[b]Sergeant First Class Branton Briggs:[/b] 

[img]http://i.imgur.com/7XfM1WN.jpg?1[/img]

[b]Physical Description:[/b]
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[*]53 years old (as of 2023).  (Born 1970.)
[*]5'10", 225#; fit and strong with a layer of [i]winter fat[/i].
[*]Graying dark hair; beard.
[*]Various tattoos, as of yet unexplained.
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[b]Psychological Description:[/b]
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[*]After a lifetime of hating his given name, he has gone exclusively by his surname throughout his adult years.  
[*]He is strong willed, determined, and confident.
[*]He can become very violent very quickly if the need arises, and he seldom shows mercy to those who cross him.
[*]He demands total loyalty from those serving him, and he shows total loyal to those who serve him well.
[*]He doesn't say much, but when he does, people who know him well listen.
[*]He is a bit of a misogynist in that he believes a woman's duty is to be laboring in the fields, in the kitchen, or in the bed.
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[b]Background:[/b]
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[*]1970: Born.
[*]His father was a career soldier.  Briggs grew up on a succession of military bases across the world.
[*]His father was a strict and conservative husband; his mother was an obedient wife who did what she was told, when she was told, [i]how[/i] she was told lest she be punished.  Briggs grew up believing that this was the way men and women interacted as couples, whether married or not.
[*]1988: Briggs entered the US Army the day he turned 18 (1 May 1970).
[*]He had a troubled military career:
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[*]Although a great soldier, Briggs had problems with authority.  
[*]Unable to deal with taking orders from Officers who were younger and less experienced than he, Briggs was [i]busted[/i] four times for insubordination over his 32 year career.
[*]Often he was restored to his previous rank due to superior performance or heroic acts; while other times he simply had to work his way back up like any other hard working soldier.
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[*]2018: As a Sergeant First Class (again!), Briggs became Chief Training Officer at a Special Forces Training School based in Washington State. 
[*]2022: 
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[*]Briggs's unit had been in Bend, Oregon, since May when the virus struck the state in mid-November.  The Unit had been assigned to a National Guard Armory, instructing Guardsmen on winter warfare in preparation for deployment later that year to The Ukraine, where NATO was in a hot and active shooting war with Russian-backed separatists.
[*]By Christmas, the plague has swept through the population of Bend, of most of the United States, and of much of the world.  Bend's population was dropping rapidly, via death and flight; and funeral pyres burned in nearly every neighborhood day and night.  Armed groups -- some giving themselves militia names -- were taking over and securing portions of the city: they scavenged and looted now abandoned homes and businesses; they secured bridges and highway [i]bottlenecks[/i] to [i]tax[/i] travelers of their possessions; and when necessary -- and sometimes even when not -- they killed, with their victims often being men, women, and children who had once been their own neighbors.
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[*]2023:
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[*]By January, with both the Major and Master Sergeant of the Special Forces Unit now dead, Briggs was the most senior member left in the unit.
[*]His unit was put under the direct command of the National Guard Unit's Captain, a true [i]weekend warrior[/i] with no combat experience.  Briggs knew immediately that this new assignment was [i]not[/i] going to last.
[*]By Valentines day, the population of Bend had dropped -- via disease, other deaths, and flight -- from over 90,000 to less than 2,000.
[*]The various gangs and militias across Bend were in almost daily street battles with one another.  The Captain was determined to bring calm to the city using his dwindling Guard Unit, but all he was doing was unnecessarily getting men hurt or killed.   
[*]By late March, the Guard Unit was down to just 18 men: 8 Special Forces (including Briggs), 6 original Guardsmen, and 4 new Guard recruits.  
[*]On 1 April 2023, Briggs new it was time for a change.[/list]
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