Category Archives: Characters

Reintroducing the PCs, Part 1: Red and Cowboy

As my gaming group moves toward resuming play in Kaserne on the Borderlands, it’s probably time to refresh my three loyal readers on who the player charcters are. I have eight players, all but one of whom is running two characters. As a result of events that occurred shortly before the hiatus, the PCs have split into two teams. One team is staying in Ponikla, the village in which the campaign began, to continue with local stabilization and infrastructure recovery efforts. The other team is headed to Krakow by way of Czestochowa, seeking answers to a few different mysteries that have reared their ugly heads over the course of the campaign.

I think I’m going to do this as a series of eight posts, each one focusing on a single player’s PCs. We’ll start with Player M, who runs Red and Cowboy. Red is an original PC; Cowboy is a liberated POW NPC who was adopted and fleshed out.

William “Red” Grayson, M.D.

Lieutenant, U.S. Navy Medical Corps

Ponikla Team

“Red” was doing his residency when the war began. Drafted and direct-commissioned as a Navy trauma surgeon, he was attached to an infantry battalion in 2nd Marine Division. With the collapse of anything resembling international law and treaty enforcement, he’s picked up a rifle to defend his patients… and himself… and, really, anyone else who needs it.

Over the course of the campaign, Red has emerged as one of the party’s leaders (though not necessarily its tactical commander). He’s also been at the forefront of scientific inquiry into the various weird phenomena that the PCs have encountered. When the team split, he chose to stay in Ponikla to help drive regional recovery, as he’s the only known physician within at least a 50km radius. He’s established a decent pocket clinic in the one house in Ponikla with a geothermal climate control system.

Appearance: Tired, definitly has seen better days, with greying auburn hair and a scar across one cheek from flying shrapnel.

Buddy: Ellis

Moral Code: Never turn your back on family. Friends are just family that you choose.

Big Dream: Find a place to settle down, be a doctor, raise a family.

Strength C: Close Combat D, Stamina D (Load Carrier)

Agility C: Mobility D, Ranged Combat C

Intelligence B: Recon C, Survival D (Herbalist [homebrew]), Tech D

Empathy A: Command C (Logistician), Persuasion C (Trader), Medical Aid B (Combat Medic, Field Surgeon)

Coolness Under Fire A

Permanent Rads 8

Armament: M4A1, Glock 18C, axe, entrenching tool

Other Key Equipment: all the medical supplies

Kira “Cowboy” Lopez

Private First Class, U.S. Army – MOS 13F (Forward Observer), attached to 4th Ranger Battalion

Expedition Team

Kira was raised on a cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle by an impatient, frequently drunk, father and her Hispanic mother.  Until her mother died in a car accident in the late ’89.  Her father became unbearable and she blamed him for the accident.  Their relationship got worse as she got older, and spent as much time away from the ranch as she could get away with.  She left Texas for California as soon as she graduated from high school in ’93.  She was sick of rural life, sick of her father, and everyone else knowing your business, and wanting to live pretty much anywhere else.

In Los Angeles, she apprenticed to an electrician, thinking it would be a good way to make a living doing gigs for rich people (or something like that) and it was alright for awhile.  She worked hard, often being willing to work from before dawn until it was too dark to work safely.  On the weekends she partied hard, hanging out with the metalheads and goths, going to concerts and night clubs.  On Sundays, once she kicked out anyone she might have come home with the night before, and if she wasn’t too badly hung over, she’d go to church, thinking her mother would be even more disappointed in her if she didn’t.

When the war broke out, she had the misfortune of having an early draft number.  Cowboy won out as her nickname in bootcamp because she was absolutely willing to throw fists over “Cowgirl” innuendos, and somebody else already got to be “Texas.”  She ended up in artillery when her math skills and understanding of trajectories and coordinates indicated she’d be good at it.

Now that the war is effectively over, Madga’s speech has her reconsidering her desire to live anywhere other than some rural shithole, realizing that now…everywhere is a shithole, and it’s going to be mighty hard to find food in an urban shithole.  For once, a small, close-knit community might be okay.  Besides, if she ends up back in the States, they’d probably send her somewhere else to fight…and she knows she doesn’t want to get involvd in a civil war back home.While she used to think she’d prefer someplace like Valhalla for an afterlife, Kira always remembers to light a candle for her mother and her ancestors on Dias de Muerte, and has included people from her unit who’ve died over the course of the war.

