Characters
Below all of our characters will be listed. My party is below:
Starboard Watch's Party
Bye bye, love.
Bye bye, sweet caress.
Hello, emptiness.
I feel like I could die.
Bye bye, my love, goodbye...
Horace Sherman
In another life, in another time, perhaps Horace would've been a lawman protecting a community that he loved. Or perhaps he would've been a soldier, fighting for his homeland against the aggressors. He could've taken up a flag, made it his own, and put in every ounce of his soul to protect it. God knows he tried many times - so many times - to find a place to call home. But the Wastes' unforgiving nature made this impossible, and nothing more than a dream.
Born in the desolate town of Hawthorne, tucked away somewhere halfway between New Reno and Vegas, he could've lived a simple life. He could've taken up the trade of his father, a simple tinkerer, and lived out his days in obscurity and in ignominy. It would've been a pleasant life, if a bit boring. It would've, if God did not turn against the town and blight Horace's life with constant struggle. For at the young age of twelve, the entire town was descended upon by raiders. They spared little, and destroyed so much. A once thriving community, an oasis in the desert, was ransacked and left for ruin. Horace's family, his entire clan, were butchered before his eyes as he hid in a barrel.
Some days, dark days, he wishes he would've died with them. A part of him died that day anyway.
With his only home in flames, the young boy left and wandered the desert north, towards New Reno. He was picked up by a caravan on its way to Hawthorne, and they brought him back with them to the Biggest Little City in the World. One of the drivers, the eldest of the group by far by the name of Boyce, took him in and raised him as best he could in his old age. He brought him along the Brahmin trails and the caravan routes stretching from New Canaan to Vault City, and soon became an indispensable figure on the long routes. He was quick shot, easily handling a repeater, and soon earned his keep.
But it wasn't meant to last.
Returning from the Long Haul to New Canaan, they found that the caravan company had been bought out and liquidated by the Crimson Caravan, another victim of the Californians. Forced out of a job, and quickly afterwards out of his home, Horace took up his rifle and what little belongings he could carry and ventured out into the Wastes. He traveled a little bit, until he stumbled upon a Desert Ranger outpost. Welcomed in initially as a simple refugee after telling the story of Hawthorne, he quickly made himself useful and joined up with the Rangers as they patrolled the stretch of highway leading from New Reno to New Vegas.
And so he lived the life of a Ranger, protecting the roving caravans and laying down law to the towns along the Stretch. One of these towns, Goldfield - in the shade of Montezuma's Peak, became his regular spot. He grew to love it, to nurture it, and to care for it. Horace even found a lady, and began a courtship that would lead to ruin. He fell in love with this Latin beauty, by the name Eunice, and set out to make her his. But she had been pledged to another, a brutal Brahmin driver, who did not take kindly to the Ranger consorting with his betrothed.
The two settled their dispute with a challenge: a duel. And Horace's draw was quicker than the Brahmin driver's. As he lay dying on the ground just outside of town, the Ranger hopped on his horse and rode away, the screams of Eunice cursing him to a life of ruin echoing into his ears.
He drifted about the Ranger outposts in relative obscurity until, in 2271, the Rangers merged with the NCR's. This was unacceptable to Horace, who soon left the Rangers behind and set off into the desert. The only thing that kept his life secure, the only thing that made sense, had been ripped from him. He felt insulted, betrayed, and angry. The roads that he followed all led to Vegas, and he soon found himself in Westside.
There, he was able to kick his feet up a little bit. These people, they didn't know his past. He could rewrite himself, and so he did. He pretended to be a lawman, roving the Wastes in search of ending injustice. And the people believed him! And they took him in, putting him in with their militia, which was tasked with repelling the Fiend gangs that roved outside the walls. Horace took joy - immense and immeasurable pleasure - in killing them. He imagined that each of them were those raiders who, nearly thirty years before, had killed his family. He ended their lives slowly, making sure they felt the pain that he did.
When the Second Battle of Hoover Dam came, and all of the chaos that followed, Horace soon rose to be the unofficial sheriff of Westside. They repelled roving gangs of raiders and pillagers in the chaos directly following the NCR Evacuation, and managed to restore law to that part of Vegas. But it wasn't to last. Soon, bounty hunters from Goldfield came to Westside in search of the fugitive Ranger, who proceeded to shoot them dead. He left that night, heading off towards the south in search of a quiet town where he could retire, or at least kill himself in peace.
