A ghoul who has wandered the Wasteland for centuries, unable to rest lest he slip into the violent habits of his feral brethren. He trades meat, skins and scavenged goods with ghoul-friendly settlements as he travels, stopping only long enough to help those in need along his trail.

Victor is a pre-War ghoul, having been 35 years old when the bombs fell, although his transformation was very gradual, potentially as a result of the method by which he became a ghoul. Despite his age, he shows few signs of cognitive dysfunction, and his eidetic memory is sharp as ever.

He's spent several decades simply travelling from settlement to settlement, rarely staying for more than a few weeks in any one place. He is many things at once; a hunter, a mercenary, a doctor, a scientist, and despite his gruff manner he's quick to aid those he finds struggling in the Wastes. He rarely stays for thanks, moving on as soon as he's stabilised a situation and the people he's helping are back on their feet again.

It has only been in recent years that Victor has taken up travelling with a companion, after finding Curie-- the lone survivor of a poorly-planned experiment-- in a disused Vault. The younger, excitable wolf and his drive to help anyone he can has given Victor something new to focus on, and he's slowly re-emerging from his shell as a result.

"It doesn't get better. One day it might be 'okay', though."

Personality

Victor is a quiet, tense ghoul who, despite his size and power armour, tends to slip quickly in and out of notice. He hates the dry rasp of his voice, so avoids speaking wherever possible, resorting to action, sign or pantomime before opening his mouth. When he does speak, it's often because he's angry-- he won't hesitate to start a fight with someone he thinks is taking advantage of others or hurting them with their ignorance. To those he befriends, Victor is unfailingly loyal and protective. Those he disrespects he'd abandon without a second thought.

He's uneasy around larger groups of people, often fading to the edges or leaving entirely. Victor does best on his own, or with one or two companions, though he often won't stick with said companions for long. He's most at home haunting the wilderness with a rifle, or in the quiet depths of abandoned cities. Exploration, re-mapping and resource gathering are his main occupations, but he usually won't turn down delivery jobs or other "fetch quests".

He is deeply horrified by his ghastly appearance, and does his best to avoid letting anyone see his uncovered face.

History

Victor was part of a battalion of soldiers assigned to an experimental testing program before the war began. None of them were aware they were test subjects until they arrived at the facility, and those who resisted were quickly disposed of. Victor kept his head down and went along with the tests, unable to escape as he'd had his claws blunted along with the rest of the surviving mobians. The soldiers were divided into groups to test survival strategies for the potential nuclear war that always seemed on the horizon, and Victor found himself enduring repeated radiation exposure and unknown chemical agents as part of a trial for… Something.

Then one day the bombs fell. The facility was hidden enough to avoid being caught in a blast, but not far enough away not to be damaged by the shockwave of a nearby detonation. The guards and scientists fled, leaving the prisoners trapped in their cells.

And in desperation. Victor punched his way out of his cell.

The worst of it was over by the time Victor escaped, with most people reduced to squabbling over resources in the aftermath. He helped himself to a suit of power armour and some weapons from the armoury, stole a car, and travelled to the base his boyfriend was last stationed at, hoping against hope that Magnus was still alive. Most of the personnel had already abandoned their posts. Magnus had stayed in the vain hope Victor would find him, and together they grabbed what they could carry and headed out into the wilderness. They found an empty cabin not far from a lake, which they commandeered as a living space. For a while they lived relatively peacefully, hunting game and gathering what edible vegetation they could find and wondering how bad things were back in the towns and cities.

And then Magnus started to get sick. Victor didn't.

When Magnus couldn't travel anymore, Victor took over the bulk of hunting and gathering, and made sure he was safe and well-fed. They both knew what to expect from radiation poisoning; Magnus theorised that Victor had been protected from the worst of it where he'd been kept, and Victor let him believe that. When Magnus began struggling to feed himself, Victor took over. He rarely left Magnus' side, except when they desperately needed supplies. When Magnus finally passed, it was peacefully in Victor's arms. Victor buried him in their favourite spot overlooking the lake.

Unable to handle his grief in the home they'd shared together, Victor gathered the supplies he could carry and walked away. He wasn't really planning on going anywhere specific, just away from the memories. He wasn't a stranger to hunting his own food while on the move, and he stopped in at small pockets of civilisation to trade meat and hides for goods he couldn't make on his own. He clashed frequently with raiders and mutated animals, and raided any abandoned army or enclave facilities he could find for parts and extra microfusion packs.

Time passed. Victor travelled the whole width of the country and back, not really interested in settling anywhere for long, but too wary of whatever had been done to him by the military to leave the world entirely.

He went longer without realising what was happening to him than a human would, since the first sign of his ghoulification was an incomplete shed that left minor bare patches between his scales. Covered in the full body power armour, he was able to avoid detection for some time, but after his helmet broke he was reduced to covering the lower half of his face to hide the exposed cartilage and bone of his snout. Unfortunately, his milky eyes and the peeling scales on his face, horns and spines made it impossible to disguise himself completely.

Sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of his reflection, and feel grateful that Magnus hadn't lived to see what a horror he'd become.

At one point, he worked in the Mojave as a courier. █████ █████ █████ ███ ████, ███████████ ██████████ ████. █████ ██████ ████████ █████, █████████ ███████ █████ ███████ ██. ██████ █████████ ████ █ ██████ █████████, ███ █████████ █████ ████████. ███████ ███████ ██████ ████████. ████ █████████ ████ ██ ████ ██████ ███████████. ███████ ███ ████████ ██████, ████ █████████ ████. ████ ███████ ████████ ████ █████ ███████████. ███████ ██ ████ ██ █████ ██████ ████████. ██████ ████ █████ ███ ████ ████ █████████ █████████ ███████ ███ ████. ████ ████ █████ █████████ ████ █████████ ███████ ███ ███ ██████. █████ ████ ██████ ████ █████ ████████ █████████.

Victor left the Mojave in an unusual direction, partly to avoid being followed and partly to try and pick over new areas for scrap metal and parts. Miles away from the desert, he found the entrance to a Vault hidden in a cave, and hacked his way through the security system to search for survivors or supplies. Initially the Vault appeared empty, but in the process of ransacking its mostly untouched contents, he found an open cryogenics pod-- and the wide-eyed occupant of that pod hiding behind it.

Curie had been part of a project similar to the one Victor had been subjected to; he and the other most promising specimens had been frozen before the war, along with the science team that had worked on them, and re-awoken ~80 years before the present day. He knew his way around the Vault's system, but had been under the impression that the world outside had been rendered totally uninhabitable, and so had stayed inside even as the last of the scientists had grown old and passed away.

When Victor left, he took Curie with him. Although he intended to leave Curie at the nearest settlement, the wolf refused to leave his side, and so the two travelled on together.

Current Day

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Skills