Ugh I love this idea! Here's some characters for your consideration:
As for the zombies, here are some ideas:
Transmission Type
I think that the infection should spread either through bite only or bodily fluids only. If we go with bite, I think we should have people turn upon being bitten. With bodily fluids, I think upon ingestion.
Senses
Dulled hearing, heightened sight.
Weaknesses
In my opinion, zombies should want to avoid sunlight. I feel like this will make sense with fire also being a weakness.
 _______________________________________________ | Zaneta “Zaney or Zane” Tiphus | 21 | cis female | bisexual | | former novitiate | _______________________________________________  | APPERANCE ____________________________________________________________________________ With her back, hands, and forehead covered in scars, Zaneta is known to wear her hair long with a silk veil that’s ornately held back by pearl-encrusted clips. She refuses to let anyone see the right side of her face, given the garish mark that strikes through it. There are two tattoos on her wrists and two on either side of her hips. No one can ever see what the ones on her wrist say, as she usually wears black out of habit. Despite her dark dress, her bright baby blue eyes are constantly locked in a state of wide-eyed innocence. She can usually get whatever she wants with a bat of her eyelashes. It also helps that she’s average height, coming to about 5’6’’ without shoes on. Her wardrobe consists of pearl hair clips, organza and silk veils, black dresses with plenty of lace, black and white skirts that barely pass for sensical clothing, a wide array of tube tops, sweatshirts, and pants, and even her old derby jersey, an array of rosaries she’s added chains from her old sets of jewelry to in order to spice things ups, ridiculously big cross or hoop earrings, cowboy boots and go-go boots, Docs with the heels so worn down it’s a miracle they are even wearable, platforms that make her too fashionable for the apocalypse, black mom jeans, black bustier, and a white pirate shirt. Zane prides herself on being fashionable for the apocalypse. PERSONALITY ____________________________________________________________________________ Bubbly | Confident | Adventurous | Restless | Rebellious | Resourceful | Flirtatious | Apathetic How do you solve a problem like Zaneta? She always has this naive sense of the world, even though she’s fully aware of its evils. She’s like a cat- she always lands on her feet, and it’s gotten to the point where she relies on that. Zaney is fully aware of what people think of her, particularly in regards to her bubbly nature… and the fact that she’s known to flirt with anything that moves. Still, discounted her entire life as a silly, little airhead, Zaneta prides herself on her confidence that often translates into foolish bravery and strong headedness. If someone needs a spider killed, monsters shooed away, or a zombie slaughtered, Zaneta is the first to volunteer. She’s always open to talk to new people, even if they’re dead and trying to eat her brains. Simply put, it's easier to let Zaney run free than to abridge her adventurous nature because good things happen more often than bad things. Usually. She’s at least gotten this far on her strong will. Some call Zaney a chaos junkie, given the way she’s drawn to always start a fight. Really, she just feels like she has no place in the world. She tried the whole God thing, but turns out she’s too free-spirited for such a position. Before joining the nunnery, she tried college but dropped out after she realized she liked roller derby more than solving quadratic equations (seriously… why did anyone think that Zaneta would excel in a math degree?). Before that, she was the star cheerleader. Nothing’s ever stuck with Zaney, except derby and her rebellious spirit. Perhaps she should join a commune. Despite her overflowing spirit, Zaneta still struggles with appealing to people’s feelings. She simply doesn’t understand them usually, even though she’s well-aware of her own. It surely doesn’t help that she used to cut up dead animals at a kid just to “look at their insides,” but she swears she’s not a serial killer. At least not one for humans… maybe zombies though. Zaneta’s just got more goals in life than feelings for it. She wants to get things done, contribute to the world in some way. Not sit around talking about her sadness. BIOGRAPHY ____________________________________________________________________________ Zaneta’s life didn’t really begin until her senior year. She lived simply with her mother (her father unknown), busting kneecaps on her roller derby team (If you want to know, her nickname was Fridge. Don’t ask). Zaneta was called “Zaney” and loved by almost everyone who got to meet her. Sure, she had ultimate Elle Woods energy, and her grades were abysmal, but she managed to go to college with a little bit of effort. She dropped out only a few years later, making people think she was some type of idiot. Except, Zaneta had always been smart. She’s just never applied herself and was blonde so everyone assumed the party, it-girl was stupid beyond recognition. No, Zaneta simply enjoyed putting her skills to other uses. Like turning their rival school’s entire football team against each other because she was dating all of them at the same time, resulting in them turning on each other in the middle of the game (she kissed one of them during halftime) and allowing her school to go to states for the first time in almost fifty years. She did the same thing with the Debate Team, but no one wants