I'll just go with engineer then. The man figured out how a gas engine worked by taking it apart and putting it back together so he's got a gift for it.

I think I'll make my character a jack of all trades, with English teacher being his official job. You'll see the rest hopefully before tonight is over, and you can tell me if I need to make any tweaks.

Appearance:


Name: John 'Exile' Rourke.

Weapon: Hand-crafted AK-105 which he built himself and keeps hidden from those who work for The System, though he would never use it unless he were to leave Barrowside for any reason. He also has a hand-crafted survival knife made from paracord and metal from one of his scrapped AK builds, along with a much smaller, but similarly made, shiv which he keeps on him at all times. His work keeps him in shape, but he only has limited hand-to-hand combat knowledge, thus he prefers to fight with a weapon, or not at all.

Estimated Age: Between 27 and 29.

Personality: John has always been a cautious optimist with a heart of gold, though his mannerisms can come off as strange or eccentric to others. His general mood tends to be anywhere between relaxed and content, though he can also be unpredictable in certain situations. He has been known to talk to himself on occasion, which causes others to put his sanity into question. Some suspect it has something to do with his life before coming to Barrowside. Even if he is insane, it's only mild, and he has never hurt anybody while in one of his more odd states of mind, so people tend to roll with it. In most cases, he tends to muse aloud about the human condition, good vs. bad, morality, government, things like that. Some people refer to him as something of a philosopher because of it. One way or the other, he is a friendly person who is easy to talk to, most of the time, and you can usually look to him to cheer things up.

Brief Background: As far as anyone knows, John was born in a community similar to Barrowside and raised to be an intelligent man with several marketable skills. That's the gist of his story, though if he wanted to go deeper, he would tell you about how Rockwell was run by people who didn't want anyone to get too smart, to help keep any sort of organized revolution from starting. He says that Barrowside is ruled under more reasonable conditions, but it's still imperfect. He says that Rockwell kept people in check by setting up a church and coaxing people to look to a higher power for answers, with government-appointed pastors. "It was an... effective form of control... and the greatest reason that I consider myself to be an atheist."

His parents were revolutionaries, in a way, who saw the oppressive nature of their government and wanted to replace it with a more democratic system. They always thought that knowledge was the answer, and this rubbed off on John to a great extent. He became an avid bookworm, and studied every piece of nonfictional writing he could get his hands on. Through his studies and self-teaching, he gained a broad array of basic and intermediate knowledge on several subjects, not the least of which was English. He began writing at an early age, and he often drew a crowd of people who listened to his stories. He always wrote about someplace where nothing could hurt you, where there was plenty of food and water, no disease, no zombies; a place where everything was peaceful and you didn't have to worry or care about anything.

During his late teenage years, a point at which his parents considered him to be an adult, they organized a protest against the government of Rockwell. He doesn't say anything other than the protesters were shut down, brutally. Over a hundred arrests, his mother among them, several executions, including that of his father, and even stricter rules for the entire community. It was at that point that John grabbed what he could and left Rockwell, assuming the name "Exile" and searching for a better place to stay. He eventually stumbled upon Barrowside after travelling for roughly a year, barely surviving on ancient food stores he found along the way.

In truth, there was no rebellion. Rockwell was destroyed by an overwhelming force of raiders who killed everyone who resisted, along with some who didn't. John was lucky to be captured and taken into their ranks. He appeared to them younger than he was, so they took him in and tried to push their customs on him. He went along with it, but did not forget what his parents taught him. His knowledge allowed him to plan an escape, and he even managed to get away with a gun; a rusty old AK. He could tell it was in dire need of repair, so he took to learning how it worked, and thus his interest and talent in gunsmithing came to fruition.

Between evading the raiders' search parties and looking for food, he barely had time to work on the old rifle, and no time for reading any books he came across or writing anything else. Between the dehydration and practical starvation, he began to lose his sanity. He kept himself going though, and at one point stumbled upon a "prepper" shelter built from a shipping container. He managed to find plenty of food and water inside, and was able to take a true pause to think about what to do next. He knew the raiders would keep looking for him, and they weren't far behind, so he had to either kill them or somehow mislead them. He could only think of one surefire way of doing so, and it was going to hurt.

After taking some antibiotics and painkillers he found in the shelter, John cut his hand on a broken window at a nearby house and let it bleed as he walked in a random direction. He kept it up for about twenty minutes before he cleaned and bandaged the wound, leaving a blood trail roughly a mile long. After making sure he did a proper job of cleaning the wound, he ran off in a different direction, hoping that the pint of blood he spilled was worth it. After a few days and no more sign that the raiders were following him, he continued forth, unmolested by any further pursuit. He traveled alone for about a month before running into a caravan who happened to have some parts for the rifle. He managed to get it into working condition on the condition that he give it to the caravan. He got a pretty sturdy knife in exchange, along with information on where some other gun parts might be found. He thanked the caravan for his hospitality and left him a short story he had re-written from before the fall of Rockwell.

The information lead him to an old gun store with files of blueprints and build instructions, including one for an AK-105. He managed to scrounge together all of the parts necessary to build the carbine, and was able to do so with the help of some manually operated machines and tools, though he figured he should learn to build one without such help. He kept another complete set of parts and continued on, thinking he wouldn't start until he needed to. After a couple more weeks of travel, he found Barrowside, where his AK and knife were confiscated. He considered breaking out, valuing freedom over community, but he learned after about a month of being confined to a cell that he had lost more of his sanity than he thought.

