[hider=Jordan][center][img]http://www.short-haircut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/black-girl-short-hairstyles.jpg[/img][/center][/hider]

[center]Dr. Jordan Palmer[/center]

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Specialty/Archetype: She is most useful for field medicine and scientific insight/hacking, and is a skillful handler of her plasma rifle.

Appearance/Gear: She wears a light ensemble of leather armor and a filthy, filthy white cloak that looks like it was once a lab coat. She wears a doctor’s mask and a pair of goggles about her neck, bringing them up to protect her face in the event of a sandstorm. If one were to pull up her sleeves, they’d find a myriad of puncture scars indicative of heavy chem use. Unless moving, high, or focused on pursuits that take all of her concentration, she shakes very slightly. Prideful of her plasma rifle, she cleans, mods and cares for it religiously, the shiny parts especially shiny, the glowy parts particularly glowy. Her belt is weighed down heavily with recycled ammunition, medical supplies, junk useful for crafting and tools, and clunks about as she runs or walks. She has a palm-sized, cracked LED looped on a string that she wears as a necklace. She is of average height, angularly-shaped, lanky and built with lean, quick muscle. She is only strong enough to swing around her rifle, and doesn't take very well to being struck or shot.

Personality: Friendly and loyal, Jordan is very often willing to help those she considers an ally. Her friends are kept close, as precious as jewels, and she will often protect them in any way she can, be it from injury, disease or thugs. Her skill in unplanned medical procedures is unprecedented, almost preferring to work under intense pressure, too easily distracted otherwise. Flirting is a favorable pastime, from robots to Nightkin, average humans just a little too plain for her tastes. Her thirst for discovery stretches a little beyond human decency in darker times, occasionally dipping into cruel territory with how she will manipulate her subjects into entering her experiments, such as omitting the truth of a test to avoid ”muddying up” the results. One of the few times she refuses to use people as test subjects is in the case of prostitutes. In her eyes, they must be protected and treated well above many others, and holds a sympathetic, albeit reckless, view of them. She is just as quick to misuse her knowledge of medicine to split a few chems with one as she is to help eliminate a particularly abusive client for them. She gets very sensitive around robots, becoming more reserved and logically-minded in their presence, whether they speak to her or not. When presented with alcohol, she will drink far, far too much, drone on about scientific papers she’d written, find the nearest ghoul and sleep with them, and then proceed to pass out for a few long hours. Her opinion of the Followers of the Apocalypse is quoted as “A bunch of nice dudes with their hearts in the right place. A little uptight, though."