to note that they were gullible to let her do it twice. When she started college, no one expected Zaney to go into math. Especially not calculus. However, she did it anyway, and she almost graduated. But, being Zaneta, nothing could hold her fascination that long. Therefore, her next obvious conclusion was to become a nun. For some reason. Her thinking was that she’d become like Mother Tereasa, just without all the terrible qualities. You see, the reason why she wanted to become a mathematician was because she wanted to be the next Einstein. Now, she was looking to become a philanthropist and servant of God. She lasted all of six months before quitting, unable to stay away from roller derby and her friends. After that, she started working at a local diner, trying to come up with a new goal. When the apocalypse hit Texas, Zaneta was planning a road trip to Florida with her gal pals where they were going to do all the things they could only do on the weekends in Austin. Her mom came home that day, greased up from working on the underbelly of a car at work, and turned on the news to discover that the entire world was falling apart. Something shifted in Zelda that day, and she forced Zaney to throw out anything she had packed in her Jeep for the trip that didn’t have a survival use and revealed to have hidden a duffle bag filled with an entire Army base worth of weapons under her bed for years. They set off towards Nevada that evening and Zaneta woke up the next day to find that her friends, who had set off without her, had been killed by a swarm of zombies, at least what sounded like zombies based on how It was how it was described on the radio. After everything turned to shit, Zaneta and her mom roamed for a while before they finally found their way to Chicago. It wasn’t long before her mother started to show signs of drifting away. She’d leave for a few hours and come back just before dark. Then, one day, her mom got too brave and the wild look in her eyes made Zaney go after her. She doesn’t remember what happened after that, only that her mom didn’t come back, but she did. She assumes her mom’s dead. After all, Zaneta returned with cuts on her hands and back, marrying up her forehead and cheek. It certainly didn’t help that she couldn’t remember anything that happened. Still, even though she can’t get answers about her wounds, she blames herself for her mother’s death. OTHER AND HEADCANNONS ____________________________________________________________________________ Unknown | #456593
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 _______________________________________________ | Aran “A.J” Ahmadov | 22 | cis male | bisexual | | college student and drug dealer | _______________________________________________   | APPERANCE ____________________________________________________________________________ Standing at 6’3’’, Aran is lanky and long. He stands like an Enderman, with long arms reaching out to grab things. He wears round glasses that manage to soften some of the features of his face, especially because he’s made of long, harsh lines. On top of his glasses, A.J. has dark brown curly hair. It’s often in his face or forming a strange halo. Usually, Aran can be found wearing big, hefty sweaters with his favorite red low-top Converses. He’s a simple guy, and he dresses like an indie kid, even during the apocalypse. PERSONALITY ____________________________________________________________________________ Bubbly | Attentive | Intuitive | Organized | Calm | Over-protective | Big-mouthed | Finicky |Deceptive | Eccentric As the glue of his college friend group, Aran is extremely aware of other people's needs and opinions. He ensures anyone and everyone feels welcome and loved. Believing in karmic justice, Aran does this in hopes of people reciprocating the kindness he spreads. Suffering from a sub-par high school social experience, he knows what it's like to feel left out, so he has a tendency to organize every social event and D&D game to a T. Aran can't have a brunch without giving everyone a place card, attempting to mix up the group and keep everyone in touch with each other. He's the one who’s always messages the group chat first, asking everyone for an update on their lives. He would never exclude anyone, and he expects to be involved. In fact, he'll make himself involved. On top of being hyper-involved with everyone's lives and ultra-supportive, Aran is a calming presence. Perhaps it can come across as uncaring to the unfamiliar eye, but he's incredible at quieting a room of everyone's worries. In addition to this, he's able to read a room quickly, picking up on the minute details and intricate emotions. Because of this, he's the type of person to hug someone without needing to know what's going on. Due to his family's tendency to ignore him, Aran is an expert at making people feel loved and understood. He believes in being supportive without being pushy (or so he thinks). Aran doesn't need to know why you're crying, even if he's going to grill you once those tears dry up. Aran chooses to call his intense involvement in his friends' lives being over-protective. A less conservative judgment would be that he's overbearing and controlling. It comes from a good place, but he can't reel it in to a normal level. Oftentimes, he'll get into fights about what his behavior is classified as. So maybe he spent two hours Insta-stalking that girl you mentioned finding cute in your Psych class or he emailed your professor about you being sick... that just means he cares! He'll defend you to the very end, but he can't