[OOC] The Walking Dead - Survival: New Orleans

[Voltus_Ventus]

*sob sob* it's been so long!

[Antagonist]

Name: Leon Pendanski

Age: 23

Nationality: Polish-American

Occupation (pre-outbreak): Police officer

Appearance: Leon has short, brown hair that is almost always spiked up. He has light, tanned skin that match his blue eyes perfectly. Leon has a sleeve tattoo of various different symbols on his left arm and also has his left ear pierced with a small, silver stud. He is a muscular male and proud of it. There is a scar down his right shin from where a criminal slashed at him with a blade. Leon is normally seen wearing his Miami Police Department uniform.

Personality: Leon is a bit of a loner because he watched his close friends be devoured before his eyes in the initial stages of the outbreak. He learned not to get attached to people for fear of them ending up with the same fate as his former companions. In his spare time, he works out or reads whatever books he managed to salvage from his apartment before having to evacuate.

History: Leon was born in Florida and spent most of his time surfing on the beach with friends. He spent almost all his free time out the house with friends or family. At fourteen years old, Leon decided he wanted to become a police officer and started going to the gym. He did well in school and made sure he never got in trouble with the law. At nineteen, Leon moved out of the family household to a nice apartment just outside Miami and joined the Miami Police Department. After a year of serving, the outbreak hit Florida and all the cities and towns inside it. Of course there was panic and the police just couldn't handle the rioters and looters that came in abundance. They instead let them run amok and set up evacuation outposts on the outskirts of all major cities for the citizens who wanted to just get away. Problem was that they also became packed and a breeding ground for infected. People who had been bit turned and walkers arrived by the hundreds, devouring anybody unlucky enough to be in their path. Leon was stationed at one such outpost and, after seeing staying behind and fighting was a lost cause, stole a police car and drove as fast as he could, he just wanted to get away from the chaos.

Useful Skills: Good with a gun and has basic medical training.

Inventory: One 9mm pistol
Two ammo magazines
One pair of handcuffs
One baton
Two bottles of water
One packet of chips

Other: N/A

[TheyMostlyComeAtNight]

Name: Jason Tanner 'Twix'

Age: 20

Nationality: British

Occupation (pre-outbreak): Student

Appearance: Slightly below average height with shaggy light brown hair and well tanned skin. He wears a waterproof jacket over a faded twix shirt, dark green cargo pants and a well worn but high quality pair of walking boots. He is well muscled but not overtly muscly.

Personality: Twix can be selfish and annoying, he can be funny and generous, that depends on if he likes you or not. He is quite a flamboyant individual and always puts lots of energy into whatever he is trying to accomplish.

History: He lived a pretty normal life, had parents, went to school. Then he decided to take a break and visit the USA. It just happened to be his bad luck that the goddamn apocalypse started whilst he was over here. At first he tried to get home but as the country was overrun he soon had to give up on that possibility, he's been living with groups and alone travelling the country. He's recently arrived in New Orleans and doesn't know the layout at all, his travelling companions died en route so he walked the rest of the way alone.

Useful Skills: Free-runner => scouting. Proficient if not excellent at hunting. Decent with his fire axe <= has had a lot of practice. Half-decent shot with a pistol.

Inventory:
Fire axe
Browning High power 9mm Pistol -no bullets
2 smoked rabbits.
tinderbox = flint, metal, some kindling.
gas mask
2 improvised smoke grenades (in coca cola cans)
1 lucky bobble hat -white and blue.
1 sleeping mat
1 sleeping bag
Rope and hook.
0.5L Water canister
Other: -to be done.

[Note]

Name: David Sharpe

Age: 46

Nationality: American (Caucasian)

Occupation (pre-outbreak): Store Clerk

Appearance:
David isn’t heavily muscled or incredibly skinny, he falls somewhere in the middle. He stands at about 5' 10". His hair has greyed, though a few strands of black hair have survived. It is unkempt and medium in length. David has a grown out “horseshoe” mustache which has the same coloration as his hair. He always wears an unbuttoned, tattered jean jacket over his faded, yellow New Orleans Saints T-Shirt. He also wears khaki pants and black sneakers, both are dirtied in various ways.

