sokolov

I am found cave beneath two arch and three open window. This cave is good cave, wide and flat, and free of most debris. [ He pronounces this 'debreeze'. ]

There will be no troublemaking in this cave. Trouble you can make outside, is good place with levels for fighting - tiers. In cave, bring food and someone will cook, bring water and someone will boil, so on.

I have many supply and if something you need, probably I have. Knife, rope, wire for snare, container for water. Net. Many things.

[ Spam available in this cave, hunting, etc. ]

[ The CES today is a sweeping mountain vista, rocky and cold enough to fog breath, treacherous with snow and ice. It's quite beautiful; however, this is not the concern of Sokolov, who is out for a jog on the sheer mountain pathways. Because he can. Because he hasn't been getting enough exercise lately. He's got light boots, thermal underwear, and a light jacket. He's fine. ]

[ kitchen ]

[ He's here in lunch shift, experimenting with a) sandwiches and b) pizza. Be prepared for sandwiches cooked from a cookbook, made of apples, cheese and ham, or salmon, cream cheese and tomato, or for pizza made of arugula and pear, or with pumpkin and pine nuts and bacon.

Why he's making these specifically is anyone's guess. ]

Is there anyone would like nice warm pair of socks? I have plenty yarn, soft, very warm. [ let him wave around a skein for your viewing pleasure. ]

And I am extremely bored.

Nice young man suggested I teach survival, that many ports are difficult places to live. I once survived in desert forty-eight hours no water, drank own urine, sucked on blood of small animals. Experience - very unpleasant.

[ He is totally knitting while saying all this. ]

I was once Spetsnaz, and have much training in this and other things. Probably is someone better than me to teach, but perhaps I will offer and find if anyone accept.

[ actionspam - gym ]

[ Sokolov is extremely good at rolling around on the floor.

No, really. There are perhaps ten thousand people in the world better than him, and they all do things like perform in circuses, or go to the Olympics, or perhaps also work in Russian special forces. The rest of the billions of humans on the planet simply do not enter the equation at all.

So in the gym he will show up once a day and do his stretches and warm up and make sure a section of mat is swept clear of all obstacles. And then he will start falling on it. Diving. Rolling. Skittering across the floor using all parts of the body except hands, which, in this form of fighting, are presumed to be holding a weapon at the time.

He is very firm about practicing this often. ]

[ voice - backdated to 4th wall ]

[ in Russian, though certain words can be distinguished, such as 'Zula' or 'AK-47': ] If any of my men hear this: the operation in Xiamen is a very bad idea. Do not trust Zula's word on what apartment the hackers are in. Do not go to 505. It is a terrorist bomb factory. I know this sounds crazy, but it is true.

If you don't listen and go to 505 instead, be prepared for many unwashed Negroes, AK-47s and volatile chemicals.

[ A beat, then, in English: ] Zula? Can you hear me?

[ spam - flood ]

[ The first extremely odd event of the day is the gun that appears in his room. It is a lovely piece of work: a revolver, and crafted, not machine-made. He can see the marks of individualization, of hand-working the metal, and he wonders why in God's name anyone would do that when there are many, many easier ways of getting a reliable gun.

Still, he can't help but appreciate a craftsman's work, and this is why he reaches down to pick it up.

And promptly drops it in surprise when he realizes that he can no longer see his hands.

Careful testing (in a mirror, a pane of glass and the screen of the journal) determines that he cannot, in fact, see any aspect of himself, in person or in reflection. His hands are still there, a fact that he confirms by groping blind and sending his lamp crashing to the floor.

Eventually, he requires someone else to confirm what it is that's just happened. He picks up the gun (meaning that there is now an exquisitely nice revolver floating in midair) and steps out into the hallway. ]

Excuse me! Can anyone see me?

[ Anyone who touches the revolver may find themselves with a similar invisibility problem. Duration is up to you.

Also feel free to run into him in hallways, common areas (invisible pool?), grabbing food, etc. ]

User Name/Nick: Ryann
User DW: cornichaun
AIM/IM: cornichaun @ AIM, cornichaun @ Plurk
E-mail: cornichaun @ gmail
Other Characters: Cambridge

Character Name: Sokolov
Series: REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
Age: late 30s
From When?: The beginning of the extended action sequence in Xiamen; when Sokolov and his men bust into an apartment they think is going to contain a few teenage Chinese hackers and instead it contains an Islamic terrorist's bomb-making factory. Yeah, it's that kind of book.

