Name: Thomas Vaugrenard
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Appearance:Tom stands at a staggering height of 6'3 and weighs in at around 216 lbs of pure muscle. Despite being of Caucasian descent, his skin has a tanned complexion from the years he spent in the Middle East and Africa as a soldier and mercenary. He has close-cropped black hair and always keeps himself clean shaven. He is rarely seen without his jet-black military webbing and signature M40 Gas Mask worn over a battered police riot gear. His right leg is rather stiff from the knee-down, a result of an injury he suffered in 2016.
Personality: Tom is a very effective soldier and team player who is always first to volunteer for the most dangerous assignments. He is incredibly strong and is capable of lugging around heavy equipment tirelessly. Mentally he has never cracked under fire nor has he chaffed under command. So long as there’s a battle to be fought, he is a loyal soldier. At the same time he has a rather glaring problem: he has an obsessive lust for war as only someone who didn’t grow up in a country wracked by it could possibly have. While not discussing war or fighting one, a dead glaze lines his eyes. He becomes remote and detached, although he will still go about his duties with macabre intensity. He is quickly bored by anything other than the thrill of combat and as such is not a very strong communicator. His darkly romantic fixation with war also makes him fairly unsympathetic to those who suffer as a result of it. This is not a result of callous judgment, but rather an inability to comprehend why others don’t enjoy war as he does. This defect is likely neurological and accounts for many of his other sociopathic tendencies.
Short Bio: Tom is a native of Dallas, Texas and the first son of a lower-middle class family. Tom was an average kid for the most part until his hormones started kicking in and he got into not-so-average fights regularly in school. In fact he quickly gained a reputation at each of the three schools he attended (two of which he was expelled from) for never being able to pass up a good fight. Unlike most trouble kids his age Tom didn’t get into fights because it was “macho” or to impress the girls. Tom fought because he loved to fight and always walked away from a finished fight happy that he engaged in combat, even the ones he lost. In high school he started piling on muscle mass not because he was losing fights, rather because he wanted to be seen as a more credible threat in order to challenge stronger opponents.
Naturally all this blood sport put Tom on the bad side of life and law. His grades had tanked; he received discipline regularly for vandalism, public disturbance and even one account of attempted arson. Of course as his parents became disillusioned with the menace Tom had become; they got rid of him at the first opportunity, the day of his eighteenth birthday.
Needless to say, civil society had no real place for a hellion like Tom and that suited him quite well as he never planned on being civil. Tom found that no matter how fierce or strong his opponents in the brawls were, the fights were really no different than before. Those fights lost their flare, paling in comparison to another brilliantly burning beacon of hostility.
Despite his pugnacious past and juvenile record, the US Army accepted his enlistment and he was sent off to Fort Sill for boot camp and was assigned an MOS in infantry. His AIT was, unsurprisingly, close-quarters combat given how much his previous fights had served to hone his awareness. At Fort Benning he completed his training and joined the ranks of the 2nd Battalion of the 69th Armored Regiment as part of a Stryker unit. He served two tours in Iraq from 2005-2006 and 2007-2008.
During Tom’s first tour he made his mark as an effective soldier in the battle of Ramadi. During his unit’s home furlough Tom opted to spend the majority of his time on base engrossing himself in the study of war, weapons and conflict around the world. His fellow servicemen and women saw him exercising constantly and invariably with a book in one of his enormous hands.
It was during his second tour with the 69th in Iraq that his fellow soldiers started giving Tom a wider berth. Having eased into the unsettling nature of war during their first deployment, many of the members of Tom’s unit found some of his new-found habits unnerving. Tom would stare for hours on end in awe of the wreckage and ruin of the urban warzones yet dismiss, with nothing more than a glance and a shrug, rotting dog corpses, the begging of children with stumps where limbs should be, and the shrieks of women at night. More disturbing still was how much Tom talked about war, mayhem and destruction during a time and in a place where those around him were all surrounded by such calamity and all anyone else wanted to talk about was home…and griping. No matter what, all that seemed to excite Tom was either going to war or talking about it, even when it wasn’t “their” war he wanted to speak of.
