Kraven the Hunter

## Personality

Sergei Kravinoff is a wild man at heart. Pure and simple. With an outrageous and beastly grin, he usually defies social conventions and feels more at home in the wild than in the urban society. Emphasizing on living in the moment, Sergei lives and breathes for the hunt. For the thrill of the chase, that is where Sergei feels alive. In the instance of pursuit. Despite this lifestyle, he is not against companionship. Whenever he needs to work with people (or in a pack as he calls it), he is affable and accomodating. In addition, whenever not on the hunt, he is fairly laid-back and jovial, much like how predators tend to be fairly lax when not on the hunt.

However, he can be as cold as Russia itself. His background and his job at the KGB embittered him toward most of humanity and justifies most of his murders and hitjobs as culling the human population. He has a vague viewpoint of "might makes right" for the most part, but is intelligent and pragmatic enough to recognize different varities of strength, such as emotional and mental. He is more at home with beasts than with people on a general note and he has little reservations on murder for the most part. He is a predator at heart and so seeks out his prey for him to claim dominion over. This dogmatic mentality does lead him to obsessive behaviors at times. Other times, his temper can get the better of him and the pride in his own capabilities. Despite it all though, Kraven the Hunter is a man who does what he loves and what he loves is the hunt. Wherever that hunt may lead him all depends on fate.

## Powers & Abilities

***Master Hunter/tracker*-** Sergei is a master of hunting and tracking. Having devoted his life since boyhood to the Hunt, he is a master of hunting whatever is needed along with tracking. He has even applied this to his targets such as learning their behaviors and patterns. Additionally, this has also made him a master survivalist and capable of living off of the land for extensive periods of time. He is also an expert of creating traps through his time in the wild and luring prey in.

***KGB Training*-** Kraven the Hunter is a veteran KGB agent and thus possesses the various firearm handling, psychological training, intelligence gathering and other skills associated with KGB agents. As such, he is a formidable combatant. Additionally, he has hone his powers of analysis extensively, which aids him in his disguises as he is able to observe the subtle quirks, ticks and patterns of a person to track them. However, he favors close quarters combat and considered among the most dangerous Russian agents with a knife.

## Tools & Equipment

***- Ancestral Kravinoff hunting blade:*** A large hunting knife that has been in the Kravinoff family for generations. Kraven stole it from his father when he left home. It is made out of a powerful metal

***- KGB Specialized Ballistic Knife:*** A tactical ballistic (spring-loaded) knife that was custom made for him in his later years for his missions. Notable for being made of depleted carbonadium and thus capable of handling several superhuman targets.

***- Modified KGB tranquilizer serum:*** A special tranquilizer serum that he uses mainly for his time in handling animals though sometimes using it for nonlethal missions if need be. He was given the formula as a gift by his brother, who modified it from the one for him. He tends to use it in blowdarts though has coated his ballistic knife with it a couple of times.

## History

### The Young Hunter

Born as Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff, he was the child of former Russian noble Nikolai Kravinoff and his wife Anna Makarova Kravinoff. The two were both children of the waning Russian arisocracy and thus were gravitated toward the other. However, the marriage would fall apart soon after Sergei's birth as Anna Kravinoff, who had prior been suffering from depression, would gain postpatrum depression and later postpartum psychosis that would result in her death after an unknown incident. Depressed and in grief, Nikolai sought comfort in a servant woman and months later, Sergei would have a half-brother born in Dmitri, though his mother dying in childbirth too. Unlike Dmitri, Sergei was treated well throughout his early years and often the positive comparison to that of Dmitri. Sergei, despite his own disdain for his half-brother, became the only person of the family to openly show affection and care for him. Sergei noted this from how he watched a pack of wolves interact, specifically how one wolf growled at a runt yet should any of the other wolves try at the runt, the other wolf growled louder. He may have been born a runt and of different mothers, but Dmitri was still his brother. With his father busy with his work, he had free reign of the house and would spend plenty of time in the wilderness and getting to know the wildlife. To him, the great outdoors was freedom and where he truly felt alive. During his time in school, he would cause mischief and chaos, usually with his brother by his side. If nothing else, he appeciated his brother's loyalty and his skill at imitating people.

However, as he grew to adolescence, he felt the restlessness of desiring to leave home and forge his path, but he didn't know where to go. After years of tenseness, he would leave the Kravinoff estate when he was now a full-grown man. Years of tension and anger between father and son exploded into an argument, in part also due to Nikolai's failures as a father with Dmitri and the disrespect that was shown to Anna. Sergei went into the Russian wilds, armed with only his heirlooms he reclaimed and his faithful brother. The two spent weeks over in the Russian wilderness where Sergei thrived in an environment of the wild while Dmitri pushed through out of sheer determination to not be a burden to his brother. During such time, they ended up discovering a KGB member who was a double agent to Leviathan. Sergei stalked and followed him, chasing him for his treachery and managed to apprehend and wound him after Dmitri managed to trick him into confessing onto an audio tape by disguising himself, with the two also catching the Leviathan correspondant. After turning the two in and hearing of their exploits, the agency was so impressed that they invited the two to join up up with the KGB.

