X4-71 "Roy"

Character Name:
X4-71

Nickname(s):
Roy

Race:
Synth, 3rd Gen

Sex:
Male

Age:
31

Birthplace:
The Institute




Height:
5'10"

Weight:
175 lbs

Eye Color:
Blue

Hair Color:
Brown

Hair Style:
Relatively short and slicked back while still keeping an non-suspicious amount of shag

Facial Hair:
A short beard

Skin Color:
Caucasian, tanned

Build:
Medium size but quite muscular.

Distinguishing Features:
Has a scar that goes from his collar bone to just before the carotid artery.  Also has a few minor nicks and scars on his face as would be unsurprising of a Wastelander, with plenty more on his body, including three gunshot scars.





Profession:
Courser

Skills:
As a Courser, he's quite good at subterfuge, energy weapon use, hacking, and melee combat.

Training:
Standard Courser training (if that can ever be called standard).  Some experience from being in the wasteland.

Other Abilities:
Besides the physical improvements that come with being a courser, he also has become quite good at not seeming like a machine in personality--he's not quite what one would call a master of speechcraft, but he's good enough to blend in with great talent, even faking emotions.  He can also read Chinese (not speak it).

Apparel:
Typical courser coat and uniform; also has a Caravan outfit that he sometimes uses.

Weaponry:
A high-grade institute rifle (which has been painted to look more like a standard laser rifle), as well as a very powerfully juiced-up stun baton

Other Equipment:
A Stealth Boy, Stimpaks, his courser chip, and a specialized portable computer that he can use to download information from a Synth, including himself if he so wishes.  When using his merchant disguise he has some assorted relatively-high-cap-value junk that he sells to passersby just to maintain his cover (when I say that, I mean wonderglue and Nuka-Cola Quantum as opposed to scissors high).  Also keeps some books and play scripts on hand for when he has to wait around.




Affiliation:
Institute (Some Sympathies elsewhere)

Religious Belief:
Wildly uncertain

Sexual Preference:  Pansexual, but bordering on being biromantic asexual

Relationship Status:
Single

Personality:
X4-71 is a somewhat older courser who has become quite adept at figuring out human personalities, and as such will generally come across as just a somewhat business-like fellow who likes to just keep his interactions short and sweet for sake of efficiency.  He acts rather meticulous, counting out the caps to the exact number and tends to fidget around with trying to make things sit in just the right position, not quite to the point of seeming like he has OCD, but enough that people who know nothing about the disorder would say he has it.  However, this is obviously a cover personality... but the strange part is that he actually HAS a personality that he doesn't normally show.  It's still very subdued and deadpan most of the time, but he has begun thinking a great deal about the place and use of emotions and what purposes they serve, both for organics and for synths.  He has become deeply introspective, considering morality and using the time in the field he has to assess the various groups and powers of the wasteland, be they small trade caravans or the Institute itself.  That said, he keeps these thoughts to himself, his only major outward hint of this being his habit of using philosophically charged lines, not just from classic philosophers such as Aristotle or Kong Fuzi, but from literature that he sometimes reads on the road, usually while in the company of organics.  His particular favorite is a play script from a group attempting to make a stage adaptation of Blade Runner.  He can get emotional, but it is very rare that he shows his true thoughts off unless they happen to coincide with his character's actions.




X4-71 has no memory of his time from before being a Courser, or rather he has a few but he's pretty much filed them as utterly unimportant and has more or less forgotten them.  The first four years of his work as a Courser are largely uninteresting for him to think back on, barely registered as more than the occasional mission to break up his training and his single-minded focus on tracking down his intended target and doing what the Institute wishes of them, though of note was his peculiar talent for bringing individuals back alive when asked to make the attempt.  As his sixth year dawned, however, he was tasked to hunt down a rogue synth who had, so far, been rather deadly for previous coursers.  His preparation had been very simply to take combat caution and eliminate the target at distance before confirming the kill--he was rather unpleasantly surprised when he found out that his target had taken sanctuary within Diamond City.  This mission took a grand total of ten months, largely because he was unable to approach this woman and she was smart enough to know better than to approach him due to how utterly obvious it was that X4-71 was a synth just by his wooden mannerisms.  However, he eventually caught the runaway when she went out scavenging with a few people; even managed to bring her back alive with her crew none the wiser to her fate.  Afterward he convinced the Institute to allow him to begin training to act more human, and soon he started putting an effort in to manage this, actively practicing his acting and beginning to go out of his way to read literature during his down time, especially stuff he found while out in the wasteland.  Of course, this wasn't enough to end his work, and so for another decade or so he continued his work, becoming much better as a spy, eventually going by the name Roy after a character in a theater script he found that was practically tailor-made for his training.  He still didn't register it as dull work, but he was beginning to remember his events in more detail and actually focus on the important lessons he picked up from his jobs, both in his hunting and in blending in.  He even started using his wandering as an excuse to be a very minor merchant, just so that he could have a proper cover.

