F O M A - K O Z L O V
Details
Full Name: Foma "Kos" Kozlov
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Age: 22
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 145 lbs
Birthdate: 15th of Glade, Year 97, Age of Steel
Birthplace: Nivenhain, Lorien
Profession: Apprentice Artificer
Housing: A small, miserable apartment in Lower Nivenheim
Partners: None
Titles: Nameless
Factions: None
Fluencies: Common and Silvain
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
Kos stands confident in his below average height, one of the few decidedly Rien things about him. His chestnut hair and sable eyes nicely contrast his paler skin, and his hooded gaze gives him an air of carefully cultivated calm. More muscular than many his age due to the rigors of his unfortunate upbringing, he remains steadfast in keeping his body fit and functional.
In his youth, he wore such labels as "pretty" or "delicate", and, while those familiar words still linger about him, he carries himself with the certainty of a man, often pushing aside others' ideas of his own "boyishness" without need to say a single word on the matter.
Having only just come into money, his wardrobe is highly utilitarian. Mass-produced shirts and trousers, boots and cloaks, belts and gloves... his sole piece of finery is what would be an embarrassingly inexpensive embroidered tunic to any of the named classes he wears over his clothes to "fit in" among those he works with. The result is pitiable, but the effort is difficult not to take note of at least.
He strives to remain clean, though his fingers are often stained with inks and oils and various other mysterious pigments not for lack of washing. His most valuable possession is a small glass bottle of a woody-scented perfume he dabs upon his wrists and neck. The scent is subtle, but it, more than anything, provides for him a sort of courage; one he is not ashamed to admit springs fourth from it.
Personality
A mix of middle grounds, Foma is bold but not brazen, diligent but not indefatigable, discerning but not perspicacious, collected but not imperturbable, ambitious but not belligerent, and courteous but not genteel.
He understands that to get what he wants compromises must be made, and being open to compromise makes maintaining static morals and values more trouble than it’s worth.
He upholds the laws not because he believes in them, but because he believes in keeping his head attached to his shoulders. He is invested in conversations not because he holds any false hopes that those he speaks with care to converse with him, but because connections, above all else, are what one needs to succeed in a land such a Lorien. He is never above utilizing whatever he has to offer to get what he both wants and needs, because the body and tongue and mind and even soul are all simply tools, not all that dissimilar from the Hollows he grew up around.
This mindset doesn’t come without questions. He thinks and thinks often upon what life might have been like had he been born into purpose. He longs to belong, but, at the same time, refuses to forget why he doesn’t, wears it proudly to remind himself that no matter how high he might eventually climb, there is always the chance he will fall.
So, he does what he can to mitigate.
He strives to remain level-headed, working against impulse to mull over decisions before committing to them, to explore all avenues of option, if they are available to him. He makes both mistakes and triumphs and is himself, like any other, a collection of fault and merit. The greatest of these, however, is his ambition. It is a slow and steadily burning thing that pushes him ever forward. He holds no lofty dreams of becoming something so grandiose as a duke nor that childish fantasy of king, but he does firmly believe that his effort and work will one day be genuinely lauded, appreciated, and, even, sought out. For this reason, he throws himself into his work, not only to prove to his worth to others, but to prove it to himself as well. No other holds higher expectations for Foma than he himself.
History
Nameless, yet named.
The Kozlovs were a historically bitter family, filled with spite for their stationless fate, cursing Kindred and King alike for punishments never revoked. It was not their fault, therefore, how could they ever hope to correct it? Not by labors nor betterment, surely. So they remained, spawning generation after hateful generation, expectation placed upon each one to do what their prior refused: reclaim their rightful place among the Rien people, proud and regal once again.
Theirs was a foolish mistake made by a foolish man for a foolish reason: love. Love cast them out of favor. Love pinned them to a life below that of even a Hollow. Love hardened their hearts and ate away at their resolve. Because it was for love that their ancestor saw fit to declare the Kindred anathema, to rally those around him to rise up and reject, to foolishly believe that she whom he loved would praise him, adore him, believe him to be the purest and brightest light shining true in a world of misery, deception, and vengeance.
Which she, wretched thing, did not.
Heresy. Blasphemy. Apostasy. Though he was torn apart in the Northern Wastes by the very creatures he so despised, his children and their children and their children’s children were branded Nameless, and “Kozlov”, like those before them who had met such similar fates, faded from tongue but not from memory.