Personality:
David is untrusting to those outside of his group. He’s cautious and conservative, always urging to group to take only what’s needed and to be extremely careful. First impressions of David make him seem like a really nice guy, but when you spend enough time with him his true colors show through. David puts survival before morality and humanity, willing to do horrible things to undeserving people if it means he'll live another day. Stagnancy is not an option for David, he always tries to make things happen. He is normally positive, but never too optimistic. He can be brutally honest about the hopelessness of situations. David is usually nice and understanding, unless you don’t agree with his ideas. When he thinks up a plan it is usually half-assed and requires a lot of improvisation to execute, though he expects everyone to play a long. He’s a kind-hearted guy, but agitating him is not a difficult task to accomplish. David can be easily provoked into dropping his good-natured, sincere demeanor and becoming a very cruel individual.

History:
When the outbreak hit, David was a single dad with a son. His wife had passed away a few years prior in a car accident, sparking a drinking problem. He originally lived in Mississippi, but traveled a lot with his son in post-outbreak America. While making their war out of Mississippi, David’s son was bitten by a walker and David himself had to put him down. Losing his son took a toll on David, he never gets a full night’s sleep. His son's death whirled David into a violent rage, though he's simmered down since (though not entirely). During his travels he was responsible for the robbing and death of a few innocent people, for which he now feels remorse. Eventually, he arrived in New Orleans and came across Marcus Calderón. Though David doesn’t like or trust strangers, he was desperate for companionship and decided to team up with the man. After traveling together for about a week, they came across Lee Richardson shortly after he was run out of his hideout by walkers.

Useful Skills:
A good shot with firearms, a skilled scavenger.

Inventory:
3L Leather Water Bladder
Candy Bar x3
Canned Goods x6
A hatchet
A small survival knife
A hunting rifle, 3 rounds of ammunition
A flashlight
A photo of his wife and child.

Other: N/A

[Sarge]

Totts: Character looks fine.

Antagonist: Looks good. I like the idea of having a rookie police officer on board. Could make things interesting.

TheyMostlyComeAtNight: I'll need to see a finished character sheet before I comment. Looks fine so far, though.

Note: Character looks fine. Only thing I would say is that since bread is a highly perishable commodity, he must have either made it himself recently or found it frozen.

I'll put up my own character sheet soon. In the meantime, I'd like people to start thinking about how they want to start things off. Should we all be in separate groups to begin with and meet up at a later point, or should we begin as a group having been forced together following some kind of calamitous event (I was thinking forced to take cover from a herd of walkers in the same building, or something like that)?

EDIT: My character sheet is now up on the front page. Marcus Calderón.

[Tatsua Aiisen]

Name: Jackson (or just "Jack.")
Age: 34
Nationality: Canadian (First Nations)
Occupation: Canadian Ranger
Appearance: Jack stands at about six feet with a strong, lean physique and short-cut dark brown hair. He is easily identified by his red Canadian Rangers baseball cap, which he refuses to lose even in the chaos of the apocalypse.

Personality: During the past few weeks, Jackson's personality has shown a number of noticeable changes from the norm. He's still as thick-skinned and sharp-witted as ever, but there's a certain madness in him that wasn't present before, likely as a result of the horrific circumstances he's recently been forced to face. While normally quite level-headed, he's been growing increasingly unstable as the days pass by. Even still, his calmness can be disturbing at times, especially when he seems seething with anger or despair. A natural loner, Jack works best when forced to act on his own, but has no qualms with working as a team where necessary for survival. A few notable traits of his are his sharp instincts, love of children and ability to make tough decisions without hesitation.