Inmate/Warden: Sokolov is a character who probably lands almost exactly halfway between inmate and warden. While he is a responsible, methodical ex-Special Forces Russian soldier, with a keen sense of chivalry, he also happens to be a guy who has committed kidnapping, assault, murder, and other varied crimes while working private security for the Russian mob. He is basically a good person, and one that would make a pretty good warden; however, at the canon point where he is, he is currently in progress of trying to kill a bunch of Chinese teenagers for a boss of the Russian mob who's clearly in the process of going crazy. So, inmate it is.
Item: n/a

Abilities/Powers: Sokolov is entirely normal-human. That said, he is ex-Spetsnaz, Russian Special Forces, and has significant training and experience in military and espionage. He is methodical and thinks through tactical situations in an extremely detailed way, and he's smart and has a wide variety of general knowledge on weapons, tactics, and just stuff that's relevant for his jobs.

Personality: Sokolov is, in short, a stupendous badass. He is an exceptional kind of dude, the sort who gains his exceptionalness not from some innate shiny leadership quality but who works hard and puzzles through every single thing he experiences and learns from each and every situation. He is orderly and reasoned, calm under pressure, and can roll around on the floor (in a gunfight) better than 99.9% of the Earth population. He gives the overwhelming impression, most of the time, of calm competence, and of being in control of any given situation.

Sokolov is Russian, born and raised. He joined the armed forces and fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and was recruited to Special Forces after a couple of military tours. Thus he came into a lot of very specialized knowledge after he had already had on-the-ground, everyday experience to apply it to. The effect of his joining Special Forces late produced a very thoughtful soldier, one who focuses on primarily survival and secondarily control of the situation, and one who is very good at putting himself in the shoes of his enemy and predicting their moves before they make them. (Sokolov, in fact, was often mocked in his units for making moves that had no apparent tactical advantage, simply because he was testing a hypothesis about how the enemy was thinking at that given time.)

Unfortunately, the military proved a very stressful place to work, and Sokolov eventually retired, seeking careers that don't put him in pants-shitting terror on a regular basis. He became a security consultant. This brings with it a few important things. First, Sokolov is part of military culture. It is one of obeying orders, no matter what, and of completing the mission as priority #1. You don't go over your superior's head. You don't ask a lot of messy questions. And you do the job. Generally, the job is terrifically boring, with occasional moments of excitement like bringing down a celebrity's stalker. In Sokolov's opinion, the more exciting it gets, the more he's failed a mission: being a real professional is knowing how to carry out your objectives without leaving a body count and breaking a lot of laws.

What's most exceptional about Sokolov in particular is the way he thinks. He will meticulously break down any given situation, and choose the most logical path at the time. He is always prepared for at least six different eventualities, and in downtime, he imagines up more of them and prepares for them too. Our first POV section from him, he takes the situation he's in (having kidnapped two people, flown into China illegally, and working for a mob boss who might be having aneurysms as they speak) and decides that he has been out-normaled. Sokolov's main tactic in psyching out an enemy is the use of normal. Find out what the enemy thinks is normal and give it to them to lull them, and then take it away to make them freak out. Sokolov got trapped in this situation of deceptive normality and ended up in way deeper than he wanted to be.

Internally, he isn't a bad person. He buys into military culture, and he believes chivalry and appreciative treatment of women is a basic requirement for being a human, a male, and having all your shit together. This isn't because he thinks of women as less capable - in fact, he identifies Zula, a woman without combat capability or particular computer skills as the most competent person in a situation that mostly required computers and combat because she is intelligent, because she thinks things through, and because he recognizes those qualities in her. He also recognizes, easily, that she is the only one who didn't choose a life of crime and court this kind of stupidity and danger, and thus is probably the only one who doesn't deserve to die one way or another. He also works closely with a female British spy, treating her as a person who is every bit as intelligent and untrustworthy as he is, with agendas beyond him.

Where his mistakes come in is in his complacence. He lives this life as a security consultant without fully considering the consequences on the people whose lives he disrupts. For the most part, this doesn't matter at all; guarding a celebrity or being hired out to defend a shipment of something is mostly uneventful. But his bosses hire out his men to some bad people, including the Russian mob, on a regular basis, and he treats those assignments the same as any other. In his mind, people who do dangerous things and end up involved with dangerous people should know that the consequences of their actions could be fatal. In this way, he avoids a lot of moral responsibility for what it is he does.

Barge Reactions: Initially, Sokolov will react to the Barge as a hostile situation. He will approach it as though he is a hostage, and as though his first duty is to escape. Once the Barge is explained to him, and once he gets that initial burst out of his system, he'll be attempting to deal with everything on the Barge as pragmatically and meticulously as possible. He will probably draw graphs and speculate about the uses of certain superpowers. He will not let himself be intimidated, and he will continue being as on-the-ground practical as he always is.

