Nadiya Tokarev

Synopsis
Nadiya was born and raised in the Sovjet Union. Her life was hard and at the first opportunity she got, she got out of her family's home. She was taken in by one of her professors, that taught philosphy at the university of Moscow. There she met her sire.

She left Moscow and stayed with her sire in Saint-Petersburg for a decade, before saying goodbye and going on her own path. She stayed in London for a while, but when the treath of the Second Inquisition became too great, she fled to the United States.

There she settled down in the Valley, but it would take her years to finally be ready again to join other Kindred, and be swept away in their politics again.

Important Character Information

 * Nadiya has complex PTSD as her clan bane. She got cPTSD from child abuse at the hands of her mother.
 * Nadiya's father is Vladimir Krychkov, he was a member of the KGB and their leader at one point. He participated in the Coup of 1991. She barerly saw him, but has picked up some things from him.
 * Nadiya is a follower of the Dark Mother, Lillith and is a Bahari.
 * Nadiya is the owner of Path of the Moon: a wellness and spa in Malibu.
 * Nadiya is the Herald in Prince Bata's court in San Diego

Important Relationships

 * Irena Veceslav - Nadiya's sire
 * Zed - Mawla of Nadiya. He was her first friend in the Valley. He is an Anarch Brujah from Nines territory.
 * Jezebelle- She is her Moon Sister. Nadiya is very protective of both Jezebelle and Sibyl
 * Oliver - Oliver is her lover. She has always been hellbent on making him better- and still thinks this way- even with his second chance. She wants him to grow and become the man she knows he can be.
 * Brandy - Close friend
 * Jenny - Moon sister and good friend
 * Luc - Moon brother, Nadiya considers him her little brother
 * Mark - moon brother, she would do a lot for him and the other way around. She feels like he really understands her

Backstory
'''Trigger warning: Mentions of (child) abuse (mental, emotional and physical). Read with caution.'''

Katarina Kryuchkov was born in the Sovjet Union. She was born in Moscow in 1971. Her parents were high up in the social ladder. Her father worked in the KGB and her mother was a secretary for the state newspaper. The first few years of Nadiya’s life, everything was great. She was in a loving family and her father still had time to be home. But everything changed after her brother Victor was born in 1979. Her mother focused herself on her new born son and Katarina was left behind. She was expected to help in the household and do her homework without a problem. Luckily her father still had time for her and she loved her dad. Even though he was gone for days at a time, the moments he was home, she loved every moment. They played cards, or went to the playground or they went walking around the city. But around when her brother turned two, her father got a higher position in the KGB and he didn’t have time for her anymore, or only during some weekends. At the same time, her mother really started to ignore her like she wasn’t a part of the family anymore.

For the next ten years, between 10-20 years old, she got abused by her mother. It started out with mental and emotional abuse (which was bad enough on its own), but once her father became the leader of the KGB, her mother also began to physically abuse her. The physical hits where always done when her brother wasn’t home, but the other two were done right in front of his face. But her brother hadn’t known anything else and thought it was normal, thought this was how a mother-daughter relationship worked. He was the star in the household. In her mother’s eyes Victor could do nothing wrong. She kept talking how he would join the KGB like his father before him and how he would make the country proud.

Katarina didn’t exactly know when the abuse started, or why, but she knew that her mother had way too high expectations for her, and they were never enough. She joined ballet lessons as a young girl and managed to get into a ballet academy at 11 years old. But still her mother wasn’t happy. She needed to have perfect marks on both her school and dancing to make her happy and even then she was never good enough like her brother – even though he just went to a normal school and didn’t have the best grades. Katarina did ballet until she was 15. She had gotten a minor injury during training and was out for a few weeks – nothing bad and nothing she could really do anything about – but her mother was furious. She hit her in her leg multiple times until something finally snapped. Then she kept yelling that it was Katerina’s fault. She was out for months- and stopped ballet all together. Her leg luckily healed back to what it was supposed to be, but she never would forgive her mother for taking her career from her.

Her mother was very pro communism and Soviet Union. It made Katarina despise the regime. Even though her father was a big part of it. But she didn’t care anymore, her mother had turned everything bad, even her father. He had never helped her, he was the leader of spies! How was he not able to see what happened in his own home? Katarina didn’t know. She still pretended to be very pro-Soviet Union and she was good at lying (thank her mother for that). After her high school was done, she went to university to study philosophy. It was very difficult for her and not because she was stupid, but because the abuse had made it hard for her to do tasks and concentrate. Her mother was still viciously attacking her. Her only safety was one of her professors. Prof. Emma Tokarev shared her views about the Soviet Union – about how they failed their people, but especially how can you preach for socialism when your core members abuse their lessers? Professor Tokarev was the first that heard the truth about her. She told her that now that she was an adult, she should get out of the household asap. She even proposed for her to stay in her home until she could get her own apartment. Katarina managed to pack her things and get out of the house right when the Soviet Union fell. Her mother was in shock (both for the fall and because her husband was in jail). Katarina called this poetic justice and she still (quietly) celebrates the 26th December as the day she got out of her abusive family and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Even though she was now with the philosophy professor, Katarina stopped her studies for a year. She needed a break. Professor Tokarev wanted to help her and get her a psychologist but during this turbulent time, most of them were still pro communism and it was not safe for Katarina to tell her story. So instead she stayed inside most of the time. But after a year even her professor had enough of that. She joined the university again in January for the second term. There she met Irena. She was an older student, but she called herself an eternal student. She loved learning new things. She was very smart, but also very observant. Katarina sometimes thought she could see through her. The only odd thing, was that Irena only came to evening lessons, when it had gotten dark already. Like she slept during the day. After a month of knowing each other Irena had invited her for a small dinner party at her home for Katarina’s birthday. She hadn’t really celebrated her birthday and was really happy that someone wanted to throw something for her. Once arrived there was no dinner, instead Irena told her who she was and that she saw the pain in her eyes. That she had gone through abuse herself and that she could help her. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would help her. She accepted and was embraced.

