Kender's been physically mutated beyond the point of human recognition. The most striking features are his absence of eyes, having shriveled over the years and being grown underneath the skin of his head. His skin has turned sickly and gray, with a few spots of black chitin growing from his skin, primarily his arms. His black hair is thick and uncared for, growing down most of his back. He stands at about 6"3' feet tall, as a result of his mutations stretching out his body, with his limbs being unnervingly thin. His fingers have also been warped, turning them into sharp, pointed claws.
He wears shoddy, rebuilt leather armor, with a padded tunic and a black tattered cloak. His trademark weapon is his chipped blade, which over the years has been constantly chipped, reforged, and dirtied.

-Irritable
-Careful
-Apathetic
-Crabby
-Patient
-Disciplined
-Old

Kender was once a promising swordsman from Ireland. He was sent to participate in the World Fighter Expo, 1980, his first real chance to encounter the best of the best that the world had to offer.

And then the Blast happened.

Kender hadn't even arrived in the city proper. The shower of radiation had descended from the obliterated nuclear missile in an outward ring, contaminating him and anyone else on the outskirts of the city worst of all. Yet still, he managed to persevere into entering the city, as well as the hell it had in store as it's resident celebrated warriors turned to infighting and violence. Yet as his body quickly succumbed to mutation, the worst consequence his body suffered was the loss of his eyesight, as a layer of skin had grown, fusing his eyelids shut, shrinking his eyes, and filling the empty space in with mass. In just a matter of weeks, the once-promising warrior was made a blind abomination.
The other warlords of the city were more sadistically amused by his unfortunate mutations than threatened by his skill with the blade. As an ironic blessing, during the New Fennec War he was pushed around or humiliated more than actually threatened. Living in the vicious remains of New-Fennec destroyed Kender's spirit. He was a frail, beaten hermit, until he was taken in by one of the remaining gangs, The Void Stars. After meeting with it's enigmatic leader, he reemerged a different man. He reclaimed his blade, picked himself up, and ceased using his own lack of vision as an excuse for weakness. Building himself back up from the bottom, he retook his position as a powerful swordfighter, becoming one of the gang's most trusted lieutenants.

The Blind Idiot Style is a unique, recombinant style, using both Kender's initial training before his mutations crippled him, as well as the precautions taken to work around his disability, as well as even take advantage of it. It gives Kender amazing perception and multitask over a battleground, being able to perceive nearly anything within a small radius around himself, making him a deadly opponent and difficult to surprise.
In addition to his newfound blindsense, Kender makes use of his other mutations as well, using his lighter, lankier frame to move quickly out of danger.
The actual blade Kender utilizes, however, is not the peak of perfection. It's rusted and worn, despite properly bonding to it, and requires frequent repairs and reforgings. In almost any state, it constantly has a jagged and chipped edge, as if just drawing the thing could snap it in two. However, this proves advantageous. Due to the blade's brittleness, most of the times it properly contacts it chips, causing shards to become embedded in the opponents skin, increasing the harm each attack could potentially inflict. It's also quite rusty, and tetanus in the wastes can be a death sentence to ill-bodied warriors.

Weaknesses
Kender's blindsense only detects moving targets. It provides little protection against getting baited or ambushed by stationary opponents, and is also vulnerable to fast-paced long-distance attacks. He's also fairly vulnerable, given his stretched and aged body, with just a minor injury being a possible fatal blow. His sword is also unreliable, being prone to chip and snap should he be too careless with it.

Kender isn't his actual, original name. He's forgotten it over the years.

Bolus stands at about 6 feet and three inches, making him tall with a narrow frame built upon him. At almost all times, he keeps himself heavily wrapped and masked, obscuring many of his other features underneath thick red coat and wide cloth pants. Even beneath that, he heavily bandages his body, and wears a pair of glasses covering his eyes.

He always carries an arsenal of thrown implements, including over four dozen needles, two cases of metal pellets, and three Stun Pellets, at any given time. He also works to conceal some of them well, even if it causes discomfort, making being stripped of them entirely difficult.