Path to Redemption: Sokolov is not going to be terribly difficult to redeem. He has been skirting the edge of morally grey in a way that makes him at heart uncomfortable for quite a bit of his life. All the materials for redemption are there, and they're not even that far from the surface: he is efficient, practical and straightforward, and professional, and for the most part this can very easily manifest in doing the morally right thing. The area of conflict hits around the space around following orders. He follows orders because he is from military culture, because it is the best thing involved for his job, because he is most accustomed to it. He feels he can't reach above his boss's head, and that's why he steadily traps himself into this situation where he's going to have to kill Chinese teenagers.

What Sokolov needs is to take a hard look at his life and his choices, and to pinpoint the spots where he let it get not just out of control but also into a realm that he finds morally conflicting. It would also help for someone to examine the line where orders should be disobeyed, and where a soldier stops having a duty to do as he's told and starts having a duty to think for himself. Sokolov is good at thinking for himself. He just needs to be prodded some.

Overall, he will probably be an extremely reliable inmate. He will take a very practical view on the barge, and he will do what he feels is the best in any given situation, which will very rarely be disobeying any rules that a warden sets down. At first, he might be very violent, assuming he has been kidnapped, but once that initial burst dies down he should be all right.

Any warden doesn't have to be military but does have to be able to connect with and trust Sokolov, and should definitely be someone who Understands How Things Work, either instinctively or through experience. If Sokolov can't respect his warden, then they are going to get absolutely nowhere because he's just going to think they're a complete idiot who has no idea what they're doing. Someone who's all sunshine and rainbows can work for him, but they have to be a very strong person in addition to being a very lighthearted person.

History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde

Almost all we are given of Sokolov's history I covered briefly in the personality section. The link above contains information about the plot of the book, which is hideously complicated. In short: in the beginning of canon, where I'm taking him from, Sokolov is inmate material; by the end of canon, he is warden material.

Sample Journal Entry:

[ video ]

This is very bad time. [ The accent is thick, Russian, and the man on the video is sharp-eyed, irate. ] I was in middle of an operation in Xiamen, and must return. This is urgent. Very, very urgent.

[ He is absolutely genuine. ]

Space boat must wait.

[ A beat. ]

I am sorry for assaults. I was little bit hasty.


Sample RP: On one particularly memorable mission in Chechnya, Sokolov broke his ribs in several places. The pain was excruciating, and the doctor prescribed him an incredible number of pills to make up for it. Pills in little bottles. Pills in tiny, individual plastic packaging. Pills that had to be broken in half. Pills that left revolting tastes on the back of his tongue. Pills that were taken by the handful. Sokolov, ever the dutiful soldier, had written down all of the instructions given by the doctor and followed them to the letter.

In his memory, what happened regarding the incident is this:

One moment he was in close quarters, attempting to ram his elbow through a man's nose and into his brain.

The next moment he awakened, seemingly, at his own kitchen table, miles of pills spread out before him.

Over the next few weeks, his memory returned in fits and starts, like recalling a dream. That sort of short-term memory loss was common, his doctor told him, while weaning him off the pills. Nevertheless, Sokolov strongly disliked the sensation, and proceeded to have minor nightmares about waking up in strange places for years afterward.

That sensation is extremely similar to this one.

He looks around to find a familiar room, from his flat in Moscow. His first thought is a mental congratulations - hey, he survived! Whatever happened in that apparent bomb factory in Xiamen failed to end Sokolov's life, or to remove any of his limbs or appendages. This is a good day, in his line of work.

And then it occurs to him that the view outside the window is wrong.

He steps to it, and does not find the skyline of Moscow, arranged as history and architectural whims have created it. He finds, instead, stars. Preliminary exploration also indicates that the flat's living room/kitchen, bathroom, and balcony have all made themselves scarce, as rooms generally do not have a tendency to do.

Sokolov concludes, then, that he is missing something. Perhaps a lot of somethings. Perhaps several weeks worth of somethings. But he can honestly not comprehend a single explanation that involves someone taking the bedroom out of his flat and placing it somewhere else. Is this a replica? Why go through the effort? To make him complacent when he 'awakens'? Because, if they know anything about him and Chechnya, they should know that was one of the worst possible things they could do.

He tries the door. It opens.

He moves against the wall, quick and smooth. If he hears voices, he pauses to listen. If someone is coming, he flattens himself away, and then, upon their appearance, attacks.

Sokolov is prepared to admit that there might be something weird going on here, and that it's entirely possible he was in on the weirdness up until about four and a half minutes ago. Out of respect for this lack of knowledge, he doesn't attack lethally. He pins someone and gets his arm around their throat - or, tries to.

And then he'll start asking questions.

"Where am I," he'll say, "and what is this?" - sounding incongruously calm for someone who has just leapt out of nowhere and pounced like a prowling jungle cat.

Special Notes: Sokolov retains no Barge memories; this is a complete reset.