Nothing profound really happened to the world. Countries had their disputes, radicals made their threats, and there was even war, but none of these things seemed especially dangerous. No more dangerous than normal, anyway. The simple fact is that when things did change, they did so slowly. Small shifts you hear about on public radio. You'd hear sensationalized, bloat stories with big scary headlines too, granted we all know how quick those fall to the wayside. One moment you're sitting on your sofa watching some show, the next you're hearing screams and gunfire.

Everything with a screen and an internet connection changed in a flash. Devices we all joked about being tapped flashed simple text warnings. Lock your doors, evacuate the city, standby for instructions, we didn't know it yet, but each message depended on your location. The average shmuck had no idea what was going on and was given a simple choice to do or don't. You just hoped the instructions really helped. You hoped it wasn't akin to duck, cover, and kiss your ass goodbye.

Those who left their homes found a whole new world. In a matter of minutes the streets were flooded by frightened families, sinister opportunists, police, and soldiers. Heavy, military-style vehicles blocked roads at checkpoints, assumingly looking for terrorists or some sickness. Many cars are abandoned and the only thing guarded the area around the checkpoints is a sniper. Apparently some people don't notice or just don't care. There are rumours of dirty bombs, nukes, and even zombies. You doubt it all, or maybe you believe it all, either way, you left for a reason and can only keep moving.

Name

Age Realistic to your occupation

Occupation

Hobbies Please provide 2

Psychology Give us a sense of how they think, how they make decisions, and let us have some insight into their personality. Please give this some real thought, rushing here is very telling.

Brief History Give us the highlights of their history. Provide a couple experiences that have shaped them into who they are today -- make this the hook that wets our appetite to learn more.

Background Every Advanced RPer/author has probably put in way too much time and effort creating a massive background history most just skim. I get it, I do it too. Feel free to create a personal history to your heart's content here. The Brief History above will give people a quick run-down and should drive them here to get a fuller understanding. This will also help you hash out what's important in the long-run, I recommend writing this BEFORE you Brief History.

Skills List 2 skills that separate this character from the average shmuck. Maybe they speak very well, have a knack for fixing things, or they worked in city planning and predicting social behaviour. These should relate to an Occupation or Hobby, ideally, but I'll make an exception if it's well-tied to something in one's Background.

Weaknesses List 2 weaknesses that are significant. I will not accept issues that people can simply ignore, or are so specific that they're unlikely to actually come into play. Consider your own flaws, whether they be mental, ideological, or physical, as you craft these.

Your Turn Ask me whatever questions you have about the roleplay. In my roleplays I like an active community willing to share, plan, and just build into something greater. Your questions give me a good sense of how you think and what you'd like to see -- very important.

Name: Selena Karan

Age: 37

Occupation: Marine Invertebrate Zoologist. Research Scientist.

Appearance:

Hobbies: Longtime member of the SCA, regular SCUBA diver. She has many more hobbies—one must keep busy after all and she has no social life, but those are her two major ones.

Psychology If asked to describe herself Selena would use words like “nerd”, “weird”, and “quiet.” She is all of those of course. A scholar at heart she loves to learn new things, that’s one of the reasons she likes the SCA so much. There is always more to learn. She is very quiet, making friends is difficult for her, and she tends to make it worse on herself by refusing to leave her comfort zone if at all possible. Outside of her comfort zone (her lab, underwater, discussing one of the arts for which is a Laurel) she is the sort of unassuming and non-confrontational. She is the one at the party or the bar who was drug there by a friend, sits in the back, in the dark, nursing a drink and smiling politely at everyone while talking to no one. Few people ever get to know her well, and those that do are surprised at her range of interests. She is intelligent, loves her work, loves her hobbies, and in general her life. She even likes traveling though that took her some time to get enough out of her comfort zone to explore the places she had to travel to. She loves video games, writing, reading, camping, gardening, even just sitting on the beach doing nothing, but few people ever learn this about her. To most she is just another person who shares their space. She has a hard time tolerating stupdity or lack of common sense, but rather than say anything she will just leave if she can or retreat even further into silence if she can't. She hates public speaking unless its in front of her peers, then she feels at home. While Hawaii is a very open and welcoming place, and she is always cheerful and welcoming to others, she doesn't really stick around to 'chat.' She is loyal to her friends and though she has never had a long-term relationship, the longest was only a few months, she would never dream of cheating on someone she cared about. She has strong opinions on religion and politics (though not necessarily politicians) consequently she rarely talks about them afraid people will dislike her for stating her thoughts or she will create conflict. She loves her work and would gush about it if she ever felt comfortable enough with someone to bore them to death with it.

Brief History Selena studied hard, got good grades, went to college, went to grad school, and became a researcher for the University of Hawaii. She lives alone on a big plot of land on the big island and her only regular social activity is attending meetings and events for her local SCA, or occasionally traveling to the Estrella War if she can afford it. Basically she is the typical, and fairly normal, nerd. She spends most of her time at home, at work, underwater, or at the SCA. She does spend a lot of her time improving or practicing her skills for the SCA. She may not know where to shop to buy a formal dress, but she knows exactly where to order the material, thread, and trim and make one herself. She has a few very close friends from work and the SCA but that is about it. She does travel quite a bit for her work, despite or because of her specialization to her field she is actually a well known scientist and has several papers published in peer-reviewed journals. She hasn't made the cover of 'Nature' yet but she hasn't given up hope on doing so. That is her professional goal, that and the elusive 'tenure.'

