App for systemwide

[hoodornament]

UNPLUGGED

OOC

Name: V.
Age: 26
Contact details: v__ @ plurk, v_veri @ DWRP slack
Characters already in Systemwide: None.

BASIC PROFILE

Name: Max Rockatansky
Age: Unknown. Late 30s, roughly.
Canon: Mad Max: Fury Road
Appearance:

He look like dis.

As a note, in-universe and therefore, presumably, in any other Matrix he has an injury to the knee requiring a leg brace and and a large tattoo on his back, text viewable here. (I, personally, would like this to persist, but if that's not how the game works then such concerns have magically vanished, the end.)
Extraction point: Shortly post-film.

OVERVIEW

Personality: Max Rockatansky is a walking mess. A chronic loner, he spends as much of his time as he reasonably can simply surviving. Part of this is an inevitable consequence of the world in which he lives — there's always something from which to run, whether be it hunger and thirst or any of the bloodthirsty, ruthless bandits who roam the wasteland he inhabits. Most of all, though, he runs from himself — from past failures, and from the sort of involvement with any other person which might lead to new ones. At this he is overwhelmingly unsuccessful, because for all of his amorality, developed by necessity through years in the post-apocalyptic desert — morality is the luxury of people with enough time and resources to sit and consider it — he is fundamentally decent. This is the primary source of his madness: that in a world gone to hell, he can't help allowing himself, when fate provides an opportunity, to become just the faintest bit invested in anyone he encounters who proves worthy of investment. It's an instinct he fights — the film demonstrates repeatedly that he has no desire to involve himself any more than is necessary.

He's reticent even to speak, particularly to strangers but also to the people with whom he throws in his lot. This, along with his hard-earned survival skills makes him an imminently practical ally in difficult situations, but perhaps not the best company otherwise, even to himself. He has, after all, driven himself mad — he experiences guilt-fueled hallucinations of people he perceives as having been let down by him, in particular a young girl whose death is briefly displayed in a flashback and who refers to him as 'pa' in another hallucination. Whether it not she is actually his child is arguable and never neatly established, but certainly he thought of her, at least in part, as such. These hallucinations pursue him relentlessly, appearing again when he is at rest, when the danger is not imminent — except in a notable instance in which a vision warns him of impending danger not consciously noticed and in doing so saves his life. Most often, however, they find him in stillness, which is a primary motivating factor feeding his desire to keep moving, to remain aloof and uninvolved.

As previously mentioned, these attempts to distance himself from other people rarely go as planned. He is not, in and of himself, a hero — not even of his own story. Max is a wanderer in the wastes, too absorbed in the immediate realities of his world to be invested in changing it. He's just as inclined to perpetuate the cycles of violence which have shaped the wasteland as he is to remain aloof: life doesn't often provide him a choice, but when it does, callousness and cruelty still remain the easiest options. At the outset of the film he's been wandering on his own for so long, in fact, that his cognition has become more animalistic and instinctual than intellectual, and his capture by the War Boys and use as human livestock hardly helps matters. He's wary, twitchy, a nameless, rootless creature, a state to which he ultimately leaves to return at the end of the film, though not unchanged. Though he is not the hero of any story, he finds himself in Fury Road tangled up in the stories of a group of women who are, and though he throws in his lot with them out of necessity initially he quickly becomes invested in their success and their survival, and in doing so rediscovers his humanity. That is not, of course, to say that the process is finished — in the end he returns to the desert alone, off to stumble across another story, another somebody who will, in spite of all his trying, inspire him to help them, and in doing so help himself.

His extraction from the Matrix has provided the when and the what, but this new adventure has provided him with new tribulations. Thoroughly accustomed though he is to the difficulties of life in a post-apocalyptic world, he's far less accustomed to living that life socially. All the same, in the months since his extraction he has softened; though he still keeps largely to himself, it is becoming increasingly impossible to remain detached from the problems of his neighbors and how intricately they relate to his own in a world both very like and very unlike that to which he is accustomed.

Matrix: Here's a plot/history overview.

Max's world is, by his own description, one of fire and blood. He lives in a post-apocalyptic Australia, well into the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust which wiped out a large portion of the population as well as enough of the usable resources that the survivors quickly fell into a cycle of violent struggle over what did remain. Those resources precisely have shaped the world from which he comes: gasoline is more widely-available than water, weapons more common than crops, and the distance to travel to get to any of these is significant enough that a group survives or dies based on the quality and quantity of its stock of automobiles. As such, few if any of the fractured social groups pursue a lifestyle which isn't focused on vehicles, and the cars or motorcycles of individual groups have been heavily modified to suit the territories they inhabit and lifestyles they pursue. All successful groups are innovators by necessity — in the absence of industry, they're forced to work with what's available, finding ingenious ways to fuse disparate parts into working, and indeed formidable machines of war. Some groups even worship vehicles and related concepts, adapting their beliefs to their world and in doing do giving meaning to the widespread violence and cruelty — and in doing so making themselves all the more formidable.

