GAMA: White and Gray [OOC] [OPEN]

[Kassaran]

*starts planning to port Tyr over to Gama*

Good luck justifying him

Wonder if I should list notable characters I'll be controlling with minimal information or just let it play out ICly...

List 'em.

[Rygondria]

The french man will be delayed until the weekend.

[Monfrox]

Probably gonna give MP a more backstage kinda job and go forward with a different character. That being said, would love to see more apps. Especially from those who tagged.

[Towers]

Yeah it would be pretty much impossible to justify Autenburg showing up...

Also hi Froxy! Hi everyone else! it's been some time hasn't it? Missed you all.

Froxy can I have a bit of a timeline clarification, how long has everyone been where? I was thinking about submitting a daughter of a spook who spent a little/some/most of her childhood with the battalion after being pulled from her peaceful home life. What kind of age range could I shoot for, I was thinking 17-19 where would that land me in terms of time spent on the base?

[Monfrox]

TOWERS!

The Exodus Battalion has been in Anchorage for almost ten years now. I don't know if I mentioned it or not but it's currently 2077. The PLA Navy showed up around 2071 and the Russians came the following year.

[Zjaum]

Tag. I'm going to need a bit to look over all that backstory...

[Bentus]

WIP

Nationstates Name: Bentus
Character name: Ameline Matthieu
Character sex: Female
Character age: 35
Character role: Medic and Doctor, as well as on the occasional hunter team.
Character appearance: (if you can't find an image, a description will suffice)

Level of training: First scouted my GAMA at the age of 10, Ameline was identified as having potential as a Valkyrie candidate and was admitted into the program. She was trained in both VALK and regular combat, with the sudden threat posed by the outbreak of the plague thrusting her into frontline combat before she was legally allowed to drive. She requested and gained additional training as a medic, swiftly becoming adept at the trade with no shortage of practice. She continued to fight within France, eventually leaving GAMA as the government grew increasingly desperate, drawing upon all avenues of manpower that it could. After the country collapsed, she learned how to survive in the wilderness for the years afterwards.

Strengths:
- VALK training and piloting capability. However, this is a fact that she doesn’t advertise publicly and keeps under wraps. While her superiors are aware of her past, to the majority of those who know her, she’s the camp’s medic and doctor rather than a former member of GAMA.
- Medical training and expertise.
- Her time as a soldier has taught her how to fight effectively, but she has shied away from frontline duty ever since joining with the Exodus battalion.

Flaws:
- Due to her integration with her VALK being accelerated with GAMA, the process was left imperfect. To this day, Ameline suffers from migraines and headaches because of her body temporarily rejecting her nanites.
- Ameline has increasingly turned to alcoholism. While her nanites do give her something of an increased tolerance, it is a worrying development that could leave her impaired and would certainly be grounds for punishment in a military unit.
- Ameline has kept herself out of frontline combat in recent years in a deliberate effort. Some pin her aversion to conflict as weariness or fatigue at the perceived futility of the fighting. Others have claimed that she has become frightened of the undead, although none have said as much to her face.

Personality: (give a brief description so we can gauge how they'll act ICly)
Biography:
Born in 2042, Ameline lived a normal childhood until she tested positive for VALK compatibility at the age of 10. The world was mobilising itself for the escalating conflict with the undead and Ameline found herself declared an asset of the state. As the situation deteriorated, she was deployed along with other pilots by the age of 12, little more than a child being hurled into the fray. Regardless, she quickly demonstrated herself to be an able combatant, if not an exceptional pilot.

Inevitably, some of their missions ended up in failure. Ameline became increasingly cold throughout the war, requesting to be trained as a medic after finding herself helpless as a comrade died by her side. While her request was granted, she never received the opportunity to put her new training to use serving with GAMA. As the nations of Europe steadily succumbed to the pressing tide of undead, France found the frontline moving within its borders. Recalling the entirety of their contingent to GAMA in a desperate effort to bolster their troop numbers, Ameline was deployed along with her VALK to shore up her nation’s defences. Ultimately, her presence was a futile gesture.

Losing her VALK in 2057, she fought from then on as another foot soldier doing her best to stem the meat grinder’s advance. It wasn’t two years later when the last vestiges of an organised resistance in France puttered out into silence. Ameline managed to flee to the UK along with other survivors, pulled in as a member of an auxiliary force that hardly mustered up to regimental strength. When the orders for the evacuation arrived, Ameline resisted, nearly being charged with desertion. As the fleet of evacuees had sailed away from the white cliffs, Ameline’s eyes remained fixed on the continental coast and the image of a homeland she'd likely never see again.

RP Sample: (link directly to posts. Please do not link to an entire thread because I will not be able to sort through the whole thing)
Theme song: (this is not required, but gives us a good feel for your character. Think about what would play when they walk into a room or something that speaks to their character)

[Monfrox]

Bentus, I love it. I'm totally on board with the idea of you getting involved in the story and going all-in. It's a good mentality to have.