As he readied himself to leave Vegas, he read the news of the Courier, the Leader of the Free State, calling on volunteers to head East. And with little other option in his tank, he took it. There was no other choice, and besides, he doubted that bounty hunters would cross into the wild lands of the East to come and find it. The caps weren't worth it.
Razor & Wire, their real names Nelson and Jean, never knew their families. Or their past. Or even where they were born. Most of it was washed away in the trauma of the Legion's assault on their tribe, and in the years of servitude to the Legionaries. Brutally beaten down all their lives, they were subjugated to the worst treatments of the cruelest of Caesar's Army.
Razor was used as a live training dummy by the foot soldiers, who practiced their martial arts on him with brutal efficiency. They beat him to a pulp in every way imaginable, from the youngest of the boys to the hardest Centurion. The Legionaries made sure to hurt him enough to remind him of his place, enough to practice their art truly, but also just enough to ensure that he would make a full enough recovery to go again. And again. And again.
Wire, on the other hand, was earmarked almost immediately as a Legionary sex slave. Even from a young age, she was groomed to become the local Centurion's whore. It was against Caesar's code of conduct to consort and to have relations with the slaves, to be sure, but every Legionary did it anyway. And the local Centurion was the cruelest and the most vile of them all. She dreaded the day that she would walk through his tent, and when the day came, she vowed to leave. To run as far as she could.
Razor and Wire left in the middle of the night, no one but themselves knowing of their plans. They managed, out of sheer luck, to break off the slave collars and ran for the hills of Arizona. They didn't stop until they reached the Colorado, practically swimming across to Port Aradesh. In their last stretch, they were sighted by Legionaries who shot at them from their side of the river.
The NCR troopers on watch spotted them swimming across, and exchanged covering fire with the Legion before the pair crossed into NCR territory. There, they were given clothes, food, and a place to stay. The NCR troopers mentioned New Vegas to the North, and suggested that they head there. It was, in the words of the NCR soldier, a place to start over. To win it all.
And so the pair went off with a caravan into Vegas, reaching the city in time to find that a new state had been declared. An independent state, free of the NCR and of the Legion. Taking on new names, they settled in Freeside for a time, finding work prospecting in the ruins and helping the Followers, but their luck ran out when a gang of thugs robbed them and chased them out of Freeside. With no where to go, they headed down the Long 15, stopping at Sloan.
Razor found work as a miner in the excavation pits, working hard to provide for Wire, who worked with the Followers' Doctor who tended to the miners in the town. It was a hard life, but it was better than the Legion. And so when the word came that the Courier was calling upon volunteers to head East, they volunteered at once. To spite the Legion, and to rebuild a life that had gone so wrong at the beginning.
Born in Shady Sands, in the heart of the Republic, Kaspar Morgan could've become a bureaucrat. Worked his way through the political machine of the NCR, weaseled his way into Congress. He could've sat comfortably in his Congressional seat until he felt the call of the Presidency, and when he won that, he would've gone down in history as one of the Republic's finest Presidents, rivaling even Tandi.
But, that's the could'ves and would'ves.
His family were government workers, his father a small-time cop working in the city's police department, and his mother a clerk at the local post office. Meager beginnings, for sure, but they had high expectations of their only child. They were too busy with their own work to sire another, or to even bother raising him on their own. Left to his own devices, under direction of a Followers scholar acting as his teacher, he began to manifest an independent streak, gradually turning away from the system his parents hoped to raise him to join.
The Followers scholar, a man by the name of Stocks, taught him the closest thing to a classical education he could provide in the post-Atomic Horror. He was brought up on old books of the pre-War era, the old philosophers and their works, on ancient holotapes filled with knowledge hidden in plain sight. Perhaps it was the Followers teacher's intention all along to raise Kaspar to be against the New Californian system, or perhaps that simply happened by chance. In whatever event, he was turned so radically against the system and turned towards the Followers of the Apocalypse, joining their order and leaving whatever machinations his parents had behind.
They, aghast by his decision, disowned him. Cursed his very name. Their own son, no less! His father mocked him, calling him a misguided fool following a dying order. His mother, well, she was far less charitable. She threw every insult in the book at him as he packed his belongings and left at the age of 16, leaving his family and Shady Sands behind as he left with his mentor heading to a school outside the city. He never saw Shady Sands, or his family, ever again.