-Cold-hearted
-Perceptive
-Untrustworthy
-Coarse
-Resourceful
-Vicious
-Cautious

Have two people left alive on the planet, eventually somebody's going to want somebody dead. The brutal wastes are certainly no exception to that principle. To the skilled and acclimated to the taking of another life, bounty hunting can be quite the profitable profession, even in the deadliest parts of the wastes. The Sand Tigers are an entire tradition dedicating to reaping the fertile opportunity that hunting down warlords and survivors alike has to offer, operating across a wide stretch of old America.
Bolus was born and raised as part of the order. Yet while being trained, he showed very little promise in the traditional arts and techniques practiced by the Sand Tigers at large. He was humiliated and mocked by his peers, even to the point of being an outcast among them. Yet eventually, Bolus found his strength in the Art of throwing, allowing him to shine and become one of their most skilled members.
Despite taking a wide variety of jobs, regardless of morality or danger, the one land untouched by the Sand Tigers was the hellhole that was New Fennec. Undetered, Bolus set out to become the first Sand Tiger to collect the high-priced heads squatting in the city's remains.

Bolus' style of choice is the Pecking Crane, one based almost entirely around thrown needles, pellets, and any other sort of throwable object. He's capable of hurling needles and pellets at incredibly high force and speed, enough to rival that of a firearm. Even with just a pebble, he can inflict grievous harm, and on one occasion even killed someone with a single shot through the skull.

Weaknesses
Despite obviously favoring distance to close-quarters combat, Bolus' fighting capacity is also dependent on his own arsenal, which dwindles over the course of a fight, possibly leaving him defenseless.

None

Ezekiel stands at around six feet tall, but he is a gaunt figure beneath the dark hooded robes he always wears. Eating only for survival, he is almost deathly thin, an impression only strengthened by his pale skin and hair. His eyes are a washed-out blue, but they still hold an intensity. Ezekiel carries no weapons, and the only trinket he carries is a heavy iron cross that hangs from a chain around his neck. He also travels barefoot, considering the pain to be divine punishment.

Ezekiel never knew his parents. The scorched wastelands are no place to raise a child, but even there, there are some who seek them out. When he was still a babe, Ezekiel was brought under the care of a strange group, the Sisters of the Immortal Faith. To this day, he does not know whether he was intentionally left with the sisters, or whether he was taken from his parent's arms by force, and he never thought to ask.

From as early as he can remember, he was imbued with faith. Countless hours of worship, writing out the scripture until his fingers bled, Ezekiel's life was dedicated to the distorted faith of the Sisters of the Immortal Faith. To the Sisters, within their fortified convent, the Blast had been the apocalypse, the beginning of Armageddon. They believed that they had been left behind as vessels of their lord, to continue spreading his message so that more sinners may find redemption.

As Ezekiel grew older, the voices started. They whispered to him in the darkness, and he came to believe that he was communicating the the lord himself. The voices convinced him that the Sisters message was wrong. The righteous had been left behind not to redeem the sinners, but instead to bring righteous retribution. Ezekiel was almost twenty years old when he finally discovered the lords real gift. To him, the flames that poured forth and engulfed the convent were divine. The roar of the fire drowned out the screams, and Ezekiel did not look back as he set out into the wasteland.

Since then, Ezekiel has continued to purge whatever 'sinners' he encounters, following the will of the voices. In the last few months, the voices have been talking almost relentlessly about the hive of villainy that New Fennec has become, and he has been inevitably drawn to the City of Lost Warriors...

It may well be divine intervention that has gifted Ezekiel his 'art', but it is just as likely to have been caused by the toxic radiation that poisons the wasteland. No matter what the source, Ezekiel has found that when he is gripped by a righteous fury, flames seem to pour forth from him, leaving his own body unharmed, but burning away the sinners.

Weaknesses
Ezekiel is not a trained fighter, and he can therefore be outmanoeuvred with relative ease by a skilled warrior. He is also limited in his range, and acting with only human reflexes.

