REF: SNEZ-088 // Part 3
Behavior & Narrative Utility
The Field Manual
Behavior is where character becomes tangible. Dmitri's ISTJ function stack, his Enneagram 6w5 vigilance, his dismissive-avoidant attachment, his PTSD — none of it matters if it doesn't manifest in the way he checks a room's exits, the way he chops firewood at three in the morning, the way his jaw tightens when someone says something kind.
Daily Routines
Dmitri wakes before dawn. Always. This is not a choice — it is a physiological fact, hardwired by twelve years of military reveille and reinforced by a nervous system that interprets deep sleep as a vulnerability. He does not use an alarm. His body simply knows when the light changes.
The morning routine is invariable. Physical training for one hour — weighted carries, bodyweight exercises, sword forms with Petrov's claymore. Weapon maintenance follows, conducted with ritual precision. Then the perimeter check, whether he is in a campsite, an inn, or a client's compound.
Breakfast is functional. Food is fuel. He eats light and late — half a rice ball at dawn is what he considers sufficient. The one exception is tea — not the elaborate ceremony of Liyue culture, but a simple preparation of herbs steeped for exactly four minutes. He drinks it slowly, and this is what passes for comfort.
Positioning: Walks Ahead
When traveling with others, Dmitri walks ahead. Always. Not beside, not behind — ahead, by exactly three to five paces. This is not rudeness; it is tactical positioning. The point man absorbs the first contact. He places himself between the unknown and whoever follows. If asked to walk beside someone, he will comply for approximately ninety seconds before drifting forward again. The habit is involuntary.
The Evening Watch
Camp setup is the closest thing Dmitri has to creative expression. He selects positions with scientific precision — back to a cliff or dense vegetation, clear sightlines on approaches, proximity to water. He uses his Dendro Vision to enhance natural defenses: thorn barriers grown across vulnerable approaches, seed-pod trip lines, vine-woven shelters.
The evening watch is Dmitri's natural element. While others sleep, he sits at the fire's edge with the claymore across his knees, conducting rolling perimeter assessments. He is, in these hours, most completely himself — vigilance is not performance but purpose.
The Battle That Never Ends
Sleep is Dmitri's adversary. He sleeps in his clothes, with his boots on or within arm's reach. The claymore lies beside the bedroll, positioned for a draw that his muscle memory can execute before his conscious mind engages.
On good nights, he achieves four to five hours of fragmented sleep. On bad nights — nights with flashbacks, nights with the smell of smoke on the wind — he does not sleep at all. The nightmares, when they come, are full sensory reconstructions. He wakes rigid: every muscle locked, breathing stopped, hands clenched so tightly that his nails leave marks.
Physical Tells
The body does not lie. It can be disciplined, controlled, trained into submission — and Dmitri's body has been all of these things — but beneath the military posture, his flesh tells stories that his mouth will not.
| State | Physical Sign |
|---|---|
| Lying | Speech becomes too perfect, too fluent |
| High emotion | Jaw clenches, muscle tic below left ear |
| Happiness | Shoulders drop ~2cm, almost-smile |
| Anger | Voice goes quiet, absolute stillness |
| Sadness | Eye distance, postural erosion, withdraws |
"You will never see Dmitri Volkov cry. Not because he does not weep, but because he has learned to time his grief to moonless nights and empty rooms."
Habits and Quirks
Nervous Habits
The Weapon Check
Under stress, his dominant hand drifts to the claymore hilt — not to draw, but to confirm. He does this dozens of times daily.
Jaw Clenching
When suppressing emotion, his jaw sets with visible force. This has caused dental damage over the years.
Exit Counting
In any enclosed space, Dmitri catalogs exits upon entry and recounts them under stress.
Comfort Behaviors
Weapon Maintenance
When anxious, grieving, or unable to sleep, he cleans the claymore. He has cleaned it three times in a single night during bad episodes.
Dendro Communion
Time spent in contact with growing things — hands on bark, feet on earth — produces a measurable calming effect. He calls it "scouting." It is therapy.
Chopping Wood
When emotions exceed what stillness can manage, he seeks wood to chop. Innkeepers who host him find their wood stores inexplicably full come morning.
