To anybody applying a character. If you character is currently residing in, or is planning to reside in, the colony/town/settlement of Refuge you are more than welcome to take the map and claim a house/area. The map is really just for a general feel and layout, I snagged it from google maps.
The real IC town is going to be a little more post apoc and shabby.
For those of you who already claimed a locale in the int. check, I will be updating the map when I get home.
I've posted my character, and you are welcome to use that sheet as a model for your own if you wish. I'm not particular on the little customizing things people do, or how they choose to input their information as long as the basic layout is adhered to.
@Aeonumbra, so this might seem like a dumb question, but since I don't believe in those, I shall ask it!
Under "Current State of Local Area", what's the difference between the Public & Refuge? Is "Public" essentially anything outside of the Refuge border?
Precisely. The refuge part is meant to let you know what services are available, and with some flavor text beneath. (Such as letting you know that vehicles in refuge are pretty much used by the RPO exclusively.)
I have glanced over the character sheets, but unfortunately after my nap today I spent most of the evening building a computer. I'll be sending out replies and posting my character Wednesday morning.
Elijah is of an average height and build that has been sculpted through a rigorous regime of exercise from his time serving his country. He's not a bodybuilder by any means, but he is athletic and toned. He keeps his hair cut short and scruffy, but lets his facial hair grow out (he shaves his lip though, he's not one for mustaches).
He has a bit of an awkward, if not charming, face. A narrow, pointed chin coupled with a sharp nose and large ears have given him a face few could come to say they love, even with a smile worthy of a chewing gum commercial. Most people take him for Spanish or Brazilian decent despite his white, if slightly tanned, complexion.
His arms end right after his wrists, but the metal cuff that keeps his cybernetic hands attached actually encircles the wrist itself. Other than those permanent accessories, Eli can typically be found in some sort of tank-top or plane shirt and army fatigues combo. He also usually wears thick gloves over his hand out in the field, or when doing other labor.
Elijah wasn't anything too incredible growing up, in fact he was perfectly mediocre. Got into a little trouble as a kid, got decent grades most of the time, had some friends, couple of school crushes, some broken bones—The basic childhood. After high school, he enlisted in the army. Not because his father did it, in fact his father was a baker, and not because he felt compelled to serve his country. It just seemed like the smartest financial option to him. Which, he was told, was why a lot of people signed up. He skipped the extra schooling and, after completing his basic training, opted to go right into grunt work.
Eli was a hard and dedicated worker. He was an above average soldier, or so the tests and training told him. Much to the bane of his anxiety, he wouldn't actually be deployed overseas for almost two more years—Instead it was just teased and hinted at. But, eventually he was deployed and thus began the Second Korean Conflict, or "2.K.C" as most in Eli's troop called it. He spent a few years away from home, with little in the way of leave or a day off from trying to fight and survive in the Korean jungles.
As tensions rose and escalated into The Eastern Conflict, it seemed the world hung upon the precipice of a third world war after all these years. The American government took action, and for his all of his hard work, Eli found himself in a unit that didn't officially exist. Once more he was thrust back in training of a different sorts. The unit had to work together fluidly, with precision and speed, there was no room for errors. Failure likely meant death or gruesome torture, for which there would be no rescue from. If they were caught, the world couldn't know who backed them. Why? Because they were assigned to do things like: Assassinate the President of the People's Republic of China, a major proprietor in the continual escalation of eastern conflicts.
Official reports say the Chinese President was victim to a horrendous and unfortunate accident resulting in the catastrophic failure of his vehicle.
Eli worked alongside this group for his remaining time in the military, receiving dead drops and operating deep within foreign borders, surviving in the wilderness or hiding within their cities. Quietly eliminating the opposition in an attempt to "end rising hostilities", and perhaps help America prosper as a fortunate result. At least, until things started erupt back home. It was shortly after the first reports of the riots when Eli and his squad were called back to the Homeland. Their skills were needed on their home soil, a thought that left a sour taste in Eli's mouth.
Eli took part in ending the riots. He did a lot of things that, looking back on, he's not entirely proud of (some of them still haunt him). Especially with his involvement in the Tucson riots, which was a gruesome and violent affair. He was then sent to Sacramento, California, for a month to ensure things there didn't escalate with the recent spree of murders. Once things started to quiet down Elijah was given two months leave, before being sent back out overseas.
Finally, almost a year later, the risings tensions seemed to relax a bit, Especially with the recent break through with the "Miracle Gene" and the American W.D.P program. However, the American government is a suspicious bunch. They wanted Eli to come home and help train more operatives like him. Officially he'd be marked down as a Special Unit, there would be no connections to him or the unit he was apart of.
The same night he stepped off the plane, Eli found himself in the midst of an apocalypse.
