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[muscovy]

P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Kira
OOC Journal: narva
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: Over
Email + IM: narwa
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: "Muscovy", the nation that will one day become Russia.

((Mostly for the sake of simplicity. It's not entirely accurate at his point of time, as his territory still consists of multiple independent "states" and Muscovy is not the unrivalled greatest among them either. I play it as that back home he would adopt a different name depending on where he is and whom he is talking to. When he entered Eachdraidh, he just picked one of the possibilites because he figured it to be one where the chance that people would be angry about him picking it was the smallest, and that was Muscovy. OOCly the main reason was of course that I wanted people to be able to realize who he is without having extensive historical knowledge.

"Russia", his later name, is definitely wrong at this time and he wouldn't connect it with himself, as the Kievan Rus is personified by his sister, the later Ukraine. Well, by now he's been told that he will become "Russia" one day, but he still doesn't feel that that is him.))

Canon: Axis Powers Hetalia

Original or Alternate Universe: CRAU (from eachdraidh)

Canon Point: During the Tartar Yoke, late 1300s | Eachdraidh, early November 2701

Number: No preference.

Setting: Wikipedia and Kitawiki

History:

((Muscovy is taken from a fairly early canon point of Russia's existence as portrayed in Hetalia, but he is one of the nations whose childhood has gotten significant coverage in the comics and is thus, in my opinion, appable from this early on. Headcanon (that is extrapolated from irl history) is written in cursive.))

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.

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. He uses this freedom to hang with his sisters and stalk his neighbours. But it also means that he has no support but General Winter against those that try to bully him.

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 Tartar's and China's houses), and hasn't met a lot of nations. It is shown that he knows his sisters, Mongolia, Mongolia's after effect 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 heard about most of the other European nations, but I would doubt that he has met many, if any, of the canon ones. 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 does already display at times but is not consciously aware of 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?


Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

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). Since General Winter would technically be "on him" if I bring him in from January, I think Muscovy could use him in Eachdraidh.

☀ 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).

☀ Furthermore, 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, good with the bow and him playing the harp sounds nice for his apparent age, but it's not concerto quality or anything. He also added more languages to the ones that he already spoke.


Inventory:

☀ A worn scarf.
☀ A set of six red-painted tin knight figurines, obviously meant to be children's toys. Should he give 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. Limitation: They won't grow to a realistic size anymore and stay at about 30cm high.
☀ A set of clothes. They're made by the Dwarves of Cothromach and thus of a high quality, a little over a year old, reminiscent of first age Noldorin style and have a Fëanorian star on the chest.
☀ A set of daggers.
☀ Two fairies. Sketto is about 30 cm tall when standing, Pityo about 20. Their sentience is described as "simple minds, only one emotion at a time, simple personalities", somewhat alike in level to that of a cat/dog (without intending to insult any cats). They don't speak but chime/chirp and can understand human speech. I'm not sure if they can get in as pets or not, considering that they're humanoid with wings. Mod plz?
☀ Two warding stones. These stones will take a few strikes against the bearer before breaking (they can protect against up to one fatal cut/one broken bone).
☀ A bandersnatch coat that is too big for him.
☀ A harp his size.
☀ A music box that plays Frere Jacques.
☀ A bow akin to that of Tolkien Dwarves and arrows to go with it.
☀ A backpack containing food for two days, yarn, knitting needles, wool and a stick, herbs, a spoon, a small knife and an iron bowl.


Appearance: Muscovy has a fairly normal build for a child, with a round, usually smiling face and purple eyes. In canon, the way he dresses tends to give him the looks of a heavy kid, and he's never seen without his scarf - this still holds partly true after Eachdraidh, but the ratty scarf now contrasts a quality set of clothes that fit him better, so that he doesn't appear as bulky anymore.

His hair is ash blond and after Eachdraidh long and braided in a specific style that he won't change (according to the headcanon of his "adoptive father" Maglor's player, Maglor's ethnic group, the Noldor, use braids to proclaim house, status and some other things. Muscoy's braids would proclaim him as Maglor's dependant. I'm open to retcon this in case that Atarax's Tolkien-muns don't agree with the headcanon and just say that it is just an ordinary hairstyle that Maglor liked to put in his hair without any meaning behind it). He keeps it mostly to keep a connection with Maglor.

