JackHasAShotgun

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

I know man I know. I'm working on getting this launched asap but work is hella rough. Hopefully I get out early. I'm gonna pass over the doc on refuge for noe and work on the ic.

I'll give a quick overview on important stuff about Refuge

@Aeonumbra

I got sick and whilst sick I become fully bitch-made and can't concentrate or really do anything other than sleep for shit so the delay is actually appreciated here. :P

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

Basic Information

Name:

Thomas Croft

Age:

24

Nationality:

American

Ethnicity:

Caucasian

Sex:

Male

Height:

5’8

Weight:

Around 160lb

Eye Color:

Gray

Hair Color:

Light Brown

Physical Disabilities:

• N/A

Physical Identifiers

• Thin scar runs vertically through right eyebrow
• Long scar running horizontally across left forearm

Appearance:

Thomas is a leanly muscled and wiry looking young man who often has an awkward smirk on his face. His gray eyes always seem to have a look of uncertainty in them, as if he’s unsure of what he’s doing or what he should say. The bags under his eyes also hint at his habitual lack of sleep. His nose is slightly crooked and squashed with thick nostrils. Anyone with an eye for such things could probably tell it has been broken on more than one occasion.

Body wise Thomas has only one tattoo and only a few scars. One scar across his eyebrow, one nasty looking one on his abdomen and one long thin scar running horizontally across his left forearm.

He has somewhat long and unkempt hair and typically sports a small beard and a mustache.

Clothing wise he tends to wear somewhat baggy jeans and t-shirts and often dons hoodies, plain in color. Black, gray or white usually. Over whatever he’s wearing on his back he wears his patch, a leather vest with his biker clubs insignia on the back. The insignia shows a lone pregnant woman smoking on a Harley Davidson with a sign saying “Lake Erie” in the background.

Biography

Thomas was born and raised in Warren, Ohio. His father was a marine who died in combat when he was still just a baby according to his mother, though he never really decided on whether he believed her or not. It didn’t really matter much to him. He has one older brother who despite tensions between them happens to be the one person alive he loves and trusts.

For the first 17 or so years of his life Thomas was regularly abused by his mom, both mentally and physically. She had already fucked up his brother so she said she had him to really do it right this time, to do the mother thing properly. Of course she failed at that and everything she did to his older brother she ended up also inflicting on him.

As a rather obvious consequence of almost daily trauma Thomas could never really concentrate in school. He would often get some much needed rest at least since almost every night he tried to sleep at home he would often be awoken by nightmares and could rarely return to sleep afterwards. Thankfully when he was 16 his brother finally managed to get his own place and took Thomas with him, not telling their mom his address or anything else lest she call the authorities.

He was as happy as he was capable of being to be away from his mom but still had very complex feelings towards her. Living with his brother proved to be a much happier existence though despite their circumstances. Not being able to finish school himself his brother supported them with a mixed income earned from bricklaying and illegal jobs carried out as part of a local biker gang. With less than a year left of Thomas’ education and no hope of him getting anything out of it either the two of them decided he would simply stop going.

From there on out they lived almost completely off the grid, taking any manual labor work they could whilst also lining their pockets with certain illegal endeavors. Drawn to actually being a part of a family Thomas also decided to try and join The Eerie Bastards, the biker gang. It was relatively easy since his brother was already a trusted member and half of the criminal element had similar backgrounds and personalities to him.

By the time he was 20 he was a patched member of the club. This came with what he had hoped; a new family. He’d always had an interest in guns, mostly because of a love of video games and despite being able to easily get one in his neighborhood he’d never before owned one. At first it was because having a gun in the same house as his mom was basically suicide and later on he respected his brother enough not to get one without asking him but wasn’t quite comfortable enough to actually do that. He didn’t know about the two handguns, one shotgun and one rifle his brother already had. When they finally did talk about it his brother said they’d just helped him sleep at first but he didn’t want to tell him about them being there in case he had… thoughts. In his new family though a love of guns was commonplace and appreciated. They taught him how to strip and clean a handgun plus several rifles and shotguns. The Sergeant at Arms also took him out to his uncle's farm and helped him practice shooting with all sorts of firearms almost every other week. Every patched member carried a gun and a knife, but possessing either without the will or ability to use them was more of a danger to himself than anyone else, or so he was told.

