Character Application
Name: "Hello, and thank you for inviting me for an interview. I am an avid reader of your newspaper, if you will believe me. My name is Jaroslav Wlawek. Comrade Jaroslav, although others of the Faith have taken to calling themselves 'brother' now that the Communists have corrupted our title. But I stick to it. Their time has come, and ours will come again"
Age: "I am 39, although my physical age belies my spiritual age, as some have said. I have lived enough life for a man twice my age, but that is something most men and women in our country share, nowadays. By the end we will have aged a combined millenium. But I am already going off-topic"
Personality description: "Soft-spoken. That's usually the first thing people say, and it is hard to get across in writing. People who read my poetry are sometimes surprised by how mellow my intonation is, as the subjects of my work can be so very violent. Since the War I have not raised my voice in anger. People ask me if that makes it hard to run a ministry, or to debate my fellow ministers. I have not found it so; I raise my hand, and people eager to hear what I have to say fall silent. This is in line with my pacifism; as you well know, I am appaled my any kind of violence done to other human beings, which politically is probably my defining characteristic. Forgiving, but that comes with the Cloth, as Forgiveness was the First Act of God, as it shall be the Last, both with every member of his flock as it is the way of the world. I would like to mirror Them in that regard, if They will allow me that naïvite."
Appearance:
Faction: "I am not wholly unsupportive of the monarchist cause; there are some Articles that definitely support that position, but we must also be practical, and see when the world is changing. I have read enough to know that republics are stable and safe, after their initial establishment, and that they generally further the progress of humanity and the safety of their Keep. Thus, I am a Republican, as Fate has made me make my decision, and this decision is what I think Them has envisioned for me. In the end, we will all know who was right. In the very end."
Position in leadership: "People get this wrong sometimes, so I will state it for certain for the record. I am the Minister for Internal Affairs, meaning I am technically in charge of our police, gendarmerie and the non-military intelligence agencies, of which less and less remains. I was Minister for the Affairs of Faith, but our president reshuffled his cabinet somewhat after some members resigned. My predecessor was less lucky, succumbing to a car bombing by radical... well, we are still unsure, but he had made enemies on both the side of the communists and the fascists. People confuse those two, and mostly refer to me as 'prime minister', which is a misnomer: the position of prime minister is not an official one, but designates the chair of the Council of Ministers, a position that technically rotates. But I have been doing it for a while now. I hope this clears up a thing or two"
If Military or Militia leader, how many troops under command?: "My Lord, I would not know what to do when commanding legions. How would I sign orders that condemned people, friends and foes, to their deaths? And not one, but dozens, every single day? No, I do not command legions. Even the gendarmerie falls under the President. My direct charge consists of police forces, of which fewer and fewer remain, and the aforementioned intelligence forces, of which there are probably still up to a thousand agents about. Although we estimate that about 1/4 of those have been compromised, and separating the good from the bad is one of our primary tasks"
Political Ideology: "I'm a Dvoeverish Democrat; I am led by the Articles of Faith in my politics, but separately from the divine right of monarchs. I believe in Republican government, and also that the State has some role in caring for the sick and the poor. But to try and replace the Church entirely in this matter, as the Social Democrats seem willing to undertake, goes too far, and would alienate people from their central community in life and the lessons it teaches. The Church is more than just alms; there are the Articles to consider"
Goals: "A nation under God; a kingdom of heaven and truth, where people are free from want and have security, where they can marry, have children, go to Church, without fearing for their lives, both from others and from the government. A nation of concience and truly-held, moral belief"
Biography: "The screaming guns have read,
Their sermon, far at first,
But whistling as they pass,
Their terror cut a painful swath,
And ending with a truthful boom,
Heard by all except the souls encased therein
"I destinctly remember this poem most of all; the original is now encased in glass in my office, right over there. Less morbid than you might imagine; people hear about a field hospital and imagine the red smirches are blood. But they aren't; they tend to forget that I had to write on the only paper available to me, in the notebook I had dragged through deep pools of mud and stagnant water of the trenches. I was only sixteen; I had lied to the recruiting officer, and even though he did not believe me, the country was in no position to deny putting a rifle in the hands of a boy willing to ram a bayonet through the Freidians. Apoligies for the strong wording, but I am a language person, and I will never forget the coarse, rough words of our drill sergeant. I hated him at the time, but he probably saved my life seven times since then; four times just by teaching me how to get off 30 aimed shots per minute with a bolt-action. I will not dwell on the War; enough people have died recently to put those memories in bad taste, and I am not trying to convince you that I am some kind of war hero. Far from it. Just know that, at sixteen, I was a brat desperately trying to get away from home, wanting to see more than the few acres of corn by parents owned. A brat with an eye for words, dragging a notebook and a pencil with him through the Freidian mud.