Technology level is variable. Though some objects seem to come from the modern period, they are often in a significant state of decay or rendered useless by the lack of infrastructure to support them. A denizen of this world might be a highly-skilled mechanic, or possessed of basic medical knowledge on par with that of the real world, but have no concept of the telephone. Similarly, culture and politics are not highly-advanced, though there appear to remain educated, literate members of the population. Power, on the other hand, comes and goes, and knowledge beyond the practical is the consequence of amassing enough power as to allow oneself to indulge — often by creating a monopoly or artificial shortages, as Immortan Joe and the respective leaders of the Bullet Farm and Gastown have done.

This world, additionally, possesses no anomalous or magical properties. What can't be done with engines and bullets is easily enough accomplished with pyrotechnics.

As there is relatively little organization, the role of Agents in this particular world would be difficult to discern — though this lack of organization precisely would make it easier for them to infiltrate any social group they may have to, especially as these groups appear to impose a certain degree of conformity upon their members.

Real World: Max has been extracted fairly recently. I will assume that some months have passed, during which he has grown accustomed to his new lot and quietly established himself as an accomplished mechanic and gunsmith, but otherwise he has found little incentive to stand out — or rather, he has tried hard not to find that incentive. That position is, of course, increasingly tenuous, and he is beginning to develop an interest in offering his services to the Zion Defence Grid.

ABILITIES AND SKILLS

Anomalies: In the context of this game it's probably fairly reasonable to assume that his more portentous visions are indicative of a very latent ability to read what's going to happen in the Matrix very shortly before it does. I don't anticipate this happening often, though, certainly to start, nor do I expect that he would care to explore the implications enough to realise this.

Skillset:
CRACKED ANYONE I EVER CAME ACROSS OUT HERE: Decent with firearms of all sorts, also possessed of knowledge on how to maintain and repair them.
V8, HIGH OCTANE: Good driver of all kinds of vehicles in many kinds of conditions.
FIX WHAT'S BROKEN: Very accomplished mechanic. Can jerry-rig just about anything together into something useful. This includes vehicles and improvised weaponry; I'm assuming he has the basic skills necessary to build many of the sorts of things seen in the film.
BLOODBAG: Some basic medical knowledge — he reinflates a collapsed lung and performs blood transfusions in the film, among other things. O-plus, universal donor.
OUT HERE, EVERYTHING HURTS: Not a good technique fighter but a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat and with simple bludgeoning or bladed weapons. His skill comes from necessity and he will fight viciously if he feels a need to, with relatively little regard for pain or injury.

Upload Capabilities:

Anomalous Skills: 1
Martial Arts: 3
Projectile Weaponry: 2
Technical Skills: 3
Wild Card: 1

SAMPLES

It's the stillness that grates most. Zion is moving all around him but he sits still and waits for something to happen. In a way they all are, but for a man accustomed to open spaces the closeness of the city is all the more oppressive. Sitting at the edge of his bunk, he closes his eyes and lets his head fall forward, fingers rising to feel out the edges of the headjack. Whether or not he regrets his choice isn't worth considering. There's food here, and water. Shelter. One is treated as a person here. Nothing, nothing moves.

Max...

He squeezes his eyes shut, gripping his skull in both hands before letting them drop to his lap, eyes opening. He nods, hums softly, pushes himself to his feet. Yes, he has. He knows what follows and he has. He's left them all behind, truly and properly now, left them more completely than he ever has before. And maybe, maybe he owes them nothing but that sentiment rings false even unspoken, even as it echoes around his head as he paces the room, rubbing at the back of his neck. Could he do them a greater service if he were still there, still plugged in? Perhaps, but the potential here is greater... so why doesn't he do anything? Why does he offer only the most tangential assistance?

The answer, the perpetual answer is that he can't fix what's broken, that he shouldn't even try given the inevitability of failure. It will only drive him madder. He scratches roughly at his scalp, murmuring softly, wordlessly to himself — to the ghosts in the room, to the walls. Best not. Best not get involved in the fate of a world, of worlds; it's not his place. His least of anyone, surely: it's easy to harbour a lack of concern for the human race when one has seen so little of redeeming value in it. Difficult, though, surprisingly difficult to walk away, perhaps because it would mean walking away from her. Poor thing. Could they ever have pulled her out? Could she, under other circumstances, have been saved? If he'd known, if they'd come sooner, if he'd done enough? Can't fix what's broken, not when it's this broken, but given the opportunity to fix the rest...

Sample #2