It is a bit hard to estimate his apparent age, but I'll put it in the 6~7 years range. (If necessary I can explain this estimate.)

Age: 500+ | apparent age: 6~7

AU Clarification:

Muscovy arrived in the Drabwurld through being chased there by fairies and met Maglor when he mistook him for China and sought a night's safe rest with him. This turned out splendidly, as the immortal Elf took a liking to the apparent child. Despite them being brought to this world by opposing powers, Muscovy stayed with Maglor and his family. For that reason he ignored most of the war that was going on and encountered people on both sides. While he started out thinking that Maglor was a nation or something akin to it and thought of himself as the adult's dependence, this in time shifted to him thinking of Maglor as something akin to a father and calling him "my lord father" when referring to him. After Maglor vanished (= was dropped), Muscovy travelled the world by himself, selling herbs from the forests, small game like rabbits and knitted goods, and though he was less well off than at Maglor's side managed to stay afloat economically, partly through connections with people with Russian ancestors who tended to feel positively towards him and through connections with other shardbearers (= player characters). His main relations with others were with two men, Aragorn and John, whom he used as as fake guardians when people claimed that such a young kid should not run around alone, and some people that were either friends of his not!father, business partners or, in two instances, people who taught him something and came close to being his friends.

What Muscovy could experience in Eachdraidh was a relationship with a stronger, parent-like figure who could make him feel safe, and feel like that safety would last and the knowledge that it could in theory last for eternity- and who gave him the feeling that this was unconditionally and never hurt him. Though this situation did not last for very long (Maglor only "officially adopted" him, as far as Muscovy is concerned at least, three months before he vanished, though their relationship had been developing into a parent-child feeling since three months before that) it left a deep impression on Muscovy. He learned what it meant to completely trust another person to maintain a positive relationship from their end, which he had never considered possible before - he always thought that it would have to be him who is the stronger one for a relationship (a friendship) to be maintained consistently and not turn sour or end, and that nobody would protect him without expecting to gain something from it. But Maglor was strong and could protect him, treated him well and kept him around, and unlike the people whose nation Muscovy is (who might have shown him continuous love and care) he wasn't mortal, so he could in theory stay around forever.

Losing Maglor was a shock, and threw him back. But while Maglor was still there two other relationships had developed that, while neither as strong nor as secure, showed him that the same traits (aka the consistently positive relationship with a stronger person, even though they are (to a degree) mortal) could exist outside of Maglor, too. Sure, one of these relationships he suspects is partly due to Maglor having asked it of the man in question, but the other seems to be entirely without reason and gain. And while he is still a bit confused by such consistently positive relationships with stronger people being possible, the idea that they are has taken root in his heart, though it is weak yet. And he still thinks that an inequality in power is both necessary and will naturally develop within any kind of postitive (and negative) relationship. Even with the people that I compared to friends above, he feels a power imbalance that he sees no issue with and doesn't think could become a balance (it could only tilt in his favour).

An extension of belonging to Maglor was that he belonged to a family that could offer him protection. Sure, he has family back home too, but neither of his sisters is in a position where they could offer him any help against dangers and harm, and Maglor's family could and to at least a degree would have. And Maglor even made sure that there were people within the family (one of them one of the men mentioned above) who would take care of him should Maglor die or vanish. He still feels a bit more secure when he visibly identifies with Maglor's family, even though he knows that it can technically be unsafe if he runs into those that don't like them.

An experience that he could never have made in canon is that he was almost entirely by himself mentally in Eachdraidh: There were some descendants of Russians that still identified as "the nationality of my grandparent" to a very small degree, but he was an almost complete individual - he felt only his own thoughts and feelings and his decisions were swayed by nothing that his own will, not even by a boss who could have given him unresistable orders. His health was entirely up to how he treated his body because he had no economy. For a while, that left him unsure and feeling empty, but as he got used to it he started feel more certain about his own feelings and wishes, and to act more selfishly in some ways - if he ties himself to someone, it will only be him who is tied thusly, and if he takes risks, he only risks his own safety or wellbeing. So he can do all these things more freely, and has started to very cautiously do them more freely.

