virtualFear!~ and Revenant - Joint Wastelander application

[Steam Username:] virtualFear!~
[Steam ID:] STEAM_0:1:20505572.

[Name:] Levi Astrauckas.
[Age:] 27.
[Species:] Human.
[Talents:] Guns, lockpick, repair, sneak, survival.
[Weaknesses:] Barter, science, speech.

[Faction:] Wastelander - formerly a raider (non-psycho, although dealing with PTSD.)

[Equipment:] Levi wears a set of plain dark gray fatigues adorned with various pouches around the waist and military-issue combat armor - more excessively on the torso although limited to forearms and knees for the limbs, with no pauldrons to speak of. She carries a DKS-501 Sniper Rifle chambered in .223, a Thompson 1928A1, and a kabar combat knife; she has sufficient .223 and .45 ammunition for both weapons, maintained through her income as a caravan guard and a mercenary. She also has a handheld radio and an array of miscellaneous equipment, including a flint and a field ration eating device.

[Backstory:]

Levi was born in the outskirts of the remnants of New York city. The details of her family and initial life are vague at best: she knows that she's an orphan with her father dead and mother unaccounted for and that she was taken in, after an extensive series of changing hands, by her adoptive father, Wyatt Jones. Wyatt was an outlaw in the most classic sense of the west - he was a quick-draw gunslinger, complete with the big hat and spurred boots, who was renowned locally as a bandit. Throughout her early life Wyatt actively taught Levi his discipline - that being, how to kill and steal for gain, as well as the ways of gunslinging, before he was abruptly murdered in a shootout gone wrong when she was 11 years old.

Without her adoptive father and teacher, Levi applied what she knew and picked up fighting conventionally with small arms as opposed to gunslinging. For an 11 year old she was talented and, after a small string of holdups and robberies across the outskirts west of New York, she fell into the care of a small gang of bandits prowling west of New York. This led into an early life of moving from one gang to another which ultimately came to fruition as she came to 21 years of age, where she came to the helm of of a seasoned gang of bandits operating between New York and Altoona. She became renowned as a sharpshooter, utilizing a lever-action rifle with a telescopic sight to provide ranged support and oversight for her gang while using the vantage to coordinate assaults. Just under 2 years past before she became the undisputed leader of the gang, having dealt with various aspirants using a varying array of methods.

Shortly after becoming the undisputed and reputable head of the gang, the income slowly began to dry up - between the lawmen of the wastes, conflicts with rival gangs and caravans becoming wary among other things, they needed a new way to make profit. Levi decided, after much consideration, to have the gang's operation expand more west into slaver territory, closer towards Pittsburgh, to steal from the slavers of the Pitt. After 4 months of profitable operation, they were ambushed on the way back to Molestown by a group of slavers and after a bloody battle that became locally known as the Standoff of Starry Cross, captured and transported back to the Pitt.

After the long hike back to the Pitt, Levi spent a mere 2 weeks working as a slave before coming across the opportunity to fight in the cage. Regardless of despising raiders for making banditry "savage", as if it wasn't already, she saw becoming one of the raiders the only chance at leaving the Pitt and reuniting her old gang. After battling using her Thompson 1928A1 - given to her in a mission to clear the Trogs - and an M1911 for a total of 6 rounds, she gained her opportunity to pledge her case to the boss of the Pitt; the bid was successful, and soon enough found herself gaining the attention of a raider known to be brutal even by the standards of the Pitt: Mary Kyle, more commonly known as "Bloody Mary".

Levi, soon enough, came underneath the command of Bloody Mary as her gang's sharpshooter. For this end, she was provided with a DKS-501, and in turn she sold her M1911 for further ammunition for her DKS and Thompson. Bloody Mary was known even throughout the Pitt as violent, crazy, and impulsive - she bore a set of file-sharpened teeth alongside her armament and was an excessive cannibal. Levi and Mary developed an abusive relationship with one another, with Mary as the aggressor; it was common enough for Mary to force Levi to cannibalize, kill and even make people she didn't want to suffer - including her friends, for Mary to beat her for not doing as she was told and an array of much worse in an array of different ways and directions. What was ultimately created was a Stockholm Syndrome abusive relationship with a psychotic raider known to rape and kill "for fun."

