Gleaned from overheard conversations, chats in the dinner hall of the Cult's dungeon complex, Vasily's numerous contacts, and stray comments by Gurov himself...
Lev Ivanovich Gurov was about 5 or so when Ragnarok took place, so he grew up after the war subsided. His generation saw a lot more young people become adventurers than ones before it; partly due to tales about the heroes of the last generation, and partly because Ragnarok and the conflicts that surrounded it caused some hefty social upheaval, shook up the established order in a lot of the Russian and surrounding lands - the kind of thing that always happens after big wars or revolutions.
So, like many others, Gurov got together with a few like-minded young people and set out to go adventuring. They traveled together for several years, fighting monsters, undertaking quests - the usual. Gurov and his friends didn't fight for any noble cause or lofty patron; they were just looking for the big score - and the thrill of the adventures on the road to it.
They'd just made one particular score, a pretty hefty one - not their first, but a decently big treasure hoard that was now all theirs. The victorious party was on their way to the nearest big city to do some trading, cash their loot in for some upgrades to their adventuring gear. It was at this point that Gurov turned to his buddies and said, "Hey guys... what are we doing? We've been after the big one, and this pretty much qualifies. Why are we spending it on stuff to let us go out looking for more monsters to fight? Let's cash it all in and go live the good life. That was the plan, right?"
The others all looked at each other, then at Gurov, and replied after a bit of silence that none of them really knew how to do anything else with their lives. Besides, they said, the whole adventuring gig was pretty much its own end at this point. Gurov wasn't having any of it. "The hell with that. I didn't sign up for a lifetime of this. Besides, I've got a whole city full of pretty girls to get into my bed, and if I'm going to make any kind of dent in that list, I'd better get started ASAP." His closest friend in the party, a fighter named Oleg, told Gurov that he'd miss the adventuring life before a year's end. The rest of them just shook their heads. But Gurov had made his decision; he took his share of the loot and the party gold and headed home to Novgorod the next day.
Gurov bought a nice house on the shore of Lake Ilmen and settled down to live the easy life. He spent his money lavishly, he threw parties and feasts, he mingled with Novgorod's wealthy and powerful elite. Oh, and he got a whole lot of pretty girls into his bed. Never being shortsighted, Gurov invested some of his money, making some decent and steady profits. His life was good and easy and unstressful.
It took him about a year to realize that he was bored out of his mind.
It wasn't just that Gurov's talents as a suave, experienced rogue, a smooth talker and a quick thinker, were being wholly and utterly wasted. All these people he now bumped elbows with - all the advisors and merchants and court wizards - he had nothing in common with any of them. How could he? None of them had ever so much as raised a sword against a goblin in their lives. All they knew was the comfortable city life. Making polite conversation with this crowd was enough to make him want to scream.
At the same time, however, Gurov found that he didn't really miss creeping through dark, smelly, claustrophobic lairs, risking his life in battle against some hell-spawn, for what? The chance to find or buy some trinket that would make a dragon's fiery breath hurt just a little less, and do it all over again the next day. Gurov rather enjoyed not having his face sliced open every week, and he really enjoyed not having to wash off monster guts every day.
That whole year, as an undercurrent to the trivial gossip and mundane conversation, Gurov had been getting just the faintest glimpses of strange rumors. A snippet of conversation at the edge of hearing; certain buying patterns among small-time merchants that didn't seem quite right; some wizards of his acquaintance that were acting suspicious in just the wrong way. All of it somehow linking back to a name - Loki. The Fallen Trickster, the dead god. Gurov had picked up some tidbits about Ragnarok, its causes and history, things almost everyone knew in this day and age.
