Despite what you said I'm interested in hearing about Ivan Ivanovitch
i can answer this now that i've had several sessions with him. he was a soviet conscript in his 40s, when he was alive. he considers himself fortunate to have been embraced before the wall fell, and that he got to die through the end of the soviet union when blood was cheaper than bread. like many gangrel, his sire killed him and dumped him in kazakhstan, told him she'd be back in a year. the mountains of eastern kazakhstan are very different from afghanistan where he served, but close enough that he could figure out how to live in the harsh terrain. he only went a little bit crazy, just enough that it took him three or four years to figure out it had been more than one. years without meeting another kindred, years of fighting leopards and wolves for scraps of meat and eating the occasional kazakh who was traveling too far from home. when he realized his sire wasn't coming back for him, he went home to yekaterinburg and started asking for her, only to discover she died fighting lupines. fortunately, she had had some pull with her sire, the gangrel volkov, one of the rare city gangrel and a major player in the prince of yekaterinburg's court.
so, ivan's grandsire took him in, made him part of his pack. this was in the late eighties, and ivan was not uncomfortable with doing terrible things when ordered to do so, as any soldier of any nation must be. it was easy enough for him to keep separate from his former associates--the only person he kept in touch with was an old sergeant of his, who just assumed he had faked his own death to get out of military service and turned to a life of crime, which was common enough, and fairly close to the truth. the nights of the 90s were good, and relatively easy despite the constant pressures of the war with the lupines.
then, jusssst as volkov is starting to feel like he can make a move for princedom, xaviar does his nasty thing in the ivory tower's conclave, and the camarilla's tenuous hold on yekaterinburg immediately explodes. the nosferatu remain mostly loyal to the camarilla, but are unable to elect a new prince since the brujah were already more or less anarchs in everything but name. the power struggles start immediately, and bring the golden years of yekaterinburg's court to a close.
now, it's the mid 2000s, and volkov has more or less taken control of the city--neither he nor ivan would say it out loud, but ivan was a major part of volkov's ascent to power. he's killed more than a few kindred, and broken more than a few mortal kneecaps. volkov doesn't want to be a baron, though, he wants the title he sees as having been taken from him back in the 90s. he wants to be a prince. for reasons that my storyteller has not yet devised but will, i am assured, eventually become clear, the prince of seattle, a ventrue named carlyle (don't mention it to him) was identified as someone who could and potentially would vouch for volkov being readmitted to the camarilla as prince of yekaterinburg. of course, nothing like that comes for free, so now ivan is in america. he despises the prince of seattle, who he sees as weak, and vain, but his immense loyalty to volkov and the importance of maintaining a relationship between prince and baron keep him from making even the slightest move against him. he's in seattle to be useful to carlyle and so that's what he's doing. he's not particularly good at courtly manners, but he knows how to wear a well-tailored suit, be polite, speak when spoken to, and follow orders. he and a pair of rather annoying siblings who frequently underestimate him have been granted a small domain in the industrial district, and on the rare occasions that ivan permits himself to hunt, he delights in finding blonde, american cattle who look rather like a certain prince and tearing them apart in dark alleyways.