Razar stands at 5' 11 and weighs at about 155 lbs. His body and build is more on the leaner side of athletic. His body is covered in a white powder that stains his skin in an almost skeletal fashion, accentuated by the black paint around his stone grey eyes. He is rarely seen with the bandana off and usually dresses in a black vest, dark brown cargo pants and a heavy set of black boots. Razar is covered in scars, which he displays proudly. His gear is light, consisting of knee pads, engineering gloves matching his pants and two battle axes made from scrap (the heads being half a buzz-saw and half a sprocket) as well as a pair of goggles for storms.

- LOUD!
- Tenacious
- Hotheaded
- Mental
- Gloryseeker
- Fearless

Razar doesn't remember much and the point where his mind began to warp into the mess it is now has lost itself to time. All he's ever known is survival and violence and it's no wonder why. He was born into a clan of desert raiders, who would ambush caravans of travellers or raze smaller settlements regularly, who called themselves the Skull Reavers. Painting themselves into apparitions of deaths was part of their culture, that promoted a fearless, unforgiving way of living where glory and strength was rewarded. Razar was taught their wild fighting style from the age of 8 and he joined his first raid at 13, starting the creation of who Razar is today. He found he had a knack for rallying the other Reavers when fights were tough and he strived to embody the clan's values.

At age 21, Razar was on another raid, performing his regular war-cries from atop of one of the scrap vehicles. The raid was successful, bringing back plenty of spoils. However, on the way back, the party was struck by a vicious sandstorm that tore right through them. Razar was thrown off of one of the buggies and couldn't remember anything past that. When he came to, he found himself rising from the sand. Alive, but alone, Razar wondered the deserts, going from place to place and surviving how he knew best. However, being alone meant that pure raids were out of the question. Instead, Razar found that saving survivors from attacks on the roadside or allowing an innocent to escape was... satisfying... although he never stuck around long... mainly because his pure viciousness and excitement when fighting meant that he wasn't really welcomed by those he saved. They were scared out of their wits! Still, Razar continues... looking for his next glorious battle.

Whisperings of a city where only the strongest of fighters occupied found their way to Razar, thus beginning his journey to New Fennec.

Razar doesn't possess a strict 'Art' per se. What he does have is his two axes and a never-say-die fighting style. A vicious, all-out approach, Razar's berserker fighting style utilises the nasty scrap axes to their fullest extent. Slashes, chops and kicks are the main methods of attacking and barely uses any kind of grappling, even when disarmed. One of the more noteworthy aspects is that the longer the fight goes on, the more excited and aggressive Razar gets. It's almost as if the fight itself becomes his fuel.

Weaknesses
While as seemingly unstoppable in offence as Berserker Storm may see, it has no defensive capabilities whatsoever. Any kind of well-timed counterattack, dodge or block seriously messes with Razar's "flow". As well as this, disarming Razar of his axes is incredibly effective. While he will still fight, foolishly so, he has no actual hand-to-hand skills.

Xil Gil stands at 6'1" and weighs 230 pounds. He's an Englishman with bad teeth, coke bottle spectacles, an unpleasant face, and a parted mop of black hair. His eyes are a dull green, the same as his favorite tie. He always wears black leather gloves and a black business suit. His boxing reach is 76".
From about the middle of his forearms down, his flesh tapers into a black, flexible polymer skin dotted with nodes and rivets.

*Hypocritical

*Opinionated

*Inattentive

*Scrappy

*Wrathful

*Cowardly

*Well-Spoken

*Twit

Xillian Giles was born in the irradiated slums of what used to be London, England, abandoned and left to fight for survival. He stole and extorted and fought other children, and though he had a good vocabulary due to his proud ownership of a single surviving dictionary, he adopted none of the positive traits his ancestors had. He started work as hired muscle, and over the years augmented his body to survive the dire conditions.

Xil Gil was eventually found by an underground cybernetic combat promoter who gave him further modifications. He has since made a living fighting other cyborgs to the death, and as a hired goon.

It took a lifetime of forming the right connections but at last he found a ship and spent his life savings to travel to another country, migrating to New Fennic in the hopes that his unique skillset would pay off.

