Name: Dexter K. Sterling.
Aliases: N/A.
Age: Twenty-two.
Birthday: June 26th, 1994.
Ethnicity: Caucasian.
Birth Place: Delavan, Wisconsin.
Location: Atlanta, Georgia.
Gender: Male.
Major/Minor: N/A.
Occupation: Construction Worker.
Languages:
- French ... (Very Poor Fluency)
- Russian ... (Moderate Fluency)
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 142 lbs.
Build: Thin & Willowy.
Eyes: Grey-Blue.
Hair: Ash-Brown.
Skin Tone: Pale.
Tattoos/Scars/Piercings: A torn playing card with an unusual depiction of a
King on it, with a series of numbers descending along the clean side of the card. The tattoo stops just barely above the collarbone, towards the left side of his neck near the tendon above the shoulder.
- Except for the tattoo partially covered by clothing at the side of his neck, the others are neither readily visible nor significant.
- All of Dexter's tattoos use very minimal color as he has preferred clean lines and to use black ink exclusively.
- There are a few scars on his knuckles and thumb from various cuts and scrapes. They were received over time from working with glass, tile, and tools ranging from a simple hammer -- to more complicated woodworking equipment such as a planer.
- There are two minor scars at the back of his skull which are not visible beneath his hair.
- No piercings.
Pragmatic * Disconnected * Confident * Neglectful
Sexuality: Heterosexual / Straight.
Relationship Status: In a relationship.
Personality:Before the outbreak, Dexter was an easy-going guy. He didn't let anything stress him out and was friendly company to those he surrounded himself with. Sometimes he put his interests before what was best for him, but that didn't detract from who he was as a person.
However, he had an issue with disconnecting and quitting when he wasn't able to do something right the first couple of times. He didn't care about others' disappointment in himself, which actually made it easier to quit, but was afraid of disappointing himself. He thoroughly enjoyed being the best, and held himself to excessively high standards.
So, importantly, after the outbreak when Dexter realized he couldn't protect himself or the people he cared about – he began to dissociate himself from the situation, to quit essentially. Dexter went in and out of auto-pilot throughout the months he was alone. Before he realized, it had been years all blurred together into long nights starving and walkers around every corner.
Dexter doesn't like to commit to the details. It's better that he doesn't. Years of fear, stress, and questionable choices has put him into an uneasy state of mind. He does absolutely anything to keep himself distracted – often enlisting bad jokes to entertain bad company so he can spare a nervous laugh. Or he turns to a smoke as to ease his anxiety.
The best way to explain Dexter is to say that he's just a lost kid looking for something. What that something is he doesn't quite know. What he does know is that constantly living in fear is plucking him apart, day-by-day.
Note: Habits, hobbies, likes, etc – for the most part – are based on the current setting which is
post-outbreak.
Habits:
- Dexter likes to smoke whenever he gets a chance, limited only by the lack of cigarettes lying around.
- He can be slightly self-destructive, falling into bad habits as a result of boredom and absent-mindedness.
- He likes to collect items of previous significance, and often sacrifices precious time to retrieve them.
Hobbies:
- Carpentry.
- Guitar.
- Fishing.
- Swimming.
- Reading.
Fears:
- Phasmophobia. (Superstitious)
- Atychiphobia. (Perfectionist)
- Basiphobia. (from Dangerous Heights)
Likes:
- People.
- Slim Jims.
- Large Dogs.
- Historical & Science Fiction.
- Board-Games / Video-Games.
- Movies / TV.
Dislikes:- Boredom.
- People.
- Migraines.
- Optimism.
- Small Dogs.
- Cold Water.
Pre Outbreak Skills:
- Major Carpentry
- Minor Electrical
- Survival Skills
- Technical Drawing
- Camaraderie
Post Outbreak Skills:
- Survival Skills
- Hunting / Trapping
- Handgun Handling
- Basic Medical Aid
Current Supplies:
● Black beanie missing its tag. A key-ring is fastened through the fabric behind an ear.
● Carhartt jacket in a rustic red color, sparsely covered in torn holes and stains.
● Faded tan t-shirt that fits loosely beneath his jacket. No tears or stains are visible.
● Pair of pants, faded blue work jeans held through by a worn out belt. The zipper is stuck and will no longer go down.
● Rugged
brown workboots that fit snug.
● Knee-high bright red baseball socks concealed by his jeans and workboots.
- Northface Backpack that is black and grey. One of the shoulder straps is held together by fastened shoe strings.
- Empty pistol that is completely missing its magazine. The slide displays the manufacturer 'Sig Sauer' and some numbers, at which Dexter is unfamiliar with.
