elle days | courier six (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quixotically) wrote2021-01-15 03:41 am
quixotically) wrote2021-01-15 03:41 am
Entry tags:
thisavrou [application]
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Malathyne
Are you 16 or older: Yuppo
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
Malathyne
Current Characters: Link
Tag: elle days (courier six)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Elena "Elle" Days
Canon: Fallout: New Vegas
Canon Point: Post-game
Age: 23
History:
The game: Fallout: New Vegas
The setting: the Mojave Wasteland, Timeline and history notes
The character: Courier Six (Elle's role)
The main plot progression: Fallout: New Vegas walkthrough
The DLCs: Old World Blues, Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road
An extended history detailing the choices Elle made, why, and their effects on her: [here]
Elle's ending slides: [here]
Personality:
One of the first things to understand about Elle is just how incredibly social she is. This is a very large part of who she is: she is people-oriented. She needs to have people around her; an Elle who is alone is not a happy Elle, and when left alone for extended periods of time with no support, she starts to crumble. Although it is true that there are many times when she knows or feels that she must do something alone, such as when she went to face Benny and when she set out to chase Ulysses through the Divide, at the end of the day, she needs friends to come home to. Elle's innermost needs largely revolve around having a place to belong and having the approval of the people she cares about.
Luckily for her, she is the kind of person who makes friends easily, no matter where she is or what situation she's in. In fact, she's been known to make very close bonds in a very short amount of time. Just look at the way she built a family around her out of the people she picked up along the way to track down Benny. This is especially proven in how she managed to win the solid trust of all three of her highly suspicious and paranoid fellow kidnappees in the Sierra Madre in a short matter of days.
What contributes to this? She is earnest and puts her all into everything she does. And although this means she can come across as intense at times, it also means that her intentions are almost always open and easily read. She doesn't feel a need to compete with the people around her, instead preferring to default to going with the social flow made by others. She is friendly and unafraid to reach out to others, no matter who they are, no matter how likely they are to hurt her. She's downright eager to make new connections, and it shows. At times, though, this eagerness can turn her awkward, with lots of fumbling with her words and blushing. This results from how much she worries about the right thing to do and say; she is just so naturally desperate to please.
This is most often seen after she gets past the "polite" phase of meeting someone and starts to care about what they think. For example, it only took minutes for Boone to realize that she was reliable enough to help him, but once he started traveling with her, she was a bundle of nerves and kept chatting his ear off in hopes he might reach back to make an emotional connection. On top of everything else, she keeps her promises, and will go out of her way to prove that she is trustworthy and capable without any hesitation at all. This means that, even if the rest of her personality puts someone off, she often wins them over anyway simply through sheer reliability.
Being naturally people-oriented and incredibly observant results in Elle being socially astute, despite any awkwardness. It's easy for her to see the connections between people, between events, and she's always considering possibilities and consequences. However, when you mix this with her desire to change the world around her... To be entirely honest, Elle can be manipulative. Although direct lying is something she's very bad at because of the way she wears her heart on her sleeve, she's very good at using her emotions and the emotions of others. She uses her emotional transparency as a tool, more often than not, drawing out pieces of her emotions and emphasizing them in the hopes that they will foreshadow the others.
For example, she is very aware of her habit of going with the social flow, as mentioned earlier, and she knows that it creates an impression of being easy to walk over. If she believes that playing at being submissive and agreeable will get whatever result she desires, then she may take this very habit of hers and tap into it on purpose, even if she has no intention of going along with the person's plan. (If this is the case, though, she doesn't make promises she has no intentions of keeping.) And, because this habit is a natural part of who she is, it adds credibility to her act, making it look more genuine than it really is. Manipulations like this are a very calculated thing, but almost always well-intentioned. That isn't to say that she won't and hasn't weaponized this (it's how she convinced Elijah that she was incompetent enough to not be a threat so he'd let his guard down so she could kill him), but it's more uncommon than one might expect.