Background: Selena had a pretty average life and childhood, nothing outstanding, nothing horrible, nothing great. It just was. She lived in a small town in northern California, which didn't help her exposure to social activities. Which meant that overall she “just was.” Oh she was a good enough scholar to get good grades at the private parochial school she attended, she was not popular but had a few good friends, and for the most part she just carried on mostly unnoticed. She had no extracurricular activities other than “science club” and “book club.” Those were just glorified names for a small group of people, the ones that were already her friends, gathering around and doing small experiments and reading/discussing books they would have read anyway were they not in a club. That was until she was introduced to the SCA. She immediately fell in love with the feeling of the organization, not really being exposed to the politics but just the glamor of it. She started attending meetings and events whenever she could, which only made her more of an outcast in high school. She did, however, get to use her 'mandatory' home economics class—the school was outdated enough that it still required all females to take home economics—to get the basics of costuming down. Others sewed shirts, quilts, quaint little dresses. Selena's project was a noble's surcoat complete with trim and embroidery. That of course placed her squarely in the “she's weird” category but it didn't really change much in the scheme of her life.

When she was old enough to sign up for the society she did so and began her progress towards the peereage of the laurels. She learned that it wasn't as glamorous as she had thought, and it was quite full of politics and procedures that, as far as she could tell, just gunked up the works. Still she stuck it out, she had been there for so long it was sort of a fixture in her life. And at least there she found people who shared her interests. She focused on the arts and sciences, preferring the creative outlet she found there rather than the combat. She did discover she liked archery, it was right up her alley. So that’s what she focused on, the arts and archery.

She stayed in the society through college, in Hawaii, and through graduate school as well. It became almost normal to her...expected. She was happy that at least in Hawaii people were more laid back. In fact she felt at home in Hawaii unlike anywhere else she had ever lived. She attended grad school in Australia but as soon as she finished she returned to Hawaii. She was actually well known in her field, and had put in lots of hours working for various research facilities while she tried to figure out where she wanted to end up. She got a job at UH Hilo, bought a house in the Puna District way back in nowhere on a 3-acre plot of land, and settled down into a very solitary but contented life. Like most people in the rural areas of the Big Island, she had her own small garden, chickens, a couple female goats, rabbits, and tilapia pond. She enjoyed working her land as much as she enjoyed her research and diving, But all those activities-- research, tending her homestead farm, even diving and her work in the SCA tended to be solitary activities she worked on at home and only showed off at gatherings, she taught others, she was expected to, but she wasn't very skilled at teaching.

While she lived in Hawaii, she was obligated to attend various scientific conferences across the country and occasionally even in other countries. Japan in particular was making great strides in marine science and she had been there on multiple occasions.

Skills: She is skilled in several SCA arts and skills and in fact has her Laurels in several including cheese making, tanning, bowyer/fletcher. She is currently pursuing brewing, cordials, and herbalism though they are coming along slowly. She has not pursued many of the combat arts, at least not vigorously, save for archery. She is a very skilled marksman with her longbow, both in target shooting and combat archery. She is also quite good with mundane bows, though she has never used them for anything other than target shooting. Of course she also has quite a bit of schooling under her belt, culminating in a PhD in Marine Invertebrate Zoology.

Weaknesses: She is very socially awkward, spending most of her time in her lab, at Kingdom events and activities, and just at home. She doesn't really enjoy the company of others, preferring to talk to people through the safe distance of a computer or mobile device. She has a very specialized focus in her field of work, eschewing most other disciplines. She keeps abreast of the current work done in many of the marine biology fields but not many other ones. In fact she rarely keeps track of ordinary news, she might be able to tell you who the current President of the United States is, beyond that probably not much. She knows where the lava is actively flowing near her property but she wouldn't pay much attention to hurricanes, earthquakes, or similar that hit other lands. She doesn't own a TV and relies on the computer and mobile devices for all her news, research, and entertainment. She is the typical nerd and thus really only feels comfortable around other nerds, loves computer and virtual life, shuns a real life, and has very little feeling for how the world works outside her very narrow circles of interest. She's a skilled archer, able to hit targets most wouldn't, but the one time she went pig hunting (at the insistence of one of her very few friends) she felt so sad for the pig she couldn't shoot it. She even has to have her neighbors butcher her rabbit clutches when its time, though she has no problem working with them once they are dead. It's the killing that bothers her.

