[CHAR] Welcome to the Rice Fields Motherfucker- An Ambitious Vietnam War RP

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[Lady Selune]

Vietnamese Forces

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PAVN NCO Dinh Van Ty

Name: Dinh Van Ty

Gender: Male

Nationality: Vietnamese

Ethnicity: Viet

Appearance:

Ty, 27 stands at a rather short 5"3, and weighs 73lbs, making him a small figure. His hair, which he trims as best he can, is black, and his eyes are a similar colour. He looks even smaller than his stature would imply due to a habit of looking down and making himself small anyway- learned from his time spying on soldiers when he was a child. He has a flattened nose, thin lips and a wiry build, and his cheekbones are situated fairly low on his face, as would be expected. He has a small birthmark with no real defining shape on his left thigh and smatterings of acne scars across his cheeks and nose. Otherwise, he is rather unremarkable.

Uniform:

Ty wears the dark green uniform common amongst PAVN soldiers of the time, along with a dirtied and muddied jungle hat. It offers no protection, but it is very comfortable, and so he sticks with it. On his feet he has a pair of PAVN combat shoes- a proper, if cheap, construction. He wears both the Chicom AK chest rig and side belt, attached to a canvas belt, allowing him to carry eight thirty-round magazines for his Type 56, as well as around twelve extra bullets for his Nagant. As well as this, he has a magazine pouch that can hold four grenades. Lastly, he has a web carrier and strap for a nondescript canteen, as well as a whistle on a strap around his neck.

Armaments:

Chinese-made Norinco Type 56 with folding spike bayonet

Russian-made Nagant M1895

Russian F1 grenades

Specialisation: Infantry NCO

Personality:

Ty is as staunch a communist as one can really be with the understanding that he has of the system, and has a habit of shouting 'encouraging' slogans more fit for a Soviet commissar twenty years earlier than a PAVN soldier. He gives off an air of sternness, despite his small size, and encourages his men to take everything as seriously as he does, even if they don't listen to him.

History:

Ty is a farming boy through and through. He remembers vividly skirmishes around his village with the French, and he himself ended up organising a small group of young boys as scouts, most of his time was spent in the rice fields, listening to his grandfather and father talk about their stories as they planted and harvested rice.

These stories instilled him with a sort of proto-patriotism about his country, and when he learnt that the Americans were now coming into the country, just like the countless other foreign powers, he saw it as his chance to tell stories to his own sons. He was one of the first people in his village to sign up into the army.

Whilst he has a very rudimentary knowledge of the politics of North and South, he understands (sort of,) the ideas behind communism and capitalism, and is a staunch believer in the communist system, even if he doesn't know much about it. Like others, he idolises Ho Chi Min, and is ready to make his own stories as an NCO within his company.

PAVN Infantryman Phong Nga (DECEASED)

Name: Phong Nga

Gender: Male
Nationality: Vietnamese
Ethnicity: Viet
Appearance: Nga, 22 stands 5’7” tall and weighs 156 Lbs. He has short black hair and brown eyes. His nose is flattened against this face, flared in the nostrils and the young man has several small moles dotting his cheeks. His face is more round than any other shape. His physique is lean, but otherwise strong. He has no tattoos and only a small scar on his left leg bellow the shin.

Uniform: Nga wears the standard dark green Khaki uniform of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). He prefers to wear the sleeves folded to just below the elbows. He wears the standard dark green-colored phenolic sun-helmet with mesh covering and tennis shoe-jungle boot, a cheap construction. His load bearing equipment (LBE) consisted of a tan canvas belt with a square aluminum buckle. Upon the buckle is a star, Nga personally painted red. Upon this belt is his canteen pouch, grenade pouches (with strap to go over opposite shoulder) and spare magazine pouch. Nga’s canteen is olive drab in color, of aluminum construction, a Chinese copy of a Japanese canteen. Nga used his trench knife to scrape some paint away and etch his name into the side of it. To complete his LBE, Nga wore the NVA “chest pouch” which resembles a shop apron drawn over his head, ending at the canvas belt. This chest pouch has three ammunition pouches and three smaller pouches for boxed cartridges. He also carries a Czechoslovakian ammunition bag, strapped across his shoulder to carry an additional five magazines. Upon his back, he carries the standard issue rucksack with a central compartment and three external pockets, based off a French design. In his ammunition pouches he carries eight 30-round magazines & 4 hand grenades. He possesses a ninth magazine which is inserted in the magazine well of his rifle.

