To a small cabal of occultists the collapse of the Soviet Union was not because of malfeasance, mismanagement or sabotage. Instead the seeds of its destruction were planted on July 21st 1969, when the USA beat it to the moon.
To them that event started the trickle which became an avalanche which swept away any chance of communism prevailing. Most of them are too young or stubborn to blame economic stagnation or fallout from the loosening yoke of control over USSR satellite states, let alone exhaustion from war in Afghanistan or the Chernobyl reactor meltdown. No, it was that moment in the late 60s, when American boots touched lunar soil in front of the world that was the fulcrum of history. The tide turned on the day that humanity's greatest achievement was snatched away. The fact that it took more than two decades for the final impact to be felt is mere technicality.
However the means to rewrite history are within their grasp. They need to plan and prepare carefully for the opportunity, they’ll only have one shot. (Not that any of them really give a shit about the Soviet Union outside their personal agendas, but it makes good set dressing for the direction they pretend to share.)
The objective of the Lost Cosmonauts is to change history so that the Soviet Union was the first to land on the moon (they’re at 18% of their cosmic objective), in order to complete this objective their goals are the following:
- Find the lost Krechet-94 of Grinin Yakovich, a one-of-a-kind artifact created by Vetrov’s unit back in the 1960s, which is capable of a very specific kind of space/time travel.
- Obtain two major charges to power the artifact. Technically the plan could be carried out with one but it would mean stranding Adrian on the moon. Only Vetrov is aware of this complication.
- Build a man-portable apparatus capable of broadcasting their achievement to the world of the 1960s. They can’t change anything on the ground so it will have to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
There is no telling what might happen if they succeed, time travel is a fraught and inexplicable endeavour. Will they really change history? Or will they become trapped in a microcosm of their own making? Or will nothing of consequence result? Won’t the world of the 1960s write their efforts off as a hoax? There’s only one way to find out.
Vetrov Nikitovich was a ghoulish imp of a man in the 1960s and time has done nothing to improve things. He was second-in-charge of a small Soviet military research unit ostensibly working on the mathematics of rocket trajectories. In reality they were the pet project of a high level political functionary with an intense interest in occult metaphysics and their technological and military applications. Towards the end of the 60s their entire purpose was bent towards a last ditch effort to win the space race.
They only partially succeeded and not enough to win. The unit was disbanded and its members receded into obscurity. Vetrov himself was convicted of trafficking in samizdat, contraband literature, in the 1970s and spent a significant period of time imprisoned until well after the fall of the Union in the 90s. Afterwards he approached the new regime as a would-be court wizard but received stony reception.
Vetrov’s motives are entirely selfish, if he can recapture the success of the project that promised him ascendancy he can hit the undo button on his shitty life. He likes to pretend the entire undertaking is his idea, but until Zoya put the idea in his head the decrepit mathematical and arcane savant would have likely drank himself to death surrounded by crumbling tomes and unnatural proofs.
Adrian Sokolov grew up wanting to be a cosmonaut. Unlike a lot of kids he held onto this dream and nearly realised it. An aerospace engineering degree from MIPT, a pilot’s career with the Russian Air Force, a sterling reputation as a stalwart and purposeful young man on a mission. Resigning his commission to enter the cosmonaut selection process (a technicality required by Roscosmos’s status as a civilian organisation) he was on the cusp of realising a lifetime’s work and dedication. Three months later he had a breakdown from trying to keep together the fallout of symptoms that until then he put down to stress reactions that he felt he simply had to handle to keep his place.
Adrian has severe bipolar disorder, which he manages with a raft of varying medications. Applying the same discipline and routine to living his life that saw him through his studies and military career is what kept him going. Truncating the horizon of his life down to one day at a time is the only way he was able to cope. His career was over, until Zoya approached and literally offered him the moon.
Pulled back from a life of listless survival Adrian is utterly committed to the cabal’s cause. If the cabal can promise him his shattered dreams back he’ll be the wildest political zealot they’ve ever seen. The others find his anachronistic affectations bewildering but are willing to stomach the fiery convictions none of them actually share in return for his talented dedication.
Zoya Petrov, thief and sorcerer. Zoya has a history of attaching herself to other’s dreams and seeing what she can make of them. It was her that dredged Vetrov up from rotting away in a bedsit with his equations and pulled Adrian out of his funk. She and Miwa encountered each other by happenstance in Vladivostok but Zoya still takes the credit for their encounter, these things just happen for her. She is an avatar of the opportunist and attuned to the eddies of the statosphere by virtue of a prosthetic eye made of topaz, which she usually conceals behind mirrored sunglasses.
For Zoya the cabal’s goal is an expression of opportunity that trumps all others, snatching back circumstances lost to the passage of time for personal benefit. Her well-off family was ruined in the fall and success will either mean rewriting her personal history to fix this or one hell of a powerful kick towards godwalker status or even ascension. The irony of giving up her self-made success as a high-level go-between and smuggler in organised crime circles isn’t lost on her. While Zoya appreciates the material wealth and power of her position, her ideal waffles between either metaphysical supremacy or giving up the game entirely for the cosseted wealth and status she could have had. If she can, she’ll take both.
Zoya maintains an air of mystery, coming and going as she pleases. Between her criminal contacts and a collection of magickal artifacts the eye has helped her amass she works to make herself indispensable to the cabal. When that isn't enough she uses her position to play the other members off against one another. Although Vetrov is allegedly in charge, Zoya is the one really pulling the strings.
Miwa Mikura grew up in Hokkaido, but her family was originally from the Kuril Islands. Her great-grandparents displacement by Soviet invasion and administration from the end of WWII onward was always a sore point with her father. His aggressive and outspoken opinions on the matter and, more to the point, excessive public drinking made him a public figure of derision and this carried over to the rest of his family. Outcast amongst an established diaspora, her upbringing was fertile ground as a budding motumancer. She breaks down the identities of those who cling to heritage and tradition while secretly nursing her own out of a sense of wounded superiority.
Miwa desires nothing more than putting a match to the Cold War. The Soviet Union never technically made peace with Japan and she hopes increasing tensions between the two superpowers can spark it off into a conflagration that will - if not unhand her ancestral home - consume the invading nation. If she can’t have the place that ruined her family (that she has ironically never seen) then no one can. To this end she intends to corrupt the message the cabal will send to the world of the 1960s with her brand of acrimonious sorcery.
The rest of the cabal are relying on her for the magickal energy to make the trip possible. She exploits this need by needling their foibles as a source of charges.
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