History: Jordan was born in Freeside as the second child of a repairman, tasked from the time she could run to scout out derelict buildings in the neighborhood for whatever could be found. She grew up alternating between beating away Radroaches with iron poles over a pile of scrap metal to watching her father turn her hard-earned salvage into things people could use to survive and live. Her older sister, Maya, hired then as a guard for the Followers of the Apocalypse’s fort in Freeside, saw her potential and brought her along during her guard shifts to read the books at the Fort and help run messages between the Kings and the Followers. By the time Jordan was 10, she had an extensive knowledge of medicine and science, hungering constantly for more. The Followers encouraged her education, her father showed her as much as he could, and her sister often took her into the alley by their home to practice shooting. Inspired, she began to collect and save the spare parts of various broken-down robots in wreckages, over the span of several years patching together the empty shell of a scrap-heap robot she could only dream of bringing to life. 
Then, when Jordan was 17, disaster struck. Her father’s shop was attacked in the night by a band of thugs, and Maya, in fighting back to protect her family, was beaten horrifically and shot. Only Jordan’s medical knowledge kept Maya from death long enough for a Follower doctor to arrive and bring her to the base. It took weeks for Maya to recover, phasing in and out of consciousness, her body mangled and broken. Jordan had to face the reality of her losing her sister, and in that time, became horrifically depressed. She threw her robot-shell in the alley, spent all day in the ruins of the more desolate places of Freeside, and came home dragging behind herself dead animals for rogue dissection, if only to distract herself from the anxiety and regret. Her books and experiments could only hold her for so long, tragically, and to the sorrow of her father, she turned to buying cheap chems on her cut of the shop’s earnings. Maya was alive, but paralyzed and unable to guard for the Followers anymore. She got by with helping their father around the shop, but the loss of income damaged the family’s livelihood. Jordan abandoned her deeper pursuits and took Maya’s place in guarding the base, the clean-cut work giving her some comfort. She bought herself a plasma rifle from Silver Rush, repaired and optimized it over the course of a year with the help of her greying father, and eventually eased away from chems. She found her robot buried under piles of garbage and dragged it back into her room. Nights spent staring at it as it watched, silently, back gave her some peace, but also an itch to see it move, live. She cut away half of her earnings to save up for scraps of circuitry, wiring up her creation with the reverence that a lover would hold for their partner. She spoke to her robot, thrilled every time she managed to make it lift its arm, turn on its head LED, walk. At 24, she had finally finished it. The first time her robot looked at her, truly looked at her, she fell in love. She swore chems off for good, as she’d promised to her robot, whom she’d dubbed Zia.
Zia was a close companion to Jordan, following her around on her guard duties or when she’d occasionally be allowed to perform surgery or administer medicine to those who could not make it to the base. Eventually, the Followers grew used to Zia’s presence, answering its questions and collecting little wigs and hats for it to wear, a bit of comedic relief in the stressed lives of the doctors and scholars. Jordan, a desire to explore the world beyond New Vegas festering now that she had Zia, eventually requested to do some courier work for the Followers, succeeding and finally leaving Freeside with the blessing of her family. She traveled far and wide, delivering humanitarian aid as a fully-fledged doctor for the Followers. But the Wastelands were harsh and unforgiving. During a bout of delivering Stimpaks to a camp of refugees fleeing the Legion’s expansion, she and Zia were attacked by Legion scouts. Zia had only been given a plasma pistol welded to its frame as any kind of defense, and Jordan was captured and watched as the love of her life was dismantled and ripped apart for scrap. Jordan herself was raped in a nearby Legion encampment, her supplies stolen and her gear taken, readied for a life of slavery were it not for NCR raiding the camp just in time, saving her and a group of prostitutes whom had been tricked into being captured. The women remained close to Jordan while they all stayed in an NCR refugee camp, caring for her while she mourned Zia and sympathizing with her feelings of being used after being assaulted as she had been. Eventually, she gathered up the nerve to leave the camp on her own, now broken, lonely and gripping her rifle like it was her lifeline. Abandoning the Followers philosophy of pacifism, she shot and vaporized any lone Legion scout, gang member or thug she came across indiscriminately as she made her way back through the Mojave. She made it to Freeside, came home, and sobbed into her sister’s arms for hours. When she was finished, she went to the base of the Followers, stole as many confiscated chems as she could and squatted in a dilapidated building for days, phasing in and out of a thousand different highs, heart only kept beating, sometimes, by a well-placed Stimpak injection. The Followers found her a week later, a waste of a human being, and brought her in, at first treating her with care, giving her Fixer and food. 
One night, however, aching over a lack of Fixer, she snuck again into the Follower’s supplies and stole as much as she could manage, again disappearing, alternating between a loathsome hunger for chems and a remorseful swallowing of Fixer. The Followers, now furious, cut any ties with her, forcibly took back their chems and whatever Fixer was left, and abandoned her to drift for a year, saying they would only take her back if she swore off chems and made herself an honest woman again. Sobered just enough by their ultimatum, she gathered her weapons, armor and gear, and, with Zia’s LED about her neck, went off to go find herself again. She made a point of helping people for only what she needed, slipping and relapsing into chem abuse whenever she’d fail in saving someone or keeping a band of refugees safe from raiders.

Other: No one is actually sure if she deserves the title of “Doctor” or not. Formerly a Follower of the Apocalypse, now a freelancer whom works for (rarely) chems, places to sleep, food and salvage. Her opinion of the Slayers is unflattering at best, seeing their purge of all of the odd creatures to arise from the radiation spike as a horrifying waste of potential study. She helps the refugees when she can, but much prefers to take samples of the irradiated beings than kill them outright.