I'm back.

[b]Theme Song:[/b] [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzkgstEqDyU]Anadel - In The Water (Clem Remix)[/url]

[b]Name:[/b] Coltrane Anders
[b]Nicknames:[/b] Trane, Cole, C'.
[b]Age:[/b] 34
[b]Class: Drifter:[/b] Former Condemned
[b]Faction/Subclass:[/b] Mechanic/Scavenger
[b]Gender:[/b] Male.
[b]Sexuality:[/b] Hetereosexual.

[b]Physical Attributes:[/b]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ZtS9iFT.jpg[/img]

Standing at a rough height of about 5'11, Coltrane could be considered something of a physically imposing individual, possessing a somewhat stocky build with a slightly weathered physique, though his age appears to have toned this down just a little bit. Alongside his dark brown eyes he sports a head of hair that appears to be of a very dark shade, and he has a tendency keep it butch-cut. In contrast, he sports a beard which has more of a tendency to stand out than his hair. However, he does well to keep it groomed and it seldom appears as anything more than trimmed-down. Across his lower left neck is a scar from being stabbed with a shank in prison, and similarly he bears a small amount of scarring across his abdominal region for the same reasons.

[b]Attire:[/b] Typically, Coltrane is never seen without his trademark jeans and grey vest, though this may become subject to change depending on the season and the weather. During the colder months, he's known to slip on a [url=http://images.wikia.com/walkingdead/images/9/92/Lee_Everett_10.png]jacket[/url], though usually that's the limit, as additional clothing tends to slow him down.
[b]Height:[/b] 5'10
[b]Weight:[/b] 210lbs

[b]Personality:[/b]

Without a doubt, Coltrane is a man with many regrets. Having wasted his youth on a life of violence and intimidation and spent the better half of his years in prison, he heavily regrets his past decisions, and to some extent feels pity for those he hurt in the past, and for those who helped him to hurt others, noting that the gang life was a 'vicious, never-ending cycle'. In addition, he feels a heavy amount of guilt, both for having killed and caused the death of several friends and his own father, which still haunts him. Outwardly, he can be an optimistic, sometimes friendly fellow who keeps to himself, and despite having conformed to a more quiet and resigned life whilst incarcerated, he still bears something of an angry, bottled-up temper which can be released when pushed to his limits, and it’s at this point where he is at his most dangerous. In particular, violence and abuse towards women and younger children can spark off this temper. He also bears a strong set of personal morals and principles which, since his abandonment of the Condemned, he has chosen to stick by no matter what. He also has a fondness for classic American cars, such as the Chevrolet Impala or the Dodge Challenger.

[b]Before the Infection:[/b] Born in the late eighties in South Central Los Angeles, Coltrane, grew up in one of the city's african american ethnic enclaves amid a time of gangs and the crack epidemic. Coltrane's father was like many other working class individuals, earning an honest day's living working as a mechanic at the local autoshop. He had a particular hobby when it came to cars, something he passed down to Coltrane as he grew up, and by the time he was ten years old the two had begun spending hours in his father's garage working on restoring a classic '64 Chevy Impala SS he’d bought to pristine condition. Sometimes when the two were having a disagreement, his father would even take him into the garage and try to settle their issues through talking, all whilst he polished the Impala and played soothing Bob Marley tunes on the radio, and it was much to Coltrane's ire at times that his father often encouraged him to work an honest living as opposed to getting involved with the gangs and becoming trapped in the vicious cycle of crime. 

Yet, it was to his father's dismay that Coltrane ultimately ended up becoming associated with the very same crowd he’d tried to steer him away from, first off through close friends who were like-minded in their desire to earn 'easy money' through various means, such as acting as a lookout for local corner crews and passing the ‘laundry’ between dealers. As Coltrane grew older, so did his involvement with the gangs. Least to say, his father grew worried about his son but at the same time optimistic for the future, and despite the elevating seriousness of the crimes that Coltrane participated in, he still encouraged his son to try and turn his life around and follow a 'straight' path, yet his advice fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Coltrane became more and more desensitized to the violence and corruption around him, witnessing friends die at the hands of rival gang members just because they’d been working on the wrong corner or wearing the wrong colors. One time he saw such brutality against the sister of his best friend Tyreke ‘Ty’ Richardson, who frequently suffered at the hands of her abusive, drug addict boyfriend who was trying to coerce her into working as a prostitute to fund his habit and left her with regular bruises. After one bruise too many put her in the hospital, Ty enlisted Coltrane’s help in taking revenge and when the two found the abuser getting high in a crack den, Ty beat the man to death with his own crack pipe whilst Coltrane watched.

