Max Moroz
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Oi, tovarish. | |
| Max Moroz | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Natural/Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Maximilian Mikhail Moroz |
| Known Aliases: | ' |
| Species: | Winter Elf Subspecies. |
| Age: | 23 |
| Height: | 6' 9" |
| Weight: | 180 |
| Eye Color: | Dark Brown |
| Hair Color: | White |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American (immigrant from Praetorian Russia) |
| Occupation: | Hero/Waiter/Check-Out Clerk |
| Place of Birth: | Unrecorded (Veliky Ustyug, Praetorian Russia) |
| Base of Operations: | The Gaspee, Founder's Falls |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Melanie Moroz (Sister), Milena Moroz (Mother), Misha Moroz (Father), Baba Yaga (Grandmother?) |
| Known Powers | |
| Manipulation of ice, weather. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Cross Country training - 3.95 GPA at Paragon University with degrees in English and Journalism | |
| Equipment | |
| Mostly decorative | |
| Former member of the Outcasts | |
Contents |
Background
"Long ago, in the thrice-ninth kingdom..."
So, you wanna know about Max Moroz?
Long story short, Max is a winter elf. You know. Like the kind Santa have? Except that Max isn't from this dimension, see, he's not a native. He's from that Praetorian Earth place. And you know what? He's really glad to be on this version of earth. So glad, in fact, that he's using his powers to help the world that helped him become what he is today. You can skip the rest of what I'm gonna say right now if that's all you wanted to know, because trust me, I know some stuff about my hombre Maximilian.
The Old Country
"One does not look for good to come from good."
Still here? Alright, don't say I didn't warn you.
Max Moroz is from Praetorian Earth, and he's kind of like one of Santa's elves. Except on Praetorian Earth, Santa isn't a nice fat man who gives you gifts - he's an psychopathic manifestation of the hungry wrath of winter. He doesn't give good children toys, no - once per year he flies around the globe, freezing naughty children solid in blocks of ice, as grim surprises for their parents to find the next morning. What's worse? Three days later, Bloody Nicholas, the Ded Moroz, Praetorian-effing-Santa Claus, will dig up any children that have been buried, and take them away. What he does with the bodies... well, he's gotta be hungry from flying around the world, you know?
And that's where Santa's Elves come in. The Elves of the Ded Moroz haunt the frozen wastelands of Russia year-round, ensuring a constant winter, hunting down and devouring anyone who tries to find the hidden castle of Bloody Nicholas. To that end, they can speak with the wind, commanding it to do as they say, and also communicate with the Tundra wolves, sometimes even wearing their skin and leading their packs on a hunt against any humans who don't offer the Ded Moroz appropriate tribute, who trespass on his lands, who who speak ill of him.
As if that weren't charming enough, the whole Blood of Moroz subspecies only exists due to the hag known as the Baba Yaga, the old witch with iron teeth and wooden legs, who lives in a hut that runs around on chicken legs. Pretty weird, I know, but the hag's got more magical hoodoo than most gods can dream about, see, and she's the grandmother of the whole Moroz clan. So you see - not only do the whole Blood of Moroz people work for a single psychopathic elf, but they've got an old hag bossing them around, too.
Paradise, right? No wonder Max's parents took the chance to get out while the getting was good.
New York
"When burned by milk, one will blow on water."
Seventeen years ago, one of the predecessors of Portal Corp, a Dr. Maxwell Yugushenko, was working on his own way of breaking through the dimensions in a small lab in the middle of nowhere, Russia. He sent a small crew of explorers, unknowingly, into the wintery domain of the Ded Moroz. They didn't really find anything at all, just snow and trees and vast, angry looking mountains. Then they heard the wolves. See, Max and Max's Parents were the first people to find the portal, and they knew immediately what it meant.
A way out.
Sick of scraping their lives together, unable to escape from their immortal leaders, they knew their only hope was with these strangers. They scared the crew as much as they knew how (Which, if you've ever met Max's Parents, is quite a bit) and with little Max in-tow, they followed them back through the gateway. Their first reactions? They thought they were on fire. Imagine existing in only sub-arctic conditions the whole of your life, being one with the cold, with permafrost for skin and ice-water for blood. Well, the 72 degree farenheit (that's about 20 degrees, celsius) lab was like the middle of the Sahara to them. But little Max, little six year old max? He liked it just fine.
