Profile

Player’s Name: LotusLeif
DA Account or alternative chat/email: LotusLeif
Journal Account: MageWarriorKalryr

--CHARACTER REFERENCE SHEET--

BASIC DEMOGRAPHICS

Name: Ian Chandler
Age: Looks 14. Is technically a bit older, just sort of perpetually stuck in his awkward teen years.
Gender: Male
Species: Zombie! Or rather, infected post-human. If you want to get technical about it.
Languages: English, a bit of Spanish.


APPEARANCE

Height: Almost 5'5".
Weight: Slightly pudgy. His parents said he's still losing his baby fat.
Build: Average and unimpressive. He's decent at track and does a bit of activity, but most of his time is spent on writing or video games, and he's not exactly super fit.
Skin: Caucasian, pallid and sickly. He's got a pimple on his chin that he used to be really self-conscious about, but now he's more self-conscious of the darker color of what veins are visible beneath his skin, of the way his cuts bloom purple like bruises, and his eyes.
Hair: Blond, limp and washed-out and a bit dirty.
Eyes: Wide and oily black, with bags underneath that make them look even larger and more insectoid. Normally hidden behind a pair of shades.
Other traits: Ian is a member of the undead. When he bleeds, what comes out instead of blood are very dark red (nearly black) masses of crawling insects, millions of them that are nearly impossible to see unless you're looking closeup. Over time, without consuming human flesh, his body starts to rot, pieces falling off or oozing black.
Clothes: Ian was wearing dirty, worn old clothes that look like they've been through an apocalypse. (Because, well, they have.) Namely, a black t-shirt, old blue jeans, and a dusty maroon jacket.


PHYSICALITY

Demeanor: Ian has absolutely no self-confidence and is afraid of everything, and it shows. He walks with bad posture, hands in the pockets of his jacket, and takes frequent looks about. He tends to dart from place to place, keep to cover, and talk a bit too quickly. He's paranoid and defensive, easily startled or panicked.

When the HuNGEr gets the better of him, though, his moves become much more efficient. His hunched posture becomes more so, as if a part of him wants to walk on all fours. He looks around more slowly, moves with a silky, rapid purpose. While he still moves in quick bursts, it's much less like fleeing and more like a rabid dog prowling about, impatient for something to attack.

Speech patterns: When he's in his own right mind, Ian speaks with the slightly cracking voice of your typical nearly 15-year-old. He's quiet and unassertive, and tends to use the word 'um' and trail off a lot. When he's around friends he makes a few more casual jokes, but his sense of humor is terrible and he loves bad puns. He's decently observant, but most of his observances he keeps to himself. Related to that, he's rather secretive.

When the hUNGer StartS GETting the BETTER of HIm, though, he speaks in a chaotic tone that seems to alternate randomly between a low growl and a harsh hissing. His speech becomes a lot more ill-focused, tuned more and more solely to the idea of GeTTiNG MEAT. He slowly loses bits and pieces of his humanity.

PERSONALITY

Overview: Ian is, when he's In CONtRoL of himself, a shy and friendly young man. He's a bit nervous around people and a teensy bit on the unassertive side, but he likes helping others and making new friends. He's a bit of a daydreamer and an idealist, always eager to see the best in the people he knows. When he's not cowering in fear or hiding away somewhere, he's ready with a kind word and a bit of assistance. When push comes to shove, while he's scared of his own shadow, he will swallow that fear and step forward to help someone in need. He's also a writer and very invested in politics, and if given an inch on either of those topics he will happily babble your ear off.

Unfortunately for him, however, he is also very dead and very infected. While he's one of the exceedingly rare infected who do still have sentience and memories of who they were, the HuNGER for FLeSh is a very convincing hunger, indeed. Being around blood or injury makes him very, very uncomfortable, and as he gets hungrier he gets twitchier, moodier, and more erratic. He may even snap at people, though he really prays not literally.

Passions: EATinG hUMAN FLesH, politics (he's a democrat, but he really doesn't like the idea of a two-party system), writing (he specializes in high fantasy, dragons and wizards and such), video games (mostly FPSes), hiking, going exploring, activism, making a difference in your community, daydreaming, lazy summer days, staying alive.

Fears: Ian's biggest and most common fear is being a zombie. He's terrified of the idea, and of himself. He's scared of his fellow survivors finding out, trying to kill him. He's scared of his hunger getting the best of him and hurting someone he loves. He's scared of one day losing his mind completely. He's scared of having to eat people to stay sane. He's scared of the end of the world, scared of the other infected, scared of there never being a cure, scared of people dying. He's scared of appearing off, scared of suspicion being put on him, scared of being hurt.

