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Characters Biography
Reverend Alberts
Half English, half Scottish, Alberts was always physically tough, tempered by his desire to help others. That tough, solid, no-nonsense approach was perfect for a stint as an Army Chaplain, followed by 20 years working with disaffected youths in South London. Having spent his life trying to steer people away from the “bad” side and over to the “good,” Alberts wasn’t happy when his life’s work was destroyed by a pack of raging monsters at tea-time one afternoon. That afternoon he quickly went from ministering to the dead and dying to bringing down the wrath of Alberts on the heads of all the evil abominations. And on any other body parts he can reach.
Donovan “Bulldog” Neal
Donovan is big, tough, and can handle himself in almost any situation. But, he is way more than he seems to a careless glance. He wasn’t just one of the guys providing close protection services to a bunch of wrestlers; he was the guy who set up, owned, and ran the whole security business. Born in Atlanta, GA, he was smart and well-educated, working in law enforcement before setting up his own business. Not just muscle, he was the brains of the operation too. But now he’s another survivor, stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just say a short prayer for all the Zeds that are standing between this man and what he wants. Or get in there and help him kill them!
Rae Higgins
Rae Higgins is an Australian import into Europe. Born in Melbourne, she grew up in Darwin and then took time out to explore the world before settling down to work in London. Quiet, mild-mannered data analyst by day, Rae lights up the night in her true Rockabilly form. The low-key, long-sleeved clothes conceal her tats from boring, conservative middle-managers, her makeup and hair appropriate for an inane office environment. Until the weekend. Then all gray is banned and Rae’s world explodes in music, fun, and loud primary colors. Perhaps fortunately for Rae, she was at the High Rockabilly Festival in Calafell, Spain when the original outbreak kicked off, so she missed out as her dull, boring co-workers were chewed to pieces. And now she doesn’t have to hide her light. Rock my world, Zeds!
Hayato Tanaka
Tanaka is a conflicted individual with a serious death-wish problem. Born in Okinawa, he was brought up around Americans in the military. Moving to mainland Japan with his family, the Americanized Tanaka failed to fit in and took up drama classes. After college he moved to LA, playing cliched bit-parts in bad movies, before moving on to Europe trying to find more ‘serious’ work. All he got there were bad-guy roles in French gangster films and some tats. Now, in the apocalypse, he seems to be confusing his own reality with some of the movie parts he has played. This seems to involve visions of the Yakuza, demon, and a Hollywood take on bushido.
Ana Larive
She would probably be assigned to that group the establishment called “disaffected youth,” except that Ana largely didn’t give enough of a crap about anything except travelling around Europe, indulging her passions for photographing abandoned places, and death metal bands. And now that there isn’t much “establishment” left, Ana cares even less. While there is now a distinct lack of bands on tour, there are ever-more abandoned places. And the sweet part about her current job is that she gets to go into those places and make them look even more abandoned. You see, she’s discovered a new passion – blowing stuff up!
Lt. Bill Masterson
Bill Masterson had a checkered career in the Army. He wanted heroic soldiering, against bold and evil enemies of Queen and Country, but what he got was a bunch of dirty terrorists. He wanted a good shooting war, but what he got was leading his men through a series of stupid “police actions” in crappy parts of the world. So he quit. After a couple of worthless jobs, he woke up one morning to the Apocalypse going on in the streets of London. Masterson, now the heroic soldier he wanted to be, let himself in to the local Reserves barracks, tooled himself up, and started his own shooting war. It wasn’t the war he had expected or trained for, but it worked. And he is bloody good at it!
Classic Briar
Once upon a time, Briar got the call to suit up to handle a riot in London. But, this time it wasn’t the usual procession of hippies, environmentalists, and hairy anarchists getting the rough end of Briar’s nightstick. Happily, his affinity for unsolicited violence actually did get him through the next few months, before he had to abandon Blighty and move on to foreign fields. Now he can extend his good old-fashioned police methods beyond clipping errant teenagers upside the head to controlling a horde of man-eating mutant monsters by shooting, burning, and blowing them to smithereens. And his happy-go-lucky London bobby persona helps to keep the morale of the team up. Or annoy the crap out of them.
Rob Briar
Rob Briar was a police constable at the age of 17, until the day he was called out to what seemed, to his superiors, to be some half-witted anarchist riot. We all know it wasn’t, but Briar discovered that the hard way. Luckily, he wasn’t just an old-fashioned “London bobby”, but had spent enough time on counter-terrorism work to be familiar with a board range of firearms. Underneath the happy-go-lucky, jokey exterior Briar is hard as nails. That toughness, along with the toughness of the kevlar in his riot gear, is about all that got him through those first few days alive. Now he is continuing to do his duty, serving the public by trying to stamp out this menace with any and every weapon that comes to hand.
Classic Masterson
No-one has ever really understood how this Masterson rose through the ranks at all, although some have suggested his richer and better-looking cousin, Captain Sir Richard Wiggins, may have had some influence. Or perhaps it was his smarter brother. But, as is always noted, he’s a rough diamond, a man of few (polite) words and has an unnaturally calm demeanour in combat situations. Pretty much everyone reckons this is due to his lack of imagination, empathy and intelligence. Luckily, he directs his men decisively and always gets the job done – no matter how unsavory that job would appear to anyone with good taste or decent manners.