Elle's other driving motivation is an instinctive need to change the world around her. Even if it's in just a little way, she wants to know that she's having an impact. This, combined with her genuine desire to make people happy, is what ultimately drives her to fight for the sake of other people. Without this drive, she would get too caught up in longing to make things better, and never get up and actually do it. When she feels as though she cannot affect the world and people around her, she starts to grow restless, antsy, as well as insecure and paranoid. All of her doubt is targeted inward, and she starts to think that she's not good for anything. She cares so much about everything and everyone around her, she feels the need to do something, anything, for them, to make life better, and if she can't even do something as small as make someone smile... It shakes her to her core.
This ends up feeding into her natural restlessness. On top of everything else, Elle is extremely curious. She wants to know what's around the next bend, what's in that cave, what that person's story is. She wants to touch the places that have been forgotten since the Great War and bring life back to them. When combined with her need to have an impact, and her learned recklessness, she ends up sticking her fingers into all the pies, even if she knows for a fact there are bear traps hidden in them. She simply cannot leave well enough alone, even if she knows better. She has to know. She has to have her answers.
The reason why her recklessness is "learned" is because she is naturally a worrywort. "What if" this, and "what if" that, she is constantly seeing possibilities, good and bad, consequences of her actions, futures likely and unlikely. But she has also learned that she is not very good at planning, not on her own. She sees too many things that could happen, and has a hard time narrowing it down in order to make concrete plans without someone else there to help her. She's much better off gathering up resources (this includes information) and being prepared for anything that may come her way. Flying by the seat of her pants has long since been the name of her game, and she's learned through experience that she's much more effective if she leaves room for herself to improvise.
But that's not entirely where her recklessness comes from. She has also learned that, despite being frail and easily hurt, she has a tendency to bounce back from anything that is thrown at her. At the end of the day, her self-preservation instinct will kick in, no matter what, and she will fight until she is the survivor. She will claw her way out of any grave she's put in. And... As a result, she's come to think herself as kind of invincible. Considering all of the ridiculous, over-the-top, incredibly dangerous things she's been through, it's not hard to see where she gets the idea, but it also drastically increases the likelihood that she will risk life and limb to rescue a little kid's teddy bear from an alpha deathclaw. Because, y'know. It's The Right Thing To Do, And It's Not Like I Can Die, Anyway, So It's Better If It's Me And Not Somebody Else.
In these moments, it is easy to catch her insecurities in action. Even now, after her victory at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, after the differences she has made in the lives of her friends, Elle has massive self-worth issues. From the beginning of her adventure, Elle has felt small and insignificant. In this light, it's unsurprising that, even without the influence of Errolyn, Elle grew so quickly attached to Mr. House; he was the first to pick her up and tell her that she could do more, told her that she was important. But it is because of these self-worth issues that, no matter what she does, Elle never feels like she is enough. There is always something she could have done better, someone she should have saved. Even if logically, she can see that she found the single good decision out of a long list of bad decisions, she feels as though she should have somehow, some way, magically found the perfect Happy Ending. And there is a deep-rooted fear that, if she doesn't do everything just right, then she will lose everyone she loves. Which... yeah, means that she always feels like she's going to lose her loved ones, and it'll be All Her Fault. (It is not a stretch in the least to say that Elle has abandonment issues.)
Even if Elle does not remember the deaths of her father, of Avery and Leland, the keen feeling of failure follows her in her subconscious. Catastrophic failure; failure to protect the people who mattered to her most. And remember Elle's thought pattern from earlier? Take it up a notch and add in a strong dose of survivor's guilt. "If I can't even do something like that, something so simple as protecting who matters to me, then what good am I? Why am I alive when I feel like they deserve life more than me?" Elle may not consciously have suicidal thoughts, but in those situations where she's flinging herself whole-heartedly into something incredibly dangerous, simply because there's a sliver of chance good might come out of it? It starts to look an awful lot like she does.
And yet... It is in these very same situations that her determination tends to shine through. It can even be said that, more than sheer, dumb luck, it is actually her determination that carries her through those life-or-death situations. Often, whether someone underestimates Elle is entirely based on whether or not they realize how determined she must be, in order to have achieved all of the things that are attributed to her name. It isn't uncommon for people to be surprised when they first meet her, that this tiny, mild, smiling waif of a girl is the Courier. She is emotional and parades her vulnerabilities out for all to see. She is so, so needy of the people around her, friendly and cheerful and awkward. And yet, she's the one who's pulled all of this off?
