[b]Name/Nickname:[/b] Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Grey

[b]Age:[/b] 17

[b]Appearance:[/b] [center][img]http://img04.deviantart.net/a482/i/2011/325/2/9/northern_star_by_amalthee-d4gwt2x.jpg[/img]
Picture by [url=http://amalthee.deviantart.com/]Amalthee[/url][/center]

[u]Physical appearance:[/u] Shoulder-length black hair, grey-blue eyes, small nose, high cheekbones, fair skin (a little on the pale side). Scrawny, light feminine curves, small bust.

[u]Clothes:[/u] Military pants (brown), a black long-sleeve shirt (and, depending on the temperature, a t-shirt underneath), an all-weather jacket (leather skin) with a hood, military boots (plus socks) and fingerless gloves.

[u]Armor:[/u] Elbow- and kneepads (plastic, reinforced with kevlar) over her jacket, padded plastic chest- and backplate underneath (not the same quality as the pads – it can protect her from glancing knife attacks and will cushion a fall or punch but that’s about it). They are held together by leather straps and are self-made. She also wears arm- and shinguards of the same quality, also over her jacket. Despite their somewhat questionable usefulness in melee combat, they are light, don’t impede her movement and might make the difference between a bruise and a broken bone.

[u]Equipment:[/u] A self-made composite bow, full quiver of arrows (worn on her back), a backpack with rations, water, a stimpak, a dose of med-x and other basics (first aid, change of undergarments, rope…).


[b]Race:[/b] Human


[b]Personality:[/b] Upbeat, optimistic and friendly (if a little bit of a smart-ass) on the surface, albeit sometimes very quiet and thoughtful. Towards people she trusts, she may reveal a much more vulnerable side that is still struggling with the death of her parents and the realities of the wasteland.

[i]Traits:[/i]
[u]Inexperienced:[/u] She has killed before and generally speaking has 'powered through' the discomfort and guilt that goes with it but she is still fairly young and hasn't been roaming the wasteland for long, so particularly gruesome displays of violence, close calls and other things most people would hardly even think of as out-of-the-ordinary can shake her emotionally.

[u]Moral:[/u] Despite having lost her parents to raiders, she believes that people can be good and the world doesn't have to be a place of dread and violence. She holds on to her humanity and wouldn't stand idly by if an innocent was in danger (unless her fear was too great --> guilty conscience) and couldn't kill somebody unless she knew with certainty that they were guilty of something, although she'd still have moral qualms (unless it was in the heat of battle).


[b]Skills/Attributes:[/b] 
[u]Marksmanship:[/u] Pretty good with rifles (her mother taught her but the rifle is gone, along with her parents). Aaron Logan (vietmyke's character) took her in and is currently teaching her how to use bow and arrow (her primary weapon) and she's showing a lot of promise, her accuracy and speed improving constantly, though she'd still feel more comfortable with a rifle.

[u]Melee/Dodging:[/u] She's learned where you have to stab somebody (or something) to kill it quickly and she carries a combat knife; her strategy when forced into melee is to dodge her opponent's attacks entirely and to strike at a weakspot, ending the engagement as quickly as possible. However, should the first stab or two not hit something vital and if her opponent grabs ahold of her, her odds of winning or even surviving the engagement are 50% at best - if they aren't too strong, that is.

[u]Science:[/u] Her father was an educated man from a Haven who enjoyed sharing his knowledge with his daughter. As a result, she knows 'sciency' stuff: A little physics here, some geography there, a little biology for good measure... oh, and chemistry. While nowhere near as skilled as her old man in this field, she knows her way around a chemistry set, from acids and explosives to medicine - at least theoretically. Gathering the supplies necessary is a different matter entirely. 

[u]Survival:[/u] Her knowledge in this field is surprisingly limited. She knows what chemical compounds she would need to test water or food for radioactivity or poison and how to remove them, but finding food and water, trapping, tracking... All these are still relatively new to her and while she might be able to survive on her own, she would rather stay at her mentor/protector's side and look over his shoulder.

[u]Stealth:[/u] She can hide and be quiet but sneaking up on an opponent without making a single sound is a lot more difficult than that. Sneaking past somebody who's a few yard away isn't beyond her but getting close enough to stab somebody in the back is dicey.

[u]Climbing and Agility:[/u] Knowing that her melee strength is questionable and she cannot sneak well enough to make up for it, she has taken to avoiding it altogether. She can not only run away fairly well (prudence is the better part of valor, right?) but also climb and reach high-grounds others would see as unreachable. With a certain understanding of how to move her body and shift her momentum, she will try to dodge melee attacks rather than taking them, though her lack of experience means that avoiding melee altogether is still her best option.


[b]Backstory:[/b] Ellie’s childhood has been about as blissful as a childhood can be in the world after the bombs, growing up in an isolated farming community some hundred miles north of Silvershaw, born to loving parents who were struggling less than most. Her parents were quite different from one another: Her mother was a skilled hunter who had, earlier in her life, come across a pre-war military rifle and ammo and taught her daughter early on how to use it; her father, on the other hand, was a man of science, a very intelligent and educated man who had grown up in a Haven and never tired of teaching his child about the ‘sciences’, the vast knowledge of the world that had been lost during the war. 

But what stood out most during her childhood was what she taught herself: How to build and repair things. Tinkering was the only thing one could do on rainy days and Ellie developed a stubborn determination to succeed in such endeavors. Her greatest achievement was repairing a shortwave radio, something that in itself wouldn’t have been really noteworthy if not for the contact she made – for a few minutes, she was talking to somebody who claimed to live in North America, who told her about a life that sounded very familiar to what her own part of the world had to offer. After this, they only managed to talk twice more, but that was enough to make her realize something: That the world was bigger than the community and supposed island they lived on, that there were other people out there and not everything and everyone ended in the war. It gave her a sense of curiosity and adventure. 

But adventure had a tendency to come to you in this world and it soon found their neck of the woods in the form of raiders. First, tentative attacks could be easily repelled but as they increased in frequency and intensity and claimed their first lives, the community started to fall apart, families leaving in the dark of night to find somewhere safer. This eventually forced the Greys to leave when she was 13.
They moved around for a while but soon realized that they would be safest in the biggest settlement around – Silvershaw. But her parents died on their journey in a raider ambush. Their small group of attackers fought over the teenage girl and only their leader remained. Ellie managed to get ahold of a knife and stabbed him to death but was injured. After attempting (and failing) to bury her parents, she reluctantly left their corpses and most of their possessions behind and collapsed about a mile away from Silvershaw. To her luck, one of the settlement’s rangers, Aaron Logan, was returning from a patrol and brought her in.

There, she was nursed back to health but was alone and had trouble fitting in with the teenagers, repairing odds and ends for the Rangers, travelers and townspeople to earn her keep. But she wasn’t satisfied with just staying in town and was eventually (at age 14) taken in by Aaron Logan who agreed to teach her how to survive in the wasteland. She has been his protégée ever since.

[b]Other:[/b] Ellie has developed a chem addiction (Med-X and, to some degree, Jet). Unless she hasn’t been using for a few days, there’s no physical evidence (injection marks on her arm, well hidden under her shirt and jacket) of her addiction.