under the condition that he not wear Maglor's family crest anymore. He did so and lived with her and Luthien (until she vanished) in a treehouse in the oxygen gardens of the ship all the months until, after a battle, it crashlanded on a jungle planet and had to be evacuated. His relationship with Galadriel was, while he trusted and respected her, not of the same close connection as he had had with Maglor. She truly was his lady aunt, not his lord father. But by the perception changes that he had undergone in Eachdraidh he knew her to be one of the exceptions that would not abuse the power held over him and not hurt or demand things of him unduly, and it was a good relationship. Yes, it also retained a strong pragmatic impetus (when he helped Galadriel save herself from a danger that the ship threw at her and endangered himself in the process, he later explained to her that her not being there as guardian anymore would have made his situation as a young child without a powerful adult next to him precarious as well. But the same had applied to his relationship with Maglor, and when he found a new adult again in Rey (and to a lesser degree in Firo) the consideration of a visibly powerful person to back him up so that nobody would start something with him, the unspoken threat enough, was still a strong consideration). But that doesn't invalidate that he genuinely cared about all his long-term "guardians".
During this time, Muscovy comparatively quickly made new friends: The other children on board, and also one adult: Firo. He also had his first encounters with Rey, but they took longer to grow on one another. While none of the friends that Muscovy made during this time were close enough for him to have been distraught upon their departure (only Maglor achieved that during his whole time in the two games, and in his case it was also the loss of the first person that Muscovy had ever fully trusted to only want his best - he loves his canonical sisters, but he knows their first priority are their own people and not him, so he cannot fully trust them there), he cared about them. And he came to the point where he would usually approach them if he saw them instead of staying in a distance and simply watch them, as he does with people most of the time because it is safer and because it will let them participate in their liveliness without disrupting and potentially ending it, or having them cast him away from it. So this was a different kind of trust in friends that he achieved.
And then the ship crashlanded, and soon after Galadriel disappeared. And Muscovy returned to looking after himself, this time without any adult to point to if someone asked. It was the worst time to suddenly be without a guardian: Nobody knew what was edible, for a while the supply of non-acidic water was very small and there was a lot of chaos and insecurity. But he got through it, and because it was a tropic jungle, the lack of a place to stay was a constant source of insecurity but not a true issue. During this time, him and Rey grew to be friends.
But then there was a stampede, right through the camp, and afterwards Muscovy decided that he didn't want to sleep on the ground anymore. Through his failed attempts to build himself a treehouse, Rey and Firo learned that he was not only without an adult but also without a place to stay with, and he was offered to live with them.
And then they became a little family. Well, something like that. But Rey did eventually adopt Firo's last name to distinguish herself from the briefly before arrived Star-Wars!Rey, who also had only a first name, and Muscovy, upon figuring that out, became a Prochainezo too, considering it a sign of formal belonging similar to Maglor's family crest. And then a while after, him and Rey realized that somehow, she had come to fill the position of a mother to him (Firo he considers his big brother, but not all things have to line up neatly). His emotional relationship to them is... undefined. He cares a lot for them, and he trusts Rey completely and Firo mostly (he just thinks that Firo has very silly ideas sometimes): Both for them to only want his best and not abuse their position of trust and relative power over him, and to not leave. And for Rey specifically to, due to her position, be the head of the household and make decisions and interpretations that he will accept.
Here, another change to his perception of friendship happened. He pushed the idea of "absolutely not leaving one another" into the family category, in a slow but certain process that at least in part was based in discussions with Firo about the nature of family (while he always considered family to be the relationship that nothing can severe, those discussions added to it that family has little to nothing to do with blood relation, and some other thoughts). So when he found out that all three of them were immortal, them not being friends but family seemed obvious to him.
So his idea about friendship developed roughly to the point where: Relationships between two people are normally defined through power dynamics, and the same goes for friendships. And many people mostly or only seek their own good when they are stronger. But he's not the only one who would want to use his power to make the weaker person happy, and those people who want his best he can make friends with even if they're stronger or equally strong (if they're weaker it doesn't matter because he means well and he can force them to behave). If a friendship is forever, then that is family. (Both friendships and family relationships can be impacted by one higher priority that might turn the stronger person against the weaker, like a nation's people or Maglor's oath to recover a set of gemstones. But as long as that isn't in the picture, the trust needs to be justified).
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: TDM goodness!