promise he won't cause bodily harm to the one who hurt you. Unfortunately, Aran also suffers from being a massive gossip. He can't seem to keep everyone's ideas to himself. This comes from his tendency to be "too much" when it comes to caring for others. He just needs to discuss with his nearest confidant about how to deal with your choice in significant other. There's an inherent attempt to do good with this also, but, obviously, he's telling everyone other people's business. On top of Aran's intense involvement in other people's lives, he's extremely particular about how things are done. He feels compelled to control everything, and if it isn't done the "proper way," he'll take over the entire situation. Aran will fix anything he feels wasn't done right. This makes him awful in group projects, but it can also annoy his friends, especially when playing D&D. He hates it when other people mess with his narrative, convinced his creativity is enough to create a magical experience for everyone. Overall, Aran is an awful collaborator. Aran can just... be a lot to handle. He's lovable, definitely, but he tends to be over-the-top about everything. Simple isn't a normal appearance when it comes to Aran. He prefers to call this eccentricity, like the type a billionaire who invests in flamethrowers or Beanie Babies has. Still, it's often more annoying than anything. He comes to every D&D meeting with mood music ready, a powerpoint of aesthetic pictures, and even props if he has the time. At his apartment, he has a collection of those plastic babies that are a meme except he paints them all and creates specialized name tags for them. They're essentially his form of an old woman's tchotchkes. Perhaps some of this is a strength, but it intensifies his other faults. Even before the games began to infiltrate his life, Aran is a master in the art of deceptiveness. He's able to live two different personalities simultaneously, and, when he gets caught, it tends to piss people off. He's either this hyper-organized, over-bearing, lovable geek or he's dealing weed at the next frat party. This makes him a fantastic liar by default. Aran can easily slip from one personality to the other, and he often feels terrible about it. He isn't a compulsive liar, but he does what he can whilst suffering a massive identity crisis. As one of the more classically nerdy people of the group, Aran still holds onto a lot of his freshman year passions (despite not really being that guy anymore). He's a Trekkie, rages about GoT (especially that last season), reads the books before the movies/tv shows, and frequents various fan-theory Reddits. Another remnant of his younger and much more innocent self is his "go-get-'em attitude". He doesn't use it for acing exams anymore, but it's still a huge part of Aran's personality. Now, he uses it to keep his double life a secret from his family and friends. Flying by the seat of his pants, Aran manages to be in two places at once, it seems. Determination is a guiding light for Aran, and he uses it for good and bad (depending on your interpretation). Spending a large amount of high school friends-less (or with shitty ones), Aran wore the label of "nerd" as a badge of honor. Although he's definitely grown past limiting his identity to one thing, he's still seen as the smart one by his peers- despite failing half of his classes this semester. Witty, without the wool pulled over his eyes, and a problem-solver, Aran is still as intelligent as he was in high school. Knowing that there are people much smarter than him, Aran has a tendency to overcompensate by being the leader of any function. Although his glaring flaws have the capability to make a group project or outing miserable, he's still the best one for the job. Unwilling to let obstacles get in his way, Aran will ride into the storm first, leading the pack into war. In a more practical sense, he's the type of guy to order water for the whole table at a restaurant so nobody sits in awkward silence and glaring at the waiter. BIOGRAPHY ____________________________________________________________________________ Living in San Diego his entire life, Aran has had only a few different places he's called home. His mother and father moved the family only once during his adolescence. And they only moved down the block to a bigger home after his father got a promotion. The wildest his living situation ever got (outside of living on his own) was when they lived with his dementia-ridden grandmother, for three months during their second home's renovations. A true bohemian, his grandmother was Maude from [italics] Harold and Maude [/italics] to the core; her house was shrouded in plants (a trait he picked up), sage-flavored incense (to which Aran question why she didn't just burn sage) constantly burned, and she read people's fortunes for a little extra retirement funding (which she promptly spent at the casino). His parents would call this the worst three months of their lives, but Aran calls it the best and the most formative. Aran suffers from classic middle child syndrome, and as a result, he often craves being the leader. Otherwise, he feels a bit lost in his role in life. However, this go-getter attitude also makes him the glue in many friendships. Aran is astounding at planning events and bringing everyone closer. He is always ready to put on a show for his DnD group, which is why it is a shame he was never good enough for school plays and musicals. Always the lowest-level tech assistant, never even a supporting character . . . But that is all behind him now. He has turned