"I had been what I called 'the Front' for seven months, six days and eleven-ish hours. What I called the Front changed over time; the reserve camps, the supply depots, the rear line of trenches... By the end, I don't know if I ever truly saw the Front. But after seven months, six days and eleven hours, I went over the top for the first, and last time. You don't hear the shell that hits you, or at least, not the bang. You hear the whistle, and when you hear the distinctive pitch, never heard before in your life although you have lived through hundreds of shellings, you know it is headed for you. It's a sound you can't describe; all you can do is accept that something is coming for you, and make your peace with the Lord. I don't know if I did, but I woke up four hours later, less my right leg and my right eye. I wish I could say I picked up my pencil at once and started writing, but it took me a month of fever, agony, screaming and crying before I could actually get something productive done, and by then only because the dull boredom of constant pain was getting to me. I wanted to write one good poem; but I wrote my whole first book there. For instance:
"Vladi Vestmir, Butcher's Son,
slayed calves and lamb and chicks, and then,
himself was cut and bleeding out to die,
a roulade entwined by barbed wire"
"I don't know if the man in question was actually a butcher's son, or whether he was named Vladi. But I could think of nothing else, as I saw the bayonet cashes in his torso, and the nurses cutting the wire from his legs piece by piece. We had conversation, although it was mostly me talking, since one of his lungs had been punctured. He listened to my poetry, I thinked he liked it. When he got a bit better we shared some jokes and drinks, and he taught me to play the harmonica. He died the day after that; I never asked him his name. But apologies, I am talking about the War again, although it ended for me when I lost my leg. I lay in limbo for three months, until the rest of my life began; I was approached by Comrade Pulawitsj, a Field Cleric tending to the Dying, reading the Final Articles only known to the Priests. He had read them to me in the first month, and I had memorised them. He conversed, he read some of my poetry, which he seemed to enjoy, even though he could not understand most of it. A lot of people tell me that: they didn't understand, until the national trauma of that war settled in, and then they started to get it. Comrade Pulawitsj, himself having been infected by polio at a young age, could not use his left arm properly. Everyone in the Church had something, it was almost a requirement. You had to know human weakness to truly understand the divine. The Cripled Church, the communists mockingly call us, just as the heathen rulers of old. I understood, and I took him up on his offer. There was no future for me on the farm anyway.
"My apprenticeship was under Comrade Pulawitsj in the coastal town of Prevla. Prevla was unlike anything I had seen before; it wasn't big, but it was extremely lively. A lot of fishermen lived there, as well as sailors and navy veterans. Leading that congregation after the War was a true miracle, and I think I saw the work of the Lord in Comrade Pulawitsj. A community of communists, monarchists, republicans, cripples and wounded, widows and orphans. But the small town of Prevla supported itself; every Sunday, during the Songs, enough money and food would be collected for everyone. Prevla was far from paradise, but having seen the rows upon rows of crippled veterans waiting in bread lines in larger cities, I was happy to be there. After Comrade Pulawitsj' passing, I had gained enough of their trust to lead them in the Songs every Sunday, and to my amazement, the Lord worked his miracles through me, too. Comrade Pulawitsj died just a year into that horrific economic malaise following the death of president Zukal, after all.
"I entered into politics about four years after the death of Zukal. Just local politics, at that time. Prevla had been relatively spared, but the government coffers had dried up and the city was feeling the burden of having to care for the poor more and more. They began to rely on the Church more and more, and as I represented the Church to many people in Prevla, I thus had to enter into the city politics to ensure our money was well-spent. I was elected mayor two years afterwards. It was good that I had no official connections to any national party, because that allowed Prevla to get through the communist period relatively unscathed. But when the communists lost the election and the RVP came to power again, I could hardly stand by and do nothing. I could also not allow communist parties after Jerabek had outlawed them, especially as those groups took to the streets. Prevla was a fishing community, with a lot of leftist sympathies, and it took all the effort in the world to get them to lay down their arms. In the end, I managed, but only with the help of business moguls to buy out the community-owned fisheries; it was the crackdown of the bosses, in the end, that silenced dissent.
"But it was a model for the rest of the country. After the death of Simek and the resignation of the old Minister for the Affairs of Faith, who could not console his religious feelings with the execution, Jerabek offered me the function. He just needed someone on board who seemed neutral, but who also had a trustworthy past. As a mayor, a political outsider in the capital, I was the perfect candidate, and after some consideration, I accepted. Well, the rest is history, as they say. Car bombing, minister Ulya Ulyanovich dies, and I took over his place. Of course, the so-called 'Second Revolution' had already kicked off, and the Lichtors were already out in the open. From there, all I could do was watch the slide... But with foreign support, and the support of the air force, I believe we can restore peaceful order to our Republic"
Do not remove - 2088
