[hider=Sam Vogel, EPA] Name: Samantha Vogel, “Sam” AGE: 32/April 08, 1988 Gender: Female Appearance: 5’6’’, 130 lbs; blonde hair worn long, often in a ponytail, blue eyes, a small scar on her chin. She has strong northern European features to match her coloring. Sam rarely wears makeup and is not fussy with fashion. Sam has a pleasant sounding voice somewhere in the middle range, she cannot sing very well, and has a boisterous laugh. [hider=Sam][img]https://www.wilsonjackets.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Big-Sky-S03-Katheryn-Winnick-Green-Leather-Jacket.jpg[/img][/hider] Profession: Environmental Protection Agency Inspector Education: Masters in Chemistry, BA in Environmental Science from the University of Colorado in Boulder Psych Eval/Personal Info: A passionate and stubborn woman known for following up on inspections even when the case is no longer in her hands. Works closely with investigators and has a reputation for tenacity and ignoring directives. While she gets results but also has been reprimanded and transferred due to overstepping her authority. Born in Flagstaff and raised on a working cattle ranch in eastern Arizona to God fearing parents who believed common sense and hard work would take a person far in life, Sam was raised to be diligent, persevering, and obedient. Two out of three ain’t bad. Sam graduated highschool while lettering in track and field and soccer while helping with the family ranch. After attending two years at the local junior college in Flagstaff, Sam needed some breathing room. She was accepted at the University of Colorado in Boulder and earned a Masters in chemistry and a BS in Environmental Science. While at college she was on the junior varsity track and field but failed to make varsity after an untreated torn meniscus became too painful. After graduating, she returned to Arizona and got a job in Phoenix at Access Laboratory as a research scientist. Sam worked there for two years but the job never felt satisfying, it was feeding into a system of for profit healthcare that she did not agree with. Finally, she resigned and took a job at a water treatment facility and the interest in fighting pollution blossomed. In 2015 she took a contract job as a certified EPA inspector for the endangered water sources of Arizona, in particular those near farms. Proving herself to be tenacious and committed, Sam was hired full time as an inspector for water pollution though she had to move to Denver as the position was in Region 8 which covered Colorado and the upper midwest, along with Montana and the Dakotas. In 2016 she joined the protests at Standing Rock against the ill advised pipeline. This did not go well with her supervisor who was conscious of the political ramifications of an EPA employee standing alongside who he viewed as extremists. She was transferred out and sent back to Region 9 to work at the headquarters in San Francisco, CA. From here she worked on water pollution projects in California and the Philippines. As the budget started to be cut in 2017, she was transferred back to the smaller office in Phoenix to work on Arizona special projects and replace the lead inspector who had resigned. Sam currently still lives just outside Phoenix in a two bedroom bungalow in the South Mountain neighborhood with a fenced in patch of sand to call a yard. Right now she is sharing it with her sister Melanie and Melanie’s three year old daughter, Lucy, and her dog, Scout. Sam tries to be as eco conscious as possible, she researches the companies she buys from and tries to avoid the big sinners like Nestle and ConAgra but it can be difficult, especially on the road. She buys locally sourced food as much as possible, grows her own garden and has her own chickens for eggs. This works well enough in her budget for one or two people and she stays home and does meal planning. She just purchased her first hybrid vehicle and is saving for a solar panel set up for her house. Sam has a weekly poker night with some friends and coworkers. She also has a local bar she frequents for a couple of drinks and some pool or darts. She enjoys old country and outlaw country, classic rock and metal. Her guilty pleasure is 80s pop. Trail riding or hiking on the weekends. She has three hens in a backyard coop, a patch of raised bed vegetable garden, a red heeler named Scout and an adopted mustang gelding named Ranger she keeps at a boarding stable outside of the city. [hider=A Brush with the Unnatural] Sam was contacted by her friend, Cindy Kinsel, a high school teacher