He'd never been that interested in secret knowledge and arcane lore, but this roused his interest. Mostly it was boredom. This secret, whatever it was, could be a challenge to unravel. No ulterior motive - Gurov had no idea what all of it was about - just the chance to do something, anything, to flex his old talents, see if he still had what it took to get to the bottom of a good mystery. So he started digging. Discreetly, covertly, Gurov dug up more and more, and it got weirder and more interesting as he kept going. He discovered that there was a Cult, a shadowy group apparently dedicated to bringing back the Trickster God. Some powerful people were in on this, as far as he could tell, though he couldn't find out the identities of more than a couple, and even that was more suspicion than knowledge. But the Cult of the Fallen Trickster was real, that much he knew.
Gurov thought the whole thing was pretty crazy. Bringing back Loki? He didn't know enough about this sort of thing to even decide if it was even possible, and he definitely wasn't sure if it was a good idea. Hadn't Loki been behind the whole Ragnarok thing...? Still, he kept investigating, his curiosity irrevocably piqued. At least this was better than sitting around and doing a lot of lavish and extravagant nothing.
At about the same time...
The Cult of the Fallen Trickster had grown more numerous than its founding members had anticipated. They were no closer to their goal, however, than they had been at the beginning. All of the leads, the painstaking arcane research, the finding and delving into ancient tomes and prophecies, had thus far been to no avail. The powerful inner circle began to recognize that this enterprise of theirs would take more time, and a great deal more resources, than they had available to them. Thus far, the Cult consisted mostly of Loki's devoted acolytes and aspiring servants: bookish wizards, sages with their noses buried in books of arcane lore, clerics obsessed with prophecies about the Trickster God. They had precious few contacts in the world at large; when the Cult had to deal with people outside of their membership, especially the shady, the black-market, and the underground, they were, for the most part, clumsy and inexperienced about it. This had already led to some complications and some failures. Worst of all, it seemed that despite the Cult leadership's best efforts, rumors and information about their activities had begun to leak out. The inner circle recognized that a brotherhood of Loki's faithful would not be enough. They needed to start recruiting.
The sort of person that the Cult was in dire need of would be someone skilled in social interaction; experienced with the real world, not just book-learned; preferably someone established in important circles, with his own network of contacts; and, just as importantly, devoid of dedication to any sort of high morality, any true devotion to a cause or patron. People like that could handle the Cult's interaction with the world - trades, acquisitions, investigations, gathering of information and gossip, the arranging of certain deals, the greasing of certain wheels. Also, the inner circle wanted people who could handle the the Cult's public relations. Not to make the public know and like them, of course; just the opposite. Someone with the right skills could quash rumors, suppress evidence of the Cult's existence, and make sure that if people knew of Cult at all, it would only be as a silly, far-fetched, and utterly unlikely old wives' tale. So when one Lev Gurov began snooping around, started to find out a remarkable amount of information about their activities, the Cult leadership knew almost immediately that they had their man. They watched him surreptitiously, scried on him, found out as much as they could, and decided Gurov was a perfect fit.
Vladislav Chernovsky came to see Gurov personally. He was disguised, of course, not revealing his true identity or nature. The archmage did not have to do a whole lot of convincing. He told Gurov a lot of what the latter already knew, filled in some blanks while leaving others tantalizingly empty. Gurov didn't think long before taking the job. What Chernovsky offered was the dream career: Gurov would mostly stay in Novgorod, continue leading his comfortable lifestyle, but now his life would have purpose. He'd still mingle with the upper echelons of society, only now, he would be subtly milking them for information, carefully watching all of Novgorod, arranging events to suit his new masters' plans. And he would never be asked to wade hip-deep through cold, dark waters in some forgotten cave on the other side of the world, his heart racing with the knowledge that his next step could be his last.
So Gurov accepted, becoming the first member of the Cult with no ideological ties to the Trickster God. That was ten years ago. Many others followed him, recruited first by the inner circle, then by Gurov himself. He rose in power and influence within the Cult, eventually being chosen to oversee all Cult operations through the Principality of Novgorod. Many of the organization's successes in that time were owed to Gurov's skillful, subtle guiding hand. And all the while, the ministers, the merchants, the court wizards, all knew him only as a wealthy retired adventurer, a lover of women and lavish feasts and the good life.