Wastelands ~ The Game's afoot

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"Imagine all the people, living in harmony."
- John Lennon, Imagine

Imagine for a moment a world without politics. Imagine a world without religions, where people's views no longer mattered, where there was no longer any distinction between old and young, rich and poor, Atheist or Believer, liberal or conservative. Imagine a world where every person was equal regardless of skin color or ethnic background.

The United States and Russia have over 30,000 nuclear devices in their arsenals as of February 2001. It would take 800 such devices to end most human life on this planet. In the half-hour between the launch of the missiles and the detonation of the last bomb, it would not be difficult to imagine a world where racial, religious, class, and national distinctions no longer mattered. In the days and weeks after the bombs, the remaining people would struggle to survive in a vastly different environment. The Earth as well as humankind would bear the scars of that wound for hundreds if not thousands of years.

~ Jason Marcel

This is going to be a dark, gritty and heroless world. Survival, not heroics is the main goal. The Wastelands are no place for heros. Taking place though the eyes of the survivors of a nuclear war in the Pacfic Northwest as they venture from their bunker. (Those who join after we start are survivors that the intials find and let into the group) These are the average joes at the end of the world.

SIGN UP SHEET

Name: Duh, need to know what your character is called

Sex: Male or Female

Appearence: What do you look like? What do you wear?

Useful Skills: There are no slack offs in the Wastes. You have to have abillities - from being good with guns to a geology major or being just plain old strong.

Personality: What's your character like? Introvert or Extrovert? Jock or Nerd? A Dreamer or Realist? Religous? Rasict? Just a good overall description of who they are.

Posessions: What do you have that the rest of the group is not likely to have?

I must approve your character for you to become involved. We will begin when two RPers sign up (I will be a character also)

Here's an example of a finished character, my own for this RP.

Name: Virgil Brown

Sex: Male

Appearence: A white bald male in his forties. Has an obvious limp from a childhood injury. Mildly underweight with deepset eyes and a thin face. Around 5 feet 5 inches tall. Wears a beat up mechanics outfit most of the time.

Useful Skills: Though he looks like a common repairman he graduated at the top of his class in MIT, meaning he can fix virtually piece of electronic equqiment and program computers. Because he worked as car mechanic in his teens and early twenties he has an initimate knowledge of machinery of all sorts.

Personality: Virgil is harshly cynical and completely OCD. He fiddles and tinkers without machines into they are abosulutely perfect. He has no respect for authority and a massive ego, though to a degree he can back up his ego with his IQ (At least 200). He plans everything far in advance and has severe paranoia, his own fear drove his to construct the bunker that housed the survivors.

Posessions: Survival Laptop, capable of operating under extreme conditions this laptop can be beaten, burned and shot and continue to run. It has solar cells and a battery to store gathered power for dark areas. Snap On Toolkit, this kit contains a variety of tools, screws and bolts - enough to repair most anything.

Name: Sydney Lydecker

Sex: Male

Appearence: Slightly overweight, glasses. Wears rumpled, comfortable clothes. In his early 30's.

Useful Skills: A geneticist by trade, Lydecker is actually a scientific jack-of-all-trades. He doesn't know all, but he knows a lot, through memory palace mnemonic techniques. If push came to shove and he ever had to fight, he is not an excellent fighter, but can improvise using surrounding objects really well.

Personality: An agnostic, he lost his family in the holocaust of the nuclear exchange. Cynical, but more towards the pessimistic side of cynical, he nonetheless hold a very utilitarian point of view. He also believes in the sanctity of life, and will not take another human (or mutant, if we go that far) life unless his own was directly threatened. Not actually pacifistic. He has a mildly sorrowful disposition. At times, he will admit the limit of his knowledge, but at other times, he will not be so humble. Never seen without a book in hand.

Posessions: A number of books he brought into the bunker.
A fluid (as well as the knowledge to create it) that helps decontaminate radioactive materials to safer levels.
A multipurpose scanner that can help detect biological weapons, scan any lifeforms, and act as a geiger counter. However, it is not very portable. The best miniturisation is a backpack with a rifle sized scanner. Also, it is at best 85% reliable, except with the geiger counter function. (Hey, he's had a few years to rig it up)

Hey Flagg, can we wait until there are about half a dozen characters?

I deliberately made the multi-scanner a more bulky device in order to prevent it from being an all-purpose McGuffin.

Sounds like great fun Flagg!


My Character Profile:

Name: Aaron North.

Sex: Male

Age: 38

Appearance: Tall light framed man with a very light complexion. Requires glasses for severe astigmatism. Normally wares kaki pants and a sturdy Carhard coat and hiking boots.

