When he gives you an order, it's in your best interest to follow it.
Viktor Molotok is Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Fifth Fleet, Duke of New Siberia, and Warden of the Southern Marches. He is also a convicted mass murderer who has been exiled to the Arachnid Quarantine Zone for life.
Early Life[]
Viktor was born in 2229 to Stanislav and Ulyana Molotok, a family of gas giant miners in the Port Arthur system on the frontier of known space, and the home to the largest community of ethnic Russian immigrants from Earth That Was. He had an older brother, Pyotr, and a younger sister, Natalya. Young Viktor was fourteen years old (and terrified) when the Eastern Bloc siezed Port Arthur early in the Third Civil War. Four months later, Viktor watched in amazement as Major Alistar Dimiye, a fellow Russian from Port Arthur, recaputured the system without firing a shot by terrifying his enemy into an unconditional surrender. From that moment onward, young Viktor wanted to grow up to be a Tech Infantry trooper.
Unfortunately, the Eastern Bloc recaptured Port Arthur in early 2244. Viktor's family and community, as non-han, automatically became de facto second-class citizens. Later that year, Viktor's father Stanislav managed to escape from occupied Port Arthur to New Paris. Over the next two years, his father saved up enough money to have the rest of the family smuggled out of Port Arthur to New Paris inside a tanker ship.
Viktor's older brother Pyotr had already awakened as a entropy mage, and was immeadiately drafted into the Tech Infantry. Unfortunately, by now it was obvious that Viktor, now seventeen, had no supernatural abilities, and thus could never be the Tech Infantry trooper that he'd dreamed of. Despite his dissappointment, he was still facing mandatory military service under the Five Acts, and so chose to enlist in the Earth Fleet instead. When his younger sister Natalya came of age the next year, she enlisted in the Light Infantry.
[]
During Basic Training, Viktor meet a fellow Russian refugee from Port Arthur, Katya Petrikov, and they quickly became good friends. After graduating, they had the good luck to be assigned to the same ship, the Stalingrad-class battlecruiser Kursk, and the two had a grand old time discussing the shortcoming of officers right in front of them - but in Russian, so almost no one else understood them. Although there was a strong attraction between Viktor and Katya, Fleet fratranization regulations prevented them from acting on it. After an three uneventful years, Viktor had shown promise and risen to the rank of Chief Petty Officer, while Katya had only risen as high as Spaceman First Class. She planned to put in her mandatory five years of service and get out, but Viktor decided to go career Fleet and was accepted to Officer Candidate School, and the two parted ways.
Viktor graduated OCS with top marks and the rank of Ensign. He was assigned as a Sensor Officer to the Nike-class frigate EFS Mastodon stationed along the Arachnid Quarantine Zone. For well over a year he preformed well, and even developed a new technique of predicting the movement of Bug ships. With several weeks of leave saved up, he returned to New Paris to visit his family, then Avalon to visit Katya, who by now had completed her Federal Service and was attending University. Depsite both of them intending to make it just a visit between old friends, now that they were no longer bound by Fleet regulations, the pent-up attraction between them finally exploded into passion, and Viktor saw little of Avalon outside of Katya's apartment. Realizing a very long-distance relationship was unrealistic and doomed to failure, they decided to consider Viktor's visit just one hell of fun weekend (but agreed to keep in touch). Refreshed and reinvigorated, Viktor returned to the Mastodon... just in time for the Vin Shriak Holy War to break out.
More coming later.
Behind the Scenes[]
Viktor Molotok was player/writer Ed Stasheff's player character in the Season 9.1 Miniseries. "Molotok" means "hammer" in Russian, so Ed thought it would make a good name for a naval officer overly fond of mass drivers. His actor avatar is Terrence Stamp.