NAME: Clayton Mcphaul (Clay)
AGE: 26
BORN: Cleveland, OH
HEIGHT AND WEIGHT: 5'11/174 Lbs
APPEARANCE:
Clay shaves every few days...ish, but he doesn't take great care to stay completely clean. As a result, a little bit of fuzz tends to grow on his face between shavings- a 'five-o-clock shadow' of sorts. It's all right, as it doesn't detract from his appearance at all. He has short cut, relatively light brown hair (on account of his many, many hours in the sun), but again, he really doesn't get too much of a chance to get haircuts or other such things. Generally he can only wash his face, and take 'baths', if he has the luck to be hired on a trip to a place with a nearby lake or river. When he is home, he takes much better care of himself, by far. He wears 'stylish' clothes, given many, many tips on fashion from some of his younger, female clients. He likes to think that he looks fairly handsome, if not stunning.
BIO: Born in Cleveland, to a modest family, Clay didn't get everything he wanted a kid, but he was reasonably well-off. Nothing bad really happened in his life. His grandparents are all still alive, his family healthy, his parents still living simply and peacefully. His life was actually better than normal, as his father actually worked as a photographer, and so his clients would pay for him to go to all sorts of exotic places, to obtain the best possible shots, for whatever they wanted. Clay's father, being a family man, would insist on taking his family with him, including his wife, Clay, and Clay's little sister, Brianne, regardless of his client's reluctance. Clay's dad was one of the best, and so they invariably ended up going along, to all sorts of fantastical places. Ireland, The Egyptians Pyramids, Mayan Temples: they saw it all. Asking Clay where he hadn't been became a more useful question than asking where he HAD been.
It was these trips that convinced Clay on what he wanted to do in life. He wanted to travel, to explore the world. Unfortunately, it was his sister who displayed the skills of their father in photography. Clay could barely take a family picture. He just didn't have the gift. He DID, however, have vast amounts of street sense. He made friends easily, instinctively avoided hostile people, and was generally good with his social life. His family moved to Augusta, Georgia on his fourteenth birthday, and he had very little trouble adjusting. Sure, they talked a bit different, but so did he, to them. Not too much of a problem. His grades were steady, low-to-mid A's, and his relations with others were sturdy as well. He was the target of a few bullies, for a time, but with the rest of his life on such stable ground, they didn't really bother him too much.
He met Jason and Able in high-school, through the Baseball 'grapevine'. He wasn't a huge fan of Baseball, but he had a damn good swing, and his father wanted Brianne to have someone to practice with. She was, and is, a big Baseball and Softball fan. Clay wasn't one to argue with the man who made his life so comfortable, and tried out. He wasn't exactly a shoo-in, but the coach could see the talent there. In he went, and formed a bond with his friends. He quit after the first year, when Brianne met Alicia, Jason's sister, who also liked Softball. A stroke of luck really, as Clay had found his next calling, from the internet: Parkour. He took to it like a fish to water, and his latent talents for extended movement and lots of climbing and jumping showed themselves. His friends called him crazy, but they didn't mean it in a bad way. He also got into breakdancing, although he wasn't quite as interested in it as he was with Parkour. He also became quite interested in Paintball, as well, playing with his friends when he had the time.
He also found an old reality Television show titled 'Survivorman'. A real reality show, it detailed surviving by oneself for a week in the most hostile of enviroments with very little. This was a dream of Clay's, to become a survivor in his own right. He began going on intense backbacking trips, often dragging his closest friends along for the journey. He also dragged Brianne and her friends along, sometimes. Brianne had the photography gift, and he wanted the beautiful landscapes that he managed to find, even in the middle of a city like Augusta. And since Brianne wouldn't go anywhere with Clay without bringing her friend(s) along, Clay was forced to deal with it. He and Brianne were friends, and many of her friends became his. It was such a tight knit group, when Able became involved with Alicia, He had talked to both Alicia and Brianne about Able's obvious choice on one of their Backpacking trips.
As Clay grew up, graduated High School, and went to college (for Engineering, as he really had nothign else to do), on a partly-paid scholarship, he stepped up his game. The trips became extended affairs, traveling to all sorts of ridiculous places. He slowly gathered the knowledge of many, many different tips and tricks to survive for extended periods of time in isolated areas. He eventually had the skills of an SERE (
http://www.airforce.com/careers/deta...d-escape-sere/) trained United States soldier, albeit completely self taught. He also had very little money, as he had used most of it to fund his trips to all over the world, over and over again. In a strange twist of fate, however, one of his old college friends, now a fairly accomplished actor, contacted him a week or so after Clay gradutated, and asked for a 'guide' into a wooded area. Apparently, Clay's trips had not gone unnoticed. Clay accepted, naturally, and he helped a relatively famous Actor 'rough it' in the woods for almost two weeks. He had no idea what was to come.
He recieved three calls when he returned, from other actors and actresses. They had been told about Clay's skills by his friend. Apparently, they were all huge campers, or at least, big on the idea. They co-hired him to give them a tour of the Tibetian mountains. It was less comfortable than he would have like, but it worked out in the end. That was just the beginning. Fast forward a year or two, and Clay had become almost a celebrity himself. Big time actors who wanted to get away from the paprazzi called him up. He once helped Morgan Freeman experience the joys of Scotland for five days. In fact, he had several female advances that weren't set up by agents, or rumored by the press. Of course, he didn't want any other rumors to make an appearance, and so he nicely turned each down, while being careful to maintain their friendships. This was all good, but his crowning moment of 'glory', in his opinion, was the time one Megan Fox called to talk about hiring him for a short trip to the Alaskan Glaciers. Well, it was one of her agents, but it was close enough. The trip went off without a hitch and Clay made a new friend.
It was after this that Clay decided a vacation of his own would be in order, so when his four closest friends called him to go on a trip with them, he jumped at the opportunity. In his own free time, Clay had become quite the paintball sensation with his friends, and had kept up his practice of Parkour. He had a stellar life going, and it was time to hang out with some old friends, instead of making any more new ones. He also decided to go to keep Able and Jason away from each others throats, should the need arise.
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Originally Posted by Bladewind
