Anatoly Alekseyevich Korolyuk

[Holtzmann]

IRC Nickname: Holtzmann


Name: Anatoly Alekseyevich Korolyuk
Alias: none
Age: 16
Date of Birth: January 1st
Hometown: outskirts of St. Petersburg, Russia

Height: 5'6"
Weight: 148lbs
Hair Color: straw blonde
Eye Color: light blue
Nationality/Race: Russian-Ukrainian


Occupation: Law student

Personality Profile: Anatoly doesn't draw much attention. While not shy and actually rather easy to get talking, he simply doesn't start a lot of conversations. His humor is somewhat dry and caustic, and he sometimes slips russian words in his speech. More often than not, those are either acknowledgments or insults. His grief counseling was extremely effective, but he still has some weird quirks and morbid tastes. And while he does suffer from insomnia, at least he is not depressive, suicidal or violent anymore (although he can be very cruel when needed). Anatoly is underage, but he is always smuggling some sort of drink in a hip flask. Thankfully, he holds his alcohol very well.

Physical Description: A plain boy with an average build. His face is angular and clean-shaven, with deep eyes (with permanent dark marks under them) and nearly no zits or pimples, except for a few faint scars crossing his left cheek. His hair is cut very short, almost shaved. His usual outfit is formal and elegant, with social black shoes and trousers, a white button-up shirt with a tie, and a simple blazer or jacket over it all.

Character Picture (Optional):


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Mutation/Powers:

Primary : Effigy - Anatoly is able to create what he calls "effigies": moving, semi-intelligent statues that obey his commands. He is able to create those out of any non-living object or material, warping and distorting objects until they attain the desired shape, or causing the effigy to form inside or at the surface of a larger object and then break its way out, leaving a crater where it used to be. The effigy's characteristics are defined by their material, with clay and earth being strong but rather slow and easy to destroy, while metal effigies are very strong and fast, and glass effigies look pretty and pointy, but not much else.

He can only create effigies in humanoid shapes. If the original object was already shaped like a living being, he can animate them like that instead, and they will behave as their living counterparts do. The effigies have a measure of intelligence and instinct, and will always obey Anatoly to the best of their ability. The harder the original object or material is, and the more it needs to be molded to achieve the desired shape, the more difficult and energy-consuming it is for Anatoly to create the effigy. For this reason, statues of any kind are much easier to turn into effigies than concrete slabs and automobiles. Anatoly can create effigies out of skeletons very easily, and bone effigies will always attempt to reform themselves if destroyed or disassembled.

Effigies will last for up to a week if not "reinforced" periodically by Anatoly, and may be dismissed at will. Once dismissed, an effigy will become a simple statue, without any sign of having ever moved. Dismissed effigies often crumble if their original materials are not hard enough to sustain their position.

Secondary : Enfeeble - the same process used to shape and warp matter to create Anatoly's effigies may also be used to weaken creatures and objects. With a mental command, a sphere of up to 5 yards in radius anywhere inside Anatoly's field of view is affected by this power. Any matter within the sphere, living or dead, starts emanating a faint, sickly red glow. Enfeebled matter becomes weaker and more brittle: muscles can't produce as much force, bones and walls crack under strain, metal bends and snaps more easily. This power is so pervasive, it even weakens energy fields in the affected area. Anyone affected suddenly feels heavier and tired.

Enfeebled matter is easier to transform into effigies, requiring less effort from Anatoly. Even if taken out of the originally affected area, enfeebled objects and beings will remain in this state until the effect expires or until Anatoly uses this power again. Enfeebling doesn't consume any power or cause Anatoly any strain, but the enfeeblement effect vanishes harmlessly after about fifty seconds. Any matter warped, destroyed or otherwise altered while enfeebled remains in that state even after the effect ends. Anatoly is completely immune to the effects of this power, and is able to use it at point-blank without any effects to himself.

