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Age: 31
Gender: Male
Appearance: 6 feet tall, average build, Caucasian. Long brown hair (a little past the arm pits), developing a full beard. He usually wears a jacket and long-sleeve shirt with denim jeans, all of them patched beyond the point of recognizability.
Weapons: Revolver (Six-Shooter)
Personality: Stoic and calm, with a passive-aggressive intensity.
Political Side: Neutral
Strengths: David is notable for his wit and wisdom. Being versed in many schools of philosophy, he has the tendency to approach problems from different angles. He is also a skilled debater, being able to run circles around others with his arguments.
Weaknesses: Due to brief radiation exposure, his left arm is partially paralyzed, putting him at a disadvantage in several areas. The end result of the paralysis is a total loss of dexterity in his left hand, and a sluggishness in the movement of his arm. The joints in that arm are tender as well, making them painful to move. In addition, the arm is periodically subject to sudden shocks of pain due to the damaged nature of the nerve cells present there. He has learned to handle and fire his handgun one handed, but the end result of a bum arm means reloading can't be done on the fly.
Bio:
Before the hell of global war started, David was a young man who had a bright future to look forward to. The world economy was on the rise, and it looked like everything was going to turn out alright. David has an avid reader who enjoyed reading books on philosophy. He believed that if he read through enough teachings, he might become a great, learned, morally superior man, the paragon of humanity. Before the war began, he was already in college with the aims of attaining a major in Philosophy.
When the first nukes were dropped, David had the fortune of not living in one of the major populations that were targeted. Amidst the riots that occurred, David managed to garner together a few others. The small group stole lab supplies and food from the university before driving off as far a away as possible. The car eventually broke down while traveling through the Rocky Mountains. While attempting to find a way to get help, the small group headed west. Thanks to some Geiger counters they had stolen, they managed to avoid the heavily irradiated areas, but they were still exposed. Everyone else received such high doses of radiation that they either died from their bodies shutting down, or by their own hand. David, the only one who survived, eventually found help weeks later in the form a US army base. While there, he was treated for radiation exposure. It was discovered that he had developed a benign tumor in his left kidney, and his left arm was partially paralyzed.
It was decided by the leading officer, a Corporal Cheryl Stewart, that David would quickly become a resource drain, and that he would have to soon pull his weight. David was given the minimum number of days recommended by the doctor to recover, and was then set up to help with the going ons of the base. The next year was a crash-course in learning to survive, and while he had become integrated with the personnel there, he refused to be an outright member of the military, which Stewart thankfully understood.
The stay there was short-lived however, when a bombing run on the base resulted in the death of most of the soldiers. Stewart, on the brink of death, gave her revolver to David. She told him that the new world would need people like him, people who could look above current conflicts and ask the big questions. David then took what he could and left with the few remaining survivors.
While trying to find the location of another base, David and the others were assaulted by invading Vietnamese forces. During one particular firefight, the entire group was almost wiped out. David ended up holding one of the enemy soldiers at gunpoint, but upon seeing the soldier's face could not muster up the will to shoot--the soldier was a young man about David's age. Just as he lowered his gun, David was knocked on the head from behind and passed out.
David then spent the next few months as a prisoner, being interrogated. He told them that he knew nothing, and when they continued he would do whatever he could to keep himself from going insane, quoting literature, poetry, whatever it took. It took a long time, but they eventually figured him to be of no consequence, and scheduled him to be sent to an internment camp. One of the intelligence officers who took part in his interrogation took pity on him. During the transit to the camp, he gave David back the revolver along with some ammunition and a compass, telling David to go northeast and not stop.
Doing as he was told, David kept going until he reached a highway in the middle of nowhere. Dehydrated and exhausted, no longer holding the will to live, David simply collapsed on the road.
David woke up a few weeks later to the sounds of an argument over him. He eventually learned that he had been picked up by some people heading north, almost getting run over. The place he was in was a community that had been established by people who wanted nothing left to do with the war.
It was there that David regained his will to live. He even ran across one of his college friends who had managed to escape the devastation. David's philosophical insights became highly regarded when arguments cropped up, and his input helped to diffuse issues that would have otherwise polarized and destroyed the community. He has stayed there ever since, though the day may come when a higher calling beckons him...
EDIT: Just fixed a few spelling and grammar errors.
Edited by Ken the Wandering Soul, 07 February 2009 - 10:28 PM.
