Emil Draganov

Captain of the Kholodnyy Veter (a.k.a. Ledovyy Tiran, the Ice Tyrant)

Dutiful service saw me crippled and left for dead. The power to help those in need saw me driven from my homeland. Vengeance left me even more hollow than the hate that festers in my heart still. The world is a cold place, друг. Allow me to demonstrate.

— Emil Draganov, in a merchant captain's final moments

A dreaded Zeselnik pirate captain wielding a powerful Mark of Ice, which takes the place of the leg he lost in his youth, Emil Draganov is a ruthless man who seeks out the the rich and corrupt in particular, hoping to redistribute their wealth towards those more deserving.

At a fairly young age, the icebreaker vessel on which his family served ran aground in the arctic circle. Dozens died, but the captain and various other officers survived the impact and left Emil for dead, trapped under debris in the boiler room. As one of a very few people remaining on the ship, Emil lopped off his own leg to escape his entrapment and did everything he could to aid the dead and dying. On the brink of death, with his leg stump turning gangrenous and the survivors nearly dead from starvation, their salvation came in the form of any Stirgan's worst fear.

A god saw fit to Mark him.

With his lost limb replaced with a jagged peg of ice and the ship repaired by divine means, Emil returned to Stirge a hero of the surviving crew, only to find himself ostracized when he made port. Magic is considered a cursed practice by most Stirgans at the best of times, and being Marked was all it took to immediately be rendered a pariah by all he once knew and loved. Worse still, while in port and still learning what his new status as a Marked man would mean in the long run, Emil encountered the prior captain of his vessel. The scoundrel had become filthy rich off of stories of his 'heroic escape' from the wreckage of the icebreaker, leaving out how he'd abandoned most of the crew to die despite ample room in the lifeboats to stay and help had he been willing. In a fit of rage, Emil drew upon his new powers to freeze the man solid where he sat, shattered the corpse, and stormed away from his homeland with whoever remained who would follow him.

Years passed before Emil would be spotted in Stirgan waters again, and he'd changed a great deal in that time. Now going by the moniker of Ledovyy Tiran, the Ice Tyrant, he had embraced his life as an unwanted vagrant, turning to piracy to keep food on the table for him and his. His ship, too, had been affected by the divine magics that now replaced his leg, and the ice that formed around its hull was known to lash out and hold ships fast, to be relinquished or destroyed at the captain's leisure. He targeted the trading vessels of rich, exploitative companies, slaughtering their officers but often leaving the rest of the crew alive and the ships themselves intact. Ships owned by his old shipping company were less fortunate. If they could be found at all, it would be shattered into pieces and embedded in ice, the corpses of the officers sometimes still visible calling for help from within.

In time, Emil would turn towards vaguely humanitarian goals, using the wealth he gained from his piracy and the scraps of the ships he didn't leave as frozen warnings to others to form Nezavisimost (Hезависимость). It was a city of steel and timber, built on massive stilts that anchored to an undersea mountain range, and established as a sovereign nation free from the influence of Stirgan government and the cloying hands of its merchant lords. Founded on his psuedocommunist ideals, it is technically run by its people, for its people, and overseen by an elected governor, but all who live there know... whether he denies it or not, Emil is the heart of their sanctuary, and its true, rightful ruler.