Katarina with the help of Irena faked her own dead (a suicide more specifically). Then she took on a new name. Her first name was Eliza Tolstoi. Irena and her travelled to Saint-Petersburg and stayed there for ten years. Irena was an independent Kindred and Eliza followed her lead. She felt free using another name. Like she could finally try and leave the past behind. It was still very difficult and she refused to take blood from an unwilling victim. This made it that she joined the gothic vampire scene. Staying in bars where people liked to be bitten helped her feel better, like she wasn’t abusing people back. In those ten years she mostly stayed to herself and her sire, trying to settle into her new life. Once everything settled down around her, she asked Irena to leave. She wanted to go to England, she wanted to see how capitalism worked, she wanted to be free of Russia. It might have been her home, and she was proud Russian (but not proud of the Soviet Union) she still wanted to go. Irena let her go and told her she would only need to call if she needed help, besides she wanted to travel to Asia. The two said goodbye and Eliza changed her name for the last time.

She came to England with a good Russian passport (bless Irena for knowing how to forge them well) and she was now known as Nadiya Tokarev. She honoured the professor that helped her with taking her surname. She settled down in London. There she used her same tactics as in Saint-Petersburg. Only here she had 2 Toreador friends. Both were independent as well and they had a good bond. But when the Inquisition came knocking, Nadiya fled, distraught by visions and she left her friends behind. She still doesn't know if they managed to get out in time. She fled to the United States and settled down in the Valley.

She joined the goth scene again, but she also decided to take a job. A few nights a week she was a security guard in an underground parking of a five star hotel. It paid okay and now she had something to do at least. On the job she met Kevin O’Brian. The two of them became great friends. He loved talking about all kinds of geek stuff, he read comics, watched movies and played video games. Nadiya wasn’t brought up with it and she loved hearing about these heroes doing all kinds of wonderous feats. To other Kindred she would say her job was a cover up so she had a “reason” to be up at night, but in reality she loved the job because she didn’t have to bother with people, Kevin was an exception of the rule.

At the same period she met one of the anarchs from Nines’ domain. She met Zed by accident, but they became some sort of mentor/student relation. Zed learned her more about Kindred politics, but mostly about Anarchs. She was interested in how it worked but she still refused to pick a side and remained  independent. The Anarch was a Brujah. He had been a boxer in his human life and was great in both punching as evading. They became good friends and it was one of the few Kindred she trusted. He took a liking in her as well. Zed learned her to evade better and she helped him to pick up sounds better, to see better. Learning each other one of their powers had strengthened their bond and on the days she had it hard, he was the one dude that could cheer her up.

A couple years after coming to the US she was having a security watch when two people got out of their car and were walking towards the stairwell. Nadiya was walking around the parking lot at the moment while Kevin was in their room watching the camera’s. Nadiya was close enough to hear the two talking and they were speaking Russian. They had a duffel bag with them and didn’t pay attention to her. She pretended not to understand them and listened in on the conversation. They were talking about robbing one of the clients in the hotel. She had grabbed her phone and send the warning code word to Kevin, who called the cops. Nadiya waited for them to enter a place where she knew there wasn’t a camera pointed to them, right before they would reach the stairwell and she managed to knock the both of them out. The police arrived and interviewed her. She had explained how they were speaking Russian, talking about their crime and she could understand it. The owner of the hotel was very happy with her. She had stopped the men from trying to break into one of the hotels most pristine guests. As a gift, she was allowed to pick her work days more flexible.

A second  thing that happened was that she was asked to the police station. Detective Kain Jamerson was part of the drugs department. They were dealing with a Russian mob of some sorts and he had heard from the other case that she could speak Russian. She was appointed as an independent translater and whenever they needed  to have something translated, she was there to help (and get paid of course). Over the years they became good friends. On some points she and the detective disagreed, like how black and white he saw some things, but on others they agreed (friends need to be protected as do innocent people). She began to see him outside of work, just as friends to hang out. At first he was a bit weirded out by her never being outside during the day, but her working during night times, eased his suspicion. (Like Nadiya said; why be awake during the day if I only do night shifts?). So Kain began to get used to asking her help during the night. With her help some bad people landed in jail, luckily for her they never knew how suddenly the police force knew Russian.

If Nadiya wasn’t at work, or hunting, she was home. She preferred to be alone and in the safety of her home. But lately Zed had been pushing her to visit some more of the Kindred spaces. The Second Inquisition was looming over the city again and safety in numbers would be a good thing to think about. Nadiya finally would need to get out of her comfort zone.