He spent the next five years studying, training, learning everything he could get his hands on. But he was a poor student in anything that wasn't the arts. Kaspar wasn't a very accomplished doctor, in a world and a time when doctors were in high demand and the Followers seemed to be providing more medicinal help than anything else. But his skill with languages earned him a place with the Followers, learning tribal languages like they were always locked in his brain.
After he left the school, he was posted to a mission in the Northern Frontier, in what was before the War the Northwest Commonwealth, somewhere in Oregon. They were stationed with a tribe in the shadow of the ruins of Salem, in the old Williamette Forests, by the name of the Bone-Dancers. They were a gifted people, capable of peace and understanding just as much as they were cruelty and violence. The Followers sought to foster their peaceful nature, tempering their hostile ways. But as Kaspar learned their language, embedded himself in their culture, he found that it was untenable. These people were so tied to their ways, the way their pidgin creole molded their minds made it almost impossible to separate their ways from that. Ten years of his life were spent in their company, earning the tribe's trust.
As a show of gratitude for years of faithful service, the Tribal Chieftain offered his daughter to the Follower. She was a beautiful little thing, by the name of Opfeal. A native beauty if there ever was one, and she had been one of his most eager students. He dismissed the other Followers, who insisted that he politely turn down the offer, he at once married her and ingrained himself further with the Bone-Dancers. The other Followers, one by one, soon deserted Kaspar, who had become something closer to a Wild Man in their eyes. Soon, only he was left from the original mission. It seemed his independent life had finally been accomplished, that he had succeeded what he set out to do.
But it all came crashing down.
A rival tribe, the Rivermen, who inhabited the stretches of land along the Williamette River, began an aggressive campaign against the Bone-Dancers. One by one, their towns were sacked and burned, their men killed, their women raped, and their children abducted. When the Rivermen descended upon the last town, where Kaspar and Opfeal lived, they barely escaped with their lives. Fleeing south back to New California with what little remained of the Bone-Dancers, they were forced to start over. Kaspar reluctantly rejoined the Followers, being seen something like an outcast, and Opfeal tagged along with him.
Embarrassed by his presence, the Followers sent him out to the Mojave. He made the long travel from Modoc, through New Reno, out towards New Vegas - side-stepping the Divide, which in his absence had mysteriously been destroyed. They reached the Mojave around the same time as the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, taking up residence in Freeside as Kaspar assisted the Followers at Old Mormon Fort with what little he could do. He spent most of his time tending to the children, teaching them and instructing them even under such anarchic times. When the Courier established the Free State, and invited the Followers into the arrangement, Kaspar soon found new employment.
He was sent into Inner Vegas, which was getting redeveloped as more than just a collection of casinos and tourist traps. It was, in the Courier's vision, to become a place of industry, of learning, of true living. And so Kaspar went into Inner Vegas, setting up a school where he taught the children of the gamblers and the Families and whoever else lived in that Sin Strip. While he sought to separate himself from the darkness, Opfeal became increasingly enamored with it. At the Circus, just a little bit down the Strip from the Tops, she picked up a job as a dancer. And one thing led to another, as they so often do in Vegas.
Kaspar was disgusted, ashamed that he had brought this innocent tribal girl to such a place, and sought to leave. Goodsprings had an opening at their schoolhouse, which had just been rebuilt. But Opfeal refused, enjoying the life of debauchery too much. And, in the end, they split after a terrible row. But he vowed that he loved her, and would continue to do so, and would be waiting when she returned to her sense. Leaving Vegas, he went down to Goodsprings for a while, trying to forget Vegas, to forget Opfeal. He lost himself in his work, teaching the settlers and their children as best he could. He mulled on and on about leaving the Mojave, returning to California, but he could never bring himself to do it. He held out hope that she would return to him.
The years went by, and while the candlelight of hope waned, it still held out.
He was contacted by the Followers of the Apocalypse to lead the Prescott Expedition, to act as an overseer of the community. Seeing his chance of leaving the Mojave, he took it at once. But, before he left, he sent a letter to Opfeal by courier, telling her that he was heading East, and that if she decided to come back, he would be there.
And so, even now, in the far East, he holds out hope.
