CHARACTER Lizaveta Isakova

[Lizaveta Isakova]

Name: Yelizaveta Petrovna Isakova
Alias/Handle: Lizaveta, Lizka
Age: 25
Ethnicity: Russian
Birthplace: Petrovsk, Saratov Oblast, Russia, USSR
Appearance: Lizaveta is pushing six feet tall and slender. Her proportions make her appear rail thin, but she is a healthy 130 lbs and sports a slim figure, the lithe and toned body of a disciplined dancer. She has no visible cyberware. She has blue eyes and golden blonde hair, and a thin, serious face. Although not usually visible, Lizka has a scar on her back from a farming injury when she was a child.

Background:

• Family Ranking: 3 - Corporate Technician - Lizaveta's parents are midlevel corporate farming technicians at SovOil's agricultural subsidiaries
• Parents: 4 - Both parents are living.
• Childhood Environment: 10 - On a Corporate Controlled Farm

Personality:

Inwardly reserved, shy, disciplined. Outwardly cold, remote, detached.

Person You Value Most:

Anastasia Petrovna Isakova, her younger sister.

What Do You Value Most:

Knowledge

How Do You Feel About Most People:

People are untrustworthy. Don't depend on anyone.

Your Most Valued Possession:

A letter from her parents, almost worn through from reading and re-reading.

Friends & Enemies:

Friends: No close friends.
Enemies: Significant portions of the Russian oligarchy and criminal element. Parts of the NCPD. Irina Popova, a ballerina that she beat out for prima in her former life.
Lovers:
Ex-Lovers: Grigori Abramov (deceased, lovers' quarrel)

Lifepath / Role:

Fixer

Skills:

• Lockpicking
• Self-Defense
• Handguns
• Expert Ballet

Language(s):

• Russian (Native)
• English (Fluent)
• SO-UZ (Conversant)
• French (Conversant)
• Spanish (Broken)

Cyberware:

N/A

Empathy:

7

Humanity:

70

Gear & Style:

• Weapons: Nue (a jet black .45 caliber power pistol, equipped with a TSX Tocororo silencer); concealed knife
• Gadgets: Datapad, Phone, Makeup compact (concealing lockpicks)
• Outfits: A wardrobe that will suit for any occasion, from high-quality slacks, skirts, and blouses for everyday to more businesslike dresses and suits for her professional life, to elegant eveningwear. These pieces were largely gifts from her ex-lover, and so have been collected over five or so years, but as far as Lizaveta is concerned classic clothes never go out of style. Lizaveta tends to favor cool colors like white, pale grey, and pale blue, though her wardrobe is, of course, also dotted with fashionable black as well.

History:

Yelizaveta Petrovna Isakova was the second youngest of four children. Her family had always been in farming, as far back as anyone could remember (which, her father would proudly tell anyone who asked any several who hadn't) was documented as far back as when the Romanovs ruled. Through the Patriotic War of 1812, the Second Patriotic War, the Revolution, the Great Patriotic War, the Cold War, the fall of communism, the corporate wars -- the Isakovas were a farming family, through and through. That evolved over time, from when they were serfs to feudal lords, to now being low-level technicians working for SovOil's agricultural subsidiaries. And so it was expected that when the third child of Mr. Isakov and Mrs. Isakova came around, he or she would also be a farmer. But Yelizaveta, named for her paternal great-grandmother, had other talents. From a young age, she was a musical prodigy, skilled with the only musical instruments around (an old piano and a violin) and a very talented dancer. So from the time she started school, Lizaveta was allowed to take dance lessons as her cultural enrichment, and when the teacher suggested that she train professionally, her parents reluctantly agreed. After all, if three of their four children were farmers, that still counted toward tradition.

