Application to Bardsong
Oct. 27th, 2020 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whodareswinsThe Player
Player Name/Handle: Lox
Player Contact: Loxagn#2076 [Discord]
Characters Currently Played: This game just started.
Are you 18 or older?: Yes
Who invited you into Bardsong?: The admins!
The Character
Name: Jason Cole, The Lone Wanderer
Canon: Fallout
Canon Point: 3 years after the end of Fallout 3
Age: 23
History: Setting information can be found here.
Jason was born in the ruins of Washington, D.C. on July 13, 2258 to a scientist named James Cole and his wife, Catherine. Unfortunately, Catherine died in childbirth, leaving her husband and infant son to fend for themselves. Fearing for his son’s safety, James abandoned the couple’s passion project, a Purifier for the Potomac River Basin, and sought shelter in the nearby Vault 101.
In spite of its Overseer’s isolationist policies, Vault 101 needed a doctor, and so James was allowed in. He grew up there, never knowing that he hadn’t been born in the Vault. He made a friend in the daughter of the Overseer, Amata, and developed a keen interest in fixing things and, especially, helping people, which had him learning medicine under his father’s wing. It seemed like he would have a happy childhood, until the day his father vanished without warning, having left the Vault. The Overseer blamed Jason, and tried to have him killed as a result.
With Amata’s help, Jason fled the Vault, narrowly escaping with his life, and with nothing but his father’s footsteps to follow, Jason spent months searching the Wastes, helping people where he could and picking up what information he could find.
It took months, but Jason eventually reunited with his father, and the two of them sought to make Project Purity a reality. Unfortunately, the reunion was short-lived, and the Project was overtaken by the Enclave and his father flooded the Purifier with radiation to keep it out of their hands, ending his own life. With what remained of Project Purity’s research staff, Jason fled to the Brotherhood of Steel, the only force big enough to hold back the Enclave. Jason, at this point, reeling from the death of his father, received a ray of hope in the form of a message from Amata: Please help. He returned to Vault 101 to find it in chaos, with the Overseer taking totalitarian control and killing dissenters. Because Amata begged him to, Jason, with difficulty, managed to talk the Overseer into stepping down, and when Amata took the position Jason dared to hope that he could, perhaps, finally return home.
But, Amata told him, he couldn’t. The wasteland had changed him, and he frightened people. Without a home to go back to, and with his father’s legacy in ruins, the stress and trauma of the past months proved too much for Jason to bear, and for a period of several months he vanished entirely. During this time, rumors began to surface of an entity called a ‘Lone Wanderer’ over the radio, who wore faceless black armor and was responsible for destroying several settlements of slavers, raiders, and mercenaries. He was spotted as far as the Pitt, according to rumor, and in spite of being something of a wasteland boogeyman, he garnered respect by protecting traders from the Enclave- violently, more often than not. Point Lookout, too, was another sighting of the infamous 'Lone Wanderer', a place where Jason had the great misfortune to be drugged with potent hallucinogens while investigating a local cult, suffering (and, miraculously, surviving) the removal of a piece of his brain at the hands of one of the cult's 'doctors' whilst unconscious. Later, Jason would stumble into the settlement of Oasis, at the northernmost edge of the Capital Wasteland. There he saw something he’d only ever seen in pictures- green. Oasis was paradise, covered in trees and growing crops, and at the center of it a mutant named Harold who had had the misfortune of being in a state of symbiosis with a tree, rooted to one spot until his death. Though Harold wanted to die, the sight of the Wasteland converted into so much vibrancy and life shook him from his apathy with the stark realization: This could be what the Wasteland looked like, given the chance. With effort, Jason convinced Harold to remain, for the sake of helping the Wasteland recover, and with newfound determination, he set off for Vault 87, the last known location of a GECK, the missing piece of his father’s legacy.
The Enclave, unfortunately, had come to the same conclusion, and was waiting for a chance to retrieve the GECK, but unfortunately with Vault 87 as badly-irradiated as it was, they could not. When Jason retrieved it with the help of a friendly mutant named Fawkes, they ambushed him and dragged him to their stronghold, Raven Rock. They underestimated, however, the capacity of the ‘Lone Wanderer’ to deal with threats, and before long the stronghold was in ruins and the Enclave forced to evacuate. Jason took the GECK to the Purifier along with the help of the Brotherhood of Steel (and Fawkes), carving a path through Enclave forces and eventually activating it, saving the Wasteland from being strangled by the organization’s totalitarian control.
The following months were a protracted campaign against the Enclave, which the mysterious ‘Lone Wanderer’ took much of the credit for, given his brutal combat effectiveness and his near-legendary ability to seemingly ‘vanish’ into thin air. Jason, for his part, was happy to work on fine-tuning the Purifier and coordinate deliveries of clean water to the distant settlements of the wastes, and when the Enclave was finally broken and destroyed, it seemed, Jason could finally settle down and live in peace.
