Nikolas

When Nikolas came to the Mys, he was immediately approached by something very, very familiar: an attempted pickpocketing.

Anatoly has little time for what's considered "right" and "wrong" and is more concerned with what he personally wants. What he wanted at that time was the gold jingling in Nikolas's purse. Yeah, he was a tourist and clueless about the Icefield and all alone, but... Anatoly wanted a piece of jewelry that was for sale at the local auction house. So he was gonna take the treasure.

Andrei managed to interrupt this process by warding Anatoly off from Nikolas's person and warning him not to trust him. And maybe check his bags. And - were those mushrooms?

They quickly bonded over their love of fungal creatures (and over a quick and angry shakedown of Anatoly after Andrei sicced his sister Lyudmila onto him) and became fast friends. Nikolas revealed his reason for being here: a research expedition to find strains of decompositional fungi and bacteria that are capable of surviving subzero temperatures. Andrei was fascinated by this. Wendelin was, frankly, horrified.