Name: Sergeant Nathan Vikowski
Date of Birth: 20/02/2046 (What is it with Americans and their incorrect method of organising dates?)
Physical Description: Standing at a rough height of about 5'11, Nate is a man who's prematurely aged beyond his years, having the body of someone in their early thirties but the eyes and the world-weariness of one at least a score past that. His hair is a coarse, charcoal colour, kept trimmed down to a typical crew cut that you might see with a lot of soldiers, whilst he keeps his jaw and cheeks trimmed of any noticable facial hair as is required amongst the US Army's personnel. His eyes are a pale blue, due in part to his distant Polish ancestry, and his hardened expression reminds one of the thousand-yard stare one sees in older war films from times long since passed. Physically, he's of a fairly average build, though years of military training and routine have toned him up and left him with especially strengthened limbs, alongside a number of faded scars from his lengthy service in Alaska. The most notable of his injuries, however, would be just below the knee of his left leg which has left him with a pronounced limp whenever he walks on it, though he otherwise functions normally.
Image: Can't really find one that suits at the moment, description will have to do for now.
Profession: US Army Infantryman
Background: Born in suburban Los Angeles as the elder son of a career soldier, Nate spent his early years surrounded by patriotic zeal and eventually came to aspire towards the idea of following in his old man's footsteps and enlisting in the army. At the same time, the United States' growing tensions with China over their oil supply led many to believe that a war with the 'Filthy Reds' was all but inevitable, and only a year after Nate enlisted in the army at the age of eighteen, the Chinese invasion of Alaska had begun, and the United States initiated the Anchorage Campaign.
Naive and green as they came, Nate was unprepared for the bleak truth of war that the patriotic zeal and glorification of military service had always swept under the rug, and by the end of his first eighteen months he was one of remaining half of the original members of his unit that hadn't been killed or captured by the enemy. He'd lost more than a few friends and when the psychological effect was noticed, instead of being sent home he was promoted to Corporal and temporarily re-assigned to prison camp duty, where he saw just as many horrors inflicted on Chinese POWs and at times found himself doing the same. He became somewhat disconnected the ideals that the US were meant to stand for, but continued his service as the 'loyal grunt' he was expected to be.
Eventually he was able to ship home on leave for a few months, having been unable to correspond with his family except through short letters. When he came to visit them in LA, he learned that his younger brother Wyatt had secretly enlisted despite being underage, courtesy of Uncle Sam's loosening of regulations so the Anchorage Front Line could be reinforced. Knowing what harsh reality awaited his brother, Nate quickly returned to active service to find out which unit Wyatt had been assigned to. It was only a few months later that he learned that his brother had been captured and transferred to a POW camp far behind enemy lines. He knew the kind of treatment the kid was in for, and so he chose to willingly endure additional service on the frontline with the hope that if he helped to see the war through, he'd be able to liberate Wyatt from captivity before it was too late.
To this end, he successfully transferred to the mechanised heavy infantry division which saw the brunt of the action and placed him in the so-called 'mouth of the red dragon', a notoriously dangerous field of operation aptly named for the strategic advantage held over it by the Chinese woth their 'dragon's breath' artillery strikes. Wearing the newly developed power armour that the US believed could help win the war, Nate spent the next few years in bloody fighting until the war was all-but won for the US, the Chinese prison camps having been all but liberated by the American forces. However, during one of the few final pushes to liberate the remaining camps - where Wyatt was still being held - military command gave orders to pull back in order to protect a depot for Poseidon Energy which was said to hold a number of corporate VIPs, several of whom were known to be massive supporters of US Politicians. Despite the fact that the depot was hardly acknowledged by the retreating Chinese, preoccupied with covering their own receding lines, Nate's command had deemed it 'important' enough to hold off liberating the remaining POWs until reinforcements arrived.
Alas, reinforcements finally arrived to relieve the 'glorified bodyguards' of their duties, it was too late for the POWs - in a policy of 'salting-the-earth' during their retreat and out of revenge for their own executed prisoners, the Chinese had executed most of the American prisoners en-masse before demolishing the camps to rubble to leave no trace behind, Wyatt listed amongst the dead. To add salt to the wound, a dejected Nate was quickly shipped back home only to find himself being placed alongside law enforcement agencies in a desperate attempt to keep the peace as American men, women and children began protesting and rioting over shortages of food and oil. After seeing the men who were meant to be 'protecting Free America' by beating back the crowds in their power armour, and how the government seemed to be whitewashing the whole deal with 'minor incidents of unrest', it was then that Nate realised how his brother, along with hundreds of other Americans had been willingly sacrificed to protect the private interests of a few 'suits' for little gain for the American people, and he became disillusioned with the ideals and the country that he'd given up a brother and over a decade of his life to serve. With stories of deserters reaching him from as far as newly annexed Canada, Nate found himself contemplating joining their ranks as the eve of nuclear holocaust was upon them all.
Personality: Given his original circumstances for enlisting in the military, Nate himself isn't a particularly ammoral or otherwise antagonistic individual, rather another unfortunate example of how exposure to violence and warfare can shape a man into something worse. Having spent close to a decade fighting the Chinese in Anchorage, then returning home to find the next 'enemy' were the Americans he'd initially enlisted to defend, Nate's psyche has already been pushed to breaking point, leaving him prone to violent outbursts in which he lashes out against those who disagree or otherwise become 'obstacles' to his own goals, either through verbal intimidation or physical confrontaton. In particular, he distrusts authority figures who can't 'prove' themselves capable of handling their role, and he equally mistrusts political figures - whom he views as having always used soldiers such as himself as pawns for their own personal gain, but in contrast he is more likely to be accepting of like-minded or working-class individuals and in a situation of crisis he's often one to step up to the role of a figure of leadership or guidance of such people. Also, despite his temperamental shortcomings, he had a tendency to display fierce loyalty towards those who align their beliefs with his own, those who take his side in situations of crsis and those who've suffered similar situations of loss or otherwise traumatic experiences due to the war.
SPECIAL:
Strength 6
Perception 7
Endurance 8
Charisma 4
Intelligence 6
Agility 4
Luck 3
This is still a WIP, so.. yeah.