Little Bill

1930's Zombie Apocalypse (Always accepting)

Always glad to see some interest. PM me if you'd like any details @Kyro.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

---

Though the rain had long since subsided into a mist, the leaves shook off their collected rainwater with every branch pushed aside or root kicked by the men stomping through the forest, and quickly became a much more irritating presence than before. The crows circled overhead and intermittently squawked in disapproval, settling on a treetop for a few moments to caw and cackle at the two, before taking off in flurries of sporadic energy, shaking the branches and showering the two with icy droplets.

In the distance there is a low gurgling, only occasionally rising above the rain and wind. About sixty yards away from the men, hidden by the thick brush of the forest and camouflaged by a fairly autumnal outfit stands a man, supporting himself with one hand on a tree. His hair is short and brown, but matted and oily. His skin is an unhealthy pale, the same shade as the underside of a mushroom or a tree stripped of bark. He wears a dark red and gold plaid shirt, a rawhide vest, and a dark khaki pair of pants. His shoes are indiscernible, as his lower body up to his knees is caked in mud and dirt that have dried into a layer of thick black clay. His arms up to his elbows, are the same.

---

Peter didn't remember how he found himself in the forest. It didn't matter. He smelled something in the forest. Food. He was always hungry, though he hadn't remembered how long always was. He didn't remember anything, in fact. He held no memories of his former life, and made no new memories. His thoughts, if they could even be called thoughts, were sporadic and short-lived, and mostly focused on one subject alone. Hunger. His hunger was maddening. All he could focus on was hunting and food. Warm, life-giving, flesh and blood. He drooled at the thought, continuing his aimless shuffle. He had lost the scent he had picked up earlier, but was now tracking a noise. It sounded living. If Peter could have formed words, "prey" would have come to mind.

Something was moving up ahead.

Peter's head turned ninety degrees, snapping in place almost instantly. Two targets. Instinctively, the smell of blood filled his nostrils, as if he had bashed the back of his head. His vision began to turn red. His hands sprung open, cracking his joints with tension. He lowered his posture, growling all the while, advancing towards them. They hadn't seen him and they hadn't heard him, though unbeknownst to Peter, they had began to smell him -- the stench of stale urea and rotting meat clung to him as readily as the clay covering his limbs. Though Peter didn't possess the intelligence to consider if his prey could smell him, he knew that he could not afford to lose the two. He was too hungry to lose them. He slowly crept closer, shambling quickly from one patch of bushes to the next.

There was little he understood outside of the hunt, though he understood the importance of surprise, as primitive of an understanding as it was.

His red eyes blinked with an emotionless intensity, scanning the two men. He was so hungry. So hungry. He grinded his teeth together, now only about sixty yards away. The closer he got, he could feel his adrenaline rising higher and higher, filling his nostrils with the scent of their ambrosial blood and warm, marbled layers of meat. He grinded his teeth more.

He stood up, supporting himself on a tree, staring at the two men with a wolfish gaze. His stomach rumbled softly as he growled, clenching his hands into fists. Images of violence and nourishment flashed through his mind, instinctively urging him to infect the men. He was too hungry for that. He would eat them, he planned to himself in silence.

Eat them.

---

Clay Jameson

---

Clay had been too late to enter the baseball game, though he hoped that being the one to find the ball would grant him access into the next inning. While Henry and a large farmhand Clay hadn't met scanned the forest's edge, Clay took it upon himself to search further. After all, the two were taking a while.

Clay began to look through the forest floor. It was covered in the dead leaves of an early winter to come, painting the ground in shades of black and brown. "Should be easy, finding a white ball in all this muck." the wiry man groaned to himself, lifting the branches of a small shrub with a stick, hoping the small white shape he had seen through the foliage was the ball.

Luck was not on his side today. It was a small white toadstool, covered on the underside with a thick blanket of cobwebs. Clay sighed and sat on a small stump, taking a rest from his search as he continued to scan the area, pulling a long piece of grass out of the dirt to chew on.

