Post by Radfish on Nov 3, 2013 1:44:18 GMT -5
Character Name: Theodore “Theo” Stahlberg
Nickname(s): Ted, Teddy, ‘Pretty Boy,’ plus common ghoul slurs (the shuffler, zombie, etc.)
Race: Ghoul
Sex: Male
Age: 29
Birthplace: A settlement on California’s border
Height: 5’5”
Weight: 130 lb.
Eye Color: Pre-ghoul, both were light blue. After ghoulification, his left eye appears to have a white film over it.
Hair Color: dark brown
Hair Style: Has more hair than the average ghoul, but it does not cover the entire head. The right side is more preserved, having large bunches of hair that can reach down to mid-neck, and the left side having a few stray strands still connected.
Facial Hair: N/A
Skin Color: Previously pale skin turning a decaying brownish-yellow, with a few discolorations or irritated red areas.
Build: Small and light, but not a twig
Distinguishing Features: As a ghoul, much of his flesh is decaying. Muscle can be seen exposed in numerous areas, including the left side of his jaw, half of his neck, and much of his left arm and back. Dark veins can be seen through the skin, webbing though most of his body. His face, despite displaying portions of muscle and lacking nose cartilage, is relatively preserved (especially on the right side); retaining a normal eye, an ear, portions of hair, and portions of his lips. The flesh on the rest of his body is on the better side of standard for a ghoul.
Profession: A scout, repairman, and scavenger
Attributes:
• Strength: 2
• Perception:7
• Endurance: 5
• Charisma: 6
• Intelligence:8
• Agility: 8
• Luck: 4
Skills:
• Subterfuge
• Craftsmanship
• Survival
Training: Mostly moving in a group, he never really experiences times where he is needed to fight for himself (outside of hunting small animals), so while he may have the knowledge of how firearms work, he does not have hands-on experience with them usually. On the road, he has knowledge of many plants and creatures, knowing how to scout resources and how to set up an effective camping ground. With his knowledge of scouting, he relies heavily on not being seen. With the advice of passing wanderers, curious tinkering, and a couple of surviving handbooks, he has learned to work with machinery and weapons.
Other Abilities: Can cook a mean squirrel stew and knows a basics of barter and first-aid. He has studied and observed the effects of radiation on living things enough to know how to diagnose and treat radiation poisoning.
Apparel: Trying to stay out of the elements and hide his decaying flesh, much of his body is covered. Normal clothing consist of a long sleeved, turtle-necked, magenta sweater he wears underneath a green bomber jacket, which has a fur lining on the inside and around the neck. He wears tan pants that are tucked into a pair of scrappy, but still efficient, combat boots. He keeps his hands in fingerless gloves and wraps most of his skin in bandages. In places with a large population of humans, he will place a scarf around his face and may put goggles or sunglasses on.
Weaponry: Main weapon is a laser pistol, which he tends to worry over and keep in good conditioning. Although it gets little use, he also keeps a large hunting knife strapped to his thigh.
Other Equipment: Keeps a decently large satchel slung over his shoulder, which keeps most of his supplies. Commonly carries bottles of dirty water and irradiated food (takes consumables too irradiated for human consumption), surviving machine manuals and books, a pair of binoculars, plus a few handy Stimpaks. Although useless, he keeps a pack of Rad-X and Rad-Away on him, for no other reason but to give to others or sell. He also keeps a few repair tools on a belt and some scrap mechanics.
Affiliation: N/A
Religious Belief: Agnostic (Grew up without any religion, does not like to talk about it, but can believe there is somebody up there that casts all this misfortune upon people)
Sexual Preference: Homosexual
Relationship Status: Single (would probably never have a real relationship, he sees it as an extra anxiety and another potential weakness)
Personality: Theo practices the way of passive cynicism; never thinking of the brighter outcome, but also not shoving pessimistic complaints down everyone’s throat, acting more depressed than irritated or angry. Inwardly he believes that most people are brutish idiots charging towards their own death, but he would never speak an insult to someone’s face. He rarely sees any real “fun” in being out in the wasteland, but feels as though he is given no other choice. In addition to his bad outlook on the world, he has an arguably worse opinion of himself: He has yet to come to terms with his ghoulification and has become consumed by it, having extreme anxiety attacks and nightmares about him decomposing while still alive and then descending into insanity. He is very careful about what he does, terrified that anything will progress his decomposition further and attempts to slow it down by covering himself with bandages and even taking in small doses of radiation in efforts to heal, but not enough to risk turning feral. While not exactly cowardly, he may be overly cautious about most, thinking that anything could be a trap. His goal in a fight? Never get in a fight, stay hidden, and on that time when a fight is unavoidable—never go at an enemy head-on. Along with a fear of death, he also has a fear of abandonment, causing him to almost appear “clingy” after he has joins a group, despite never actually wanting to share any personal thoughts or emotions with others. His esteem issues cause him to put more effort towards assisting others to try and show them that he is not just a complete burden.
