Name: Scout
Age: 34
Gender/Species: Human
Appearance:
Scout stands at around 6ft with small breasts, broad shoulders and a very muscular frame. She sports a crop of red hair, shaved and flipped to one side. A scar gouges through her face from her forehead, down to her left eyebrow, missing the eye due to her eyesocket and ending near the corner of her lips. Her eyes are bright green and usually a little bloodshot. She has faint frown-lines and a small nose. She's festooned in makeshift, almost 'raider'ish armour - pieces of metal strapped to her body in all sorts of places, and doubling up as her backpack with all sorts of bags and pouches crammed in spaces around it or tied to the pipes and nails jutting out.
SPECIAL Stats:
S: 10
P: 5
E: 10
C: 3
I: 4
A: 5
L: 3
Skills:
Scavenging: whilst most survivors are gifted in the art of finding supplies, Scout has a knack for finding what she needs and hoarding them. Eventually she'll find a use for everything; by the end of the day she has sold some of the less useful items and made a good store of caps.
First Aid: Scout revels in the irony. She has a firm grasp on the knowledge of medical care that she still cannot explain to this day, and it is perhaps this understanding of her body's limitations that has kept her on the very edge of living during her darker days. She's no surgeon, but she uses pre-war medical terms and knows how to treat an impressive array of wounds and illnesses.
Singing: Hey, everybody has a hobby. No-one could even begin to expect that this bulky apathetic scrap-store could produce such a beautiful sound from her mouth, but there you go. Notably, she sings when she's bored or in distress; proper performances can help to boost morale, and whilst she won't even humour the idea when semi-sober, an intoxicated Scout or a Scout hopped up on Jet can belt out a song or two to amuse the crowd.
Perks/Traits:
Strength: has gained a lot of muscle from lugging around her scavenging scrap and her metal armour, so when she throws a punch it's not something to laugh about. She's able to lift heavy objects and people, carry more items and cause some impressive damage in her melee attacks.
Endurance: A dangerous cocktail of bad luck, a lack of self-preservation instincts and inexperience have made Scout into a toughened veteran. She's able to withstand more blows and shrug off more wounds and her pain tolerance is high. Consequently, a forgotten injury can cause some serious problems later on.
Jet: It plays an integral part in her life and despite her addiction, her use of Jet does count as a perk. Her senses are heightened, her reactions are quicker and she's more agile in general since she's rarely completely sober. Just after taking a hit these benefits are amplified for a while, making her a dangerous foe in combat.
Apathetic: Unless she has a financial, social or moral obligation to look after the people she's around, Scout can be fairly insensitive towards the suffering of others. If she doesn't think solving the issues of some settlers is useful in her own progress then she'll usually abandon them. She doesn't go out of her way to be cruel or merciless.
Personality:
In one word, she could be summarised as "indifferent". Scout takes things in with a pinch of cynical humour and sarcasm to brighten up her day, but otherwise she wanders around with a numbness that can almost be felt; as if she couldn't care less about everything. She's a borderline nihilist; it's hardly depression, but simply a moral viewpoint that this new life is meaningless. This mindset is almost parasitic and feeds on her energy and enthusiasm. She doesn't hold her own survival in high regard, but her survival instinct kicks in when it's needed.
In her struggle against her numbness, Scout uses Jet and, unfortunately, has developed an addiction. When she takes a hit she becomes uncharacteristically upbeat and excited. Withdrawal is a gradual and painful process; she becomes fidgety and irritable at first, then she starts to shiver and she's attacked with headaches. After a week or so it becomes hard to focus, she breaks into cold sweats, she becomes more aggressive and depressed. All the while she becomes weaker, as if she was physically ill, and her mentality deteriorates as she slowly becomes less self-sufficient. It's unsurprising, therefore, that Scout hoards Jet whenever she can get a hold of it and refuses to part with any of it.
Under the chem usage and the disassociation lies another core aspect of Scout's personality, which sometimes surfaces through her nonchalance - often when she's high. It is best described as her humanity. She can be caring, incredibly understanding, sympathetic and loyal. Since she does not hold her own life and existence in high regard, it gives her more scope to look out for other people. Those who get to know her and become friends with her will find a valuable ally and a shoulder to cry on, but there's an absence of sexual drive and consequently her interest in romance is pretty much non-existent. At her core, Scout is a good-hearted person; but her mental instability and addiction make it difficult to express her empathy.
History:
Scout originated from Vault 646, where historical preservation played a dominant role in the society. It was therefore designed to replicate a pre-war neighbourhood, with fake gardens and the main source of entertainment being outdated TV shows and radio podcasts. A small task force of Scouts were chosen to ensure that supplies continued to last through the vault. The Scouts would be well-equipped and sent out into the wasteland to retrieve food and water, gaining freedom at the price of complete isolation from the rest of the vault dwellers in order to maintain the illusion of pre-war life and avoid any external information ruining the experiment.
Scout grew up in the vault, and lived - for the first 20 or so years - in peace. Enamoured with her husband Kyle Reddison, she lived in a suburban house, with a conservative and typical American lifestyle. When raiders tore through the vault after tracking down the Scouts to their hideout, brutally murdered her husband and torched the building, something snapped.
It took Scout a while to remember these events, the trauma causing severe memory repression and denial to cloud her past. Scout instinctively took on the one word that was ingrained into her psyche as her name; unaware of it at the time, she believed the Scouts were the root of fault 646's downfall. After leaving the vault she scraped out some form of survival but kept largely to herself, acting as any vault dweller would - stupidly and without any modicum of skill, somehow managing to live long enough through sheer grit and random pieces of good luck to learn the ropes. The more she found out, the less she wanted to keep going; but being one of the very few left from her vault, Scout felt a moral obligation to keep going and continue the vault experiment - preserving history.
Weapons and Armor:
'Raider' armour.
Multi-purpose stabber.
Pipe bolt action pistol.
Simple underclothes.
Welding goggles and a length of cloth which doubles up as a
keffiyeh.
Miscellaneous Equipment:
- At least 3 Jet inhalers.
- Two wedding bands, one for each hand.
- Pip Boy. It's old, though, and one of the only things that works is the radio.