Desensitized to the violence, Coltrane had started carrying a gun around with him wherever he went and as he grew bolder and more arrogant, he’d begun to use it not just as a means of scaring off any would-be muggers or people threatening to rough him but as a means of intimidating others. More than a few times he found himself holding up a dope fiend at gunpoint for their money and their drugs, but he’d still not actually used a gun or killed anyone. That soon changed, however.

News hit home that whilst Ty had been driving his sister, his girlfriend and one of their mutual friends to a nearby block party, they’d been attacked by a number of rival gang members in a drive-by in retaliation for shutting down one of their corner crews. Ty’s friend and his girlfriend had died on the scene, whilst Ty himself had initially survived the shooting but died on his way to the hospital. Only his sister who was in a critical condition because of her injuries had survived. Furious at this, Coltrane and several others planned revenge. When word came out on the streets that a rival corner crew captain by the name of ‘Pitbull’ had been responsible for the hit, Coltrane and two others piled into an associate’s car and headed off to a ‘cruise’ where gangbangers from all over South Central had met up to show off their tricked out cars with custom hydraulics and fine-tuned ghettoblaster systems where Pitbull was attending with several of his own friends. Arming himself with AK-47 acquired through their Black Mafia Family associates, Coltrane and the group waited until Pitbull was exposed out in the middle of the street before they circled them in the car once and opened fire, gunning down Pitbull and two others before making a beeline for their own neighbourhood.

‘An eye for an eye’ was what Coltrane told himself, yet deep down inside he was afraid of what he’d done. Afraid of what was going to happen to him, about either ending up in prison or ending up dead in a reprisal from the rival gang. A few days afterwards he’d learned that one of the others who’d participated in the shooting alongside him had been arrested and charged with the murders after the AK-47 used by Coltrane had been found stashed in his house during a routine drugs search, though they weren’t able to figure out who the other prints had belonged to. Another week passed by and still things were quiet, but his luck ran out almost a month later.

Whilst eating at a fast food restaurant with several friends, Coltrane saw himself being tailed by someone who he recognised as belonging to the same rival crew as Pitbull had and quickly ducked into the restroom. When he was followed inside and threatened, Coltrane pulled a concealed weapon on him and threatened him at gunpoint, only to be interrupted when he heard another voice warning him to drop the gun; an off-duty LAPD Officer who’d walked into the commotion and had called for backup before heading inside with his own weapon. Pretty soon, Coltrane was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and making criminal threats with a firearm.

Whilst the two charges alone alongside the gang association would've been enough to keep Coltrane inside for at least eight years, when his fingerprints were taken he was finally linked to the earlier shooting of Pitbull and his friends and after another member of the gang turned informant in order to have his sentence reduced, he was charged with participating in the shooting as well. An open-and-shut court case soon followed, and Coltrane ultimately received a 25 years to life sentence for all three charges. Soon enough he was on his way to the California prison system to join many other individuals like him who’d ended up incarcerated through their involvement with the gangs.

Only a week after his arrival at a maximum security penitentiary where he began his sentence, Coltrane was hit with the news that in retaliation for the earlier shooting and the threat on Pitbull's life, several rival gang members had plotted revenge against him and had fired a volley of bullets at his front porch during a drive-by in the middle of the night and that his father had been killed instead of him. The guilt almost crushed him and when his younger brother refused to visit him anymore and his mother was too upset to leave the house, he nearly broke down altogether. In the following years after his incarceration, having seen the older inmates who were in for hard-time and witnessed the harsh reality of prison life, he slowly began to realise his failings and what he'd done wrong, and how he'd only helped further fuel the cycle of the violence. These ideas were only further cemented when an attempt on his life was made by an old gang rival with a shank, which led to permanent scarring around his neck and lower abdominal region. Cutting ties with his old gang, he was able to take the opportunity to think over his actions. He came to regret his actions, and for essentially ruining his life, and pondered whether or not if he'd ever be able to integrate back into society if he was ever released.