In Ruck:
-Sweatshirt
-one additional uniform
-olive drab boonie cap
-rain poncho (small fold up item)

Armaments:
-AK-47 with 6H2 bayonet
-French manufactured trench knife

Specialization: Infantry

Personality: Nga is generally an easy-going son of a peasant fisherman. He views the army as a large cumbersome enterprise that is both thrilling and frightening. It is the largest grouping of people in one place he has experienced and is overwhelming. He is optimistic about the future and believes he will do well in the army. He is uncertain about killing and hopes the governments in Hanoi and Saigon can come to a mutual agreement without having to fight. His father and uncles fought against the Japanese and the French, but they are all gone now, right? Nga is obviously naïve.

History: Nga grew up in Ngoc Van, Nghệ An Province, a coastal fishing village where he learned to fish with his brothers on their father and uncle’s fishing boats. They fished the Tonkin Bay daily. It was his family’s way of life. He was destined to learn the trade.

He remembers Japanese soldiers marching through his village on occasion when he was a boy, but rarely did they stop for long periods of time. He remembers when the French soldiers returned after the war with Japan ended. They appeared pleasant, but he listened to the grumblings of the village elders about how they had worn out their welcome and needed to go back to France. He slowly adopted that attitude, it was time for them to leave. He really did not understand the why, but since father believed that, so did he. He fished the Bay with family members and lived a happy life.

The politics of the North and South of his country are irrelevant to Nga as long as his family is fed and their needs are taken care of. Which the government in Hanoi has been fairly good about. When he heard talk of Americans coming to Saigon to help them resist the North, he did not understand why. Nga does not understand why the Americans must get involved in what is strictly a Vietnamese matter. He perceives the Americans as hostile invaders, they are unwelcomed and need of being evicted, just as the French were before them.

He joined the Army for adventure and patriotism roughly two years ago. He would like to see his nation unified as one. This is a dream his father bore and his father’s father and so on back to a time when the Chinese were lords of Indochina.

Dung Mai is a sweet young flower of girl with beautiful hazel eyes, just turned 20 and the love of Nga’s life. He carries a photograph of her in his pack. He dreams of returning home to marry her, settling down and starting a family one day. For now, he marches off to the drums of war. He bears the rank of Binh nhất (Private First Class), rifleman in 1st squad, 1st Platoon, No. 4 Company of his regiment.

NPCs: Dung Mai, 20 – Phong Nga’s girlfriend. She waits for her fisherman turned soldier to return home from the war.

PLAF Scout Bùi Đình

Name: Bùi Đình

Gender: Male
Nationality: Vietnamese
Ethnicity: Viet
Appearance:
Đình is a wizened old man, weathered by the weather and the sun, but a wiry man. He stands at about 5’2 and has had the fat scoured off him by the years. He remains spry as a goat and able to run people that aren’t used to the highlands to the ground. He has very few teeth left and has to chew meat carefully, but he has endurance for days. It’s also notable that he has scars – he’s lost two fingers to war, and has shrapnel burns on his arms and chest. He’s also taken two bullets, one Japanese and one French, and is still here to talk about it. He’s gone gray in the hair and a lot of that is gone but for a stubble up top.

He’s only 44 but he looks twenty years older, as people from industrialized countries might reckon it.

Notable souvenir: He has an Iron Cross 1st class around his neck, with some beads on leather string. He doesn’t realise that the symbol means quite something else to Europeans. He does know he took it off a blonde legionnaire early in the last war and likes having a keepsake like that around.

Uniform:
Black pajamas, a checked peasant scarf, peasant sandals and a rice hat, albeit his is wrapped in brown cloth to keep it from sticking out too much in the underbrush. He also has a bedroll strapped to his back and a waterskin. All in all, he travels light.

Armaments:
- Mosin Nagant 91/30 with a homemade sling from braided French parachutist scarves. The rifle is well-worn, but kept in very good shape.
- A locally-made machete with a wooden handle and wooden sheath. Wickedly curved and his is well worn.

Specialization: Local Guide/Viet Cong

Personality:
Đình spent some quiet years after Dien Bien Phu and the partition farming pigs and raising kids with his wife, but now he’s getting older. He moans and groans about creaking joints, but he’s mostly just putting on. It’s true, he’s not 22 anymore. All the same, he’s a lifelong nationalist and thinks that Ho Chi Minh has always stood up for his people. Ngo Dinh Diem is a northen catholic Mandarin and a suckup to the French. If he’s going to fight for one side or the other, at least he can relate to Ho Chi Minh’s ambitions. In his youth, he fought for fiery passion. Now he’s putting himself out there because he’s old—his sons are adults. His daughters are married. His wife is taken care of. He’d rather be the one out there taking the risks than his sons. They know how to shoot, but they’re too damned impetuous.

