[hider=Arthur West]

Name: Dr. Arthur West

Age: 36

Race: Caucasian

Sex: M

Skills: Medicine and Botany/Hydroponics. Formally educated in The Institute so has a wide breadth of knowledge for various Bioscience topics (chemistry, genetics etc.)

Personality: Generally reserved and not too keen on getting close to people. Mostly because he’s afraid they’ll discover his past and associations. He is generally friendly and polite however, and usually very willing to help. Like many in The Institute he’s very analytical and also maladjusted when it comes to wasteland living. 

Weapons & armor/clothing: Has a well-worn hazmat suit that he uses to traverse the wasteland. Normally however, he can usually be found wearing a Vault-Tec doctor’s lab coat taken from Vault 88. He also wears a pair of eyeglasses, which he is virtually blind without. 

For self defense, he carries around an Institute laser pistol, which he claims he scavenged off a destroyed synth, but was in fact his own personal firearm while he lived in The Institute. Which he never needed to use until recently.

(Previous) Occupation(s): Institute Bioscientist

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): The Institute. Occasionally, he still sends and receives coded radio messages to friends, family, and colleagues in Vault 88. But only rarely, given the considerable risk involved for both parties. 

Backstory: Arthur was born and raised in The Institute and like most there, never saw the surface, having spent his whole life within its sealed environment. As a child, he was raised on the notion that the surface was a horrifying place: a nightmare realm full of mutated monsters and savage raiders. An idea which stuck with him well into adulthood. 

After receiving his doctorate, he entered The Institute’s Bioscience division where he served as a medical assistant for some time before jumping from project to project in various research roles. Eventually however, he was pulled into a top secret classified project within Bioscience after having been highly recommended by his superiors. He started work in the FEV Lab immediately. 

Arthur was a part of the FEV Program for years, working very closely with his good friend and colleague Dr. Brian Virgil, and for years he experimented on wasteland test subjects. Injecting them with the modified variants of the Forced Evolutionary Virus and analyzing the results. Subjects that successfully transformed would typically be tagged and released back out into the wasteland. Those that did not, were terminated on the spot. 

For years, Arthur never questioned his work. Many of the test subjects that were brought in were raiders, mercenaries, brutes, junkies, and savages. People who behaved as less than animals. All of these served to confirm his beliefs that the surface was a brutal, monstrous place. Experimenting on them for the betterment of science and even releasing them back to the surface, therefore, made perfect sense. After all, [i]monsters belong where monsters live. [/i]

Every so often however, an individual would be brought in which didn’t meet this profile. They were scared, no petrified even, of him. And they certainly didn’t look like brutish savages. But they too would be used and then disposed. He initially justified this with his belief that even if rare exceptions occurred, the surface was still a terrible place where the weak would eventually be killed, tortured, or eaten. If anything, turning them would help them to survive in the brutal animalistic world they had to live in. And once they were turned, there was no going back anyway. [i]And monsters belong where monsters live[/i]. 

As the frequency of these ‘exceptions’ continued without noticeable change however, his doubts soon began to gnaw at him.  They grew constantly, until it became an ulcer in his life. Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore and confided in his colleague, Dr. Virgil, that he was having doubts about the program and his role in it. Far from giving him the solace and reassurance he wanted however, Virgil told him that his feelings were the same and that he felt the project was both useless and deeply wrong. Together, they penned a formal letter of protest to The Director and requested the project be shut down, but it was summarily rejected. 

Unsure of what to do next, and unwilling to continue their work, Virgil proposed a radical idea to Arthur. Sabotage. He made his intentions known that he planned to destroy the lab and escape The Institute if he had to, and he asked his friend to join him, knowing full well it might mean both of their deaths, but convinced that it had to be done. Arthur was shocked and terrified of the idea of leaving The Institute to live up top. Despite his misgivings about the project, he was still mortally fearful of anything above ground, and nightmares he’d had as a child about horrible things crawling around in the world above him crept back into his memory. 

Arthur asked Virgil to give him a night to think about it, and they both agreed to discuss it the next morning. As Arthur lay awake in his bed however, his fear grew. Fear of being exiled and fear of what awaited him on the surface. His cowardice got the better of him, and he broke down. In the middle of the night, he reported Virgil to the SRB. 

While Arthur waited in his apartment quietly, Coursers stormed Virgil’s residence. They did not find him there. A second group had moved to secure the FEV Lab, and there Dr. Virgil was found, alone, at the lab. Arthur never fully learned what transpired there that night. But from what he understood, Virgil had been up making preparations for their departure, in anticipation of his friend agreeing to join him. The lab had apparently been completely destroyed and rendered useless in the scuffle. He never saw Dr. Virgil again. 

Guilt ridden at what he’d done. Both to his friend and in his work on the FEV project, Arthur requested medical leave from The Directorate, which he was granted under the circumstances. The ensuing days became a blur for him. And when The Institute was destroyed by an act of an outsider, The Director’s own father it seemed, Arthur made little protest or show of grief. Unlike most of his colleagues, he understood the reasons why this had happened.

When The Institute relocated to Vault 88, alive but resource strapped, and began the process of rebuilding. Arthur stayed for only a short while, before gathering what material possessions he owned, saying his goodbyes, and leaving. He journeyed out into the wasteland, fully expecting to die. But he knew he had to do it. After all, [i]monsters belong where monsters live[/i]. 

By some twist of fate though, he did not die. Instead he began roving from settlement to settlement and plying his services as a wandering physician, only asking for food, water, or a bed in return.  In more than one instance, he had rather close encounters with the mutated monsters he’d helped to unleash. His own terrible creations. And in a few horrifying moments, he thought he recognized some of them.  

Now Arthur’s wanderings have led him north to Salem. The quiet ruins of the seaside town has attracted his attention and hope that perhaps he can find a measure of peace here. Although he rather doubts it. 

[/hider]