Yuri (character)

Yuri was a powerful psychic that was once Premier Romanov's chief advisor and later turned against the world in a bid to take it over with his army of genetically altered humans and beasts. Most likely, he, not Romanov, was the true ruler of the USSR in the 1970s.

His appearance bears an uncanny resemblance to Vladimir Lenin, with a bald head and goatee. On his forehead are tattooed three Hebrew letters "resh", "vav", and "yod", and an odd machine is surgically implanted into his skull, possibly some sort of psionic amplifier.

History
Much of Yuri's history remains unknown. It is known that he has roots in Transylvania, Romania, where he has a family castle.

Great World War II
According to Soviet records, Yuri was one of a group of telepaths gathered by Joseph Stalin. During this time, Yuri developed his telepathic powers. However, the USSR eventually lost the Second World War, and Yuri and his fellow telepaths were never deployed in battle.

Following the war, Yuri joined Premier Romanov, who he helped rearm the USSR, developing psychic technology and forming the backbone of the Psychic Corps.

Great World War III
Yuri played a key part in both the preparation and execution of the Soviet invasion of the USA, using his mind-control technology to prevent nuclear retaliation, and later to turn the American population into mindless slaves via giant Psychic Beacons.

During the war, little was seen of Yuri from the Allied side, although the Allied commanders knew that he was a key advisor to Romanov, and few ventured to guess that his influence on Romanov was more than just that of an advisor. As Moscow fell, he disappeared for a time.

Although Yuri himself did not join combat during the Great World War III in any of the campaigns, there existed a number of units bearing his name. These 'Yuris' were in all respects equivalent to psi-corps troopers. One theory of the nomenclature here was that Yuri wished to spread disinformation as to his true whereabouts in preparation for his worldwide psychic attack.

Psychic Dominator Disaster


During the Psychic Dominator Disaster, Yuri had stolen Soviet cloning technology; using it to create a number of clones. However, to protect himself from any clone plotting against him, Yuri engineered his clones to have inferior psychic abilities. Yuri himself was seen on the battlefield once or twice; he stood upon a hovering platform which rendered him immune to being trampled, and allowed him to cross over water. His powers were so well developed that he could mind control entire enemy structures, through the personnel within.

After the Allies had finally defeated Romanov's forces through a surprise Chronosphere invasion of Moscow, Yuri resurfaced. However, he had abandoned his former employers, and revealed that during the war, he had raised an army of his own and a planned to take over the world with mind-controlling Psychic Dominators in every country. Yuri personally contacted President Dugan to gloat over this plan. Dugan originally tried to dissuade Yuri with an amnesty offer and leadership of Russia, however, Yuri preferred the entire world to one country. At that point, Dugan ordered an air strike, failing to destroy the Dominator in San Francisco, but damaging a nuclear power plant generating energy for it, allowing some Allied and Soviet command centers to avoid falling under Yuri's control. However, an overwhelming majority of humanity succumbed to Yuri's dominance permanently. The Allies and Soviets took up arms against Yuri, using the Allied-built time machine to travel back in time and stop Yuri from carrying out his plan.

Downfall
After his final defeat in Antarctica, in the Allied account Yuri was captured and put into a Psychic Isolation Chamber, which was used to strip him of his mind control abilities. As General Carville put it best: "He won't be able to mind control a fly.". He possibly stayed in his chamber for the rest of his life, under guard of Allied soldiers. The Soviet account says that he stole the time machine and attempted to remove his enemies from existence, but was foiled when the Soviets sabotaged the time machine, causing it to overload and use all of it's power which, in turn, sent Yuri into the Cretaceous period just to be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

After GWWIII, a Soviet Time Travel experiment to restore the Union to its past glory was instrumental in (thankfully) removing Yuri forever and was not seen again in WWIII ever since. Unfortunately, that only helped replace one psionics-induced nightmare with another in WWIII, one of Imperial Japanese origin:

"Yuriko Omega".

Military Strenght
Yuri was the leader of a very versatile and efficent army. His main battle tank was the Lasher Light Tank. Even though it wasn't as strong as heavier tanks such as the Rhino, it was very fast and could easily outrange the grizzly tank. When stationed in a Tank Bunker, it was heavily defended and this made it a very efficent defense. His Gattling Tanks could easily kill infantry and, once their guns were fully charged, they would do heavy damage even to Kirov Airships and some light tanks. Yuri used many psychic units as well, like the Yuri Clone, the Mastermind and the Psychic Tower. Yuri commanders would use these to turn enemy units against each other. If powerful units were captured, then they would fight for the Yuri player to help defend his base. Furthermore, captured units could be sent into a Grinder for a little extra cash. This also helped Yuri's economy a lot, even though the Slave Miners were good miners as well. Yuri did not use aircrafts like the allied Harrier and the soviet MiG, however, he had the Floating Disc, a powerful floating disk that could destroy infantry and vehicles with its laser. Also, if it went near a power plant or a refinery, it was able either to turn the enemy's power down or steal enemy's cash. This was also the reason why Yuri didn't use Spies. The Boomer Submarine was Yuri's only naval unit. It was a very big sub, a lot stronger than the soviet Typhoon, that was also able to use rockets against ground targets, much like the soviet Dreadnought. Yuri infantry was also versatile. The Initiate was perhaps the strongest basic infantry unit, which used the power of his mind to start fires. It was very effective against infantry and quite effective against structures and, if in big numbers, against tanks. The Brute was Yuri's tank hunter. It was a huge mutant who could smash almost anything with his powerful fists. They were specially designed to take over enemy tanks because their weapons were almost useless against Brutes. The Virus was Yuri's sniper unit. Much like the british sniper it could kill infantry from a great range. Even if the sniper had greater attack range, the Virus was armed with some deadly toxins that could quickly kill infantry near the infected target. Yuri used the Genetic Mutator and the Psychic Dominator as his superweapons. The first one was able to turn the infantry of a specified area into loyal Brutes, the second one was able to mind control some units in a specified area, and in the meanwhile it also damaged buildings. These units, along with some others, made Yuri's army feared in the whole world. Or at least, before Cherdenko erased it from existance.

Behind the Scenes
"Yuriko" of the Empire of the Rising Sun is, basically and essentially, a female, destructive version of the subject, namely his Prime and Clone types. The 'ko' suffix at the end of her name is a traditional addition that basically means 'Daughter of' Essentially this makes Yuriko's name mean 'Daughter of Yuri'. In a recent live chat with the dev team however, the developers stated that: "The only relation Yuriko has to Yuri is 'in spirit'. And that they share four letters."

Yuri was played by Udo Kier.