Name: Laura Grimshaw.
Date of Birth: 2261-01-03 (23 years old).
Sex: Female.
Appearance: Laura’s physique is hardly imposing; she stands 5’4” (165cm) at her full height and weighs 125 pounds (56kg), making her quite short and scrawny compared to some of the veritable giants in the Brotherhood of Steel’s Knight division. That said, the weight she does have is mostly lean muscle and Laura has only just enough fat on her bones to fill out her womanly attributes. Her lack of experience as an Initiate shows itself in the wholeness of her sun-kissed skin, which would be pale if not for her tan, where the only scars she has are a small assortment of childhood mementos in a world that is inherently dangerous and in which everyone acquires a few cuts and bruises over the years, no matter who they are. Even her feet and her hands are dainty and look more like a Scribe’s than a Knight’s, but Laura is determined to prove her mettle as a warrior.
Her face is pleasant enough to the eye, her features free of radiation damage, as she sheds the last vestiges of girlhood and assumes a woman’s face. High cheekbones push her eyes into an almond-shaped slant, framed by the feminine arch of her brow, and her straight and modest nose has obviously never been broken before. Her lips are full, tipped by a cupid’s bow and have a natural blush to them. A smattering of faint freckles on her cheeks give her face a little character, but otherwise her skin is smooth and flawless. The sapphirine brightness of her eyes contrasts sharply against her voluminous black hair, usually worn in an asymmetrical, elegant parting, but Laura carries a hair tie with her to keep her hair out of her face when things get… well, hairy.
Place of Birth: Vault 49, Montana, United States.
Path: Knight.
Rank: Initiate.
Equipment: Brotherhood fatigues: All-weather combat fatigues fashioned from dark wool and tan fabric. Includes gloves and leather boots. Provides a modest amount of protection and features enough pouches and straps to carry all of Laura’s gear.
AER9 laser rifle: A gift from the Paladin that sponsored her initiation into the Brotherhood, it now serves as Laura’s primary combat weapon. It’s standard-issue, the only modification being the inclusion of a scope to better make use of Laura’s sharpshooting skills.
N99 10mm pistol: Common sidearm, also unmodified. Laura has etched her father’s name into the side of the barrel.
Combat knife: Stick ‘em with the pointy end, although this particular knife has a serrated blade -- slashing works just as well and causes vigorous bleeding.
Explosives: For blowing things up, of course. Her inventory at the start of the mission includes the following:
- 3x fragmentation grenades.
- 1x fragmentation mine.
- 2x molotov cocktail.
- 1x pulse grenade.
Ammunition: Can’t shoot without some good ol’ lead or juice.
- 4x fusion cells, 30-shot capacity.
- 5x clips of 10mm ammunition, 12-shot capacity.
Notable Talents: Sharp-Shooting Sharpshooter: What Laura lacks in combat experience she makes up for in hours on the range, both in her native Vault 49 and during her time with the Brotherhood. She’s a crack shot with any type of firearm, which naturally leads into her preference to engage the enemy from range.
Where’d She Go?: Lithe, little and light on her feet, Laura is gone and out of sight before you know it. This usually goes against the standard Brotherhood doctrine of victory through overwhelming application of force, but variety is the spice of life and nobody can deny the effectiveness of a laser shot through the back of someone’s head at 150 paces.
Resourceful: Initiate Grimshaw is full of grit and ingenuity, necessary traits and skills in a Vault that requires constant maintenance and doesn’t have infinite resources. She is quick to come up with unorthodox applications of whatever happens to be at hand to solve problems and good at using the environment to her advantage.
Laughable Failings: Arachnophobe: Even a world full of Deathclaws, Cazadors and Mirelurks, Laura’s terrified of spiders. They’re just so… creepy!
Sensitive Soul: The camaraderie of soldiers is filled with playful banter and snide jabs at each other. Unfortunately for Laura, she has a hard time telling if people are serious when making jokes at her expense and it’s happened more than once that she’s burst into tears when made fun of, or sulked for days before clearing the air, much to the bewilderment of her fellows. She fears loneliness more than being embarrassed, however, and is quick to forgive.
18-Carat Run of Bad Luck: Electronics have a habit of breaking in her hands -- they just stop working sometimes. She swears she didn’t do anything wrong! Her frustration at this and the apparent ineptitude with fancy pre-war stuff it betrays was part of her motivation to go down the path of the Knight and not the path of the Scribe.
