Moislav | Boris | Ermak | Burhan | Chagantai
MOISLAVAGE: 22
HEIGHT: 5′6″
HAIR: Blond
EYES: Blue
RACE: Russian [Jewish]
Moislav was born in a small village outside of Kiev.
When he’s three months old, his village is attacked by soldiers, who round up all the Jews with the intention of burning them. Moislav’s fair haired and light-eyed teenage mother, denies her heritage to the soldiers and escapes with Moislav to Kiev. As a teen, Moislav leaves his mother and moves to another part of the city, where he finds employment with the glass making Pashkov clan; he befriends Ermak Pashkov who teaches him how to fight, and is seduced by the heir apparent of the Pashkov family, Boris.
After a shift in politics gives the newly established Catholic Church a strong presence in Kiev, the elder Pashkov decides to move the clan into the Far East. Unwilling to live without Boris, Moislav goes with them.
After a year of travel, the fifty-plus settlers in the Pashkov caravan arrive at a lake called Bosten-Hu, near the Silk Road city of Turfan. After a month of peaceful living, a Mongol troop arrives and informs them that they’ve settled on Mongol land. Violence erupts, and many Russians are killed.
Moislav survives along with Boris, Ermak, and a dozen others.
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BORIS
AGE: 20
HEIGHT: 6′2″
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Blue
RACE: Russian
Anton Pashkov, a glass blower and ex-soldier, settled in Kiev and married a glass merchant’s daughter. When the man died, he took over the business and soon his wife gave birth to a son, Boris.
Because of his mother’s influence, Boris is kept out of the workshops where his father and cousins toil away; instead he spends his days with his mother, doted on and playing happily until her death when he turns twelve. Shortly after, his father quickly puts him to work where he finds a friend in his teenage cousin Ermak. Ermak shows him the ropes and helps him adjust to the life of a working man; he also begins training in the art of combat. Soon he’s known as one of the deadliest swordsmen on the streets of Kiev, and no one challenges him, no one dares, except the second best swordsman, and that’s Ermak. Not long after, he’s introduced to a young man named Moislav, who’s hired as a delivery worker by Ermak; Boris develops feelings for Moislav, and they become lovers.
Boris’s life is uprooted at nineteen, when his father sells off the family shares of the business to his uncle Vladimir, and moves the extended family to Siberia.
They settle at an oasis known as Bosten-Hu, with the intent on trading in the nearby city of Turfan. All is well until Boris’s father orders the death of a Mongol messenger, and evokes their wrath. Boris survives the brutal retaliatory attack, but is unable to save his father.
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ERMAK PASHKOV
AGE: 24
HEIGHT: 6′5″
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Brown
RACE: Russian
Ermak was the middle child in a family of outspoken and hardworking glass merchants. Born fifth in a set of eight sons, to Vladimir Pashkov, a man who had more mistresses then wives, Ermak had a loving family, and when old enough to work in the shops he learned the art of blowing glass.
As he matures and grows strong, he learns to fight and gains a reputation on the streets of Kiev as a force to be reckoned with. Despite his large frame, he’s never a bully; Ermak is known as the Pashkov with a level head, and a heart the size of his gut.
When his uncle Anton grows unhappy with the church’s seizure of power in Kiev, he decides to sell off his share of the business and travel to the Far East; Vladimir agrees to buy out his brother’s share, only if he takes Ermak with him. Vladimir fears for his favorite son, as he’s all too aware of the Ermak’s homosexuality-and the Church position on it; he doesn’t want his son persecuted in Kiev. Anton agrees to this pact because of his own son Boris’s homosexual nature, but there is grumbling from others in his traveling group. He explains to these men that Ermak and Boris’s fighting skills are required if they are to survive the journey east. Three months into the expedition, word is sent to Ermak that Vlad is dead, and his inheritance seized by the church and given to his brother, citing evidence supplied by them of Ermak’s deviant nature.
Ermak is sad only that his father never lived to see the beauty of Bosten-Hu. Life at the oasis is good until he advises his uncle against trusting a messenger sent by the Mongols. It’s a fatal error made worse when Anton murders the man and hours later, a Mongol militia arrives and drives them out of Bosten-Hu.
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GENERAL BURHAN
AGE: 30
HEIGHT: 5′5″
HAIR: Black
EYES: Black
RACE: Mongol
Burhan was born the second son of a brutal northern minghan commander whose troops were known for their bloodthirsty raids, and garnished the attention of the Kahn’s General, Subedai.
After countless campaigns into China, his father is sent north to the Siberian desert to begin the conquest of the prosperous isolated cities of the Tarim Basin. When eight-years old Burhan loses his ‘brother of the breast’ [half-brothers weaned by the same nursemaid] to an attacking army outside the city of Jiaohe, and so he enters the army and rises through the ranks with each new skirmish. After his father’s death during the sacking of Kashqar, young Burhan makes rank and obtains a horse; as the years pass he’s instrumental in the Mongolian push across the Taklamakan desert.
When his Commander sets his sights on Turfan, Burhan sets his sights on the land around Bosten-Hu. When he arrives with his tjumen, he finds a village of fifty or so Rusians [white men with Mongol souls]. After they murder his messenger, Burhan and his men swoop down on them in the night and drive out the ones they can’t kill.
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EMISSARY CHAGANTAI
AGE: 29
HEIGHT: 6′4″
HAIR: Black
EYES: Black
RACE: Mongol
Chagantai was found abandoned at the age of eight after troops from Jiaohe attacked a small Mongol settlement at the base of the Tienshen Mountains.
Taken to Jiaohe as a refugee, the childless wife of Turfan nobleman Aye falls in love with the boy and takes him in. When the Mongols retaliate by destroying Jiaohe, Aye and his wife leave the city quickly, and hide the boy’s identity from officials in Turfan. Years later, during the siege of a nearby city called Kashqar, they continue to lie about his identity and claim he’s the child of their only daughter, murdered at Jiaohe. Chagantai is raised in comfort and when old enough, he’s handed over to an imperial school for training in administration. Here he gains a reputation for being a promiscuous cut-sleeve [homosexual], but his tremendous skill with foreign languages prompts his instructors to ignore his social misconduct.
When Mongols set up camp nearbye, the King of Turfan calls on Chagantai to remember his old language, and “negotiate” with this new threat. He does so willingly, but soon finds himself named as Emissary to the Mongols at Bosten-Hu.
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