But her determination leads her to obsession. If her emotions are her tools and her recklessness her armor, then her determination is her fuel. She WILL do what she set her mind on. She will NOT give up. So, as much as she values peace and will apologize repeatedly, even if it isn't her fault, just to keep that peace, in critical times, she is not a pushover. As much importance as she places on other people's emotions, when push comes to shove, she doesn't always cave. In these instances, she'll speak her mind, butt heads with people she shouldn't butt heads with, and refuse to give up even on the worst of people. But because she likes to act passive and inoffensive most of the time, this incredibly stubborn streak often comes as a surprise to those who buy that behavior full-sale.
Abilities/Skills:
Elle is 100% human, and everything she can do is reliant on her physical ability, skills, and equipment. However, the following should be noted:
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
In Fallout: New Vegas, character base stats are organized in a format known as S.P.E.C.I.A.L. These seven base stats dictate how many hit points and skill points the character has, as well as provide bonuses to skills and affect the character's move speed, physical strength, how often critical hits will be scored, and how much of an impression the character will leave on other people. Five is the base/average stat.
Here are the details on Elle's S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:
When it comes to skills needed to survive in the Wasteland, Elle's picked up a lot of experience and tricks from her companions. However, when push comes to shove, there are some she makes more use of than others.
In addition to her skills, Elle also developed various tricks and shortcuts throughout her adventures. She also has had a few surgeries, which have provided her almost supernatural benefits.
Traits are innate perks that provide both a benefit and a drawback. The protagonist can pick up to two at the beginning of the game. The ones listed below are more like statistical benefits and drawbacks of physical build and personality inclinations.
Strengths:
Though when Elle started her journey, a load like this would be unimaginable, thanks to her Reinforced Spine, this is an everyday load for Elle.
Network Sample: [intro @ eudio]
Prose/Action Sample: [test drive]
Are you 16 or older: Yuppo
Contact:
Current Characters: Link
Tag: elle days (courier six)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Elena "Elle" Days
Canon: Fallout: New Vegas
Canon Point: Post-game
Age: 23
History:
The game: Fallout: New Vegas
The setting: the Mojave Wasteland, Timeline and history notes
The character: Courier Six (Elle's role)
The main plot progression: Fallout: New Vegas walkthrough
The DLCs: Old World Blues, Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road
An extended history detailing the choices Elle made, why, and their effects on her: [here]
Elle's ending slides: [here]
Personality:
One of the first things to understand about Elle is just how incredibly social she is. This is a very large part of who she is: she is people-oriented. She needs to have people around her; an Elle who is alone is not a happy Elle, and when left alone for extended periods of time with no support, she starts to crumble. Although it is true that there are many times when she knows or feels that she must do something alone, such as when she went to face Benny and when she set out to chase Ulysses through the Divide, at the end of the day, she needs friends to come home to. Elle's innermost needs largely revolve around having a place to belong and having the approval of the people she cares about.
Luckily for her, she is the kind of person who makes friends easily, no matter where she is or what situation she's in. In fact, she's been known to make very close bonds in a very short amount of time. Just look at the way she built a family around her out of the people she picked up along the way to track down Benny. This is especially proven in how she managed to win the solid trust of all three of her highly suspicious and paranoid fellow kidnappees in the Sierra Madre in a short matter of days.
What contributes to this? She is earnest and puts her all into everything she does. And although this means she can come across as intense at times, it also means that her intentions are almost always open and easily read. She doesn't feel a need to compete with the people around her, instead preferring to default to going with the social flow made by others. She is friendly and unafraid to reach out to others, no matter who they are, no matter how likely they are to hurt her. She's downright eager to make new connections, and it shows. At times, though, this eagerness can turn her awkward, with lots of fumbling with her words and blushing. This results from how much she worries about the right thing to do and say; she is just so naturally desperate to please.