Personality: Having been born a Vault Dweller has shaped Laura’s personality and still determines most of her values and morals. She grew up surrounded exclusively by other humans, having never seen a Ghoul or a Super Mutant until she was a grown woman, and finds it difficult to empathise with them -- not to mention that they were responsible for the death of her father. The Brotherhood’s mission of keeping dangerous technology out of the hands of others seems noble enough to her and their adherence to hierarchy and protocol is familiar to her, bearing a strong resemblance to the regimented life of a Vault Dweller. Therefore, it was an easy decision to sign up.
When it comes to regular people, Laura is as personable as it gets -- the very opposite of a lone wolf. Kind, helpful and supportive, it’s in Laura’s nature to be a positive force for the people at her side. She knows what it’s like to be stuck with the same people day in and day out, working as a team, and makes the most of it, trying to befriend everyone and keep close the people she cares about. She’s been in a few relationships but nothing too serious and especially now that she’s got something to prove in the Brotherhood, she isn’t actively looking for something to distract her from her goals. Friends, on the other hand… can’t have enough of those.
Her anger ebbs away as quickly as it comes on in the hot flashes of emotional outbursts, and while she’s courageous, sure, Laura is far from the fearlessness of a dyed-in-the-wool Paladin. In short, she’s not quite as much in control over her emotions as she wants to be. There’s still much room for her to grow. Her fear of spiders is her only phobia, but Laura is also susceptible to more ordinary fears: to be found wanting or weak is something she works very hard to avoid, and her worst nightmares are filled with the idea that there is no hope for the world after all, and that she will be resigned to returning to Vault 49 empty-handed, with nothing to show for their mission but the death of her father.
She misses him dearly and hopes that he is proud of what she has become, for he had just as much of an idealistic view of what the world could be as Laura herself did. This idealism expresses itself in a fascination, bordering on an obsession, with the Brotherhood of Steel, its mission and its people -- especially the leaders. People like Elder Maxson and Paladin Danse are living legends to Laura and she uses her spare time to record the Brotherhood for posterity and capture its spirit in her drawings. On the other hand, Laura is aware that it was never part of the plan for her and Thaddeus to go missing indefinitely and the day will come that she must return to Vault 49 to establish two-way communication with the nexus of civilization that she’s found: the Brotherhood. She wants to prove herself before it comes to that, however.
Short Background: If there was ever an experimental purpose to Vault 49, it has been long lost to memory. Located in the remote wilderness of Montana, the Vault has been open for a long time and its inhabitants make by with a combination of the hydroponics plant inside the facility and the resources they can gather from the surrounding hills and countryside. Being such a rural location, the vicinity of the Vault was spared the worst of the bombardments and there are still relatively verdant areas in which wildlife roams and sometimes even flourishes.
Laura’s father was part of the recon-teams, armed with hunting rifles and Vault security armor, that made sure the area around the Vault remained safe and that the hunter-gatherers could do their work in peace. Her mother worked in the hydroponics plant and was an artist in her spare time, drawing and painting portraits of the Vault Dwellers as they went about their lives or posed for her brush -- in lieu of a functioning camera, Sarah’s work was the closest they could get to a record of their lives. Laura’s earliest memory is of her mother at work and her second-oldest memory is of her mother sharing her pencils with her and patiently teaching her how to draw.
As the years went by, a nagging question developed in the back of the Vault Dwellers’ minds: what happened to everyone else? Montana seemed to be empty, but surely there would still be some form of civilization elsewhere? The recon-teams began to range farther and farther, staying away for weeks at a time, as they explored the remains of the Old World around them. Laura and one of her brothers, Thaddeus, born with the same inquisitive streak as their father, began training as soon as they were able, eager to follow in their father’s footsteps, and many an hour was spent on the shooting range and pouring over old maps to familiarize themselves with the lay of the land. Their other siblings (Joseph, Karen and Robert) had no interest in the world around them and focused on life in the Vault, but Laura and Thaddeus dreamed of the day they would follow their father, Deckard, into the world and on a mission that would reconnect Vault 49 with the rest of the world -- and Laura dreamed of capturing it all on paper, armed with her pencils and erasers, just like her mother had taught her.
While she had friends and even a string of boyfriends growing up, Laura’s mind was fixed on the unknown world above the surface and the only thing that never failed to rapturously capture her interest were her father’s stories whenever he returned to the Vault. He told her about the beasts they’d fought and the vistas they’d seen, but Deckard could never shake the melancholy from his voice. The world was empty. In all their travels, they’d never found another living human. There was evidence of post-war civilization, for they did find ramshackle huts and overgrown shelters, but they were all abandoned. Where had the people gone, they wondered?