A few months go by, and Dr. Yugushenko's communicating with them, figuring out what they are. He contacts the only person he can think of who might possibly know what to do with them, this really old cape named Statesman. Well, Statesman drops by Yugushenko's lab, and being the nice guy that he is, offers asylum, and a chance to start their lives over again to Milena and Misha. They shake hands on it, and the US gladly accepts it's newest foreigners, the Moroz family. So where do they go, to start over with a clean slate, to escape from the madness and hunger and cold of the Old Country?
Washington Heights, Manhattan.
That's where I met him, anyway. Hard not to think something's up with these guys, right? Not only is the entire family blue as a sunless day, not only do they have ears pointier than Mr. Spock, but these alternate-universe Russians move right into the heart of one of the most Dominican neighborhoods outside of Santo Domingo. But you know what the funny thing was? They fit in great. Turns out Max's Mom got on great with the neighborhood women, who were glad to have some metahumans that didn't just hang around downtown all day. In a few short months, she fit right in - even started teaching some of the neighborhood chicas potato magic. Yeah, laugh it up - magic from a potato? But this was old stuff, not the flashy fireballing, demon-summoning, reality-rendering fluff you see people hucking about these days. Nah, this was magic to make someone fall in love with you, to help you conceive a child, to keep your baby healthy. Useful magic, you follow? Funny thing was, sometimes the potato magic even worked. Max's Ma was the talk of Washington Heights, and singlehandedly responsible, some say, who an entire generation of little kids running around.
His dad, Misha, went right to work, too, in a kosher Deli on the lower-east side. Turns out that after a century or two of hunting down animals, people, and anything in-between that upset the Ded Moroz, Max's dad was handy with a knife. He could butcher a whole carcass in half the time it took most of the other workers. Plus, in the summer, Misha Moroz singlehandedly kept the whole freezer running without electricity. In a few years, Misha Moroz was running that deli, then another one. He kept his pointy blue ears to the ground about new opportunities, hired metahumans and foreigners no one else wanted, and then worked them to the bone, but always made sure they got an honest day's pay. Guy like that goes far. He bought some franchise supermarkets, way out in the then-growing suburbs (remember the 80's?), and he worked them hard, but fair. He was into organic food way back then, too, never buying meat that had too many dyes or preservatives. He tasted everything firsthand, raw - if there were too many chemicals, he wouldn't sell it. Misha Moroz was Whole Foods before Whole Foods was Whole Foods.
And Max? Well, he didn't do so well. He went to Catholic School 'till junior high, and had a hard time understanding the New Testament, but picked up on the wrathful old books right away. He was smart but shy - multivitamins let him grow long of limb and healthy, too. Max is about a whole foot taller than his dad, almost twice the size of his mom. He went out for the track team, hoping to impress girls, when his metahuman powers weren't registered as being enough to make a difference against normal humans.
Oh, also? Being the only blue kid in school (and Russian, to boot) meant that he got into fights daily. Rare was the lunch hour he didn't have his food or his money stolen, his tray flipped, or have someones dirty napkins tossed in his hair. He was friends with the other outcasts, nerds, and freaks, but never really fit in with them, either. Did I mention that he didn't really speak English 'till fifth grade? Boys laughed at him, girls laughed at him, and his parents told him, constantly, that "The steady drip wears away the rock."
Well, turns out they were right. High School comes, and by this point Max's folks have the money, and he's smart enough, and so he transfers to a private school, one of those Metahuman Friendly places. He really starts to blossom those last few years - goes out for track, joins the chess club, starts making friends in every social clique. Even gets himself a girlfriend - this nice immigrant chica, Maritzia. Not the prettiest girl, but a great accent and sense of humor. Smarter than he was, too, ask anyone. Always flirting in class, eating lunch together, they even go out to see a few movies.