Tertiary : none yet

Drawbacks/Weaknesses/Side Effects : 
- If his ability to create humanoids out of inanimate materials is ignored, Anatoly is a perfectly normal human. He has no physical or mental enhancements, and his breath is actually shorter than the usual.
- While the amount or size of the effigies Anatoly can create is effectively infinite, the amount of effigies he can control is limited. If he ever goes over twenty-five effigies (with larger effigies "costing" more in terms of control), the new animated statues will start running out of control. Their behavior is defined by their original material, with "harder" materials being more aggressive. Out-of-control effigies may not be dismissed and must be destroyed.
- Creating effigies is a quick but strenuous activity, and Anatoly's weak heart will start to hurt in protest if he tries to create too many of them in a short period of time. Insisting in creating more effigies will eventually result in a heart attack.
- His enfeeblement power has effectively infinite range, but it loses accuracy easily. It also requires line of sight and may not be used more than once every few seconds.

How do you believe this character's powers will further develop in the future?  Control over more effigies is an area that Anatoly keeps striving to improve on. That aside, he has latent telekinetic powers that have never been developed.

Background:

Son of Ukrainian parents who had been relocated to Russia during the Soviet regime, Anatoly Alekseyevich Korolyuk was born in the first few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. His family lived in a tiny rural town in the outskirts of St. Petersburg, but their Ukrainian heritage was not very well-met by the somewhat xenophobic villagers. For most of his early life, young Anatoly and his two siblings only had each other to play with.

Anatoly was a sick child with a weak heart. As he grew up, he turned to computers for amusement that wouldn't make his chest hurt, making use of an almost ancient wireless telephone link installed in their farm to learn about the outside world. On the Internet, Anatoly learned the basics of English and gained much knowledge of the world beyond his farm, his town, and even distant St Petersburg.

One day, however, the farm was attacked by bandits, intent on stealing the money his family had earned from that summer's wheat harvest. His father, Alekseyev, reacted. In the struggle, one of the bandits was also killed, and the others, enraged, started executing his family. His father first, then his mother, his grandmother, his uncle, his younger brother, his older sister… When it came to Anatoly, however, the murderers were stopped by the sudden appearance of strange monsters, humanoid creatures made out of earth and brick that sprouted from the very walls of the house.

The robbers ran away, but Anatoly followed, a small army of those creatures in tow. They eventually reached the town, and the grief-stricken fifteen year-old boy started turning the old cars and farming machines that dotted the dusty streets into metal monstrosities that searched tirelessly for the murderers. Unfortunately, the creatures were soon out of his control, and started rampaging across the village. By the end of the day, not a living soul remained, and Anatoly's jagged creations started warring among each other, leaving nothing but rubble and a traumatized, desolated boy in their wake.

An aid and relief organization eventually found the destroyed town and rescued Anatoly after three harrowing days. He had buried his family and the rest of the townsfolk with the help of his creations, and crucified the robbers in the middle of the village. Suspecting the government would want to have a… word with that boy, the relief workers quickly turned him over to an international mutant protection organization. The rest of Anatoly's year was spent moving from one place to another to avoid detection, undergoing heavy therapy and training to both heal the psychological damage of his first mutation and to give him control over it.

Eventually, he was smuggled into the US, given fake documentation that placed his family as immigrants that lived in a small farm in Massachusetts, killed in a fire that destroyed their farmhouse. After a brief acclimation in the US, Anatoly was deemed ready to go back to school and was sent to Cobalt Academy, to finish his high-school education and then pursue a degree in Law.


Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
- Anatoly works hard to get rid of his accent, and he plans on never going back to Russia or Ukraine (where the rest of his family still lives).
- Anatoly sometimes walks around being followed by a silent woman called Svetlana. She wears the slightly more form-fitting equivalent of a burqa, made out of heavy veils and without any holes for the eyes. Her hands, the only visible part of her body, are permanently covered by black velvet gloves.
- He also has a pet cat effigy, called Misha, made from a life-sized alabaster cat statue he found at a shop the first time he wandered about Salem.
- Ever since he came to the US, Anatoly has started amassing quite the collection of animal and human skulls, both genuine and copies of varying qualities. He keeps them in his room, and is all too willing to show them to people.
- Anatoly's stay in Cobalt is being paid by the organization that shipped him there, but he does have quite a bit of money he inherited from his family. He intends to invest it, keeping at least half of it to pay for the costs of starting a career as a lawyer. Ironically, given his powers, he has nearly no interest in sculpting.