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Spook
Topic Started: Apr 23 2014, 06:55 PM (187 Views)
T42
Vault dweller
[ *  * ]
Name: Spook

Age: 19

Race: Human, Hispanic

SPECIAL: S:4 P:7 E:5 C:3(*-1) I:8 A:7(*+1) L:6

Personality:
Spook is an awkward, scraggly, and somewhat creepy individual. His tribal upbringing and practically solitary life in the wasteland has gifted him with much, but nothing in the way of social graces. This, combined with his habit of starting up conversations about chem cooking, the anatomy of mutated insects, how best to create various homemade poisons, and the semi-casual consumption of human flesh, has made him more or less an outcast from proper society. (however proper it can be in this day and age) His speech impediment and piercing stare that can be felt through the goggles of his Wastehound helmet certainly do not help in this regard.

However, Spook always tries his best to be polite, gregariously offering many of his homemade chems and recipes for fried radscorpion. He is noted to have a way with children and domesticated animals, as they are not as put off by his awkwardness.

Spook generally likes to be accepted, but has never really formed a close friendship with anyone in particular, and is nomadic by nature. He is often consumed with some form of wanderlust, always seeking something new, weather that be a new chem or cooking recipe, or a chance to travel abroad as a caravan guard. Though he habitually shoots up various chems, he has not succumbed to addiction, being smart about his habits. His bookish demeanor and near photographic memory allow him to memorize various things... though this skill mostly pertains to every medical and cook book he has ever read.

Spook is highly superstitious, believing in ghosts and demons, and holding to the traditional Badlander faith that the ancestors must be appeased in order to gain any sort of favor in this world. Thus he begins each day with prayer, and adorns himself with various lucky charms such as small animal skulls and bits of giant insect carapace. It should also be noted that he has a deep phobia of any and all robots and AI constructs, holding that they are too demons, and out to devour his soul.

Spook is also, like most people of his tribe, a cannibal. While he dose not regularly consume human flesh, nor dose he hunger for it constantly, if a fresh corpse is there and he is hungry, he will not hesitate to grill up some liver and eyeballs. He is only vaguely aware that this is not acceptable in regular society, and has been run out of more than one settlement for his cuisine.

All these oddities would normally lead someone to assume that Spook is rather slow in the head, but in fact he is far smarter than most who inhabit the wastes, capable of comprehending nearly any concept set before it. Already he understands quite a few wasteland recipes and can concoct basic poisons and chems. Other concepts such as math and spelling are well understood by him, but due to his lacking education, he knows only as much as he could learn from a few scattered books and holotapes he has scrounged out in the wastelands. But he is always hungry to know more, and greatly appreciates intellectual pursuits.

Spook respects those who have things he could learn, and is generally polite to those who are kind to him in return. However, he has a dark way of coping with those who intend him harm, Spook can hold a grudge for years if need be, and will never forgive, and most certainly never forget. Even those who are only unpleasant or rude run the risk of having this soft spoken tribal poison their food.

Appearance:
Spook is a scraggly but muscled individual of a somewhat stout height and light tan/brown completion. He is often dirty and bears hundreds of scars, both small and large, shallow and deep, all over his body. His calloused but nimble hands have long, dexterous fingers and sharp nails. These hands hang on gangly, almost primate like arms, which are knotted with muscle and covered in shallow scars. His skinny, but stout legs are somewhat shorter in perportion to his arms and body, and are usually covered by his brahmin skin pants.

He hasn't removed his rawhide Wastehound helmet in years, and thus his face remains a mystery. His body is usually wreathed in his tattered burlap rags that give him the appearance of a brown ghost, with a rather large rucksack slung over his shoulder. His worn brahmin skin pants are patched and sewn together at odd intervals, showing some serious wear and tear from years in the wasteland.

His Wastehound helmet is somewhat unique, bearing a pair of glowing, yellow goggles, and a very scrawled patchwork of stitches and staples. His helmet also boasts a single, mohawk like tuft of hair. Also notable is his bandoleer of bullets and a belt of leather pouches and labeled jars that are often obscured by his rags.
His body is also covered with various tribal fetishes and lucky totems, from bone charms and insect carapaces, to odd bits of scrap metal and jewelry.

