Name/Nicknames: Joel “Happy” Woods
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Appearance: Joel is a relatively small man, standing at 5’6 and being 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 several different machetes to his left bicep, across his chest, his left hip and both palms of his hands.
Clothing wise Joel dresses surprisingly well, wearing a white button-up shirt, black dress pants held up by a black belt and comfortable black dress shoes. Whilst on a job this outfit gets a whole bunch of light armor, sheaths and holsters strapped onto it. These include a Kevlar vest, shoulder plates, elbow and knee pads, tactical gloves and what he is most renowned for; a Kevlar mask.
Race: Human
Strengths:Battle Hardened: Time spent in the trenches has given Joel a frightening capacity for violence and a shockingly cold attitude towards it. He’s calm under fire and weirdly a firefight is one of the very few occasions he’s almost guaranteed to show some humor. This almost 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 conflict 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’d 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.
Chomsky: Joel's best friend. One of his only friends actually. Chomsky was originally a Legion war dog, trained in the art of overwhelming and killing the enemy. He was shot during a skirmish in the no man's land between the NCR camp and the Legion's position. When the fight was done and the Legionnaires lay dying or dead this dog, whimpering in pain caught Joel’s eye. Usually they would just finish the job, putting the poor animals out of their misery but something on this occasion possessed Joel to carry the dog back to camp. A desire to take some life out of so much death, perhaps. Digging the round out of the pup himself Joel slowly nursed him back to health, sharing his meager rations over several months, training and eventually even fighting alongside the dog. Turns out he fought with whoever he considered master, not a specific faction. They’ve been working together for five years now.
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 bottles though and that came with its own set of problems so he eventually kicked it. Insomnia’s better than a 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 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 troops 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 such Joel didn’t get anywhere near as much training as you might expect a soldier 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 change 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. Killing children is another. Despite his natural leanings towards at the very least trying to be good he has put himself into an incredibly violent lifestyle where it has proven pretty damn difficult to be.
Calm and collected in nature, Joel tends to be polite and honest with those he communicates with, rarely ever even raising his voice.
Skills/Attributes:CQC: Joel is incredibly deadly at close quarters, his speed, intelligence and brutality making him extremely efficient in such encounters. Give him a decent knife and point him at a dimly lit building and he’ll fill that place with corpses. Although he initially had to wing his close quarters fighting he has since trained extensively, being tutored by the rangers he met whilst stationed in the Mojave taught him a hell of a lot, primarily certain techniques of old world martial arts that utilized weapons. No single one in particular, but there are definite Pencak Silat, FMA and WW2 Combative influences to his fighting style.
Aside from his talent with knives and his hands he’s also adept with handguns. He’s certainly no Ranger when it comes to marksmanship but he can hit a target well enough at a reasonable distance and his reflexes make it so a bullet is usually leaving the barrel of his gun before his enemies have even registered he has one in hand.
Back-story: Joel grew up in New Reno, the oldest of six children. They were a blessing and a curse to Joel, he loved his mom and siblings deeply but as soon as his father left he had to become the man of the house. Thus his life of stress began. At first it was relatively easy, he just worked a whole hell of a lot. Anything he could do that wouldn’t get him or his family gunned down. Eventually though that wasn’t enough, there were too many mouths to feed in their home and things were only getting worse. Seeking a way to help long term his little brother suggested joining the NCR army. They were apparently paid well enough and the place they were all being sent off to now was supposed to be unlike anything else in the land. A city preserved. He never really wanted to join the army, but New Reno isn’t exactly teeming with work for young men trying to feed over sized families. It really wasn’t much of a choice. Join the army and fight away, saving and sending money back home or join one of the local crime families and likely be dead before his 20th birthday. So he enlisted and several months later found himself stationed at Camp Forlorn Hope, freshly turned 19.
It was all right for a while, they were under-supplied but they didn’t see a massive amount of combat. At least relative to what they would in the future. Then the Legion took Nelson and hell began. They crucified two of his friends who had been ordered to hold the town temporarily and with that as a stationing point the raids began. It seemed they attacked every night, and when they didn’t Joel and his comrades were ordered into the no man's land where they skirmished with the Legion. Most of the time at least half of the people sent down were killed, felled by machetes or dogs. He saw more death than he ever thought he would, even coming from a place such as New Reno. He eventually became comfortable with it. Every night he welcomed it, just to see friends and enemies alike die and welcome it again the next night.
Eventually The Courier arrived. Her arrival was the beginning of better times at Forlorn Hope. This was way before she would become the legend but already she was a spectacular human being. She recovered supplies, helped patch up the wounded and even lead the assault on Nelson. Joel having faced death and lived several dozen times at this point volunteered to help with the attack. He was good, as were the men and women sent with him but compared to The Courier they were doing child paintings whilst she was Leonardo Da Vinci when it came to the art of killing. They won that fight almost entirely because of that woman. When Joel stormed the house and came face to face with Dead Sea he was almost killed. He, Chomsky and another trooper managed to kill two of the three in that place, but Dead Sea was like a Deathclaw with that machete of his. He sliced open Joel’s chest, and just before he buried that deadly instrument into the 20 year old's skull his own was burst open by the rounds of a 5.56 pistol. What a day.
Things got better at the camp after that. There wasn’t anywhere near as much daily bloodshed and about a month after The Courier left the famed 1st Recon came to the camp, freed up at Camp McCarran by actions taken by The Courier apparently. Despite all the improvements however it was too late for Joel, he’d become more familiar with death than he would ever be with life. There’s no easy way of getting over that. By the time the Second Battle of Hoover Dam came and The Courier pushed both the NCR and Legion out of the Mojave Joel wasn’t even mad. The whole war had been a shit show. He went home, honorably discharged and with several medals feeling nothing but loss. Whilst he was away his family had done okay, although one of his sisters had developed a Med-X addiction and began working as a prostitute in one of the casinos, a slave to the chems they provided. She overdosed and died, putting yet another nail into Joel’s tortured soul. His family was happy to have him home, at first his little brothers even wanted to hear stories about the Mojave and New Vegas. They could tell though, that campaign had ruined the Joel they knew.
No longer held in check by fear of fighting or death and still needing caps to keep his family afloat Joel took work as a soldier for a local crime family. The Lazzari’s. He had other reasons for working with them too, they were at war against the assholes who got his sister addicted to Med-X. Slaughter those bastards and get paid for it? Yes please. Joel blamed all of them. Not just the specific crew who ran the casino where his sister had worked. Every single one of them. Over the next year he gained a reputation around New Reno for his brutal efficiency. Where most gang killings were peppered with bullets his were mostly absent of them. Just knife wounds and enough blood to paint the walls with. Word of his line of work inevitably got back to his mom and family and he was disowned, but he still gets caps to them in ways. Whether it be by just giving it to his younger siblings and telling them to lie about it or bribing certain people to give his younger siblings better paid, safer jobs.
He’s now an independent mercenary, but Lazzari being the major power in town most of his work comes from them.
Theme Song: Richard Thompson - Dad’s Gonna Kill MeItems Owned:On Person:Sig Sauer P226 (10 Rounds + 2 Spare Magazines)
Glock 17 (17 Rounds + 2 Spare Magazines)
2 KarambitsKA-BAR Knife78 Caps
In Apartment:Survival + Camping Gear
Winchester Model 70 (35 Rounds)
WASR-10 AK-47 Rifle (500 Rounds)
S&W Model 269 (48 Rounds)
Various Bladed Weapons
4 Grenades
Food
Several Bottles of Purified Water
754 Bottlecaps
