Kazimir Volken

Portrayed By	Edward James Olmos
Sex	Male
Status	Unregistered Evolved
Ability	Life-Force Manipulation
Age	119
Date of Birth	August 11th, 1889

Bodies are beginning to show up in the county morgue, people murdered in a gruesome manner, leaving behind only withered and dessicated husks that look more like they should be on display at an Egyptian history display at a museum. Someone is responsible, but as of now, no one knows who.

History

The story of Kazimir Volken begins in 1889, born to Vladimir and Serise Volken in Berlin, Prussia. Kazimir was raised with the stern upbringing of Russian Orthodox parents, his mother being a Russian-born immigrant, and his father an officer in the German Empire. With the taciturn and strict military fathering and strong Russian Orthodox influence in his life, Kazimir became much as he was raised, a strict and cold man, often commented upon by his peers as clinical and without humor.

Much of Kazimir's early life was in part preparation for his enlistment into military service of the German Empire, which his father saw as the highest duty one could perform for his country and kingdom. By the age of sixteen, Kazimir was beginning what his father would approve of as a military career. For the years that passed, leading up into the bitter conflict of the "Great War", Kazimir and his father would serve together, fighting for the sovereignty of the German Empire.

Amidst the background of World War I, Kazimir through his early adulthood would come to witness the horrors of trench warefare, witness the evolution of the military machine, and the ingenuity humans can inflict on one another on the battlefield. None of this, however, prepared him for what he would eventually see as the height of human cruelty, and what would eventually become his crisis of faith.

On August 25th, 1914, Kazimir and his father Vladimir were in the city of Leuven in Belgium, working with the paranoia of the German military at the time, fearful of Belgian guerilla fighters as they moved in through the once neutral country. The orders were simple, evacuate the city's entire population and execute those who resisted. For the young Kazimir, who's torturous enlistment at his father's command was driving him ever slowly towards dementia, it was the beaking point.

Raiding the Leuven University, Kazimir and fifteen fellow soldiers came under fire from francs-tireurs, French irregulars positioned in Belgium. During the firefight, Kazimir was struck in the abdomen by stray gunfire and laid dying on the floor of the University as the battle raged on around him. It would be his father, Vladimir, who stepped in to marshall the German forces against the francs-tireurs, only to find his only son dying. By the time the firefight had ended, Kazimir was dead. His father, finally wracked with both the guilt of forcing his son's hand to join the military, crouched down over Kazimir, taking one bloodied hand in both of his, and began praying.

The sound of his father's prayers are one of Kazimir's last memories of his father. For a change had begun, brought on by the adrenaline rush of his mortal wound, brought on by so many circumstances piling together. Kazimir had awakened to an ability far and beyond that of normal humans, and it was an ability he had no hope of controling. With a single touch to his bare skin, Kazimir's body reacted to save the young man's life, leeching vitality from his father. Siphoning from his own parent a sustaining life-force that revitalized the young soldier, repairing his grevious wounds and affording him a second chance at life. It was those choking prayers that his father's dying form rasped out that struck Kazimir the most.

When his fellow soldiers discovered what happened, they turned on kazimir, unable to rationalize how his injuries were completely healed, and how his father had become a dessicated husk of a corpse. History notes that 248 residents of Leuven were killed that warm night in August, the records of German losses — less notable stastics — would count 137. That is the number of lives claimed by Kazimir's terrified rampage before he vanished into the Belgian wilderness like a frightened animal.

From 1914 to 1918, during the remaining four years of World War I, Kazimir fled thorugh eastern Eurpoe, hoping to distance himself from the conflict and discover what it is that he has become. Pretentious notions of being an angel of death, or perhaps the devil himself were entertained only briefly, and Kazimir began to ever so slowly feel that perhaps it was simply his lack of faith that had caused him to lose so much, and to become cursed as he is.

Over the four years, Kazimir began to understand the basic prinicples of that curse, that any bare skin contact between himself and another living being caused it to slowly wither and die. Plants, animals, people; nothing was safe from his wicked caress, and with each ounce of vitality stolen from another, Kazimir began to understand the horrible realization that he was not only repairing his own body, but also regressing his age, becoming more youthful and vivacious in the process. The theft of life became something of an addiction for Kazimir, a brief touch here or a gentle careewss there to get him through the day, the blissful sense of euphoria that came with such revitalization only made him more embittered to his own nature. He could derive a sense of pleasure from the suffering he inflicted on others to survive, such an existance could be considered nothing but evil.