Starting Equipment:
Clothing:

Badlander Wastehound Helmet- A ritual mask that Spook put together after he returned victorious from his Hunters Rite. Though it may appear like any other Wastehound helmet to the uninitiated observer, its importance to Spook is paramount. Not only dose it protect his face and eyes from the elements, but, as far as Spook is concerned, it protects his very soul from the demons that inhabit the afterlife. He, as any Badlander, believes that if he dies with his face bared, his soul will be snatched up by malevolent spirits.

Burlap Rags- Spook wreaths himself in dusty, burlap rags in order to keep the harsh wasteland sun off his skin for the most part and protect him from sand and other light debris.

Utility Belt+Bandoleer- Holding his Dart Gun and Combat Knife; along with ammunition and various poisons. Spooks entire arsenal is in his belt, and as such he always keeps it tied close to him.

Tribal Foot-wraps- What, you didn't think he went barefoot did you? Though, considering the foot-wraps, they aren't much better than being barefoot.

Rucksack- A large, worn backpack that holds most of Spooks possessions such as Cook Books and other odd ingredients for dishes, chems, and poisons. It also contains some cooking tools and other odds and ends for repairing his cloths and weapons, along with some odd clips of ammunition.

Canteen- Usually clipped to Spook's utility belt, this rusty and dented old canteen is usually filled with either water or cactus juice. It can be used as an impromptu melee weapon should things get really desperate.

Weapons:

Dart Gun- Constructed by Spook when he was just thirteen years old, this poison dart launcher is the tribals closest friend and undoubtedly deadly with its masters knowledge of poisons.

Tribal Knife(Tier 1)- More tool than weapon, this old combat knife is still quite effective when applied to the jugular.


Story:
Spook was born to the infamous Badlanders Tribe in the middle of the endless desert that is the Midwestern United States. Brought up to be a mercenary and survivalist since he could walk, Spook became very familiar around conventional weapons at a very early age. However, unlike the more rowdy and tough children, Spook was very quiet, and preferred his doting mothers company than that of boys his age. At age six, his father was killed by deathclaws, and this drove Spook closer to his mother than ever. His dependency was considered odd by the tribe, who usually raise their children communally and expect them to be tough and independent. Further oddities manifested themselves as he aged.

Spook was a quiet, introverted child, never straying far from his mother and usually helping her prepair meat brought in by the warriors and teaching himself to read any Pre-War books he could find. Spook would develop a tendency to vanish whenever other children came his way, as they quickly found pleasure in bullying him for is odd ways and scrawny form.
At age thirteen, he, like all Badlanders, underwent his Hunters Rite, a ceremonial hunt in which he must seek out and kill the selected target and bring evidence of the kill back to the tribe in order to earn the right of adulthood and name. His target was a member of a nearby raider gang that had recently given the tribe trouble.

He sought out the raider, on his own as was customary, armed with only a Dart Gun he threw together and some anti-freeze from an old refrigerator he happened upon. He found the raider encampment in the burnt out ruins of a dilapidated gas station, and stalked him. Sneaking about the perimeter of the encampment with surprising agility and primal grace, he chose his moment. When he squeezed the trigger, the poisoned dart sped home, lodging itself in the raiders back as he relived himself behind the back of the gas station. The reacted to the attack as if it were an insect sting at firs, and in the night, mistook the dart for a bloatfly stinger. He casually discarded the dart and retired to his cot in the parking lot of the gas station... and never woke up. His fellows disposed of his body in the morning, unceremoniously casting it into a nearby ditch, where Spook quietly sawed off the raiders head with his own tribal knife.

He returned to his tribe a man, much to his peers surprise and his mothers pride, and took the name Spook, stealthy exploits.
From that day on he lead a fairly normal life by Badlander standards. He traveled the wastes with his tribesmen, worked as a mercenary with other warrior bands, and hunted wild game to feed his kin. He also kept up his hobby of cooking and insect studies, and later found interest in cooking chems and poisons. He continued on this simple but fulfilling life until his mother passed away from natural causes at the age of fifty. Spook, now twenty years old, was devastated, his mother was his only real family in the tribe. He had never married or had any real friends, and was still rather alienated by his tribesmen for his odd ways.