This is most often seen after she gets past the "polite" phase of meeting someone and starts to care about what they think. For example, it only took minutes for Boone to realize that she was reliable enough to help him, but once he started traveling with her, she was a bundle of nerves and kept chatting his ear off in hopes he might reach back to make an emotional connection. On top of everything else, she keeps her promises, and will go out of her way to prove that she is trustworthy and capable without any hesitation at all. This means that, even if the rest of her personality puts someone off, she often wins them over anyway simply through sheer reliability.
Being naturally people-oriented and incredibly observant results in Elle being socially astute, despite any awkwardness. It's easy for her to see the connections between people, between events, and she's always considering possibilities and consequences. However, when you mix this with her desire to change the world around her... To be entirely honest, Elle can be manipulative. Although direct lying is something she's very bad at because of the way she wears her heart on her sleeve, she's very good at using her emotions and the emotions of others. She uses her emotional transparency as a tool, more often than not, drawing out pieces of her emotions and emphasizing them in the hopes that they will foreshadow the others.
For example, she is very aware of her habit of going with the social flow, as mentioned earlier, and she knows that it creates an impression of being easy to walk over. If she believes that playing at being submissive and agreeable will get whatever result she desires, then she may take this very habit of hers and tap into it on purpose, even if she has no intention of going along with the person's plan. (If this is the case, though, she doesn't make promises she has no intentions of keeping.) And, because this habit is a natural part of who she is, it adds credibility to her act, making it look more genuine than it really is. Manipulations like this are a very calculated thing, but almost always well-intentioned. That isn't to say that she won't and hasn't weaponized this (it's how she convinced Elijah that she was incompetent enough to not be a threat so he'd let his guard down so she could kill him), but it's more uncommon than one might expect.
Elle's other driving motivation is an instinctive need to change the world around her. Even if it's in just a little way, she wants to know that she's having an impact. This, combined with her genuine desire to make people happy, is what ultimately drives her to fight for the sake of other people. Without this drive, she would get too caught up in longing to make things better, and never get up and actually do it. When she feels as though she cannot affect the world and people around her, she starts to grow restless, antsy, as well as insecure and paranoid. All of her doubt is targeted inward, and she starts to think that she's not good for anything. She cares so much about everything and everyone around her, she feels the need to do something, anything, for them, to make life better, and if she can't even do something as small as make someone smile... It shakes her to her core.
This ends up feeding into her natural restlessness. On top of everything else, Elle is extremely curious. She wants to know what's around the next bend, what's in that cave, what that person's story is. She wants to touch the places that have been forgotten since the Great War and bring life back to them. When combined with her need to have an impact, and her learned recklessness, she ends up sticking her fingers into all the pies, even if she knows for a fact there are bear traps hidden in them. She simply cannot leave well enough alone, even if she knows better. She has to know. She has to have her answers.
The reason why her recklessness is "learned" is because she is naturally a worrywort. "What if" this, and "what if" that, she is constantly seeing possibilities, good and bad, consequences of her actions, futures likely and unlikely. But she has also learned that she is not very good at planning, not on her own. She sees too many things that could happen, and has a hard time narrowing it down in order to make concrete plans without someone else there to help her. She's much better off gathering up resources (this includes information) and being prepared for anything that may come her way. Flying by the seat of her pants has long since been the name of her game, and she's learned through experience that she's much more effective if she leaves room for herself to improvise.
But that's not entirely where her recklessness comes from. She has also learned that, despite being frail and easily hurt, she has a tendency to bounce back from anything that is thrown at her. At the end of the day, her self-preservation instinct will kick in, no matter what, and she will fight until she is the survivor. She will claw her way out of any grave she's put in. And... As a result, she's come to think herself as kind of invincible. Considering all of the ridiculous, over-the-top, incredibly dangerous things she's been through, it's not hard to see where she gets the idea, but it also drastically increases the likelihood that she will risk life and limb to rescue a little kid's teddy bear from an alpha deathclaw. Because, y'know. It's The Right Thing To Do, And It's Not Like I Can Die, Anyway, So It's Better If It's Me And Not Somebody Else.
