Post by Maggie on Aug 4, 2013 23:32:25 GMT
Where do you go little bird
When it snows, when it snows?
When it snows, when it snows?
Name: Margaret “Maggie” Whistler
Alias: Maggie, Magpie
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Unknown
Faction: Survivor
Role: Trader/Smuggler
Location: Outskirts (Wandering)
Physical Description:
She moves like a feral dog, in control of her environment but never fully at ease, her brown eyes always scanning for the next source of danger. Long limbs give her the illusion of height, but she’s closer to average size (5’5”). Her shaggy, shoulder-length dark hair looks like it was hacked short with a knife, and it probably was. Freckles along the bridge of her nose, tops of her shoulders and arms aren’t immediately obvious due to perpetual sunburn. Her face would look delicate – with a pointed chin, well-defined cheekbones and slim nose – if it weren’t for the scars and a lump on the bridge of her nose from a healed break.
Her hands are long and delicate looking, despite scarring on the knuckles and dry, callused skin. There’s a scar in the shape of a bite mark on the inside of her right palm, and a well-healed knife wound running across the palm from the inner joint of her thumb to between the fourth and fifth finger. The tip of her left ear is missing, and a clean-edged scar runs from temple to the corner of her jaw. Several more old knife wounds on her shoulders, chest, and stomach, as well as some almost-faded markings on her back.
Maggie is a jeans-and-t-shirt kind of girl, but then she hasn’t even seen a dress before. Her pride and joy are her mother’s old leather hiking boots, and she takes great pains to care for them. A ratty oiled canvas pack and the remains of an old baseball cap with her hair pulled out the back complete the ensemble.
Personality:
Maggie grew up a soldier in the midst of a losing battle. She has little patience for pleasantries, and tends to be direct when dealing with other people.
Compartmentalizing her life is something she had to do to survive, shaping her into a person of contrasting desires and motivations. She is curious and apathetic in turns. She has no use for hope, companionship, or safety. It’s difficult for her to form close bonds because she had a rather lonely, isolated childhood.
There is only the next day, the next ruin to explore, the next near-death experience to barely survive. Maggie lives to push the envelope just a bit further, gathering curiosities from the past as she does. At some point she picked up the nickname "Magpie" because of her fondness for shiny objects.
Her friends are few and far in between, but she can be remarkably generous when it comes to them. Like all people in this new world she is ruthless when she has to be, even when it comes to old friends. She sells her wares to anyone that stops shooting long enough to pay – hunters, soldiers, fireflies and survivors alike. Not that she’s been caught. Yet.
Alignment: Neutral
Likes: dogs, wilderness, fresh food, outwitting her enemies, showers
Dislikes: Cities, the military, hunters, sunburn, rotten meat, “do-gooders”, rats
Strengths:
- Stealth – You won’t even hear her coming; moves easily in the dark.
- Sharp Eyes - An eye for useful junk and trinkets.
- Clever Girl – She’s got a quick head on her shoulders, there’s no doubt.
Weaknesses:
- Weak – Not physically strong, relatively speaking.
- Deserter – You can’t trust her to have your back.
- Ambush Predator – She’ll go down like a ton of bricks in a head-to-head fight.
History and Background:
She was born to a pair of Fireflies several years after the outbreak. Her mother was fiery and uncompromising, a revolutionary to the core - unlike Maggie’s more retiring researcher father. They were often absent, but Maggie grew up around soldiers: learned how to make traps at seven, got her first knife at eight and her first gun at ten. It didn’t encourage close family bonds, but it allowed her time to master the survival skills she needed to live.
The military presence in her Zone fell when she was thirteen years old, and after food became scarce around the last half of the second year, everything broke into anarchy. An explosion left Maggie unconscious, buried under a pile of rubble. She woke almost two days later to a rat gnawing on her ear, causing a lifelong fear of rats that never quite faded.
A young teen alone in the ruins was a target, she learned this well growing up. Gathering what supplies she could, she limped out of the dying city as quickly as she was able, nearly losing her life to former Fireflies turned Hunter. It still troubles her that she didn’t feel like she lost anything that day. Not parents, not friends. For all that the whole world complains of their losses, it’s Maggie’s one secret ambition: to have something that she could lose.
Arsenal:
- Bow
- 9mm pistol – she’s a pretty good shot
- Shiv – She’s got a nasty cut on her hand from one of these.
- Ice pick – She keeps this in her boot, last line of defense
Equipment:
- Pack - held together with duct tape and prayers
- Folding knife – Old, not useful as a weapon.
- Gas Mask
- Snares
- Firefly tags – her mother’s tags
Roleplay Example:
Maggie dumped the bag of concrete mix to the floor with a loud thump and slumped against the doorframe, blowing a wisp of loose hair out of her face with an impatient huff. She gave the shopkeeper - a tall, slim black man with rough hands and unexpected softness around his eyes – her best glare.
“I swear Louis, you’d better pay us good for this. Had to drag the thing up a goddamn mountain.”
Of course he only smiled. Asshole. “Don’t you worry your pretty head, Magpie. I’ve got ya covered.”
“You’d better,” she shot back without much venom. A second glance revealed the little shop was more prosperous than she remembered. At least she was assuming so; the shelves had more merchandise on them than ever. It gave her a peculiar rush of pride. Louis slipped into her field of vision, looking for a moment like the shy boy he might have been Before.
“…About that other thing…?”
She actually cracked a smile at that, unclipping something from around her neck and crossing the room to drop it with a clatter on the scuffed countertop. A simple metal cross with geometric shapes etched into the pitted surface, strung on what looked like a piece of boot lace. “Not as much bling as you like I think, but I figure it’ll work.”
His face folded into a broad grin, his teeth a flash of pearly white. “It’s perfect.” He rounded the counter, and tugged her into a brief hug that she pretended she had to tolerate. “Thanks.”
After a moment she shoved him away with a bark of laughter. “Go and give that to your pretty boyfriend before he decides to gun me down for messing with his man.”
Louis snorted. “Ari would never do that to you, darlin’.” He dug around in his pocket and flipped a coin in her direction – a shower token. “Go take a shower, Magpie, you smell like a runner. Come back in about an hour for your goods, yeah?”
“Ha ha. You try taking a bath on the road, see where that gets you.”
Extras:
The Dog:
A rangy grey-and-white pit bull mix called Dusty, with floppy ears and a goofy expression. Maggie literally bought him for a song – a nearly flawless record she found in the ruins. He knows both voice commands and hand signals, showing intelligence characteristic of dogs that survived the twenty-odd years since the outbreak. Dusty has a specially rigged backpack of his own that contains his food and water, as well as a few odds and ends that don’t fit in Maggie’s pack. He hasn’t barked once in the entire time they have traveled together.
Theme: Wailing Jennys - Arlington :
Player Name: J
Age: 20
Roleplay Experience: eight years
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