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Born in a settlement sitting on the border of California, Theodore Stahlberg was the child of the local doctor and a member of the town’s scouting party. His mother, a doctor who decided to settle down from wandering the wasteland, worried for his health as a child and kept him close to the settlement most of the time. In the years he stayed inside the settlement, his mother taught him to read and let him help with some of the patients, although he was always too nervous to work with anything worse than a small cut. While he was not particularly disliked, he lacked friends due to his preferences to be alone and shyness. When he turned sixteen, his father, part of the scouting party that collected supplies for the settlement, dragged him out to teach him about the wasteland in the intent to prepare him for his new responsibilities as he grew older. Out there, he learned about safe resources and how to avoid hazardous situations, including the rights and wrongs of scavenging. With a scholarly curiosity, he learned and memorized the medical properties of many plants and tried to bring back any books that seemed salvageable, which included multiple manuals on how to fix and maintain machinery and some pre-war fiction. As he got older he grew into being a likeable, albeit slightly unknown, member of the community.
At the age of twenty-six, an event strongly impacted his life. During a scouting with his peers, others in his team discovered they discovered a small cavern with a surprising amount of plant life. Entering further they discovered the plants were being grown due to a massive amount of radiation coming from deeper in the cave. Curious, they delved further in, killing a few feral ghouls as the came closer to the source of the radiation. In the depths, they found a mountain of barrels, full of radioactive waste. The party decided to turn back before any were harmed, but abruptly discovered the barrels were rigged to explode after someone stepped onto a hidden pressure plate. While much of the party were already ahead and were able to escape, a handful of scouts were caught in the eruption—including Theo. This is the event that began his ghouification.
Upon awakening, he was shocked he survived, but was oblivious to the thought of becoming a ghoul. He continued through the cavern in search for other survivors but fell short and fled back to the settlement. Over the course of the next few months he began to notice that his skin was feeling odd and that his hair would sometimes fall out in chunks. When his skin began to fall off he finally realized that he was becoming a ghoul, and began to abruptly panic. He broke into the clinic and took all the bandages and began to wrap most of his body with them. Then, still in a blind fit he packed up some of his belongings and fled the small town, afraid of the reactions he would get if anyone saw what was happening to him.
After wandering and camping out for days, it was a stroke of stupendous luck that he crossed paths with a peculiar caravan. While walking along the road one night he saw a caravan in the midst of a struggle with geckoes. With a doubt that he would be of any use and the fear of being shot on sight mistakenly, he was hesitant to go to their aid, but guilty conscience persuaded him to enter the tumble with his hunting knife anyway. After the fight he discovered he had stumbled across a band of wandering ghouls, who under the party name of “Cadaver’s caravan” traded goods and wandered the wasteland. Seeing an opportunity for acceptance and safety he begged the leader to allow him along, offering repair services and minimal burdens, and was kindly allowed into the party.
He followed the caravan for a few years, scavenging and repairing their weapons (he was even given his own laser pistol after he practically rebuilt it from scraps), and eventually moved his way up in the group in terms of respect. Many of the ghouls were surprised at how young he was and how early he was in the decomposing process, which nicked him the ironic title of being the “pretty boy” of the group. Despite what he saw as decent, if not pleasant, company, he still was not accepting of the fact that he was among a crowd of irradiated mutants, using many of the caps he earned to try and find methods or treatments to reverse ghoulification. While the others may be drinking at a local bar, he would be talking with the local doctors and scientist about any studies. As he came up short on any possibility of reversing what he saw as a living nightmare, he continued to decompose, and his anxiety increased to the point of possible instability.
After a few more years of wandering, there was a tussle between some racist mercenaries and the leader of the caravan, which ended with half the party being thrown in a ditch and the other half running for their lives. Theo, who was out scouting at the time, returned to the sight of some of the last of the caravan being slaughtered by the mercenaries as he watched from a distance.
With a new fear and hesitance towards humans, Theo found it more difficult trust others. Alone once again, he began to wander the roads as a single scavenger, occasionally following behind caravans and taking up small-time jobs, staying in towns as long as he could before he runs out of caps and has to go back to scavenging for work and supplies, drifting wherever the roads and the caravans go.
(Sorry if I messed anything up! I know I need A LOT of help with this, so all help is welcomed. Also, I'm sorry I couldn't get a screenshot of him, so I drew something instead--I hope that is alright.)