Appearance: 5’3″ & dusky skinned, she has surpisingly light hair, and hazel eyes.  She has a number of tattooes, a mix of pagan, hispanic culture, and heavy metal.  She’s outwardly cheerful & reliable, and has an excellent singing voice, even if her music preference is heavy metal.

Moral Code: She isn’t a Ranger, but never leave someone behind.

Big Dream: Motivated by Madga & Red, maybe help make at least a small part of the world a better place.

Strength B: Heavy Weapons B (Redleg), Close Combat D, Stamina D

Agility B: Driving D, Mobility D, Ranged Combat C

Intelligence B: Recon C (Scout), Tech B (Chemist, Electrician)

Empathy C

Coolness Under Fire A

Permanent Rads 9

Armament: PKM, Sa vz.26, pearl-handled switchblade

Aggressor

For Star Wars (any system, but preferably Fantasy Flight’s):

Another starfighter pilot concept. This one’s a human, an Imperial instructor pilot who defected with an early-model Interceptor. He’s still a starfighter pilot and still flying it, but for obvious reasons, he’s a better fit for an irregular unit (like the PCs’) than a fleet squadron. He may have done a tour as an aggressor pilot in a Rebel training unit, so he likely has an encyclopedic knowledge of the capabilities and flight dynamics of most of the galaxy’s common starfighter designs. For best effect, and because the Star Wars universe has always implied social status with accents, play him as a WWII British Spitfire or Hurricane pilot: upper-crust accent, unflappable, prone to understatement, immaculate hair and mustache, silk scarf, tongue like a razor if you get on his bad side. Tallyho, chaps!

His bird was from his training squadron, so it was fitted with ion cannons in place of the lasers (no sense in needlessly killing the cadets too early). Rebel techs have restored the original laser capability but the ion guns are in a shipping crate just in case they’re needed. He’s named the bird To Serve the Empire… in the same sense as To Serve Man. Add appropriate nose art…

Phantom

For Star Wars (any system, but preferably Fantasy Flight’s):

This pitch is for is an R2-series astromech droid starfighter pilot.

Yes, pilot. He flies an X-Wing or Y-Wing from the astromech socket. His organic partner was killed by a cockpit hit. He got the bird back to base at a time when the situation was so desperate that someone in authority let him keep flying. He’s steam-cleaned the gore out of the cockpit but otherwise left it gutted by the turbolaser hit (hey, not running life support means more power budget for shields). The starfighter is now painted in a monochrome version of the standard Rebel Alliance palette to make it look like an unmanned ghost fighter.

While the concept is wholly playable, the droid’s designation is the joke:

R2-F4.

Four Operators #4

Closing out the series after Brass, Fix, and Crashcart. Final thoughts about the team at the bottom.

Blank Path (Gaius Zimmerman)

Blank Path is a man of faith. What that faith may be is currently undefined, because I had no idea where to go when the dice gave me a Clergy background for my final operator, but this dude definitely believes in something strongly enough to be a militant street preacher of his particular truth. Moreover, with Voice of the People giving him Pop Idol 2, he apparently has a substantial following among the city’s underclass. Of the four characters I rolled up, he’s mechanically the least effective, and the most frustrating from a characterization perspective – a pure face with a cause. But I find myself surprisingly interested to see where he goes.

(Of the four, he had the objectively worst attribute rolls. The combination of a rolled CHA 7 and Clergy background pretty much obligated me to spend an edge slot on Prodigy to make him an effective man of the cloth.)

Attributes: STR 11, DEX 11, CON 8, INT 10, WIS 14 (+1), CHA 18 (+3 from Prodigy)

Skills: Lead-1, Perform-1, Stab-0, Talk-0

Edges: Prodigy, Voice of the People

Foci: Diplomat 1, Pop Idol 2

HP 6; attack bonus +0; saves physical 15+, evasion 15+, mental 12+, luck 15+

Contacts: see below

Equipment: Fashionable clothing; reinforced clothing; basic smartphone; sword; knife; trauma patch; $30 cash

Voice of the People and Pop Idol combine to give Blank Path access to a motley collection of the faithful (or those who are just entertained by his message). However, his inner circle contains a few regulars:

Athanas Kuroki, Gaius’ distant cousin, is a well-known counterculture musician and rabble-rouser under the stage name of Zen Bomb. They’ve worked together on occasion when the job called for their combined social and networking skills, and are frequently found enjoying the attention of their respective groupies. Despite his own fame and influence, Athanas thinks Gaius is the one who’s really going to make it big. His extensive network of fans feeds him all kinds of information, but he’s best at working those connections to find people who don’t want to be found.

