Goldmarble — Roleplayer Guild

Name:

Amber Bergstrom

Age:

Occupation:

Marine Engine Mechanic

Family life:

Single, never married. Father deceased. Mother and two brothers unknown status.

Hair:

Dark Brown

Eyes:

Green

Weight:

156 lbs

Blood type:

AB-

Immune:

Gear:

Eberlestock Gunslinger pack - On back

Hennessey Camping hammock (with winter-proofing gear)

Heavy winter sleeping bag

Small multifuel stove

Dried food supplies (Packed in zip lock bags; meat, rice, beans, vegetables, fruit and trailmix)

Small pot

Hydration pack

Water Filtration Kit

Field rifle cleaning kit

Spare clothing

First aid kit

50 round box of .30 Carbine soft point ammunition (37 rounds left)

Camera cleaning kit

15" laptop

Toiletries + Toilet paper

Fire-starting kit (Ferro-cerium rod, char cloth, box of matches)

Take-down fishing pole

Small tackle box

In the rifle scabbard she carries a M1 Carbine mounted in a choate non-folding stock. The front hand guard replaced with a scout model with an aimpoint mounted. Around the butt of the stock she has a modified Carbine magazine pouch to fit the stock, with a pair of fifteen round magazines stored. One Fifteen round magazine loaded in the rifle.

LowePro Outback 100 - Waist, offset to left, belt and shoulder strap

Pentax K-3 Camera with 50-135mm lens attached. Two 32gb cards in the camera, two more card pocket one, and a pair of 64gb cards in card pocket two - Main pocket

Pentax 31mm pancake lens and AF540FGZ II flash - left pocket

2x 30 round magazines for Carbine, and a Foursevens Quark flashlight (2x AA batteries) - Right pocket

2x spare battery packs, pen and small pad of paper - Lid pocket

32mm Snap-on chrome-steel combination wrench (2.1 lbs, 17" long) - Custom fabbed sheetmetal holster on belt, right side.
Small, folding pair of 8x binoculars - Fabric belt pouch, right side.
Condor Hudson's Bay Knife - Leather sheath, right side

Bio:

Born in Chicago to a mother, Christine, who hailed from a wealthy family from banking, and a father, Gordon, who had worked his way up to the city council from the middle class, the second of three children, her two siblings being brothers, Jake and Daniel. Amber's early years were spent being taken care of by maids and supplementary caregivers as her parents lacked the time to give the children the attention they truly needed. Still, Christine was ecstatic to have a baby girl, and Amber's life started out as if she were a princess, spoiled and surrounded by pink dresses and luxury.

By the time she entered high school though, she had a feeling of being disconnected slightly from the image she portrayed. In the private school, she was popular and well liked, dated two of of the most popular boys. Yet she found herself privately disenchanted with the virulent nature of the act she played. It was to the point where she developed a mild neurosis of trying to scrub the lies and filth from her teeth every night. Even so, she graduated high school with honors, and had scholarships to Ivy League colleges lined up for her. She rebelled and moved out with the help of one of her friends that wasn't part of the circle her mother approved of. They moved north to Wisconsin, and sought work. After a brief stint in a fast food restaurant, and a cell-phone dealership, Amber, an eighteen year old brunette, just 5'7" and weighting 112 pounds, found herself standing before Randy Collins, a 6'2", broad shouldered, barrel chested man with arms thick with corded muscle, and a deep natural tan with obvious tan lines. His pale blonde hair shaved short, and bearing a regular ¼" stubble accentuating his gruff exterior. He wore a simple white sleeveless shirt, and heavy duck-cotton, tan contractor overalls. He was a contractor, running his own construction business, fairly well known for his perfectionism, and honesty. He gave her a chance. While the start of the job was rough, she quickly began to excel, proving to herself more than anything, that she could do it.

She stayed in construction for four years, before deciding to move on to something of a new challenge; after helping to build a new section of a shipyard, she went to a technical school and learned diesel mechanics, her apprenticeship started with a small company, that folded soon after her start, but her boss took her under his wing as he moved to to one of the Great Lakes Shipyards locations, where she has prospered, and grown from a green beginner, to a talented veteran of noted skill.

She also began to find a love of the outdoors whiles she was on her own, rather well reflected in her photographic work, she began by going camping with friends, and then looking for less RV friendly places to get out to. She began hiking, and from there, getting into 4x4 trucks, and off road driving, which she was able to apply some of her skills to, but needed to learn more. She taught herself welding, pipe bending, and how to fabricate things that she needed. Strangely though, the more she got into off road driving, the more she found it to be like the kind of camping she was trying to get away from in the first place; crowded, too many people, too much noise, not enough wilderness. It lead her to sell her tow rig, trailer and Jeep after going on a short “overland” run with some friends she had met at one of the off road meets. It was the outdoor experience she had been wanting from the start.

While her work and social life was going well, her family life was not. Essentially ostracized from her family, her mother wanting to disown her, her brothers refusing to understand her, and a father somewhat distant and ambivalent, she felt rather alone. Still, when her father called her to ask for help, she packed and left. She came to learn that he and her mother had separated, and it wasn't on good terms, Amber's brothers had sided with their mother, but the main problem was that he had just survived a heart attack that had hit when he was climbing stairs at his office, he had fallen and fractured his right arm and leg.

