maverick eshlin, a criminal born and raised in louisianaFor a few years leading up to the Fall, Maverick had been an active small time criminal, and had just recently become involved with a drug smuggling operation deep in New Orleans. Quickly, though, the activity had garnered the attention of the FBI and DEA, and after some dirty work had been done, Maverick fled, leaving his old friends behind to clean up the mess. With his former associates out for his head, and law enforcement wanting to lock him up, Maverick took the best way out he could think of and headed for the Northern Border, to escape into Canada. When the virus hit and society collapsed, Maverick had barely made it into Michigan, just short of his goal of making it across the Great Lakes. He was stranded and alone, and now had to deal with the dead rising around him.
⌝ appearanceMaverick stands on slender, toned legs, with the rest of his body following suit in form and tone. Never having been the most built or muscular man, Maverick has always been on the thin, lanky side, but it’s always worked in his advantage, most of the time at least. His wiry build holds him up at a healthy five feet, nine inches tall, a well rounded height to maintain a low profile. Overall, his figure is nothing of note and doesn’t draw much attention, but that’s exactly what he wanted, and it worked well for his previous life.
His hair is now a long, overgrown mess, with only traces of the well-kempt haircut he used to have left behind. His beard has taken over most of his face, with his narrow, naturally sort of pursed lips being nearly enveloped by encroaching mustache whiskers. His eyes are slightly sunken and dark, with bags and circles he’s had since before the Fall, but which have only been exacerbated since. He has what some people have described as “Resting Bitch Face”, meaning that his neutral facial expression usually isn’t a friendly or inviting one. His eyes are narrow and distrustful, with his smile being a thing of rarity.
⌝ personalityMost would say that Maverick has a cool personality, and some would say he’s cold nearly to a fault. His line of work and general upbringing never put much value in extended and warm conversation, and so he’s learned to be mostly succinct and efficient in his speaking. Sentences one or three words in length are normality, and his usual tone of voice is unsurprisingly also lacking in energy. Maverick has barely spoken a word in years, and his lack of social interaction really shows in conversation.
None of this should be taken as an express indication that Maverick is actually a cold, heartless man. Make no mistake, he’s no street tramp with a heart of gold or some sort of soft-spoken anti-hero, but he’s still a man with a decent set of morals and an intact sense of empathy and sympathy. It’s simply that, most of the time, his desire for expediency and efficiency keep most of these thoughts away from the forefront of mind. If you scratch his back, he’ll scratch yours, but don’t expect him to be jumping in front of moving vehicles anytime soon.
Maverick is not a man of thinking, he’s more a man of action. If something needs to get done, he’ll get it done, as long as he has a solid leader in his life. His lack of strong leaders in his development years led to him always searching for someone to give him direction, for someone to please, and that’s how he fell into crime and stayed so good at it. Give Maverick directions, and he’ll follow it up to the T, anything short of throwing himself off a cliff, he’ll accomplish to the best of his ability. That’s the only way he knows how to act, and it’s what kept him alive for so long in Louisiana. The Rangers were a great chance for him to find some semblance of organization again, as he’d spent the better part of the last 5 years wandering, staying just barely alive.
⌝ biographyBorn in New Orleans, Maverick spent a majority of his early life in a small suburb east of the Big Easy. His father left his life very early on, but not because he was some vagabond that couldn’t be bothered with a child by any means. His father, like Maverick would later become, was a career criminal, and decided one night to rob the wrong house, and was quickly shot and killed by the homeowner. Left by herself with a child and no job, Maverick’s mother tried her hardest to get her life together, throwing herself into multiple jobs, all while juggling the stress of raising a child alone, still in pain over the loss of her husband. Quickly, though, the pressure of a child and two jobs became too overbearing, and she reached a breaking point. What was once a little indulgence here and there to relieve stress, became crippling addiction that dictated her life more than her jobs and her child.
Maverick’s early childhood was a mess of being abandoned by his addict mother, and with no other family members she could even pass responsibility to, Maverick was truly alone. His memories are characterized by periods of hunger and sleeplessness, fighting off the fear of being alone, but even when his mother was present it wasn’t sunny. She tried her best to be the mother she knew she could be, but she had fallen so far from grace, her child learned to raise himself sooner than she could.