In these moments, it is easy to catch her insecurities in action. Even now, after her victory at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, after the differences she has made in the lives of her friends, Elle has massive self-worth issues. From the beginning of her adventure, Elle has felt small and insignificant. In this light, it's unsurprising that, even without the influence of Errolyn, Elle grew so quickly attached to Mr. House; he was the first to pick her up and tell her that she could do more, told her that she was important. But it is because of these self-worth issues that, no matter what she does, Elle never feels like she is enough. There is always something she could have done better, someone she should have saved. Even if logically, she can see that she found the single good decision out of a long list of bad decisions, she feels as though she should have somehow, some way, magically found the perfect Happy Ending. And there is a deep-rooted fear that, if she doesn't do everything just right, then she will lose everyone she loves. Which... yeah, means that she always feels like she's going to lose her loved ones, and it'll be All Her Fault. (It is not a stretch in the least to say that Elle has abandonment issues.)
Even if Elle does not remember the deaths of her father, of Avery and Leland, the keen feeling of failure follows her in her subconscious. Catastrophic failure; failure to protect the people who mattered to her most. And remember Elle's thought pattern from earlier? Take it up a notch and add in a strong dose of survivor's guilt. "If I can't even do something like that, something so simple as protecting who matters to me, then what good am I? Why am I alive when I feel like they deserve life more than me?" Elle may not consciously have suicidal thoughts, but in those situations where she's flinging herself whole-heartedly into something incredibly dangerous, simply because there's a sliver of chance good might come out of it? It starts to look an awful lot like she does.
And yet... It is in these very same situations that her determination tends to shine through. It can even be said that, more than sheer, dumb luck, it is actually her determination that carries her through those life-or-death situations. Often, whether someone underestimates Elle is entirely based on whether or not they realize how determined she must be, in order to have achieved all of the things that are attributed to her name. It isn't uncommon for people to be surprised when they first meet her, that this tiny, mild, smiling waif of a girl is the Courier. She is emotional and parades her vulnerabilities out for all to see. She is so, so needy of the people around her, friendly and cheerful and awkward. And yet, she's the one who's pulled all of this off?
But her determination leads her to obsession. If her emotions are her tools and her recklessness her armor, then her determination is her fuel. She WILL do what she set her mind on. She will NOT give up. So, as much as she values peace and will apologize repeatedly, even if it isn't her fault, just to keep that peace, in critical times, she is not a pushover. As much importance as she places on other people's emotions, when push comes to shove, she doesn't always cave. In these instances, she'll speak her mind, butt heads with people she shouldn't butt heads with, and refuse to give up even on the worst of people. But because she likes to act passive and inoffensive most of the time, this incredibly stubborn streak often comes as a surprise to those who buy that behavior full-sale.
Abilities/Skills:
Elle is 100% human, and everything she can do is reliant on her physical ability, skills, and equipment. However, the following should be noted:
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
In Fallout: New Vegas, character base stats are organized in a format known as S.P.E.C.I.A.L. These seven base stats dictate how many hit points and skill points the character has, as well as provide bonuses to skills and affect the character's move speed, physical strength, how often critical hits will be scored, and how much of an impression the character will leave on other people. Five is the base/average stat.
Here are the details on Elle's S.P.E.C.I.A.L.:
▶ Strength: 6Skills [wiki]
Because her strength wasn't up to scratch for the first part of her journey (it started as a 4), she didn't have the muscle to carry a lot of gear. To make up for it, she's had to learn how to pack smart and learn how to compensate for the weight of heavier weapons (see the Weapon Handling perk). The only reason why her strength is statistically a 6 is due to surgery from her time in Big MT. In narrative, this will translate to having a stronger back for carrying equipment and being more resistant to, say, breaking her back. She will not throw harder punches or do more damage with melee weapons; when it comes to those things, she is still quite bad at them.
▶ Perception: 8
She has a keen eye and strong intuition, and both of these things help her pick up on small details that other people might otherwise miss. When wearing her Pre-War fedora, this stat increases (by one) for two reasons: one, it keeps the sun out of her eyes, and two, the hat is a ~frame of mind.~
▶ Endurance: 4
She takes injury hard and has the chance of going down faster than your average folk. Over her time in the Mojave, she learned how to adapt and was forced to withstand more pain and longer periods of time without food and water.