Extended Information
Residence:
Two-story townhouse in Refuge, just behind the Command Center.
Profession:
First Captain of the Refuge Special Operatives
Aligned Faction:
Refuge Survivors
Relatives:
Aiyana Shuppert: Sister (24) Alive
Teacher: She works with ages 12-17 to teach general education and survival skills.
Joanna Shuppert: Sister (22) Alive
Recycler: Breaks down items into raw components and materials.
Personnel Data
Weapons:
Heckler & Koch HK416 Assault Rifle:
Under-barrel flashlight
Reflex dot sight
Assault foregrip
3-point side sling
30 round magazine
Beretta M9:
Belt holster
17 round magazine
Tactical Knives (2x):
Forearm sheath
Boot sheath
Equipment
Backpack, Leg-mounted canteen pouch, Road Flares, Protective Goggles, Tactical Vest, Long range comms radio, fragmentation grenades, small bolt cutters, rations, can-opener, frying pan, sleeping roll, tarp, lighter fluid, and a collapsible crowbar.
Miscellaneous
A picture of his sisters, tin of cigarettes, Zippo with a low relief, howling wolf, and a book
Trade Skills: • First Recon The majority of Elijah's military career was spent serving as officially titled as First Recon, on paper. Unofficially he was part of a glorified infiltration unit. Typically they were tasked with gathering information, and prioritizing the capture or liberation of key assets or the quiet elimination of high priority targets. Often times this meant roughing it and learning to survive in foreign lands, with little to no support. Hell, officially his squadron didn't even exist.
This kind of work has left him with pretty good knowledge on how to survive in the wilds, which much of the current world has become. He's no professional by any means, but he does have a wide range of skills he's developed. Additionally, he's an apt marksman and is an efficient hand-to-hand combatant. He's combat oriented, ready to lead, and claims he has long since made peace with his demons.
• The Regime's Routine Day in, and day out, certain practices and procedures were drilled into Elijah's head until they were more than just second nature, they were a part of who he was as a person. Do your push-ups, lube your gun, service your vehicle, rub out a quickie, do your pull-ups, and so forth. Thanks to this trained mentality, Elijah keeps himself in great shape. He has strength and stamina, and a decent speed to him as well. He also has knowledge of weapon maintenance and, to some degree, vehicle maintenance.
Talents & Hobbies:
Talents
Has the patience to wait for a stone to erode
Natural sketch artist
Hobbies
Loves to read (has a secret love for romance novels)
Enjoys drinking, smoking, and a pretty woman on his arm
Limitations: • P.T.S.D Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is so common among those who served, or are serving, that it's basically a stereotypical trait. Nobody's surprised to hear a soldier say they suffer from PTSD, so Elijah doesn't like to talk about it. He likes to think that it will just go away eventually. His two prominent symptoms are hyperarousal and re-experiencing symptoms.
• Hand-me-downs: Ah, puns. Elijah has a pretty positive outlook on things, but that doesn't change the fact that he has a pair of pre-era mechanical hands. Unfortunately, his knowledge on cybernetics-engineering is limited. He has to rely on others to fix and maintain them. Getting the internal components (which are protected by an outer shell) wet makes his hands either go haywire, or simply burn out. Receiving a powerful electric shock can also produce the same effect (the outer shell is insulated to prevent lesser shocks).
👁️• Paranormal Panic: When there's something strange in your neighborhood, apparently Eli isn't the guy to call. Eli's a capable guy, in normal situations. But when it comes to the unnatural, impossible, and.. well, paranormal he freaks out. Which, ironically, is a natural reaction. It's not like he's never believed in the occasional ghost, but some of the shit he's seen recently left him with a case of broken nerves.
Elizabeth "Liv" Themis — by Innis *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Thomas Croft — by JackHasAShotgun *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Alex TreVayne — by Rawk *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Daniel Pope — by Subject Zero *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Larisa "Lyssa" Friedrich — by Ever *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Hannah & Amanda Sinclair — by Force and Fury *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy* Cassandra Teresa Pacheco — by Rockette *M.I.A : Last seen with the Federal Way convoy*
Nothing had prepared Ahza for this moment. Six years of training, on which she had placed such little importance, did not prepare her artificial nerves for the staccato of gunfire spraying bark-like chips as it traced a heavy line along an adjacent wall. She reeled back, synapses firing, fingers scrabbling for purchase as she stumbled. Her senses buzzed, overwhelmed by the instant cacophony of warfare. Sounds became muddled, distant vague yelling over the hiss of blaster fire and the pinging of ballistics off of metal armor, obfuscated by explosions that rippled through the earth beneath ear. She stumbled again, taking a step back from the near-physical force of the chaos, aghast and wretchedly terrified by the surreal presence of being in the midst of an active warzone. She felt the etheric pulse, knew it for what it was by the way it crawled across her senses. She fell to the ground, feet gouging the hard-packed soil as she scrambled away from blaster fire charring a line between building. Sprays of steaming pebbles and hot earth rained around her.