Personality:
Pretty much anybody who knows Jason Cole would tell you that he's... nice. Nicer than most people in the Wasteland. Half the time he’s in town, he’s helping out at Doc Church’s clinic, or checking in on the Stahls, or fixing up the old Water Purifier. He’s compassionate, and he tries his best to help anyone who he thinks is in need of it. When asked, he simply replies that his father was a doctor and a religious man, who taught him to stand up for other people and lend a hand wherever it was needed. He even took the time to disarm that bomb, and nobody even knew it was still active, even though he barely knew the people of Megaton at the time.
He’s generally quiet, keeps to himself, but you can always tell when he’s got himself into a new project. His face lights up, and he’ll start talking all the time with Sheriff Simms or Moira and then they’ll set up some new fortification or fix up something that was broken. He’s the sort of person who never does anything by half-measures, and once he’s settled on a goal he’ll pursue it until it’s finished or it’s impossible, one of the two.
Jason’s father was a scientist , and worked hard to foster an inquisitive mind. It worked quite well- Jason’s grown up with an intense instinct for investigation and exploring, probing at every facet of an apparent mystery until he’s learned everything he can. Early on he developed a keen interest in electronics, frequently tinkering and messing with any device he could get his hands on in the limited environment of the Vault. Growing up he was the nerdy kid, reading every book the vault had access to by the time he was sixteen, and that’s an attitude that followed him into his adult life. To most of the people of Megaton, he’s a good kid, and with any luck the Wasteland won’t grind that out of him.
It certainly hasn’t, over the few years he’s been ‘outside’. Jason remains, perhaps, as well-intentioned as he ever was, though perhaps as a coping mechanism for the unassailably bleak nature of life in the Capital Wasteland, he’s developed a very keen sense for ‘black comedy’, frequently finding a grim sort of humor or commentary in the bleakest situations. It can be cause for concern, among those who consider him a friend, but at least it’s a relatively healthy defense against the horrors of the wastes.
What isn’t, however, is the entity that has earned both fear and adoration throughout the Capital Wasteland, an entity that had the name ‘Lone Wanderer’ ascribed to him by Galaxy News Radio. Not quite a separate persona, but rather a state he seems to slip into when confronted with the sort of atrocity that, while unfortunately commonplace in the wasteland, leaves a decent man no choice other than to destroy it, or break. He puts on the armor, and something in him changes at a fundamental level. The need to do what’s best for the Wasteland, and vicious pragmatism, these rise to the forefront, and all else, in the moment, is forgotten.
The people near him don’t know, save perhaps for his closest confidants- one Sarah Lyons and Sheriff Simms of Megaton, both of whom are aware that Jason Cole, the kid who made Project Purity work, and The Lone Wanderer, the man that burned the Enclave to the ground, are the same person. For the vast majority of people who know Jason, the nature of most of the morally-questionable things he’s done remains something that is carefully-guarded, for obvious reasons. Jason may have a sneaking suspicion, particularly after years in the Wasteland and traumatic brain damage endured during the events of Point Lookout, that he isn’t entirely sane, but it’s a topic that he avoids thinking about if at all possibly, because to address the problem would require an examination of his actions and moral choices that he’s not certain he has the capacity to deal with. He makes allies easily and works well in a group, but the number of people he considers ‘friends’ can be counted on one hand, which is not helped by the reminder that even the closest friends have, in the past, betrayed him at the worst possible moments when it became convenient for them.
Inventory:
● A Colt Army Model 1860, previously belonging to a man named Paulson, and ammunition for same.
● Occam's Razor, a well-worn Bowie knife with a claw emblem burned into the pommel.
● A small bag containing a number of implements to do with medicine. Scalpel, forceps, stethoscope, opthalmoscope, suture kit, tweezers, reusable needle, and a small bottle of extremely high-proof spirits along with a small collection of medicinal chems.
● Several bottles of purified water, and one bottle of an alarmingly luminescent soft drink labeled 'Nuka-Cola Quantum'.
● A leather duffel bag containing all of this and, bizarrely, a significant accruement of soda bottle caps.
Link one or two roleplay samples featuring your character from within the past year:
Name two short term goals and one long term goal you have for your character in this game:
Short term, I'd be most interested in Jason joining the Seekers, and learning healing arts so he can return to his previous preferred career of doctor. He's also going to be investigating the processes of how the Starfallen got here and, by extension, the means by which they might conceivably return to their home worlds, though I recognize that such things probably aren't going to be possible in-game.
In the long term, I would like for Jason to interact with people in a context that he's never had much of a chance to be exposed to before, that being a wholly-positive environment. The kid's been emotionally closed-off for a very long time, and I want to experience him actually getting close to people for a change.
(Optional)Specify up to three starting character classes for your character:
Scout and Seeker just to start.
