Born in 1976, the boy grew up on a small farm in Staraya Rudnya close to the Belorussian border. For most of his time, he worked on the family farm. There wasn't much else to do. See, his family didn't have much money. They couldn't send him to school, and living anywhere else was expensive so even after the boy turned into a man he kept living at the farm as most of his family had before him, as is common in these areas.

Knowing this, one wouldn't be surprised to hear the boy had found his life to be rather boring and pointless, but certainly not to the point of depression. He had little to compare his life to, first of all. For all he knew, life just didn't have much more to offer. He didn't mind much, and living in the middle of nowhere that he did, few people outside his family and fellow villagers minded him much, and even the ones who did mind tended to meddle very little. Through obscurity and isolation, he was free to do as he pleased as long as he fulfilled his duties on the farm.

Most of his free time he spent either wandering aimlessly through the nearby forests, thinking about not much at all in his early years. Then as he grew, his mind started to wander with him. He thoughts never really formed anything solid, but touched on various of the few subjects he would have been exposed to in his isolated environment. The broken down Niva left behind a field on the other edge of the forest, which, as he passed it on his walks more often, he figured he could get running again, if only his father would let him use his tools for once. The girls who lived similar lives in the village, one of whom he'd had an eye on. Sasha was her name. The harvest season, which he certainly wasn't looking forward to for the days would be long and his sleep wouldn't be.

His second most memorable day was when after finally nagging his father for his tools and getting the Niva running again, he took Sasha for the ride that made her his. They didn't get far as the car broke down again, but it didn't matter to him then as the two spent their night under the stars. Its the second most memorable only because of what happened a few years later.

By that time they boy, now a man, had asked her father for her hand in marriage in reply to which the father had laughed loudly and slapped him hard on the back. "She's all yours if you think you can handle her. I haven't been able to for years." As fate would have it, however, they never got to exchange their vows. A few days before they were supposed to, she disappeared to all but the young man himself. While everyone else was asleep, he wasn't. Nerves, almost a week in advance, had kept him awake and so again he wandered, ending up close to her house. He still wonders whether or not that was a coincidence.

As he neared the small building, he heard multiple engines start and the sounds of a struggle and the beginnings of a scream fading as the doors slammed shut. He hasn't known many people in his isolated life, but he knew he would've recognized that voice amongst a million, if he'd ever had learned how to count that far.

The rumors of the local mafia has reached even Staraya Rudnya and the thought sent a chill down his spine. They were supposed to have tight connections to some of the traders in the Zone that has sprung up relatively nearby a few years ago after the CNPP accident. Stories of fantastic items that seemed like magic had been repeated often enough that he started believing them although rumors of the dangers involved have always kept him from being more than vaguely interested. The story about the mafia specifically goes that they kidnap young girls and women and sell them to the highest bidder for the money to buy these strange artefacts, only to sell them for a profit across the border.

The young man had no hopes of ever fighting organized crime on this scale, and so he set out to do the only thing he could think of. The Niva he has repeatedly repaired and still used between breakdowns became his ticket to the Zone. If he can't beat them, he could at least try to buy her back and for that, he neither either money or artefacts, both of which he expected to find the closer he would get to the center of the Zone.

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No STALKER has ever seen him twice in one place or with the same gear, and not many have seem him twice to begin with, yet there's rumors about him. All who saw him say his eyes look straight through them into the distance behind them, like he never really focuses on those he speaks to. Some report that, under his breath, he would occasionally mutter to himself. "Too late. I was too late." Much speculation but no real evidence goes around as to what could have happened to the poor man to put him into that state. Nobody who met him ever dared to ask.

The STALKERs have unanimously taken to calling him Seeker. It is said that, for the right price, he will find without fail anything you're looking for, and he always seems to be looking for something. Very few people, however, claim to have dared ask him for his services if they did meet him and most of those claims turned out to be false, when pressed further. Those few true claims, however, resonate with others who have met the man. All who did, never felt at ease when around the man. Nobody would have seen him as a threat, but beyond that thousand yard stare all they could see was the madness of the Zone.