Name: Nathanial Black
Nickname: Nate
Age: 24
Race: Human
Sexuality: Straight
Karma: Paladin
Past Occupations: DC Enclave soldier, trade caravan tech specialist, prospector and shop hand
Current Occupation: Prospector for Hazel's junk shop
Alliance(s): Hazel's junk shop
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:

Strength: 5
Perception: 7
Endurance: 5
Charisma: 5
Intelligence: 7
Agility: 6
Luck: 5

Perks:

Computer Whiz
Sniper
Night Person
Gunslinger
Power Armor training
Laser Commander
Commando

Appearance:

Nate stands at 5' feet 11 and has an average if slightly thin build. His eyes are a dark unassuming brown occasionally obscured by his overflowing mass of black hair. Curiously, Nate shaves daily considering the practice the symbolic of civilized manhood. Four years of dangerous living in the wastes have diluted his "sheltered" features, his originally pale skin, the product of years of life underground has been significantly toned and various scars and burns have given his body a passing wasteland look.

Observant people can guess that Nate didn't live most of his life in the wasteland, though two of his teeth have been broken by a particularly viscous punch, the majority are of a quality pretty rare in the wastes. Nate's body is also uncommonly healthy, and his hair misses any long term effects of radiation degradation.
Nate wares a brown trader's jacket as his town outfit, accompanied by a pair of faded blue jeans. He holds on to various sets of salvaged clothing in the shop, but these consists of little more than patched up pre-war clothes and a few leather jackets. Nate has a "Sunday suite", his last remaining set of formal ware produced by the Enclave rather than pre-war America. He wears the suite whenever he goes to L-Mart's broken down church for reflection and prayer.

Nathanial still speaks "prewar English" and refrains from most of the wasteland slang. Nate is aware that his speech gives away his dissimilar background, so he tries to talk as little as possible with people he isn't sure about since changing his way of speaking has never worked out 100%. He is courteous and refrains from swearing and improper language, sometimes he isn't properly understood by particularly thick locals but after years of these problems he can understand most of what they say or at least the gist of it





Armor: Light recon armor and, modified with leather boots gloves and sleeves since the original armor pieces degraded over time. Nate lost his original recon helmet and has instead ether dark goggles or a pair of sunglasses (depending on the weather) and a hide cowboy hat to protect his head from the sun.

Equipment: [b]
On him: Scoped Gauss Rifle - 30 Microfusion cells, Recharger pistol - (no ammo), 2 stimpacks, 2 radway packs, 2 purified water bottles, 2 caravan lunches, a pocket knife, a silver chain cross, a small pocket bible he found while prospecting and a hiking backpack..
In the shop: a portable terminal; modified with a small camera printer and an extendable satellite uplink, a large wooden crucifix, The Black family bible (Three centuries old), Razor knife, Enclave dog tags, several Enclave medals, various tools and spares packed into a small tool box.
[b]Money: 30 caps

Likes:
Old world knowledge
Exploring
Churches
Energy weapons
Teaching
Tinkering
Nuka-Cola

Dislikes:
Alcohol
Smoking
Chems
Mines & explosives
Improper language

Personality:

Nathanial's personality reflects his history; he isn't the same man he used to be back in DC. Whereas he may have been brash, outspoken - possibly arrogant and something of an idealist, today he is a private reserved man with no goals in mind beyond surviving each day at a time.
His outlandish appearance an manners, particularly during his early days in the wasteland led to several negative encounters. His bad experiences made him cautious of advertising these traits, and thus far the best way of doing just that is simply to talk as little as possible and remain uninvolved and unimportant. Despite coming to dismiss the Enclave views of wastelanders as savages and barbarians, Nate has a great deal of trouble trusting them.

To those few he can make exceptions, Nate awkwardly tests the boundaries between his caution and his desires to talk to those wastelanders just as he would have done to his friends in the Enclave. He will always be somewhat cautious, but lowering at least some of the walls he has built around himself does much to relive his stress.

Morally, Nate is something of an oddity. He genuinely believes in the tenants of Christianity and law, but has no idea how to implement him in an age of history which can only be described as "godless". None the less, and very privately, Nate does what he can to live by his morals. Specifically Nate tries to help other people in their lives but never quite so openly, afraid that others will take advantage of him.

Since giving up on finding the Enclave's Chicago outpost, Nate hasn't had much of a goal in mind beyond daily survival. Nate feels that god spared him to survive the war and travel the wasteland for a reason, but has no idea what that reason may be.

History:

Nathanial was born in the Enclave, as was common to many of the surviving prewar organizations. His parents and entire family where involved in the organization and its mission, to revive the USA as it was before the bombs fell. Despite the unmatched power the organization held in North America, the Enclave's leadership and main base of operations where defeated in the West Coast by the actions of The Chosen One and the Brotherhood of Steel – New California Republic coalition.

In the 2250's, Augustus Autumn senior led a significant part of the Enclave to the Raven Rock military base in the Washington DC area shorty prior to the final NCR's final assault on Camp Navarro. Nate was born a year later in the newly reactivated military base and under the leadership of a new president; John Henry Eden. Nate's childhood was marked with the understanding that his generation would fight the war over Washington that was to come. Nate's parents were oddities set apart in the general zealousness of the Enclave's members for their devotion to the Christian faith.