Xil Gil created his own style and uses his hands almost exclusively. His mitts are completely robotic, and their strength is such that he can crush an engine block in his grip as if it were Styrofoam. He can give steel girders Indian sunburns or rub a quarter between two fingers and reduce it to hot shavings. The raw power of his pinching phalanges can make an industrial hydraulic press wet in the panties. The high tension single-atom filament muscle fibers and fiber optic nerve cables situated throughout his entire body serve only to make his paws as ridiculously strong as possible. The entire purpose of the mechanisms built into his frame is to lend ultimate power to his hands and wrists.
This being the case, it should be obvious why he likes to shake hands in dark alleys.
Most of the sinew and bone in his body is interwoven with contractile synthetic fibers and composite metals to power his monster grip. He can jam his fingers through solid concrete and tear normal men limb from limb like an industrial accident nightmare. In addition his innards are studded with electrostatic transformers that create a field which counters the effect that technology disrupting junk has on his circuitry.

Weaknesses Though his muscles and bones are nearly invulnerable, Xil Gil still has all of his human organs. He's susceptible to drowning, poisoning, shockwaves, and direct hits to the vitals save for his reinforced skull. His flesh is also vulnerable to lacerations, burns, ect.

He's rather dimwitted outside of a fight and is prone to clumsiness and embarrassing accidents, even in battle if he loses his concentration, which happens easily.
His vision is limited when accessing his task manager. Pop up windows, you know.

At 5’8”, Oroshi is relatively unassuming for a Warrior, covering her head under a large, disclike black hat, her neck and the lower half of her face hidden behind a thick purple scarf, and her body concealed by a large black cloak and robes. Her olive skin and brown eyes are further concealed by her messy jet-black hair, which hangs down to her neck.

Underneath all that, her body from the neck down is almost entirely robotic; a complex network of advanced-looking machinery, electronics, and metallic gray armor plating. It all manages to maintain a sleek, refined silhouette, hiding a variety of weapons and utility systems in such a compact space. In battle, a jet-black visor folds over her face, completing the cyborg ninja look.

Oroshi’s former life can only be recalled in fragments: A quiet breeze blowing throughout a village whose name is always on the tip of her tongue, working a field for a crop that changes every time she thinks about it, watching the sunset with a crush whose face is a blur, training under a master of some kind... Strange little pieces of memories that give her only the vaguest impression of who she used to be. She’d left it all behind somehow; whether she was abducted or left willingly, she couldn’t say.

Her new life began with GENESIS. They rebuilt her body, reprogrammed her mind, made her their special agent for their sinister plans of rebuilding the world in their image. None of her memories from this time were lost to her; it was more like she was viewing it all through a thick haze. She couldn’t refuse their orders, and her sense of morality had been so thoroughly wiped clean that she had trouble seeing any issue with what she was doing. The kidnapping and even murder of innocents barely registered to her.

Until one day, when she suddenly regained control. Her memory and even sense of identity were still shattered, but she had control, and some of those odd little scraps of who she used to be. She couldn’t even form a coherent reason why yet, but she knew what she was doing for GENESIS made her sick. She reached out to an occasional ally of hers, someone simultaneously out of the influence of her captors while also seeming trustworthy: A mercenary that GENESIS had codenamed Samoon. After some planning, they destroyed GENESIS, in a satisfying act of revenge.

In Oroshi’s mind, however, she wasn’t finished. Her conscience still weighed heavily on her, and she decided to dedicate herself to bringing justice to the wastes and helping in any way she could. Her travels brought her to New Fennec, in search of both tyrants to topple and a way to maintain her aging enhancements.

An Art that was (allegedly) developed by Ninjas of old, it has since found its way to Oroshi's tribe, where she learned it and later refined it with her cybernetic enhancements. Based on blinding speed and constant movement punctuated by bounding leaps and the occasional flashy death blow, the Art isn't so much constant prodding as it is laying into the opponent hard, from every angle imaginable and more. Staying full of surprises and unleashing the best ones at the most opportune moments. Requiring extreme agility, strength, and a sharp mind, it's an Art more than suited for survival in the wastes.

