Mile-high Mercenary
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Nothing personal, rafiki. This is just business. | |
| Mile-High Mercenary | |
| Player: @Zyflix | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Corruptor |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Michael Matveyev |
| Known Aliases: | Miles, Misha |
| Species: | magical trans-human |
| Age: | 30 |
| Height: | 5'10 |
| Weight: | varies |
| Eye Color: | avian or stark white |
| Hair Color: | brown, cornrows |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | kenyan, of russian and somalian descent |
| Occupation: | mercenary |
| Place of Birth: | Marsabit |
| Base of Operations: | Nairobe |
| Marital Status: | Never married, but has several ex-loves. |
| Known Relatives: | Younger brother, Chege Matveyev |
| Known Powers | |
| Weather manipulation, flight, rifles, electricity (mu) | |
| Known Abilities | |
| spirit sight, cartography | |
| Equipment | |
| GH combat armor, a large selection of rifles. | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
Character History
Lineage
Michael Matveyev.
His father was a Russian soldier. Information on his actual rank and standing while in the Russian military is sketchy at best. He split with the military, but it is unknown what caused this. Whatever the case, he became a freelance mercenary. He traveled the world to make his fortune, but never returned to the motherland.
Michael’s mother was a Somalian from an animist family, a rare thing there. Her family controlled a modest territory, but was pushed out by Muslim families and exiled into Kenya.
Early Years
Raised in Kenya, his father was often away from home on missions. He would often return with money, and injuries, get nursed back to health, then stupidly go right back out. Mike's father was dead by the time Michael reached age 17, but by then Mike’s dad had already taught him the basics of most military hardware.
With a younger brother and ailing mother to support, Mike took up the family business. His father would not have wanted him to. Mike's father always said he trained Mike so he could defend himself, not go out and get himself killed.
It took a long time for Mike to put together a good team. He kept them from in-fighting by always getting the contractor to agree to pay each man a flat amount. That way, the share wouldn’t increase if someone died in a mission.
By age twenty-nine, he had a solid seven-man team. They survived three missions in a row with no casualties… a good record considering every man on the team was a natural, homegrown human equiped with standard military gear.
Betrayal
At age thirty they were hired for a dangerous mission in Uganda. They had to strike a well-armed smuggling ring. They were hired by a Kenyan smuggler who didn’t like the competition. Unfortunately, they survived this mission with no casualties. This was unfortunate, because their contractor did not have enough money on hand to pay them all. He rightly assumed they would be… irate… and tricked them into a trap.
Three survived the trap: Michael Matveyev was one. A man named Pitch Bear was another. He was a child soldier in the past, from Uganda. He dealt with his torturous history by… going a little crazy and talking a lot. It was an odd personality for a six foot three monster of a man, but he somehow pulled it off. The other survivor was a self-styled assassin named Poison Sparrow. He was a thin, toned man, no more than five foot six. The midde-eastern Sparrow was an expert on all things poison, and actually preferred getting up close and even fighting bare-handed. His past, however, was a mystery.
Michael, Pitch, and Poison made a pact to take down this contractor and take their payment, plus the payment their comrades deserved, out of the smuggler’s hide. Pitch had enough contacts in other countries to put together a small army, and Poison never let the contractor see his face, so he could be the infiltrator. Mike agreed to play diversion, taking the attention of the smuggler’s hunters and drawing them off the scent of the other two.
The Core
Unfortunately, the hunters were a bit too persistent. Michael was being tracked too well. He was trying to get back into Uganda, but he knew he’d never make it through the border with so many eyes after him. Luckily, he knew of a cave system not on any map. It was a smuggling route, so the pursuers likely knew of it as well. However, it has a fifty percent fatality rate, even for professional spelunkers. Because of this, Michael assumed they wouldn’t follow him there. He calculated a 10% survival chance up top, and 50% in the caverns, so he took the latter.
He quickly got lost, despite having navigated the caverns once before. Micro-quakes, too deep to register on most scales, caused the caverns to shift frequently. He was probably five miles straight down and a few more miles in before he realized he was being followed. One of the smuggler’s best men had actually followed him through the cavernous labyrinth. Mike set up an ambush. The fight was brief, but intense. The tracker was taken down, but Mike was shot in the process.
He quickly treated the wound and tried to back-track, but only ended up going deeper in the caverns- deeper down than he ever had before. Eventually he lost his footing and fell… far.
When Mike awoke, he had several broken ribs, two broken legs… and a shoulder that still had a bullet lodged in it. He was miles underground, with internal bleeding, and to make matters worse, his light source had run out of juice. He was in the bottom of a large cavern with a domed ceiling, roughly three hundred yards up. How he even survived a fall like that with only broken bones was a mystery.
Oddly, it wasn’t pitch black. He could see faint drawings all over the ancient cavern. They covered the walls, and even the ceiling, despite the fact that the walls were smooth and un-climbable. How ancient man could have painted them, he didn't know. With blood loss, and blurred vision, Mike saw the cave art glow brighter and brighter. One glyph, a symbol of an eagle, called out to him. He reached the shaky hand of his good arm out to touch it… and that is when things got interesting.
Mystic Awakening
Michael passed out into a powerful vision. He lived the life-cycle of an eagle… from hatching until death… every moment.
When he awoke, roughly twenty minutes had passed. He struggled with his broken form to look up, seeing four things that appeared tethered to him with spiritual chains. The beings had no form and did not speak, but Mike somehow knew they were wind spirits, one always facing inwards from each cardinal direction. How he could now see spirits and spiritual energy, he did not know…
The spiritual chains moved one link inwards, and Mike… changed… for the first time. His wounds healed in an instant and his eyes became bird-like. Phantom wings of shadow formed on Mike’s back, wavering in the air…
…Now where that magic came from is another story entirely. The cavern was created by a tribe that was about to be wiped out before it’s time…a form of mystical time capsule. However, that story would take a book in itself…
Revenge
Days later, the contractor had captured Poison and Pitch. They were held captive in a compound, being slowly tortured as the contractor and his associates were still undecided as to their ultimate fate. Outside, the rooftop guards fell suddenly to sniper fire. Mike landed silently on the roof. He threw in a couple gas canisters before dropping in. Before they knew what hit them, Mike raised his left hand. A gale-force wind slammed the contractor and several of his cronies into a wall. While they were pinned by the wind, Mike let loose a full auto round from his rifle, ending them. He then quickly freed Pitch and Poison… who, despite being rather confused, proceeded to help dismantle the rest of the smuggling compound.
Recent History
Over the next few months, Mike began taking solo missions. Reporters called him “Mile-high mercenary” because they weren’t able to ID the transformed man as Matveyev. This caused him to take the nick-name “Miles.“
Occasionally, he had to draw the spiritual chains in another link or two, bringing the wind spirits closer to merging with his own... changing him further. His wings are now physical, his ears pointed, and his eyes sometimes become stark, glowing white. Despite being thirty, he now looks twenty-five, his aging slowing considerably, and even reversing slightly.
He eventually decided to move to the rogue isle’s area to capitalize on its abundant market of contracts for powered people. It is there that he was recruited into a new mercenary outfit, the Ghost Hounds…
Skills
- Pathfinding and cartography.
- Speaks English, Russian, and Swahili.
- Soul sight: the ability to see external spirits or spiritual energy.
- Highly skilled with most small arms.
- automatic weapons
- sniper rifles
- grenades
- hand guns
- combat knives
- Powerful weather control.
- extreme winds, up to and including tornados and micro-hurricane cells
- sudden arctic weather
- semi-intelligent lightning storms
- fog and other misc. abilities
- Moderate electricity manipulation.
- Flight.