History: Jackson has always sought out a traditional lifestyle, living off the land and being at peace with nature. To this end, he joined the Canadian Rangers, sharing and learning from the traditional teachings of his people. On the side, he helped out at the local school, since he had always liked children. When he met his wife, his life became more peaceful, especially once she bore him two young daughters. He cared deeply for his girls, teaching them and protecting them to the best of his ability. His wife liked to travel, but Jack's occupation and nature stopped him from going far from home.

When the apocalypse hit, Jack's youngest daughter was one of the initial casualties. At the time, his wife was on vacation in Florida, much to her husband's worry. For a time, he stayed in the territory he knew and devoted everything to protecting his remaining daughter and community. His little girl needed her mother, however, and the people of his community soon died, leaving just the two of them out in the great Canadian wilderness. They decided together that they would travel to try to find their mother, who they thought might still be alive. And so, their journey took them out of familiar territory and into the united states.

For a while, they kept safe in the wilderness, caring for one another as only a parent and child could. The Walkers, as they began to be called, seemed hardly a threat with miles of forest and a good, reliable rifle protecting them. Things took a turn for the worst when Jack's daughter came down with illness, and Jack was forced to go into town to try to find medicine. What he found instead was Walkers, and a lot of them. He was stranded for four days in a pharmacy, and when he finally escaped, he returned to camp knowing that his daughter was dead. She had turned, despite having not been bitten, and he was forced to put her down.

After this point, Jackson's mental state began to degrade rapidly. He moved on without purpose, feeling as if all the despair in the world would crush him soon enough. What saved him was a companion, somebody he could travel with, somebody to remind him of his goal. He travelled with this man for a while, heading for Florida, until the two of them managed to get themselves stuck in New Orleans...

Useful Skills: Military training and hunting experience contribute to an exceptional amount of skill with firearms. Expert at a variety of survival and wilderness skills such as hunting, tracking, fishing, first aid and shelter creation. Also quite reliable in melee combat, with or without weapons. Sports impressive reasoning and insight which has often lead to a joke or two about him being suited for police duty. Knows traditional techniques and medicines, although ones more suited for his home climate...

Other: Jackson is very much outside of his element, many of the techniques he is familiar with are less useful so far from home, and there are surely many techniques he is not aware of that would do him well.

Inventory

Red Canadian Rangers Sweater
Pair of Binoculars
Hatchet
Survival knife
Lee-Enfield Rifle (with fifty three rounds of ammunition and proper maintenance tools)
Change of clothes
Sleeping bag
Canned goods (x8)
Jerky (Four strips)
Water canteen
Bottles of water (x2)
Flashlight
Large backpack
Photograph of wife and daughters

[Fell]

Name: Kaden Yukito

Age: 20

Nationality: Greek, Japanese

Occupation (pre-outbreak): He was a street con and a thief, mainly pick pocketing and breaking and entering

Appearance:

Kaden

He stands at five feet and eleven inches, and is one hundred and seventy pounds. He wears a baggy pair of black cargo pants with dozens of pockets all over them, some have obviously been sewn on. He wears a loose fitting light grey button up that has been torn and re-stitched in multiple places, he tends to roll up the sleeves. Underneath that he has an old dark grey t-shirt on, and over the button up is a black trench coat, well worn, but also well cared for. As with the pants, pockets have also been stitched on all over the coat. He has on a pair of black fingerless gloves and a black caddy cap, as well as black work boots.

Personality: Energetic, charismatic and outgoing before the outbreak Kaden has been deeply shaken by the apocalypse. Having lived a relatively care free life previously, being constantly on alert has taken a toll on him, and while he still maintains the appearance of being the same up beat guy he once was, he has become more jaded, slightly colder, realizing that now calculation might be more prudent than anything.