at Pinon High School on the Navajo Nation. There was some wildlife found dead near a water source in a cave in the Lukachukai Mountains. A pair of her students had found it while exploring and told her about it the next following Monday. Cindy and her husband Frank, a tribal police officer, went with the boys to check the site. While the local water is known to be tainted with the chemicals that leached when the location had active uranium mines, it is not known to be so instantly deadly. Radiation poisoning takes its time, these deaths had been quick and from the photos Cindy sent her, painful. Each animal seemed to have died writhing in agony, their heads tossed back and limbs contorted. Dark stains in the sand underneath them seemed to be blood or other fluids. It was unsettling and Sam told her to try to save some of the carcasses for necropsy by the EPA biologist however she was informed the bodies had already been removed by tribal police and burned. Sam arrived and dressed in her hazmat suit to take samples from a small spring that had welled up at the base of the mountains. She took her samples and examined the small cave. It had been little more than a crevice, she had to crouch and squeeze her way inside. It opened up to a room around the size of a studio apartment and near the mouth of the cave there was signs of animals that had inhabited the cave at some point. Bones and dried scat littered the corners. The sound of water echoed in the small cavern and she could see there was what seemed to be another passage at the back of the cave going deeper into the mountains. There was something else noticeable, an unusual smell wafting from the back. Faint as it was, the scent was distinct, it reminded Sam of the air in a lightning storm. The ozone odor was out of place in the cave and she made note of it. Beside the passage was a small trickle of water, cutting through the sandstone floor. It seemed to be seeping from the walls, carried down by stalactites. That was not so unusual, there were often springs under the desert, a network of limestone aquifers that collected the seasonal rainfall. She shone her flashlight at the back passage but it just seemed to extend deeper than the beam of light could penetrate. Sam collected her samples and left, despite the tug of curiosity to explore. Back at the truck, she set up her field lab and did some preliminary tests for common toxic chemicals. While the usual suspects popped up, the results of decades of mining for radioactive materials, there was something else. An unknown substance appearing in high quantities, it was something her test kit was not equipped to identify. Sam took her samples back to the lab and wrote up a report, the only chemicals found would not have caused such acute pain and death. From the photos, it appeared to have killed nearly instantly, the dead cougar and various small mammals and reptiles did not even have a chance to make it out of the cave before succumbing. She made a few slides and looked at them under the microscope, if it was not chemical perhaps it was biological. What she saw in the droplet of water was something she had never seen before, even read about. It appeared at first to be an amoeba however when it moved it rippled and shimmered, changing from an silvery tone like mercury to an oily black and back again as it moved across the surface. Out of curiosity, Sam poked a fine syringe needle into the drop of water, trying to touch the thing. When she did, it reacted immediately and aggressively, if a tiny blob could be aggressive. It clung to the needle tip and Sam tried to gently wipe it off but it seemed to grow in size and move upwards towards the base of the needle. Grabbing a larger sample jar, Sam threw the slide and the syringe into it and capped the glass. Shaken by what she saw, Sam wrote up her findings and submitted the form directly to the head of the Region 9 EPA labs to request a microbiologist take a look at the strange organism. She stored the samples in the locked refrigerator at the lab and left for the night. When she arrived the next day, the samples were gone and no one seemed to have an explanation for it. Sam began questioning her immediate supervisor who also seemed concerned and said he would look into it. Days passed and when she asked about an update, he only said it was out of his hands. Sam pushed up the chain of command until she was emailing Sharon McKinney, the Region 9 senior administrator. She got a very firm response to stop asking and return to her other duties, that