The pattern of abandonment and drug abuse continued for many years, that is, until the hurricane hit. In the disarray, Maverick was separated from his mother in the early hours of the morning due to the severe flooding, and was rescued just before sun up, in nothing short of a miracle for the young man. That same miracle couldn’t be replicated for his mother, though, as she remained missing, lost to the growing floodwaters. Going from refugee camp to refugee camp, his mother was nowhere to be found.
Even after all these years, Maverick has never found his mother, as she remains one of hundreds that are still considered missing to this day.
Having lost just about everything he had, from his only family, to his own few material possessions, Maverick had no means to travel anywhere to start anew. He had to drag himself back to his old life with only the clothes on his back, only now, there was almost nothing left of anyone else’s life, either. Same as his mother, a lot of his friends had gone missing or died in the floods too, so the few friends that he had, all banded together and tried their best to fend for each other.
Scavenging and thievery were the best way to get by for a while, but as reconstruction and revitalization efforts came underway, many of them were able to get steady jobs, with some slowly getting back on their feet and venturing out on their own. Others found it too difficult to continue living a shell of an old life, and either left, fell victim to addiction, or just gave up on life entirely. Those first few years after were the most difficult of Maverick’s life, but they forced him to grow up faster than he ever thought he’d have to, and molded much of who he is today.
Even when money began to flow back into the destruction-stricken area, it wasn’t always enough to keep those sinking people afloat, and just like before, many turned to crime to support themselves, Maverick being no different. It had been three years since the disaster, and Maverick was still struggling, both mentally and financially. Many of his friends had moved on and left, leaving Maverick alone once again. Seeing how many of his friends had taken to crime to support themselves, he followed suit, joining in on the ranks of petty street crime and drug dealing. Desperation and hunger make for a dedicated worker, and it wasn’t long before he caught the attention of some of the underworld’s veterans. Mack was known as a dedicated worker, who wasn’t afraid of a challenge or susceptible to the ordinary harassment or violent threats that people like him faced regularly.
Mack had ingratiated himself with the old guard, favors here and there, small time jobs from time to time. He’d proven to be reliable and honest, two traits that meant a lot, but most of all, he wasn’t a talker. Most joked that he’d never even learned to talk, and only knew how to communicate through nods and blinks. Jokes aside, his work ethic and professionalism had earned him a good name with those that it mattered with, and before he knew it, he was starting to move up in the ranks.
After a few years of hustling, just a week after his 23rd birthday, Mack was brought in on something much larger than himself. The bosses had become part of a much larger, statewide operation of smuggling drugs. No more dimebags or eight balls on street corners, this was bigger money and bigger stakes, all of which was enticing to Mack. He’d made good money off the streets, and was hungry for the chance to make even more.
The entire operation was based in the docks, where the increased amount of construction supplies coming in were used to smuggle more drugs than they had ever before. Yes, security was tight, but everyone was having a tough time, and the right people were easy to bribe. Once the cargo landed, that’s where Mack and his crew came in. They were in charge of making sure all the shipments were being broken down and transported properly and as secretly as possible. The less eyes and hands, the better, and he was thriving in the new environment. Working in the dark, quietly and diligently was the exact kind of work that he favored. As long as he kept his part of the daisy chain running smoothly, he was paid and fed well.
That was all well and good, for the moment, at least, but, large scale criminal operations like that take a lot more than a few greased palms and strong-armed snitches to keep under wraps. Distrust between the ranks began to grow. As small pawns here and there were caught and imprisoned, some were beginning to think that there was an informant in the mix. Soon, eyes fell to Maverick, and it came time to prove his loyalty.
In front of him was a single, bound man. In his hand, a loaded pistol. Behind the captive was a deep grave, dug in a filthy lot in a long abandoned part of town, and behind Maverick was a duo of criminal lieutenants, observing to be sure he could prove his loyalty to the bosses by killing someone they’d deemed expendable. When it came between Maverick’s life or the man in front of him, the choice seemed obvious and easy to him.
