Illyana Rasputin

Player
Sue

Personality
Illyana’s personality is a study in contradictions. She wishes she was outgoing, confident, and likeable - and sometimes she is. But she always feels as if she’s on the outside, watching, figuring out how she’s “supposed to” react to things by mimicking the reactions of those around her.

Except when she gets tired of it, at which time Illyana’s real personality wins out. She’s impulsive, quick to anger and (usually) slow to forgive. She has no concept of the “big picture”, and wouldn’t care about it if she did. She’s attracted to power, not really because she wants to wield it but because she wants, for once, control of her own life and isn’t sure how else to get it. She loves fiercely - if you’re Illyana’s friend, she’ll do pretty much anything for you, without worrying about the cost to herself. Or, for that matter, to anyone else, because the people she cares about are the only ones she’s really worried about. But it’s hard for her to make friends, at least in part because she knows they’ll only be taken away.

At the end of the day, though, Illyana will try to be whatever the people she cares about want her to be, because deep down, she will always be the little girl who was pulled into Limbo, and who gave up part of her soul in exchange for a promise that she’d be loved. Even if, as she suspects, she’s really not lovable, and even if she knows it’s not going to last.

Powers
Illyana’s primary mutant power is the ability to manipulate Limbo’s “stepping disks” - naturally occurring holes in space/time. She’s able to direct them, choosing the ones that will take her where and when she wants to go. The only problem with this is that she can call the disks from anywhere, but unless she’s in Limbo, they will only take her there. Once there, she can call another disk to take her elsewhere, but any teleport requires a stopover.

Aside from that, Illyana’s a powerful sorceress (the ability is a mutation, honed by study). At thirteen, she wasn’t quite capable of taking Belasco on, in Limbo - at 20, she has the ability but has forgotten a lot of what she’d learned. Moreover, her magical powers are weakened in any area that isn’t Limbo (other fantasy lands are close).

In any area, Illyana is capable of summoning her sword and armor.

Talents
Illyana’s multilingual (can speak both Russian and English, the latter nearly without an accent) and can read several others, most of which haven’t been heard on Earth in centuries. She’s a good dancer, and can draw not-badly. She has a knack for mimicry, usually at other people’s expense and, if she works at it, isn’t a horrible strategist. Unfortunately, she rarely sticks to the strategy, so this isn’t much in evidence.

She’s skilled in both armed and unarmed combat (her preferred weapon is her sword), and is capable of making something edible out of nearly anything. Not good, granted, but edible.

Interests
Magic, popular culture (any, she’s really not picky), dancing, people-watching.

History
At age six, Illyana Rasputin began what she was promised at the time would be an amazing, wonderful adventure.

Except really, not so much.

Backing up. Illyana was the third child and only daughter of Nikolai and Alexandra Rasputin. She has two older brothers, Mikhail and Piotr, and was very much loved as a child. Until, that is, she turned six, and somehow attracted the attention of Belasco, the demon sorcerer who ruled Limbo. He called to her, and she came, stepping through a glowing portal into Hell.

Or what had once been a hell dimension, anyway.

Illyana was more confused than panicked, and when Belasco promised her that she would always be loved, and would have, as she grew up, more power than she could ever imagine, she agreed to stay, not realizing at the time that there was no actual choice involved. At that time, Belasco took the first piece of her soul, twisted it, and put it into the Beatrice amulet. Illyana was sealed to Limbo, her time in Russia fading from her memory until all that was left was vague impressions and images, and Belasco achieved the first step in his plan to use Illyana’s abilities to both enhance his own and to bring forth the Dark Gods of his former dimension, intending to use their power to take over the Earth.

But not yet. Uninterested in Illyana now that he had her, he handed her over to one of his lieutenants, Stolas. Stolas was a demon-lord, but more narcissistic than evil. He took care of Illyana, protected her as much as he could, and began her education in sorcery. And Illyana was content. No, happy; Stolas wasn’t a bad surrogate father, and Illyana would later maintain that this was the one time in her life when she honestly felt safe.

It couldn’t last. When she was ten, Belasco decided that she was old enough to begin training in earnest, and when she clung to Stolas and refused to go, Belasco blasted him into oblivion. Illyana cried, devastated, as the demon she’d thought of as her father crumbled to dust in her arms - even as part of her was  amazed by and attracted to the power Belasco had used to accomplish the deed. When Belasco reminded her that she’d made a deal with him, she went along - not willingly, exactly, but resigned. After all, there really wasn’t anything else she could do.

And another piece of her soul filled another point of the Beatrice amulet’s pentagram.

And thus her apprenticeship began in earnest. She learned to wield elemental forces, how to transform objects and living beings (Belasco forced her to practice on her pet Squidge, torturing it over and over again). She read the lessons she was assigned from the spellbooks Belasco gave her - and then read everything she could, whenever she could, from the ones he kept to himself. She learned that with enough power, one could do anything, and at fourteen, as a “graduation exercise” she poured herself into a single moment of creation, and brought forth a sword. One that could, among more mundane uses, dispel magic.

And Belasco actually stepped backwards as she looked up from it to him, her eyes flashing white with power and hatred.

It lasted only a moment. Even as love and hate fought for dominance in Illyana, Belasco rallied and blasted her backwards, and she instinctively summoned one of Limbo’s stepping disks.

She landed right in the middle of Sentinel Zone 1982. Where she’s been ever since, unable to access her powers, while her time in Limbo began to seem more and more of a dream, one reinforced by occasional “reminders” Belasco sent as she slept. But this was reality - crumbling buildings, hunger, escape attempts that inevitably failed, leaving the people she’d become attached to dead, over and over again.

Because that was how life worked. Wasn’t it?