History: Kaden was born into an odd family dynamic in upstate New York. His mother was a loud and affectionate woman, his father on the other hand was a cool headed and reserved man. For the first nine years of Kaden’s life his mother was the lifeblood of the house, and the little family thrived happily. That was until his mother ran off with another man, abandoning them both and leaving Kaden with his father.
Lost and unsure of himself Kaden’s father became strict and harsh, expecting nothing but the absolute best from his son, insisting he not only take extra tutoring after school, but also begin taking martial arts classes to teach him rigorous discipline. In the end the overwhelming amount of pressure was too much for Kaden and after seven years of living under his father’s thumb, he ran away, heading for the big city.
Pretty soon Kaden was pick pocketing and hustling in New York City, conning and cheating tourists out of their money with cheap tricks, rigged card games, and nimble sticky fingers, but he always tried to stick to all the richies, never wanting to take from someone who couldn’t afford to lose.
He spent a year like that, flying solo, but in the end Kaden found himself teamed up with a brother and sister working out of Mott Haven, a decent residential area just outside the main city, robbing the residential areas at night, and working the tourists in Manhattan by day. Things were actually going pretty good, and had been for the last three years for all three of them right up until the cops showed up. The brother got caught and Kaden and the sister split fast. By the time presence of mind returned to Kaden and he went back to the apartment they all shared there was something weird going on in the city.
The outbreak had begun, and he was in the middle of East NYC. It was chaos, pure pandemonium. In the craze and confusion Kaden got out by the skin of his teeth in the back of a truck bed headed for Georgia. In the three hours it had taken him to get from his apartment to the truck bed he had done… things. He had changed, and as he and the small group he was with left the city he knew he was never going to be able to change back.
He eventually left the group he escaped with. There were no heroics, no tragedy, nothing. To him it was just a group of people who in a moment of panic and necessity had banded together. They weren’t going to last as a group, he saw that, and he left before anything they did would truly harm his chances for survival.
He has traveled with some groups for short periods but never too long, moving in a truly random path, he is a firm believer in the idea that to stop moving is to surrender to the gimps(what he calls the walkers), and that if he selected a destination once he got there he might be tempted not to move on. Because of this concept he has wandered from town to town, only stopping anywhere long enough to scavenge for supplies. Now he has found himself staring now at the bridge heading into New Orleans.

Useful Skills: His father enrolled him in a martial arts school that taught a mixture of Jujutsu, Judo and Aikido as well as a separate Kendo class as a boy, and while many of the skills had faded, with necessity some of the old teachings have come back. He has always had fast hands, and is good at slight of hand tricks, as well as pick pocketing, skills much more recently practiced than the martial arts. He knows how to pick locks and break open doors, as well as sort of knowing how to hotwire cars (a hit and miss skill) and shut off alarms. He is also relatively good at parkour a skill that has saved him countless times, both pre and post outbreak. He has never in his life fired a gun both pre and post apocalypse.

Inventory: In addition to the clothes on his back
-In his pockets-
1 Set of Lock picks
2 Sewing Kits
1 Road Map of Continental U.S.
1 Compass
3 Pencils
1 Folding pocketknife
-Hanging from belt-
1 Crowbar
-On his back-
1 Rucksack
-In the Rucksack-
1 Pair of Burgundy Basketball Shorts
1 Spare T-Shirt
1 Sleeping Bag
2 Decks of playing cards
1 Art of War (Hard back)
1 Plato: Complete Works (Paperback)

Other: Kaden speaks English fluently and knows bits of both Greek and Japanese, he also loves dogs, though none that he has met post apocalypse have been very friendly.

[Flychageo]

Sarge said
In the meantime, I'd like people to start thinking about how they want to start things off. Should we all be in separate groups to begin with and meet up at a later point, or should we begin as a group having been forced together following some kind of calamitous event (I was thinking forced to take cover from a herd of walkers in the same building, or something like that)? My character sheet is now up on the front page. Marcus Calderón.

I have been exchanging PM's with a few people, and I believe that Tatsua (Jackson) and I will be arriving having already met. Another person has expressed interest in arriving with us, but hasn't confirmed, so I believe she might have changed her mind.