Arlen Baggio is Gaius’ oldest acquaintance and first follower of the faith. Their friendship began when Gaius rescued Arlen from a gang fight, killing their childhood bully in the process. Today, Arlen works as an outlander smuggler under the handle Slice, and he can occasionally provide transport or loaner vehicles.

Sonja Porsche is a corporate middle manager whose ambition once led her into crimes against Gaius’ faith. Gaius spared her life and she’s still trying to make good on that (a random roll which suggests she may have undergone conversion at swordpoint). Perhaps Gaius spared her because of their childhood friendship (really, dice?). Her current job is in her corp’s government liaison office, and while she won’t betray her employer (yet), she has no qualms about siphoning off government data or getting official paperwork rubber-stamped or lost.

So is it a viable team? Well… I haven’t played CWN, which means my capacity to judge is limited, but it looks like the dice gave me a fairly balanced group of hacker, shooter, healer, and face. The only cyber on the team is Brass’ cranial jack and they lack any big-ticket vehicles or drones, but that seems to be the intent for starting operators. Fix will definitely have to carry the team in combat for a while, though.

I still have no idea WTF to do with Blank Path’s faith, though, or how to integrate that into being an operator. I have some vague idea that it’s a syncretic faith that appeals to operators in particular, and that demands action against the market forces that control society. That would impel him to action – and would make him a major target for corporate retaliation if he ever started getting real traction.

As I was writing up these characters, it occurred to me that CWN’s random creation system doesn’t yield much in the way of PC backstory. The brilliant one-roll generator for contacts implies a lot of shared history, so that’s one way to find those hooks, but I also found I had more writing prompts for the contacts than for the PCs themselves. If I were actually going to do something with these characters, I’d’ve invested more time in profiling them, but this really was just an urge to use the random creation mechanics that I needed to get out of my head.

Four Operators #3

Continuing the series after Brass and Fix…

Crashcart (Olga Novotny)

Crashcart is a former employee of the city’s largest emergency medical corporation. Originally trained as a physician’s assistant, she shifted career tracks to paramedic while studying for her cybernetician credentials. Her last few years of work saw her on the high-threat detail, where driving and marksmanship can be as essential as medical skills when it comes to keeping a patient alive long enough to reach a higher level of care. She wound up on the outs with the corp and working as an operator through an unspecified set of circumstances (unspecified because the character creation arc didn’t suggest anything really interesting).

Olga’s closest social connection is Marie Wallace, a corporate security agent who freelances in operator circles (under the handle Ice Bee) and remains a great source of insider info on their former mutual employer. Marie owes Olga a large unspecified debt, though Olga is too polite to bring this up when sober. They knew each other before Olga exited corporate employment, but didn’t really socialize outside work. That changed when they ran into each other at a club after Olga went freelance, and they’ve since worked together on occasion (and partied hard afterward).

Attributes: STR 11, DEX 14 (+1), CON 12, INT 16 (+1), WIS 13, CHA 11

Skills: Drive-1, Fix-0, Heal-1, Lead-0, Shoot-0

Edges: Focused, Masterful Expertise

Foci: Authority 1, Cyberdoc 1

HP 1; attack bonus +0; saves physical 15+, evasion 14+, mental 15+, luck 15+

Contacts: Marie Wallace (corporate security officer, described above) (friend)

Equipment: cyberdoc kit; light pistol w/ 2 magazines; ordinary clothing; reinforced clothing; basic smartphone; trauma patch; $25 cash

Every team needs a good medic and the rolls for Crashcart came out pretty well, with one glaring exception. That’s her sole, lonely hit point. Keeping her out of combat will be not only a priority but an absolute necessity until she has a few levels under her belt.

Four Operators #2

Continued from the previous post…

Fix (Olaf Janssens)

Back in the day, Olaf Janssens was just another juviegang kid on the city’s streets, solving problems with applied violence. The corp recruiters said they saw potential in him – they just didn’t bother to tell him that he was a potential meat shield. He figured it out after a few years, though, and got out before he could be expended. Without many marketable skills for civilian life, he sidestepped neatly into the ranks of the city’s operators.