Owing to his experience in two previous guerrilla wars, Đình understands patience. He feels a bit of paternal feeling towards these young men coming down, and is therefore patient with their eagerness to fight; they’ll see what it’s all about soon enough.

History:

Đình was born in Kontum, grew up there, and learned to fight the Japanese there, when he was a young man, in his 20’s. The Japanese were not very welcome, they knew what the Japanese were doing to the Chinese in the North and they quickly demonstrated that they learned a little too much from the long noses; they looked down on the Vietnamese people and sought merely to supplant the long noses as imperialist masters. So he fought them, and learned the hard way. The Japanese were brutal and effective jungle fighters, but they had some help. The Americans, in those days, sent help. The British armed them cautiously, perhaps fearing that victory would bring a new set of problems to grapple with.

They were right.

Before that, he was interested in resisting the French, but the real war got underway the day that the British came in after they kicked the Japanese out and said that the French were taking over again. That’s when Ho Chi Minh decided to start their war against the colonialists and Đình was fighting among the Viet Minh. During la guerre en Indochine, he worked with mules to help smuggle equipment around, laid booby traps and fought the French in that vicious war. He even helped haul Vo Nguyen Giap’s artillery into place around Dien Bien Phu, helped load the artillery that fired down on the paratroopers and joined in the fighting when the time came. He was wounded in the fighting.

After that, he settled back home, slipping in carefully from the North as the partition happened. He maintained his allegiances, but he was quiet. He got to know his kids, he got to have a few years of peace while Ngo Dinh Diem decided to flout the accords that the Viet Minh had fought for. When word came down through friends and the couriers that he had some orders and they were starting up the war again, he told his eldest that the farm was now his and got his rifle. He and some others started up the war in the hills again, slowly working to build themselves to fight the next bunch. Older and wiser, he also knew that his family didn’t need him to provide anymore, and he knew he could be of use.

Oh, sure, he heard the Americans were on the side of Diem now. But there was always someone to fight, and they were always bigger and more powerful than they were. Still, there they still were, like water passing by a rock.

PAVN Machine-Gunner Quy Phan

Name: Quy Phan

Gender: Male
Nationality: Vietnamese
Ethnicity: Vietnamese
Appearance: Quy, 19 years old, is barely above 5'5" tall, thin and well toned from working on the family rice farm growing up. He has a scar across the bridge of his nose from a fall, but otherwise lacks any real identifiable features that one might link to him. He keeps his hair in a very short cut, whenever possible, mostly to keep it out of his eyes when he was working.

Uniform: Like most others, Quy wears his standard issue PAVN tan uniform. He keeps his sleeves rolled down, preferring to keep his arms covered whenever possible. Typically, Quy prefers a field cap that is the same color as his uniform, though will use otherwise if the need arises. He kept the sandles he wore from his time on the farm, mixing and matching it with his conventional PAVN uniform, preferring them over the issued boots.

Armaments:
- Degtyaryov Machine Gun
- 6H2 Bayonet

Specialization: Light Machine Gunner

Personality: Quy is the kind of person who is honest to a fault. He speaks his mind, usually without regard to whether someone wants to hear this or not. This can work both in his favor and against it, since he will let someone know what he thinks without realizing it might be better to keep his mouth shut. Unlike the rest of his family, who did not want him to go off to war, having lost his father and an uncle to the French, he feels that if none of them go, who will protect their way of life? He sees war as a duty, something that he is obligated to due for the good of his family. The PAVN might as well be an extension of said family, the way he sees it, so he would feel disgraceful if he didn't stick his neck out for his family. Whether this will weather the first firefight, or not, remains to be seen, but he is a determined young man if nothing else, and has no interest in quitting or backing out early, which could make retreat actions difficult to swallow.