Sergei joined because he saw a chance to hunt the most dangerous animal: man. Additionally, he saw it as a chance to learn his path and indeed, he would become one of the most feared assets of the Kremlin for his capabilities, especially when partnered up with his brother. During such times, he had many adventures, including meeting the Winter Guard themselves. In the early years, he was somewhat open about what he did to the most part and would end up charming Aleksandra Nikolaevna, the daughter of a prominent Soviet official, Mikhail Aleksei "Grand Duke" Nikolaevich. The two would end up married and spend a bit of time together, him giving her the affectionate nickname of Sasha. The two would even have a son together, Vladimir Kravinoff. He would be known as Kraven the Hunter for how he was the predator of anyone who was his target. He would become a legend for his various escapades, compounding with how secretative he was about his personal life beyond the relationship with his brother. Various rumors spread about where he goes whenever he is not on the hunt.

### Entering The Wild

Eventually, after years of service, he would see his time with the Kremlin coming to an end. Political strife had taken a bit of a toll on him. He could sense that the USSR was a doomed beast and tried to convince his family to come with him to leave the nation and find somewhere else to live. However, Sasha refused to and the bickering led to a rather fierce argument, established by Kravin's long years away from hime among other issues, resulting in Kravin and Sasha divorcing in 1984. She would elect to stay in the Soviet Union along with Vladimir in the Kravinoff estate. However, more surprising was Dmitri's willingness to stay and no longer following his older brother. Kraven for the most part felt some pride that his runt of a brother had finally grown strong. The two would part ways amicably though not without doing a few final missions together. Kravin would spend the next few years traveling the world and he would end up settling in a rather unexpected place: Africa.

He first arrived in the continent as part of a mission to assist the Deng in Ethiopia yars prior to him leaving the USSR. It was there he fell in love with the wilderness of the continent and found more fulfillment in with the beasts there. He traveled initially alone, but during his time on the African West Coast, he met and fell in love with Calypso Ezili, a Haitian-American criminal who escaped to Liberia. The two fell in love upon first sight and would travel together, eventually making their way to Kenya and would settle down there. While initially targeting the large beasts, his kinship would have him empathize with them and would switch to protect the wildlife of Africa, even killing many poachers who harmed the beasts. He grew content in his life there and for the most part, remained under the radar and keeping to himself and with Calypso. His only consistent contact was his brother though would on occasion sneak back into his estate to check up on Vladimir.

One day, he got a call from his brother, talking about some sort of Spider-Man. Hearing of his superhuman capabilities and how he was tearing the mob down made Sergei very interested. He returned to society and proceeded to head to New York City, eager to hunt what sounded like his greatest prey yet, the Spider-Man.

## Trivia

* Despite leaving, Kravin made sure his ex-wife and son were well taken care of. He noted that when Vladimir would come of age, he would show him his secret training/hunting ground that only he and Dmitri knew, located in the mysterious Savage Land.

* Much like his brother, he despised the infamous Red Room project of the USSR. He found it to be a very unnatural and disturbing site, being anathema to the wild and natural spirit he was. When Dmitri told him of the fall of the USSR, Kravin snuck in and together, the two wrecked and burned the Red Room to the ground. Kraven's only regret was not checking if he and his brother were thorough enough.

* The extent of his travels remain a secret, with the Soviet officials who tried to track him unable to find anything with Chameleon feigning ignorance. However, Chameleon was aware of some of the ventures his brother went through, including siring another child after his divorce, this time with a woman who said she was from Atlantis.

* Most of his medical knowledge outside of basic first aid was self-taught. While he was a rambunctious student in his youth, he maintained a sharp mind and his years out in the wild and caring for animals had him actively go and learn everything he could about their care. This has also made him very skilled in plants, venoms, poisons and so on.

* He initially did not prepare traps for his prey, preferring to stalk and chase them, leaving the traps for his brother to set up. This changed when he went to Kenya and had to switch his tactics. In fact, he used what he learned by observing his brother doing and recalling his explanations in order to set traps. While he has become a master of setting and preparing traps, he notes that his brother is likely still his superior.

* Sergei is a teetotaler, a trait he would pass onto his brother. He got this when he would see his father get drunk in his misery when he got older and how it would erode the body's capabilities over time. Despite this, he has experimented with hallucinogen and other drugs with "mystical" properties while with Calypso, if in trying to sharpen his mind and spirit.

* While he was a gameskeeper over in Kenya, he would occasionally work as an assassin or hitman to make money, with most of the funds being donated to charities for the well-being of the animals or to go to maintain his family. His brother Dmitri is one of the few people who know of this and thus keeps track of the payments, using it to stay in touch with his brother.

* His spirit animal is the lion, based on his behavior and his familarity with them. He is known to wrestle with lions and has a close bond with them. He even views his past and present lovers as his lionesses, showing a care for them, even if no longer together.

* His skill in handling animals has made him well-liked by the locals, even if they do fear him for his beavior to where he is considered to be a king of beasts. His skill in taming and handling animals are such to where some believe he may possess a form of supernatural power toward them, something he finds amusing.

* He possesses some minor knowledge of the occult thanks to this time being spent with Calypso, including honing his senses with the substances she has creating.