Lizaveta was scouted by the Bolshoi Ballet company when she was twelve, and taken to Moscow to learn and train. When she was fifteen, she went touring with the company. When she was seventeen, Lizaveta was promoted to prima ballerina, one of the principal dancers in the company. It came with a decent salary, most of which she saved to send home to her family. She grew in strength and in talent, honing her skills until she was acknowledged by the cultural community in Moscow as one of the best. When she was nineteen, Lizaveta caught the eye of Grigori Abramov, a wealthy and well-connected young businessman. Though she had been touring with the ballet for four years by then, she was still by most measures a naive young woman, living under the sheltered auspices of, first, her parents and then the strict matrons at the Bolshoi, she knew little of the outside world. She didn't know at the time that Grigori was an information broker affiliated with the Organitskaya, or that he had ordered assassinations, kidnappings, and other violent crimes. She simply knew him as a handsome fellow with an interest in the arts. The truth became apparent after three dates when, as he was driving her back to her flat, he took a phone call and nonchalantly ordered a hit on a rival. Lizaveta thanked him for the meal and said good night, and then stopped taking his calls.

After that, it became clear that when Grigori Abramov wanted one's attention, he got it. It was an insistent courtship involving filling her dressing room with exotic roses -- an extravagance, given the agricultural environment -- and some light breaking-and-entering, culminating in a terrifying moment when Grigori sent her a video clip of one of her brothers and her sister outside the farm, putting away farming implements. The message was obvious, and a terrified Lizaveta began returning Grigori's phone calls. He had the good grace not to explicitly mention the threat to her family, but he didn't need to; Lizaveta was quite compliant after that.

Eventually Grigori got bored of Lizaveta being away, touring with the ballet, and at his request she limited her performances to when the company was performing at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. During the off season, Lizaveta traveled with Grigori. He had business in London and Berlin, Tokyo, Shanghai, Buenos Aires and Night City. The more time she spent with him, the more Lizaveta absorbed of his work. She saw how he kept the plates spinning, how he organized things, the subtle diplomacy -- and lack of diplomacy, when it was warranted -- that he employed, and when to exert pressure (read: violence). When she was twenty-two Grigori moved to Nigh City on a more permanent basis, establishing a semi-independent information brokerage. When he invited Lizaveta to retire from the ballet, the dancer hesitated. After all it had been her dream and her life's work for more than a decade to reach the pinnacle of Russian ballet. Grigori resolved the situation by taking a hammer to one of her knees while she was visiting him in Night City, effectively stranding her there to convalesce.

The two never discussed the incident, but that was the moment that Lizaveta knew that she was going to kill Grigori Abramov. She was twenty-two, and being laid up after reconstructive surgery for three months gave her a lot of time to stew on the matter. The more she thought of it, the more Lizaveta understood that it wouldn't be enough to eliminate Grigori. That would leave her more vulnerable, and now that she didn't have a dancing career to fall back on, she would need some way to provide security for herself and her family. And she knew that after three years with Abramov, she knew too much for the business to let her walk away. No; she had to capture Grigori's operation, to take him and his loyalists out, and to find a way to keep the rest of the small organization on sides. The independent contractors and mercs that made up most of the footwork, well, they would be easy enough. They didn't really care who ran the shop, as long as the eddies were good. Lizaveta ingratiated herself with the inner circle of Grigori's information brokerage, and made herself invaluable to her lover. He relied on her as a hostess, as a beautiful distraction, as a piece of art to be admired while dealing with people. Eventually, she came to be one of his informants, using her celebrity status -- not as pronounced in Night City as it would have been in Moscow, of course, but she was still recognizable enough to be cultivated -- to supply him with information. Some of it, though, she kept for herself. That which she could use as leverage when the moment came.

It was a slow and careful plan. Three years had passed since the incident, and the police were called to the apartment she shared with Grigori. He had drunkenly tripped, fallen through the glass railing of the balcony, plummeted thirty-eight floors to a grisly death on the pavement in front of the apartment building. A terrible accident, she said, and of course the limited security footage in the apartment would bear that out. And over the next six hours, several more died. A car careened from a cliff after the brakes failed, killing the two men inside. A woman was found with her head in her oven. Three, in separate parts of the city, shot. In a city as large and as violent as Night City, even the crimes wouldn't raise many eyebrows, especially if there was nothing official to link them all.

By the end of the week, Lizaveta was sitting in a precarious new position at the top of Grigori's information brokerage, having earned the loyalty of some of the inner circle, leveraged information on some others to force them to accept her, and killed the rest. But as she turned her attention to carving out her own little piece of security in Night City, Lizaveta had a nagging feeling that she hadn't seen the last of Night City's finest.