However, this is not such the case. I really wish you would've talked to me beforehand. In the original thread, it didn't matter because everyone was a Valkyrie pilot. Now, well, it's different. A Valkyire is a very story-centric character and they have access to a lot of meta-knowledge about happenings, even if they're an older pilot. It also gives them a perk that could become useful and overpowered should we run across abandoned VALKs from GAMA. If I have to require super tactically written posts for people who want to be Rangers and Green Berets and MARSOC and SEALs and PJs, then to be a Valkyrie would require a lot more than just that. I don't know you all that well, and I don't believe you were here with us for the first thread.

I'm going to have to ask you to adjust the character or start new. Sorry.

As for the others, I'll send out TGs bugging you guys (especially those with WIP apps) to get going. I won't make the IC thread if all I'm getting is tags and lurkers.

[Atlannia]

So I meant to get this up last night but instead got embroiled in an argument on another forum over the acceptance policy of the school from boku no hero academia. I'm sure you all understand.

Anyway I hope this is fine, this isn't my usual genre so stuff may need some tweaking, I dunno.

Nationstates Name: Atlannia
Character name: Eden Walker
Character sex: female
Character age: 17
Character role : Eden is extremely eager to please and something of a generalist so she ends up doing a lot of odd jobs. But she has a sense of direction and rather likes being outside the base so she puts her hand up for courier jobs whenever they are available.
Character appearance: WiP
Level of training: Eden learned the basics of caring for and operating handguns from her former guardian, since starting to take missions outside the wall she's received basic instruction in survivalism, navigation and basic rifle marksmanship.
Strengths: Observant: Eden is perceptive and quick witted, she catches things that other people might miss and learns new skills quickly.
Level headed: Eden rarely panics and is good at keeping a handle on her emotions, even in situations that outstrip her experience.
Emotional Intelligence: Eden is good at reading people and responding to their emotional state, all the while rarely revealing her own feelings.
Runner: Eden is surprisingly fast on her feet both as a sprinter and over longer distances
Flaws: Insecure: Due to the circumstances she arrived under Eden doesn't feel as though her position in Exodus battalion is assured. This mostly manifests as an extreme need to make herself usefulness and a reluctance to seek help or admit to any difficulty, without intervention she'll often work herself to exhaustion and she has trouble forging deep bonds with anyone
defeatist: Eden's life so far has emphasized avoiding or escaping trouble, she's not conditioned to stand and fight even when that's viable and has a pessimistic view of her own capabilities.
doormat: Eden lacks assertiveness and usually ends up going along with other people's ideas.
chemical enthusiast: Eden did not inherit old world notions of narcotics morality. Such things are of course pretty rare these days but when they're on offer Eden tends to make bad decisions.
Personality: Eden tends to keep up a cheery, helpful facade. She prefers to stay busy and will pitch in anywhere someone needs help, coming off as polite and easy to talk to, a good listener. Attempts to pry pas this facade will be met with skillful deflections, evasiveness or outright avoidance as Eden suddenly develops a pressing need to be somewhere else.

Internally Eden is consumed with guilt over the circumstances that lead to her arriving at Exodus. Subconsciously she is terrified that she'll be ejected if she doesn't work hard enough and secretly believes that would be justified. Eden has no particular skill-set that makes her indispensable and feels like her life came at the cost of more deserving people. Although she's extremely good at hiding it, this anxiety dictates a lot of her behavior.

Biography: Eden was born well after the early stages of the infection and has no experience of life before. Though she has vague memories of her parents they died early and for the most part her only guardian was a family friend she called Uncle Ricky. Uncle Ricky, one Richard Duponte, was a retired Green Beret who had been living in Texas but moved up to link up with Eden's family in the early stages of the crisis. Duponte didn't arrive in time to save Eden's parents from a localized outbreak of infected but Eden survived the ordeal by hiding and Duponte took her under his wing.

The pair joined up with some national guard stragglers, with Uncle Ricky advising and assisting them with various defensive actions and evacuations. Having Duponte's experience on their side was a great relief to the guardsmen and although they lost a lot of people they remained together and relatively composed up until the end, all the while Eden grew up helping out where she could and learning the basics of several useful skills

Eventually the situation deteriorated to the point that making a break for the north to link up with Exodus was the only viable option. Despite being seriously under-supplied and few in number by this time the group made the journey and eventually made it to Fort Richardson although their timing ended up being pretty bad. They arrived in the midst of heavy infected activity not far from the base that coincided with a string of minor crises that had sapped available manpower. Eager to earn their keep, the guardsmen volunteered to accompany the under strength kill team being sent out and helpfully volunteered Duponte's background. Suitably bolstered with these forces the team set out, leaving Eden to get settled.

What happened next is only the subject of after action reports from the survivors but the essential timeline seems to be that shortly before making contact with the infected Duponte's overall conduct made it obvious to the Exodus veterans that Duponte had very clearly received little if any actual training, let alone being a green beret. When confronted a dispute arose between the guardsmen and Duponte on one side and the Exodus veterans on the other that alerted nearby infected, triggering a disastrous encounter. The team was forced to retreat and by the time they made it back to base the total casualty count was the all of the guardsmen, Duponte and a couple of experienced operator's that Exodus could ill afford to lose.

