c. GSC Game World

So, as a way of passing the time, I figured I’d start sharing some material from some of the RPGs I’m presently involved in. So for a start, here’s the character profile and background of Yegor, the character I’m playing in a Rifts: Warlords of Russia campaign.

The ecto-hunter known as Yegor Kusnetsev was originally born in an isolated Buryat village on the shores of Lake Baikal, in the centuries that followed the apocalyptic opening of the Rifts and the magical suffusion of the world that followed. He was the younger of two children, and his Yegor’s parents made a living repurposing and recycling the refuse of the civilization-that-was for their village, creating everything from gardening tools and reading glasses to fishing gear and weapons for the village. Yegor and his older sister Irina had to learn their parents’ skills from a very early age, though each of them had other talents that the rest of the village did not know about: Yegor, for instance, had an innate ability to sense when other people were around and where they were, while Irina had an untrained yet powerful ability to manipulate magic.

Yegor and Irina’s parents both knew about their children’s gifts, but forbade their them from ever using these powers in public, knowing that their fellow villagers would react out of superstition and fear if they found out that the Kusnetsev children were unnaturally gifted. While Yegor took his parents’ warnings to heart and suppressed his psychic gift wherever possible, however, Irina continued to dabble with her powers in secret, slowly but surely discovering the means to commune with the spirits of the dead.

One fateful night, however, disaster struck. A rift suddenly opened near the village, and from it came spilling forth a pack of predatory DeeBees. In the ensuing attack, the villagers ultimately managed to drive back the monsters, but at the cost of many of their lives…including those of Yegor and Irina’s parents. Utterly heartbroken alone, and with no other relatives to adopt them, Yegor and Irina were forced to fend for themselves. Yegor tried to cope by helping repair the village as best he could, but Irina found herself slowly falling apart. Wanting to set things right again, Irina decided to use her powers for good, and bring back her parents.

Though Irina’s magical abilities were powerful, however, she had not the training or the practice to use them properly. What ensued was another disaster to follow the first, as Irina’s spell backfired, sending green eldritch power geysering into the night sky and suffusing the very ground with unholy light. Irina’s spell had opened a door that should not have been opened, allowing a horde of hungry ghosts to come pouring into the village. Many of the villagers were killed, their souls devoured in that night of violence and madness, and many others still were possessed by the insane spirits…but Yegor, fighting off his possessed neighbours as best he could with a scavenged saw-blade used for farming, seemed strangely immune to any possession.

Eventually, Yegor was forced to run back to his home and bar the doors, hoping to save his sister and escape…and not knowing that Irina was the one responsible for this nightmare. When he found Irina, however, her eyes were glowing with an unreal light, and, with a voice that was not her own, she spoke of how hungry she was after all of these years, before unleashing a blistering spell at Yegor. Little by little, his flesh began to wither as she spell sapped at his life force, slowly but surely shriveleing him to a dry husk…

Yegor, and his village, would have been doomed that night had it not been for the intervention of an unlikely saviour. A wandering ecto-hunter, Aleksandr Dagbaev—then known more fancifully as “the Reaper of the East”– was drawn to the commotion, and immediately came to the village’s aid, blasting down ghost after ghost with his twin arcane pistols. Tracing the ghostly infestation to its source, Aleksandr managed to find the possessed necromancer who had summoned the ghost—as well as the boy whose life force she seemed in the process of devouring—and blasted her down with two good shots. With the necromancer dead, the ghosts dissipated back into the ether, and those who had possessed the villagers either fled into the night or collapsed as the possessing entities finally left them.

Yegor had been badly injured in this ordeal, with his right arm and his jaw withered and necrotized by the foul magic. The boy didn’t even have time to grieve for his sister, however, when the villagers came after him. Having learned that Irina was responsible for the ghosts, and suspecting that he was similarly aberrant thanks to his resistance to possession, the remaining villagers formed a mob with the intention of drowning the boy in the lake. Aleksandr, however, dispersed the crowd by firing several shots into the air, and warning them that, while he usually only killed ghosts, he would make an exception if any of them touched the boy. And with that, Aleksandr left the ruined village, taking the wounded boy with him.

From that day forward, Aleksandr became Yegor’s protector and mentor, training him in the ways of the ecto-hunter. Yegor, who had lost his parents to trans-dimensional beasts, his sister and his home to ghosts, and whose features had permanently been scarred by dark magic, learned eagerly, and as the years passed he grew to become a skilled ecto-hunter in his own right. In addition to training Yegor to fight, to hunt, and to effectively track the supernatural, Aleksandr also encouraged Yegor to make use of his psychic abilities—such gifts, he said, were a boon in fighting the spectral and the demonic. Yegor, in turn, still made use of his learned skills in salvaging and recycling to make weapons and gear, and often his recycling skills came in handy in his and Aleksandr’s long journey together.

