For your consideration:

Rafael Reyes [+]

NAME
Rafael Reyes

AGE
31

GENDER
Male

HEIGHT
6'1"

WEIGHT
He prefers not to say, but is a fan of the term "Fluffy".

ETHNICITY
Mexican American

SEXUAL ORIENTATION
Heterosexual

RELIGION
Agnostic

OCCUPATION
"Entrepreneur"

ABILITY
Alcohol Empowerment - The madder the Hulk gets, the stronger and more invulnerable the Hulk gets. Rafael doesn't get mad. Rafael gets drunk! The higher his blood alcohol level, the higher his genetic reaction becomes, increasing his strength, durability and healing by volume. At it's highest level, he could potentially become completely invulnerable and ridiculously strong, but it comes at a cost. The main drawback is that alcohol still affects him just as it would anyone else; he gets shit faced! His indomitable presence becomes hindered by his intoxication, impaired judgement and lack of coordination. At his worst, he is very much a bull in a china shop, and that china shop will likely end up leveled to the ground.

Without alcohol in his system, he is just as relatively weak and vulnerable as any other person of his size and build.

BACKGROUND
Rafael didn't have an exceptional upbringing. His grandparents had roots in Puebla, but his parents sought opportunities elsewhere. Raul Reyes, Raf's father, used his expert knowledge of human biology to chase the American dream, becoming a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles. A frigid man, Raul wasn't a big fan of the nightlife or social scenes, but after some coaxing by his few, but very close, friends, he found the love of his life in a woman named Sophia as they danced and sang and tripped and spilled and vomited during a very memorable, yet extremely hazy night at a dance club. It wasn't much later after that when Rafael burst onto the scene in all his lovable glory.

Rafael, while certainly charismatic, was otherwise a very unimpressive version of his father. He is a slave to indulgence and a lover of laze. Lacking a great eating habit, any ambition or any sort of willpower, Rafael found himself to be a loved, but disappointing, member of the family. After enough nagging, Raf moved out of LA and into San Francisco to put a bit of distance between him and his rich, but overbearing, parents. Even through middle-age, his father made sure to provide him with an allowance while Raf took on odd jobs and a shady occupation. Marijuana and liquor are his only vices, but he has helped his living by moving a variety of frowned upon product.

Today, Rafael finds himself with two male roommates in an apartment that would be politely labeled as economy class, at best. A run down shithole, at worst. Little did Raf know how much his world would change when the storm hit...

OOC Notes: I know we have another Strength based character here, but Rafael is not built to be a badass and his strength is exclusively dependent on his intake. We have a lot of serious characters on board and this guy is intended to be anything but serious in terms of his demeanor. I'm hoping it will be a very fun character to write for and hopefully an entertaining one to read about.

@Chulance as requested

Kandahar [+]

Name: Dariush Khan - AKA Kandahar
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Height: 5'10
Weight: 162lb
Ethnicity: Pashtun
Sexual Orientation: Irrelevant
Religion: Lapsed Sunni
Occupation: Self-Employed

Appearance:
A light-skinned man of average build, sporting no particularly muscular features barring those of a man not unused to physical labour. Kandahar’s face is one of a man perhaps prematurely aged by the ravages of war - or, in his case, by the experience of torture and death. A short, coarse beard clings to his face and jawline, with a short mass of equally coarse charcoal hair atop his head, with almost perpetually crinkled eyes to match. Normally garbed in a dark leather jacket and cargo pants with a rugged pair of working boots, Kandahar is a man that does not particularly stand out in a crowd. If anything is of note, it is the amputation of his left ring finger past the first joint.

Ability: Immortality
There isn't any other way to say it - Kandahar can't die. And that goes without saying that he hasn’t tried, or at least thrown himself back into the jaws of death in the aftermath of the Energy Storm. Fatal injuries don't put him down, eventually healing and closing up once sufficient time has passed. Even lost limbs, with time, will recover.