Tom was rotated into the reserves after his unit returned from Iraq. Not content to sit around in the US while there were “perfectly good wars going on”, Tom worked his way around the military network for work in the private sector. He landed his first contract in 2009 with Obelisk International LLC out of Seattle for four years state side while he completed battle assembly. Tom then saw low-intensity conflict in central and South America for over a year starting in late 2012. He was transferred back to the US in 2014 for executive protection service (rumors abound of a friendly fire incident in Columbia) and of course finding such a job far too civilized for his taste cut his ties with Obelisk to work as a freelancer. He fought against ISIS in Syria in Iraq independently for a time until he was forced to go back stateside after suffering a major injury to his right leg.
Effectively out of the action, Tom began to integrate himself into normal society. For several years, things went well for him. He found a steady job as a construction worker, started seeing a psychiatrist to help deal with his sociopathic tendencies and even had himself a nice relationship with a woman he met at the local bar. Unfortunately for Tom, all good things must come to an end. For Tom, it all came crashing down on the 6th of October, 2020.
Coming home from work late in the evening, he found out that his then girlfriend had left him for another man. The event triggered Tom's inner madman and, without thinking, he grabbed his pistol and headed for his girlfriend's house with the intention of doing something he no doubt would regret later on. Thankfully, his doubt and fear overcame his anger and he stopped halfway. His rational side yelled at him to go back home and settle the problem peacefully, but instead he headed to a local liquor store to fill himself up with booze so that he could
do the deed. Fortunately for everyone, however, Tom got himself too drunk and he was arrested by the local police force before he could do anything.
Drunk off his ass and barely conscious, Tom was put in a holding cell and passed out... only to find the world had ended overnight. For some reason, he was the only one left alive inside the police station that day. Not wanting to find out what the hell killed everyone, Tom quickly looted the station's armory and headed home. He would lock himself in his house for the next year or so, only ever going out to find food and water. After a year, he got a little stir crazy and eventually decided he should head out and live a somewhat nomadic life.
For a relatively long time, Tom thought about what he should become now that the whole world's gone to shit. With his military training and combat experience, he figured he was above everyone else and held an edge against other survivors. So, the question was: Should he use his training and experience as a mean to take and do anything he wanted, or should he use it to help others survive in the world with whatever way he can?
After thinking it through, he eventually settled for the latter option.
Ever since then, Tom has styled himself as some sort of noble road warrior, wandering from town to town to help out small communities of survivors while at the same time ridding post-apocalyptic America from people he deem to be evil or undesirable. His travels have now landed him in the state of Maryland...
Weapon:
- Mossberg 590A1 Tactical Shotgun
Tom's shotgun is equipped with a single point bungee sling attached to the rear of the body. His go-to weapon for most engagements, the shotgun has a collapsible stock and a tactical light attached to it. Currently, Tom has about twenty slugs and five buckshots for his shotgun. - Beretta 92FS
The semi-automatic Beretta pistol is Tom's favored secondary weapon. Whenever his shotgun isn't enough to get the job done, he'll use his Beretta. Currently, he's got a full clip for the pistol and about one more to spare. Nowadays, he rarely uses it anymore due to a lack of ammo, but he does take the pistol out from time to time to either intimidate other people or to discourage any potential hostiles from attacking him. - Baseball Bat
Whenever there's a need to get up close and personal, the Baseball Bat is Tom's weapon of choice. The sturdy bat is a deadly weapon in the hands of someone as strong as Tom. - Machete
Despite rarely using it as a weapon, Tom still carries around a hybrid Machete/Saw for survival and tactical purposes. - Tactical Knife
For emergency purposes, Tom keeps a sharp knife tucked near his ankle.
Skills:
- Military Training
With roughly 15 years worth of military service, Tom is a deadly combatant and an excellent survivalist. - Brawler
Ever since he was a child, Tom has always been a fan of fighting hand-to-hand. Couple that with his strength and military training, then you have yourself a rather intimidating fighter. - All Juiced Up
Simply put, Tom is a beast. Weighing in at around 216 lbs of pure muscle, he is generally much stronger than most people. Not only that, he also has a seemingly endless stamina, being able to lug around heavy equipment over long distances before getting tired.
Supplies and Equipment:
- Two First-Aid Kits
- Multi-tool
- Crowbar
- Binoculars
- Three Paracord bracelets
- Several days worth of clean water
- Several days worth of rations
- Sleeping Bag
- Riot Gear
- Military Webbing
- M40 Gas Mask
- Zippo Lighter
- Chest Flashlight
- 4 Flares
