Dmitry Krepchenko

Nickname:
Rank: Hetman of the Zeporozhian Cossack Host

Heiromartyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki

Male

61

Ruthenian

Hetman of the
Zaporozhian Cossack Host

A tall, portly, and svelte barrel chested man, with the round face and high cheekbones to match, Dmitri Krepchenko was at the same time as fearful as he was welcoming, as cheerful to his friends and peaceful strangers as he was prone to anger at injustice or dishonor.

His steely blue eyes poked out from his pale, rosy face with a vibrant humor - both joyous and wolf like, with thick crows feet tracing the path of the years in his cheeks, still pockmarked lightly from youthful scars and delicately latticed with the frost of tiny blood vessels etched in not least through years of exposure to the elements, but also not most of which being homemade vodka and beer, in addition to the harshly inland winters along the dnieper and the strong northern sun of the long summer days in the fields of golden grain.

His hair glistened slightly from the virility generated by sweat and oil, a dense reddish brown 'chupryna' forelock pulled back into a tied pony tail across his otherwise shaven skull, accompanied by a similarly long and flowing handlebar moustache, in the typical manner of the cossack.

Beyond his superior drapery, modest despite its intricate weaving, his girth and stature indicated his high rank, the successful confidence of his many trials radiating from his person, his ability to maintain some measure of heft despite the hard life showing his favor among those many kind muzhichky who showed him their hospitality, and further still, also belied his fond enjoyment of the many nights by the fire in the wooden Sich eating Kolbasa, Smoked fish and cheese, sharing tales of adventure and lively debate of all things masculine over a warm mug of grog; whether the subject philosophy, ukrainian politics, heroic tales of past cossacks, or lewd and boisterous humor, held always with a tongue firmly in cheek to both dissipate the strong desires of the men and yet protect the virtue of the prized and cherished divichy by self deprecation.

At one time, many battles ago, Dimitri's angry temperament and nearly insurmountable desire for all manner of conquest earned him him the adapted surname of Krepchenko, or, 'the mighty', as well as several other less noble titles long forgotten even to his cohort and not dared to be repeated here, if not for their lack of currency to our tale, then at the very least for the possibility that your humble narrator might be narrating in mixed company..

Nonetheless, as the pain of his difficult youth faded away into the more painful bloodshed of many fallen brothers in many long ago battles, the distance of time aided further by his elevation in the ranks of the Zoprozhian Host and of husbandry, this perhaps ill-reputable temper was now tempered into something of a functional character, much like the blade of his Shashka, focused into a strong and crisp blade, sheathed quietly and nearly invisibly beneath his long 'burka' outercoat, yet always nearby and ready, should the honor of the Host and of the Cossack Code need be defended against knowing aggressors.

The detail of Knowledge, so important in the above, was a key part of the honing of his angry blade as he grew into manhood; as he came to train the younger members of the Host, and of his own sons, the cultivation of his gentle, boyish and loving patronal side which was previously hidden under the sort of brittle metal armour so
foreign to Cossack dress became increasingly important to him, most especially as he grew in his true Obedience to his fair bride, Evgenia Ivanova Kovalesky.

But now, even some of these younger memories sadly faded, as his daughters married into leaders of the Host, or to lesser Nobles, his sons sons departed this realm, lost in battle or to illness, and his fair love Evgenia fell away in the cold and near starvation of one particularly harsh winter..

Although he was immeasurably sad for these irreparable losses which he mourned with every available thought, he knew that carrying more loss and sadness was part of the price he paid for his longevity, and for the good of the Host, the losses strengthened him in giving him patience, balance, and foresight to shrewdly and cautiously lead the host in the extremely delicate and dangerous reality that was survival in war-torn lands of the Ukraine.

Though once the best swordfighter and fighter in the whole of the Zaprozhian Host, and quite possibly Sloboda Ukraine as well, these days his still formidable strength and agility was best kept in reserve, and applied more philosophically in the development of training and skills education of his troops.

Other time spent now, when not mourning the loss of his family and kinsmen, was better spent in deliberate council with his trusted elders, and reviewing tactics and techniques, both hard and soft, so that his ability to lead in battle and in trading and political negotiations with friend and foe alike were always beneficial and just, for both the Host and the Right-Believing Rus nation.

On a less formal level, he was an excellent story teller and listener, always happy to lend an ear or play a game of draughts or gorodki with his Cossack family if time permitted, so as to provide assistance, direct or indirect to his tribe, and perhaps even venture to earn some measure of forgiveness for the many sins and shortgivings incurred in a long and violent life as a soldier in the Host.

Although at one time an excellent Balalaika player, he now gave this up, preferring instead to listen to his younger kinsmen, especially since after the loss of his dear Evgenia, the playing of the old familiar favorites, once performed together for all during the many cold but celebratory festal campfire nights now made him prone to bouts of intolerable loneliness and drunken despair for her loss, which at the very least would be a shameful set of habits for a man of his important rank to cultivate, let alone to even further dishonor her beloved and cherished memory in such a unfitting and ungreatful way.

As a Hetman of the Zaprozhian host, Dmitry requires little in the way of gear - but the few items he did posess were treasured as priceless. Of all, the most important of course was his cross necklace, a smoothly warn hand forged affair of simple metal given to him to replace his infant baptismal cross by his Godparents upon becoming a full soldier in the Host.