Later on when news of the incident spread someone else recalled Duponte's name in connection with the infamous Infektaid scandal. During the early days of the infection a conman in Texas had taken advantage of the pnic to sell what were essentially aspirin as a miracle cure for the disease which resulted in several deaths when patients that had been treated with infektaid instead of quarantined turned and infected several other people.

With the closest thing to a family Eden had ever known gone, she was forced to integrate into Exodus as best she could with the shadow of Duponte's misdeeds hanging over her. It's only been a few months since then and it's been a rough transition despit e Eden's best efforts.
RP Sample: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=28994428#p28994428
Theme song: Another Travelin' Song

[Bentus]

I'm going to have to ask you to adjust the character or start new. Sorry.

As for the others, I'll send out TGs bugging you guys (especially those with WIP apps) to get going. I won't make the IC thread if all I'm getting is tags and lurkers.

No prob mate, fully understand - I enjoy writing up the apps about as much as actually RPing so I tend to go all-in and ask fix issues later. I doubt I'll be able to get anything up for at least a week, courtesy of finals, but I'll see if I can't scrounge together an alternative. Just to clarify though, if we're interested in having a character that is VALK capable then we need to hit you up with a TG or somesuch beforehand?

[Tsuyoi Tekikoku]

I've got a work in progress~ But hopefully i get her done soon!

[Monfrox]

I'm going to have to ask you to adjust the character or start new. Sorry.

As for the others, I'll send out TGs bugging you guys (especially those with WIP apps) to get going. I won't make the IC thread if all I'm getting is tags and lurkers.

No prob mate, fully understand - I enjoy writing up the apps about as much as actually RPing so I tend to go all-in and ask fix issues later. I doubt I'll be able to get anything up for at least a week, courtesy of finals, but I'll see if I can't scrounge together an alternative. Just to clarify though, if we're interested in having a character that is VALK capable then we need to hit you up with a TG or somesuch beforehand?

I'll need to talk extensively with you on it.

[Kassaran]

Those who are going to post applications, don't wait. This is an RP I've been waiting on for a while, carry through with what you start.

[Reverend Norv]

Nationstates Name: Norv

Character name: Blackburn, Liam. Lieutenant Colonel. Department of Defense Identification Number 0148402383.

Character sex: Male

Character age: 47 (D.O.B 3/15/2030)

Character role: Civil-Military Operations Coordinator, Exodus Battalion

"What does that mean? Heh. What doesn't it mean? I am responsible for managing everything that an ordinary civilian government would take care of around here, if an ordinary civilian government existed anymore - which makes me somewhere around number three or four in the battalion command structure. I make sure noncombatants get enough food. I ration medical supplies and oversee clinics. I organize repairs to non-military infrastructure: sewage, for example, and civilian housing. I adjudicate disputes between Battalion personnel and locals, whatever their countries of origin. I help to run the schools, and try to find enough qualified teachers. I make arrangements to take care of orphans, invalids, and the very old. I go and yell at the CO until the battalion sends out patrols to secure outlying areas from the infected or from bandits. I manage the military courts that hear cases involving both civilians and battalion personnel. Basically, if you live within two hundred miles of Anchorage and need help, mine is the office to which you go. I could go on all day, and Lord knows, I do."

Character appearance: Race: white/Caucasian. Sex: Male. Height: 5'8''. Weight: 158 lbs. Eyes: green. Hair: grey.

"The file says just about everything, I think. I'm shorter than average, small-boned and slightly built, but wiry - like a sprinter, or a gymnast. I have scars on my left forearm, and the palm of my right hand, and my right thigh. I'm fair-skinned, a little sallow, and I burn easily in the sun. False modesty aside, I was very handsome as a young man, and maybe I still am, albeit in a weathered kind of way: symmetrical features, straight nose, chiseled jaw, high forehead. There are a lot more lines carved into that face now, though. My eyes are greyish-green, a soft faded color like moss, and my hair has gone prematurely grey - an odd shade, darker than you'd expect, like burnished gunmetal. I wear it short, but not in a buzz-cut: more like a 1940s-style officer's cut, a side-part with the back and sides closely trimmed. I tend to wear a heavy horsehide barnstormer coat over my fatigues and body armor, with my rank insignia pinned to the collar, and that garment has become my trademark: people identify me as the officer in the big leather coat."

Level of training: Lt. Col. Blackburn is a graduate of Harvard University US Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, US Army Basic Officer Leaders Course (Infantry), US Army Airborne School, the Defense Language Institute (with certificate in Chinese), US Army Pathfinder School, US Army Civil Affairs Officer Qualification Course, and the School of Advanced Military Studies.

"So what does that mean? It means I'm one of the last of the old guard: I was trained before everything fell apart in the early '60s, back when the Army had schools to teach officers everything under the sun. ROTC taught me - well, not all that much, looking back on it. Mostly, it taught me responsibility and integrity. BOLC taught me to fight, and to think tactically, and to keep my head under fire - I'm no Delta gunslinger, but I know more about killing than most of these new National Guard troops. Jump School taught me to jump out of planes, not that I've had much cause to do that in the last few years. The DLI taught me Chinese, I learned Spanish as a kid, and I've added some Russian to that list since the VMF Rossii showed up in Anchorage. Pathfinder school taught me stealth, wilderness survival, and raw physical toughness. Civil Affairs training taught me to do the job that I've got now: a little bit of diplomacy, a little bit of engineering, a little bit of education theory, a little bit of business management, and a whole lot of hard work. SAMS taught me to think outside the box and to take command in a crisis. Everything else I know, I've learned by surviving the last fifteen years."