Weaknesses
The guiding philosophy of Okami no Kiba is that a good offense is the best defense; when it comes to actually standing your ground and defending against attacks, it’s got next to nothing. It also relies on being utterly unpredictable, and leaves the practitioner vulnerable should they be psyched out or their movements otherwise predicted.

As for Oroshi herself, her augments grant her ridiculous agility and enhanced strength, but have far less armor plating than the average cyborg, leaving her somewhat fragile.

Standing at just over 5’10”, Stick projects a rather friendly aura, with soft facial features, a warm smile that never seems to fade, big green eyes, and a messy head of brown hair that falls down to her shoulders. She has a relatively slender frame that she covers up with olive, baggy clothing, which is further covered by a fashionably cut blue poncho made from a tarp taken from an old shipping container. She also carries a bag with her, though whether it’s attached to her back or the long wooden staff she’s never seen without depends on how she’s feeling at the moment.

Some time after the Blast, there emerged a group of nomadic Warriors calling themselves Students of the Arts. Their mission; find, learn, and record every Fighting Art in existence, passing their wisdom down both to their offspring and to a hidden library tucked away from the eyes of any greedy bandits or warlords.

Stick was one of these nomads, having been born into the school and raised on its stories and teachings. She was always a bit of an odd one, having a strange fascination with staves that earned the young Student her name, but she nevertheless showed endless potential and had a shining enthusiasm for learning martial arts. She wanted to leave the nest and strike out on her own by the time she hit her mid-teens. But she had to wait. Warrior or no, the wastes weren’t a place for anyone so young.

Eventually, some time after she turned eighteen, she was finally allowed to strike out on her own, and contribute to the collective knowledge of the Students. Growing up on stories of New Fennec, the countless Warriors there, and legends of the Art that could thwart a nuclear blast, she was eventually drawn there, determined to learn how to do it herself. She wasn’t just going to record an Art, she was going to make history!

Drawing from a variety of martial arts techniques from across the world, Gakusei no Ken is the signature Art of the Students, and it is unique among them in that it is almost entirely defensive, utilizing a variety of impregnable stances developed for the purpose of analyzing an opponent’s own fighting style. In its sphere of defense, it’s relatively versatile, able to swap from weaving dodges to fluid parries to solid blocks that enable the practitioner to avoid a variety of attacks in whatever fashion they see fit.

Stick’s own addition to this style is the weapon she was named after; a solid bo staff, just under six feet long and made of reliable oak. It’s a handy tool as well as a dependable weapon, being used for vaulting, deflecting, and blocking. Though it’s far more powerful than it’s simple appearance might indicate, Stick can also attach her survival knife to the end, forming a makeshift spear.

Weaknesses
Gakusei no Ken’s greatest flaw is that it’s geared entirely towards defense, not offense. Not so much that Stick herself is weak, the Art was simply made for studying, not conquering, only offering various quick pokes and jabs to get the job done. In addition, Stick can’t completely mitigate the damage of attacks she doesn’t dodge, meaning that she can be worn down by anyone who can outlast her.

While Stick finds her staff to be indispensable in combat, she’s also liable to use it for just about anything else she can come up with, from carrying bags to roasting food.

Rae is one of the less monstrous Aberrants at first glance, possessing draconic features such as a long snout and a pair of horns on her head, what would be part of a frightening visage were it not offset by her lazy green eyes and tall, lanky figure. Her long, black hair escapes from under her hood, which is attached to a special black jacket, a gift from her better half, which has the handy ability to regenerate from damage, a necessity considering her abilities and the tendency for spurts of electricity to regularly arc across her body.