Outside his usual team, Fix’s closest associates are Nebo Ojeda and Vince Nakashima, the two other survivors of his juviegang. Nebo never really left his former life, moving up into a mid-level enforcer position in the organized crime syndicate that used the juviegang and others like it as a farm team. Today, he manages the syndicate’s safehouses and can make them available for a price. Vince got out of the city, more or less, turning his hand to pirate radio. He operates in the badlands just outside the reach of city services, broadcasting to an audience of badlanders, ruralists, and survivalists, and can tap that network to move things in and out of the city.

Attributes: STR 12, DEX 15 (+1), CON 14 (+1), INT 15 (+1), WIS 8, CHA 12

Skills: Notice-0, Shoot-1, Sneak-0, Stab-1

Edges: Hard to Kill, On Target

Foci: Assassin 1

HP 5; attack bonus +1; saves physical 14+, evasion 14+, mental 15+, luck 15+

Contacts: Nebo Ojeda (gang enforcer, described above) (acquaintance); Vince Nakashima (public personality, described above) (acquaintance)

Equipment: heavy pistol w/ 3 magazines; knife; armored clothing; basic smartphone; ordinary clothing; 2 trauma patches; $51 cash

With acceptable physical stats and the Soldier background, Fix was unlikely to be anything other than a combat-focused character. This build leans into that, with his edges making him more durable and more accurate – fairly straightforward. The Assassin focus suggests a bit more finesse than a basic infantry grunt, though, and makes it easier for him to carry out his default team role in non-permissive environments.

Four Operators #1

I recently acquired my dead tree edition of Cities Without Number from the Kickstarter campaign reward drop. While I am not a huge fan of OSR games in general, CWN’s predecessors have a lot of GM tools, so I went into the KS expecting something similar for the cyberpunk genre and was not disappointed.

Coincident with this, I started listening to the second season of Tale of the Manticore, having recently finished the first. I usually can’t stand actual play podcasts (Two Past Midnight being the main exception), but Tale works for me because it is solo play. As such, there’s none of the usual annoying uncut table talk and in-jokes, and it flows very well. While I have neither bandwidth nor inclination to do a solo campaign right now (let alone, ye gods, podcast or blog it), Tale‘s S2 character creation episode inspired me to roll up a team of PCs using CWN’s random creation options. I used Behind the Name for all character names and Fantasy Name Generators for operator handles.

I don’t know that I’ll ever do anything with these folks again, but here’s the first one.

Brass (Jacinta Dumont)

Brass is a second-generation hacker. Growing up in the city’s crumbling low-income quarter, she spent most of her free time and cash in Tybee’s, the corner arcade, which was something of a safe haven for the neighborhood kids who were on the outside of gangs and other social structures. Her interest in how the games worked caught the attention of the owner, Tybee, who ran the place as a cover for their less-legitimate work.

Under Tybee’s mentorship, Jacinta grew into a skilled coder, going so far as to serve as a subcontractor for some of Tybee’s last jobs before they exited the business. Tybee, still well-known under their operator handle of Surveyor, finished Brass’ training and pointed her at her first few jobs before setting her loose to fly on her own.

In her off hours, Brass is something of a gym rat. It started as a way to convince the neighborhood gangers to leave her alone, but she’s found that weight and bag work are a good way to let her mind chew over a persistent coding problem. She’s never benefited from formal training, though, so she’s overspecialized in strength work at the expense of cardio.

Attributes: STR 16 (+1), DEX 10, CON 8, INT 15 (+1), WIS 8, CHA 8

Skills: Fix-1, Program-1, Punch-0, Sneak-0, Talk-0

Edges: Focused, Hacker

Foci: Safe Haven 1, Unarmed Combatant 1

HP 3; attack bonus +0; saves physical 14+, evasion 14+, mental 15+, luck 15+

Contacts: Tyler “Tybee” Biondi (formerly Surveyor), watchful neighborhood elder as described above (friend)

Cyberware: cranial jack

Equipment: scrap deck with cheap VR crown; ordinary clothing; basic tools; basic smartphone; armored clothing; light pistol w/ 2 magazines; $25 cash

The initial rolls for Brass left me scratching my head a bit. How to reconcile a Coder background with that STR score? Well, okay, lean into it and play against type. If I were using the optional Shadowrun-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off material from CWN’s deluxe edition, I’d make her an orc decker. Here, she’s an atypically-physical hacker who isn’t completely useless for fieldwork. The “watchful neighborhood elder” roll for her friend suggested a hacker mentor and the detailed d4/d6/d8/d10/d12/d20 one-roll flesh-out confirmed a lot of those details.

