Age: 31 [21 at the start of the invasion]
Gender: Male
Description:
Ted is 5'9 with red hair that he lets grow out thicker in the winter. He usually sports a beard, mainly because daily shaving is a nuisance to him. Surgical scars remain on his right elbow where a titanium plate used to be bolted in, along with a variety of war wounds throughout the invasion. He usually wears leather pants, a hooded t-shirt, and boots. In the winter he wears a balaclava if the temperatures warrant. The most notable physical characteristic he holds is half of his right ear being seared off from a warrior's plasma generator.
Background: Theodore, Ted, Theo, or whatever someone would choose to call him had a strict upbringing. His father, Thomas, was a retired Green Beret of the U.S. Special Forces. Once a warm-hearted man before war changed him, he was stern and expected much from even a child. The man was a mythical figure of granite to Ted, he aspired to be his father. His parents pushed him to be a scholar-athlete. He tried his best but always came up a little short in the academic department. A 3.2 GPA in high school would make most parents happy, but not the Daclaveons.
His at home life was different than most. Tom had his son hunting, gutting, and cooking his food at an early age. "Any person should be prepared to be the last man on Earth at any moment," was a motto he seemed to live by. Ted took a particular liking to bow hunting, it added a much stealthier and cerebral component to the game. Tying knots, dressing wounds, you name it. It was like an intensive decade long one-on-one boy scout training session.
In his sophomore year he slipped to a 2.9 GPA; chasing tail and drinking booze caught up with him. He and his father had a shouting match that ended with Tom backhanding Ted. They stared each other down, both furious, until Ted stormed out of the house with his bow. It was out of season but he found a doe after four-and-a-half hours, felling it with one shaft. He carried the body home as a statement, expecting his dad to call the cops on him for poaching. He threw the carcass on the doorstep and called in after his parents.
"How do you like that? In troubled times I resort to hunting something down and killing it. Must be those Daclaveon murderous genes acting up!" They didn't speak for weeks, though his mother Abigale did her best to mend it all. Both got hit with a double whammy two weeks later when a drunk driver careened into the Daclaveon's vehicle on their way home from visiting friends. The impact hit the passenger side where Abigale sat and the car flipped 2 to 3 times.
Abby died in the ER. Ted had a broken arm, which he thought practically ruined a year of athletics playing WR in football and PG in basketball. Not to mention track and field . . . he was still set on pleasing Tom. When they told him about his mom, he didn't speak until they released him to his father. Tom had barely been scratched in the accident. He embraced his son tightly at the hospital, then they sat in silence on the way home. In the driveway his father collapsed into tears, an act that stunned Ted. "It should have been me." He said. The two hugged for the first time since Ted was age five.
Tom did his best to take more of a nurturing turn, but he still had a hard nature. A year later on graduation Ted had athletic scholarship offers, having improved his grades, but planned on joining the Army to follow in his father's footsteps. Tom put a stop to that. "The U.S. Army and Special Forces are a grand thing that I hold dear, but you're all I've got. I don't want to lose you too." So, Ted took a scholarship to Colorado State. The invasion started in his junior year. Ted abandoned his school, taking some of his friends with him to his father's home back in Denver. Tom had been part of an old-school military survival group that prepped for stupid shit like alien invasions and zombie apocalypses in their spare time. He was decked out in his Green Beret and the rest of the gear. As his father told him since he could remember, ""The green beret is a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom." Humanity's freedom as a whole was at stake.
Over the first few years they did great. The group farmed, hunted, and gathered. Few women were around so the focus was pure survival. Most of the military men were old, and it started to show. Sickness took the first few. Then the intense battles started as some of the aliens seemed to set down an encampment in their area of the Rocky Mountains. The Mountain Wars are what they called the next three years. Brutal death is what they were, more on the human side than the alien. Their losses were too great and they were forced to move further West. In Utah he lost his father to a bandit raid. He stalked the group for months in revenge, picking them off one by one until he had to run off when they finally found him. The living ones' faces still blazed in his mind. He carried and wore his father's Green Beret in remembrance.
He continued with the remaining men of his group: A couple of old war veterans, a former Kansas State Trooper, and his college football teammate Reggie. As they made their way closer and closer to Arizona. they found out about Sanctuary and headed there in 2022. He had no intentions of becoming a leader, community or militarily, he just wanted to do his part and let the chips fall where they may. Ted wants humanity to live, but this conflicts with what he feels, because he despises bandits and raiders more than the aliens at times. Even though he is a grown man and getting older, the loss of his father to raiders left him deeply embittered with parts of humanity.
Skills: Ted is familiar with a variety of weapons, survival gear, and survival tactics. He is especially skilled with a bow and blades, fletching his own arrows and crafting his own shivs. The bow may not seem like the best choice when the enemy dons more armor, but a well placed shot in a weak area does wonders. While not a prodigy by any means, he is physically gifted. His time playing as a point guard and a wide receiver left him with physical skills and the ability to perform under pressure. The two sports, especially football, also came with a few concussions. The human side of him has not been lost, as he also uses his sports knowledge to bring happiness to the people. Even in the face of death, organizing a sport can distract people from the dreary day-by-day drudge. If anything could be called his strongest skill, it would be his ability to work in a team toward a common goal. This is the whole reason he wanted to go to Sanctuary.