Post by Garrett Sixsmith on Aug 9, 2013 1:40:53 GMT
Name: Garrett Sixsmith.
Alias: Sixsmith.
Age: 51.
Gender: Male.
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual.
Faction: Survivors.
Role: Largely concerned with the security of Tommy's Dam, but also doubles as a doctor in emergencies.
Location: Tommy's Dam.
Physical Description: Tall and wiry, Garrett doesn't look particularly strong unless you take note of the way he carries himself, all tense and poised like some predatory, feline thing waiting to pounce. Close up, you can just about feel the tension trembling in his muscles, like a tightly coiled spring.
His hair still retains a few dark hints of its original black, but it's largely silver-grey now, and his eyes, once startlingly blue, are pale and sad and rheumy these days, though they'll flash to hard steel if he feels the need to threaten.
Across his hands and forearms there runs a complex network of scars, mostly acquired in the early days of the outbreak, when everybody was terrified of everyone else and he hadn't yet mastered the art of disarming a blade-wielding opponent. On his left wrist, faded and barely visible for all the twisted white channels of scar tissue, the words 'In Arduis Fidelis' are tattooed.
His clothing varies by the season, but generally it's simple and unobtrusive, as he knows full well the importance of being able to blend in with your surroundings when you're being tracked by armed bandits. He always keeps a pistol holstered to his leg, and closer inspection will usually reveal several knives stashed away at various places on his person: one on each hip, one on the thigh not occupied by the pistol, and once in each boot. The only other consistent element of his attire is Lola's engagement ring on a chain around his neck.
Personality: When he first came to the dam Garrett was quiet and withdrawn, speaking only when absolutely necessary and even then only in monosyllabic grunts. Being around decent people has done him a world of good, however, and these days he's remarkably friendly easy to get along with. He gives the impression of trusting new arrival straight away, though in reality he's always cautious. Outside the settlement he becomes far more guarded. It's a dangerous world, after all.
Loyal to a fault, when he finally comes to trust a person, to really trust them, it still surprises him to see the evil that humans are capable of harbouring in their hearts. It's taken him a long time to come to terms with what happened to the first group of people he put his trust him, and even now, if anybody asks him about his past he darkens and becomes rude and generally unpleasant, either until the subject is dropped or until he gets so angry that he snaps, shouts, and storms off.
For all his friendliness, Garrett can be pretty frightening from time to time.
Alignment: Neutral. Not one to shy away from a task, however unpleasant, Garrett can be relied on to do whatever it takes for the sake of the people he's come to care about. The families at Tommy's Dam are all he really has to live for and he'll do anything to preserve that. Anything.
Likes: Clear, starry nights and the way summer smells at dusk; candlelight and campfires, midnight when the moon is so big and so bright it makes your heart ache, and you wonder whatever happened to the men on the ISS; the look on their faces, the kids who weren't around in the great Before, when you tell them that there might be people up there with the stars; old relics of the bygone age, simple, stupid things that you laugh to think of now, napkin holders and ice-skates and bookmarks; the way alcohol tastes even finer now, the way you can pour yourself a glass of dirt-poor whiskey and it burns in the back of your throat and tastes like The Macallan; finally having somewhere to belong, after all those years of searching, and feeling like these people are all of them good people.
Dislikes: Loud and persistent noises, because you never know what might be creeping up to catch you unaware; the flat, dead heat of summer here, with no air-con to take the edge off; the infected, of course, but especially runners because they still so closely resemble humans, because they turned recently and it breaks his heart and makes him think of Lola, how badly it hurt to lose her; people prying, asking insensitive questions about the past that he clearly doesn't want to discuss; those sleepless nights when you toss and turn and stare big-eyed and wide awake into the darkness, thinking dark thoughts about this sad, broken world.
Strengths: Good at taking orders from his time in the military, and also blessed with steady hands that make him a halfway decent shot from close range. His training as, essentially, a paramedic, and several years of field experience, mean that he won't hesitate to try and save your life if he sees you wounded (provided you've proven you're not a threat), and that he's capable of keeping a cool head in the enormous pressure of combat situations. Where he really excels, though, is in hand-to-hand combat. If he's close enough to get a punch in, you'd be well advised to brace yourself for a broken nose and a knife in the ribs.
Weaknesses: Absolutely point-blank refuses to talk about his past, leading many people to think him untrustworthy. In spite of his ability to keep calm during a fight, he can be brash and quick to anger in conversations he doesn't want to have. He's also increasingly bad at sneaking around; where once he could avoid detection and get the upper hand during bandit raids, he finds himself making too much noise and drawing fire these days, which is useful in itself but never his intention.
History and Background: Garrett was born in England, in a small town just outside London, some twenty-six years before the outbreak brought humanity to its knees.
