Tag Archives: let me tell you about my players’ characters

Janek Wakes Up (sometime before 19 October 2000)

Janek Woźniak has been on the run for… a while. Things have been a bit muddled since the ambush outside Warsaw that claimed the rest of his uncle’s merchant convoy. The Polish teenager isn’t really thinking of much beyond his next meal and a safe place to sleep when he stumbles across a bridge and into a small town on the south bank of a big river.

The place is under the protection of foreign soldiers. It takes Janek a day or two to parse that it really is protection, not “protection.” The troops are East Germans, and enough of them speak functional Polish to smooth their integration into the local population.

It’s Janek’s third or fourth day in the town when something clouding his brain burns away. He’s sitting in the one local roadhouse, enjoying the sensations of being clean, well-fed, and warm. There’s an excited stir as people start crowding into the dining room. Then four of the East Germans push their way in, carrying a couple of car batteries, a couple of rolls of wire, and a few prewar electronic devices of some sort. There’s a flurry of setup activity. One of the soldiers looks at something strapped to his wrist, then kneels almost reverently before the central contraption and does some things to it.

From everywhere in the room, there’s a crackle. A hiss. The crowd stills expectantly.

Then – music.

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Reintroducing the PCs, Part 2: Alexei and Pettimore

Continuing our string of character introductions, we move on to Player B’s PCs, Alexei and Pettimore. Pettimore is an original PC (and the only one who was ported from a previous iteration of this campaign – with some unsettling story implications. Alexei is a later addition.

Alexei Brandt

East German civilian

Ponikla Team

Before the war, Alexei Brandt was a teenage metalhead, yearning for the freedom that his bootleg Western albums spoke of. He made a living doing odd jobs, anything from farming to radio repair (and he may or may not have been involved in pirate radio). As things broke down, Alexei became a drifter, trying to stay one step ahead of the war as he traded and worked and salvaged for food and shelter.

Alexei linked up with the team more or less by accident, as he was a bystander in the Battle of Radom. Minka recognized him from their prewar acquaintanceship and recruited him (which didn’t take much convincing). When the team split, Alexei elected to remain in Ponikla for the chance of a stable life, putting his hands to work on the village’s infrastructure.

Appearance: Alexei is an ’80’s metalhead in his late teens. 

Buddy: Minka

Moral Code: You don’t have to be a bad guy to be metal.

Big Dream: Don’t get shot. Make money. Get girls.

Strength C: Close Combat D, Stamina C

Agility B: Driving D (Biker), Ranged Combat D

Intelligence B: Survival D (Jerry Rig [homebrew]), Tech C (Electrician)

Empathy B: Persuasion B (Storyteller [homebrew], Trader)

Coolness Under Fire D

Permanent Rads 1

Armament: AK-74, double-barreled shotgun, Mister Morgenstern

Other Key Equipment: Walkman and collection of bootleg punk albums and mixtapes, denim vest, bicycle with cargo trailer full of assorted salvage and trade goods

Album List: Black Sabbath – Paranoid; Jerry Lee Lewis – Live at the Star Club, Hamburg; Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry; Motorhead – Ace of Spades; Dio – Holy Diver; Panzerfaust der Wahrheit (Bazooka of Truth) – LAUF UM DEIN LEBEN, ER HAT EINE PANZERFAUST!

John Lee Pettimore

Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps – MOS 8541 (Scout Sniper)

Expedition Team

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 team 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…

Appearance: Preeetty much Chris Kyle, but lankier.

Buddy: Arkadi

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

Big Dream: Home.

Strength C: Close Combat C, Stamina D

Agility B: Mobility D, Ranged Combat B (Sniper)

Intelligence B: Recon C (Scout), Survival C (Hunter)

Empathy B: Persuasion D

Coolness Under Fire: C

Permanent Rads: 5

Armament: Thoughts and Prayers (SVD with the occasional uncanny ability of its own), hunting bow, M45 MEU(SOC)

Other Key Equipment: Bible, prayerbook, bear claw necklace

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