Oh, and snakes. Snakes are scary.

Strengths: Ian's main strengths are that he's a survivor, and (HuNGEr aside) a genuinely nice kid. He knows a great many survival techniques, from where to find shelter to how to make fire to how to kill a man in several ways, and he copes well in strange or new situations. He's good at keeping calm, prioritizing, and he's a pretty fast runner when he puts his mind to it. He's imaginative and creative, decently clever, and very sweet. He's eager to listen to problems and help people, patient and welcoming, and exceptionally friendly and charitable. He'd give you the shirt off his back if you don't mind the bloodstains.

Lastly, due to the infection, he's fairly durable--while parts of him can and do fall off, he can put them back on easily enough, and nothing short of a shot to the brain will really kill him. When he's feral, he can drive himself well past the point of exhaustion, pushing all his muscles and limits to the singular goal of GeTTIng FOOd.

Weaknesses: Many. Ian is gullible and trusting, eager to make friends and make people happy. He's painfully shy, gets nervous and panics easily, and is practically scared of his own shadow. His vision is terrible, and he's a bit sickly and not terribly strong. He daydreams and spaces out a lot, stammers and isn't terribly useful.

There is also, on top of that, the minor fact that he's infected with a zombie virus that makes it so his blood is made up of millions of tiny bugs and he has a terrible hunger for human flesh, to the point that he occasionally loses focus and growls or snarls without meaning to. His blood and saliva, should they get into another person, will attempt to consume them from the inside out, the bugs inside of them multiplying at a positively insane rate. It makes dating very awkward.

Quirks:

* Rubs his arms a lot, even when it's not cold.

* Tends to stutter when nervous, which is most of the time.

* Makes popular media references, but only tentatively, unless he's with someone who gets them or gives them in return. Then he fires them off like rockets.

* Has poor willpower when around blood or gore. There's a part of him which wants to eat it VERY BADLY, and the part of him that's human is fighting it. This tends to lead to a lot of stress and discomfort when he's around blood, perhaps even fainting. Fortunately, stress and discomfort around blood are relatively normal.

* Ian was raised in a strongly Christian household. While he considers himself generally fairly Liberal, he tends to be slightly homophobic and a teensy bit biased against Atheists or Agnostics, though he tries not to let this get the best of him.

HISTORY

Dream: Ian's dreams are pretty average, if a bit hazy and hectic and disorderly and vaguely scary, like a bad fever dream. They tend to be lethargic with bursts of rapid activity, calm memories interspersed with nightmare images that he doesn't often remember come morning.

Homeworld: Like many Insom residents, Ian comes from the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. Well, sort of. The earth has been unpleasantly infested with tiny black insects that feast on rot, decay, and flesh when they can get it. They have a complicated and ever-evolving hivemind to each nest, and while they can survive on their own, they don't last very long outside and prefer a soft, warm, food-filled environment, like human veins. A human infected with the parasites, be they alive or dead, will rapidly become effectively braindead as the bugs consume much of the innards to make their nest. These consumed humans exhibit odd behavior (naturally!): wandering around doing whatever they did last, trying to reenact actions that they lack the brain matter to complete, and general 'patchiness' as the half-eaten brain still attempts to function. Often, they will feel a drive towards consuming other meat, especially human meat, but it's a lurching, almost pathetic sort of hunger.

Ian has been working with a team of survivors trying to create a reformed society several years after the infestation broke out. Things are going optimistically well, but there's a fair bit of arguing and distrust amongst the survivors, and the politics of this new society are shaky at best.

Family/Friends: Ian tries to avoid having too many friends for obvious reasons, and his old family is long-missing, presumed dead. However, he does have a few people he cares/cared about.

Louis: The unofficial Team Leader of Ian and his fellow survivors. A burly, cheery Wisconsin man who used to be a mayor and biker before the apocalypse. While the dire nature of it has dampened his spirit somewhat, he retains his organizational skills, optimism, and occasional badassery in his position. He likes to think of himself as a father figure to many of the lost survivors, but recently it's become increasingly obvious that people are starting to wonder why he should be the leader.

Arlene: A fellow survivor. A security officer before the apocalypse went down (mall cop, not that she's revealing that part), Arlene is hard around the edges, and beneath that... well, there's mostly more hardness. The apocalypse didn't help anything. However, she genuinely cares about the other survivors, and will do what she can to secure what order they have. She has very little patience for bullshit, and occasionally forgets that perhaps making all the children cry is not the best for morale.