▶ Charisma: 8
Her charisma comes down to her bright personality, which stands out in a setting like the Mojave Wasteland, where "nothing is clean" (as Elle has put it). She is engaging, friendly, and genuine, and while this doesn't always help her get along with everyone, it does get her results when she's talking to people. She leaves a strong impression on those she meets, and word of her travels quickly in the Mojave.
▶ Intelligence: 4
Sometimes, even if she sees the small details, she doesn't always connect them to the bigger picture. Generally, this means that she can be slower to catch on to things than other people, usually because her focus is elsewhere.
▶ Agility: 6
When it comes to dodging attacks, reaction time in combat, and running, Elle benefits from her Small Frame (see Traits below). This means she's a smaller target for people to aim at, and she can be a zippy little thing if she really wants to be.
▶ Luck: 7
It can be said that Lady Luck is especially fond of her. Things have a habit of going right for her, both at the card tables and when it comes to scoring lucky hits on her enemies.
When it comes to skills needed to survive in the Wasteland, Elle's picked up a lot of experience and tricks from her companions. However, when push comes to shove, there are some she makes more use of than others.
▶ Speech and Barter (her most used skills, considering how she prefers to talk around conflicts more than anything else. and sometimes, talking money works where just plain talking doesn't)Perks (that matter; wiki)
▶ Guns (fairly straightforward; guns are a girl's best friend. they have saved her life and the lives of her friends and those around her time and time again, and so through necessity more than anything else she's learned how to use guns as accurately and most effectively as possible. her specialty here falls under "shotguns to the face," but if she's adaptable and fairly handy with pistols and rifles, too. however, she is useless with heavy weapons, such as miniguns)
▶ Lockpick (in order to access the best stashes of goods, get through doors that have been locked since before the War, and find clues for her quests, she has had to tackle locks with just bobby pins and a screwdriver, and it's more than second nature for her)
▶ Repair (the Mojave is just as unkind to gear as it is to people. in order to maintain upkeep on her equipment, old technology in the desert, and even sometimes her companions, she has had to learn how to fix anything put in front of her. it helps that two of her closest friends are especially talented at this and were willing to teach her both the basics and some tricks of the trade)
▶ Science (though she started her journey without much interest in this area, the Big MT taught her how important it can be. her knowledge specialty here is in hacking RobCo terminals and breaking and fixing robots from the Fallout world)
▶ Medicine (this is a skill she has developed since before she became a Courier, so it comes very easily to her; sometimes, she realizes she knows how to do something without having been taught it. her knowledge specialty lies in curing poisons and dealing with battlefield trauma. she has saved the lives of Boomers, NCR soldiers, her friends, and herself with her skill)
▶ Sneak (staying quiet and unnoticed can be vital to surviving at times, especially in highly dangerous areas like the Big MT and the Sierra Madre ... and narrow trash-littered hallways full of invisible super mutants)
▶ Survival (a necessity for staying alive in an irradiated desert wasteland, and that's where her outdoorsman skills lie. she'll be much less effective in, say, a forest or tundra environment, but she knows very well how to deal with a lack of food and water, clean or otherwise, how to tolerate the heat, and how to cook and hunt. it's worth noting though that she's a big baby in the face of cold)
It should also be noted that the following skills are marked weaknesses for her, ones that she barely uses and barely knows how:
▶ Unarmed (the best she hope to do is try to knock someone off their feet so she can put more distance between them)
▶ Melee (her preferred melee weapon is the butt of her gun. no, it isn't good for her gun, but if someone's closed to melee with her, she's desperate enough to go for it)
In addition to her skills, Elle also developed various tricks and shortcuts throughout her adventures. She also has had a few surgeries, which have provided her almost supernatural benefits.