Another turning point in my boy Max's life, though, happens during one senior graduation party. Don't remember whose house it was, but the place was packed - everyone from his school are there, and then some, even some kid's older friends show up, who are gracious enough to provide some social lubricant in the form of cheap beer. Milwaukee's Best is still a beer Max curses to this day. He and Mari, see, they find their way to the hot tub, each having consumed about a beer and a half. They hop in, and one thing leads to another.
The entire party stops when the Ambulances arrive. Maritzia's in the hot tub, block of ice from the waist-down, starting to go shivering and going into shock, Max freaking out as he hits his hands against the ice. People trying to hold him back, but he's suddenly too cold to touch, you know? He starts screaming stuff in Russian at the paramedics, who have to mace the poor kid in the face before they can reach Mari and start to chip her out. She loses three toes (almost her whole foot - she still walks with a limp), and Max recieves his Diploma in one of the Manhattan-based metahuman holding tanks of Freedom Corp. Suddenly, his whole family starts getting the evil eye - maladito hombre, they start calling him, to have done that to Mari. Can't trust 'em. Suddenly, the whole family are social pariahs - even little Melody.
So, Papa Moroz, he packs the whole family up, and moves them north, to Paragon City. Cooler climate, he says, no bad history. They can start over, better this time.
Paragon
"One may have a soft bed, but it will still be hard to sleep."
Here's where I'm pretty hazy on the details. Max, he only tells me so much, you know? From what I gather, though, he and his whole family move to this low-rent district, Brickstown. Bad neighborhood, but pretty ethic. Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs. His family fits in, sorta, for the first time. Misha becomes the business man again, Milena starts to conquer the social life. Even Melody gets on great in her private school, starts making lots of new friends. Only Max feels alone. No friends, no Maritzia, a nobody metahuman who can't even control his own powers, in a town already known for it's metahumans. "Every sandpiper praises it's own swamp," his parents tell him, "We all want to eat fish, but no one wants to go into the lake," they say. "Get out there and meet people," his mother says, hitting him with her wooden spoon, "You need to look good if you're going to get into a nice college."
And meet people he does.
It's 2002. 9/11 still fresh in everyone's minds, no one knows what to do. Max is 18, college coming up. He gets depressed, falls in with the wrong crowd - a whole gang of low-powered metahumans, calling themselves The Outcasts. Drugs, power, easy fame, the whole Kosha Nostra thing - Max falls hook line and sinker. He steals all the cash his parents have one night (Max'd never steal from Melody) and sets off to join up.
He lasts about two weeks, before he's picked up one night by some police officers as he tries to hotwire a car. The cops take him in, his parents pick him up from the station. His Dad's deadly silent the whole time, his mother speaking only when she has to - and when she does, thunder rumbles overhead.
Max says that when they got home that night, after the most awkward car-ride of his life, his mother takes this big wooden spoon that she uses, see, and gives him the beating of his life. The Outcasts, though, they started to teach Max how to use his powers - he tries to freeze 'em, his own mom and dad, tries to use the wind to blow 'em back so he can escape again. Nothing doing. See, Misha and Milena, back in the Old Country, they were some of the fiercest hunters that the Ded Moroz had. And they didn't get that way by being lazy when it came to their powers. First sign of a snowflake so much as drips from Max's finger, old Papa Moroz has the whole kitchen covered in ice. Max goes flat on his back. Then his mom sets into him with the spoon, screaming the whole time.
Well, this goes on for a while, if you hear Melody tell it, but Max says it couldn't've take more than an hour. Next day at breakfast, though, everyone is deadly quiet. Max's mom, she flops the college application forms in front of him, as well as a permit for metahuman power usage within city limits. He fills out both applications. Family still barely speaks to itself for the next week.
"Things need to rest to heal," Max tells me later. The end of summer comes, and he ships off to college. He works his ass off, both academically, and in regards to his powers. Says he realizes what they're for, at last. Four years and one alien invasion later, Max graduates magna cum laude from Paragon University. He was a smart kid, you know? I was at his graduation, sitting right alongside his parents. He didn't spend it cooped up in a holding tank, either - it was a nice day, too, the whole ceremony taking place in this William's Square place. His parents never stop smiling the whole time, either - not only did he pull off good grades, but he'd been an officially licensed hero since the Rikti Invasion.