- Buck-Knife with a fixed, beefy blade. The knife is stored in a sheath beneath his jacket.
- Stanley FatMax drywall hammer, originally used for doing drywall. Now it's used for other things.
- Electrical tape in a bright green color. It is barely used.
- Standard work gloves for moving large or heavy objects.
- Old Spice deodorant. You kind of need it when you have to go days and weeks without bathing.
- Emergency supply of Slim Jims. Snack-sized sticks not normal sized. Running low.
- Four emptied 16 fluid-ounce plastic water bottles. Flattened to conserve space.
Your First Walker Encounter:Dexter was out with the guys at a property in Forsyth, nice big ranch style home some ways off a highway. There was a couple other houses like it nearby, each tucked into its own little tracts of land with a couple of open acres.
The woman who owned it used to work in the administration of the school Dexter went to as a kid, also worked with his mother. She was a quiet, lonely lady with no family that Dexter knew of. From what he knew she had some doctorate in English literature, and likely spent her free time ghostwriting smutty novels for other sexually repressed older women.
One of their crewmen wasn't feeling so hot, so the missus offered him to stay inside while they finished up replacing the old porch. As the afternoon dragged on and they were almost finished, they heard a scream from inside the home. At first it was out of surprise, but the screams quickly turned into that of heart-wrenching agony.
Upon entering the home they could see the grossly pale figure of their fellow crew-member on top of the woman, his face dug into the collar of her neck. Dexter froze up seeing what he did. There was so much blood, so much blood. It ran like a river of wine that soaked the white rug of the den in seconds, quickly running off in excess onto the nice hardwood.
It took what felt like hours to restrain what their friend had become, and long before the ambulance arrived the missus had died from blood loss. The following days were further shadowed by troubling news that spanned the world, and the decisive loss of contact with friends and family in the weeks to come.
History Before Outbreak:For the most part growing up, Dexter always had something to do. He was born in a quaint little place in Wisconsin with a Navy officer as a father, a professional water-skier as a mother, and three older siblings. While his family originally moved very often, shortly after Dexter was born his father retired from the Navy.
Almost immediately after retiring, his father landed a solid job that required them to move to Georgia; and Dexter's mother opted to be a stay-at-home mom to raise their two daughters and two sons. Dexter's father, while being a complete inconsiderate hard-ass, was the smartest man Dexter had ever known. Not only was Dexter's father one of the best at his job as an electrical engineer, he was a damn good handyman.
Every piece of furniture in their bedrooms growing up was made by their father – in a shop that he had drawn up and built himself, with lumber that he had for the most part cut and planed himself. The only thing his father didn't do was lay the concrete.
Dexter was highly competitive with his siblings growing up, following in their footsteps to whatever sport they were interested in. He also became a Cub Scout at the age of five, and pursued it into being a Boy Scout until he was in eighth grade.
School was a breeze for Dexter for a majority of his young life, but when sports and school together began demanding further dedication from him – such as practices getting longer and more frequent, summer conditioning being mandatory, and morning workouts a requirement to play for the football team – he began to sacrifice things he was not already exceptional at.
Dexter had quit Boyscouts going into high school along with a number of other sports and activities; he instead stuck with contact sports like lacrosse and football. While Dexter initially had some of the highest scores of his grade, his aptitude began to catch up with him as curriculum quickly became far more difficult to learn.
After freshman year, Dexter's grades started to drop significantly. He opted out of his advanced classes, and gradually began to care less and less for his school work. Homework went without completion as he chose to play games and socialize over finishing it, and began to drag his grades down like an anchor. In his mind, if he couldn't get it right the first time or produce exceptional results, it wasn't worth doing.
Dexter didn't receive any secondary education, in fact he barely finished high school. Dexter was herded through the system off the grace of multiple-choice testing, riding off on exceptionally high test scores while having completed very little in-class assignments or homework.
Dexter's friends disappeared from his life, off to college or off for military service, while Dexter lived at home without enough financial support – or the desire, in reality – to attend college. He decided his best option would be to join his brother working for a construction company owned and operated by a friend of the family.
Extra Details:
● Dexter has taken three full credit high school courses in Architectural Drafting & Design, which he began by learning on paper – and then in the second year started to use computer-based software such as AutoCAD almost exclusively.
● Instead of taking P.E & Health in high school, Dexter opted for four years of Army Junior-ROTC. He made every team related to ROTC: Drill, Color Guard, Exhibition, Sabre, and Raider – but did not make Rifle Team, ever.
● Most of what Dexter got paid to do was working with other contractors he knew, replacing flooring, laying tile, and setting drywall. Whereas Dexter's older brother specifically worked with their company, working with augers and concrete.