It was in 1917 when Kazimir finally stopped his journey east, settling in Vladivostok. It was poor timing for Kazimir, settling in to seek solance among the Russian Orthodox church, during what would eventually become known as the Russian Revolution. Taken in by the priests, Kazimir confided his secret in Mikhail Petrovich, a clergyman of renown in Vladivostok who once presented with proof of Kazimir's claims, proposed to him the notion that such a curse was a sign of a test from God. He felt that Kazimir was being tested not only fo rhis faith, but for his capacity to do good despite impediment. He urged the plagued young man to use what seemed to be a wholly destructive curse to a good end. Kazimir, perhaps ironicly, chose in the end to use his gift to fight for the White Army during the Russian Revolution, in an attempt to uphold the status of the Russian Orthodox church and combat what Kazimir saw as tyranny in the form of the soviet movement.

Kazimir's involvement with the White Movement and their ultimate defeat in October 1922 when Vladivostok fell to the soviet army further his disenchantment with war and human conflict. Still believing himself to be a singularly cursed and unique individual, Kazimir fled Russia after the fall of Vladivostok and abandoned the church, seeing no good to come from his curse, still struggling with the notion of who and what he was. While thoughts of suicide were entertained at one time, Kasimir saw that as a coward's solution to a dillemma, seeing death as something he escaped once at the cost of his father's own life. To die again would simply be to visit that same pain upon another.

Between 1922 and the early 1930's, Kazimir returned to the German military, rejoining under a false identity with the intentions of serving what he saw as a strong political movement towards German superiority. It was in this time that Kazimir quickly rose through the ranks of the growing German military, eventually finding himself embroiled in the wrong side of World War II.

It was not the conflict, however, that Kazimir was interested in, so much so that he had discovered the existance of others such as himself. Hitler's misguided seeking of mystic and religious power and knowledge had left him to discover the nature of the Evolved before much of the world at large would. Primarially concerned with both the military application of psychics and other Evolved powers, Kazimir was eventually introduced to the Fuhrer himself, and demonstrated his ability to him. In light of this revelation, Kazimir and a small group of other evolved serving the Nazi party began para-military experimentation and examination of individuals showing "extraordinary" gifts. Wholly driven by his desire to understand himself and his own curse, Kazimir knowingly participated in many atrocities comitted upon the human race during the height of the Nazi party. This, though, came with no true answers. While breakthroughs were made in what was believed to be the "origin" of the "ubermensch," Kazimir was unable himself to find rhyme or reason behind the proliferation of abilities seen during his tenure.

During this time of experimentation, Kazimir came to understand his own powers more fully, discovering his ability to drain life-energy from a distance and beginning to grasp the notion of his own immortality. By the time Germany fell to allied forces, Kazimir had already broken his ties to the Nazi party, seeking asylum in the United States, offering research and information gleaned from German science programs in exchange for his freedom as many Nazi scientists did. However, knowledge of the Evolved and his own gift was kept secret, for a time.

Through the end of World War II and on into the fifties, Kazimir would serve as a biological researcher for the American government, having obtained asylum from his war crimes in exchange for the scientific understanding obtained during his service in the Fuhrer's search for the Evolved. However, Kazimir himself was more obsessed with what he had come to understand was happening to his body as a result of the experimentation with his powers done during the war. He was rapidly aging, cellular degeneration causing himself to constantly need to feed off of those around him in order to repair his own hastily dying body. Presented with a growing list of disappearances surrounding him, suspicion on Kazimir began to grow, and in 1957 the Federal government moved in after the death of a notable American scientist under Kazimir's supervision, accusing Kazimir himself of the death.

This attempt to arrest Kasimir resulted in the unleashing of his powers on the federal agents sent to take him in, killing six of the seven men sent to capture him, and finally pushing Kazimir beyond the limit of his own body's capabilities. Having strained that shell for so long, Kazimir found himself hovering once more at death's door, even the life-energy robbed from the men he killed was not enough to sustain his body. However, it was here where evolution took its next leap forward, and the life-thieving man made his biggest heist yet. Among the federal agents sent to aquire Kazimir was one Richard Santiago, a mexican-born American, and the first victim of Kazimir's most frightening ability.

