Personal Dossier
Physical DescriptionLife as a mercenary has turned a once thin, lanky young Alan into the gnarled man that now pilots the Wild Wolf. His face still denotes some tinge of handsomeness under the usual gleam of oil and dirt, but time and stress have caused early wrinkled to appear on Alan’s forehead. He also has tinges of gray appearing in his dark brown hair now. He stands at an average height of 5’10, and his arms and legs are quite muscular due to the labor that comes with self-maintenance on a NC.
Alan’s usual facial demeanor among strangers is a lackadaisical and goofy attitude. A half-cocked smile, a wry grin, and a gentle chuckle are commonplace for Alan in a canteen or in a meeting room. It’s when he gets to know someone or when things get serious that his demeanor changes into a cold stare; revealing his dark green eyes. He usually has bags under his eyes, both in part to a lack of good rest and due to the mental strain, the Polaris shift has done to his brain. His dark, spotty beard is usually unkempt but thin, and his hair is kept in a messy cut, never long, but always disheveled.
Personality TraitsJocular
Intelligent
Creative
Insular
Deceptive
Manic
Well-Read
Effects of Polaris ShiftAlan was tested at the age of fifteen in his community of Dead Springs, and while he held a solid synchronization level during his first years as a community pilot in the Atlanta area, it wasn’t until his entire squad and home were destroyed that he experienced his first perfect synchronization, which is partially in line with the fact that he survived such an experience. In the six years since he has undergone perfect synchronization a handful of times, but in recent years he has been suffering from “memory bleeding.” In a sense, he is undergoing extreme mental dementia, where he experiences the memories of someone else. Memories include a pre-war forest in the morning, a sunrise, and snowfall. If left untreated, Alan can become lost in the memories, and become confused and upset when he is brought back to “reality.” He takes a low-dose prescription for now, but it only helps treat the symptoms, as his steady mental degradation is irreversible.
Personal HistoryAlan grew up in Dead Springs, near the Atlanta Megacity in Fairbanks. Small ruins and tons of junk, it became a frontier trading post between the larger megacities in lower Fairbanks. Still, living in the frontier comes with danger: raiders especially. The test came to Alan’s town later in his life, when he was fifteen. Thinking of a chance to provide for his family and give them a better life than living in a junkyard town, he took his chance with the surgery. Still, a town needs money to pay its pilots. And Dead Springs was no megacity. But when you’re in a junkyard, you can find many wondrous things: including the frame of the Wild Wolf. Found nestled away in a collapsed compound in the ruins, the frame had been stripped of armor and a core, leaving only the skeleton remaining: a remnant of what it could be. But a frame would work: with money raised for a core, and what armor and armaments the money could afford; the WW was rebuilt piecemeal. But it worked.
Alan took up sorties with local combatants, as well as defense jobs in the area; providing for both his home and his family; allowing them more luxuries than a Junker’s life can provide. But more than that, he fought to bring them some semblance of peace. However, a roughshod mech is only as good as its parts and pilot allow; and it was on these sorties that Alan met real terror. A team of outdated and hand-built mechs doesn’t usually fare well against well trained and well-equipped soldiers; especially deserters from Atlanta. Outmatched and outgunned, Alan’s compatriots were slaughtered, and he was left broken and left for dead; a heavy grinder blade digging into his cockpit and tearing the metal apart, giving him his facial scar as a reminder. Alan's final memory of that day was a large custom NC with golden plating, inspecting Alan's damaged frame and simply walking away.
The deserters didn’t simply wipe out the defense party; they came to Dead Springs. The town and its people burned. By the time Alan had made his way to his hometown, he was too late. The sight of his family and friends slaughtered awoke something inside of him: a beast; a wild, rabid dog that fed on all of Alan’s negativity towards his weakness came to life. It consumed him and drove him to fight. He survived, and he kept the Wild Wolf alive using the parts he could salvage from his fallen comrades. Metal scavenged from the destroyed ruins of his town strengthened his armor-and he went hunting.
Surprise attacks. Traps. Decoys and delays. Alan learned to fight his new enemies with his mind to make up for his glaring technological weaknesses and his own lack of combat skills. And when it came to combat, the harder he fought, the higher his synchronization grew with the Wild Wolf. Between perfect synchronization in battle and the tactical advantages Alan created in combat, he’d gotten his revenge at the cost of serious damage to his NC. But the leader, the Golden NC, was nowhere to be found during this time. When Alan returned to the Atlanta burrow with news of the attack and these deserters, he was blacklisted from the job board, removed from the local registry and told that it was simply a raider attack and nothing more. A week later, towns near Dead Springs claimed allegiance to the Atlanta Burrow and most residents were relocated.