Then, about three years ago (just before the events of Fallout 4), he had a mission, during which he was ordered to track down a synth and download the information he had before killing him--this particular synth, going under the name Harris Falke, was suspected to be related to the Railroad and, as such, would be quite valuable.  When he found Harris, he pretty quickly realized that he had enough fellow caravan compatriots that an outright assault would be impractical, so instead he attempted to approach and befriend the man so that he could eventually get him alone.  Now, Roy never thought much about the friendship during the time, he'd done this before and he simply was going through the motions of trying to get to know someone, but Harris was a friendly person, a little twitchy and fidgety, but nice enough and well-liked by his compatriots. Eventually the time came and they went into a scavenging location together, but before X4-71 could act, Harris got into a conversation with him.  He basically confronted him on his reading of Blade Runner, that he too had found a copy of it, and simply commented that it was interesting to know that he was meeting another synth in person--that he always thought that when he met another it would be a courser there to kill him.  The two wound up having a very long conversation about the story, talking philosophy in detail and essentially bonding as two Snyths.  At this point, X4-71 was not actually intending to betray the Institute, he was simply indulging in a personal curiosity and getting as much information out of the man as he could before killing him.  However... he ironically never got the chance.  One of their traveling companions overheard their conversation and rounded up the rest of the caravan to kill the synths; turned out that Harris knew nothing about the Railroad.  There was a brief but intense firefight, during which all of the caravaners were killed, X4-71 was hit in the leg, and Harris was mortally wounded.  Only once the courser started downloading the dying man's information did he realize what was happening, but even then he simply laughed bitterly at it and made a comment that would wind up shattering the hunter's peace of mind, "You know... I wonder what you would think in my place.  If you would find these tears more valuable.  What would have happened if... if we were able... *cough* to protect them from the rain..."  X4-71 had no response when the man was alive, but once Harris died, the man's words finally clicked, the realization of what was lost as the synth faded from the world.  Yet... ironically, he knew that he could preserve the man's "tears in the rain," and, against orders from the Institute, copied the man's memories into a private folder in his computer and, once returned, started looking into whether another synth's memories could be moved into another.  He worded it carefully, acting as if it was an information failsafe more than anything, but even then those he spoke to were wary of the idea.

Since that day he has continued to work as a courser, however he has also begun compiling a collection, trying to save what he could and secretly hiding it in a little computer he's stashed into a cave in the wasteland.  He has begun ready far more philosophy, ranging from Greek, to twentieth century European and American, to Chinese where he could.  He has begun questioning things, not comfortable in the idea of rebellion as his control chip is still mostly functional, but still enough that under normal circumstances he would have been targeted as a potential candidate for rewriting given enough time and an inevitable slip-up.  Perhaps fortunately for him, the world had other plans.  When the Brotherhood of Steel decided to assault the Institute, he was one of those who were brought in for defense, and after a heroic job of defeating the attackers (alongside both the Sole Survivor and his fellow Institute Synths), he found himself with a new job: being a courser against the BoS.  His somewhat subversive thoughts have never ceased, but X4-71 has assessed the BoS as a far greater threat and has figured that anything he can do to assist the fragile Triple Alliance of Railroad, Minutemen, and Danse's Outcasts would be perfectly fine, even if it is while assisting the Institute.  He's wary of his faction and is aware that they may become a threat for those peoples later, but he has decided to cross that metaphorical bridge when he comes to it.  Right now, there is a war going on, and the only victory that can be afforded to happen is at the expense of the Brotherhood of Steel.