[b]After the Infection:[/b]

Typically, when the apocalypse came and law and order began to collapse, the prison system was the first thing to cave in under itself as inmates rioted and overwhelmed the already struggling guards, claiming the great complexes as fortresses of their own. With places such as Los Angeles in ruin under the feet of the legions of dead, the gangs had nowhere else to go and after a brief power struggle amidst warring factions, the dust settled and a new faction rose from the ashes, a loosely connected group of former inmates identifying themselves as the 'Condemned'. Coltrane had been fortunate enough to keep his head down and avoid getting stabbed in the back of the neck by a rioting inmate or shot by a panicked guard, and with the gangs slowly dissolving to form this new unified faction, he had little other choice but to go along with it for safety.

For a while, the prison facility was relatively secure, with great massive fences and walls to keep the infected out, alongside any would-be scavengers or 'outsider' bandits. In addition, riot armour and weaponry acquired from the armory had left the inmates with a small arsenal and a means of which to hold off organised attacks, which served to keep it under their control after a brief, failed attempt by the National Guard at reclaiming the prison. But, as things would seem, the supplies left within the prison were limited and the food reserves would, at most, last little more than a few months for the surviving inmates. As much as he disagreed with their attitudes and methods of dealing with people, Coltrane had little choice but to go along with the cold, calculating nature of the Condemned, out of fear of what they'd do to him after seeing many others meet rather unfortunate fates. He kept to himself for the most part, guilt accumulating as he watched other inmates callously murder other survivors, sometimes for their supplies and sometimes just for sheer amusement. He wanted to intervene and stop them, but knew he couldn't. At least it was what he'd told himself, at any rate.

Meanwhile, other time the Condemned had been able to acquire a number of stolen vehicles, including a 1964 Chevy Impala SS which bore an uncanny resemblance to the very same one that he and his father had worked on during his childhood, though he shook it off as a simple coincidence and at the unlikely chance of the inmates having gone so far into the overrun streets of Los Angeles just to steal the car. Yet it haunted him just a little bit, as it reminded him of his father and of how he'd hoped for him to live a good life, instead of ruining it as he had. Again he ended up trying to ignore the matter, instead offering his mechanical skill as a way to contribute to the group instead of having to accompany them on their 'pillage and burn' runs. It worked for a little while, but eventually he was called up for yet another scavenging trip, yet this time there would be a different outcome.

Placed behind the wheel with three other inmates, Coltrane’s group were ordered to head down to a nearby town to scavenge what little supplies were left. He obliged them, and decided to wait in the car whilst they went out to retrieve the goods. Yet, the sound of gunfire caught his attention, and as he approached the scene he spotted the inmates holding up a small group of survivors which appeared to consist of a small family, an man in his mid thirties with a wife of similar age, alongside a boy of roughly thirteen years old and a younger daughter who looked to be about seven or eight. Stragglers on the road had been one thing, but families? Coltrane couldn't take it any longer and attempted to talk them out of harming them by appealing to their better nature, only to be completely rebuked. When one of them made a remark implying a desire to sexually abuse the daughter, he snapped.

It'd been the last straw for Coltrane, who had grown sick and tired of watching the inmates go about their brutal and callous ways and no longer able to live with himself. Armed with only a toolkit which he kept around for working on the cars, Coltrane turned on the others and bludgeoned one of them to death before stealing his pistol and gunning a second man down, whilst the other one bolted for it down the road. Almost forgetting about the bewildered family of survivors who’d just witnessed the scene, Coltrane offered a simple 'Sorry', tossed them a small bag of supplies from the back of the Chevy and set off with it, looking for another place to go.

