Data of Recruit #23
Name: Michael Dean Arbobrly (Pronounced "arbor-lee")
Nickname: "Tunnel Rat"
D.O.B: 2/14/1952
Height:6'8"
Weight: 188 lbs.
Eye Colour: Brown
Hair Colour: Black
General Appearance: Arborly is tall and well-built, in the fashion of most men in The Rat's Nest. His skin is pale due to the fact that he has spent most of his life underground, combing through the sewer networks and subway tunnels that served as the makeshift fallout shelters for thousands of people. Also in the fashion of most men in The Rat's Nest - and indeed, most people in general - Arborly has skin of an almost corpse-like pallor. His eyes are perpetually bloodshot and squinted, as if to shield himself against the rays of the sun on the surface world. He is free from any heavy scarring or physically distorting conditions, the only things marring his visage being a heavy shadow of beard growth and deep, craggy lines on his face, giving him an appearance of age well beyond his 35 years. He prefers clothing that is pragmatic and utilitarian over flashy and showy, and his favorite articles of clothing - his ONLY articles of clothing - are several pairs of thermal undergarments, a tuque, a running jacket, a sheepskin-collared leather jacket, a double-layered pair of worker's jeans and fleece-lined logging boots.
Skills: Like most denizens of The Rat's Nest, the twisting, writhing corridors of sewer pipes, subway tunnels and maintenance corridors that swerve through the deep, dark underground of most old cities, Michael has an almost preternatural sense of direction. He has a more acute internal compass than most surface dwellers, and can read and navigate via maps with un-natural accuracy. He also knows a great deal about stealth and confusion tactics, and the basics of emergency first aid should such a thing become necessary.
Mutation Effects:
- Enhanced Night Vision: Not necessarily a 'mutation' as much as an 'environmental adaptation', but Arborly has incredibly acute night vision. Like most people in The Rat's Nest, Arborly's night vision - having been developed from twenty-plus years underground, in low light conditions - is head and shoulders above a normal human's night vision. Although nowhere near as good as night vision goggles or a flashlight, Arborly can see things that most people can't in the dark.
- Adrenaline Burst: A completely unique adaptation that the magic of limited radiation exposure has given to Arborly is the addition of two extra adrenal glands to his system. Under normal circumstances - such as any other situation where epinephrine would be released into the human bloodstream, such as the fight-or-flight instinct coming into play - only two of his adrenal glands activate. However, when Arborly sees fit, he can trigger an "adrenaline burst", which produces twice the normal amount of epinephrine as a normal adrenaline rush, which temporarily produces effects like enhanced strength, running speed, agility, and "personal temporal distortion", an effect that most people would refer to as "slow-mo" or "bullet-time", which lets Arborly see things at about half the speed that they would normally happen, and plan and react accordingly.
Weakness(s): Arborly has lived underground for most of his life. Although that has provided advantages in the form of his night vision and navigational skills, there are certain stigmas attached to these conditions. His pale skin burns easily when exposed to too much sunlight, and this goes beyond mere sunburn - the pain that Michael experiences when his skin is burned is phenomenal. His eyes, while perfectly fine in overcast, cloudy or night-time situations, must be protected from the sun during the day, or they also hurt and sting, limiting his ability to see anything at all. For this purpose, he must wear a brimmed hat or some form of eyewear to protect his eyesight.
He is primarily a loner, caused by his years of drifting between communities in The Rat's Nest, which contains few static settlements and a very small population spread out over several hundred square miles of tunnels. It is hard for him to trust people entirely, and he hides much of what he finds or knows as part of his nature. Whenever possible, he prefers being as far ahead of or behind a group as he can safely get, and only sticks close to the group as a whole when it is necessary for his survival. The concept of being permanently attached to a group of people has him very on edge. Also, the isolation has left him with few social graces, and he doesn't speak much as a result.
But perhaps the biggest and most important problem is this: Michael Arborly cannot fight. Yes, he knows the basics of combat, both hand-to-hand and with firearms, but beyond that limited experience, he is utterly incompetent. His main skill set is in navigation, outmaneuvering, and evasion, not head-on combat. Against an unskilled opponent he can hold his own, but against someone who is trained in combat and fights as a living, Michael is barely capable of fighting. Matching fists or melee weapons, Arborly relies on his size and strength instead of knowledge of the human body, speed and accuracy. In a firefight, he can't shoot on the move. All in all, he's an essential team-mate in every situation except social interaction and combat.
