Welcome to Arkheologorodok
 [Добро пожаловать в Aрхеологородok]

"50th Anniversary of the USSR" cover of "Tekhnika Molodezhi (Technology for Youth) Soviet magazine, 1972
sourced from Soviet Visuals 

Resting along the G'am River on the Steppe, Arkheologorodok was founded as a Soviet science city shortly after the Great Patriotic War. Built atop the burnt ruins of some nameless town destroyed by a plague in 1904, the academicians and military men were much more interested in vastly older ruins far below that. Arkheologorodok (literally Archaeology Town) was devoted to excavation of the ruins below, and then the study and exploitation of the technologies found within. It became home to institutes of every stripe dedicated to boldly advancing Soviet science into every direction of the unknown. Factories were established to create any materials the scientists needed, and entire populations were moved in and housed to work those factories. It had every amenity a Soviet citizen could dream of. And then, the money ran out.

 The immediate years after the dissolution were hard, funding tried up and labs were abandoned. Overnight, most of the factories were churning out products that no longer had buyers. The town was quickly dying, until the old abattoir to the south-east was reopened by the Saburovs. This stabilized the town long enough for some former party officials to properly reinvent themselves as capitalists and find ways to make the Advanced Metallurgical Complex and the cement factory profitable. The town also had an ace up its sleeve in the form of the Stepnoy Universitet, for people all seem to learn Russian so very quickly in Arkheologorodok, and this fact was used to advertise Stepnoy as the best place to learn Russian for foreigners looking to loot the ruins of the Soviet Union. 

With republics spinning off in every direction during the collapse, Arkheologorodok found itself seemingly in none of them, and currently exists in a sort of Transnistria like state. As such, it has found itself for miscreants and weirdos from all over. Most recently, it has attracted the NOVOST Group, a holding company and owner of the energy company Stepneft, which has set about exploiting the gas fields in the marshlands to the south of the town and is rapidly becoming the largest employer in town. It is also clearly seeking to buy up the entirety of Arkheologorodok, and the Saburovs have not taken kindly to it. Lines are being drawn, and arms are being taken up. Enter the players...

Dramatis Personae
[драматические персонажи]

Gavril Bootur, Yakut Hitman 

Hailing from Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation, Gavril was raised to be a valuable member of the family business. The Bootur family business just happened to be contract killing, and business has long been good. Though comfortable with a gun in their hands, Gavril and his kin have long preferred the silence of blades, and are known across the Siberian underworld as consummate professionals. However, a recent job went sideways and Southern Siberia has gotten a little too hot for Gavril. Hoping to lie low for a while, Gavril has found himself in Arkheologorodok. We'll see how long that lasts.

Professor Luka Semenov, Eurasian Occultist 

A tenured anthropology professor at Stepnoy University, Semenov is a forthcoming, agreeable, and diligent professor, which is why the university administration is willing to tolerate his more...fringe viewpoints. 

 Semenov is a proponent of what he calls the "Homo Slavonic Hypothesis," which posits the Slavic peoples are the descendants of an ancient, technologically advanced, psychic human offshoot who once ruled over a globe spanning empire. During his time living and researching in Arkheologorodok, Semenov has come to believe that deep beneath the surface are the ruins of a suburb of the Homo Slavonic's great Arctic Mega-City. Hoping to uncover great Slavic wisdom before the review for tenure renewal comes up, Semenov now looks to brave the Underground to find the lost city.

Though a kind, almost grandfatherly figure, do NOT mention Dugin to him. Not after Omsk. 

Aleksandr "El Afortunado" Bogruv, Mobster and Devotee of Santa Muerte 

A long time member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, Aleksandr is a skilled negotiator. This is why he was sent to Mexico in the mid-2000s to act as an in-between for the continued exchange of guns for drugs with the Sinaloa Cartel. This is also why he was marked for death by the Juarez Cartel. On one fine, dusky evening in Fuentes del Valle, Aleksandr found himself bleeding out, stumbling through back alleys as the Sicarios closed in, collapsing before a folk shrine to Santa Muerte. There, he experienced an apparition of the Dead Saint who revealed to him but a fragment of the true nature of death. Upon waking, Aleksandr found his wounds miraculously healed - a stroke of apparent luck that earned him the nickname El Afortunado.

From that moment on, Aleksandr became a disciple of Santa Muerte, seeking out her holy places and the blessing of her divine apparition. In the most recent and direct of these apparitions, Aleksandr has been commanded by his beloved Saint to travel to Arkheologorodok for reasons she has not yet seen fit to reveal. But El Afortunado is a man of faith, and he will seek to fulfill her will in this strange place. 

Dr Jurgen Galidikas, Experimental Eugenicist 

Originally from Boston, Dr. Galidikas is a talented surgeon who is more interested in the health of the body of society than he is in the health of the bodies of his patients. And there have been many bodies. Wanted in the United States for multiple unauthorized lobotomies, Jurgen now finds himself in Arkheologorodok, a town known for its scientific curiosity and its lack of extradition treaties. Helps that it's mostly white, well, at least a close approximation to white as far as Dr. Galidikas is concerned. He works at the Valerii V. Bunak Ward of City Sanitorium No. 1 because the administration at the D.I. Dankovksy Hospital googled his name. Ironically a well-regarded figure at the free Sanitorium and the community it serves due to actually having a degree and offering off the books procedures for only the price of mere sterilization. 

He now has begun to journey into the Underground so he can better observe and study our next contestant...

Spartak, Stalinist Apeman

A monument to the achievements of science under the Wise Guidance of Comrade Stalin, Spartak is one of the finest specimen's produced by Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov's research, continued long after his faked death. Sadly, success was achieved too late for Spartak and his kin to fight the German Fascists, and with Comrade Stalin's death in 1953, the collective farm deep within the Taiga where the hyrbids lived was forgotten. And forgotten it would have remained were it not for the logging companies of the Oligarchs. 

Chased from their collective farm, the hybrids were scattered to the four winds, and Spartak found himself alone in a world that had gone wrong. However, Spartak was raised in the fine tradition of Stalinist education, and would brook no idea of defeatism. Clearly the present moment called for primitive capitalist accumulation so he could purchase a tract of land from the capitalists and re-establish the commune. Having heard that Arkheologorodok offered opportunities for wealth and new technologies to wield against capitalists and traitors, Spartak quickly set out. 

Description

Special thanks to Tomas (Dr. Galidikas's player) for making the fantastic character portraits