Foma’s father was a Kozlov true to their inherited legacy: angry, resentful, wretched. His mother, though, was a Nameless not of punishment but migration. There was no love between her and his father, but she had wanted somewhere safe to lay her head to rest and father Kozlov’s was as good a place as any. With time and bed shared came Foma, and though his father took no pleasure in bringing yet another accursed babe into the world, his mother wanted more for him than the perpetual misery his father claimed to be inevitable.
She did not shield him from the acid and smoke his father spit like some festering wound of the earth. She let him listen, let him watch and see and realize that that was not the man he wished to be. She impressed upon him drive and desire and the promise that while he was a Kozlov and had inherited all that came with the wretched name, he was just as much her son, her child, and possessed within him the power to reject one fate for another.
For a child so very frightened of becoming the very thing that stared him in the eye, time and time again, only to curse his uselessness and bemoan the cruelty of their inescapable position, Foma found his mother’s firm assurances near addictive. He craved her support and sought her out in all matters. He wished to please her which, over time, gradually became a desire to please himself, for that was all she ever spoke of.
But these two were not his only influencers. From the time he was old enough to join his father in the factories manned by unliving shadows of flesh and blood replicated in cold, pale loranium, the Hollows became his unlikely friends… albeit a one-sided friendship. They worked tirelessly, were strong and capable, and to a child who had only his mother to speak gently to him, they seemed, in their silence, to be kind. So he grew fond of them, even under the duress of labor, the slick of sweat, the strain and pain of work not meant for human hands. They never helped him. They never showed him true kindness nor concern. Yet, they were ever present, ever pressing onwards, just as his mother wanted for him. He found them inspiring in their own right: horrific and hated, not so very much unlike himself as his father was so quick to claim, yet still they trudged ever onward.
From his father he learned fear. From his mother he learned hope. And from the Hollows? He learned diligence.
As years passed, the boy grew into himself, taller, stronger, more capable with each passing day. His fondness for Hollows, too, became greater, pressing upwards and onwards, threatening obsession. He had never been gifted purpose by the Kindred. He was Nameless, aimless, nothing but a body to be worked until it could work no longer, a Hollow in all things but soul. But that soul, that separate thing, had been so amply stoked by his mother’s careful tending, that he found himself drawn to age old craft of artifice.
He wanted not only to better understand his self-proclaimed Hollow fellows and compatriots but to create them. To improve upon them. To instill within them spirit, even soul. A goal he never spoke of to any but the silent creatures themselves, for even someone as lowly as he knew that Hollows were not to be tampered with. But with found desire came machinations.
His mother taught him how to read, how to speak, how to behave as would be expected of him. His father taught him, in his own way, the dangers of being rash and spiteful, of believing he was deserving of anything more than what he managed to eke out for himself.
He began, in earnest, to shamelessly proposition any and all artificers who did not directly threaten him with legal retribution for his unwanted disturbances. His face and with it firm determination grew to be a familiar sight among the lustrian population, but familiarity hardly bred affinity. Door after door closed to him. Time and time again he was told there was no place for him, to seek out something better suited to one of his station.
But he refused to relent.
-
“No,” the guard growled, arms crossed and demeanor as dark as Foma’s own defiant stare. “Mister Wagner has told you time and time again, boy, there is nothing for you here.”
“Mister Wagner, in fact, has not, sir,” Foma calmly replied, careful to keep his tone in check in spite of his rising frustration. “I have only ever spoken with you and yours, never Mister Wagner directly.”
“Me and mine?” Laughter, far colder and biting than the Lorian air itself. “We are the voice of Mister Wagner in situations such as these. He has no need of a mind past its prime. You’re far too old, boy. Use the hair on your cock to go find a comfortable bed in a bordello where you might spread your legs and receive the drippings of someone who matters.”
Foma’s fists clenched, but he refused to let the jab draw a rise out of him. “I’m merely asking for a chance, sir, to speak with Mister Wagner himself. I-“
“Have you not ears to hear with, boy?”
“I do, sir, it’s only-“
“Then leave,” the guard repeated for what must have been the fifth or sixth time that day. “Or I’ll make you.”
Before either of them could do or say anything more, the heavy wooden door swung open to reveal a young girl, no older than twelve years or so, who wore a scowl fit to be placed upon even the most severe of elderly crones.
“What in the world,” she began, hands upon her dainty little hips clad in an exquisite mix of silk skirts and furs, “Is the source of all this ruckus?”
The guard began to open his mouth, but the girl turned a scalding glare to him before he could speak. “That question, Bancroft, was rhetorical. We can all hear the two of you going on out here.”
