Artyom Sokolov

Artyom Sokolov is a character role-played by TenguHangover.

Introduction
Born of a Russian family in Vilnius, Lithuania - Not a speaker of Lithuanian, and only an average speaker of Russian. Most of his knowledge of America comes from American media, creating a warped perspective of how America actually is in his mind. No aspirations in life, and no true interests until one day stumbling upon a toy gun on a rural trip in the Lithuanian country side. His American action movie fascination and ineptness of real world knowledge of firearms led him to assume it was actually a real firearm. He tried to sell it illegally in hopes of making a decent bit of money where he luckily found a client. Unluckily the client knew it was fake and assumed it was a scam attempt and gave Artyom a severe beating. Despite the failure, there was a rush of adrenaline that he started to miss. He wanted more. Growing weary and bored of his locale and seeing the possibility of true riches in America, a land of guns and money, he decided to emigrate in the hopes of getting further into this "career". He spent a year with distant family in Liberty City to get somewhat accustomed to America and how things are, before moving out to Los Santos. With the high amount of crime, illegal weapons, and dirty money washing the area, it was an opportunity of riches to be made in his mind.

Starting Out
A shitty, petty criminal at first, only partaking in the lightest of crimes, and having some unfortunate meetings with local gangs he was eventually pushed away from his true goal. He's never been caught though, and with no criminal record sought interest in a local private military company, Merryweather Security, as a means to become more experienced with firearms and the multiple varieties of them. At the same time he sought connection with fellow Russians who shared a common interest of being alone and rejected by the city, to instead come together as a brotherhood. After spending some time he was torn between the two groups, wanting to help his new friends, but also wanting to stay employed with a clean record for Merryweather.

The Russian Mafia ended up being pretty spicy, showing Artyom that they might generate far too much heat for him. He got involved in several more shady and higher profile crimes through another sleepless night before finally deciding they were too much for him. He decided to go clean for the time being, and cut all ties with The Russians.

Merryweather Security
Artyom Sokolov was a Sergeant for the now defunct Merryweather Security. During his involvement he had befriended Johnathen Sheperd and Chris Johansen, both of whom had recruited him, and rose through the ranks rather quickly. On standby he usually engaged in work with the standing security contract for Premium Deluxe Motorsport, but security work with the group had landed him numerous contracts with Tim Lee for blackjack nights, Ron Otterman for Weasel News security, and a few high profile city events.

When Ron Otterman had become Interim mayor in 2019, Artyom was picked as his Secret Service security detail which ran for about a month.

During this detail there was a situation involving Kiki Chanel at PDM where Artyom had shot Kiki in self defense after several violent interactions throughout the day. The police felt the self defense was justified but not lethal self defense considering his taser availability and was given his Criminal Misuse of a Firearm charge without loss of license as a softer charge.

Sheperd and Johansen had originally believed him to be too quiet with a potentially sinister mind brewing but this was ignored as time went on. The damage to the area around his eyes has never been explained, with most people just assuming he was a crack addict when out of uniform. His background has only hinted at military service here and there, and his backstory is potentially fake. He had supposedly associated with Pavel Voronin in the past but this was found out to also be a lie.

With Merryweather now defunct/inactive, Artyom is again looking for the next door in life.