▶ Damage Bonuses (this comes from having so much experience killing things in the Wasteland; she's just learned where to aim and how to take enemies down faster)Traits [wiki]
▶ Survival Tricks (little things like "how to run longer on less water" and "how to make drugs last longer")
▶ Animal Friend [two ranks] (Elle naturally has a way with animals, and so many in the Wasteland don't attack her, and they will even aid her in battle)
▶ Jury Rigging / Junk Rounds / Scrounger (thanks partially to experience and necessity, but mostly thanks to her friends Raul and Veronica, she has learned how to fix things and make ammo from whatever happens to be lying around, and how to scrape for materials to do so)
▶ Quick Draw / Rapid Reload / Run 'n' Gun (she has learned how to reload her gun fast and draw it even faster, as well as fire one-handed guns more accurately while in movement)
▶ And Stay Back / Shotgun Surgeon (she has learned how to make the most of her favored weapon, the shotgun, so that she can do more damage and catch opponents off-balance)
▶ Weapon Handling (she learned how to handle heavy weapons without her accuracy suffering for it)
▶ Big Brained / Cardiac Arrest / Reinforced Spine (at the end of her time in Big MT, she was stitched back together, but in a way that made her body stronger. she is more resistant to poisons and being addicted to drugs and healing items have a stronger effect. in addition, the likelihood of her breaking bones or suffering from concussions has been reduced, partially balancing out the drawbacks of Small Frame)
Traits are innate perks that provide both a benefit and a drawback. The protagonist can pick up to two at the beginning of the game. The ones listed below are more like statistical benefits and drawbacks of physical build and personality inclinations.
▶ Small FrameStrengths/Weaknesses:
Like it says on the tin, Elle is built small. This has its bright side, namely that it's easy for her to hide in cramped places and duck under incoming attacks. Unfortunately, it also means it's pretty easy to break her limbs if that attack does hit...
▶ Good Natured
Elle is naturally predisposed to try to resolve conflicts peacefully. It's so set in her bones that it took a lot more effort for her to learn to be combat effective, thanks to her reluctance.
Strengths:
▶ See skillset and perks, especially those from her surgeries, listed aboveWeaknesses:
▶ Has a knack for not dying when she's supposed to, either through luck or sheer determination
▶ Speaking of determination, when push ultimately comes to shove she won't stop for nothing
▶ Has a natural way with animals
▶ Empathetic and earnest
▶ Extremely perceptive, especially when it comes to emotions
▶ Socially savvy
▶ Good at both team and independent work
▶ Good improvising skills
▶ Loyal to a fault
▶ Memory erasure/alteration is a huge hot button issue for her; she'll lose her shit about it more dramatically than other thingsItems:
▶ She's human and the kind to be carried away by a stiff wind, aka more squishy than the average human
▶ Can't leave well enough alone
▶ Almost useless in a hand-to-hand combat situation
▶ Tendency to chafe under strict rules she doesn't agree with (can you say "chaotic good")
▶ No formal education in... anything. At all. Her knowledge is patchy and either self-taught or learned from friends with experience
▶ Trends towards sensitive (esp. in regards to approval of others; can you say "abandonment issues") and has doormat tendencies
▶ Known to climb on a high horse about morality occasionally, though she tries not to
▶ Wears her heart on her sleeve
▶ Doesn't give up on people/relationships, even bad/unhealthy ones, unless circumstances push her to
Though when Elle started her journey, a load like this would be unimaginable, thanks to her Reinforced Spine, this is an everyday load for Elle.