Meet the Survivors II.A: The Expedition Team

With a number of new PCs introduced since we began play in January, it’s probably time for a series of posts to get our hypothetical reader up to speed on who’s who. This post will cover the PCs and NPCs who’ll be going on the road trip, heading south toward Krakow and the mysteries that await there.

Where available, I’m using player-provided character bios and descriptions.

Ellis

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Alan Crenshaw spent the years leading up to the war building networks of assets and informants, cultivating relationships through a myriad of different methods serving the interests of the United States. Operating under the cryptonym of ELLIS, he found success in subtly undermining Soviet interests in the region. That is, until the Cold War turned hot.

Moral Code: Deception has kept you alive – it is your armor and your weapon of choice. Never tell the whole truth.

Big Dream: Uncover the conspiracy that actually led to the world being in the awful state that it is today.

Build: Intelligence and investigation initially, bending a bit toward leadership as the campaign has evolved. Ellis isn’t primarily a shooter, but he’s a force multiplier for the shooters if given time to shape the battlespace.

Tools: Disguises, binoculars, and careful rationing of truth. For when things get kinetic, Ellis carries an H&K G3, a Beretta Model 85, and a set of brass knuckles that imprint the name “Manfred” on their victims.

Alt: Ellis’ player also runs Arkadi Sokolov.

John Lee Pettimore

Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps

MOS 8541 (Scout Sniper)

Pettimore hails from the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Born in coal-mining country, he saw the Corps as an escape from his home county’s endless cycle of poverty and outside exploitation. For a man who grew up hunting to put food on the table, scout/sniper school was a natural progression.

At some point during the war, Pettimore found himself in the orbit of an intelligence operative who called himself Broadstreet. Broadstreet’s small team bounced around the northwestern Poland area of operations, handling a variety of specialized tasks. When the U.S. Army’s 5th Infantry Division moved out for the summer 2000 offensive, Broadstreet’s unit was attached to it.

As the 5th ID died at Kalisz, Broadstreet, Pettimore, and their associates were behind enemy lines, extracting a U.S. State Department physician from Soviet custody. With no friendly forces to rejoin, the team fled south into a darkening world. His subsequent experiences, recounted in a conversation with Ellis and supported by the Broadstreet Dossier, are not entirely synchronized with the surrounding world’s understanding of linear time…

[Pettimore is a PC from the first iteration of this campaign, carried forward with some unexplained weirdness attached to his presence here-and-now.]

Moral Code: Never leave a man behind. Everybody goes home. God gave you the strength to ensure that.

Big Dream: Home.

Build: Sneaking, seeing, and sniping, as implied by the job title.

Tools: Faith which has so far withstood some unusual challenges, a rigid moral code, and Thoughts and Prayers, a Dragunov which is becoming more than its designer intended.

Alt: Pettimore’s player also runs Alexei Brandt.

Erick Myers

Corporal, U.S. Army

MOS 71M (Chaplain Assistant)

Born and raised in rural Minnesota, Erick, though caucasian, was essentially raised bilingual (Ojibwe) as all the signage in Bemidji was in both languages. Never quite big enough to make it big in hockey, he still played throughout high school, and even into college. He attended Bemidji State University, graduating with a degree in social work in 3 ½ years. 

The early days leading up to the conflict perhaps to be known in future history books as WWIII saw him working within the Ojibwe tribal system. He objected to the involvement, and registered as a conscientious objector. As the war escalated, he was drafted and sent into the Army despite his status, and only though persistence managed to work towards the MOS of chaplain’s assistant instead of being thrown into the light infantryman meat grinder.

He was sent overseas, attached to a rotation of units, serving under veteran chaplains of many different denominations. Raised Catholic, he still served with a Methodist, Jewish, and Anglican chaplains, and began to develop an appreciation for each. His own view on religion expanded, and he found himself creating his own hodgepodge system of belief from the best of what he encountered.

Then, as the war raged on, he encountered combat. As chaplain’s assistant, he was required to carry and use arms to protect the chaplain he served. Despite his athleticism and skills, he watched two such superior officers bleed out from wounds that his meager first aid skills were no match for. Instead of shaking his beliefs, this only intensified them. By 1999, he no longer assigned to any particular chaplain, but was merged into whatever mix of units could be cobbled together. Wherever he went, he became the impromptu chaplain for his company, squad, or fire team. His degree in social work made him a skilled and sympathetic shoulder to lean on, and he was a source of morale boost to whomever would listen. Finally, he was part of a ragtag battalion that was enveloped and overrun, and he was taken prisoner. Thinking that his war was over, he resigned to keeping his fellow POW’s spirits up, daring to pray for a release…

And so it seems that his prayers have been answered…

Moral Code: Protect his buddy and any in their flock (“Faith with Firepower”, the chaplain assistant motto).