-Cool
-Laid-Back
-Thoughtful
-Playfully mischievous
-Guarded
-Puntastic
-Don't get her riled up, you'll be sorry

It's said that Aberrants like Rae often just spring up like wild animals, and there is some truth to that. Rae's early memories are scattershot at best, her clearest and earliest being when she, as a very young girl, crawled out of a puddle of nuclear sludge in the middle of a terrifying thunderstorm. Abandoned to the wilds to fend for herself, she was close to going mindless and feral when she stumbled onto a bunker that housed a hidden facility full of survivors. The survivors, once part of a secretive government agency, had gone mad long ago and had begun to collect mutants and Aberrants from the blasted Earth, subjecting them to cruel experiments and punishments as part of their special containment protocols. Rae's ability to generate electricity was a great curiosity, and she was subjected to brutally invasive tests until an attempt to see how much charge she could store accidentally activated her secondary ability to "Call Down the Thunder", and she went on a rampage through the facility. In the chaos, the sentient Aberrants and mutants rose up and slaughtered their jailers, taking the facility for themselves with Rae's help.

She's stuck around with the Aberrants ever since, adopting a laid-back personality in the process of learning to control her impulses towards rage and fury, and helping to fend off bandits and other nuisances that wish the group ill. In the aftermath of the revolt, though, the facility became too dangerous to live in, and the Aberrants decided to pack up and make a caravan to head for the nearest city and set up shop, with Rae being asked to scout ahead and deal with anything unpleasant on the way to what will hopefully be a new home for them; New Fennec.

Rae's mutant DNA, in addition to her odd physiology, has given her the unique ability to naturally generate and absorb electrical energy, using it to physically augment her fighting abilities, summon it as its own kind of attack, as well as using it to protect herself and even heal to a degree. Combining it with her own rough combat training, her Art generally favors her being light on her feet, keeping her enemy at arm's length and goading them into attacking or making a bad decision with avoidance and light, annoying attacks, then landing a more dangerous one when an enemy exposes themselves.

Weaknesses
In her regular form, Rae's reliance on goading her opponents and nimble dodges and counters, as well as her laid-back attitude towards fights, leave her with few direct options for ending fights quickly and directly, and an enemy who isn't fooled by her antics or can simply power on through her nonsense can get an edge on her, since she's not exactly tough as a turtle either. When she Calls Down the Thunder, she has the opposite problem, throwing strategy and trickery out the window for full on aggressive action leaves her reliant on her enhanced durability to defend herself, and she can be goaded or manipulated into a bad position, ironically a strategy she uses in her regular form.

-Loves pretzels, and despite it being logistically impossible, always seems to have a bag of them on hand for a quick snack.
-Seems to like teasing and messing around with enemy fighters more then fighting them.
-Of course the hoodie has slots for her horns. What, yours doesn't?

Sam stands at a sturdy 6’2” tall. His muscled frame, though still torn and singed from the many hazards in the wastes, would no doubt be seen as quite attractive were it not for the torn and burned flesh that is the right side of his face. Most of Sam’s body has some type of scar or nick with an accompanying story but his damaged face is unmissable, with burned flesh and chunks littering most of the right cheek, forehead and jaw along with a slight divot dragged down to the neck. Indeed, the damage is such that Sam’s right eye is a cloudy white compared to his, comparatively untouched, left side with its piercing pale blue good eye. The only other remarkable physical feature Sam carries is two tattoo’s along both wrists, detailing a jagged and cruel looking chain locked and tightened in multiple different ways.
Sam’s attire is comprised of a faded blue cavalry hat and matching duster coat, which has been fitted with two bandoliers for supplies and fastened via two leather shoulder guards. Sam also wears a pair of studded leather hand wraps with flecks of dried blood on the steel knuckles. Underneath he wears a dirty dark blue shirt, belt, brown pants and dusty brown cowboy boots (sans spurs). His pants are affixed with a holster for a particularly cobbled together looking sawn-off shotgun.

■ Stoic
■ Impatient
■ Vengeful
■ Reserved
■ Melancholic
■ Blunt
■ Pragmatic

Life is, by the nature of the world these days, grim and often fatal. Yet the early life of Sam was unpleasant even with the unconventional times we find ourselves. Sam’s mother died during childbirth and his father, either taking to it in grief or out of habit which Sam never knew, drank and abused him relentlessly, eventually selling him in to slavery on his early teens for what Sam would later come to find to be a paltry amount.