Player Name/Handle: Lox
Player Contact: Loxagn#2076 [Discord]
Characters Currently Played: This game just started.
Are you 18 or older?: Yes
Who invited you into Bardsong?: The admins!
The Character
Name: Jason Cole, The Lone Wanderer
Canon: Fallout
Canon Point: 3 years after the end of Fallout 3
Age: 23
History: Setting information can be found here.
Jason was born in the ruins of Washington, D.C. on July 13, 2258 to a scientist named James Cole and his wife, Catherine. Unfortunately, Catherine died in childbirth, leaving her husband and infant son to fend for themselves. Fearing for his son’s safety, James abandoned the couple’s passion project, a Purifier for the Potomac River Basin, and sought shelter in the nearby Vault 101.
In spite of its Overseer’s isolationist policies, Vault 101 needed a doctor, and so James was allowed in. He grew up there, never knowing that he hadn’t been born in the Vault. He made a friend in the daughter of the Overseer, Amata, and developed a keen interest in fixing things and, especially, helping people, which had him learning medicine under his father’s wing. It seemed like he would have a happy childhood, until the day his father vanished without warning, having left the Vault. The Overseer blamed Jason, and tried to have him killed as a result.
With Amata’s help, Jason fled the Vault, narrowly escaping with his life, and with nothing but his father’s footsteps to follow, Jason spent months searching the Wastes, helping people where he could and picking up what information he could find.
It took months, but Jason eventually reunited with his father, and the two of them sought to make Project Purity a reality. Unfortunately, the reunion was short-lived, and the Project was overtaken by the Enclave and his father flooded the Purifier with radiation to keep it out of their hands, ending his own life. With what remained of Project Purity’s research staff, Jason fled to the Brotherhood of Steel, the only force big enough to hold back the Enclave. Jason, at this point, reeling from the death of his father, received a ray of hope in the form of a message from Amata: Please help. He returned to Vault 101 to find it in chaos, with the Overseer taking totalitarian control and killing dissenters. Because Amata begged him to, Jason, with difficulty, managed to talk the Overseer into stepping down, and when Amata took the position Jason dared to hope that he could, perhaps, finally return home.
But, Amata told him, he couldn’t. The wasteland had changed him, and he frightened people. Without a home to go back to, and with his father’s legacy in ruins, the stress and trauma of the past months proved too much for Jason to bear, and for a period of several months he vanished entirely. During this time, rumors began to surface of an entity called a ‘Lone Wanderer’ over the radio, who wore faceless black armor and was responsible for destroying several settlements of slavers, raiders, and mercenaries. He was spotted as far as the Pitt, according to rumor, and in spite of being something of a wasteland boogeyman, he garnered respect by protecting traders from the Enclave- violently, more often than not. Point Lookout, too, was another sighting of the infamous 'Lone Wanderer', a place where Jason had the great misfortune to be drugged with potent hallucinogens while investigating a local cult, suffering (and, miraculously, surviving) the removal of a piece of his brain at the hands of one of the cult's 'doctors' whilst unconscious. Later, Jason would stumble into the settlement of Oasis, at the northernmost edge of the Capital Wasteland. There he saw something he’d only ever seen in pictures- green. Oasis was paradise, covered in trees and growing crops, and at the center of it a mutant named Harold who had had the misfortune of being in a state of symbiosis with a tree, rooted to one spot until his death. Though Harold wanted to die, the sight of the Wasteland converted into so much vibrancy and life shook him from his apathy with the stark realization: This could be what the Wasteland looked like, given the chance. With effort, Jason convinced Harold to remain, for the sake of helping the Wasteland recover, and with newfound determination, he set off for Vault 87, the last known location of a GECK, the missing piece of his father’s legacy.
The Enclave, unfortunately, had come to the same conclusion, and was waiting for a chance to retrieve the GECK, but unfortunately with Vault 87 as badly-irradiated as it was, they could not. When Jason retrieved it with the help of a friendly mutant named Fawkes, they ambushed him and dragged him to their stronghold, Raven Rock. They underestimated, however, the capacity of the ‘Lone Wanderer’ to deal with threats, and before long the stronghold was in ruins and the Enclave forced to evacuate. Jason took the GECK to the Purifier along with the help of the Brotherhood of Steel (and Fawkes), carving a path through Enclave forces and eventually activating it, saving the Wasteland from being strangled by the organization’s totalitarian control.
The following months were a protracted campaign against the Enclave, which the mysterious ‘Lone Wanderer’ took much of the credit for, given his brutal combat effectiveness and his near-legendary ability to seemingly ‘vanish’ into thin air. Jason, for his part, was happy to work on fine-tuning the Purifier and coordinate deliveries of clean water to the distant settlements of the wastes, and when the Enclave was finally broken and destroyed, it seemed, Jason could finally settle down and live in peace.