With no other reason to stay, Spook left one uneventful morning, never to return. He traveled across the Midwest, working mercenary and caravan jobs, with the occasional stint as a bounty hunter or even a cook on a caravan trail. Eventually he ended up in the South, usually spending his time as a hunter, always on the look out for fresh cook books and chemical compounds to trade for.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
Spook has poor social skills and is not particularly tough or strong. As a result he tends to shy away from open combat, preferring to catch his foes unawares and pick them off one-by-one. In a full scale firefight, Spook's natural response is to find a piece of heavy cover and keep his head down until he can get a clean shot; or he may try to flank and pick off any exposed foes from ideal vantage points. He is, by nature, very cautious, always having an escape route.

His speech impediment and other social blights make him very poor at convincing people to trust him, or even follow a plan of action, no matter how sound it may be. In spite of this, he is extremely intelligent and perceptive, quickly able to discern a persons motive and acting fairly swiftly on it. He has worked very hard to train himself to control his personality and body language. (but regardless his stutter always gets worse when hes excited) This somewhat mitigates his lack of charisma, but not by much.

While generally good natured and kind to those he comes across, he is also somewhat amoral, readily stealing anything that catches his fancy and poisoning anyone who gets in his way. He will freely rob when he feels he can get away with it, and won't hesitate to kill without any shred of remorse if he has to. He can also hold a grudge for what seems like an eternity, from people who tried to kill him, to an exceptionally annoying loudmouth, Spook won't hesitate to poison such a persons food while they aren't looking or shoot them in the back with a poisoned dart.

*Traits:
Creep: Spook is generally unnerving, this is due to many factors. From his lanky, odd body, to his whisper dry voice and piercing goggled gaze. However, years of being bullied by stronger children and a tendency to avoid direct confrontation allows Spook to be extremely sneaky, hence his namesake.

Small Frame: Spook is a lanky and gaunt creature, but this lends itself to his own catlike agility. Regardless, hes a serious lightweight, and relies entirely on speed in hand to hand combat... mostly to get away!

Improv Artist: Spook has had to make most of what he has, from the rags on his back to his trusty dart gun and all his poisons. However, he is rather unfamiliar with weapons made by other entities, be they long gone Pre-War companies or modern day scroungers such as himself.

Running Inventory:

Weapons: Crossbow: (Tier 1)(GC) Spook managed to construct this lethal weapon and its ammunition from odds and ends found in a raider occupied Supermarket. Though certainly deadly, and can be poisoned like his weaker Dart Gun, it is still a rather primitive weapon.

Armor/Clothing:

Misc:Small hide x1
With some luck it seems you came acrossed a small discarded animal hide in the wilderness. It should come in handy later in your journeys.

Rollplays:

Corralling the Corral, A Bustling Town, or Deathtrap? Link: http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_wastes/inde...wtopic=1766&hl=

Spook gets involved in a little vendetta and ends up shadowing an interesting character by the name of Red Drinnion.
Spook
Race: Human, Hispanic
Level:1
Equipment: Dart Gun, Combat Knife, Bandoleer, Utility Belt, Canteen
Armor: Wastehound Helmet, Rags, Brahmin leather pants
Inventory: Jet, Dart(16), Cactus Juice, Jar of Spooky
Appearance: Gangly, rag clad tribal covered in bone charms and bits of scrap metal. Wastehound helmet has piercing yellow eyes.

Hoodlum
Race:Human, Hispanic
Level 1
Equipment: Homemade Revolver, Bolt Knuckles, Backpack, Trophy Belt
Armor:Shoulder Paldroun, Chain, Industrial Plastic Mask
Inventory:12 Gauge Shells (18), Dirty Water (5), Canned Beans (3)
Appearance: Industrial Plastic mask with jet fighter smile, black mowhawk, bare chested save for chain and leather straps holding his small blue backpack and spiked, skull shaped shoulder pladroun. Trophy belt lined with skulls, both human and animal. Various tribal and flame tattoos.
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Midnight Rider
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The Super Cereal
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
You Pass!

This topic is going to be moved to the database. There you will be expected to keep track of your character as their status changes due to injuries, new equipment, different appearances ect. This is also a great place to keep track of missions he's been on which will help other people find the stories he's been in easily. This topic is also a great to talk about your character and the direction you want to take him with other people.

