Anastasiya Alexeyev - The Coldest Will
"The will of the people is my will. The proletariat will no longer suffer beneath the boots of the bourgeois."
Michail and Zasha Alexeyev were very well known peoples throughout much of Russia. Hailing from Yekaterinburg, they were both powerful leaders whose charisma and ideologies reverberated throughout the land. A long history of the oppression of the poor and working class people brought them together. Through their similar circumstances, they found that they shared a common mind and a common enemy. In the winter of 1974, they formed a coalition together with the people of Yekaterinburg. Starting small, they banded together with one hundred others in an attempt to release the people from the vice-grip of the ruling class. From the slums, they climbed out together, hand-in-hand, consciously with their fellow working class peoples, and began to break apart the ranks of the enemy, a piece at a time.
In the winter of 1999, Zasha gave birth to Anastasiya. Her cold, icy blue eyes and her white hair were unusual, but her nose was much like her mother's. These two moments would coincide together to change the fate of the people and the Alexeyev family for years to come.
On the day of Anastasiya's birth, Michail was racing home to his wife when he was offered a ride by two men he had fought side by side with for three years: Dimitri Padlov and Sacha Chugunov. On their way back to his home, when out of reach and out of site of Michail's comrades, Dimitri and Sacha kidnapped Michail. He would never arrive home. When word of his disappearance got back to the people, their morale began to fall. Alone, Zasha tried to keep the people strong and together. She championed her daughter to take her father's place as their leader. However, this critical blow to the people sapped their strength and allowed discord to fester among them.
This gave the enemy their perfect opportunity to strike. As the people slowly began to lose faith, more seeds of corruption were sewn. Violence against the poor began to rise. Communities began to splinter. Camaraderie slowly waned. The years seemed to trickle blood from the life of the people, slowly bleeding them of vital resources and power. In 2004, a new power came to be over the Russian people: Timofey Chugunov. And for the next fifteen years, he would reign supreme over the Russian people with his son by his side.
The Chugunov Empire was a mighty one. With influence all over the world, ranging from China to the United States. However, the rebel in young Anastasiya would grow rapidly, with her mother showing her the way. Taking her mother's place would not be an easy task, but by 2019, Anastasiya had become public enemy number one, to the state. Her crimes against the ruling regime -- from destruction of property, vandalism, communing without permit, illegal water sourcing, theft, brandishing a weapon in public, and much more -- had her face plastered across many wanted posters throughout the country. Unfortunately for the state, Anastasiya was protected by the people. She had already proved to be elusive, but having the working class and the poor behind her made her that much harder to apprehend.
Over the next six years, Anastasiya had solidified her place all across Russia. She had become something of a legend, having turned the state's power, albeit slowly, on its head. During this time, she established the New Revolutionary Coalition for the People, or NRCP. Inside of this coalition, she had even begun to turn allies of the state against the ruling class. She had recruited a small number of politicians whom she managed to flip, and turned them into spies for the NRCP. Supplies and power began to flow back toward the people, and the time for the inevitable uprising had finally come.
The year was now 2025. The streets were flooded by the proletariat, with as many boots on the ground as the state had soldiers. Unfortunately, the time for revolution would have to wait, as the bombs began to fall.
Pierre Jourdain - The Bellowing Wind
"Music is to me like breath is to the lungs. Like blood to the heart. It is everything."
A young prodigy, Pierre Jourdain was born in 1994 to his mother, Eloise Jourdain in Toulouse, France. Though young, Eloise was a promising and talented ballerina in her early twenties. Even after giving birth to Pierre, she never lost her way on stage. By the time Pierre was five years old, Eloise was turning into a prominent soloist. With breakout shows all over France, Eloise had made it big. But with that stardom, she sometimes lost sight of her son. She was away often, leaving Pierre with a sitter or relative for weeks at a time. She had a bubbling, bursting career that demanded every moment of her time, and it kept her from giving Pierre the love and attention that she wanted him to have.
At ten years old, Pierre had seen very few of his mother's performances. For those he did attend, he always sat as close to the stage as possible, but not for the reasons you may think. Though he admired his mother's work, his biggest reason for sitting at the stage was to best hear the music. Jazz and opera were his first loves, but Pierre quickly became pulled into the music world for its artistry. And on his eleventh birthday, his mother gifted him a fine violin. That moment would be solidified in his memory for many decades to come, as he then learned of his talent for the instrument. Pierre, however, wasn't solely blessed with talents behind the violin. He began to pick up other instruments with great ease. The piano, the harp, the keyboard, the electric guitar, the bass, a snare drum, the cymbals, and many more instruments came to Pierre over his young life. He was redefining music with his abilities, and the world was taking notice.
And when Pierre could find no other instrument he wished to master, he turned himself into the greatest instrument of all time as he learned to sing. At twenty-four, he was performing solo in some of the most high-profile operas in all of France. He received invitations to work at Julliard and The Conservatoire de Paris. His brown eyes and black hair and his tall, slim figure were in high demand all around the world now, and his mother had never been more proud. Having earned an early retirement, she began to attend all of Pierre's performances around the world. There was no show she had missed in over six years. And now, at twenty-eight years old, Pierre had performed hundreds of times across the globe. There was almost no one who didn't know who he was.
Despite his fame and his developing fortune, Pierre was not yet satisfied. He wasn't longing for companionship, but he had an itch he could not scratch. There was something more he was meant to do, but he couldn't figure out what it was that called out to him. He took a year hiatus from the world. He fell completely off the radar, never stepping back into the public eye. Only his mother ever knew his whereabouts.
For a time, he resided just off the waters in Corsica, not far from home. He purchased a small, modest home that gave him the privacy he wanted. He used his time to meditate and study. Over two years he tried to pick up a new topic or hobby every week. Unfortunately, nothing filled him the way music did. For a brief time, he had given up on filling the void that he felt in the pit of his stomach. At last, he finally realized he had overlooked the one thing he hadn't done yet: directing music. And when it came to him, he felt a chord being struck in his brain. His eyes were big with excitement, and he couldn't believe that he had overlooked it for so long. Excitedly, at the end of his two year stint in 2025, he called his mother to break the news to her.
Ecstatic, he returned to Toulouse where he announced publicly that he would be flying out to New York and purchasing a home so that he could study more at the school of Julliard in order to become a director.
Unfortunately, Pierre's next venture would have to wait, as the bombs began to fall.