Ilya Arkadiyovich Rhyzkov

Haruspex. Butcher. Healer. A bloody mess.

For a Russian Ilya is thin skin stretched tight over brittle bone, gaunt and severe, but possesses surprising upper body strength.  He makes it a point to be as tidy and as immaculately clean as possible when his clothes and workspace aren't.  His auburn hair is cut short and parted neatly to his right, his eyes are watery-looking but quick, and his footwork's even quicker - he's had plenty of practice with his knives on all sorts of meat.

Ilya is an all-around questionable guy.  The bloodstains on his apron seem to be in the most suspicious places, he's unusually straight-faced in the most terrible of situations, and for someone whose knife skills are his livelihood he sure drinks a lot on the job, doesn't he?  He's got a sort of shaky, nervous air about him that suggests he's hiding something, but it's not as if he acts that way on purpose.  Don't give him that look.  And quit poking around the freezer!

He's sensitive to other people's needs, ranging from being gently honest to downright abusive, yet has the cold and discerning eyes of someone who carefully weighs their options before making the first cut.  He considers himself an artisan first and a healer second, despite hailing from a long line of haruspices.  Though Ilya's a med school dropout he's confident in diagnosing most health problems, but it's really the carving and cutting he enjoys the most.

Lately, he's been having a lot of problems 'reading' - that is, the entrails of chicken and lamb don't seem to be doing anything for him, and he's had to resort to bigger game (i.e. raiding farms and morgues) for accurate results.  Those suspicious guys in those suits that look way too expensive and their cop buddies keep pestering his shop, too.  It might be normal in Russia, but they seem to be asking him for more than ways to cook their meat...

A haruspex is an auger who divines from the fresh entrails of animals, usually sheep or pigeon.  Ilya can tell you quaint things like the weather or the stock prices for the next few days, but important things, things like love and lives and fate and this year's Super Bowl team, require a larger animal such as a cow or a bear.  In some drug or otherworldly-induced trances he can be frighteningly accurate to the point where he can tell the exact date, place and time something will happen.  Strong visions such as those will knock him out. 

Ilya's long reach and quick footwork make him a capable knife-fighter, a skill he's honed since childhood.  As expected, he is a master of anatomy and will go for the kill, if not a fatal or crippling wound, on the first strike.  A butterfly knife and a standard military-issue knife, both sharpened for the cleanest fillet, are his primary weapons. 

Ilya remembers.

He smells the earth when it rains and the wheat freshly harvested and the rotting meat and the blood, oh, the blood, wearing scarlet gloves up to his elbows on good days, and he remembers the steppe and his grandfather and his sister huddled around the huge wooden table and the pig carcass laid across it.  He remembers the grace with which his grandfather had killed the pig, a swipe of the hand and the arc of blood.  He remembers his thought:  Krasivaya.  Beautiful. 

He hears the tremble of the cars speeding block by block and the dull roar of the street and someone panting and he remembers the first time he held a knife and how it felt like an extension of his hand.  He remembers the oath he took and the ache in the scars across his palms and the first time he performed an augury.  The inhale, the rush of something not himself clouding his vision and the iron smell and the warmth and steam and his lips moving through he did not know what he said.  The exhale, his vision clearing and his knees and hands weak and the blood congealing underneath his fingernails.  His grandfather and sister in front of him proud and beaming.

He remembers the father that was never there ("A trusted dog of the government," his grandfather would snort derisively).  He remembers his first kill, how easy, how quick and simple.  The mugger had come at him with a gun.  Ilya hadn't even thought of what he was doing until his hand had reached into the inside of his coat and he swung.  Out of morbid curiosity he had done a reading and

nothing would ever be the same

He woke up to a stray dog sniffing him and the weight in his heart and his stomach made him vomit.  He wondered if this was how necrophiliacs felt the night after. 

Ilya remembers the old ways and he's struggling to reconcile himself with the new world.  There were paths he was meant to take, he knows, and he wonders what to make of himself now that he's gone wayward.

Ilya can be played for a fantasy setting; his profession and reading problem remain the same, except he's a traveling doctor who made it through fantasy!med school.