Foma’s turn to try to explain, she was just as quick to shut him down as she had the guard. Another glare, this one harder, more suspicious than blatantly irritated.
“And you,” she continued, finger pointing accusingly and green eyes widening for emphasis, “You want to speak to the master? Fine.”
“F-fine, miss?”
“Yes, fine. Make me repeat myself again, sir, and you’ll find my answers will very quickly shift into something not nearly so accommodating.”
“I- yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, miss.”
She paused, pale pink lips turning a slight frown as she gave him a once over. There seemed to be something else she was going to say, but she instead waved it away, hiked up her skirts, and nodded towards the guard who, begrudgingly, moved out of the way. “This way, then.”
Mister Lamprecht Wagner. A well respected if not reclusive man whose business was firmly planted within the district of Nivenhain-2. His family had produced millions of Hollows, himself among them, but in his semi-retirement, Mister Wagner had opened up a smaller, more intimate workshop to produce novel toys and trinkets; his experimental artifice, artificial creatures of convenience whose far more specific purposes allowed for a more exact sort of service than a generic Hollow might offer were also highly sought after, as they were far more aesthetically pleasing than their far more versatile Hollow cousins. He was also one of the few artificers left within reasonable distance from Foma’s home who had yet to personally turn him away.
And now… now the time of reckoning had come.
The interior of Mister Wagner’s workshop was wonderfully filled with all manner of curious things. Bits and pieces of yet-to-be-assembled creations, mysterious tools and contraptions, walls lined with books and hung with instructive blueprints, and four other young men and woman who could have only been a year or two the girl’s elders. None of them looked up from their work, engrossed in what it was they were doing or, in Rien fashion, at the very least pretending to be.
“Do not speak until spoken to,” the girl sternly murmured as she led him across the workshop’s floor towards an unwindowed door at the back of the room, “Hold no expectation for anything but failure in your heart-” She paused at the door and turned to face him. “-and swear to me, right here and now, when Mister Wagner rejects you,” she nodded towards the door they’d come in from. “You will quietly make your exit and never bother us again.”
While it had been his intention all along, Foma found swallowing his pride especially difficult in the face of the blond haired, green eyed child who spoke to him as if their roles were utterly reversed.
“Is that understood?” She added, a neat and orderly brow raised in a questioning arc.
“Yes, miss,” Foma finally managed, forcing himself to stare into her bright green eyes with his own somber brown, “I swear it.”
For a second or two, the girl simply stared back, but whatever she might have been searching for seemed to be found soon enough. She nodded, once, then turned to rap her small knuckles against the door three times in quick succession. After five seconds of what seemed to be absolute stillness, she stepped back and gestured he should open the door himself.
Nervousness gripped him then, but Foma pressed onward. His hand gripped the warm metal doorknob and, with a steadying rush of air out through his nose, he silently pushed the door open and stepped into the room behind it.
An elderly, spectacled, white haired man sat crouched over the room’s singular work-table that seemed to doubly function as a desk. The walls were lined with bookshelves, though their contents varied from their leather-bound familiars to peculiar instruments of metal and glass to containers filled with even curiouser contents.
“Close the damn door, boy.”
Immediately, Foma’s body seemed to forget exactly how to do just that. He fumbled with door, eventually managing to swing it shut, catching it just before it might slam and, instead, gently closing it behind him.
The man, Mister Wagner, didn’t look up from his work. His left hand was occupied with a small, delicately crafted creature. It seemed to be made of gold, though “spun” might have been a better word for the craftsmanship of it. The piece itself resembled a little bird, though it was mostly hollow and the “feathers” were each their own individual piece. While his right hand held a thin metal needle, which he appeared to be using to very carefully inscribe impossibly small words upon the golden bird.
Remembering the girl’s… “advice”, Foma silently remained in place. Seconds quickly stretched into minutes which in turn began to drag towards an hour. All the while, he waited. But more than that, he watched. Never before had he been given the opportunity to see a true artificer at work before. Mister Wagner’s hands were steady as stone as he continued to relentlessly engrave the little bird. The work was so exact and precise, there was a beauty to it all its own. Occasionally, the man would grunt or mumble to himself, but he never spoke. Not until the bird was finished nearly an hour and half after Foma’s arrival.
Setting the delicate metal creature upon an equally delicate stand of sculpted wood, Mister Wagner set his metal needle aside, removed his spectacles, squinted at Foma, and, at last, spoke again.
“So? Who are you?”
“My name is Foma Kozlov, sir, but I prefer Kos.”