Not too long after it happened, it became clear that the man he killed was more than just a simple snitch, and now the docks were swarmed with police activity and surrviellance, and many of the bosses were going down with the ship. Maverick’s loyalty and hard work, however, only went as far as they could pay him, so instead of sticking around and seeing it all to the end, he fled. Mexico was too obvious a choice in his mind, and the southern border was far more secure and heavily-manned than the northern one, he imagined, so instead of south, he fled north. Even as most of his colleagues had decided to go down with the ship and keep the code of silence, Mack slipped away when the least attention was thrown his way, and made his dash for Canada.
The journey north was fraught with fear and loneliness, but if Maverick was to hang on to whatever freedom he had left, his life depended on it. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t been used to, though, and everything leading up to this point had properly prepared him to make this sort of trip. What it didn’t quite prepare him for, though, was the virus that had begun to take it’s grips on the country during his flight from Louisiana, and he found himself in the middle of Michigan when it finally all hit the fan. He wasn’t very close to any major cities, so he was spared of the initial carnage of it all, but the collapse’s effects inevitably spread wide and far, and what was a fight for his freedom turned into a fight for his life.
After the Fall, he never did leave the state of Michigan, as, after society collapsed, there was little reason to continue into Canada, where he’d probably have an even harder time surviving. Quickly, though, he found himself scavenging and surviving alone, until he found reliable stability in Wolfwater. Even now, with relative safety, Maverick desired a new sense of purpose. Crime was no longer an exception, it was more or less the norm, and Maverick had tired of running around and working only for the benefit of others who made a profit off his work. In the Rangers, he saw a chance to work with good, dependable people for a change, and for a positive goal, no less. Not so much a transformation, it was more of a “predictable transition” for the criminal. If you could call it that, at least.
⌝ gear▣ Glock 22 .40Cal Handgun x1
- 15 Round Magazine x3
- SilencerCo Osprey Supressor x1
▣ A Medium Combat Knife
▣ Brass Knuckles
▣ Compact set of Binoculars
▣ IFAK Medkit ⌝ skills◈ Resilient - Maverick hasn’t just used sheer luck to persevere through the hardship that’s been presented to him. He learned young that he’d have to learn how to process and deal with adverse situations quickly, and have a level head about any sort of obstacle. He may not be good at encouraging others, but he is good at keeping himself afloat and clear minded.
◈ Hardened - Crime wasn’t an easy job, and one has to put up with a lot of threatening talk and physical violence in that line of work. It will take more than a few punches or violent words to bother Maverick, which is proving fairly useful in this new world.
◈ Brawler - Having been in a fair share of fist fights and melee brawls, Maverick is well versed in the ways of an amatuer pugilist, and can use his brass knuckles to great effect. His grappling and footwork have helped him stay away from the snapping maws of infected countless times in the past, and will probably continue to do so for a while more.
◈ Criminally Skilled - Need a car hotwired? What about a lock picked? Or maybe you just need someone who can shoot guns out of moving vehicles and actually hit something? Well, all of that is in Maverick’s wheelhouse and he’s not scared to use any skills he can to survive.
◈ Terrifying Presence - Always being around the worst of the worst, and having your life threatened on a regular basis can really thicken someone’s skin and give them a look on their face that most others don’t find comforting. Combine his cold looks with his cold demeanor, and you have someone that is naturally a bit intimidating, and someone that can get downright scary when he really needs to get a point across.
⌝ flaws◇ No Teddy Bear - On the flip side of that coin, having a mean look on your face and not talking much isn’t very conducive to making friends or having people like you. People tend to be turned away by his abrasive nature, and he’s not exactly the best at winning back through anything but great effort. He’s not good at talking himself out of situations or making good deals on trades either, unless maybe he can intimidate to get out of a tight spot.
◇ Walled Up - Maverick has gone through a lot of loss and tribulation, and it has made him unwilling to forge relationships with new people, both out of fear of making connections and plainly not wanting to be bothered with it. It even ends up making him unwilling to allow others to help him, hiding wounds and refusing assistance, even when he probably should.
◇ Self-Centered - While able to pragmatically work with and cooperate with people when it’s mutually beneficial, Maverick isn’t very willing to do things that benefit exclusively other people or actively harm his well-being for the sake of others. He’ll leave you behind, if you trip, you better get yourself up. Not the best battle buddy to have.
⌝ Other
Nothing I can think of right now.