● Dexter barely,
BARELY passed his two years of French required to graduate high school. To graduate he did not specifically need French, but a foreign language is required. He had his mother do his French homework and projects, and in class struggled greatly with the language. He had no motivation to learn it.
● Dexter's mother comes from a long line of Slavic generations, with half of his mother's family being Serbian and the other half being Russian. Dexter picked up the language at a young age and used it often when arguing with his mother, who's first language was not English, and his two sisters.
History Since Outbreak:The first time everything hit the fan, things were pretty okay. Dexter and his family were safe, his neighbors were all nice elderly people who'd help each other out, and their neighborhood were some ways off from the shopping centers and downtown areas.
The initial panic wasn't the problem. The problem was that shit continued to hit the fan again, and again, and again. The local news teams responded to the crisis with the promise that the outbreak would be met with solutions. The United States was too big, too powerful to crumble under a virus. Even when the power went out and didn't come back, Dexter and his family weren't worried.
They were lucky at first, must have been from the Irish side of his father. They were fortunate enough to avoid conflict with others when his brother and father traveled to supermarkets like Kroger, Publix, and Walmart. They stocked up when money was still being taken, and they sure as hell had money to throw. Dexter's father even bought a gun from one of the neighbors, and as much ammo as he could get out of the older man.
Dexter waited it out in their suburban house perched in the hills, his dad keeping everyone calm and organized. Food was rationed adequately, and when they needed more water they could take from their in-ground pool and boil it. Life for some time was unusually comfortable and easy, with long nights of board games with his siblings and reading by candlelight.
Their little bubble of safety fucking blew up eventually. A band of looters in an elementary school bus swerved into the neighborhood one afternoon. Dexter's house was at the entrance of the neighborhood, and so the strangers came to them first.
Dexter didn't see much of it, he was instructed to leave with his mother and siblings and that's exactly what he intended to do. They tried to make it out through the backyard and into the woods, but. Shit hit the fan, again. It was a blur of shouting and an eruption of gunfire. Dexter's father was the first to go down, and with him the only gun they had.
Dexter never ran so fast in his life, not in any of the sports he played, not for anything. He vaulted the backyard fence as bullets splintered the wood beside him. He heard his older brother cry out, and then one of his sisters, and only briefly did he hesitate to turn and see one of them stumble.
It took a long time to find somewhere safe again. And an even longer time to recover from the shock of what happened. Dexter always thought him and his family would be invincible if the world was ever ending, and would somehow find a way through it all. He had never been so wrong.
And it didn't end there. They kept running into other bad people and each time something was taken from them, whether it be their supplies or their life. Shit kept hitting the fan, bad luck engulfed Dexter and his family. And eventually Dexter was on his own after being separated from his older sister and mother.
Dexter's best days of his life was with his family after the outbreak, and naturally they became the worst days of his life later. Hours that seemed to go by in centuries began to go by in days, then weeks, then months, and years. He moved between small groups of scared, weak individuals like himself frequently. The people he met clung to each other for help until someone stronger came and stomped them out.
Through it all, Dexter persevered. He talked his way into and out of sticky situations, used what little bit of luck he had left to stumble on much needed supplies, and when he couldn't talk his way out of something nor find what he needed – he didn't think twice to use his gun.
Dexter didn't move very often as he liked to avoid risk unless he had back-up. Instead he gradually shifted around the Atlanta metro area, following in the shadow of small groups. Whenever things got heated he'd typically slip away before anyone's guards were raised, with whatever supplies he could.
That's when he came across these clowns. He never paid paid much attention to his company, but it's hard not to pay attention when they're constantly waving weapons at each other. It was like a circus of retards, but he has to give it to them – meeting them was the most straightforward conversation he ever had with a pair of guns at his face.
Character Quote: Nothing.
Theme Song: State of Nature – King 810
How Many Walkers Have You Killed:" That seems like the wrong question to be asking. It's like asking how many times you've taken a shit. Hey, you may not like it but you gotta do it. I never kept count, kinda makes me feel like a sociopath if I did, so I'll probably never be counting it. We're still referring to taking a shit right? "
How Many People Have You Killed:" I don't know. It was only twice for a while. When I got a gun it was different. At first you're scared to use it, but things change. Most of the time I used it only when I had to. Sometimes that wasn't the case, sometimes I shot first. I can't tell you if some of those times I actually killed anyone. "
Why:" I don't ask myself that question anymore. Some will tell you that you do what you have to, I don't believe in that bull shit. Sometimes I want to. "
Anything Else: I sent a private message to the GM.
*By submitting this CS in its completion I am stating I have read all the rules for this RP and am agreeing to follow them to the fullest extent with respect and courtesy.
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