After this, in keeping with values, which placed god first, family second, and tribe next, was the small locket he kept in his pocket, with a tiny oil portrait and two locks of his dear bride, the first taken on their wedding day, and the last taken mournfully from her at her burial.

Lastly, were the three emblems of his role in the Host - First among these was his Nagaika, the whip given to him in childhood to aid in his equestrian training, the seed of its firmly implated muscle memories later bearing fruit as a young man as he began training with his second possession, the shashka sword. Both of these invaluable items were handed down from his grandfather, in typical cossack style, with his father's nagaika and shashka being given to his son Illya In this way the active and living adult males would be duly armed according to the custom of the Host, with neither being able to break the tradition solely of their own accord. Such was the sense of honor and fidelity entrenched in the blood of the cossacks from an early age.

Lastly of his prized cossack possessions, aside from his horse, zakluchek, meaning the wind gust, was his Kokarda, the metal emblem worn on his fur hat, symbolizing his leadership of the Host, a ukranian trident formed into with a 3 bar cross at the top, its base seated firmly atop an inverted crescent moon, held aright by a lion on the one side, and a cossack on the other.

Certainly there were other items of importance kept for him, including many gifts, honors and trophies from his many years of service to the Host, all kept in his wooden house inside the fortress of the Zaprozhians, but, even counting those listed here, as being a man of strong faith, these earthly items carried their importance not as simply material possessions, but as symbols for the virtues of duty and fidelity to his people and nation that they represented, the right to carry each earned through the grace of God bestowed upon him despite his fallen unworthyness as a result of his years
of struggling for righteousness and the Cossack Way.

Dimitry was originally born to a lesser-ranking recently ennobled landed cossack family in the Right Bank Ukraine, scholastically trained in the best schools of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, owing to their noble rank, he was also trained in the old cossack ways of his family by his Grandparents, who kept the old ways in the Host and were still near and dear to his parents. His parents, devout and pious orthodox, structuring their whole life as service and prayer to god, ensured he would be birthed with St Dimitry as protector, both as a reference to that great martyr of old, and
also as a prayer to end the terrible reign of the False Dmitris over the Rus people in the dark Time of Troubles when he was born.

As the tensions grew between the commonwealth and moscovy grew, and his parents and elders saw the incursion of the Uniates and polish suppression of the ukranian way which they had tolerated in order to increase their lot as increasingly intolerable, Dimitry, with his parents blessing, joined the Cossack Host, initially fighting as a cossack mercenary for the poles in foreign lands, gaining wealth, rank and prestige within the ranks until the time was right for the full rebellion of the Cossack Ukranian/Ruthenian people against the polish incursion began. It was at this time that Dimitry truly came into his own, rising first as a lesser a junior Uryadnik, with several men under his wing, and later into an Ataman, the highest military rank in the Host.

It was at this time at a remove from the daily fray of the cossack warrior life that he wed his beloved bride, known to him to be god-ordained as his partner immediately from youth on, and tended to the raising of their children. This period was his fondest, with his vitality strong, devoid of it's foolish childishness, his previous military skills in battle developed in their application to leadership and strategy, when he was able to devote himself completely and absolutely to patiently and carefully tending to the intense yet gentle fire of love for his beloved and their children.

Yet as all things must, the time came quickly and suddenly to a close, his sons ready to join the host, they were away at battle with the Ottomans in the south when his bride became too sick in the fierce cold and perished while he was gaining the victories in battle and negotiations which earned him his Cockarda as Hetman of the Host. Though the loss was almost too much to bear at the time, and still haunted sharply him to this day, Dmitri viewed it as a terrible but necessary trial and divine provenance, for as those present when she departed told him, she was peaceful and serene, seeming to know him to be safe through some divine source, the vision of this yet still terrible passing of his beloved giving him strength to endure through the fiercest and toughest times as Hetman, the burden of which he all too well knew would have caused her great and nearly unbearable strain. When he was alone at night, remembering the many times they stood together silent and together and in prayer, he was quite sure he could feel her presence, gently leaning into his bosom to hug him dearly, or leaning over to give him the sweetest and most unexpected angelic kiss on the right cheek, and was assured
and comforted that if he performed his duties righteously and faithfully as Hetman, his journey to her through the trials would be swift, and he would be united as one with her again for all eternity.

It is at this point that we find our Dmitri, Hetman of the Cossack Host, carefully balancing his duties as negotiator, leader, and warrior through a most delicate time, since there was great struggle among the varying Cossack bands for the vision and direction of their land, with many opportunists and competing factions threatening to destroy them from within in a far more terrible and vicious way than could ever be imagined by any external threat.

As a virtuous and balanced man, Dmitri's view of faith, person, and tribe can only be described as that of the ordinary kind, in the wonderfully extraordinary meaning of that Word, however, in other more subtle and murky matters with good opinions less clearly proscribed, he had his own clear and definite views.

A cossack of cossacks, yet of semi noble and nominally left-bank birth, he both had a stormy and fierce propensity towards battling for the valor of the True Ideal, yet also a strong and particular desire and taste for balanced nuance and right compromise. It is here that we find our beloved Krepchenko, having been forced to align himself with the more bloodthirsty cossack hosts against his better intention in order to preserve the Hetmanate and the local Cossack unity, but now, with the moon of that time full and the tides changing ever so slightly, seeking to alter course and forge a greater alliance for the great nation and subdue that base and lesser propensity which had been so recently dominant in the post-war
peace.

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