Sidor Grigoriev
From Edge of Darkness Wiki
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- Favor: Florin • Communal Hunting Grounds
- Tenancy: Florin • Communal Hunting Grounds
- Hunting: Florin • Communal Hunting Grounds
Appearance
Sidor's face is too hard, too angular. The shadows on his face fall contrary to the light, always making him seem predatory and lurking. Sometimes they make strange, distorted shapes that seem to have a pattern to them. In his human life, he could have been of an average, reasonably pleasant appearance, he could have been hideous, he could have been handsome. It is impossible to discern his features. If one should touch him, they would find he has a perpetual shadow of stubble, and short, curly black hair cropped against his skull. He smiles rarely, and his voice is like a scalpel, delicate and wielded with utmost finesse. He was likely handsome in life, with sharp, clean features. He stands at about 6'1, with an average build.
History
Born in 1942 in Sverdlovsk, Sidor was the son of Yekaterina Ivanovna Grigorieva, apparently a stern factory worker. He had five brothers and sisters, and his father had disappeared three nights after he had been concieved. He would never discover the identity of the man, as his mother refused to speak of him, and his siblings would not survive beyond Sidor's 8th birthday. This left memories of them hazy and distant. He remembered their names, and sometimes faces, but he could not match the two.
He felt sure that one of his brothers had been in the military. He was sure he had seen him cleaning a Makarov pistol in his room. He felt sure that his sister had died of a disease that had burned her from the inside. He remembered her agonised groaning and the horrible smell of sweat and vomit that had permeated the house. But as he grew into a teenager, if he asked questions about the five dead siblings or his father, he would be punished. He learnt not to ask questions.
He didn't ask where his mother went at night, or why his mother always seemed able to get hold of food and luxuries that his friends could not. He didn't ask why she'd sometimes come home wearing different clothes, with strange exotic scents lingering on her skin. If he had done, Yekaterina would have simply struck him across the face and sent him back to his studies.
He learnt to work hard and devote himself to whatever he chose. Discipline was important. Belief in himself was important. He grew into a calm man, quiet and studious, and attended the Ural Polytechnic Institute to study Military Science. He excelled, being naturally intelligent, and was in his third and final year before everything changed.
Being a studious and hard working student, he often finished personal study early. This day was no different. He decided to return home early and prepare dinner for his aging mother. He wasn't entirely prepared to find what he did, but he wasn't entirely surprised either. On some level, he thought he'd always known.
He walked into his mother's bedroom in their small house. He found her breaking a man's fingers with calm and ruthless efficiency. The man was a mess. Broken bones, a dozen knife wounds, every nail ripped out. Sidor couldn't do much more than stare and watch as the man, in a hoarse whisper, told his mother that he'd been responsible for stealing from the Vory v zakone. His mother shot the man through the head, and turned around calmly to greet her son.
Sidor's family were outside contractors for organised crime. It had killed his father, after he was caught by the KGB in '52. It killed every brother and sister he had had. It consumed his mother. She had chosen to shelter her youngest son from it, and assumed he would be horrified. Sidor was not. He asked to join the family business, telling her it was unfair that he should be different. The moment he'd seen the man murdered, he'd known that it was where he was supposed to be. Yekaterina initially denied him, but seeing his resolve, gave in and taught him her trade.
He worked hard, and well at it. He knew how to carry himself to appear intimidating. He learnt violence. He worked for whoever paid, no questions asked. He carried a Makarov, though he prided himself on not needing to use it. His speciality was torture after the fact. Usually he could intimidate someone into coming with him through intelligence, presence and words alone.
In 1978, Shortly after Yekaterina's death from a stroke, Sidor was working over a wanna-be blackmailer who kept raving about his Master coming for him. He ignored it. Sometimes, under pressure, they snapped and did ridiculous things like that. This one, unfortunately for Sidor, was right.