America: A survivor, though only tentatively involved with the camp. She comes and goes as she pleases, like a cat. America is a bit older than Ian and arguably a bit mad, though the apocalypse has relaxed the definitions of madness a fair bit. She's quiet and focused, efficient and helpful in a sort of roundabout way. Likes burning things and exploding things, and the fact that she's allowed to now that it's the end of the world and all. Smiles with too many teeth.

Markus: Ian's best friend before the end of the world. A pudgy kid from the bad side of town who liked hanging out at Ian's place because his parents are sort of rich and Ian tends to have better games. He thought Cartman was a prime example of hilarity and had a bad example of being sexist, eating all the food, and lacking tact. On the other hand, he was genuinely there for a friend in need, and promised to beat up anyone that gave little blond mousy Ian hell, which Ian enjoyed. They met up once, after the apocalypse; surviving hardened Markus into a surprisingly capable individual, and he's currently working with his own camp of survivors and researchers. Ian still has a scar from the bullet.

Emma: Ian's little sister. A bright and rebellious girl who, at the time of Ian's death, was phasing out of her pink and princesses phase and into something involving more blacks and edgy 90s comic books. She took herself very seriously, like most 12-year-olds, and was occasionally a bit heavy on the sarcasm. Ian hasn't seen her since then, a fact which terrifies him, but he refuses to give up hope that she's okay. Markus promised to take care of her if Ian couldn't, and for all his flaws as a kid, he didn't go back on his word.

History: For most of his life, Ian was a normal boy. He grew up in a small Midwestern town to an upper class family. His mother was a biologist, specializing in the prevention and containment of invasive plant species, while his father wrote screenplays for direct-to-DVD horror films. He had a younger sister, a best friend, a steady girlfriend, decent enough grades, and life was good.

Well, until the whole end of the world thing, of course.

Ian, being an inexperienced teenager unaware of what these black-eyed humanoids were, was quickly killed by the undead, left to bleed out on his kitchen floor before the Midwest was even fully aware the parasites had spread that far. He didn't even get to see the world really destroyed; he woke up in a morgue after the nest growing inside of him started to demand more food, and he's been shuffling along trying his hardest to find some miracle way to keep himself together without indulging in that need ever since.

Sleeping: Ian was sleeping in an old warehouse with fellow survivors. While the new society is slowly coming together, old habits die hard, and none of them have yet gotten back into the habit of pajamas or even undressing, as it impedes the ability to get up and run away in a nanosecond. (Athlete's foot is one of the more common ailments of the modern survivor.) Consequently, he was sleeping fully dressed, shoes on and pack of emergency supplies as a pillow.

SKILLS

Primary Skills: Ian's main skill is being undead, unfortunately. He can see very well in the dark, go for days without sleeping, can smell meat and sense movement better than the average human, and take basically any hit that isn't a headshot and get back up. His blood is... well, it's not fair to say POISONOUS, but considering the bugs inside of it will attempt to devour any blood or innards they get into contact with, it's generally recommended you don't get it into your mouth or under your skin.

Other than that, Ian's skills are fairly limited. He's friendly but shy, helpful enough but when it comes to dangerous or life-or-death situations will take self-preservation first. (He'll feel bad about it, though.) He's knowledgeable about politics and video games and generally good at keeping peace. He seems decently clever, if not in any way brilliant.

Combat: Ian really, really prefers not to fight and will avoid it at just about all costs. His main techniques are running away and finding help. However, he's been trained by the other survivors, and while he's not about to judo flip anyone, he can and will duck and dodge and defend himself if he's in a corner. Mostly, he really doesn't want to get hit, as his bruises and blood are predictably weird.

When he's NoT IN COnTrol, however, he can fight much better. He can work his muscles well past their sane limit, which makes him seem stronger, faster, via literally tearing himself apart to get what he wants. He will deliberately slice open his palms to try and claw a person open and get the bugs in them, even try to kiss them if he doesn't think that will work. He's violent and unrelenting and merciless, seeking only meat. However, he also lacks tactics or skills; it's more of a hissing, desperate rush than anything planned.

Weapons/Gear: Nothing but his blood and a bit of old scratch paper in the corner of his pocket, with all the lint.

Unusual Abilities: Ian is a zombie, and that's really all there is to say about that. He'd really, really rather not be, and if anyone asks he wears the shades for vision problems. The limbs falling off are a medical condition, he swears.