Relatedly, he experienced not being a nation and living among other people who were neither nations nor humans, but something in between. He's started to think a bit less like a nation and more like an immortal but otherwise fairly human being, which for example affects how he thinks about politics, but also how he thinks about individual humans and interactions with them, including but not limited to that he sees the individual human much more strongly now.

Finally, he learned a bit about his history - that he will one day be Russia and very big and strong, which gave him some confidence and hope. He also encountered 2010-ish technical inventions, for example automatic doors, modern kitchen and TV sets (including terrible soaps), and modern foods like chocolate and coffee, and he knows that there can be much more advanced technology through people telling him this. And he learned that magic and sorcery can be both good and bad, just like fairytale and fantasy creatures, which makes his response to encountering them more nuanced and less fearful.



S A M P L E S
Log Sample:

He kneels on a bench in the med bay, considering the contents of his locker. It's not bad at all: two sets of clothes, one of them the one that he was wearing before coming here, the other strange and new (it reminds him a bit of the station, everything here does. Of the things that he encountered there and the moh-vees that his lord father and him watched in the tee-vee box). His weapons, the contents of his backpack, his fairies, his harp. He stuffs everything back into his backpack, nervous about the surroundings but calmed by Sketto and Pityo being with him now, mostly clinging to his wet hair and chiming anxiously at people who pass by too closely. They're lively, as always, and there; they will not leave his side (and for a moment he thought that they had left him and they're probably lucky that he didn't break them when hugging them happily as he found them again). They're his friends, even if they can't talk.

What should he do now, though? He has two options for how he may dress himself - his own clothes or the ones provided by this strange place that he can see no exit from (the doors that looked automatic didn't open when he walked by them earlier). Which should he pick? Looking around, most people seem to opt for more customized clothing, so neither will make him stick out more or less, which means that that won't affect how safe he is (after all he's seen neither John nor Aragorn nor anyone else that might help him if he gets into trouble yet. And he hates bad things happening to him - especially if it might affect the fairies, too). But wearing the star of Maglor's family might, if he runs into someone who doesn't like them ...so the uniform may be better.

It only occurs halfway through doing his braids that they will announce his belonging to his lord father just as clearly as the star, at least to those who know how to read them. ...Which, if he understood it correctly, will be very few of those who dislike them, so it should be fine, plus he has been assured before that no Elf would harm a child or one looking like a child. That is good, because he really wants to keep them, they remind him of his lord father... and then Muscovy's mind connects his strange surroundings and the memory of Maglor and the boy suddenly giggles to himself as his fingers continue their work, happiness flooding him at the realization that if this strange room is part of the place that those who are taken from the Drabwurld come to he might find Maglor again. It makes him finish as quickly as possible and search for his locket... which he can't find. But there was this strange item with his things, and he's seen others talk to it. Maybe if he pokes at it or talks to it...

Comms Sample:

[This time around, he is much less hesitant when accessing the network - sure, the device is a lot more complicated than the simple voice-activated lockets that he has become used to, but it reminds him a bit of the teh-vee and the whole concept of using a device to speak across distances is less scary now that he doesn't have to think that there is evil sorcery behind it (he still thinks that it is sorcery, he's just less troubled using it).

He even manages to use it somewhat accurately. A round face appears on the screen, smiling a pleasant smile that never ceases throughout the whole message. The blond Noldorin braids that his long hair is arranged in and the ratty scarf around his neck are the only costumized part of his appearance. After a moment he speaks up.]

I am looking for a man. He has pointy ears, long dark hair and sings a lot. He's also sad and a bit see-through.

...And tall. If you have seen him, you will tell me where he is, yes?

[He pauses.] If you can tell me where he is and I find him, I will pay a reward for it. I have herbs and can make you knitted goods and a few other items, and I am trained in healing. ...But only after I know that you did not lie. Which you should not, anyway, because it is very bad and people will be angry if you do it, and bad things will happen.