His childhood and upbringing were fairly standard. He had two younger sisters, the twins, Daisy and Poppy, and his mother took care of them while his father worked in London as an accountant, earning enough money to keep the family comfortable.
A few weeks before his seventeenth birthday, Garrett left home to join the army, much to his parents' disappointment. He trained as a combat medical technician and two years later his unit was posted to Iraq. When he was twenty-four, he left the army and moved briefly back in with his parents before getting a job in one of London's many pubs. It was there that he met Lola, with whom he'd been friends in school, and who very soon became his girlfriend.
One year into their relationship, they took a two-month-long trip to America, travelling down the west coast. In San Francisco, in late August, he proposed, and she said yes. In Seattle, in late September, the outbreak of the mutated cordyceps fungus struck and left them stranded thousands of miles away from home, in an unfamiliar city, terrified. In December of the following year, Lola confessed in a tearful, frightened whisper that she was pregnant. In June, she succumbed to the infection. Garrett put her out of her misery with a bullet, and fled, half-mad with grief and self-loathing.
In the years that followed, he wandered from place to place, always stuck on the outside of the established quarantine zones. For nearly twelve years, he ran with a group of survivors who saw his potential as a doctor and took him in. When the winters became too harsh and they started eating their children, Garrett left in horror, killing several of his friends on the way and not regretting it, not even for a moment.
Disillusioned, he toyed with the idea of taking his own life. No innocence left in the world, no clean consciences, no hope of redemption... why carry on?
It was then that he happened upon the beginnings of a settlement on the banks of a river in Wyoming—Tommy's Dam. A second chance.
Arsenal: Four Bowie knives and a hunting machete, and a Beretta M9.
Equipment: Aside from the engagement ring on a chain around his neck, Garrett doesn't generally keep anything on his person except a few rolls of bandages and, on the rare occasion they're available, a pack of cigarettes. Outside the settlement he might also carry water and a little food in a backpack, maybe a flashlight and extra ammo if he intends to be gone for more than a few hours.
Roleplay Example: Reading classical literature is a strange, sad pastime for Garrett and the people like him, people who saw the world as it was before the infection. Books that were classics then will be classics for the rest of time. The way humans live now is hardly conducive to great and powerful works of literature.
In the early years, when the faint hope of a vaccine had yet to be extinguished and still there was the promise that, one day, things would be as they were before, he'd collected the journals and letters he found on the road, meaning eventually to collate them in a big volume with a pretentious title, something like Insights Into Post-Plague America. Maybe he'd dedicate it to Lola and the baby, the little one who never was.
Of course, five years had passed, then ten, then fifteen, and the falling apart of the world had slowed but never stopped.
It's still a long way to rock bottom, but Garrett isn't a fool, and all the confessions of love, the apologies, the sad reflections on a broken world, all the photographs and all the hope that it was ever going to be okay again, everything was cast into the fire and left to burn. Better that way. Better forgotten.
So he sticks with the classics well-known and well-loved by dead generations beyond count. Today it's The Great Gatsby, but he's struggling with it as he struggles with a lot of old books. He doesn't know what some of the words mean, and it seems that the apocalypse was particularly unkind to dictionaries, so he sighs and sets the book down next to a copy of Les Miserables that he thought was a joke when he first saw the size of it. “You could take a Bloater out with that thing,” he remembers remarking, and maybe he'll test that theory one day, because there's not a chance in hell of him ever actually reading it.
Outside, spring is maturing into summer. The breeze is still pleasant but the air is increasingly hot and lightning flickers in the distant hills on most evenings. He ought to head out into the fresh air and enjoy it while he still can, maybe leave the dam altogether for a few days and get some hunting in. He's not a particularly good hunter—small game is generally too small for him to bring down from any range and he has yet to master the art of catching bigger animals by surprise—but he enjoys being outside with only a vague sense of purpose and nobody telling him what to do, where to go.
“Nngh, okay,” he mutters to himself, hauling himself to his feet and out into the dazzling sunlight, resolved to, at the very least, go and see how things are up in the power plant. The electricity's been temperamental at best since the last bandit raid left some important part of the system damaged, and there's talk about a supply run down the river in the next few days to try and find a replacement. Garrett will probably go, if they'll have him. Perhaps he'll ask around when he gets to the plant.
Extras: Years of experience have made him a semi-proficient surgeon, able, if the equipment is available, to perform minor emergency surgeries—appendectomies and the like, though the risk of infection and complications is always extremely high.
Player Name: Louise
Age: 23
Roleplay Experience: Oh boy, like 10 years I guess. I started on Neopets, haha, way before they started to properly enforce the character limit for posts.
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