▶ Pip-Boy 3000A and Glove (wrist-mounted all-in-one miniature computer that contains a health monitor, light, note-keeper, geiger counter, radio, holodisk reader, and area maps made via radar and via accessing satellite maps)SAMPLES
▶ Desert Ranger Combat Armor (Pre-War armored vest and armored duster that Elle "inherited" during her trip to Zion. it was once owned by Randall Clark, who she took on as a kind of personal hero)
▶ Elite Riot Gear Helmet (picked up in the Divide. this helmet has night vision capabilities at the touch of a button located on its side)
▶ Dapper GamblerSuitDress (a stylish yellow dress, her favorite; worn under the combat armor vest and duster in place of the old patched pants that came with the armor)
▶ Violet Scarf (self-explanatory, worn around the neck)
▶ Pre-War Hat (a black fedora, her most favorite)
▶ Courier Duster (independent variant. a gift from Ulysses. carried in her pack. worn on occasions of utmost importance; however, the boots from this set are the ones she wears with her dresses in favor of the heels in the pictures)
▶ A dirty and worn pink dress with a brahmin skin hoodie to wear over it (for casual wear; an outfit from a mod, not from the game, but made out of pieces of clothing in the game so it's incredibly lore-friendly)
▶ Kings Outfit (it's a greaser outfit, and on the back of the black leather jacket is a white crown and the words THE KINGS stitched onto it)
▶ Backpack, bandolier, leather gun holsters (they aren't fancy, and share a patchwork appearance, though one, fit for a pistol, involves a lot of snakeskin. the bandolier carries her shotgun ammunition and is worn over the vest of the combat armor)
▶ Survival gear (combat knife, canteen, rope, lighter, shovel, bedroll, foodstuffs, MREs, bottled water, screwdriver, eating utensils, tools for fixing tech and making food)
Weapons and Ammo:
▶ Hunting Shotgun (modded) (primary weapon)
▶ A Light Shining in Darkness (unique .45 magnum pistol) (sidearm of choice; gift from Joshua Graham)
▶ the Survivalist's Rifle (for when she needs to kill something very fast. this rifle has a high rate of fire and is very powerful despite its bent sights. another piece of equipment once belonging to Randall Clark)
▶ 12 gauge shotgun shells (used by the hunting shotgun) [x 40 and 8 in the gun]
▶ .45 auto rounds (used by the pistol) [x 40 and 6 in the gun]
▶ 12.7mm rounds (used by the Survivalist's rifle) [x 50 and 10 in the gun]
Aid:
▶ Stimpaks (healing chemical-based injections) [x 24]
▶ Auto-Stimpaks (auto-injecting stimpaks) [x 5]
▶ Doctor's Bags (for patching up bones and more severe wounds) [x 3]
▶ Antivenom (self-explanatory) [x 12]
▶ Med-X (Fallout's version of morphine; temporary boost to damage resistance) [x 7]
▶ Rad-X (temporary boost to radiation resistance) [x 15]
▶ Rad-Away (heals radiation) [x 15]
▶ Nuka-Cola (favorite soda) [x 5]
▶ Nuka-Cola Victory (special edition of Nuka that provides small benefits) [x 1]
▶ Sierra Madre Martini (a godawful alcoholic drink that provides surprising benefits) [x 3]
▶ Sierra Madre Martini ingredients (a few tin cans, Cloud residue, junk food) [enough to make x 3 more Martinis]
▶ Stealth Boy (technology that makes her temporarily invisible) [x 3]
Miscellaneous:
▶ Her personal journal (in which she's recorded, in exacting detail, her daily experiences and the people she's met, as well as some attempts at illustrations and some photographs, so that if she ever loses her memories again, she won't be starting from nothing a second time)
▶ Big MT Transportalponder (what looks to be an energy weapon is actually a portal gun that takes her back to the Big Empty … not that it works outside of the Mojave)
▶ Rebreather
▶ Weapon Repair Kit [x 2]
▶ Assorted cases and hulls (for ammo-making)
▶ Extra lead and powder (for ammo-making)
▶ Bobby Pins (for picking locks) [x 7 boxes of 10]
▶ Blank holotapes (for recording) [x 7]
▶ Caravan Deck (a large assortment of cards from various design decks)
▶ Zion Canyon Map (self-explanatory)
▶ Keyring (full of random keys collected throughout the Mojave. each key is labeled in some fashion)
▶ Platinum Chip (a computer chip in the shape of a poker chip)
▶ Bottle Caps (the currency of the Wasteland) [x 663]
▶ Pre-War Money (the currency used before the war) [$1,015 – which is worth anywhere from that amount to three times that in caps, depending on the merchant, location, and how much she can convince them to trade it for]
Sentimental Items:
▶ Poker Chips [x 7 – one for each of the casinos she's been to, including the Lucky 38, Atomic Wrangler, Vikki and Vance, and the Sierra Madre]
▶ Vera's Partitures
▶ Mormon Scripture (a gift from Daniel in Zion Canyon)
▶ Teddy Bear (one of the things she was carrying when she got shot. written on its tag is a name: Micah)
▶ Engraved cigarette lighter
▶ Mark of Caesar
▶ Ambassador Crocker's Note
▶ Obituary of Robert House
Network Sample: [intro @ eudio]
Prose/Action Sample: [test drive]