The official story was very sanitized, censored and lacked anything about Alan. Alan's own interpretations have been classified or simply ignored by Fairbanks staff at the Atlanta Burrow. With that, Alan left the Atlanta area and made his way across the continent, working for various settlements and cities. Alan began to make a name for himself over six years as an honest mercenary who got jobs done in a professional manner. He grew his own network of other mercenary pilots in the Fairbanks, DV and other areas.
During his tenure working as a mercenary, Alan upgraded the Wild Wolf’s systems and learned how to survive in the harsh wastelands by himself or with a squad. Still, Alan’s travels were always influenced by his one true goal: to find the Golden NC and finish what was started so many years ago. It’s this reason above all for Alan’s journey to New Anchorage.
Tactical Preferences and SkillsJunkyard Mechanic: Unlike his counterparts who had access to proper materials during their combat stays, Alan grew up in the frontier where clean, shiny new supplies were few and far between. This meant that he had to scrounge and repurpose outdated, damaged or scavenged parts to keep his unit in workable condition. While he has to leave it to the professionals for proper upkeep of the WW, Alan can perform emergency repairs in the field if push comes to shove, and that ingenuity comes in handy when things go to shit.
Unshakable Will: In serious situations, the average pilot would lose their cool and give in to negative emotions, shaking them and breaking their morale. Alan, due to both his insane drive for destruction when fully “in the zone” as well as his own nature of do-or-die, is not easily shaken in combat. It would take extreme duress to make him break his usual façade; though a break would be disastrous.
Adaptive: Alan’s past has forced him to make do with supplies and weapons he could scrounge either in the junkyard, the frontier or after the battle. Alan lacks any sheer expertise with weapons, but he makes up for that in his ability to pick up and use a weapon with gradual skill. If he can find a half-working FMR or a Powered Spike, Alan can find a way to perform maximum damage with it.
Well-Read: If Alan has one indulgence it's literature. At a young age, collecting bits of archaic literature became a past time for Alan, especially exploring the databanks of ruined libraries. Alan's datapad has to date over 800 novels, short stories and poetry ranging from the seventeenth century to the twenty-third century. Alan prefers the classics over the later literature, enjoying chivalric romances, gothic horror, and transcendental poetry. Alan's favorite stories include Le Morte d'Arthur, The Once and Future King, Frankenstein, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Tactical Awareness: Alan’s greatest strength is using the environment and information to his advantage against his enemies. He’s used dust storms for cover, set off explosions to avoid thermal detection and isn’t afraid to attack from behind if it increases his chance at victory.
NotesAlan’s facade may appear to be two-faced, but in actuality, Alan keeps his comrades at an arm’s length as a defense mechanism. His fears of growing close to others have led to issues with other pilots in his past, notably Ryn.
Neural Combatant
CodenameTypeBipedal, Mid-Range
Squad RoleAssault
NC DescriptionAt first some believe the Wild Wolf to be a raider’s mech due to its patchwork customization and scrap aesthetic. But Alan’s fine-tuning over the years has allowed him to make Wolf’s awkward platform work for him, and he has made the Wild Wolf into a dangerous machine. Areas around important joints are more thickly armored, and other areas have been stripped to the bare necessities, allowing for maximum maneuverability and mech survivability. The colors are a mix of rust-browns and dark greens over the mech, and where a corporation logo would go, Alan has his own custom stencil of Wolf’s head.
Weapons and ArmamentsLeg and Lower Back Thrusters
These give strong bursts of speed and sustained air boosts for a limited time for extra mobility
Heavily Used LFR (Light Frame Rifle)
30 round magazine rifle with anti-armor ordinance, short-to-mid range.
Underbarrel HFG Launcher
A 3 round grenade launcher attached to the LFR. Equipped with standard fragmentary grenades.
Scavenged Light Grinder Blade
A heavy blade meant to pierce and then tear pieces of a mech apart.
Electrical Discharge Cannon
Emits high powered electrical bursts at close range. Can temporarily disable an unshielded NC or cause damage to the pilot in the cockpit.
Grapple Tether
Arm mounted grapple launcher with an industrial NC winch system. An odd armament for a combat NC, but it’s varied uses have saved Alan multiple times in the past.