Panic gripped her. Desperately she recovered, awkwardly stumbling to all fours, then to her feet as she moved to the opposite end of the wall she had been hiding behind. She had no time to gather her thoughts as a chunk of the wall erupted into a cloud of shrapnel. Ahza ducked, instinctively covering her face with her arms as she turned away from the explosion. Fragments of wall whizzed by, lacerating her silicon skin and leaving pieces embedded in her arms and back. She staggered back the way she had come just in time to see one of the others warp away. Others were firing, dashing from cover to cover. Some fell, collapsing beneath sprays of gunfire. There was too much to follow, too much for her disoriented mind to process. It was all so noisy, deafening with its violence. She had no idea what was going on.
She turned back again, looking for a way to go, her mind frozen between action and inaction. She tried to recall her training but she couldn't regain her composure. Everywhere she turned there was gunfire and death and noise. It was terrible, but she had to move. Had to do something. She staggered out from behind her cover, watching as a Tarrhaidim soldier was emulsified into a cloud of fire and dust. Fragments of the armor that had been bolted to his body skittered and bounced across the ground. Ahza stared at the surreal sight, unable to take her eyes away from where the soldier had been standing. Her organs constricted and emulated nausea oozed through her. She cursed her mother's obsessiveness and ran passed the smoking crater. She darted out from cover, glancing towards the opposite end of the village in time to see one of the robotic combatants leveling a large weapon at her. Frantic, she sprinted towards a building and flung herself in through a window. The window hadn't been open, but she crashed through it in a spray of shattered biomass.
Ahza crashed to the floor inside the dwelling and lay there, radiating heat from the state of her agitation. With a wall between her and the outside world, the sounds of combat seemed muted - less so after she had put a big hole through one wall. She looked over at her arm, by her gaze slid past the dirt and detritus clinging to her, ignoring the shards of mossy-bark stuck into her silicon skin, to a pair of soldiers crouching beside an unopened window on the other side of the room. Those didn't look like the allies she had road in with - but maybe... No. They were definitely not friendly, a fact supported by the act of a pair of carbines being leveled at her. She tried to roll out of the way but she hadn't been nearly fast enough. Gunfire raked across her, peppering her body with precisely placed shots, metal shells slamming into her chest and head. Her body rocked from the impact, staggering her as she tried to climb to her feet, but not enough to stop her from rising fully. The metal slug that slammed into her knee, however, was more than sufficient to send her careening back to the floor. Posted at the entranceway was a third soldier she hadn't seen.
The third soldier fired a second slug into Ahza's side as she tried to rise, sending her back to the floor once more. Bewildered and senseless, the only course of action she could think to take was to try and rise again. The slug thrower kept a careful aim on her as the other two dumped their mags into her, targeting areas on her body where any other synthetic might have an exposed vulnerability, searching for a joint or seam to exploit. Ahza, huddled on the floor, listened to empty cartridges rain around her, sprinkling the earth as the vibrations from the gunfire rippled through her. The whine of a blaster came from nearby. Her head jerked as the blast scorched the side of her face. Silicon oozed and dripped from her, exposing the gunmetal alloy beneath.
"What kind of synthetic is that?" a muffled voice asked in between the hail of bullets.
Ahza barely heard registered the voice. Instead her eyes focused on the flattened metal shapes littering the ground around her. She realized they were bullets. Bullets that had been flattened after impacting her metal shell. She laughed then. Embarrassed, feeling foolish and dumb, she laughed. She rose to her feet and a slug hit her. She rose again, taking a second slug, leaning into it, watching the fat chunk of solid metal burst apart into a whirlwind of razor sharp steel. She had no idea what kind of weapon THAT was, but it looked incredibly lethal. Instead, the thin slices of whirling metal simply bent and twisted around her. The soldier reloaded, exchanging some kid of box-fed magazine for another slung across his hip. Ahza let him. He fired again and she braced herself - the slug hit her directly in her chest and she felt her armor harden in response, returning the force of the blow, compressing the slug and forcing it to burst apart into its deadly shrapnel.
"Hah!" she cried in triumphant mockery, "You can't hurt me!"
In retort, the soldier shot her again. Angry and overconfident, Ahza rushed him. She threw a wild, uncalculated punch and put her fist through the wall where the soldier's head had been. Grunting with frustration she ripped her hand free and turned to face her four opponents. She took a martial stance, feet set, shoulders squared. Wary, the other soldiers divided into two groups, forming up on either side of her. She glanced from one side to the other, her confidence fading into uncertainty. She waited, and they waited. Outnumbered, Ahza wondered why the soldiers didn't attack first. As if to answer her unspoken question, the wall behind her disintegrated into cloud of fire and ash. She hurtled across the room, crashing through an opposite wall, a bookshelf, and a sectional couch. She stopped on the other side of the living area, half-embedded into the furthest wall. Through the hole that had opened up behind her came the mechanical unit from earlier, wielding some kind of large cannon on its arm.