Big Dream: Expand his religious experiences, taking in whatever he can from whatever he encounters.

Build: Something of a utility infielder, but concentrated in the Agility and Empathy skills. He’ll likely develop more toward a medic concentration over the next campaign arc.

Tools: Erick hasn’t gotten much screen time yet; he’s one of the rescued POWs who started off as an NPC and was adopted as a backup PC. He’s carrying an AK-74, a Walther PPK, and some extra medical supplies, but as the expedition’s primary medic, I expect he’ll be loading up on more medical stuff.

Alt: Erick’s player also runs Leksik “Leks” Müürikivi.

Cat Mitchell

Specialist/4, U.S. Army

MOS 13F (Fire Support Specialist)

Cat’s history is still coming together. She’s a newly-introduced alternate PC, adopted from the NPC pool. She was one of the two survivors of Task Force Cobalt [this setting’s equivalent of Strike Zulu] that the team rescued from marauders. We know she’s Ranger-tabbed and a trained artillery forward observer, originally attached to TF Cobalt to provide fire support for their extraction from Lodz.

Build: Pretty much what you’d expect for a scout and forward observer.

Tools: Ideally, a good radio and a friendly battery of 155mm. Currently, an M4A1, a Colt Python, and a satchel of grenades.

Alt: Cat’s player also runs Minka.

Kira “Cowboy” Lopez

Private First Class, U.S. Army

MOS 13M (Multiple Launch Rocket System Crewmember)

Kira was raised on a cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle by an impatient, frequently drunk, father and her Hispanic mother.  Until her mother died in a car accident in the late ’89.  Her father became unbearable and she blamed him for the accident.  Their relationship got worse as she got older, and spent as much time away from the ranch as she could get away with.  She left Texas for California as soon as she graduated from high school in ’93.  She was sick of rural life, sick of her father, and everyone else knowing your business, and wanting to live pretty much anywhere else.

In Los Angeles, she apprenticed to an electrician, thinking it would be a good way to make a living doing gigs for rich people (or something like that) and it was alright for awhile.  She worked hard, often being willing to work from before dawn until it was too dark to work safely.  On the weekends she partied hard, hanging out with the metalheads and goths, going to concerts and night clubs.  On Sundays, once she kicked out anyone she might have come home with the night before, and if she wasn’t too badly hung over, she’d go to church, thinking her mother would be even more disappointed in her if she didn’t.

When the war broke out, she had the misfortune of having an early draft number.  Cowboy won out as her nickname in boot camp because she was absolutely willing to throw fists over “Cowgirl” innuendos, and somebody else already got to be “Texas.”  She ended up in artillery when her math skills and understanding of trajectories and coordinates indicated she’d be good at it.

Now that the war is effectively over, Madga’s speech has her reconsidering her desire to live anywhere other than some rural shithole, realizing that now…everywhere is a shithole, and it’s going to be mighty hard to find food in an urban shithole.  For once, a small, close-knit community might be okay.  Besides, if she ends up back in the States, they’d probably send her somewhere else to fight…and she knows she doesn’t want to get involved in a civil war back home.

While she used to think she’d prefer someplace like Valhalla for an afterlife, Kira always remembers to light a candle for her mother and her ancestors on Dias de Muerte, and has included people from her unit who’ve died over the course of the war.

Moral Code: She isn’t a Ranger, but she very much believes in never leave someone behind.

Big Dream: Motivated by Madga & Red, maybe help make at least a small part of the world a better place.

Build: The nature of 4th Edition’s skills means a competent artillerist is also pretty good with squad-level support weapons, and Cowboy is the expedition team’s primary machine-gunner. She’s also a decent technician generalist.

Tools: In the absence of a replacement MLRS, she’s making do on a smaller scale with a PKM. If she weren’t leaving Ponikla on the expedition, she’d probably be taking charge of the village’s newly-acquired mortar.

Alt: Cowboy’s player also runs Dr. William “Red” Greyson.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Reed

Private First Class, U.S. Army

MOS 12C (Bridge Crewmember)

Like Cat, Betsy is a newly-adoped NPC whose history is still shaping up. She’s one of the 5th Infantry Division POWs rescued in transit to the Radom camp. We know she was an M60 AVLB crewer in the 7th Engineer Battalion. She’s something of an adrenaline junkie and her prewar career saw her wheedling her way into as many sapper and combat arms courses as she could manage.