You are encouraged to place your character stats and info in your signature like I have and most of the members here have done as well. Browse through a few users signatures to get the idea of what to do.
Posted Image
Gordon "Stone" Hennigan, SPECIAL: 5.6.9.3.5.10.3. Level: 6 HC
Peter McCullough SPECIAL: 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 4 , 4, Level 3 HC

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY

The spirits have taken an interest in you for all the wrong reasons! Unexpected challenges will come to you during your RPs but the rewards doled out will be much juicier. It is possible to live with such a curse, but if you would rather live curse free, you could simply sell the corpse and wash your hands of the whole situation.

Lmgthev: MBP is handsome
LonesomeDrifter23: Sometimes I think MBP is a being made entirely of satire.
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Zilabus
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Er'ry day I'm overseein'
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Hey you requested some additional critiques having just had these characters passed so I'm going to come in and give you some notes/hints that I get from looking it all over!

My first non-storytelling (You know, how the narrative actually works) non-mechanical (how the writing actually is) is to try adding a line break in between paragraphs. This is just for easy reading on the forum - as you'll probably note line breaks between paragraphs and no indention is the common style and the reason for that is it is by far the easiest to read in this medium. So yeah.

I also noticed somewhat of a tier mess-up, which is that a combat knife is also the name for a tier three knife! In that sense I think you wheren't trying to jump tiers or any such, it was just an easy mistake to make. I would suggest changing the name to "tribal knife" (tier 1) or something to that effect.

Okay, no onto the actual writing rather then things like that.

Now mechanically I honestly don't see much that warrent a real critique. Clearly you have been writing enough for your writing mechanics to work and be coherent - and although there are little issues they seem to mainly just be typos and things like that.

Flow also falls into this and I think that that might be something you try to think about as you write more and more. It might just be the format of characters, but here I think something that might take away from the overall feel of your character is that it seems he is put together sort of as a bunch of parts, or what have you. This is hard to quantify in words but I think you probably get what I mean intuitively by flow - it feels in some ways like a set of different attributes together rather then as one cohesive moving work. My main advice for working on this is just to be aware of it and continue writing - just taking a second to try and think of how you can make things sound more 'connected' might be a subtle thing that helps. It is hard to give advice on an intangible like this, but being aware I think will help and make your future characters read more like characters rather than a set of different qualities put together, you know?

From a narrative standpoint I think that here there could be more focus on detail and the weight of things. Now what exactly does that mean? Well, in short, I think weight is an important thing to look at even here in a registration - and when I say weight I guess I mean something more like an abstract idea of impactfulness. The idea that things should feel important and relevant - and I think this carrys on into detail in some ways. When things don't have weight - we have this problem where more and more detail feels extraneous - things seem to become lists rather then tangables, you know? A good amount of weight, on the other hand, doesn't create this problem. More detail can easily come into play and it doesn't feel like an overload. So I think by focusing on (in the story for instance) trying to make things feel more engaging and relevant to who we have as a character and our interest as a reader, naturally we'll be able to stack on more detail, you dig it?

Okay, anyways, I think these are good places to start. I hope you don't mind that my critique is a little 'up in the clouds' so to speak. I think you have a lot of potential and talent as a writer, so I avoided trying to do something sort of like "change this to that, move this, etc." in hopes that I might give you some things to think about as you continue to progress as a writer!

Whew, all that said, let me compliment you on your talent and in the spirit of not leaving you with only things to improve, say that I think youhave a great hand for creating interesting stories and plot points - your character seems to have a uniqueness to him and he doesn't fit into any very stereotypical bad or cliche norm - and for that I look forward to seeing you progress. I think your creative mind will help lead to interesting characters, interesting settings, and interesting scenarios for them to play around him.

Hopefully all this helps!
Eli "Slim" Ambrose
SPECIAL: 3, 9, 2, 7, 9, 3, 7
Level: 5
Bucket town reputation: -175
Equipment
Weaponry: Molotov, Cherry bombs, Combat Knife, Laser pistol, Tack Mines, Smoke grenades, Syringes.
Armor:Post-war suit Tattered leather jacket
Inventory
Homemade shotgun, Gumballs, Bedspread
Mentats x3, Psycho x2, Jet x1, Wiskey x2, vodka
4 1/2 x Hides, 15 LSB dollars
Appearance
Caucasian
Very tall, lanky, and slim, jet black hair in a greased into a subdued pompadore style. Dark eyes and a cleanshaven face. Brown Windowpane suit.

Kelly "Featherweight" Capozzi
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