Strengths: Lt. Col. Blackburn's commanding officers throughout his career in the Army have repeatedly made mention of his extremely strong work ethic, leadership skills, wide array of knowledge and practical experience, capacity to adapt, and remarkable raw intellect.

"I imagine that this part of the file, at least, is clear. I have an unusual capacity for work: I can function just fine while dividing my time exclusively between eating, sleeping, and working. I don't need R&R; I wake up in the morning and go straight to work. I think it's because of that fact that I end up in charge of practically every project I touch: if I'm putting in that much effort, I expect everyone else to do their bit as well, and that attitude ends with me running the show. On the plus side, I do a good job at it: I'm an effective organizer, and a good judge of people, their characters and their skills. I'm a Civil Affairs officer, which makes me one of the Army's great generalists: I can translate a novel, draft a municipal ordinance, repair a sewer system, conduct financial and political analysis, and - yes - command an infantry company in high-intensity combat. What I don't know how to do, I can learn quickly: I know all the tricks to teach myself a skill as swiftly as possible, and I'm always ready to change a plan that isn't working. And yes - I'm smart, though what the file leaves out is that I have had the benefit of a life lived around scholars and scholarship, so I have learned how to think clearly and efficiently. That's a skill as well, more than a natural talent."

Flaws: Medical assessment: Lt. Col. Blackburn appears to be in excellent physical condition, and is often observed running in the early mornings as a form of cardiovascular training. However, some reports indicate that he has recently developed a problem with alcohol abuse. Moreover, he has missed without explanation every scheduled medical check-up in the last eighteen months.

"I guess this part is why I'm talking to myself. It started almost two years ago: memory lapses, blurry vision, a tremor in my left hand. Then it went away. When it came back, it was worse: all the old symptoms, plus fatigue, muscle spasms, mood swings. Then pain, an electric shock racing up and down my spine every time I moved my head, and a sense that I was losing control of my body: sometimes I slurred my words, sometimes I saw double. Then it went away again - and came back - and went away - and came back. I did the research. I found what I expected to find: relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. No cure. Attacks are unpredictable, but become more frequent over the years. It cripples you, blinds you, ultimately kills you. It takes its time. I've got decades left, most likely, even without treatment - and treatment isn't an option, because they'd make me resign my commission, and this place needs me. These people need me. So I drink instead, more than I should - every day, more than I should - because it helps me stay focused, keeps me from thinking about the next attack: when it'll come, how bad it'll be. And that's life for you: we live it one day at a time. At least I can be sure that my days matter, however many of them I have left."

Personality: Psychological assessment: Lt. Col. Blackburn is extremely highly functional. His typical thought pattern is analytic rather than emotive, and exhibits a high level of self-control; he enjoys intellectual challenges. He is essentially pragmatic and results-oriented, and can be unscrupulous in pursuit of his goals; however, the protection of human well-being is central to his identity, and imposes principled limits upon his pragmatism. He is extremely serious, and displays very high self-esteem; he escapes narcissism only because his self-regard is rooted in his external effectiveness rather than in his existence in se, and because he also possesses a distinctively dry and self-deprecating sense of humor.

"'Extremely highly functional' - that's the Army's notion of a compliment, I think. I suppose the file is mostly right on this score. I am analytic, and I am self-controlled. I was trained as a scholar and as a military officer, and neither of those professions rewards people who can't hold their emotions in check, who can't think with cold clarity. But I'm not some kind of living calculator. I see things clearly, that's all - people, institutions, politics. I understand emotion even if I don't let it cloud my thinking; that's what makes me a good leader, a good officer. It's also what makes me so pragmatic, I think. I understand that every human interaction has an element of manipulation, so I'm comfortable with pulling people's strings until I get what I want. And I see myself clearly too - that's one thing the file doesn't quite understand. I know my own worth; I see no value in false humility. I'm good at my job, and that matters. But I can also see the tragedy and ridiculousness of my life, and I can force myself to laugh at it - because the other options are tears and the bottle, and neither of those is appropriate before noon.

"I sound cynical now. But that's a false impression. Look: I had the chance to go AWAL, to stay at Harvard as a grad student. I chose to return to active-duty instead. Why? Because I need to know that I'm making a difference. Some of that is experimental curiosity: I come up to conclusions, and they're useless unless I can apply them. But most of it is principle, of a vague and potentially fatuous kind that I try not to spend too much time thinking about. I need to help people, to make the world a better place. Need, not want. That's why I can work dawn to dusk, day after day, without rest: because nothing makes me more fulfilled than meaningful work that helps people. That's why I can drag along other people with me, too: because they get swept up in the intensity of that need to help. And that's why, even if I sound cynical and am happy to use manipulation to get my way, there are lines I will not cross: because if you destroy more lives than you save, then you're doing more harm than good, and you might as well eat your own gun and have done with it."