Useful Skills: Nature lover with an in depth knowledge of botany, horticulture, soil science and ecology in general. Capable survivalist who can survive in most natural environments almost indefinitely.

Personality: A quiet divorced loaner who often becomes engrossed in whatever has his interest and tends to have poor interpersonal skills. Struggles with moderate bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder. Brilliant computer programmer and mathematician, he was able to live his dream of a remote setting in the wilderness and work over a high speed satellite up-link. His remote solitude saved him the day the world ended. He saw the beginning of the conflagration as he witnessed the last few minuets in the life of the Internet.

Possessions: Very few. The bombs triggered intense forest fires that destroyed his cabin and forced him to flee from the flames. He has a flint, hunting knife, compass and a Leatherman.

I hope we get someone to balance out all these eccentric-male-genius characters before it turns into a bad parody of a Robert Heinline novel.

You don't need eccentric male geniuses for that, you need egocentric male geniuses. Of course, I don't imagine those are hard to find around here (I'm two of the three). And I love Heinlein.

Aaron North accpeted.

And yes, it would be nice to have someone who can actually fight, slavers and various mutated monsters abound.

Character addendum for Aaron North:


Skill: Bow hunter - after all he's really not a complete pacifist hippie intellectual. Also as a naturalist and hunter he has well developed talent for stealth.

Possessions: High power hunting bow and quiver of arrows.


Also on the matter of motivation he should know Virgil and know about the bunker. The only reason I can come up with for Aaron to enter a devastated area is hope of his friend's survival or at least that the bunker and its provisions are intact and usable.

Also, I would hope the bunker is stocked with guns and ammunition in anticipation of what a post nuclear war world would be like.

Virgil suffers from severe paranoia, therefore the bunker has more weapons then some small third world armies. Though oddly he's never fired a gun and therefore will not be too great.

Name: Colonel Alexander Dagon

Sex: Male

Appearance: Medium height, slightly overweight, scruffy brown hair, pale skin, green eyes.

Useful Skills: Great strategist/tactician/leader, very resourceful and intelligent, strong willpower, very good at close combat for short bursts, though not such a good runner, accurate and efficient with weapons, intense military training. Reasonable at fixing things and operating equipment, but less creative than most people.

Personality: Optimist, has faith in the human race. Wishes to restart civilisation and get the human race back on track. Strong willed, determined, very generous and kind, but quick to anger and stubborn. Deserted from the British army right before the nuclear holocaust, with a group of 9 survivors, including 2 crew members, 3 children, and 4 other adults from different backgrounds that banded together.

Possessions: A catamaran ferry, with as much equipment, supplies, and food as Dagon and his comrades could fit into 1 large truck, a Land Rover Discovery, and a top-of-the range motor home. Farming equipment included, as well as 3 pigs and 4 cows.
Plenty of weapons and food stores, both brought onboard, already on the ship, and looted from the port in Dover.

Name: Nidia Flores

Sex: Female

Appearance: Short, athletic, ladina (light-complexioned latina) woman in her late twenties. Angular features, light brown curls almost perpetually pulled back in a fierce and unflattering chignon. She dresses simply, primarily for comfort and ease of movement.

Useful Skills: Before this all began she was a corrections officer who, in an attempt to shift careers and become a court interpreter, was nearing the end of her studies at the University of Washington. She has law enforcement training and experience (including extended First Aid) and is quick on her feet. Functionally multi-lingual, she speaks a flawless Spanish (can adopt a number of regional accents and colloquialisms) and also has an excellent grasp of a variety of slavic languages, most especially Russian, Polish, and Ukranian. Can also understand bits and pieces of Korean/Hangugeo, but does not speak it well.

Personality: Nidia is a practical and severe woman of few words. Daughter of wealthy Salvadoranean immigrants, much of her youth was spent as a sheltered student on Mercer Island or else at the family compound in her parents' homeland, a place ravaged by decades of socialist/fascist conflict and centuries of corruption. She has retained her family's patriotic feelings for their country of origin, as well as a heavily suspicious and untrusting attitude and nagging racist thoughts toward lower class members of her own race. This is often masked by an unreadable expression. She wears a silver chain adorned with a crucifix and a handful of saint medals, but doesn't appear to have any personal religious leanings--though it's doubtful she'd speak of them if she did. Her voice is sharp and her eyes don't seem to miss much. She has always been a believer in rigid enforcement of the law, intolerant both of corruption and unlawful exercises of mercy. It remains to be seen what a lawless world will do to that method of functioning.

Posessions: Typical police tools of the trade.

Nida accepted.

Colonel rejected for failing theme, Too perfect and too powerful.