Name/Nicknames: Joel “Happy” Woods
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Appearance: Joel is a relatively small man, standing at 5’6 and being both lean and muscular in build. He has thick black hair that he usually keeps cut quite short, although not quite in the military-like buzz cut fashion a lot of veterans keep for some years during and after service. He is clean shaven most of the time and has somewhat pale skin for someone who spends much of his time out in the sun. Due to long periods of extreme stress he looks quite a bit older than he actually is and his once warm brown eyes now look dark and angry. He rarely smiles, his face seemingly etched into a statue representation of his deep cynicism. His body wears reminders of his time spent in war, the most noticeable scars being from a bullet wound to his right shoulder that fortunately went clean through and wounds from machetes to his left bicep, across his chest, his left hip and both palms of his hands.
Race: Human
Strengths:Battle Hardened: Time spent in the trenches has given Joel a frightening capacity for violence and a shockingly cold attitude towards acts of conflict. He’s calm under fire and weirdly a firefight is one of the very few occasions he’s almost guaranteed to show some humor; something which is almost certainly a defense mechanism. This apathy towards death and destruction make him an incredibly dangerous foe to go up against.
Berserker: During his time spent fighting Joel encountered a couple of major issues. Firstly the fact that the NCR army and his camp in particular were severely under-supplied. There wasn’t enough of anything. Food, medicine, ammo and even weapons were badly needed. This meant he and his comrades often had to enter melee combat with enemies that were both physically stronger and significantly better trained than them. This caused a lot of deaths on the NCR’s side and very nearly killed Joel over and over again during his time in the Mojave. The only reason he survived against the Legionaries was rage. Pure rage. It made him almost impervious to the pain he inevitably suffered from wounds in every defense and made him attack like killing this one legionary was the only reason he was born. He made being faster, more tenacious, more violent and more blood fuelled his only reason to keep on living in those moments. Just a few more seconds, just a few more kills, just a little more revenge against the bastards who had killed so many of his friends. So many teenagers just like him. By the time the war was over he’d killed more men with a combat knife than he had with bullets.
Weaknesses:PTSD: Obviously what he experienced in the Mojave left him with a lot of wounds. As you might expect not all of them were physical. Joel experiences recurring nightmares about the time he spent fighting, his particularly nasty kills and his friends deaths. These nightmares have made it so he has more or less given up on regular sleep. Once upon a time he’d drink a bottle of whiskey and that would pretty much insure he didn’t dream that night. He soon became dependent on those bottle though and that came with its own set of problems so he eventually kicked it. Insomnia’s better than alcoholism but it’s still pretty terrible. Aside from that he’s almost always on edge and can’t even remember the last time he was able to relax without the aid of drugs or alcohol. He has basically given up on the idea of living a normal life and now throws himself at his work, disregarding almost everything and everyone else.
Bare Bones Training: The NCR didn’t exactly take their time making sure new recruits were trained properly. They seemed to be mostly concerned with replacing all the soldiers that died in the field as quickly as possible. This meant that Joel and a whole lot of other people got only the most basic of basic training. Most were sent into the Mojave not even knowing how to strip and clean a weapon. As one such person Joel didn’t get anywhere near as much training as you might expect a soldier going into a war zone should. He knows how to kill and he’s a decent commando but aside from that he’s basically your average raider in terms of tactical knowledge.
Personality: Sadly a lot of Joel's personality was changed by the trauma he went through in the military. What is left of the lad he was before has been partially hijacked or clouded by his mental illness. Where once was a compassionate, kind and open young man is now someone who is almost completely shut off from the thoughts and feelings of others. Even those he does care about deep down. He was or maybe is intelligent but unlike in the past he is completely uninterested in pursuing knowledge in a recreational manner. He doesn’t have it in him to drastically pursue self-change (at least without help) and has somewhat made his peace with living and dying how he is.
Despite his feelings being buried Joel is in no way a psychopath. He still has something akin to a moral code and won’t do anything that goes against it. These days he definitely has difficulty distinguishing right from wrong, even to himself, but there are some things he believes to be completely irredeemable. Slavery in any form is one such thing.
Skills/Attributes: (Any talents they posses)
Back-story: (Their life up to this point)
Other: (Anything else you'd like to include)