Also, Have you given any thought as to where in New Orleans the cafe is? It is probably more sensible if we meet in one of the suburbs, seeing as the center of the city would be swarming with geeks.

[Larceny]

Name: Lee Richardson

Age: 19

Nationality: American

Occupation (pre-outbreak): College Student

Appearance: Lee is tall, about 6'2" with short styled brown hair. He has brown eyes, an upturned nose, and an otherwise normal looking face. He's very athletic, as he played sports all through high school. He also maintained a very high GPA and is very intelligent due to his strict step-father. He is muscular and has a rather dark skin tone in spite of the fact that he's Caucasian. His favorite clothes include jeans and an open untucked button down on top of a Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

Personality: Lee is fun-loving. He will do almost anything for a laugh. Almost. He, unlike other clowns, knows when to stop. He has a very keen sense for danger and puts his friends before all else. The downside of that is that he is often times too trusting, and will put his life in the hands of people who only plan to turn on him. However, Lee is very good at cheering people up and keeping the mood light and happy even in the darkest of times.

History: Lee grew up in rural Louisiana with his mother and step father. He had never met his real father, is mother told him he had enlisted into the military and was called to action when Lee was very young. His mother and step-father were very loving. His step-father was strict though, urging him to maintain high grades, eat right, etc. He lived a normal childhood, playing sports, attending school. He was in his first year at college when the outbreak happened. His roommate had turned and attacked him. He narrowly escaped and roamed the woods for a matter of days. Eventually, he had found a small apartment building to live in. He rigged it with traps to keep the creeps out, and it worked for a long time. He'd go on supply runs and get what he needed and return to his home. Other survivors would come and go, he offered them shelter, but his rule was only for 2 days. Finally, after about 18 months, he made a mistake. After a creep had walked into the trap he had set at the door, he forgot to reset it. He was rudely awoken one night by several creeps who had wandered into his apartment. He quickly offed a few of them with a kitchen knife and ran outside into the woods again. He is there now, alone and scared.

Useful Skills: Lee knows how to build things. An engineering major, he loved working with his hands and making something out of nothing. He could also come up with quick solutions to problems.

Inventory: Lee has nothing right now.

[mpjama2]

Name: Frank Carson

Age: 32

Nationality: American

Occupation (pre-outbreak): CIA Agent

Appearance:
A fairly tall Caucasian male with short brown hair and a clean shaven face. He wears jeans and a t-shirt, to not draw suspicion. He takes his cleanliness very seriously, even in the apocalypse. Frank has piercing gray eyes hidden by a pair of sunglasses.

Personality:
Frank is a curious man, which often got him into trouble as an agent. However he made up for it by being extremely dedicated to the job. Like most agents, Frank is a fantastic liar, and is fairly deceptive and attempts to hide his emotions from others. He is a meticulous planner, and takes the time to think through most problems. Frank is not easily angered, but when he does get angry he is not easily calmed. He is devoted to the ideals of the United States, even into the apocalypse.

History:
Frank for the most part was a lonely guy, no family and few friends. He mostly spent his free time reading and fishing in a small pond. Frank was also part of the CIA before the apocalypse, and while most would think he was part of James Bond-esque shenanigans, in truth it was quite the opposite. Frank was for the most part an intelligence gatherer in Europe. He mostly bugged meetings between high-level officials and relayed the information to the United States. When the apocalypse began, he was in Washington D.C. Fortunately though the CIA had an inkling of what was going on, so the majority of the CIA fled to the countryside, and commandeered farms for themselves. A few stayed behind to try to stop the apocalypse, Frank included, but they failed. Most of those who stayed behind are dead, while those who left are living as comfortably as you can be during the apocalypse.

History (cont):
After civilization collapsed and there was obviously no hope of getting the situation under control, Frank and his only friends still alive took a farm 50 miles south of DC. 17 months later the plan was still working. There was shelter, clean water, and plenty of food. Unfortunately, a large horde of the Dead came from the north, and wreaked havoc on the farm. Frank was the only one to make it out alive. He and his friends while at the farm made big talk about discovering what caused the Dead to roam about, they never followed through with it. Now Frank is going to get to the bottom of this whole ordeal. He has been traveling south, city to city, to attempt to find answers. Now he's just arrived at New Orleans, and he has a feeling the answers he's been looking for is here.