Biography: Service record attached below.

• 3/15/2030: born Lawrence, MA
• 4/12/2046: won competitive high school internship with Senator Maureen LePage (D-MA)
• 5/02/2047: graduated Lawrence High School (salutatorian)
• 8/25/2047: enrolled Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, Harvard University
• 6/20/2049 - 8/20/2049: attended US Army Airborne School for Cadet Field Training
• 5/15/2051: graduated Harvard University magna cum laude with B.A. in sociology
• 3/01/2052: graduated US Army Basic Officer Leaders Course (Infantry); commissioned Second Lieutenant (0-1), 1st BN 506th INF.
• 5/5/2052 - 2/5/2053: deployed Operation Human Shelter, Guatemala.
• 13/11/2052: awarded Bronze Star with "V" Device for courage under fire and combat leadership
• 7/10/2053: awarded certificate in Chinese from Defense Language Institute, Monterey
• 7/20/2053 - 9/30/2053: attended US Army Pathfinder School.
• 10/02/2053 - 8/02/2054: deployed Operation United Front, China. WIA.
• 8/21/2054: awarded Purple Heart.
• 2/01/2055: transferred to Individual Ready Reserve.
• 8/20/2055: enrolled as doctoral student, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
• 6/02/2058 - 8/21/2058: attended Civil Affairs Officer Qualification Course.
• 9/05/2059: recalled to active duty for Operation Special Relationship. Promoted First Lieutenant (0-2), 361st Civil Affairs Brigade.
• 9/17/2059 - 8/07/2060: deployed Operation Special Relationship, United Kingdom.
• 8/23/2060: awarded Silver Star. Promoted Captain (0-3), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade.
• 9/05/2060: enrolled as graduate student, School of Advanced Military Studies.
• 5/15/2062: graduated School of Advanced Military Studies with master's degree in Military Art and Science.
• 5/17/2062: Reassigned 95th Civil Affairs Brigade.
• 11/30/2062 - 2/11/2063: deployed Operation Empire Shield, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Area.
• 2/15/2063: Promoted Major (0-4), 321st Civil Affairs Brigade (Consolidated).
• 12/04/2064 - 5/20/2065: deployed Operation Windy Redoubt, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Area.
• 6/07/2065: Transferred 31st Combat Support Brigade (Consolidated).
• 3/15/2066 - 10/11/2067: deployed Operation Emerald Aegis, Seattle-Tacoma Metropolitan Area.
• 10/29/2067: Promoted Lieutenant Colonel (0-5), 2nd Combat Support Brigade (Reconsolidated).
• 11/30/2068 - 2/11/2069: deployed Operation United Front II, Toronto Census Metropolitan Area.
• 1/18/2070: Transferred 1st United States Volunteers.
• 12/13/2070 - 3/08/2071: deployed Operation Last Stand, Regina Census Metropolitan Area.
• 1/04/2072: Transferred Northern Anglo Alliance (Exodus Battalion).

- record ceases -

"Funny how they can squeeze a man's life into a few dozen lines like that. A good cure for pride, I suppose. Still, it doesn't tell the whole story.

"Yes, I was born in Lawrence. My parents were Irish: blue-collar, came here looking for a change of scene, got trapped in a series of dead-end jobs in post-industrial New England. Lawrence was about half Dominican and half Irish, a mill town where all the mills had closed. Gangs, hobos, the whole nine yards. I learned Spanish early, and how not to get jumped.

"I learned, too, that all power is relative and rooted in willpower: in a fight, the guy who's willing to go to the hospital will beat the guy who isn't nine times out of ten, no matter the difference in strength or experience. And because of that, you can never let yourself off the hook, never say that there's nothing you can do. There is - if you have the guts to put everything on the line. And from a very early age, growing up in a place where nobody lasts long alone, I realized that the only way I could ask others to stick up for me was by sticking up for them. Those were the lessons that Lawrence taught me: toughness, commitment, solidarity, teamwork. And compassion for people whom life had knocked down, because God knows that it could all too easily be me on the ground tomorrow.

"School was about what you'd expect from public schools in the poorest town in Massachusetts. But if my teachers were never too sharp, that only made me more certain that I was smarter than everyone else in the room. I think my total lack of shame in saying that probably also stems from my time in school: I am really smart, and that does matter, and nobody is helped if I hide that under a bushel. I spent all my time studying, even outside of class, even for classes that I wasn't actually taking: I read philosophy, political theory, engineering textbooks. I never went to parties. Never ran with the gangs. Instead, I ran track and skipped the seventh grade. I fell in love with learning, with the world of words and numbers and big ideas that I found in my books. And I realized early on that education was my way out of Lawrence, my way into that vast and fascinating world. When, at the age of sixteen, I was chosen from among five thousand applicants for an internship with Senator Maureen LePage, I knew that my instinct had been right: school offered me a way out from the circumstances of my birth.