Build: Heavy on technical capabilities, a decent driver, and decent with support weapons.

Tools: As much demo and as large of a hammer as possible. She’s currently toting an HK23, a Browning Hi-Power, and an assortment of grenades and mines.

Alt: Betsy’s player also runs Magda Szymanska.

Mikolaj Krol

Miko is a Polish teenager from Warsaw who spent most of the war just trying to survive and stay out of the way of the armies. History gets a bit hazy during early 2000, but he’s believed to have met Zenobia Slusarski in Warsaw and followed her when made her escape to her hometown of Ponikla.

Miko is mildly-unhinged, adapting to his post-apocalyptic surroundings in ways that the rest of the team finds somewhat concerning. Of all Ponikla’s inhabitants, he may be the one who’s embraced the apparent nanite infection’s benefits the most. His fighting style displays a complete lack of disregard for self-preservation.

Moral Code: The world fell apart around you, you need to keep what little bit of it you can call yours.

Big Dream: Comfort is a dream long dead, as is safety. But I’ve been safer here longer than anywhere else. Can I make it better?

Build: Initially focused on scavenging and stealth, but he’s been developing toward excessive force and skirmish combat.

Tools: A complete disregard for personal safety and a machete. Until recently, Miko also relied on a satchel of grenades, but Cat took those away from him after some injudicious application of white phosphorus. He carries a PM-84 SMG that he may have fired in one battle.

Alt: None currently.

Luis Hernandez (NPC)

Technical Sergeant, U.S. Air Force

AFSC 1W071 (Special Operations Weather Technician)

Luis Hernandez grew up in New Hampshire in the shadow of Mount Washington. Being able to see the peak with the reputed worst weather in the country spurred what would become a lifelong interest in meteorology. After completing his undergraduate studies at CU Boulder, he spent a couple of years working for the National Weather Service, but desk-bound work was eating his soul. When a co-worker mentioned that the Air Force had its own meteorologists, Luis skipped lunch to visit the local recruiter’s office. A line on a list of job options leaped out at him: “Special Operations Weather Technician.” It sounded pretty badass…

After the war’s first year, aviation and airborne operations were vanishing, and with them, opportunities for Hernandez to do his real job. He wound up bouncing around a variety of units, using the usual AFSOC cross-training to fill in for specialists in other roles. He was attached to Task Force Cobalt to run communications and was the other survivor of that unit that the team rescued from marauders.

Build: Fieldcraft and technical capabilities foremost, but he can hold his own in a gunfight.

Tools: Science, an M4A1, and an M11.

Henry Bell (NPC)

Specialist/4, U.S. Army

MOS 98G (Signals Intercept Linguist)

Before the war, Henry Bell was a saxophonist in the U.S. Army Band, in it for the G.I. Bill benefits.  No one was more surprised than he when he was deployed to perform his original MOS as a signals intelligence voice intercept linguist.  He spent most of the war in a SIGINT truck behind the lines, trying to pluck Soviet transmissions out of the air.

Bell was the first of the 5th Infantry Division POWs that the team encountered and liberated. He’s since found himself in the role of Ellis’ aide-de-camp and an occasional backup driver for the team at large.

Build: Social and investigation. He’s not much of a combatant. Bell can speak Russian at native proficiency, is fluent in Korean and Polish, and is working on his pidgin German.

Tools: Good ears and a better voice. He carries an AKM but tries to avoid situations that would require him to use it.

NPC: Léonard Pan

Léonard is one of the player-contributed NPCs who was resident in Ponikla when the PCs arrived. He got some “screen” time after the black Volga incident, so this seems a good time to post his profile.

Occupation: Logistician/Administrator

Organization: MSF (aka Doctors Without Borders)

Skills: Filing paperwork, bills of lading, organizing work, passable tennis player, competent fisherman

Léonard was involved in humanitarian relief in and around Warsaw before the nukes went off. He fled with other refugees to the south, originally heading towards Lodz and then Wrocklaw. Wherever he ended up settling down, it was overtaken by Soviet troops recently and he and the few folks in his group that stuck together and were still alive were taken captive and put in a holding camp until they could decide what to do with them. 