As for what he does from now on? Psh, c'mon, I'm still in Jersey, man, I barely talk to the guy anymore.
Powers
"It is a bad workman who has bad tools."
Oi, tovarish. You want to know about my powers, yes? Well, first of all, they aren't powers. They're just how we are. We are The People, we are the Blood of Moroz, we are wind and hunger and snow and cold and all that etcetera. In the old country, we, the People, would find humans or spirits or animals that the Ded Moroz wanted dead for one reason or another, run them out into the wilderness, and then finish them off.
Eventually.
No, it wasn't a good life, and there was not job security, you know? But what can you do? My parents, they come to America and make life better for sestrenka and I. But still. We are the manifest will of winter - ice, snow, wind, sleet - these things are as second nature to us as our hands or feet. You reach out to hold a coffee cup, yes? Well, imagine instead you just want to hold it still, but not with your hand, with your ice. With the People, the Blood of Moroz, suddenly, there is ice. Hell if I know how we do it, tovarish, and asking about it never made anyone happy. Look, tovarish, you got enough time to be curious, you can go and do something productive.
Side effects? Well, yeah, there are a few. I was never a warm child. Wasn't until about puberty, though, that I actually started getting cold. By the time I entered Paragon U, I was like ice, all the time. It wasn't so bad, you know? As my people get older, we become more and more like our natures. Mamushka, she's rounding out her second century, and she can rumble like thunder or run like the wind, when she needs to. Papa, he volunteers with Red Cross, helps to put out wild fires on the West Coast. Me? I'm just a kid compared to them, but still - my nature, it can't be denied.
Yeah, it does make it hard sometimes. Imagine not being able to be touched by humans, tovarish, nothing more than a quick hug, a pat on the back, a brief handshake. You get a little alienated. But what can you do? Mamushka, she tells me that everyone wants fish for dinner, but no one wants to go into the lake to get it. You can't achieve something without work, tovarish. I took all that time I could've spent dating and going to parties, and I read books instead.
Yeah yeah, I know I spend a lot of time in Pocket D, but it's not good to read too much, right? Hard on the eyes.
Eh? Am I a werewolf? Tovarish, I don't know where you hear garbage like that, but it's crazytalk. Hey, talk to you later, I just saw someone I recognized. Dobre vecher.
People
"A tough bough requires a sharp axe."
Oi, what do you want? My son? Maxi? What has he done this time? Nothing? Are you sure it is my Maxi? Always a trouble, takes too much after his mother. Sit down, I get you something to drink. We talk, yes?
People he knows? Ne znayu. He's over in, what is it, Founder's Falls now, leaving his family in Brickstown... it's not good for a young man to be on his own like Maxi is. Still, Melody Moroz, she is our spy. He talks to her, she talks to us, we find things out.
-Psylencia: My son, he has always like red heads. I do not know why. This one, though, he tells Melody there is nothing between them. And why would he lie to his sister? We are of the People, we do not lie to each other.
-Pretty Tough: Maxi's problem is that he is too used to being on his own. He needs to meet a good woman. Most importantly, he then has to not break her heart. I know, I know, my son the heartbreaker - every father thinks that, yes? But Maxi is colder than he lets on. Not on purpose - just that is what happens. I guess that is what happens when you move family around so much when a child is young.
-Petite Le Morte: Max mentions this woman sometimes to me. Says she is his drinking buddy, one of the first people he's talked to that has been neither a cop nor a criminal nor a family member in months. I ask him why he'd want to talk to anyone else? Ha!
-Ghostheart: He tells Melody about strange woman, this Just Jane Lane Smith, says he is dead and a ghost. The people, our hearts are in the wind - I guess that makes us ghosts, yes? She says he says that she kisses him sometimes. He doesn't understand it. I tell him to stay away from dangerous, confusing women - that's how I met his mother. Ha!
-January Villainite: Eh? I have not heard too much of this one. He calls her devotchka? Ha! He calls everyone that. Tell me something I do not know, stranger.