"Which, I suppose, was why I had the nerve to apply to Harvard. And I was accepted, which stunned my parents into a kind of silent awe from which they never quite recovered. I joined the Army ROTC purely to pay for school. But those two experiences - the Army and Harvard - made me who I am today. As a cadet, I took to military life like a fish to water: I was confident to a fault, assertive, fiercely determined and resourceful. Good officer material, in other words. And even at Harvard, most of the time, I was still the smartest student in the room: I took up sociology, because I liked interviewing people and I naturally thought in terms of systems. I had a lot to prove to all of these Boston Brahmins' brats. I pushed myself very, very hard: I had a few girlfriends, but I didn't make enough time for those relationships to go anywhere. By my senior year, I had my airborne wings from the Army - jumping out of planes is good fun when you're twenty - and I was writing a two-hundred-page thesis on the sociology of the American militia movement.

"It was about that time that the virus really started getting out of hand. As soon as I graduated from Harvard, the Army rushed me through the infantry leaders' course, slapped lieutenant's bars on me, and sent me off to Guatemala to try to hold the line in Central America. That was my first taste of war: the refugee camps racked with typhus and cholera, the machine guns mowing down thousands of the infected, the reek of napalm in the jungle. It shook me. It made me angry: there had to be a better way than this butchery. I dug in my platoon around one of those refugee camps and held off the infected for four hours to give the locals time to evacuate. The Army gave me a medal for that, and then promptly retreated from Guatemala and left all of those civilians behind to die.

"Well, after that, I didn't want to get deployed again - remember, I was only in the Army in the first place because I needed a way to pay for college - so I kept volunteering for additional training: I learned Chinese at Monterey, and I learned wilderness skills at Pathfinder School. But my conscience irked me: I knew that there was more that I could be doing. In late '53, I went to China with most of the rest of the active-duty Army to try to contain the outbreak around Shanghai. You know how that ended. I've never seen more infected than during Operation United Front: millions of them, a human ocean, undulating and swarming like flies on a corpse. When they broke through the cordon, we all ran for our lives, and that's when the Air Force dropped submunitions on my platoon and blew me half to hell and gone - which is where the scars on my arms come from.

"There was a lull after that, both for the war and for me personally. The Army figured I had done my bit and transferred me to IRR: you go and live your life, we'll call you when we need you. I spent six months in physical therapy learning to use my right hand again, and then went back to Harvard for grad school: the Kennedy School of Government. I'd seen enough of war by that time to know that military force is only ever part of the solution; the Army is a political instrument that must be used for political reasons. Military affairs don't exist in a vacuum. So I became a doctoral student and started writing my thesis, and watched as Asia and Africa and Latin America went dark for good. I even fell in love, which I knew at the time was a bad idea, but it was my way of holding on to some kind of hope for the future. As a reservist, I passed the Civil Affairs course, because I figured that CA was in the business of helping civilians rather than selling them out. And I waited.

"The brass called me up in September of '59 for Operation Special Relationship. We all knew that this was the endgame. The VALKs and the Air Force did most of the heavy lifting around London, and with the mechs, we held on for a fair few months. But we were mentally weak: we still believed that there was such a thing as excessive casualties, even in the face of human extinction. So we pulled back step by step, and I ended up in Birmingham, organizing the evacuation of British refugees to the US and Canada on every ship, plane, and fishing boat I could find: any chance was better than none. When GAMA redeployed, I got left behind in de facto command of a bunch of British conscripts and three Army civil affairs teams, with fifteen thousand civilians still trapped along the docks. We dug in and held out on our own for three days, and got the civilians out, and then escaped on the last boat across the Irish Sea to Belfast. The last thing I remember seeing in Britain was thousands of the infected wading into the ocean after us until they drowned in the waves.

"They gave me the Silver Star for that, bumped me up to captain, put my face on YouTube a couple times. The Army needed heroes, and I fit the bill. But we all knew that our tactics weren't working: it was just a matter of time until we met the same fate as the UK. The brass sent me to SAMS to try to brainstorm some new way of dealing with the situation. I sat in classrooms in Leavenworth with the best and the brightest of the surviving Western militaries, and we discussed and debated and dreamed outside the box: someone once suggested nuking the Sahara to throw enough dust into the atmosphere to cause an artificial winter that would freeze all the zombies. We were high on our own brainpower, and all the while the reports of virus cases in New York and LA were getting more and more frequent.

"It all blew up literally the day after I graduated from SAMS. Word came in on the news that Boston was gone: the woman I loved, Harvard, all burned to ash by the Air Force in an attempt to quarantine the first major US outbreak. They gave me a company - five teams - in the 95th Civil Affairs and sent me to organize the evacuation of Newark. We gave it everything we had, but in the end the VALKs went down under the sheer weight of bodies and I was left clinging to the back of the last truck in the evacuation convoy while the city crumbled behind us. Only half of us made it out. The same thing happened at Chicago, and then Seattle: each time, I got promoted and folded into a reconsolidated brigade made up of the surviving support troops: Civil Affairs, engineers, combat controllers, all mixed in together. By the time we pulled back to Canada, I knew the game was up; we were fighting for time, and for dignity, not for victory. Which, I realized, was okay with me. It was like I had learned on the streets of Lawrence: you do what you can because you must. In the end - win or lose, live or die - that's all there is.