The camp was hit by locals and NATO remnants. The attack was technically thwarted and the attackers withdrew however the Soviets were were beaten badly enough that several of the captives escaped. Léonard was one of those individuals. He arrived in the village about 3 months ago.

Strength C

Agility B – Driving D, Mobility D

Intelligence B

Empathy B – Command B (Logistician), Persuasion C

Meet the Survivors

A West Marches-style campaign accommodates a large number of PCs. I have eight players, so one PC per player should be sufficient for now (I may open up a second PC slot if the campaign goes on long enough or if PCs start getting dropped with long-healing-time critical hits). Let’s take a look at the survivors whose exploits I’ll be chronicling here:

Dr. William “Red” Greyson (Lieutenant, U.S. Navy)

“Red” was doing his residency when the war began. Drafted and direct-commissioned as a Navy trauma surgeon, he was attached to an infantry battalion in 2nd Marine Division. With the collapse of anything resembling international law and treaty enforcement, he’s picked up a rifle to defend his patients… and himself… and, really, anyone else who needs it.

Medical Aid B; Combat Medic, Load Carrier, Trader

M4A1, Browning Hi-Power, medical gear

Ellis (CIA)

A veteran CIA case officer, the man who calls himself Ellis began operating in Poland several years before the war went hot. His main line of work was countering Soviet influence and encouraging Polish pro-democracy movements. His last major op involved obtaining an unspecified item from the Soviet Reserve Front HQ and Polish puppet government capital at Lublin.

Persuasion B; Interrogator, Investigator, Tactician

AK-74, Makarov, a few different disguises

John Lee Pettimore (Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps)

Pettimore grew up in a trailer in rural eastern Kentucky with two younger brothers and an alcoholic mother. He supported the family through hunting, both for subsistence and as a guide for out-of-town rich folk, and eventually parleyed that skill set into a job with the Corps. He spent the first half of the war with the 2nd Marine Division’s 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion. After the main event in Norway was over, he shifted south to the Baltic. In the churn of combat replacements and reshuffled recon assets, he eventually wound up attached to the Army’s 5th Infantry Division before its ill-fated end run into central Poland. He survived the breakout and linked up with a small group of other survivors who made their way to Krakow. He’s somewhat evasive on what happened between now and then… especially as he’s realized that his personal timeline doesn’t line up with anyone else’s…

(Pettimore is a character from a previous campaign who’s been ported from my house-ruled v2.2 into this v4 version.)

Ranged Combat B; Hunter, Scout, Sniper

Thoughts and Prayers (Dragunov), M45 MEU(SOC), compound bow, Bible

Leksik “Leks” Müürikivi (Corporal, Free Estonian Defense Force)

One of a number of Estonians who defected to NATO as soon as it became survivable, Leks is the party’s beatstick. He’s Ellis’ right-hand goon – the two of them have been through a number of escapades prior to the events that led them to Ponikla.

Survival B; Forager, Killer, Machinegunner

MG3, pump-action shotgun, Zippo engraved with “Fuck Communism”

Magda Szymanska (Polish Home Army partisan)

Magda would much rather be baking, but this is what she’s stuck with. A few years before the war started, she joined the Strzelec territorial defense volunteer organization – partly out of patriotism, partly because most of her friends were doing it. When the war broke out, she chose the side of getting her country out from under Moscow’s boot.

Recon B; Cook, Rifleman, Scout

wz.88 Tantal

Mikolaj Krol (Polish civilian)

Mikolaj was a teenager when things went sideways. He came of age in Warsaw – and then in Warsaw’s irradiated ruins. He’s the party’s scrounger and always has one eye on the exit.

Survival B; Runner, Scout, Scrounger

PM-84, machete

Minka (Polish civilian)

Before the war, Minka was a blacksmith and farrier with just enough veterinary knowledge to be dangerous. She was a skilled practitioner of a dying trade. As literal horsepower became a critical resource again, she found her skills in high demand. She’s looking for her mobile forge and her trusty horse, both of which were stolen by Soviet cavalry troops a few months ago, but until she finds those particular Russians, she’s happy to take out her frustrations on any Russians.

Medical Aid B; Blacksmith, Rider, Veterinarian

AKM, sledgehammer

Zenobia Slusarski (Polish civilian)

Zenobia is a native of Ponikla, though she moved away long before the war and only returned a month before the campaign began. A mechanic, tinker, and locksmith, she trusts and appreciates machinery more than people.

Tech B; Infiltrator, Locksmith, Scrounger

Sako L61R in .30-06, Glock 17, toolkit