"Engaging safety protocols."
"No! Salas! Don't you dare! I have it under control!"
"The asset must be protected."
"Burn you, Salas! Ash burn you and scorch your eyes!" Ahza cursed bitterly, but her protests were futile.
Salas took over.
Prying himself from the wall, Salas stood and assessed his opponents. Four humanoid targets, presumed organic; One mech, equipped with some kind of large, explosive cannon. A brief assessment of his body showed no damage - not even a scuff. These soldiers were likely not equipped to surmount the mnemonic shell - but he presumed that they could be in his calculations. The mech stook a firing stance and fired a ball of blazing hot light. Salas didn't know what the projectile was comprised of, metal or plasma, perhaps, but it didn't matter. Casually, he turned and the projectile slid by his vision, so close he could feel the heat off of it. He braced one leg as the wall beside him erupted in a shower of bark, moss, and biomatter. Flaming debris flung outward, pinging off of his body. The force pushed against him, but braced as he was he he didn't fall. Instead, his foot punched into the earth. He pivoted, falling into a runner's crouch, and then flew forward. Alarmed, the soldiers opened fire.
Salas ignored the bullet fire and, closely watching the barrel of the slug-thrower, he simply moved out of the way. Once in the midst of the soldiers, he was too close for the mech to fire on him again. One of the soldiers drew a knife, the edge humming with a blazing orange glow. Salas fell low, catching himself on one hand and spinning a foot into the soldier's side. Armor crumpled, bone fragmented, and the knife-wielder's chest ruptured into a spray of gore. The second soldier, the one who had been paired with the knife-wielder, wiped frantically at his red-stained visor but Salas rotated further, carrying his momentum and leveling a heel kick that shattered his opponent's jaw and snapped the second soldier's head back with a resounding CRACK. The second soldier crumpled to the floor. Salas didn't even pause to register the man's death or the red geyser that bubbled from his neck. Salas hurtled into the mech's leg, using the full force of his body to buckle the knee joint and send the machine crashing to the ground. It whirred and buzzed angrily as Salas slid through the earth, raising trails of dust as his fingers gouged furrows into the floor, seizing his momentum and allowing him to turn and rush back. The robot twisted, trying to level its canon at Salas. Instead, Salas leapt and put the toes of one foot through the robot's wrist, severing the joint and relieving the robot of its hand. He also relieved the bot of its cannon, aimed it at the other two soldiers and pulled the trigger. They vaporized into blazing clouds of dust and gore, bits of armor shooting in every direction like a shrapnel grenade. Then, Salas aimed directly downward, and the robot burst apart in a similar fashion. The mech absorbed the kinetic force and then its mechanical body tore asunder and hurtled in every direction.
The fight was over in seconds.
"Asset secure."
Ahza said nothing as Salas returned control to her, bitter about having her control forcibility taken away. There was no getting around it. She was a very expensive investment. She looked at the carnage around her, awed, baffled, and sulking bitterly. She knew she was being petulant, but it was hard not to be. She stared at the gore, at the smoldering crater, at the smoking bits of metal and melted circuitry. It was all so surreal. Nothing like seeing it in a video, or experiencing it in a simulation. It was unreal, bizarre, so far removed from her day-to-day reality that she didn't know how to process what she was feeling. This was supposed to be her life now? Impossible. She had gone from a panic attack, to full-on panic, into an existential crisis. Was this her purpose? Death and blood and fire? She looked at the cannon in her hands, at the mangled firing mechanism she had crushed in her grip. With disgust she dropped the weapon.
"Thanks Salas..." she said, melancholic. Thanks for what, exactly? For turning her into a killing machine? Or for protecting her? Why hadn't anyone had the foresight to give her a gun - did she even want a gun? Did she want a weapon at all? Did she even want to be here? Doing this? War raged outside, people were struggling desperately, fighting for survival, dying... and here she was contemplating if she wanted to be a part of it. Did that make her a bad person? She looked at the red streaking her feet and legs, at the ashy-char that coated her like a fine dust. Little spots of blood dotted her body like gruesome freckles. She felt sick.
"You are welcome, Ahza."
Somewhere far away in the distant reaches of civilized space an interested party frowned at a paused video feed. The image twitched and jerked, the signal weak and distorting as it showed a first person perspective of Azha looking at her dirty, bloody hands. The silicon around her fingers had melted, exposing the sleek, shimmering metal beneath.
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