The day of truth came shortly after Laura’s 18th birthday. Together with a few other members of the recon-teams, Deckard, Thaddeus and Laura prepared themselves for a long expedition to the east coast, towards what had been the bastion of authority of the United States of American: Washington D.C., the Capital Wasteland. They set off with as many supplies they could carry, armed to the teeth and each of them willing to lay down their lives for the good of the mission. They felt like the astronauts of old, who had been the first to set foot on the moon, as they set off into the unknown -- on foot.
It took them months. Where Montana had been empty and verdant, the other states they encountered were quite different… and some of them outright hostile. As they came closer to the coast they began to encounter other humans and found to their dismay, their initial joy overturned, that many of these communities were xenophobic, beleagered by raiders and hazardous creatures, or dangerous themselves, and the Vault Dwellers faced suspicion or violence wherever they went. Shootouts and firefights became common and Laura’s initial shock in the face of bullets whizzing past her head was quickly replaced by grim determination. They started out with 15 men and women. By the time they reached the edge of the Capital Wasteland, there were only 8 of them left. Deathclaws, raiders and Ghouls had taken the others, and Laura was haunted in her nightmares by memories of their scouting party being stalked at night by giant predators or cut to pieces by deranged, filthy lunatics on drugs. Despite her best intentions, her sketchbook was mostly empty and her pencils remained sharp. There was precious little in this world that she wanted to remember, let alone record for history’s sake. That said, she resolved not to have these experiences shape her opinion of the human race and the world; there had to be something more. What was the purpose of the Vault, if not to preserve them for the future? That meant that there had to
be a future worth experiencing, surely?
Their answer came as they reached the Capital Wasteland. Tragically, just before the finish line, Deckard was killed by the party’s first encounter with a group of Super Mutants, as were three of the others. Thaddeus and Laura were among the very few final survivors when the Brotherhood of Steel arrived by glorious Vertibird and destroyed the Super Mutant force within minutes. There was the future she had been waiting for: valiant men and women in giant suits of armor, like the old pre-war photographs, fighting for a better world. Eternally grateful and with nowhere else to go, Laura and Thaddeus buried their father and immediately signed up to join the heroes that had avenged his death, while the other survivors of their scouting party decided to rest and enjoy the cradle of civilization that the Capital had to offer. Pretty soon, Laura and Thaddeus lost track of them and threw themselves fully into the life of the Brotherhood.
They were always close but grew even closer after Deckard’s death. They were strangers in a strange land and while the Brotherhood was welcoming and reassuring in its organisation and honorable conduct, the inescapable truth was that they were each other’s only link to their old lives in the Vault. The two siblings initially envisioned themselves riding and dying together, but it became evident that they had different paths to follow. Laura wanted to be a Knight in shining armor, whereas Thaddeus was more fascinated by the angelic, flying vehicle that had delivered their saviours in their hour of need. They argued fiercely, for they had promised to never abandon one another, but neither could be swayed. Thaddeus would be a pilot and Laura would be a warrior. Once the matter was settled, there were no hard feelings and they agreed to keep in contact and see each other as much as possible, but not to the detriment of their respective careers.
Laura took to making friends easily and her skills as an artist, a are quality in the wastelands of the 23rd century, made her popular with the rank-and-file and officers of the Brotherhood alike. It wasn’t long before Laura found herself drawing the likeness of Paladins and Senior Scribes, though the day that she will be allowed to capture Elder Maxson eludes her still. She wanted to be more than just the Brotherhood’s remembrancer, however, and focused on her training as much as anything else. The girl that had trekked from Montana to Washington proved herself to be as quiet as the night and as unseen as the wind and it was these talents that gave her drill-sergeants the idea to teach her the art of marksmanship. Laura took to it quickly and receiving the bullseye-patch of a designated marksman was one of the proudest achievements of her life.
Now, after a few years spent learning the Brotherhood’s history and machinations, familiarizing herself with the remnants of civilization on the east coast, wrapping up her training and blunting her status as a total greenhorn on patrols and tech retrieval missions, Laura -- or as her newfound brothers and sisters know her, Initiate Grimshaw -- has been selected to prove her mettle on a rescue operation in the mysterious Commonwealth while her brother Thaddeus completes his Lancer training back in the Capital Wasteland. She’s excited and ready, though she wonders… when will it be time to return home and tell everyone, her mother and her other siblings, of the world she found?
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