Name:

Chelsea “Chessa” Tegan

Age:

17

Occupation:

Student

Hobbies:

Shoplifting

Fishing

Psychology:

Everything Chessa dose is about control. She gets her kicks out of manipulating other people, and functions best when in a position of authority. Having been born into a world where everything she wanted always seemed out of her reach, Chessa yearns to be the one calling the shots, and will stop at nothing to get her way. Developing an immense distaste for most people, Chessa views the average Joe as little better than cattle, and doesn’t care how many of them she treads on, taking sick enjoyment out of toying with the lives of those she considers to be inferior to her.

Chessa suffers from what she has come to refer to as dark thoughts, which vary in severity; ranging from quiet whisperings about traits of others which she finds distasteful, to almighty roars that bid her to do the sort of things that would give the most dastardly villain nightmares.

Chessa is autistic, although, having never been tested; it is unclear whereabouts she lands on the spectrum. A lifetime of abuse has given Chessa a rather dreary world view, and pent up a whole load of rage inside her.

Her favourite, non-antisocial, pastime is fishing, and is one of the only times when she can think clearly, without being impaired by the dark thoughts in her head.

Brief History:

The daughter of a hooker, Chessa was raised in a broken home, and had an abusive childhood. The young girl felt weak and powerless to all that was going on around her, and developed a whole plethora of psychological illnesses.

School was extremely difficult for Chessa, who was instantly branded as an outcast due to her weirdness and eccentricities, and the death of both of her parents did little to stabilise her shaken mental state.

She and her brother moved from home to home, fleeing from one tragedy to another, until they eventually ended up sharing an apartment in a bad neighbourhood, surrounded by um on all sides.

Background:

Born of mixed English/Irish descent, Chessa spent the first chunk of her life living in fear of her father, as did her mother and brother.

Chessa’s Mother had great opportunities ahead of her, having just graduated from university, but a drunken one nightstand on the wrong side of town set off a whole chain of unpleasant events which culminated in her working as a hooker for one of England’s biggest scumbags. After she fell pregnant with Chessa’s older brother, she was kicked out onto the streets, where she was picked up by yet another scumbag.

Whilst raising Chess’s brother, under the oppressive eye of her new “boyfriend”, Chessa’s mother had a brief fling with a sleazy lawyer, but as soon as she became pregnant with Chessa he vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

Chessa had an awful childhood; her Mum’s boyfriend worked multiple jobs, but spent most of his earnings on drugs and booze, leaving the family in a state of near-poverty. He had a black temper, and no member of the household was spared from his violent beatings.

Chessa grew up tough, and fell in with a bad crowd from an early age; getting caught up in all sorts of petty crime, especially developing a knack for shop lifting.

It was obvious from an early age that Chessa had psychological problems, the kind that required treatment, but these were looked over by her uncaring parents, causing them to fester; growing worse and worse as time went by. As Chessa begun to attend school, her problems only exacerbated, and before too long she was hurting both herself and others, being considered a sadist and a freak by almost all who knew her.

Several years down the line, Chessa’s mother took her own life due to depression, her boyfriend overdosing on heroine a few months later. Chessa and her brother were sent to live with some distant relatives of their mothers, who they had never met before, in America.

The pair’s new family were better off than their original one, and life in America was much more comfortable and relaxed than it had been in England, the stresses and tensions of the broken home seemingly forgotten. However, the pair had grown up tough, and had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, the both of them eventually ending up in gangs, back to their old ways. Wanting desperately to be liked by her new “friends”, Chessa started offering up her body to gang members, in an attempt to become accepted, and to get herself in a position of some notoriety.

Their new parents tried hard to love them, but they were so extremely dissimilar to their adopted children that this became near impossible, and before too long a massive rift had formed between them. As soon as he was old enough to sustain himself, Chessa’s brother moved into a small apartment with some friends, bringing his little sister with him.

Her brother’s friends are almost exclusively thugs and scumbags, but Chessa is a girl who’s spent her entire life surrounded by thugs and scumbags, so she’s right at home amongst this particular crowd.

A ticking time bomb of rampant disorders and repressed feelings, all it will take is one little push before Chessa completely loses the plot, and the outbreak could well prove to be just that and more.

Skills:

Street smarts-Chessa has grown up amongst the worst humanity has to offer, and as such she knows when to stick up for herself and when to gracefully accept defeat.

Sadism/masochism-Chessa can dish out pain like it’s nobody’s business, and is more than willing to do so-without any reservations-at even the slightest provocation, should the situation allow it. At the same time, Chessa has grown used to being pushed around and beaten on by others, and can draw some gratification from this, having developed a glut for being smacked about, which-to her- makes it that much more gratifying when she stomps her opponents into the ground.

Weaknesses:

Arrogance-Chessa believes herself to be better than almost everyone else, and will continue to uphold this set of beliefs, unless given considerable evidence to prove otherwise. This makes it extremely hard for her to form friendships, as she will often simply try and exploit people until they are no longer useful to her.

Compulsions-Chessa’s crippled mental state can impair her decisions. If she believes something will bring immediate gratification to her darker needs, then she will take the road that will give her short term satisfaction, instead of long term success.

Your Turn: I’m curious as to whereabouts the setting is (for the purpose of interaction with other players) and also what timer period we’re in (I assumed it was modern day to near future).