While they didn't exactly get along that well, Gordon agreed that he needed a change of pace, and moved back to Wisconsin to a shock he wasn't prepared for; his little girl had become a hunter, an outdoors enthusiast, a welder, and a diesel engine mechanic living in a quaint little home on a small parcel of sub-divided farm land, so far removed from the three story condo, downtown urban Chicago living she had been raised in. They were at polar opposites in their political ideals, and came to arguments frequently. He hated the fact that she had firearms, was utterly appalled that she had a concealed carry license and carried everyday. The argument took an abrupt turn however, when she revealed the fact that she had fought off two would-be rapists in the past decade, one she she didn't fire on, the other had escaped, wounded, and later arrested by police.

Over the next three years, Gordon and Amber became closer, she finally found a parent, and he finally found out who his daughter really was. He passed away in 2016, from heart failure after the sixth heart attack that year. Neither his ex-wife, nor sons made an appearance for his funeral.

A year later, she found herself wandering, trying to get out of the clutches of the arctic winds and lake-effect snows in a world that now existed after the apocalypse had struck.

Sample:

Flickering orange light radiating from the substantial bonfire in the center of the ring of trucks provided some illumination, but the majority came from the cold white light of battery powered tool-lights; one from the steering shaft, another laying on the ground beside her head as she crawled a little deeper under the Chevy's mud encrusted frame. Darkness had settled in over the farmer's field that was the staging ground for the off-roaders, it was the second night of the Independence Day weekend, and broken rigs were being repaired for a few hours more wheeling in the morning before the camp broke and the good folks headed home.

Mosquitoes and other bugs danced in the shafts of brilliance cut into the darkness by headlights or the soft glow of windows of RVs. A few had pitched tents, and one crazy person had an enclosed hammock strung between the roll cage of their truck, and a stout tree on the edge of the forest. Only one man was quietly passed out near the fire, and everyone cut him slack, as he had spent the day in the blistering heat running up and down the obstacles, passing information to the drivers and spotters, keeping the entire herd of off-road machines neat and organized. Everyone else that could, was busying themselves helping to fix the broken rigs, making food, or preparing something else for midnight.

Amber swatted another mosquito from her nose with a hand stained in brown and black from the grease, oil and mud her hands had been stuffed into since she had pulled back into camp. She had already helped out with a grenaded differential, swapping out the shattered limited slip for some spider gears someone else had in their spares bin, another rig's diesel engine had developed a misfire, and she quickly diagnosed the problem, and sent a runner back to town to pick up a replacement fuel injector while another problem needed help. This one had turned out to be one of the harder things to solve, trying to track down the shot valve in an automatic transmission that was temperamentally refusing to let the thing down shift, but it shifted up fine. The culprit was but a broken spring. A quick replacement, and it was ready to run again. As she finished bolting the oil pan back other to the bottom of the trans, she wiped her brow, already smeared with dirt and grime, from the sweat she was building on this humid and warm summer's eve.

Clambering from under the Chevy, she stretched, as the owner, Angelo expressed his thanks in a way she wished he didn't, “Come on Amber, I gotta repay you somehow, why not with dinner Thursday night?”

“Angie,” She knew he disliked the nickname, but that was all the more reason to use it, “You know exactly why. It ain't happening.” She flashed him a smart ass grin, before straightening her shoulders, stretching out her back to stand up proper, and lifting her head ever so perceptibly as she remembered having to do for her mother, her right hand flashed out, her fingers spread as she touched them to her chest, as elegantly as she could, “Besides,” a voice of Chicago's upper class suddenly sprung forth, eloquent, sophisticated, and dripping with sarcasm, “I have a reputation to maintain of being a cold, heartless, aristocratic princess. Dear me, what would my mother think if I dragged you home? I do say, she might disown me. Again!”

Angelo could only smile and roll his eyes, but a few of the other guys laughed. A light hand rested on her shoulder, and a deep gruff voice came from behind her when she wasn't paying attention, “Excuse me, I think this belongs to you?”

Amber flinched in a start, before she turned around and realized it was Jack. She quickly punched him in the right shoulder with a playful throw, laughing as she swore, “Shit Jackson, you need to tell me your goddamn secret already!” She looked at what he had in his hand, and realized it was the injector for the diesel engine. “Ahh, perfect, can get this in, and dinner should be ready....hopefully. Carlito's on the grill right?”

Jack smirked, a twitch of his bushy beard and the wrinkles of his eyes deepened, he was an older man, a military veteran who had settled down on his family's parcel of land in the middle of Wisconsin. It was his land they were enjoying now, just before he would plow under the fallow grasses and weeds, to prepare planting for leeks.

She smiled and tucked the small box into the front pocket of her filthy jeans, and began moving over to Andy's Merc swapped 4Runner, as she walked she pulled a rag from her left back pocket and wiped off some of the grease and ATF residue from her hands before tucking it back into its hole. Plucking the small box back, she quickly opened it and discarded the cardboard and papers into an orange bag hanging from the bumper of someone's tow-rig. A brief glance over the injector, and she confirmed it was the right one, after all, she'd been working on diesel engines for the past decade now, and the Mercs were fairly common swaps. She'd helped others with a few of them these past couple years as her name got spread around the community. Approaching Andy's truck, she waved, “Got the injector, ready?”

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