Vance Devereaux

Character Name:
Vance Devereaux



Nickname(s):
Dev



Race:
Human



Sex:
Male



Age:
25


Birthplace: A ranch near
Shady Sands, California







Height:
5'11"



Weight:
145 lbs



Eye Color:
Brown



Hair Color:
Dirty blonde



Hair Style:
Short, straight



Facial Hair:
Rough, unkempt beard



Skin Color:
White



Build:
Moderately bulky, slightly underfed



Distinguishing Features:
Has some mild pockmarks on his face and a burn on his hand







Profession:
Wanderer, conman



Skills:
Subterfuge, Survival



Training:
NCR basic training, family training, usual school of hard-knocks



Other Abilities:
Incredibly good silver tongue--he can lie to someone's face and claim he's a flying purple people eater and they'd believe that he thought he was telling the truth.



Apparel:
Basic wastelander outfit



Weaponry:
Lever action rifle // Battered 9mm pistol // Utility knife



Other Equipment:
Generic survival supplies, ammo, caps, and lots of Med-X







Affiliation:
None, believed dead in the NCR



Religious Belief:
Atheist



Sexual Preference:
Heterosexual



Relationship Status:
Single



Personality:
Vance has become a very depressed and weasly person, intent on getting by but not particularly caring on how or why. He doesn't have much left to live for except the sheer nature of survival and he tends to just take enjoyment out of whatever comes along, be it sex, drugs, or the pleasure of seeing an enemy's body riddled with bullets. While not utterly lacking in empathy, he has lost it enough that he would rather tend to his own needs than that of others, and won't hesitate to take advantage of someone for his own gain, though in general he prefers gentle cons over outright killing people. He is incredibly manipulative, talented at twisting someone's desires around on them and great at getting them to see his point of view... even if he is only doing that to make a quick buck. Of course, he's not great at making long term decisions, only making action plans, and tends to set himself back with poor spending habits and other such things. Most notably, he has a strong addiction to Med-X and spends most of his caps just trying to keep himself in supply; that or gambling the rest away at one of the casinos. He is somewhat haunted by guilt, to the point he has difficulty sleeping, but hasn't carried the thought through far enough to actually start doing something about stopping what causes said guilt.







Vance hails initially from the capital of the NCR, the middle of three children and only son of a local rancher couple. His early life was fairly dull, uninteresting for the most part, but efficient in teaching him what he would need to survive. He never particularly got along with his sisters or parents, but less in a hostile manner but more typical family feuding. When he was seven, his family's ranch was crippled by a bandit raid, and while it wasn't much more than harassing, their livelihood was destroyed. Without any means to keep going, they sold what they had left and took to the trails in hopes of finding something else. They eventually settled a little further south closer to  the now-defunct city of Ontario, California where Vance's father and older sister could start harvesting scrap and other salvage from the local area.  There wasn't much to this living, but it was enough to keep them alive in a meager existence.  They wound up moving twice more to similar cities nearby, namely Riverside and San Bernardino, both times due animal problems, and eventually they wound getting forced into working with the trade caravans--which was exactly the life that his parents didn't want for the kids.  Thankfully, after a year, Vance was old enough to join with the NCR, eager to be free from the bonds of his family and the constant trouble of trying to keep a household.

Unfortunately, Vance joined at just the wrong time.  He was still fairly young, fresh out of basic training when he was transferred to the Hoover Dam, where he was assigned to the command of Sergeant Abigail Marin-Smith.  She was good to the troops, and while he wasn't around long enough to know whether or not she was a good leader, he felt comfortable around the rest of the squad and felt like this was the sort of place he could at least cruise through a good chunk of his life without concern for his life, at least as compared to the usual madness of the Wasteland.  In fact, he was beginning to believe that he might even start becoming a patriot of sorts, or at least for his fellow soldiers.  However, he was soon contacted by a strange fellow whom identified himself as a messenger from a man named Caesar.  Simply put: they had his family and would kill them if he did not do as they said.  They wanted him to betray the NCR, sabotage their munition stores, and eliminate any leadership he could.  He knew what that meant--it meant essentially killing the people who had been his only friends in years, and the only people he felt he could even remotely rely on... or he was going to abandon the people who had put up with his antics for years to the tortures of this... barbarian.  Crippled by indecision, he went to the sergeant and asked the vaguest advice he could... she gave him his answer, and by her own voice did she condemn herself.

Over the next few days, he began sabotaging the ammunition crates, unloading the magazines and pocketing the rounds himself, getting sand in the actions of the guns, and other such things.  Then, when the shooting started, he smacked Sergeant Marin with the butt of his gun and dragged her off.  Of course, he knew that she had a husband--had even met him once--so he arranged a body roughly her size to be burned to a crisp and gave it her dogtags so that her husband would avoid looking for her.  Then he waited for the battle to end, uncertain whether or not to root for the Legion or not.  Eventually, the people whom held his family lost, and he was left with a choice--either stay there with Sergeant Marin and surrender (and probably get killed), kill her by throwing her to the lakelurks and go to the Legion (and probably get killed for his failure), or turn her over to the Legion as proof of his efforts (and maybe get killed).  Under cover of night, he brought his nude prisoner over to the Legion side of the river and surrendered to them, giving her over as an offering and explaining his deal to the sentries.  Eventually, the man whom had contacted him before came out with his sisters and mother, all of whom were battered and bruised from beatings, but alive.  His father was killed in their capture.  He did everything in his power to get them all back, even once Sergeant Marin awoke and started screaming at him, but it did little to help.  For the sergeant, he was given the choice of one person: he chose his little sister.  For his failed efforts of sabotage, he was given the choice of one person to keep alive but in Legion custody: he chose his older sister.  His mother was crucified before he had left the camp, and he was stripped of his useful possessions.  Then, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, he and his little sister were let out into the wasteland.

She was furious with him.  Vance was a monster in the eyes of his little sister for his betrayal and wished that he would just die.  She left while they were camped one night, and took what little they had gathered from the outer edges of the battleground.  Eventually he managed to find himself a body with some weapons still on it and killed some geckos... this set the tone for the next several years of his life, barely scraping by as he tried to gather equipment which he could use to survive.  He couldn't go back to the NCR, since he was supposed to be dead and was now a traitor.  But... he also couldn't bring himself to work for the people who murdered his mother and father.  Thus he was left to wander the wastes.  Nightmares plagued him; Sergeant Marin's screaming, as well as the death throes of all the people on the Hoover Dam, haunted him constantly.  Eventually he began trying to find something to help him sleep past the horrors, and found only Med-X powerful enough to manage that.  To deal with his addiction, he began stealing from caravans while they rested and running simple gambling cons, his favorite being the ancient shell game.  He spots his sister on occasion--she seems to be traveling with the Gun Runners and has a husband, judging from the way she hugs him--but he has lacked the courage to speak to her.  For every year he was just a wastrel who somehow managed to avoid death in the Wastes despite being without companions, a town, or any notable amount of caps.  He's just a junkie who has somehow managed to keep himself alive through caution and awareness... and that's about all he'll ever be, as near as he can tell.