He came around as soon as he realized this and managed to get out of the cell, though he then had to bargain for a good skill, thus where his English knowledge came in handy. He just barely managed to become an English teacher and was even allowed all of his belongings back, except for his completed weapons. He has since used the parts he had to build another AK and keep it hidden from The System, along with a pair of knives. He has since established himself as a respectable man with a kind heart and great writing skills.

Misc: In short, John is a jack of all trades, with his specialties lying in gunsmithing and his vast knowledge of the English language, though he keeps the former secret and fronts as an English teacher. John is a very intelligent and articulate person, using plenty of vocabulary which in a post-apocalyptic society would seem superfluous, unnecessary, or even archaic. He often takes his off-time to write short stories, or work on his novel, "The Oasis."

Although he's not very good at using guns, he knows several guns down to every pin, rivet, and screw, and makes a habit of trying to construct some; outside of the prying eyes of The System of course. He has a particular interest in AK-type rifles, fascinated by their relatively simple construction and high tolerances. With the lack of any precision tools, a lot of his builds end up being fancy paperweights. Some of the guns he turns out are functional, but far from perfect. He has only managed to craft exactly two shooters worthy of any true merit, and that was with a vast array of spare parts he found before coming to Barrowside.

Level and category: Level 5A.

Following up on some earlier discussion about how everyone would get together on this, it's almost certain than some of them know each other pretty well and have at least met the others at some point. Many high schools have a population greater than 1,200, and half the characters have lived there most, if not all, their lives.

Whether they're close or not, Mina, Mike, Sean, and Cristi would know each other fairly well, if for no other reason than because they've been in Barrowside for 20+ years based on the bios. From Cristi's bio, it's likely that he shadowed or worked with both Mike and Sean at some point in his teens and probably still does on occasion.

With the transplants, I'm sure everyone would know who they are and probably have at least a solid amount of second-hand information about them. In a community that small, anyone new is bound to get attention and news would travel fast as new tidbits about their backgrounds or personalities were discovered. As has been mentioned, those within a group probably know each other pretty well. I mean, they do live in dorms together, so I bet they even know who drools on their pillow.

Anyway, just for funsies, here's Cristi's take on his neighbors ...

Mina - Did you know I've had a crush on you since we were kids? Oh, yeah, I guess you do. Um, yeah, I guess everyone else knows too. So what are you doing for dinner? I have two cans of pork & beans, one spoon, and a flask of engine degreaser.

Mike - Awesome! Much respect!

Sean - Solid guy but, seriously man, what's with the hammer?

Daniel - Decent, fun to work with, and probably the only 2A that isn't a complete d-bag.

John - Always interesting conversation, but you're not quite right are you?

Alex - So if things don't work out with Mina ... um, never mind, you're kinda scary.

Vivian - Love the directness, and I think we might share some perspectives, but I can't tell. Nix the mumbling and enunciate?

Evelyn - Funny as hell, decent enough, but lighten up a little. You 3As are prickly.

Vale - Could you maybe not stand so close? Yeah, ok, you're not close but I can still see you and it's creeping me out. Alex? Viv? Could one of you maybe stand between me and Vale? Yeah, right there. Perfect!

Best thing I have read all day, februari! I feel as though Alex might be considered a villain by the moral standards of your average post-apocalyptic scenario. Then again, that may be by design... x.X

Feb - I loved that! Haha. Bit of romance blooming between our characters maybe?

Right my lovelies. I am gonna cook my dinner once my baby is asleep, and then I am going to do my opening post. I am going to start with Mina finalizing plans for the secret escape. She is going to literally give your characters minimal notice to pack up, and get them all out of there before anyone can be questioned and what not. I am going to have it so rumours have been spread and she gives each of your characters the true story (having circulated several versions, just to see who was interested) because they each come with a skill and showed the most interest to get the hell out of Barrowside. If your characters had confiscated weapons or trinkets (if they came to the Barrowside with anything of value, it would have been taken) she will get it back for you.

Whisket - As your character is the mechanic, are you alright with being our driver in this? There is no such thing as driving lessons and tests, so only those who need to know how to drive are taught. This would be System drivers and mechanics.

Sounds good to me

Sean won't really manage to figure it out why should he leave Barrowside by himself... So someone might need to convince him :o

The first IC post is up, and in the OP I have added a rather crude and basic map of Barrowside, just so you all get the jist of it.

enkas said
Sean won't really manage to figure it out why should he leave Barrowside by himself... So someone might need to convince him :o

I imagine Cristi would've spelled it out for him, if necessary. "Hey man, put on your imagination cap for a second. If somehow you weren't in Barrowside, you could sleep with your hammer ..."

will get an ic post up as soon as i can. I had an op yesterday and will be typing one handed for a while.

februari said
I imagine Cristi would've spelled it out for him, if necessary. "Hey man, put on your imagination cap for a second. If somehow you weren't in Barrowside, you could sleep with your hammer ..."

XD

Posty post got that post up, I feel like this the first RP I've been in in a while where it actually started.

Hope this post is okay, its harder than I thought to type one handedly.

Well hopefully we can keep this baby going. We have a good cast going. I'm also not going to be waiting for everyone to post before posting again myself. Going to chuck us all into some action pretty soon too!

Just so everyone knows, everyone is going to have to go and sit with Mina so she can tell them all about them leaving.

oh crud, the IC started!

Anyway, I'll have my post later on.

I will be posting the collab post between me and Feb in a while. So people need to get their posts in pretty quickly to keep up.

Eve will wander over in her next post.

I think the point is to weed out the ones who won't be dedicated to the plan by making them come to her instead of the other way around?