There was a groaning in the distance, quiet at first, but picking up steadily. Clay looked over his shoulder nervously, darting his eyes around the landscape. He chuckled to himself. There was nothing to worry about. Even if there was, what man would shake in his boots in the light of day? Surely not Clay.

He stood up and began his search once more, drawing closer to the two men still searching, though still about twenty yards away. He raked through the ground with his stick steadily, hoping he would recognize the ball's distinct shape in the dirt. The groaning grew louder, and was now joined by unsteady breathing. Clay looked around once more, now worried. What if it was one of the deer he had heard about?

"You fellas find anything?" He called out, turning to face Henry and Julian. In that moment, he felt a great weight slam into his side, a tearing pain in his neck, and then nothing.

Clay's neck had been grotesquely snapped, wrenched to an impossible angle. His attacker wasted no time in beginning his feast.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

I'm not sure if I'll be able to join so soon, but would it be possible to join later on? Maybe you guys could meet my guys along the road or something? I'll definitely be reading this one, but I'm not sure I'm ready enough to jump in just yet.

@Obscene Symphony

That's alright, always a chance to jump in.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

@DeadBeatWalking

Hiya! You might've missed me, but I'm waiting for approval :) Post with the CS is in the link!

roleplayerguild.com/posts/3125753

@Duck

Sorry, I thought I had replied! Clay's accepted.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

Aw damn! Have I missed the character creation deadline?

@Wade Wilson

We're always accepting, so go right ahead!

Working on a post now, when do you want to introduce the living dead?

@OnlyThePie

All I'll say is crow symbolism.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

---

It is a cold Sunday morning in early November. It has been raining almost non-stop for the past two days, though it has finally subsided into a drizzle. A cold dampness clings to the air, and mist and fog linger noticeably. The farm smells strongly of wet grass and soil, and aside from the usual murmur of activity, the only noise that can be heard are the soft winds blowing in from the ocean, and the creaking wood of the forest on the farmstead's edge. Though most of the dirt has returned to its dry state, there are large banks of mud along the dirt paths in the farm, and once-fiery orange piles of leaves have been compressed into fetid brown clumps that collect in bale-sized clusters. Most of the trees are now grey and bare, and the silence of the forest is only ever broken by a twig or branch falling onto the forest floor.

With Sunday being the worker's one day off a week, most of the farmhands are escaping the chill inside of the barns, while the farmhouse workers are nestled comfortably in their attic bunkroom. A few of the men have assembled outside of the farmhouse for a baseball game, which has gathered the attention of a small audience -- Mainly, those too old to play, a few of the farmhouse workers taking in some fresh air, and those who wish to wager some of their stored-away goods in bets over the game.

---

Scarecrow

---

Standing atop a small mound of dirt, Scarecrow raised one leg like a professional pitcher, as if he meant to strike out Babe Ruth. His caricature of a pitcher's stance drew a few laughs from the small audience, and he flashed a toothy grin. "It's the bottom of the fifth inning, and up to bat is Bill Pooley, the Pink Pennsylvanian. He's lookin' nervous ladies and gentlemen, and I'm willing to bet it's because he knows he's about to strike out." Scarecrow loudly spoke in the exaggerated, fast-talking nasally voice of a baseball commentator. He heard a few laughs, though none of them came from Bill who remained motionless, holding his bat like he meant to club Scarecrow to death with it.

Scarecrow pushed his straw hat further down on his head, tightening the brim around his forehead, pretending to shield himself from the nonexistent glare of the off-white sky above them. With a small grunt of exertion, he flung the ball towards Bill with a surprising amount of speed, sending the ball into the catcher's mitt with a satisfying thud.

"Stee-rike one!" Scarecrow announced, feeding off of Bill's frustration. Scarecrow raised his leg again, though rather than throw the ball, he pretended to throw it, cupping it in his hands the same way one would fool a dog into fetching a stick that hadn't been thrown. Bill swung heartily at the false pitch, inciting more laughter from the crowd. Scarecrow chuckled to himself as Bill gritted his teeth, turning more red than pink.