Oisten Jägerhorn
Being a big guy from Sweden who enjoyed beer and getting loud in bars, before the outbreak Jägerhorn tended to fit everyone’s idea of a modern-day Viking. But, after being vaguely involved in the craziness that was the Great Nordic Biker war in the 1990s, he’d decided that insane violence directed at people was far less fun than drinking plenty of beer and playing mediocre lead guitar for ‘Metalbika’ – his Metallica tribute band. Once the outbreaks reached Scandinavia on the other hand, insane violence became the order of the day after all. Zeds vs. People – not good karma, by Jägerhorn’s standards. Big Swedish Viking Jägerhorn vs. Zeds? Bring it on!
DJ Scully
The coolest Dutch underground DJ of his generation, Scully can’t help but be loved by everyone. Women seem to end up loving him, regardless of any common sense involved. The men should all hate him for that alone, but he’s just too much fun to be around. When the outbreak broke, he’d just finished a monster set at a disused insane asylum north of London. As the Zeds tried to eat everyone, being quick-witted and quick on his feet, if not combat-trained, kept him alive. Scully has always had trouble taking life seriously and the apocalypse hasn’t changed that. Just that he’s really good at dispatching monsters. So good that it spawned silly rumors that he must be ex-special forces, which is just another Scully joke.
Anton Strasser
Strasser marched off to his first war in 1939 as a soldier in the German army invading Poland, followed by a stomp through France in 1940 and a charge into Russia in 1941. But that led to him almost freezing to death, fighting both General Winter and the Red Army equally hard for his life. In 1942 Stalingrad loomed, victories ended, and disillusion set in. At Gumrak airfield, he was severely concussed, but lucky. Flown out, comatose, into the waiting arms of one Hans Volter, he was quietly spirited away to Volter’s lab as a wonderful subject for cryogenic tests. There he stayed, frozen and forgotten, until accidentally released by an outbreak. Bewildered, he had one brief chance to kill Volter but didn’t take it, much to his regret when he found out what was going on.
Tom Banner
Tom Banner had obsessed about the heroics of the Middle Ages since he was a small boy. His fairly stellar career as a Management Consultant actually enabled this obsession to grow as he moved from his native Canada, via Boston, to England. He had already created his own armor and took on his new persona as a re-enactor in Merry Olde England. This move coincided with the release of ‘Chivalry,’ which enabled him to act out the fantasy to a degree that most definitely would not be safe as a re-enactor. When the outbreak came, Tom climbed into his armor and went off to save fair maidens from monsters. For real. The fact that he refuses to take off his armor has lead to concerns that he is taking the whole medieval thing a touch too far. But who cares?
Mr. Foster
Foster had wandered into day trading from a mediocre English private school education, with the classic “you’ll never amount to anything, Foster” ringing in his ears from the school’s careers officer. Not that Foster really cared. But, bizarrely, he found that day trading suited him. He started to generate large sums of money and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not that he would admit to enjoying a job, obviously. He also had a habit of verbally abusing authority figures. This led to Foster being seen as a clever, smart guy, with a sardonic sense of humor and great taste in clothes and cars. Or a jumped-up little tool. You decide.
Mrs. Foster
When she interviewed Mr. Foster for a commodities trader job, Mrs. Foster was already a scarily-successful trader at a top firm in London. She was what he wanted to be, but Mr. Foster was clearly a no-hoper as a trader; he couldn’t play by the rules or keep his mouth shut. Still, there was something about him; he was so cool, so suave, so…unique. Unique enough to give her a gas mask of her own on their first date. It was almost as if he’d known that a chain gun wielding mutant maniac was going to create a flesh-eating clone horde and ruin her streak of multi-million-pound bonuses. They were married soon after in a whirlwind of flowers, lace, Zeds, and explosives. They may not be able to work together in the city making huge piles of cash, but they can work together to exterminate the zeds making huge piles of Dosh!
D.A.R.
This D.A.R., or Domestic Assistant Robot, is an upgraded version of the previous D.A.R. model and utilizes the latest in Horzine experimental robotics. Similar units are undergoing tests at various Horzine bases in the hopes of developing the D.A.R. for consumer and security markets, but this D.A.R. is special. This D.A.R. encountered Zeds while stationed at the Horzine Arctic Outpost 12, and its primary programming was overwritten by its Emergency Security Protocols, turning D.A.R. into a robotic killing machine. Unfortunately, D.A.R. shows little concern for human beings except Horzine employees, who it only hates only slightly less than humanity in general. Seeing a new market in military robots, D.A.R. has been transferred to Zed Containment Duty for field testing.
Badass Santa
First, Krampus came for his elves and his reindeer. Then, Krampus came for his home. Now, Santa isn’t going to take it anymore. Now, he has a machine gun. Ho ho ho!
St. Nicholas began his watch over the children of the world hundreds of years ago, thinking he would spend eternity bringing Christmas cheer and toys to the good little girls and boys to the world. But then, Krampus come. In a year since the Krampus Christmas Santa Claus has decided to himself to avenging to his fallen worker’s, friends, and family. Gone are the rosy cheeks and the belly like a bowl of jelly, replaced with a permanent scowl and muscle layered on muscle. There is no silent night this holiday season, this year, Santa Claus is all out of goodwill and Christmas cheer. He only has seething rage, revenge, and a vast quantity of ammunition with which to ring in the holidays.”