"We lost Toronto, made a last stand around Regina - by that time I was a lieutenant colonel in something called the 1st United States Volunteers, which was just all the surviving US troops in North America amalgamated together - then trekked through the Yukon in the coldest March I've ever known. The ones who survived the death march made it here. That was the start of Exodus Battalion. I spent our first year in Anchorage just trying to keep everyone fed: there was nowhere near enough food, so I organized rationing and put every spare man, woman, and child to work growing potatoes and carrots. There were shortages, riots, chaos in the streets. Few of the old or sick survived the first winter, but the rationing did its job, and the bulk of us made it through.

After that, I settled down to make Fort Richardson a decent place to live. There was no civilian government left, and the Battalion is organized along military lines, so as the senior-most CA officer I ended up in charge of pretty much every aspect of civilian life. I converted our furnaces to use wood instead of gas, and got the heat back on in a reliable way. I cobbled together enough windmills, DIY solar panels, and makeshift dams to run the electrical grid, at least a little, and so I got the lights turned on again. I found enough educated people, both military and civilian, to consolidate the whole local education system into one K-12 school, and I found that school administrative staff and funding ("funding," at that stage, mostly meaning ration slips). I put together a Board of Selectmen on the New England model to provide a veneer of democracy and to help me handle day-to-day civil administration, and I organized military courts to resolve disputes - which often meant drafting any surviving lawyers straight into uniform so that they could serve as qualified judges. I worked fifteen-hour days for three years straight, and kept my office door open so that anybody could come to me with their needs or concerns.

"A few years after we arrived in Anchorage, the Russians and Chinese started showing up. Like the other senior officers in the Battalion, I attended the negotiations that established the tribunes and their annual meeting. I helped to hash out the details with my counterparts in the other two factions, and I learned a fair bit of Russian in the process. With our core area on a more stable footing, I also started venturing further afield, looking for survivors on farms outside the city who might be able to help us with our chronic food shortages. We found plenty of hunkered-down farmers willing to trade, and I started work on repairing the local roads and extending our makeshift electrical infrastructure - I even organized something approaching a school bus service. But on one of those expeditions, my team got surrounded in a farmhouse by several hundred infected. I don't think I've ever fought harder than I did that night: I was certain that I was going to die. We had burned through all our ammunition by the dawn, and we were fighting with bayonets at the doors and windows. I got bit on the thigh, and carved out half of my quadriceps with a red-hot knife to try to contain the infection. Apparently, it worked, though I still walk with a limp because of it.

"While I was in a wheelchair because of that wound, I got elected as tribune, and spent a year trying to get the Russians to trade food for nuclear power from their ships, with very limited success. After that, once I could walk again, I turned to medical infrastructure: tracking down qualified doctors and nurses, getting a hospital back on line, organizing a house-call service so that farmers in the outlying areas could get treatment. Now that those efforts are starting to bear fruit, I'm focusing more on welfare: we've got a lot of disabled people here, and I want to find them suitable work and caretakers, to make sure that they can live with some kind of decency and dignity.

"It was just shortly after I finished my term as tribune that the fits started. That's life for you: recover from self-inflicted surgery just in time to be hit by multiple sclerosis. I haven't told anyone, not a soul. There's nobody to tell. I drink instead, and hide in my office when the pain and the spasms get so bad that I can't see straight. And I do my job - because there's always more to do, and every hour I work makes sure that the sick are treated, and children educated, and people fed. So I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, doing what I can because I must. Because in the end, for as long as I can draw enough breath to give an order, that is who I am."

RP Sample: My credentials are in my sig.

Theme song: The Gael

[Monfrox]

Great app, Norv. It'll take a little to go over entirely, but that's good.

[Kassaran]

Please tell me htis is still going to be a thing? Start posting your applications folks! Come on! I'm freaking moving and I got one up. I spend enough time online to have written thirty posts and applications in certain downtime... even now as I write to you, I could be doing that (and I think I will).

[Monfrox]

Settle down, Kass. Heel.

I think I talked to everyone about their apps thus far but I'd like at least one or two more people in before I get the IC up.

[Towers]

Nationstates Name: Towers

Character name: Casey Holmes
Character sex: F
Character age: 19

Character role: Technically a member of the local militia, her typical work week involves two days of administrative duties at HQ and two days of administrative duties at the archive on the base filling and managing military records, government documentation as well as civilian literature.
Character appearance: 5’6’’; Caucasian; Green eyes; Blonde hair kept short and in a ponytail; her face rests in a thin smile.

Level of training: Two days a week doing drills with the militia, been off the base about two times since she arrived for anything other than exercises and once was by accident.

Strengths: Casey can drill thorough paperwork at an incredible rate and has an eye for detail which is expressed in the sketching she does. A pretty good shot when she can calm down and focus. Master of trivia.
Flaws: Very skittish, easily spooked. Feels she has something to prove to her father and so occasionally takes stupid risks, thankfully she’s not really in a position to take dangerous ones at the moment.
Personality: Casey is very accepting of taking commands will bow to peer and group pressure very easily. She is very caring but with a tendency to worry too much about things. She enjoys games of all sorts from sports to cards to board games and shows a very competitive side in such things as they don’t have true consequences beyond her pride which is one of the few things Casey will stand up for.

