One of the NPCs introduced last time that seems to have caught the players’ attention. They have recruited her into their company…

Olga Markova

olgaOlga Markov was born in Kiev in 1909. Her father and mother ran a tailor’s shop and were solidly middle-class for the Russian Empire. Her father dabbled in socialism, and he was active in helping to fund legal aid for Jews that were targeted by the legal system, but never got into trouble himself. During the Great War, the family was able to avoid terrible hardship until the October Revolution in 1917. The Ukrainian  People’s Republic was formed and her father was a member of the Ministry for Jewish Affairs. When the Soviets came, he quickly joined the Yevsektsiya — the Bolshevik organization designed to eradicate Jewish culture and Zionist movements — to protect his family.

Her father was a traitor in many Russian Jews’ eyes, and despite his best efforts, when the Yevsektsiya was disbanded in 1929, he fell afoul of the NKVD for having been a supporter of Trotsky. He and his wife were executed, and Olga’s older brother David was sent to Siberia. She, on the other hand, had attracted the attention of Mikhail Ruslan — one of the local NKVD officers, who “rescued” her, making her his consort for several years, and it is rumored, worked on turning her into an agent of the state.

She was able to escape Ruslan’s clutches by setting him up for a squad of Jewish assassins from the Rabinowitz Group during a trip to the Crimean seaside. They were not successful in killing him, but Olga finished the job for them, and thus gained her ride to Istanbul with the few surviving assassins in 1931. She is one of the most effective killers the group has…very few see her coming.

She is tall at 5’8″, with a cold, unemotional demeanor. She rarely, if ever, lets her guard drop. The aloofness seems to make her highly attractive and often men underestimate her talent for violence. Those that know her reputation find her terrifying, partl for her preference for the knout — a kind of whip that was popular with tsarist landowners, and now with some NKVD agents.

Archetype: Spy     Motivation: Revenge     Health: 5     Style: 4

Body: 2, Dexterity: 3, Strength: 2, Charisma: 3, Intelligence: 2, Willpower: 3

Size: 0, Move: 5, Perception: 5, Initiative: 5, Defense: 5, Stun: 2

Resources: Rank 1 — Rabinowitz Group

Talents: Finesse Attack, Systema and Melee

Flaws: Callous, Criminal, Hunted, NKVD

Languages: Russian & Yiddish (native), German, Hebrew

Skills: Acrobatics 1/4, Athletics 2/4, Con 2/5, Diplomacy 1/4, Firearms 2/5, Investigation 2/4, Linguistics 2/4, Martial Arts (Systema) 2/5, Melee 2/5, Performance, Acting 1/4, Stealth 2/5, Survival 2/4

Weapons: Knout     Damage: 1N   Attack Rating: 6N   Rng: 8’   Rate: 1   Spd: A

cossack knout