By the time he was 21 he was running drugs to Ohio from New York under the cover of the regular charity runs the club did. It wasn’t long before he was helping to torch certain rival drug houses and less than two years in he committed his first revenge killing. After that line was crossed it just became another way to make money, so the murder for hire began. The brothers justified what they did for money with their abuse. What had been done to them and what path it had set them on gave them little other choice in their minds. This shared justification was strictly kept in both their heads though, they never spoke of what they went through out loud, to each other or anyone else.

Inevitably one of them was arrested, charged, convicted and sent to prison. It just so happened to be his brother. He got 25 years to life for premeditated triple murder, taking the rap for one of the bodies for his brother. Cops knew there had been at least two shooters at the scene, the wound patterns made that obvious but his brother denied his existence and any and all allegations of it being in any way related to his biker club.

Due to repeated acts of violence in the prison he was originally in he was eventually shipped further west to Colorado and so that’s where Thomas went, becoming a nomad. When the apocalypse kicked off Thomas managed to get into the prison and rescue his brother as well as hundreds of other prisoners. It turned out to be pretty damned easy since every employee had left and abandoned the prisoners to die in their cells. Once he was with his brother they looked over a map and decided to head northwest to Washington. There was plenty of drinkable water because of the coast there, cities to be looted and if needed forests to hunt in.

Extended Information

Residence:

601 Hi-Ab-La PL NE

Profession:

Landscaper/Outlaw Biker

Aligned Faction:

Refuge

Relatives:

• DeShane Croft - 34 - Brother - Alive

Personnel Data

Weapons:

• SRM 1216 Shotgun (Carried on Sling)
• Glock 17 (Belt Holster)
• Puma Bowie Knife (Belt Holster)

Equipment

• Backpack (Usually kept in house)
• Several boxes of 12 gauge shotgun shells
• Box of 9mm rounds
• Six gallon jugs of water
• Camel Sack
• Break Free CLP Cleaner & Lube
• Cotton Pads
• Sleeping Bag
• Food/Rations
• Water Purification Tablets

Miscellaneous

• Zippo Lighter with The Eerie Bastards inscribed

Trade Skills:

• On a Swivel
  Thomas has been in enough violent situations to know that they can kick off anywhere at anytime and often at a moment's notice. For this reason among a few others he pays constant attention to his surroundings, making sure he knows who’s there, what they’re talking about and even what they’re thinking if possible. This continues at any place he sleeps or even rests. If he sits somewhere he makes sure he can see the entrances and before he lets his guard down anywhere he makes sure it’s clear of all danger first even if he has stayed there numerous times before.
• Outlaw
  Thomas spent what could have been his college years being schooled by hardcore criminals, most of what they taught him being violence-oriented. Aside from simply teaching him how to maintain and shoot guns efficiently they taught him where to shoot just in case a target was wearing body armor, how to stalk and ambush a target in an urban environment and most importantly to never hesitate when the time came to pull the trigger. What makes Thomas extremely dangerous however is that truthfully almost all of his actual skill at killing comes from real experience in real situations. It’s one thing to be a good shot at the range, it’s a whole other thing to gun down two or three men in a small and crowded bar. Basically, in real high risk, life and death situations Thomas is tried and true.

Talents & Hobbies:

• Hobbies
• Gaming: Before everything went to shit Thomas loved gaming. Throughout his entire childhood he used video games to distract himself from the horror that was his home life. Later on he used them to distract himself from the acts of horror he committed. Despite them basically just being a coping mechanism he truly did love them, especially RPG’s.
• Jogging: Not something he did all that often pre-apocalypse but he has since seen first hand what happens to people who can’t run long distance in this new world. He fully expects to have to go beyond the walls of Refuge again at some point and he wants to be as ready as he possibly can when that time comes.
• Talents
• Thomas’ only useful non-combat talent is his knack for remembering details and noticing even the slightest shifts in behavior. He remembers almost everything he hears people say and if that somehow conflicts with what they say or do down the line it’ll gnaw at him until it’s at the forefront of his mind. He is compulsive about understanding why people do what they do and say what they say and this for some reason makes him an unusually decent judge of character.

Limitations:

• Socially Inept
  Thomas has spent almost his entire life socially isolating himself and when he finally did begin regularly socializing it was with a group of borderline or way past the borderline sociopaths. He’s not exactly the most charismatic man in the world. His aloof attitude towards others combined with him either being extremely distrusting or extremely loyal tends to be rather off putting to most folks.
• Tinnitus
  Thomas’ hearing has suffered for having shot firearms indoors and without ear protection way too many times. He’s not deaf, but his hearing isn’t exactly quite up to standard and he hears a ringing sound in his left ear on quite the regular basis. It’s nothing too debilitating but it definitely makes a difference in his day to day life.