History: Quy Phan, and his twin brother Tu, were not an unusual case in his village. Quite a number of the fathers and older men of the village had gone to fight first the Japanese and then the French, only to never return. It was considered fortunate that they ever got word confirming the death of Quy's father and uncle. This left him, and his brother, as the oldest men in the house, and having to learn the art of farming from neighbors and friends who had learned it from their living relatives as well. Growing up without his father was oddly easy, considering Quy never could remember the man, having been too young to really remember his face before he'd marched off and died. He remembers little of the past occupation his people had suffered, but he knew that he could not tolerate it ever happening again, he knew this in his gut even if he didn't say it out loud.

Politics were not something Quy was familiar with, having been a farmer's son and focused on learning just that, how to farm rice. But rumors and news did reach them. The idea that the South had chosen to ignore the accords and Americans were coming to help them do just that. In the eyes and mind of Quy, he saw them as little better than the French or Japanese had been, according to the stories of surviving elders of the village who had returned. Despite his mother's wishes, or indeed his younger siblings, he chose to take up arms and left the village. What surprised him was that his twin brother, Tu, chose to enlist with his twin. The two had always been close, so it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise.

Spending a year and a half in the PAVN, he is nearing his 20th birthday when word came down that, alongside Quy's comrades in arms, would be finally heading down to the South properly. Quy had been assigned an old DP-28, due to the fact that, while he wasn't a terribly good shot, he was strong enough to carry it around at a brisk manner and haul ammo as well. Tu had volunteered to help carry some of the ammo, keeping the two together to watch each other's backs. Coupled with enthusiastic application of fire, despite the lower RPM on the DP-28, made him a good, if not the most accurate, machine gunner.

NPCs:Tu Phan - Quy's twin brother, followed his brother into the army and carries several spare pan magazines for the DP-28 alongside his own AK-47. Much more soft spoken and introspective than his older brother, something that confuses those that were not aware of one twin's existence.

PAVN Sapper Ghe Tou Vinh

Name: Ghe Tou Vinh

Gender: Male

Nationality: Viet

Ethnicity: Eurasian (Franco-Vietnamese)

Appearance: Ghe is a short, thinly built young man, appearing in his mid to late twenties. Sprting a mild tan, short dark hair, a cut across his left cheek, and a broken smile just barely visible under the brim of his hat when he doesn't think anyone is looking.

Uniform: typical PAVN dark tan uniform with sun-helmet camoflouged in dyed strips of burlap. His 'web gear' consisted of the standard aluminum belt-buckle using a canvas-duck webbing salvaged earlier, holding two four-pocket greande-pouches and his shovel. His aluminum canteen has been 'personalized' with an exaggerated 'kill count' of things he'd attacked (five trucks, three machine gun nests, two half-tracks, and a fighter-jet). Also provided was a 10 pouch chest-rig for his SKS which made for a handier bondolier than his soviet-issue pouches (he poked holes in each pouch to facilitate better drainage). His rucksack aslo holds a pair of landmines and a spare demolition kit for the sappers.

Armaments:

-Type 56 Carbine
-Eight Type 77 "short stick" grenades,
-Machete
-2 landmines
-Satchel-charge.

Personality: Confrontational and short tempered, yet eager enough to prove himself to do whatever task was asked of him; as long as he was allowed to voice his 'concerns'.

History: Born in 1936 to mixed parentage of a wealthy French landowner. His prosperous life soon changed for the worse however in 1940, when with the downfall of a country halfway across the globe, to another country just as far away, passed all their land to the Japanese who detested all of an impure bloodline. He was taken from his family to be re-educated. There he heard of a resistance-movement along the country's borders, and dreamt of joining them, to rid his land of these occupiers.

When he was ten, the war was nearly over, and the Japanese had started to crack-down on anyone with any ties to France... so he fled, he fled to the only place left for him. For five months he was pursued, even with the occassional aid of the Viet Minh sympathizers he'd occassionally befriend along the way... When he arrived to enlist, he was turned-down for a combat-role, and instead was sent to tend fields and bring food and water to the wounded, a task he begrudgingly accepted.

When he'd heard that the French liberators were planning on placing the same administrator as they had during the worst days of occupation, he knew that the French government could no longer be entrusted with the safety of his land, they had to leave. That day, September second, of 1945... however, famine had struck, and he was needed to feed the hungry masses in northern Vietnam. Here is when he learned how to drive. It was then that Chinese intervention forced the French to reconsider their claimed war-prize of Vietnam.

When he was finally old enough to fight, peace broke out. He joined anyways, knowing that part of their trouble had stemmed from not being able to fight when trouble came.

That time came in 1959, with the outbreak of all-out conflict to re-unify the land under a strong and able leadership.

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