Biography: Casey Holmes is the only daughter of the domineering force the permeates life on the base, her father, Oliver Holmes former Senator for the State of Delaware. Oliver has been riding on momentum and charisma since the collapse of the U.S. government to plan himself firmly at the centre of the infant power structures that have sprung up in and around the base. Unable to snag the position of Tribune Oliver now works as a power broker and deal maker, smoothing potential problems out early and discreetly. As he’s built his reputation people now often come to him first when wanting to work out private agreements making him what he always wished to be and the worst thing possible for the current administration, indispensable.
Casey arrived on the base as at the age of nine and has spent the rest of her formative years surrounded by militaria, cold and regiment. It shows in the way the scurries about and snaps to attention.
Casey lives deeply in her father’s shadow and has only been slowly able to negotiate minor degrees of freedom each year. She can now hold a job, go on exercises with the local militia and even gets a Sunday afternoon free. She must still obey a strict curfew without a good excuse and Casey is more than certain that her father has someone following her from time to time.

RP Sample:

Thud.

As Casey found herself landing solidly on the matted floor of the exercise hall for the fourth successive time she began to question the teaching value of the exercise. She was meant to close with her instructor Julia, hook her foot with hers and bring her down. It was really going quite well for three seconds till she realised that Julia was trying to do the same thing to her and was much better at it.

“Jul’s,” She panted while looking up at her teacher “What am I learning here? I’m never going to get you, you’re way stronger.”
“It really doesn’t matter if I’m stronger with what we’re doing.” Julia replied very matter of factly and extended a hand to help her up. “That’s exactly what someone with a strength advantage would say.” Casey protested but she didn’t press the point because Julia was irritatingly enough right, there just wasn’t enough of a difference for it to be a good excuse. She just sucked.

As she got up Casey spared a quick glance for the analogue antique clinging to the sheer concrete on the far side of the hall. Twenty-to-nine, still plenty of time till she would have to go so long as she changed quickly, it wasn’t as though it was a long walk anywhere in their little snow globe of civilisation. She briefly entertained the thought of skipping curfew and seeing if she could convince Julia to take her drinking, not that she would have a good time but it would be cathartic. Last time she did something like that though she had been kept inside for a whole week and just wasn’t worth it.
So up she got and did it twelve more times and was thrown to the ground twelve more times, then said her goodbyes and trudged off to change into something not drenched in sweat and failure. A lighting quick shower and then into some thick trousers and three layers on top; a long-sleeved t-shirt, then a cardigan and finally a surplus parka she’s taken from HQ last year before power walking out into the chill. Thankfully it was May so it was only miserably cold as opposed to unbearably freezing, Casey often wondered if she’d ever experience even a temperate climate ever again.


Casey turned the key at 9:09, tight but just in her breathing room, unsurprisingly home was actually unoccupied for all her worrying. Their living space was small but well-furnished living space and Oliver liked it that way, it gave the impression of modesty but affluence which was just the sort of thing the people he brought over wanted to see. A down to earth guy who had the strength to stand up for you, he really was going to end up dead or running this whole place. She shook off the thought of things to come and found some beans and pork to make. It was greasy, gross and she loved it. Indulging in things like this was so much easier to justify after two hours of getting ruined by Julia.

As she was washing up Casey heard the sound the door opening and more than one set of voices sharing merriment coming thought. Quickly finishing she sprang to her default exit strategy, make tea (it always impressed, very hard to get now) and biscuits before vanishing. She could just scurry off but if would be more trouble later for not showing face. So, a bit of recon showed four people, Oliver, two men and a woman so four cups materialised on the table two minutes later along with sugar and milk for anyone who bothered. She smiled and filed the names in case it ever mattered and then slunk away back to the kitchen because there was business to discuss and Casey knew when she wasn’t wanted. With the remaining water, she made a little mug for herself and glided away silently to her room.

There she squirmed into bed and opened the Spring 2017 issue of the Navel War Collage Review, she’d started reading them as a joke but there was something comforting about reading about these sort of plans, discussions and worries from and age before the world stopped making sense. With her tea, her warm bed and walls just thick enough it created a marvellous illusion.

Like the whole planet hadn’t gone topsy-turvy long before she would understand, like she wasn’t living in the far end of nowhere with nowhere else to go, like she wasn’t there at all.

Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h1zpy2 ... 8&index=16

[Monfrox]

Alright, I'll see what I can do. I've been working a lot lately so been trying to get time in to unwind. I'll put together the list of accepted apps and let you all know how it goes. If you still have a WIP app, get to it.

[Kassaran]

Yisss. This has made me happy. Now I can finally rest in peace.

[Monfrox]

I have updated the characters list. I'll slip my own character in at the bottom of it, but that's after I get the IC thread up. Not working tomorrow so expect it soon.

[Kassaran]

Yussss

I'm excited about this. Really am.

[Monfrox]

It's up

Feel free to TG me any questions you have if you have any, and as always be sure to look and see if your character was accepted before posting. For now, I sleep. I have to work tonight.

[Kassaran]

Yessss... Now time to find something to do.