Scarecrow pitched the ball again, and Bill missed once more. "Strike two!" the lithe man shouted. In truth, Scarecrow was a very poor pitcher, lacking the proper depth perception to throw anything more complex than a quick underhand pitch, though Bill's frustration made up for Scarecrow's lack of skill. As Scarecrow raised his leg once more, a small murder of crows erupted from the forest, flying in a cluster away from the bare, skeletal trees. It was of little concern to the men, however. Birds were seldom more of a spectacle than sports.

Scarecrow pitched the ball again, sending it flying towards Pooley. His bat connected, and even from Scarecrow's pitcher's mound, the crack of the wood against the ball rang out like a gunshot. The ball soared through the air high and far enough that Bill knew he had no reason to run for the bases, as it reached the apex of its arc near the edge of the forest. Though nobody could see where it had landed, Bill's home-run ball had landed somewhere just beyond the farm's stone perimeter.

Bill laughed to himself as he returned to his team, tossing the bat at Scarecrow's feet triumphantly.

"Somebody go fetch that ball before it starts raining again."

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

@DeadBeatWalking Yo! I added a bit more in the places you suggested! I'm so ready!

Yulian

Name: Yulian 'Julian' Petrovich Tikhvinsky

Age: 25

Appearance: With long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, ice-blue eyes, and neatly trimmed sideburns, Yulian is what most would call a 'prettyboy.' He is lithe and athletic, and his muscled frame shows, no matter what he wears.

Personality: Yulian is a big-hearted fellow, who always has time for people. He can usually be found talking to someone with a patient smile, and acting charitably. His niceness might get on other's nerves, at first, but even the most vitriolic attacker of Yulian will admit that he is too damned nice to hold a grudge against. He is naturally charming, and he loves the ladies (But he hates men who charm women for their own gain.) This has caused more than a few fights with various men, but Yulian doesn't like fighting. Having been raised a devout Russian Orthodox, he finds fighting to be distasteful, and the act of killing to be abhorrent. He realizes that, sometimes there is a necessity, but he will speak out against it, nonetheless. Despite his kindness, he is not stupid. Yulian, while patient, is still a person, and doesn't stand for abuse of another person, or himself.

History: Yulian's large family of Russians moved to America, before the war broke out in 1914, and settled down in Quebec City, joining the Russian community therein. However, after the war had ended, Yulian, while maintaining good relations with his family, decided that he wanted something more, a sense of self. Something that he decided he couldn't get in Quebec. So, he became a drifter, working his way south, helping those he could along the way. However, his altruism didn't get him anywhere quickly, so he made it to Eastport before he got stuck in the town. There was just so much that needed fixing, and he liked the people, so he hung around.

He had been working around town for a few weeks before he found the Tackett Homestead, helping those in need. He was a regular feature in the local Catholic Church, and was invited to come to the Homestead by Farmer Tackett, who saw how hard of a worker he was, and how well-liked he was. (He's been there for a few months by the start of the RP.)

Speech Color: Gold

Traits: Agile +1, Ambidextrous +1, Bilingual +2, Clean-Cut +1, Thick-Skinned +1, Big +1, and Churchgoing -2.

@Athinar

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

When do we start this shindig?@DeadBeatWalking

@End Here

First IC post is tomorrow.

Sign me the [REDACTED] up this looks amazing!

@Obscene Symphony

Glad to have you on board!

Editied mine, all good now?

@OnlyThePie

All good.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies

ohdangsnap. Thanks : )

Changed it any better? @DeadBeatWalking

@End Here

Looks good! Add him to the accepted characters.

Of Mice and Men and Zombies (Accepting!)

Nice catch! Typo, I'll fix that in a sec. These are the usual "shoot 'em in the head" zombies. As for running, I'd say that they're mostly limited to fast, jog-speed shambling.