Private Message: You dolt. You should've stayed in the tunnels. The booze was much better there anyways.
Data of Recruit #23: Authorised Access Only.
Personality: Observation by Doctor Stratham.
"Subject Arborly displays little in the way of common social graces - no doubt attributed to his isolated lifestyle. When he can be spoken to, which is a rare occasion, he has very little to say, and is often standoffish. He isn't agressive; though, although he is definitely large and casts an imposing figure, he acknowledges that he is unable to fight competently and merely hopes to remain quiet until he can be left alone. What can be gleaned from him is the fact that he does not like being around people, and prefers to be by himself whenever possible. Although he isn't dangerous when exposed to people for extend periods of time, it is best to keep an eye on him - if only because we may lose track of him. Blood testing has also revealed he has a fondness for alcoholic substances, in particular the home-stilled liquids we found in his backpack after he arrived. When he is drunk, he appears to become slightly more sociable. He also appears to suffer spells of homesickness, where he will attempt to find the nearest enclosed space and crawl into it. This is a rare occurance, but nonetheless will be reported here."
Mental Disorders: Arborly is antisocial by nature, and has several communication issues - not attributed to the lack of stability to his mental faculties, but rather the fact that he just never really learned. He is an alcoholic, and enjoys drinking more than most activities in life. He isn't a particularly rowdy specimen when drunk; but he does become more agressive when he has imbibed.
Biography: Arborly is one of few people in America who can brag (if it can be called bragging) of having been born before the nuclear hellfire that razed most of the continent. Michael was born in a city somewhere on the west coast; the city's name lost in the annals of time, and lived most of his childhood perfectly content in the city's suburbs, up until 1967 and the end of American life as he knew it.
The few historians in Sanctuary often divided the population into two large groups for ease of research: those who were smart enough to find a fallout shelter and get into it, and those who weren't. These men and women often forget a small but crucial third group - those who didn't get into a fallout shelter, but survived anyhow. These men and women were the enterprising, the cunning, the fleet-footed men and women who could not find a fallout shelter with enough space to hold them, but stubbornly refused to shuffle off the mortal coil in a blaze of fire and ash. Although Arborly's parents either weren't part of this group of survivalists or found a fallout shelter with room enough for two more, Arborly stubbornly refused to give up on life. It was fortunate, then, that the city in which he dwelled contained a massive underground system of sewer networks, subway tunnels, access shafts and otherwise, shifting, gnarling and entwining across an absolutely massive area of land, both within and outside the city limits. It was into these tunnels that a few hundred people - Arborly included - fled before the tide of the apocalypse.
The next several years of Arborly's life went by in a blur, as survivors settled into various portions of the underground and began to build new lives in the abandoned halls of what was once the backbone of an entire city's transit system. Settlements - mostly tent cities that travelled from place to place by way of the tunnels, although several eventually became static and grew steadily - took root in the tunnels, and over the months and years adapted to their new environment, farming fungus and legumes in low light conditions and consuming non-perishable foods that were scavenged from the surface world when the radiation eventually began to subside. Outsiders began trading with this new community, which was eventually christened "The Rat's Nest" for its seemingly random, burrow-like layout. People continued mapping and navigating these tunnels, paid handsomely for their services in food and whatever could be scraped together as material goods.
Arborly was one such adventurer. Eventually, he went so far beyond the known tunnels that he found himself aboveground, well beyond the city. This discovery, although not entirely unpredictable - all subway systems eventually have to come to the surface - set the adventurer's future in stone. When he returned to the tunnels, people immediately questioned what could be found along the rail system Arborly had mapped; the one that led to the surface. Several people - scavengers and merchants, mostly - eventually decided to fund a second journey to the surface along these rails. Having no better options; Arborly went forward with it. He, along with eight other men and women, took a railcar straight across the United States, where, eventually, they found themselves in Sanctuary. The group eventually divided, and Arborly found himself where he is now - in a strange environment, with little to no memory of his past.