it was already handled. Frustrated with the sudden stone walling, Sam decided to return to the site on the Navajo Nation and make her way up to the cave. When she got back to her truck there was a man waiting, his truck idling and blocking her in. He was dressed plainly in jeans and a t-shirt, his scarred face hidden under the shadow of his cap. When he asked her to turn over the samples, she refused but after a warning and noticing the gun tucked in his waistband, Sam decided to listen to his offer. [/hider] [hider=There's Something in the Water]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YimR02wHjaO54lb7q2Y8zGSM1qaLjVCwfzEdSGtqEVA/edit[/hider] Bonds: Melanie Vogel, her younger sister who she is very close with. She’s helped her through the escape of an abusive relationship and now being a single mom. Sam tries to be her support as much as she can. Melanie and her daughter, Lucy, just moved into her house as she tries to get back on her feet. Blake Hoffman, current boyfriend who is an architect living near the hipster CenPho neighborhood. He met Sam at the farmer’s market there and they have been dating for about a year. Cindy Kinsel, her best friend since high school. A Navajo woman who still lives on the reservation and who works as a teacher at Pinon High School on the Navajo Nation. Doug Sanderson, an EPA investigator that she can trust to do his damndest to make a case on a violator. Her partner in many ways, they share the same passion for trying to save the environment. Motivations: Motivated by protecting society and the future of humanity and the current biosphere in general, no small task. Her desire to stop wanton pollution and greed stems from this as the Earth will abide but humanity might not. This extends into her work for DG as it is protecting humanity from another huge, amorphous danger to the existence of their world. Fears: The fear of it becoming too late to save themselves, from climate change, from pollution, from the unfathomable dangers of the unnatural. That their efforts might not be enough to stop the malignant forces of both supernatural and human greed. [hider=Stats and Stuff] HIT POINTS: STR+STAM+DEX 38 STRENGTH: 12 DEXTERITY: 13 STAMINA: 13 BUREAUCRACY: 4 INTELLIGENCE: 15 WILLPOWER: 16 SAN/BREAKING POINT: 80/64 POWER: 80 Gifted(70-80): Environmental Science 80, Chemistry 76, Searching 72 Adept(50-69): Awareness 61, Biology 63, Forensics 52, Law 51 Average(30-49):Craft (Chemicals) 40, Accounting 38, HUMINT 38, Subterfuge 32 Novice(10-29): Small Arms 25, First Aid 19, Survival 25, Computer Science 27, Unarmed Combat 17 Languages: Spanish 40, German 30, Navajo 30 50 = Fluent 40 = Semi-Fluent 30 = Rudimentary Special Training: History/Folklore Southwest Tribes, Navajo in particular Law (Navajo Nation Police) Horseback Riding Athletics: Rock Climbing Weaknesses: Gambling, it starts for fun but ends up addicting. She enjoys poker and makes semi-annual trips to Las Vegas for a weekend of booze and casinos. Her right knee can become painful and weak if she over uses it or kneels/sits on the floor too long. nbc ADAPTATIONS: (These are adaptations to trauma. For any SAN roll that succeeds against these two types of trauma results in you adding an X in either Violence or Helplessness. 4 Xs result in gaining an Adaptation, and a mental disorder, like PTSD for instance.) Violence: Helplessness: Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment: Because you're not going to be walking around in door-kicking gear all day, every day on a clandestine op. Clothing: Off duty, it’s jeans or shorts and t-shirts, boots or sandals. Sam likes being comfortable. For work it is business casual Weapons: A personal sidearm S&W model 340 PD (.38 Special, .357 rounds, loads 6) Tools/Equipment: Opinel folding knife, Leatherman Signal multitool, flashlight, a box of latex gloves, box of disposable facemasks, a first aid kit; her brand new metallic gray Ford F-150 hybrid pickup truck Operational Clothing/Equipment: Nothing that would remove all doubt that you are part of the US military/Law Enforcement/Intelligence Community. NATO weaponry is fine, but not required. Clothing: Breathable but sturdy clothing to wear under a hazmat suit Weapons: whatever is issued Tools/Equipment: Environmental monitoring equipment such as chemical sniffers and sampling equipment, government-issued laptop computer, rebreather, Level B hazmat suit, sewer camera, photoionization detector and protected-toe boots. A small remote controlled flying drone outfitted with a camera. [/hider] [/Hider]