Yegor continued to hunt ghosts at Aleksandr’s side until the old ecto-hunter finally met his end fighting a demon near the Boiling Sea. After personally banishing Aleksandr’s ghost—for such is the way of an ecto-hunter—Yegor turned his gaze westward, to the warring fiefdoms of Western Russia. Wandering from oblast to oblast, Yegor offered his services to anyone with rubles to pay, all the while doing his best to keep out of the ongoing squabbles of the warlords. Yegor’s grim, sinister appearance led to him being nicknamed “the Ghoul of Novisbirsk” after a successful ghost-hunt of that town, and unfortunately Yegor has been unable to rid himself of the nickname. After trying, and often failing, to stay out of the affairs of the warlords, Yegor’s travels have led him to the Sovietski, where apparently the local government is desperately looking for individuals with skills in dealing with the supernatural…

PERSONALITY:

Contrary to his grim appearance, Yegor presents an upbeat and good-natured face to the world. In civilized company his is friendly and personable, albeit severely lacking in social graces. This is only when he is in civilized company, however: for the most part, Yegor likes to shun the presence of other people when he can, and lives a reclusive, solitary lifestyle if he can help it. Deep down, Yegor still bears the scars of his sister’s possession and his village’s attempt on his life, and believes that anyone he meets will either turn on him or suffer an ill fate.

TRIVIA:

-Most of Yegor’s equipment is made from scavenged and recycled parts, including the rebreather mask that covers the lower part of his face (it is not actually functional as a gas mask, but at least gives Yegor an excuse not to show his withered jaw). His weapon of choice, the great saw-halberd he has named Erlikhan, was a weapon he cobbled together personally before getting it enchanted with a great and hungry arcane spirit.

-As a Buryut (Russian of Mongolian ancestry), Yegor has had to deal with his fair share of racism the further west he journeys. He deals with this in the same way as he deals with most other interactions with strangers—a quiet nod before he continues on his way.

-Yegor has one consistent personal contact, a wandering trader named Ksenia Orlanova. It was from Ksenia that he got his personal hover speeder, a battered old model that she had affectionately named Zhukov. Like Yegor, Ksenia deals primarily with scavenged pre-War material, though she has a knack for finding the rare and the unexpected out in the Russian wilderness.

STATS

Yegor Kusnetsev (Ecto-Hunter)

Attribute	Rating and Bonus
IQ Mental Endurance Mental Affinity Physical Strength Physical Prowess Physical Endurance Physical Beauty Speed	22 12 11 15 17 (+1 to strike and dodge/parry) 14 5 (Horror factor of 6) 21

OCC SKILLS

Skill	Percentage
Basic Math Hand to Hand: Martial Arts Intelligence Land Navigation Literacy: Russian Lore: Demons and Monsters Lore: Faeries and Creatures of Magic Pilot Hovercycle Radio: Basic Read Sensory Equipment Speak Russian Speak Euro Speak Gobli Speak Chinese Surveillance Systems Wilderness Survival Weapon Proficiency: Polearm Weapon Proficiency: Energy Pistol	55+5% (70) N/A 42+4% (52) 46+4% (58) 40+5% (55) 25+5%(40) 25+5% (40) 75+3% (82) (10% class bonus) 55+5% (70) 40+55% (55) 98% 28% 20% 20% 40+5% (55) 35+5% (50)

OCC RELATED SKILLS

Sill	Percentage
Automotive Repair Basic Electronics First Aid Lore: Psychics Mythology Recycling	25+5% (43) 30+5% (48) (45+5%) (63) 25+5% (53) 30+5% (58) 30+5% (48)

OCC SECONDARY SKILLS:

Skill	Percentage
Athletics Boxing Running Weapon Proficiency: Knife	NA to all

WEAPONS AND ARMOUR:

Sawstaff- 3 ft range, 3d6 + 2 MD, 15 pts to activate or 30 ISP, 6 mins
-+1 to strike, +2 to parry
-Spells: Thunderclap (4), Energy Bolt (6), Spinning Blades (20), Horror (10)
-Horror 10: enemies must save vs horror factor, wounded enemies must save vs horror factor 12 or go into shock

Vibro Knife- 1d6 MD
Pair of silver knives
Light MDC body armour- Urban Warrior (body 50, head 35, arms 16, legs 30, -5% movement penalty)

OTHER EQUIPMENT:

2d4 markers
Silver cross
Wooden cross
Mallet and wooden stakes
2 medium sacks
Clothing
Belt
Backpack
Bedroll
Canteen
Water skin
100 resealable plastic bags
Notepad
Language translator
Flashlight
Boots

VEHICLE:
-”Zhukov,” Novyet hoverbike (with -30 HP)

MONEY:

-3000 credits
-500 tradeable goods

OTHER STATS:

SDC: 29
HP: 27
PPE: 30
ISP: 27

Psychic powers: Mind Block (4), Presence Sense (4)

Ecto-Hunter additional stats: +2 to Perception rolls to spot ghosts

COMBAT BONUSES

Ranged:
-Energy Pistol: +2

Roll
-Impact +5

Pull Punch- +5
Strike- +3
+2 with polearms
+1 with knives (4)
+3 with Sawstaff (6)
+2 with thrown knives

Parry: +7
+2 with knives (9)
+2 with polearms
+4 with sawstaff (11)

Dodge: +7

Saves:
-Horror Factor +3
-+1 vs illusions
-+11 vs possession
-Only has to save vs a 12 vs psionics

Actions; 5

MENTAL CONDITIONS:

Recluse: character prefers to be alone; feels uncomfortable in crowds and suffers -10 ton skill checks and -1 to perception rolls when in the spotlight