expectations around by being a masterful DM. The silly voices, the elaborate puzzles, the tricky plot twists ━ it's all there. There are just a few small problems. Aran is from a very relaxed, happy suburban life. His parents, Moon and Kasem Ahmadov, work respectable, middle-class jobs. His siblings, Akara and Venus, have never gone off the deep end. His family doesn't even have a black sheep. Unless . . . he's the black sheep? As the only one to attend University of Chicago, Aran is the king of subverting his straight-laced parents' expectations. Akara, his older brother, is currently a first-year grad student at Harvard Law. Venus, whose name comes from the insistence of Aran's grandmother prior to her passing, is on the road to being a world-class pianist. As the only one predicted to have a sub-par career, Aran knows he's the odd thumb of the family. No one will acknowledge it, but he senses it's on everyone's minds, despite only communicating with his family via FaceTime and their group chat. As a teen, Aran always struggled to be seen. Even amongst his siblings, he felt ignored by them. Since there are a few years between him and Venus, they never really communicated about anything important. He was overly protective of her, as he is with all people, but she never understood his nerdy interests, only entertaining them when she had nothing else to do. Closer with his brother, Aran and Akara were troublemakers as children. They enjoyed playing harmless pranks on their schoolmates, parents, and especially their baby sister. However, as the two got older, they began to grow apart. Akara, despite having lackluster grades compared to Aran, was the star of the family, the prize. He was student body president all four years of high school, and he won several orator scholarships, leaving more than enough money to pay for Aran and Venus' college diplomas. Like Aran, Akara is also a problem-solver. The only problem is this has always outshone Aran and what he views as his most valuable asset: his ability to orchestrate everything. Even though he was valedictorian, his parents only gave him a pat on the back. Despite all this, he was close to his parents at one point. Before Venus was born, he was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kid, and his parents were always entertained by his antics, even when they got him in trouble. They used to stand by Aran and defend him against principles, critical relatives, and his own brother. "He's too sensitive... too nosey!" was a common complaint, but Kasem encouraged his youngest son to ignore them. "Most people just don't like that you know your ass from your mouth," he would tell Aran. His mother always encouraged him to be the person he is today, although perhaps a little less big-mouthed, saying, "Most people don't care... you do. Don't change that." All of this changed after the '08 crash and the family gained a member, only to lose a whole college fund's worth of money. Now, Aran is expected to find a money-making job to relieve all the stress of working extra hours (even with Akara paying largely his own way) so he could go to school. It was in high school that Aran faded into the background of his family, and he wasn't listened to anymore. All he got was criticism, the type his parents used to defend him against. As his only champion, his grandmother hosted Aran on days where he couldn't stand his parents fawning over Akara and Venus whilst no one talked about his working-a-job-and-getting-all-A's-feat. She picked up the torch his parents dropped, but she added her own twist. Encouraging him to abandon all hopes of impressing others into loving them, his grandma left an imprint on Aran forever. He'll often think of her when he lies to his parents over FaceTime, telling them he's happy and "staying out of trouble." His grandma always lived her life truthfully, even when it pissed off his mother or their extended family. As the only one who still embraces counter-culture, she is the spark that has led Aran to this double-life he lives, where he doesn't know if he's a geek still or if he's a party animal, pot-dealer-turned-filmmaker. Because of this, as one might imagine, losing his grandmother during freshman year hit Aran hard. However, it inspired him to live a fuller life. Knowing his grandmother would hate him mourning her or living a false life, he settled for an in-between. Following in his grandma's bare-foot, toe-ring studded footprints, Aran started his own cannabis business, or, as the layman would call it, he's a weed dealer. Growing it in the closet of his apartment, he's made the majority of his friends this past year through attending various ragers. In fact, he's only barely managed to scrape by the past semester because of trades of weed for free tutoring or straight-up cheating. He's made a decent amount of money from his business, and he's excited to use the money to backpack around Italy... Well, not anymore. Now, he’s got bigger fish to fry. OTHER AND HEADCANNONS ____________________________________________________________________________ Unknown | #adb80e
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As for the zombies, here are some ideas:
Transmission Type
I think that the infection should spread either through bite only or bodily fluids only. If we go with bite, I think we should have people turn upon being bitten. With bodily fluids, I think upon ingestion.
Senses
Dulled hearing, heightened sight.
Weaknesses
In my opinion, zombies should want to avoid sunlight. I feel like this will make sense with fire also being a weakness.
1x Thank
