[hider=Holland West]
[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/130d712a-258b-4ed6-983a-1034e0def6f9.jpg[/img]

Holland West was born into a life of relative comfort to a family in San Alamo that made its living by ranching horses for the NRA and brahmin for the Big 10. Back then, everyone in the Red Wastes knew that if you wanted a reliable horse or a sturdy pack brahmin, you went to the Wests. Growing up, Holland spent his first 12 years of life when he wasn't helping out with the ranch work either listening to tall tales of his uncle's adventures as an NRA ranger, reading wild west comic books with a Big 10 trader's daughter called Jenny, who Holland had befriended during her parents' visits to the ranch, and pretending to be a gunslinger himself when neither Jenny nor his uncle were around, taming the Red Wastes six bullets at a time. But then Holland's life took a turn for the worse when his uncle crossed the wrong people.

The Romero Brothers. Six of the deadliest ghouls to ever come out of Charnel House. Known for eating their victims alive. And only slightly less well known for the brutality with which they deal with those who cross them. Cross them Holland's uncle did. And when they came for him, the unknowable hand of fate decided that they would do so when he arrived at his family's ranch the day before Holland's 13th birthday. The carnage that followed became known as the worst massacre the Romero Brothers have ever committed. They killed the Wests. They killed everyone that worked for the Wests. They killed the brahmin. They killed the horses. When it was over, the Romero Brothers left only two survivors. Holland awoke the next morning a year older. With a knife in his right eye, and everyone he had grown up with dead save for a single colt who had escaped the massacre and his family's Big 10 trader friends who arrived a day later, expecting a chewing out for missing Holland's birthday and finding something much worse.

Holland and the colt were taken in by Jenny's family, who quickly learned that the events of the massacre had drastically changed the boy they once knew. Where once he was talkative, now he hardly spoke, even to Jenny. Where he enjoyed listening to interesting stories, reading comic books, and pretending he was the hero of his own little world, now he mostly sat still and kept to himself unless he was asked to help with something. Three years later, Holland was visited by a man who would not have stood out all that much in one of the comic books Holland and Jenny used to read together. Dalton, as he soon introduced himself, claimed to be an old friend of Holland's uncle. Dalton then had Holland mount up and ride out into the desert with him. What words were exchanged out there remain between the two to this day. All that is known is that when they returned, Holland had changed again. He seemed much more focused, looked a lot more determined, and no sooner had he gotten off his horse did he vow to see the Romero Brothers dead for all they had done.

There was only one problem. The Romeros had gone to ground. They had returned to their home town of Charnel House to wait until the Red Wastes had forgotten them before appearing once more too terrorize the smooth skins. Until then, any attempt to reach the Romero Brothers would surely result in Holland's death. So instead, Holland packed his things, said his goodbyes to Jenny and her family, and rode off with Dalton to join the Texas Reds. Holland spent the next two years learning the ways of the wasteland under Dalton's guidance. Readying himself for the day he finally faced the Romero Brothers. At the age of 18, Holland and the rest of the Texas Reds laid siege to the Tower at the behest of Fleece White. Though the endeavor nearly killed him many times, Holland survived all the way to the end. Even going so far as to kill one of the Five Stars' more infamous lieutenants during the final showdown on the rooftop penthouse. After the establishment of Independence, Holland followed his mentor in leaving the Reds and spent the next 5 years working under Dalton as one of the Sheriff's deputies.
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