Personality:
Pretty much anybody who knows Jason Cole would tell you that he's... nice. Nicer than most people in the Wasteland. Half the time he’s in town, he’s helping out at Doc Church’s clinic, or checking in on the Stahls, or fixing up the old Water Purifier. He’s compassionate, and he tries his best to help anyone who he thinks is in need of it. When asked, he simply replies that his father was a doctor and a religious man, who taught him to stand up for other people and lend a hand wherever it was needed. He even took the time to disarm that bomb, and nobody even knew it was still active, even though he barely knew the people of Megaton at the time.
He’s generally quiet, keeps to himself, but you can always tell when he’s got himself into a new project. His face lights up, and he’ll start talking all the time with Sheriff Simms or Moira and then they’ll set up some new fortification or fix up something that was broken. He’s the sort of person who never does anything by half-measures, and once he’s settled on a goal he’ll pursue it until it’s finished or it’s impossible, one of the two.
Jason’s father was a scientist , and worked hard to foster an inquisitive mind. It worked quite well- Jason’s grown up with an intense instinct for investigation and exploring, probing at every facet of an apparent mystery until he’s learned everything he can. Early on he developed a keen interest in electronics, frequently tinkering and messing with any device he could get his hands on in the limited environment of the Vault. Growing up he was the nerdy kid, reading every book the vault had access to by the time he was sixteen, and that’s an attitude that followed him into his adult life. To most of the people of Megaton, he’s a good kid, and with any luck the Wasteland won’t grind that out of him.
It certainly hasn’t, over the few years he’s been ‘outside’. Jason remains, perhaps, as well-intentioned as he ever was, though perhaps as a coping mechanism for the unassailably bleak nature of life in the Capital Wasteland, he’s developed a very keen sense for ‘black comedy’, frequently finding a grim sort of humor or commentary in the bleakest situations. It can be cause for concern, among those who consider him a friend, but at least it’s a relatively healthy defense against the horrors of the wastes.
What isn’t, however, is the entity that has earned both fear and adoration throughout the Capital Wasteland, an entity that had the name ‘Lone Wanderer’ ascribed to him by Galaxy News Radio. Not quite a separate persona, but rather a state he seems to slip into when confronted with the sort of atrocity that, while unfortunately commonplace in the wasteland, leaves a decent man no choice other than to destroy it, or break. He puts on the armor, and something in him changes at a fundamental level. The need to do what’s best for the Wasteland, and vicious pragmatism, these rise to the forefront, and all else, in the moment, is forgotten.
The people near him don’t know, save perhaps for his closest confidants- one Sarah Lyons and Sheriff Simms of Megaton, both of whom are aware that Jason Cole, the kid who made Project Purity work, and The Lone Wanderer, the man that burned the Enclave to the ground, are the same person. For the vast majority of people who know Jason, the nature of most of the morally-questionable things he’s done remains something that is carefully-guarded, for obvious reasons. Jason may have a sneaking suspicion, particularly after years in the Wasteland and traumatic brain damage endured during the events of Point Lookout, that he isn’t entirely sane, but it’s a topic that he avoids thinking about if at all possibly, because to address the problem would require an examination of his actions and moral choices that he’s not certain he has the capacity to deal with. He makes allies easily and works well in a group, but the number of people he considers ‘friends’ can be counted on one hand, which is not helped by the reminder that even the closest friends have, in the past, betrayed him at the worst possible moments when it became convenient for them.
Inventory:
● A Colt Army Model 1860, previously belonging to a man named Paulson, and ammunition for same.
● Occam's Razor, a well-worn Bowie knife with a claw emblem burned into the pommel.
● A small bag containing a number of implements to do with medicine. Scalpel, forceps, stethoscope, opthalmoscope, suture kit, tweezers, reusable needle, and a small bottle of extremely high-proof spirits along with a small collection of medicinal chems.
● Several bottles of purified water, and one bottle of an alarmingly luminescent soft drink labeled 'Nuka-Cola Quantum'.
● A leather duffel bag containing all of this and, bizarrely, a significant accruement of soda bottle caps.
Link one or two roleplay samples featuring your character from within the past year:
Name two short term goals and one long term goal you have for your character in this game:
Short term, I'd be most interested in Jason joining the Seekers, and learning healing arts so he can return to his previous preferred career of doctor. He's also going to be investigating the processes of how the Starfallen got here and, by extension, the means by which they might conceivably return to their home worlds, though I recognize that such things probably aren't going to be possible in-game.
In the long term, I would like for Jason to interact with people in a context that he's never had much of a chance to be exposed to before, that being a wholly-positive environment. The kid's been emotionally closed-off for a very long time, and I want to experience him actually getting close to people for a change.
(Optional)Specify up to three starting character classes for your character:
Scout and Seeker just to start.
