Name: Elissa “Ellie” Rivers

Age: 15

Gender: Female

Nomadic or sedentary: Currently nomadic, prefers to be sedentary.

Weapons: a whole boxful of her male caretaker’s shurikens. (See background) Also a slingshot.

Skills: She’s unexpectedly good at throwing those shurikens and managing to retrieve them. Also she’s a decent cook, having been the sole one providing food for herself and her sister for the last six years. She’s also quite good at first-aid.

Any unusual traits? Does it show physically?: None

Appearance: Ellie stands about 5’2” and weighs about 100 pounds, with a too-thin, once athletic build. She has earlobe length chocolate brown hair and alert green eyes, and tan skin and freckles across a stubborn nose and high cheekbones. Usually she wears ragged tank-tops and tee-shirts over leggings or jeans and sneakers.

Brief Personality: Ellie’s had to grow up too fast, being her sister’s only caretaker. To describe her in a word would be “broken”. She’s watched everyone she loves get hurt or killed by the cruelty of this world they live in, and she’s fairly jaded as a result. She’s quite intelligent and quick-thinking; she’s had to be, to survive.

Background(Please reveal your current location): Ellie was born in the year 2024. Her parents lived in a fortress called Haven, a fortified town that no one could come into. For the first eight years of her life, she lived in some semblance of normalcy, going to a daycare and rudimentary elementary school while her mom and dad went out fighting bandit groups. Anna was born when she was six and a half. Just two years after that, the walled town was burned by a bandit group. Ellie had been left in charge of Anna and had gone on a foraging trip; they were the only survivors. Everyone who had lived in the town had been slaughtered, either in the flames or afterwards as they tried to flee.

They got along well, just the two of them. Anna was preternaturally aware, as alert and intelligent as an adult, despite being stuck in the body of a two-year-old. But the constant running and fear was no place for a two-year-old and a nine-year-old. To buy some protection, Ellie managed to fall in with a gang of teen- and tween-age boys, though she had to do some awful deeds as “rent” to ensure that she wouldn’t wake up one morning to find herself bleeding to death or watching her sister being violated. Both of which happened to some of the other young girls who had been with the group.

Ellie was the only one in the group who could do even basic first aid. That was mostly why they kept her around and fed her. Four years went by in this… mutual non-hatred. When one of the teens cut himself on a rusty piece of metal, she tried to save him, but she couldn’t stop the infection. He died within a week. The rest of the group figured that she must have deliberately allowed the infected boy to die, and so they decided that it wasn’t worth it to keep her around, thinking her to be at best inept and at worst a traitor. They hurt her and hurt Anna, cutting them up with rusty scraps of metal and leaving them to die.

At this point they were in the city that had, according to Ellie’s rudimentary knowledge of geography, at one point been called New York City. They were taken in by a middle-aged couple who found them dying of infection in the middle of the road. These old people were kind and caring, and shared what food, water, and shelter they had. The woman, a skilled army medic when she had been in her prime, taught Ellie more advanced first-aid. The man, who had been very much a “nerd” in his time and found himself obsessed with Japanese culture, had boxes and boxes of throwing stars, samurai swords, and all sorts of other such paraphernalia. He taught Ellie how to use the throwing stars and raised her as his daughter.

This lasted for about a year, until their world fell apart. As with all the other people that Ellie had grown to love, these parental figures were murdered. They had gone to gather supplies and they didn’t return. When three days passed, Ellie and Anna went to look for them, and found their heads stuck on the mailbox post and their cut-up, mutilated bodies scattered up and down the alley. This was on Ellie’s fifteenth birthday, exactly two weeks ago—the day that Anna calls her sister’s “loss of humanity”.

Indeed, something within Ellie snapped when she saw that. A macabre birthday surprise, the ones she loved being turned into human balloons and human confetti, and scattered across the city street. She took supplies from her adoptive parent’s house, as many supplies as she could carry, and fled, northwest (quite an arbitrarily chosen direction, but then, she wasn’t thinking.)

Alone or with someone?: With her little sister Anna fleeing through New Jersey.

Other: Currently has in her possession three bottles of decent-quality water, a first-aid kit, a bag of dried fruits and vegetables, some rope, duct tape, a pocket knife, a sleeping bag, a box of assorted Japanese weaponry, and a slingshot.

Name: Annalyn “Anna” Rivers

Age: 8

Gender: Female

Nomadic or sedentary: Prefers to be sedentary but is currently on the run with her sister.

Weapons: A slingshot and whatever rocks, pebbles, or random round objects she can find

Skills: Anna is preternaturally intelligent for a girl of her age. She has a fabulous sense of direction (although no actual knowledge of geography.)

Any unusual traits? Does it show physically?: She has a photographic memory. Also she’s mostly mute, preferring not to talk to anyone unless it’s necessary. She uses a sign-language of sorts most of the time.

Appearance: Anna is quite small for her age, standing about 3’6” and weighing only about 40 pounds. Her skin is pale, for she doesn’t spend much time in the sun (unlike her sister) and her eyes are a bright blue. Her hair is a dark brown that hangs in ringlets to her hips and is usually left in a braid. She wears pretty much whatever she can find, usually tee-shirts and track shorts or similar outfits over sneakers.

Brief Personality (Try to show most of your character's personality IC instead of giving it all away): Anna is a very shy, frightened young girl. She’s very perceptive, always seeming to know what’s going on even when she hasn’t entirely been paying attention. The truth of it is that she usually doesn’t let herself pay attention because her mutated, enhanced mind, and the things she remembers, absolutely terrify her, and she wants to quit making such clear memories.

Background(Please reveal your current location): See Ellie’s bio.

Alone or with someone?: With Ellie fleeing to New Jersey.

Other: Really wants to meet another kid closer to her own age. Ellie’s the youngest person she’s met thus far, not counting the kids back at Haven, when she was still in the nursery for hours on end. Currently has on her person a slingshot and a bottle of water.