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

Question regarding a potential character's background and motivations: would they have the technology to fix a broken spinal cord, and if so, would it be reasonably accessible to the general public or too expensive for most people?

@Force and Fury

Judging by the near $300 I got charged for speaking to a doctor for five minutes and getting prescribed what was essentially glorified moisturizer I'm pretty sure you have to sacrifice an elementary school for that kind of medical care here. Though in seriousness it is a very interesting question. I'm curious as to how the world/U.S changed in the missing years.

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

@JackHasAShotgun It doesn't say "Edited"... something smells fishy here...

@Bishop

Huh, that is strange. Before when I quoted Rawk it also seemed to quote my post before I edited it but it's no longer doing that. Thankfully.

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

<Snipped quote by JackHasAShotgun>

Did you just post that you "accidentally posted"? *gasp* O.o

@Rawk

Ha, at first I posted a CS I hadn't yet read over.

Deadland Wasteland: //START Recruitment.exe [OPEN - APPLY]

Accidental post.

Deadland Wasteland: Calling All Survivors (Looking for a few more.)

@JackHasAShotgun Maybe they (The character) fled inland to get away from the intial chaos, and decided to continue west as opposed to all those who were headed back east to find shelter. Cars still ran in the first few, lets say weeks? (I have a reason why cars are harder to come by now.) So, we'll use that to give your character a reason to be on the west coast relatively quickly. Even though they could easily walk it in three months, without water they would die.

However, think of this more as a parallel earth. You don't have to actually know the area too well. The only real big important things is Washington state is known for having Naval Bases, and the national monument, the Space Needle. You can use google maps to get a feel for the layout once I pick an area. Otherwise, it should be pretty simple and forward, we'll make things up as we need to go and I'll document important locale's as needed. You don't have to get so specific as to know the street names. Really just the names of outlying towns and the basic geographical area.

@Aeonumbra

Ah, very useful. Thank you.

Deadland Wasteland: Calling All Survivors (Looking for a few more.)

I'm not too familiar with the states being relatively new to the country in real life. Is there anything that would make characters who weren't there pre-apocalypse head there? Aside from the fact that it's one of the coastal states. Just thinking that if we had characters who grew up on or were more familiar with the east coast, what would make them head west? It's not really that big an issue, I can probably write the exact same character on the west coast, I guess I'm just curious.

Fallout New Vegas: Points of Divergence [Reboot]

Very short post but I figured I'd get another up real quick. Probably going to need one or two more to wrap up James' current errand so I figured I'd get one up now to bridge that gap a little.

Fallout New Vegas: Points of Divergence [Reboot]

James Farkas - Freeside

It didn’t take long for James to find the run down old house the drunk had mentioned. It truly did live up to its description. The windows were gone, there was little to no furniture inside and part of the roof had caved in leaving the place almost completely open to the elements. Its appearance wasn’t even the worst thing about it though, the smell was. A strong and assaulting odor of piss and sweat that could make a fiend gag. James covered his nose with the sleeve of his coat as he entered, now grateful for it’s lack of windows. He couldn’t think of much worse than walking through such a hell hole blind.

Thankfully he found Jacob quickly, he was curled up in a corner at the top of the stairs. Even in the dim light James could tell the man's skin was red and blotchy and he was sweating. Despite that he was also shaking slightly as if he were somehow cold.

“Jacob… Jacob!” James yelled.

“Wh.. Wha.. What!?” The addict yelled back, snapping out of his suffering for a moment.

“Get your ass up. Julie sent me for you.”

“Julie… She’s a good woman.”

“Yeah, better than we deserve. You especially. Now come, get your tired old ass up and come back to the fort with me. We still need you old timer, addiction is obviously still a problem here.”

“I can’t get up James. My bones hurt more with every convulsion and what muscles I got left feel like they’re on fire… Please, I just need a hit. Bring me a hit. Dixon's got what I need.”

“Dixon huh? I’ve seen that asshole around. Where can I find him now?”

“Outside of Mick and Ralph's. He sells low quality but highly addictive chems to the vagrants that stay opposite there. Worse than an amateur chemist… Had to buy from him though, the Garrett's wouldn’t sell to me.”

“Yeah, I know all about that. All right, I’m gonna go have a talk with him. I’ll be back for you Jacob. You’re not going to erode your knowledge one hit at a time.”

James turned away and went back down the stairs, out the door and went quickly on down the street, his fingers drumming on the grip of his pistol.