At the Gates of Samaria (an exercise in creative character writing)

[Minuteman37]

I wanted to put together a little character building exercise to help give me inspiration for my possibly upcoming Apocalypse game (it's not quite AFTER the end yet).

The premise is that the PCs will be survivers inside a not quite secret enough fallout shelter after a nuclear war and nanobot caused Mega Virus.

Make a character that during this catastrophe is aware of a fallout shelter that has what they want (safty, their child, innocents to murder, be creative) and they find it, but it's locked with the only obvious means of interaction being a Telecom.

Who is your character, what do they want, what are they hiding, how do they go about getting it, how if at all do they relate to other characters from this thread?


Feel free to make as many assumptions about the setting as you like, I'll make adaption as needed if I end up using your character in the game. Though generally speaking this is set in the near future with little pockets of bleeding edge hyper advanced technology that may or maynot be alien in origin and magic/psi/supernatural spoky stuff may or maynot exist. It's there if you want to utilize it for a more interesting character.

Bonus points for especially Humorous, tragic, or spooky/ disturbing characters.

[Luke Bunyip]

It would help to be useful, and perceived as being non threatening. Someone with appropriate Engineering skills, or Medical and/or Surgery related skills etc. OK, that's the bait. To sweeten it, maybe some form of psi related empath skills, along with at least a point in Psychology, Fast Talk, and Acting.

Aka an useful con-artist/charlatan/demagogue. Given the potential power of a character like this, in a closed social environ like a fallout shelter (Are we talking Vault 13, or four people in a leaky bunker?) Disadvantages such as phobias, or a quirk such as Dislike (...) would come into their own.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

It would help to be useful, and perceived as being non threatening. Someone with appropriate Engineering skills, or Medical and/or Surgery related skills etc. OK, that's the bait. To sweeten it, maybe some form of psi related empath skills, along with at least a point in Psychology, Fast Talk, and Acting.

Aka an useful con-artist/charlatan/demagogue. Given the potential power of a character like this, in a closed social environ like a fallout shelter (Are we talking Vault 13, or four people in a leaky bunker?) Disadvantages such as phobias, or a quirk such as Dislike (...) would come into their own.

It seems like more like a vault set up.

[ericthered]

Mailman Dan knows that radiation and nanobots are dangerous, and he doesn't blame everyone for hiding in their holes. But that's not very social, and he has good tricks to stay both alive and mobile. Or so he says. Dan wants to start communication between various shelters, and he's offering to deliver messages between various vaults. He figures theres a lot of social capital to be made, and he says he may eventually start charging, but for now its free and he promises the fees will be reasonable.

Dan is backed by an ambitious tech group with aspirations of grandeur. They are less interested in social good will and more interested in finding out what's going on in each vault, and what the best way to exploit internal issues is. The group funds Dan's rediculous mail 'truck' in all its tricked out glory, and reads the mail.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Mailman Dan knows that radiation and nanobots are dangerous, and he doesn't blame everyone for hiding in their holes. But that's not very social, and he has good tricks to stay both alive and mobile. Or so he says. Dan wants to start communication between various shelters, and he's offering to deliver messages between various vaults. He figures theres a lot of social capital to be made, and he says he may eventually start charging, but for now its free and he promises the fees will be reasonable.

Dan is backed by an ambitious tech group with aspirations of grandeur. They are less interested in social good will and more interested in finding out what's going on in each vault, and what the best way to exploit internal issues is. The group funds Dan's rediculous mail 'truck' in all its tricked out glory, and reads the mail.

Love the idea, Dan sounds like a very colorful character and his dastardly patrons are committing the most heinous of felonies, mail theft!

[Jasonft]

Roger Stevens used to be a military sniper, and a pretty darn good one. He wasn't in the war that ended everything because he went a bit off the deep end and punched an officer who criticized his personal hygiene and general lack of discipline after he got back to the base from a long time in the field. Likely some little shithole conflict way on the other side of the world.

Roger had enough friends in the brass that he avoided jail time, but still they had to kick him out of the service. Roger does not care for civilian life and felt quite lost, taking refuge off in the woods with a civilian 'militia' camp. Training these civilians to shoot wasn't so great, but he put up with it and they learned to leave him alone otherwise.

Then came the war and the aftermath where the leaders of the militia started raiding settlements for supplies and captives. This wasn't what Roger signed up for so he freed the captives, gave them a bunch of guns, and blew the rest of the stockpiled military stuff he couldn't carry to the sky before vanishing into the night.

Roger needs something to do with a modicum of military discipline to it. He might well 'adopt' a shelter and do what he can to keep the riff-raff at bay, especially if someone in the shelter is a close relative of one of his former military buddies. Protecting the postal truck from the previous post as it makes it's rounds could work too. Mailman Dan's type of crazy would appeal to him, but he might not trust the backers.

Roger plays like a fairly stereotypical survivalist who is a little crazy. He doesn't like getting too close to people but also doesn't like being too far away. He has a touch or two of Danger Sense and a surprising gift for vanishing into the shadows if you take your eyes off him. Pretty decent scrounger and knows how to live off the land. Being inside too much makes him twitchy.

[ericthered]

Isaiah Kowalski wanders the wasteland, asking people if they've seen anyone on his list of photos. He says that they are old freinds and he's trying to track down their locations. He says they are likely to have changed their names, but he bears them no ill will.

If any of the questions are answered "Yes", Agent Kowalski will reveal he used to be a government agent. He's fairly sure he that those responsible for this mess are both in the area and alive. More than that, he knows the identity of a few of them. Kowalski is wracked with guilt that he didn't stop the disaster, and is dead set on making sure those men see justice. He's going to every vault, hidey hole, and shelter he can find, and asking for pictures of each member of the vault.

Whether he's telling the truth, or just a sadist capitalizing on the atmosphere of paranoia, is up to the GM. Either way, he has decent surveilance tools and a wickedly effective social engineering skills.