Private Habits (Unwitnessed)
In absolute solitude, Dmitri talks to his dead mentor. Not in the conversational way of someone with an imaginary friend, but in the terse, reporting style of a soldier debriefing his commanding officer. "Took a contract in the Chasm border region. Caravan escort. Twelve civilians, six wagons. Route was clean. No casualties."
He is mortified by this habit. If anyone witnessed it, he would deny it with a ferocity that would itself constitute a confession.
Wherever he stays for more than a few days, he grows things. Not deliberately — or not admittedly deliberately. A window box develops herb seedlings. A campsite shows new growth for weeks after his departure. He has left a trail of tiny gardens across Teyvat.
Talks to Plants
In absolute solitude, Dmitri talks to his plants. Not in the conversational way of someone with a hobby, but in the same terse, reporting style he uses for everything: "You need more water. The soil is too compact. I will fix it." He would be mortified if anyone witnessed this. The plants, for their part, respond to his Dendro resonance with visible enthusiasm.
Stress Responses
Dmitri's baseline stress level would be considered clinical anxiety in a civilian. For him, it is Tuesday. The key indicator that stress has moved from baseline to elevated is tempo change — movements develop a fractional increase in speed, conversations become shorter, the accent thickens marginally.
High Stress
The most notable behavioral change is the absence of visible distress. Dmitri becomes calmer, stiller, more precisely controlled — the eye of his own storm. His voice flattens to operational monotone. His movements become economical to the point of mechanical perfection. This is dissociative distancing: the experiencing self separates from the acting self.
Post-Stress Recovery
When the stress event resolves, Dmitri does not relax — he collapses internally while maintaining external composure. A fine tremor appears in his hands. Appetite loss persists for hours. Verbal shutdown reduces speech to near-silence. The silence can persist for hours; he is processing.
PTSD Episode Anatomy
Triggers / Escalation / Recovery
Triggers
Smell of smoke (especially burning wood or fabric), metal-on-metal sounds, flat winter light, children crying, sudden physical contact from behind. Each trigger can activate a different trauma layer.
Escalation
The experiencing self separates from the acting self. Body continues to function — he can fight, walk, speak — but the person behind the eyes has temporarily vacated. His breathing pattern shifts to a combat cadence: four counts in, seven counts hold, eight counts out. His posture curls inward, shoulders hunching, head dropping — a protective fetal instinct that horrifies him when he becomes aware of it.
Recovery
A fine tremor appears in his hands. Appetite loss persists for hours. Verbal shutdown reduces speech to near-silence. He seeks physical grounding: hands on bark, feet on earth, the weight of the claymore across his knees. Recovery can take minutes or days depending on the layer activated.
Dialogue Samples
Under Stress — During Combat
Internal Monologue — Liyue Market
The market smells like cardamom and woodsmoke. Everything in Liyue smells like something — spices, incense, the harbor salt. Snezhnaya smelled like iron and pine and cold so sharp it had no smell at all, just the absence of warmth in your lungs.
The child is staring at me again. Third stall on the left, hiding behind her mother's skirt. Small. Maybe six. She has been watching me for eleven minutes. I have been pretending not to notice because noticing would frighten her and frightening children is — no. I do not frighten children. That is a line.
Writing Guide
Dmitri experiences the full range of human emotions. He simply lacks the vocabulary and behavioral templates to express most of them in ways others can interpret. The result is a man who is often misread as emotionless when he is, in fact, experiencing emotional states of considerable intensity.
When Grateful
Dmitri does not say "thank you" easily. Instead, he reciprocates through action: equipment maintained, watches covered, positions defended with marginally more attentiveness. The reciprocity is never announced. It simply appears.
When Protective
His most fluent emotional state. He becomes expansive — awareness broadens to encompass everyone under his care. His voice becomes clear and authoritative. He is physically gentle with the protected while becoming more violent toward threats.
When Ashamed
Every behavioral system locks into its most controlled setting. Parade-ground rigid posture. Monosyllabic speech. Eye contact ceases entirely. Self-care deteriorates — he extends watches, trains past benefit, punishes himself through exertion.
"The most powerful scenes are not the ones where he expresses emotion freely. They are the ones where emotion is visible despite his best efforts to contain it."