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.