Nate was trained and educated from a young age to both fight the Enclave's enemies when the D-day came, and how to use the old's world technology so that he would contribute to America's revival once her enemies where exterminated. It was not an easy childhood, but Nate found a genuine interest in the workings of technology and thought the combat training exhilarating – particularly the mock battles and power armor training.

When the war against the Brotherhood of Steel finally came, Nate was posted to an advanced field headquarters in the Water Purifier and was attached to the technical unit responsible for overseeing the barrier network. The job wasn't difficult and consisted of Nate and members of his unit picking up on power failures in the energy barrier or attempts to break it. When Raven Rock was suddenly destroyed and the president killed, Colonel Autumn junior rallied the soldiers of the Purifier Garrison to repel the expected BoS attack. Even the technical and headquarters units where armed, but nobody expected the attack of Liberty Prime.

The giant robot tore through the Enclave's defense, allowing for a small unit of BoS commando's to take control of the Water Purifier and kill Colonel Autumn, the last Enclave commander. Though most of the purifier garrison survived the initial attack, leaderless they were easy pickings for the main BoS assault. Nate and others managed to escape, and after several weeks of chaos a leadership council of various Enclave officers was created. The fight against the brotherhood continued, desperately, and without any gains.

Nate fought through it all as an infantryman, using recon armor when his power armor had been smashed during one of the battles. Having lost contact with his parents since the fall of Raven Rock, Nate began to doubt the orders of the Enclave High Command to fight on no matter the cost. When his unit was ambushed and massacred in a brotherhood attack, Nate decided to slip away from the battlefield and search for his family. After weeks of fruitless searching, accompanied by news of the final defeat of the Enclave at Adams Air Force Base, Nate realized that there was nothing left for him anymore in the Washington wasteland.

Nate joined a trading caravan heading northwest after demonstrating his aptitude for repairing energy weapons and his understanding of technology. Nate remained in various trade caravans for three years, playing with the idea of joining the Enclave's Chicago outpost. During his three years in the caravans, Nate had the good fortune to meet a retired NCR sniper working for the trade caravans.

Nate accompanied the veteran when he went out to scout ahead of the caravan for ambushes and learned to spot for him and eventually take out the targets himself using a scoped recharger rifle. The two became partners for much of Nate's tour with the caravans and shared a bond as followers of the Christian faith. Occasionally the two would help local villages with mutant and raider problems and the elder, who fought in the NCR - Enclave War did much to educate Nathanial on the darker side of the Enclave's history. Last year the elder decided to join his final caravan run all the way back to California, having saved enough money to keep him going through old age.

When Nate finally arrived at the Illinois Wasteland, his views had changed. Nate realized that after two major defeats and the destruction of its largest base, the Enclave was now a spent force overshadowed by the emerging powers of the wasteland. Nate settled in Craterside after a brief halfhearted attempt to find the Chicago outpost which inevitably ended in failure. For the past year, Nate worked in various local caravans and later in tech evaluation and prospecting, until he met Hazel's father Will Jericho about a year and a half ago.

Nate had been prospecting an underground US Army base for technology; he had made several good finds; such as his current Gauss rifle and other weapon, however little did he know that Chinese commando's had been parachuted into the base on the eve of the Nuclear War. It turned out this commando's where not as dead as one would suppose, they had been in fact trapped in the base for two centuries and had been turned into ghouls from the radiation.

It was under these circumstances that Nate ran into Will, escaping the commies as fast as his legs could carry him. Will, who had also come to clean out the camp, saved Nate from being eaten alive by the communist "zombies". The two prospectors where trapped inside a radar control center and had to repel the attacking hoard of ghouls for days, the final stand taking place on the roof of the building. The two became partners for the remainder of the trip and by its end even friends despite the age difference between them.

Will offered Nate the use of his shop to sell his salvage in return for a share in the sales, Nate agreed. Overtime Nate became more and more involved with the store, dealing with technology that Will and Hazel didn't have any knowledge of until he practically lived in the store when he wasn't out prospecting.
Since settling down in L-Mart, Nate has made enjoyed a cordial relationship with Hazel and her family and passing friendships with various traders, mercenaries and people of learning. He maintains something of a distance, even from Hazel's family, but with them it is no longer a conscious desire to avoid arousing suspicion and more out of a force of habit. Nate dines with them occasionally and pulls his share of work for the store.

Nate has a bit of a soft spot for Lucy, whom he spoils on occasion with various toys' he finds on his travels, such as a T-rex doll he got off a caravan from Nevada. Nate has played around with the idea of fixing up the old church and turning it into a school for L-Mart's children, but he is too busy just fetching a living and helping the store stay on its feet to do anything. For now, the idea remains a dream in the unknown future.

Companions:

"Echo 7" Spy Satellite, an old prewar satellite used by the DC Enclave's technical unit to plan their construction projects. The Satellite was builled by the Enclave with a Nuclear War in mind however after more then 200 years in orbit even its auto-repair systems are deteriorating. Nowadays, the satellite can take an accurate picture of landscapes and of the general layout of buildings however it cannot zoom in more then a bird's eye view of an object (and a bird flying at high altitude at that). The quality of the photos is generally similar to that of world war 2 reconnaissance aircraft. The satellite completes an Earth orbit every 19 hours, a heavy cloud formation can obscure it's vision.