-Tom Frost: So I am sitting at home, having a sandwich, when my cellular phone, it rings. It's young Maxi, calling to tell me he talked to this man, who was just like the People. I tell him good job, and we hang up. Maxi needs more man friends, you know? So, I am glad.
-Kyndall: Hmm? Ahh, another loudmouthed woman. I worry for Maxi, that he'll never find a proper wife. English, you say? Hmph! Imperialists. This nation, I learn that there was a war against the English - to welcome one back so soon, it does not seem smart.
-Cinereal: What is the Pocket D? If you are asking me, it is a waste of time. No good can come of not being in a normal bar, with normal people. Still, I suppose is my son likes it, what am I going to do? Maxi has always liked meeting strange people. He says something like "outliers are always indicative of cultural trends" or something. My son, the college graduate. I think it is an excuse to meet odd women, but what do I know? I am only the boy's father.
-Syter: Maxi will never admit it, but he is a mother hen. He gets it from his mother - she takes too good care of our children. I would have been much harsher, but my wife, she is strong in personality, yes? Ha ha! When his sister is upset, Maxi is the first person to try to cheer her up. Young Maxi does not like seeing people upset; I think that is why he signed up to be a hero in the first place, to help people.
=Pretty Tough: I have heard of a blond woman, not able to feel pain of cold or heat. And that this woman, she likes football, likes roughhousing. I would think it would be amazing if my son did not seek her out too.
Odds and Ends
"Be wary of quiet dogs, and still waters."
- Max Moroz is fluent in Russian, English, and can get by on his Spanish. Strangely, he can also communicate with dogs, wolves, and canine creatures of all sorts.
- He has memorized dozens, maybe hundreds of proverbs, almost all of which revolve around living in the woods or fishing, and prides himself on having one for nearly every occasion.
- Max is not a religious person, as he is a pragmatist. As such, he is typically unimpressed by most supernatural entities. After all, he spent the first six years of his life as an angry winter spirit, and his government stipend is still depressingly small.
- Max spent most of his early college career working at various restaurants throughout Paragon City. Even after he officially became a hero, he sometimes moonlights as a waiter - as such, he knows well over a dozen hole-in-the-wall restaurants, bars, and take-away shops, the names of all of their best dishes, and typically, the names of any staff members working there.
- He hates eating alone, he hates seeing movies alone, and he hates drinking alone.
- A strange side effect of his dimensional travel; he can tell when children have been good or naughty, and can spontaneously generate small christmas miracles. So far, this has consisted of nothing more than the occasional candy cane manifestation.
Books
Max likes books. He always carries one with him at all times, frequently a worn paperback - something that can be easily replaced. A literary butterfly, he often starts a book in a hurry, but doesn't finish for weeks or months later. He's currently going through the following books.
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami - Max like Murakami, but thinks that Wonderland is his best book; the dual narrative structure and dreamy metarealities merge together in a glorious duet.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace - Upon hearing about Wallace's suicide, Max immediately began rereading his collection of essays, constantly surprised at the kind, intelligent, witty style of writing, now permanently tinged with bittersweet insight into the personal problems of the author.
The History of the French Revolution, by Thomas Carlyle - Currently on his third attempt to slog through the epic poem, he hates it, but acknowledges that it's probably the best thing he's ever read. He's in no rush, since after this, he's vowed to slog through Ulysses, by James Joyce.
Paradise Lost, by John Milton - A perennial favorite, Max actually wrote his senior English thesis on Milton's politics, as related through Paradise and the Areopagitica. Currently on loan to Ghostheart.
Music
"Music is the shorthand of emotion."
Max likes music. He has a Scandisk Sansa mp3 player, and he listens to it whenever he's alone. Sure, it's only got one gig of storage, but why would he want more than 100 songs to listen to?
"Start Wearing Purple" by Gogol Bordello, because hell yes.
"Ion Square" by Bloc Party.
"Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio.
"Destroy Everything You Touch" by Ladytron.
"Roads" by Portishead. Max knows that emotions are little treasures - he keeps them buried deep.