Just under 3 years of enduring this relationship left Levi in a much more fragile state of mind than before. Whilst still sane, she rarely spoke and almost always succumbed to even Mary's most violent and undesirable impulses, and the mere idea of not having Mary's command left her blank and without any idea of where she would go; even then, she clutched to the idea of one day escaping. She had long abandoned her hopes of reuniting her gang and wished only to get away, so that she might restore herself to as she once was - renowed, at the helm of a successful gang, and successful. In a raid on an old office complex where many sick wastelanders hid from the world in a small community, Mary rounded a corner to unexpectedly face a shotgun-wielding caravan guard who shot her in the chest - despite having the chance to shoot him from her vantage point before Mary rounded it. From her vantage point, she shot the rest of the team in the warehouse in succession and left Mary for dead. She left the vantage complex with Stanley Monroe, the mentally destroyed and insane young adult who would rarely failed to heel to his "masters" command, who was posted with her to keep her safe.

Barely three days after leaving Mary for dead and heading west, Levi and Stanley came across a caravan where she struck a deal: her and Stanley would guard the caravan in exchange for food and caps. So began Levi's career as a caravan guard and a mercenary, and her ongoing recovery from the damage inflicted by Bloody Mary.

[Steam Username:] Revenant
[Steam ID:] You have this somewhere.

[Name:] Stanley Monroe
[Age:] Twenty Three
[Species:] Human
[Talents:] Melee, Brawling, Survival, Explosives, Big Guns
[Weaknesses:] Small Guns, Energy Weapons, Lockpicking, Science, Speech, Bartering, Sneaking, Medicine

[Faction:] Wastelander - formerly a raider associated with "Bloody Mary" (non-psycho, although dealing with various mental issues.)

[Equipment:] Stanley wears a varying set of armor of both reinforced leather and metallic materials of varying quality and seems to have very little additions in regards to assisting with carry capacity; seeming to have focused more on protection than being able to carry any items. Stanley also typically wears a protective helmet and respirator hybrid though it seems bare the marks of wear and tear and the repairs to keep it in as best shape as possible. In regards for weapons, Stanley doesn't carry any form of ranged weaponry and instead opts for a large two-handed battle axe which seems to be pre-war with some modifications for a sturdier grip and repairs and sharpening of the blade visible.

[Backstory:]

Stanley Monroe was born in the Pitt to a pair of slaves, resulting in a upbringing of hardships and a very dog-eat-dog society; with slaves being at the bottom of the food chain. As a young Monroe lad, the boy was tasked by his masters to act nothing more as a courier around the Pitt to transport messages, items and whatever was needed, being too little and weak at his age to do the heavy lifting that the adults around the Pitt would be forced into doing. Whilst his age and development had saved him the fate of going into dangerous areas to eradicate Trogs or handle dangerous machinery, it didn't excuse him from the harsh treatment that the slavers brought down upon their 'property'. Regardless, Stanley tried his best to keep on his masters' good side to avoid getting a limb broken or worse.

As time passed and Stanley being able to develop enough to gain enough strength and knowledge of what was expected of him; Stanley would begin to develop skills in handling a weapon; specifically melee after an incident between his parents and their slaver masters which was resolved yet left the family in a distrusted position which only made Stanley's first time on Trog extermination duty more difficult as he was unable to handle a firearm and safely attack the Trogs at a distance. Fortunately for Stanley, however, a friend of the family had 'accidentally misplaced' an auto axe and the necessities to survive his first encounter with Trogs. Stanley went out a boy and came back a man; his job complete with no injuries and no indications that he had contracted Troglodyte Degeneration Contagion. This achievement resulted in a little more attention from both slaves and slavers alike for the boys talent and ability to handle himself; though it wasn't enough to make the conditions of the Pitt any better.