“Kozlov?” Mister Wagner repeated. His brow furrowed as he smacked his lips together. “No… don’t know of any Kozlovs,” he finally mumbled.
It wasn’t directly addressed to him, so Foma remained silent, eyes keenly fixed on the old man but tongue held for the time being.
“And who let you in here, boy?”
A good question. “I… don’t know her name, sir, but she was a young girl of blonde hair and green eyes.”
Mister Wagner raised a bushy brow. “And filled to the brim with lustrian cheek?”
That had been direct, and Foma floundered for an inoffensive but still truthful reply. “She’s… very willful, sir.”
“Mm.” A slow nod followed the gentle clack of Mister Wagner’s spectacles against the surface of his desk. “I take it you know nothing of artifice nor any of processes through which a golem is constructed?”
“I will learn, sir.” Eventualities belied confidence, even when Foma was told time and time again humility might net him more favor. Pity, even. “And who, may I ask, will teach you?”
There was no hesitation, no uncertainty, in Foma’s voice as he replied, gaze steady enough to build upon it Lorien’s third grand viaduct. “You, sir.”
Silence. A silence that stretched, only this time Foma was at the center of it, not the bird. Mister Wagner’s steely eyes seemed to bore into him, each little metal needles in their own right, belying nothing of the thoughts that sat behind them.
“Come.” The old man beckoned him forward with a word, no gesture nor warmth of tone. Foma obliged and stepped up to the desk as commanded. “Show me your hands, boy.”
He held both hands aloft an in front of himself, nervousness drawing a thin line of sweat down the nape of his next but determination keeping him steady.
“Hm,” Mister Wagner’s gaze settled on the hands he’d requested and more silence passed. Minute after minute, and nothing more was said nor seemed to ever be coming.
Foma could feel the telltale strain on his shoulders, the very beginning of fatigue, but he was strong from his years of hard labor, and that which began would take much more than mere minutes to find its end in exhaustion.
“Your nails…” Mister Wagner, at last, commented, interest now clear in his voice, “They’re quite clean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They have soaps in slums, do they, boy?”
The question caught Foma off-guard, and he hesitated, confusion slipping past composure. “Are you speaking in jest, sir?”
For the very briefest of moments, Mister Wagner seemed almost angry, but then his old face turned out a bemused grin. “That’s rather direct, isn’t it, boy?”
Hands still extended, Foma flinched at Mister Wagner’s amusement. “I- my apologies, sir, I didn’t mean-“
“Oh, no, but I think you did.”
“I-“
“There are two things in this world I appreciate, Mister Kozlov,” Mister Wagner began, waving Foma’s hands away and settling back into his chair. “Honesty and diligence.” He paused there, watching Foma, perhaps expecting him to interject, but Foma remained silent. Silent, but attentive. Mister Wagner seemed to find no fault with that. Not yet, anyway. “I abhor obsequious worms, you see. My work, Mister Kozlov, requires a keen eye for detail. I have no patience for those too paralyzed by social graces to correct an error, be it made by myself or another.”
Though he didn’t speak, Foma did nod in agreement at that. What was the point, after all, of surrounding oneself with people who were too afraid to do the work that needed to be done? Worse than the Hollows everyone was so keen to look down upon, even. “I expect problems to be solved and any questions asked to have a plethora of attempted answers. Wit’s end, Mister Kozlov.”
“Wit’s end, sir,” he repeated.
“You will be here at sunrise, study under Miss Holzknecht, and leave when she – and only she – gives her explicit permission.”
Though he wasn’t certain, Foma had the feeling he knew exactly who Miss Holzknecht was, but his chest felt fit to burst with excitement so pure and so vast, not even the prospect of being apprenticed to an apprentice half his age was enough to quell it. “Y-yes, sir!”
“Do not expect to have your steady hands held, Mister Kozlov. You will be earning nothing until you complete your first assignment, of which all assignments Miss Holzknecht will be in charge of issuing you. That being said,” Mister Wagner looked Foma up and down, expression unreadable. “She will take you to buy some suitable clothing and provide for you a stipend for food and food only. Is that understood?”
“It is, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Well?” Mister Wager replied, brows raising expectantly.
“Sir…?”
“Must I spell it out for you, Mister Kozlov? You’re wasting both our time now.”
“Sir!”
Half tripping over his own feet, Foma quickly pulled the door open and stepped back out into the workshop. Into his workshop.
“Well don’t just stand there, sir,” the young, blond haired girl sighed, already sounding weary of the world she spent scarcely a decade a part of. “Pick up that book and start practicing your inscriptions.”