Useful Skills:
Good with Guns: Frank was trained by the CIA, he knows how to shoot and how to take care of a gun.
Exceptional Liar: Frank worked as a CIA agent, it comes with the territory.
Basic First Aid: Frank was trained to do CPR, and how to take care of basic cuts and bruises.
Fisherman: Frank loves to fish, and has gotten pretty good at it.
Sneaky: Frank knows how not to be heard and how to avoid being seen.

Inventory: Basic Backpack.
Silenced Colt 1911 with holster.
Kitchen Knife.
Two water bottles.
Five cans of beans.
Map of the East Coast of the US.
A small towel.
One bottle of bleach.
One can-opener.
Toothpaste.
Toothbrush.
Razor.
Comb.
Scissors.
Screwdriver.
Spoon.
Bar of Soap.
Butter knife.
Fork.
Blanket.
Copy of a book called "Rogue Wizard".
A broken radio.

Other: This is my first RP on this forum, so if I screw up, make sure to let me know.

[Tatsua Aiisen]

The CIA Agent with the bottomless pockets.

[mpjama2]

Tatsua Aiisen said
The CIA Agent with the bottomless pockets.

mpjama2 said Inventory: Basic Backpack.

[Tatsua Aiisen]

My mistake, I missed that text because of how it was positioned~!

That spoon is going to be useful.

[Sarge]

Yeah, he does have quite a lot of stuff, but most of it is small and not particularly valuable. Stuff like toothbrushes, combs, cutlery, etc. could all easily have been picked up along the way, given that it's been 18 months since the outbreak.

Anyway, Tatsua, Fell and mpjama, your characters all look fine.

Larceny, yours looks okay too, but you might have missed the part on the front page where it says this is 18 months after the outbreak, so he presumably wouldn't still be wandering the woods just outside his college. He'd have to have either met up with someone or otherwise figured out some way to survive this long by now.

As for the beginning of the RP, I'm thinking that rather than instantly be in the middle of New Orleans itself, we should meet up in the town of Slidell, which is just to the north-east across the lake. This means we can play out moving into the city itself, as well as deciding what route we'd take into the city (bridge, boat, etc). You can take a look at Slidell on Google Maps, it seems like an interesting suburban setting, and there's some canals and things around too for extra fun.

[Totts]

It looks good to me, but there's just one thing

I live in the UK and actually have barely any knowledge on the climate/geography of the united states or what buildings might be there. Fill me in anyone?

[Sarge]

Totts said
I live in the UK and actually have barely any knowledge on the climate/geography of the united states or what buildings might be there. Fill me in anyone?

I'm not too worried about 100% accuracy. I'm from the UK too, never been to the US in my life, have no idea what New Orleans looks like. We're using it as a base, but I'll be adding my own narrative elements to the story too, so things like disused warehouses, shops, cafés, etc could all appear anywhere at any time when they're needed. I'm not going to stick to New Orleans geography that closely, beyond the obvious facts that it's near the ocean, has a big-ass lake next to it, and is surrounded by the 'bayou' marshland.

[Antagonist]

Oh good, I'm not the only Brit knocking around here then haha!

[Larceny]

Sarge, I will update my character bio. Thanks for the tip.

Edit: The bio is updated. Please take a look and let me know if anything else needs to be changed.

[Tatsua Aiisen]

Thanks! I hope that my poor knowledge of American geography doesn't come back to bite me in this. I'll be sure to do my research when this starts up~!

I live in Canada, and I still don't know much about the U.S geography o3o

[Totts]

Lol at the fact most of us aren't american but we are roleplaying in america.

And none of us have a clue about anything there.

xD