Background:
Dariush was born in Soviet-Occupied Afghanistan amidst a bloody, drawn-out conflict as the USSR attempted to prop up the communist puppet government that had replaced the monarchy in the 70s. Though many of the nation's intellectuals and skilled labourers had fled the country, most of Dariush's surviving relatives had remained to fight the occupation alongside the Mujahideen, with Dariush's own father smuggling arms into the nation from neighbouring Pakistan.

Raised along mountain passageways and precarious roads, ever under threat from the Soviets, Dariush's childhood was one fraught with hazard from the moment he could walk. Yet despite this, he survived to outlast the Soviet Occupation, only to see the nation of his birth descend into anarchy and civil war as different factions clashed over who and what sort of government would take the place of the communists. Amidst this, Dariush's father was arrested and executed by the Taliban, forcing his surviving family to flee to the United States to eke out a living there, Dariush among them.

Life in the pre and post-9/11 US proved tenuous at best, though Dariush made do as a displaced person exposed to US culture on the West Coast. Eventually, seeking a sense of purpose (and needing the employment anyway) he enlisted in the US Army as an interpreter, being fluent in both Pashto and Farsi, with a semblance of perhaps doing some good by returning to his nation of birth as a serviceman. Yet this too would be a bitter experience for him - Dariush came to see what a shell Afghanistan had been rendered, between the corrupt US-backed government and security forces who were often more interested in pulling 'dancing boys' off the street than dealing with insurgents, not to mention the weariness and even contempt with which his own countrymen regarded him. When Dariush's service came to an end, he had been rendered disillusioned by his time in Afghanistan.

Returning home, Dariush found himself torn between contrasting cultures, unable to reconcile the differing values he'd picked up in his years. Perhaps it was this who led him under the wing of a fellow Afghan, Gulbuddin, who had once known Dariush's father and indeed had helped his family escape to the United States back in the 90s. Out of a sense of debt and perhaps lacking a father figure, Dariush found work with Gulbuddin as a respected figure among the local Persian community, a mishmash of Afghan and Iranian expatriates that had been driven from their homeland for one reason or another, following a certain ideal - 'Shir o Khorshīd' - Lion and Sun.

Whilst Gulbuddin regarded it as simply a way of life, being part of a community, it was simply another form of organised crime. Where others trafficked sex or hard drugs, Gulbuddin dealt in opium and arms smuggled from the Khyber Pass, alongside local property fronts and protection rackets which harshly dealt with interlopers. Dariush played a significant role in building their community's power, managing associates and lesser members of the organisation - indeed, he took on a new identity in the process, becoming known as 'Kandahar' for the city of his birth.

Kandahar was a man of many things that society would deem reprehensible. He hurt people, even killed some. This identity took the place of Dariush, the sense of place and belonging embodied by the small empire which he and Gulbuddin had built out of their little community. Yet things come to an end eventually - in their case, it came in the form of a two-pronged assault on their 'community' - one on Darius himself. Kidnapped, tortured and drugged in an effort to pry some information on Gulbuddin out of him, Dariush refused to give in. His last memory prior to the Energy Storm was one of being taken out into the wilderness, moments before being shot and dumped in a shallow grave. Anything that remained of Dariush died there.

Kandahar crawled out of that grave, half-mad from the shock of dying and reawakening covered in soil, dealing with withdrawal symptoms. He returned to find their ‘community’ aflame, amidst three-pronged onslaught from rivals, the police and the anarchic aftermath of the Energy Storm itself.

Loosely based on a character I played in another setting, everything between meeting Gulbuddin up to the kidnapping actually took place on an RP community I was at way back in 2017. Was good stuff.

<Snipped quote by Zombiedude101>

Please change his ability to rapid cellular regeneration and we’ll be good to go at that point.

EDIT: Additionally, your character being killed prior to the Energy Storm would mean he would stay dead. The way it works is that after the storm, your character becomes infected with the plague and then they have their abilities. I hope this makes sense. PM me if you have questions.

<Snipped quote by Xandrya>

My view was that the Energy Storm took place prior to his execution (while he was being dosed with heroin) so by the time they actually put a bullet in him he'd already been rendered in his current state.