A monsterous creature burst into the basement and threw the Enforcer into a wall. He looked into a gaping, fanged maw and expected it to kill him. It bit him. He remembered half-passing out, time seeming to freeze, and something bitter and sickening being forced down his throat until the taste became brutally addictive and his heart seemed to freeze in his chest.
His sire, who called himself only Otets to Sidor, taught him the ways of the Kindred. He also taught him faith- he pressed into his hands the Testament of Longinius and told him that he was Damned, and that God had chosen him to prey on the kine. As before, when he'd seen the man's head bursting from his mother's bullet, he accepted it with the faith and calmness that he had always had. He threw himself into it, revelling in the horror.
It soothed his jealousy of the lack of strange, vicious shadow that he bore and they never would. It gave him a purpose in society. He stayed with his sire for twenty years, studiously learning Theban Sorcery and the creedo and rituals of the Lancea Sanctum, until the local Sanctified Prince was overthrown by a member of the Circle of the Crone. The Crone set about the power structure, taking them out and killing them.
Sidor knew better than to stay. He bribed and intimidated local shipping officials to ship a crate with him in it to the United States. He chose Sacramento for the ease of transport and speed he could arrange it, and fed well, before sleeping in the crate he'd concealed himself in and praying and trusting that if it was God's will, no one would find him.
He escaped the crate when it was being transferred from customs to the local shipping department and left, to explore the new city and present himself to continue God's work.
Sacramento
Sidor's settlement in Sacramento has been tumultuous at best, with both victories and setbacks. The vast majority of these, he treats with the same dispassion as he does everything else. However, after his adeptness with Theban Sorcery seems to have fled him, Sidor underwent a serious crisis of faith, sparked by the last words of the homeless Reverend before the Nosferatu blew his brains out.
On the other hand, he also saw to it that weakness was culled from his clan, a little personal project to make sure that the Domain's Haunts never end up in the position of slavery that he heard of in other Domains. After provoking Dirge into attacking him so that she would be bloodhunted, Sidor settled in the Domain and began to open up social ties with other Kindred, distancing himself from Anton Flores, who he was beginning to regard as unstable after his refusal to allow a vote on Priscus. During this time, he murdered Josephine Powell's sire outside of Sacramento, torturing him to death.
His power play against Dirge was a mixed bag, and Sidor was exiled for carefully covering his own trail with outbursts and disgust at other members of the Domain who had shown distaste for his family. Oddly, this incident seemed to reinforce, rather than destroy his slowly growing popularity among his clan and covenant, and earnt him an unlikely friendship in the person of Ariana Donovan.
The Murder of Anton Flores
As Anton's instability grew, Sidor silently conspired against him until he was approached by Conner Greyson. Together, they agreed that Anton was dangerous, and deserved to be murdered. When Flores lost his mind during Mass, Conner and Sidor, along with the Reeve, hunted him through the Moore House. Sidor delivered the final blow to Flores' torpid form, caving his skull in with a bootheel. As Anton crumbled to dust, the Nosferatu Clan and the Sanctified were left adrift, with no leadership.
Sidor Ascendant
The Nosferatu Clan underwent a transformation in the brief interrim period. With newcomers trickling into the Domain, and one of the longer-standing Nosferatu endebted to him, Sidor was quickly pushed into the limelight. Reluctantly, the Nosferatu shouldered the role of Priscus, and as the longest standing member of the Lancea et Sanctum, he headed into the desert to be Anointed as Bishop. Recieving a terrible vision of his own psyche, and a horrendous brand on the torso, Sidor returned to the city with a new vigor, even as he began to struggle with emerging personality fragments that he had been dissociated from in life.
Shortly afterwards, on the recommendation of Deputy Greyson, Sidor was appointed as Deputy of the Domain. He enforced his new authority quickly, torporing two Masquerade breaching serial killers with the assistance of the other vampires, who had also had their evenings ruined. He quickly became involved in the investigation of several attacks that had occurred across the Domain, as well as attending the Red Alert, when an outsider implied a bomb threat at Avalon.
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