Lidiya

"Like you have the moral high ground here? Did you even ask yourself what your people were up to out here? And the girl. Don't tell me there's any possible justification for that. Fuck you, though, because I don't have whatever it is you think I have. And if I did... I'd take the bullet before I gave you the satisfaction."

- Lidiya, during her face-off with Dragan Lidiya is an agent of the Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors (more popularly known as the Phoenicians) and a minor recurring antagonist in the Funcom MMORPG The Secret World. An ex-KGB operative and a former associate of Dragan Dzoavich, she has since parlayed her skills into a highly-successful career in securing artifacts on behalf of the Phoenicians and their clients. Unfortunately, that particular client list happens to include the vampire army currently occupying the Carpathian Mountains, eventually getting the attention of the players towards the end of the "Mortal Sins" arc.

Backstory
As with most agents of the secret societies, Lidiya's past is largely unknown, her dossier being kept well out of enemy hands. What little is known has only been conveyed through conversations between her and Dragan, and in occasional snippets of information delivered by faction contacts. According to the Illuminati handler Kirsten Geary, Lidiya was once a KGB operative, though it's not known when she joined or how long she served before the organization was formally dissolved. At some point, she also ended up in a relationship with Dragan Dzoavich, a near-legendary operative popularly known as "Ghost," and for a time, the two of them fell in love - though Dragan freely admitted that "Liddy" was a thief by nature.

However, the relationship didn't remain pleasant forever: at some point, the two were meant to rendezvous in Bangkok, apparently to discuss their future career paths in the wake of the KGB's dispersal; when Dragan didn't show up, Lidiya assumed her lover had been killed in action and decided to join the Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors. When the two finally met again, Dragan had been hired by the Orochi Group as a security specialist, and neither of them were on especially good terms; Lidiya resented Dragan for making her think he was dead, while Dragan considered Lidiya a sellout for having allied with the notoriously self-seeking Phoenicians.

With the Orochi Group intent on securing rare artifacts for their R&D departments and the Phoenicians determined to retain their monopoly on supernatural relics, it wasn't long before the resentment between the two operatives erupted into open conflict; while on separate missions to Khartoum, Lidiya and Dragan fought at length over the artifact they'd been sent to acquire, the legendary Ghost being bested in combat for the first time in his career. However, regardless of how fiercely they wounded one another, the two agents were always able to survive and go their separate ways.

During the months leading up to the beginning of the game, the Phoenicians were approached by a client of unprecedented power and influence, namely the near-mythical figure known only as Lilith. On the client's orders, Lidiya was dispatched to Transylvania and charged with maintaining surveillance on an Orochi research project situated deep within the Carpathian Mountains: here, the group's highly-ambitious Prometheus Initiative was hard at work utilizing the powers of Emma Smith, a child with the rare magical ability to manipulate and project raw Anima. Lidiya and her team were to keep watch on Emma at all times, bugging the heavily-warded cabin where she and her foster parents had been billeted and tracking her movements whenever she left; on Lilith's signal, the team was to move in and capture Emma alive and unharmed. Unfortunately, it so happened that Dragan had been assigned to the Prometheus Initiative as a bodyguard, ensuring that the two agents would once again cross paths.

Soon after the events of the Tokyo Incident, Lilith made her move, sending her army of vampires on a rampage across Transylvania in a frenzied attempt to seize control of all Orochi operations in the region. Safely protected from vampire incursions, Lidiya and her team waited until Emma had been returned to her cabin, preparing to extract her once they had found a means of breaking through the Manticore occultech defenses.

The Girl Is Gone
Having been sent to Transylvania in order to investigate the activities of the vampire army, players eventually make their way into the Carpathian Mountains, and while exploring the long-abandoned Red Hand outposts, discover Lidiya's hidden base of operations.