Sam spent less than a year with his new “owners”, often working menial jobs and running messages, it wasn’t until the group of Slavers were crushed by an unlikely force did Sam’s life truly change. Lysander Cohen, a name most average denizens of the wastes likened to a Raider Lord, had ambushed the Slaver group while they were on the move. Despite the Slaver’s superior numbers and equipment, using manipulation of the sand and graceful techniques Sam had never seen before, Cohen and his few men decimated the forces and freed their captives, gifting them with the Slaver’s own supplies to give them a chance out in the wastes. Cohen took an interest in Sam and some other of the younger slave boys, enamoured by his skill and magnetic charisma, they joined with Cohen’s Gang with the grandiose dream of protecting the people of the wastes. Raiding a dilapidated natural history museum for gear from The Old West to distinguish themselves, and because the world back then in many ways mirrored the current hardships faced now.

Although noble, the gang’s goals and morals could be construed as naive in the world now left, yet regardless they did what they were able to help the poor of the wastes while keeping themselves afloat, given their skill-sets this typically meant their moral codes had to be stretched and bent to accommodate in order to continue procuring supplies and equipment. While Sam was a trusted member of the gang, practically a son to Cohen, he was no more exempt from this than anyone else and had to take on numerous mercenary jobs with a group called GENESIS. The woman he worked with, Oroshi, was his partner on most of these assignments. In Sam’s mind it was a way for GENESIS to ensure he operated within their parameters but over time he did come to bond with her through their mutually tough lives for the benefit of a larger group, as well as answering her questions on what the world outside GENESIS was like.

Eventually, as with most unobtainable goals, cracks began to form in the gang. The longer Sam was away either working for GENESIS or elsewhere, the more things seemed to change when he returned. Cohen, previously unflappable and endlessly optimistic, began showing more signs of growing insanity and narcissism. The group itself started to show more willingness to abandon its own morals in the name of survival. Eventually things came to a head when the group attacked a community allegedly founded by slavers, raiders and the worst type of scum imaginable. Whilst this was partly true it was also home to many of the same kinds of people Cohen’s Gang used to fight in the name of, a fact which had caused Sam to very publicly challenge Cohen over, fracturing their already hollow relationship into one of mutual distrust and broken faith. In the end, while fighting off a large raider brandishing a flaming iron, Sam’s last view was of Cohen in the bowels, turning and leaving him to his fate, before Sam’s face was irreparably damaged.

Despite making it out alive through sheer force of will, the hurt and betrayal Sam felt by his only family imploding left him internally bitter and even bloodthirsty to a point for allowing themselves to fall to madness as he put it. Although the incident was years ago now, to Sam’s knowledge there is still three former members of the gang still operating. And in Sam’s case, time does not heal all wounds.

Developed (partly) by Lysander Cohen and taught to his gang from an early age, this fighting art prioritises the inflicting and receival of pain and hardship above all else, symbolic of Cohen’s Gang’s philosophy of enduring and through enduring comes strength. Although the art has a strong focus on powering through enemy attacks and utilising highly damaging strikes and grapples, the loose and unfocused nature of it means that no two members of Cohen’s Gang necessarily fight in a similar manner or utilise the same moves save for some basic maneuvers taught by Cohen. In Sam’s case, his incredible strength and size allow him to use this art to its full potential, charging or walking his man down with seemingly unstoppable malicious intent and putting on the hurt with highly damaging strikes or nigh inescapable grapples.

Weaknesses
Outlaw’s To The End is not just a fancy name, if you are unable to push yourself forward through even the most extreme adversity, you will be dead. For longer assaults the act of taking on a good amount of punishment, even for a powerhouse like Sam, can exhaust and weaken his normally unflappable defense. Furthermore, because the art is, relatively speaking, much looser and free focused as opposed to a rigid doctrine, it struggles against opponents who are considerably fast, needing outside avenues (such as the shotgun) to create a potential opening to get back in the fight.

■ Sam's drink of choice is whisky, which hurts like hell given his facial scarring but alcohol numbs down the pain from his numerous bits of wear and tear as part of Cohen's Gang.