Kazimir awoke after the confrontation with the federal agents, looking upon his own dessicated and lifeless husk that was once his body. He had transferred his own consciousness into the body of Richard Santiago, wholly abandoning his own physical form to take residence in a new body, devouring Richard's personality and inhabiting him like a second skin. Terrified of what he was becoming, Kazimir fled from the nevada facility he was working in, fled south using Santiago's life as a cover into Mexico, seeking refuge far from civilization. Kazimir's greatest fear was coming true, he felt as though he was more of a monster now than a man.

It was a revelation he would eventually come to embrace.

For the next fifteen years, Kazimir — in the body of Richard Santiago — wandered through South America, supping on the life-essence of those around him, haunting the poor and homeless, those who would not be missed. He became something like an urban legend, a man who abducted the homeless, leaving behind nothing but dried and dessicated corpses in his wake. As Richard continued to feed to sustain himself, aware that his rapidly accelerating age was affecting his new body as well, the debilitating scope of his powers began to expand as well. Visible, now, was the aura of life-draining energy that surrounded the man when he sought to consume the essence of others, manifesting as a black haze, absorbing not only energy but light as well. Kazimir was grounded, now, in his belief that he represented a plague that was coming to the world, a plague of things just like himself that would bring about the eventual end of the world. Fearing that more beings with powers like his could destroy civilization faster than wars, faster than atomic bombs, faster than humanity was already progressing, he would take it upon himself to be a cleansing force to stem the tide of this plague. Mikhail's words from Russia so many years ago haunted Kazimir, about how his curse could be turned into a gift, could be used to better others.

Kazimir agreed, finally, to this notion. His curse would become a weapon, one turned against the blight of the world that monsters such as he represented. He was driven, now, by a singular goal — The eradication of every single Evolved on the world, with himself the last to die, to ensure his work would be completed. With a potentially unlimited lifespan, Kazimir felt that a goal as grand as this could be achieved, and with all of the time in the world to make his plans and set them into action, he convinced himself that it was a realistic goal.

Starting small, Kazimir was little more than a serial killer. He would prey upon rumors of the Evolved in South America, hunting them down and siphoning their life energy to sustain himself as he had so many times before. For years his quest was of small scale, one by one tracking down whole families of Evolved by rumors and word of mouth. Occasionally the innocent would die at his hands, people who believed they had great gifts but in truth possessed none. To Kazimir, they were necessary sacrifices for the greater good. Eventually his scope broadened, following leads from South America across the sea to Africa, following stories of the Evolved like a predator would stalk prey, bringing to them painful and excruciating death.

By the mid 1990s, Kazimir's plan had been long set into action. Operating under a number of aliases, utilizing information used by the Nazis to smuggle money into and out of Switzerland, he would dip into private caches of money utilized by the Nazi party during the war to fund his quest. Stockpiles of gold long forgotten after the fall of the Third Reich, all information kept to himself. Bank account numbers, passwords, places where raw material wealth was buried in the hopes of safekeeping. Kazimir found purpose to even his darkest moments. The trail of death he left across Europe grew over the decades, learning to focus and control his ability to slow the degredation of his flesh, to best utilize the new body he had been given. He continued in this vein, hunting and killing with moderate discrimination to those he felt could be Evolved individuals. Eventually, though, it became obvious to Kazimir that a task as great as his could not be accomplished by one man alone, as as if by divine providence, the necessary aid he sought would come to him on a bleak and cold night in Rome in 2002.

On the trail of an evolved in Rome, Kazimir came into contact with a young man named Amato Salucci, he himself an Evolved possessed of a unique psychometric gift, allowing him to be able to see what he percieved as "sins" of a person merely by touching them.

Coming into contact with Kazimir, Amato was horrified as he saw the long and brutal life this man led, how he moved from one body to another, and how he himself seemed so much to be the very personification of an angel of death. Amato was the first person to become aware of Kazimir's plan, and the first to knowingly agree to the ultimate outcome that he saw for the world. A world "cleansed of the evil of our kind", as he so said to Amato. After winning over the young man's confidence, Kazimir would utilize him to gather like-minded individuals from across the world, seeking to establish a silent organization of killers with the sole intention of exterminating the Evolved. To his surprise, they came, one by one to his side. The proverbial fire that would fight fire, and in just a few years time Kazimir would have a handful of "purifiers" at his side that would work as his proxies in the world, hunting the Evolved…

Then, in 2006, Kazimir was shown validation of his beliefs.