He couldn’t nor would he go back to the prison now, nor would they let him walk a metre through the gates after the surviving inmate brought word back to them, but right now he didn’t care. For a while he lived on his own, occasionally running into other groups both friendly and not, though he kept to himself partially because his past still haunted him and because large groups were often trouble. Rarely, he’d find himself tagging along with a small number of people for a short period of time, but either way they’d end up being separated and Coltrane ended up alone, choosing never to stick in one place for more than a few months.

Eventually a passing group told him of a strong community far up north in Chico, a so-called ‘safe haven’ where people were rebuilding the world. It sounded like a pipe dream, but spending so many years on the road had left him weary and tired. He wanted to find good people, and he wanted a fresh start. He was optimistic, and so he set off towards Northern California taking the Eastern Route, sometimes using the highway and sometimes taking the back roads. Luckily enough, he’d been running out of gas just over thirty miles from the outer borders of Chico when he’d got lost that he’d been fortunate enough to stumble into a convoy of other survivors; a man by the name of Daryl among others. He gave Coltrane a good vibe and the two became quickly acquainted, and after helping out with a truck that refused to start back up it was decided that Coltrane would come along with them.

Arriving in Chico, Coltrane made it past the screenings without too much hassle and saw it for what it really was; a paradise on Earth, perhaps the last paradise on Earth. It wasn’t just about being a safe haven, but the closest thing to returning to life as it was before the apocalypse. He saw children playing in the streets, people laughing and arguing with each other in bars and shop owners trying to haggle off their goods, just like before. For all that he’d done in his past, he saw something worth starting over for. In his time here he became acquainted with several other people which Daryl knew, including the mechanical savant Wess and the young woman, Abigail, who Coltrane befriended over conversation. He also met Daryl’s other friend, Acacia, who he saw just a little bit of himself inside of her and who wanted to leave Chico on a scouting mission to help protect the community from the bandits. He’d been wondering how he could put himself to use in this new world, and he saw it as an opportunity to make up for his past. A place like Chico needed protecting, and with his knowledge of Southern California and Los Angeles and his own experiences of surviving out there on his own, he knew he could contribute. It wasn’t long before the two left again, this time headed straight back south.

[b]Arsenal:[/b] Fire Axe (Hopefully you'll get the reference), a loaded Glock 17 and technically his own physical strength (That's not to say he can tear off an infected's head with his BEAR HANDS and punch through plate steel with his BEAR HANDS, just that he's not exactly going to have trouble crushing the skull of a downed infected).

[b]Strengths/Skills/Talents:[/b] Naturally, Coltrane is something of a physically imposing individual, owing to his physique. Whilst he isn't so strong that he can perform abnormal feats of strength, in physical combat he tends to have the advantage in being a heavy hitter where he might not swing as fast as others. Blunt or heavy objects, such as a baseball bat or a fire axe, are best put to use in Coltrane's hands. Due to his previous experiences before and after incarceration, Coltrane has a considerable amount of knowledge and experience with firearms, particularly with readily available pistols such as the Glock 17 or the Colt M1911. In addition, he's also quite a well fielded mechanic, and has a great deal of experience and dexterity when it comes to working with and maintaining cars.

[b]Weaknesses/Problems:[/b] Whilst not entirely lumbering or slow, Coltrane isn't particularly as agile or quick-paced as others in his movements, owing to the stocky nature of his physique, and he isn't particularly as skilled with a blade as others might be. He also struggles a little with modern electronics having never really had the opportunity to handle them during his incarceration, so his computer literacy skills could be put into great doubt should the situation ever arise.

[b]Vehicles:[/b] Chevrolet Suburban 4WD. (Technically Acacia’s, but he uses it all the same)

[b]Home Base:[/b] Chico.

[b]Comments:[/b] So yeah, managed to rebuild the lost parts of Coltrane’s app and improve upon it. For what it's worth, I've quite the experience with the apocalypse theme. For example, I watch the TV Series, Comic Books and both seasons of Telltale’s brilliant Video Game adaptation of Robert Kirkman's excellent The Walking Dead.