Late into his teenage years and after having years to develop his skills and become integrated fully into the society of the Pitt, Stanley would manage to wrangle his way into a position in one of many fights in the cage. Being armed with the same auto axe that he had been given all those years ago, Stanley was prepared to lose it all in order to even have a shot of tasting freedom and the shot to join the 'elite' that sat over the slaves with an iron fist. It appeared that the risk was well rewarded and the odds were in his favor; resulting in Stanley being watched and eventually picked up by the infamous raider known only to him as 'Bloody Mary', the rumors and tales spoke for themselves.

Being taken along into Bloody Mary's gang, Stanley was considered the man that they turned to if they needed someone to get up close and personal. Alongside this, however, Stanley was also entrusted and taught how to use explosives properly such as grenades and mines to have some ranged capability and the ability to set ambushes on anyone that Bloody Mary wanted to fuck up. Over the period of time that Stanley spent with the group, the more that his moral compass, however weak it was to begin with, was strained and tested. Whilst Trogs had been no problem and whilst the cage was more or less driven by a fight or die reaction, being given the freedom to kill willingly for sport, fun or simply 'just cause' took Stanley a lot of time to get used to, much to Bloody Mary's frustration which would usually result in abuse of either verbal or physical, although sometimes both at once.

However, it wasn't just the fighting and trauma from being around Bloody Mary and her gang that was eating away at Stanley. Being cursed with dreadful dreams of things beyond the American Wasteland; horrors beyond his wildest dreams, Stanley did not have the help to combat the terrors of his mind. At first, the damage was subtle, seemingly just waking up in the middle of the night but as time went on and the mental strain of his activities would slowly begin to only make things worse. Perhaps it was the dosages of radiation that got to him or maybe something far worse but Stanley could swear that in the shadows, it was watching, waiting, sleeping. This overwhelming fear, in addition to everything else would eventually break Stanley down to the point of insanity; remaining nothing more than a child scared of the dark and the unknown. Fortunately, in the dark, there was light. A girl named Levi who seemed to be one of the nicer souls in Bloody Mary's gang helped keep Stanley on the right path and from losing himself to the abyss; resulting in zealous loyalty not to Bloody Mary but to Levi, swearing an oath to ensure to always keep her safe and out of harms way, even if it was Bloody Mary that was the one bringing down her sadistic fist. Stanley was lucky, without Levi, he would have possibly been completely lost and turned psychotic in nature which seemed to lead to only one path; death.

It was one fateful day that everything changed. As Stanley remained as a protector of Levi whilst she set up in her little sniper nest overlooking their target; an office complex that had been housing a community of sick wastelanders. As everything went as planned, Stanley made sure that nothing attacked himself or Levi as she provided support. It wasn't long, however, until a single shot rang out from the office complex and a series of shots rang out from Levi. As it turned out, Levi had been in the perfect position for betrayal; leaving Mary for dead and killing the rest of the gang in a bid for freedom. With his loyalty still zealous to Levi for everything she had done for him, he would follow her as the two made their bid for freedom from insanity and mindless killing; Stanley, although fragile in mind, agreed with the actions that Levi had taken, having seen the relationship both her and Bloody Mary had first hand. Someone had to stand up to her at some point.

Three days into their betrayal and running away, Stanley and Levi ran across a caravan where a deal was struck; their protection for the caravan in exchange for food, water, caps and safety in numbers. Stanley would trade in his old equipment for quite the rare item indeed; a large battle axe, seeming to be perfectly made for someone of Stanley's talents. Being armed with a suitable weapon and adequately armored, so began Stanley's journey from raider to caravan guard and mercenary and his war against the darkness that tried to swallow him whole.