The Bomb was validation in Kazimir's eyes, proof of the evil of the Evolved and the damage they could cause to the world. It was by merit of their very existance that the world was turning on its ear, chaos not just across America but countries all around the world as they struggled with the realization that the Evolved existed, that the nightmares Kazimir has sought to keep quiet and kill for much of his life were brought out into the light. Kazimir saw this as a sign, and with Amato at his side, prepared to move his operations to America again, for the first time since stealing his current form.

With his vast wealth and the concentration of Evolved migrating to New York City, Kazimir saw this as an oppotunity for his purifiers to bring their cleansing to the wound in America's side, to cauterize this gaping hole in their city, and bring about an era where the Evolved — including himself — are no longer a threat.

Evolved Ability

Life-Force Manipulation

Localized Life Draining: Kazimir possesses a dangerous and lethal ability to manipulate the life-force of other living things. With a touch of his bare skin, Kazimir unwillingly begins to siphon life energy from animals, plants or people he comes into contact with. This effect manifests in a visual withering of the living thing he comes into direct contact with as their life-force sustains his own. Prolonged contact with an individual can allow him to channel this vitality into himself to heal from wounds as though he possessed the Regeneration ability. Once contact is broken, the effect ends. Kazimir utilizes this ability to prolong his lofe to unnatural ends. If Kazimir does not kill a victim with his touch, they will eventually recover from the effect. If Kazimir kills via his touch, all that is left behind is a dessicated and dry corpse.

Entropic Field: Having mastered his touch, Kazimir has learned how to expand that life-sapping effect to a ten foot aura around himself. He can affect the biological functions of any living thing within that area as if they were in direct contact with his bare skin. At first Kazimir had to focus to create the field around himself, now after so much use Kazimir can no longer permanently disable this field, havng to concentrate to keep the aura suppressed instead of active. A visual cue to the aura is a darkening of the area surrounding Kazimir, as light is absorbed by the field, dimming his vicinity into darkness.

Possession: More a plot-device than a power, Kazimir has the capability when his body dies to leap his consciousness into a nearby person. He has only utilized this ability once, and not willingly, and does not fully understand how to use this power, nor has he been able to duplicate the effect since then. Kazimir's body-inhabiting power is more something to facilitate a dramatic villainous escape should he be killed, or otherwise be utilized by the staff to creative ends.

Notes

• Animals who come within ten feet of Kazimir are spooked by his presence, as they can sense his unnatural aura, even when suppressed. Even trained animals will not willingly attack Kazimir, and those forced within ten feet of him will panic.
• Kazimir speaks a multitude of languages, among which are German, English, Russian, Portugese and Italian.

Timeline:

Life is but a Walking Shadow	Eve is assaulted by a nightmare of a man shrouded in shadow.	Eve, Kazimir
Death and The Maiden	Helena has a brief encounter with the man from Eve's nightmare.	Helena, Kazimir
To Fool An Inquisition	Kazimir is revealed, and his followers bring to him a stray.	Amato, Munin, Kazimir, and Tamara
The Power of a Name	Amato delivers to Kazimir a name, and Kazimir discusses the power of such simple things.	Amato and Kazimir
302 Briarwood Terrace	The shadow of death looms over the detectives following Kazimir's trail of bodies.	Amato, Felix, Kaydence, and Kazimir
Guilt and Innocence	Amato and Kazimir return to the warehouse to discuss what has happened.	Amato and Kazimir
Out of the Jaws of Death	One of Kazimir's victims manages to escape his grasp, leading him on a long search…	Kazimir
The Way to Dusty Death	…that ends in another discovery entirely.	Cameron and Kazimir
Lucidity	Kazimir is confronted by Tamara, but he fails to ask the right questions at the right time.	Kazimir and Tamara
Bedside Manner	Amato returns from the conclusion of Phase 1, and his injuries are treated.	Amato and Kazimir
Phase Two	Kazimir greets an old friend, and the second phase of his master plan is set into motion.	Ethan and Kazimir
Bang, Not a Whimper	When two evolved go on an insane rampage through Greenwich Village, Kazimir lets them dig themselves deeper.	Gillian, Kent, Kazimir, Cat, and Peter