Lone Wanderer (Paula)

Name: Rae
Contact Info: Crazy_Lazy

Character Name: The Lone Wanderer, Paula
Canon: Fallout 3
Canon Point: After the last main quest: Taking it Back
Background/History: History
Previous Game History: n/a
Personality:

The Wasteland is a stressful place, but Paula has always been neurotic. Her anxiety flares up when she stresses out about certain things, and she's only really learned to get control of herself long enough to concentrate on not getting shot in the face during a firefight. When the chips are down she handles herself well enough, but make no mistake she’s internally trying to reassure herself so she doesn’t have a panic attack in the middle of a firefight. When things aren't going just so according to plan, it worries her. She's a creature of habit and anything that disturbs her routine turns her world around. Imagine how much having to leave the vault screwed with her. There is very little room for a nice and tidy schedule in the Capital Wasteland. As a result she tries to find comfort in bringing routine back into her life the best she can. For example, cleaning her guns every day at noon, ect. It’s a small comfort, but it’s something that helps her get through the day. Without constantly trying to find these small ways to cope, she wouldn’t make it out in the wastes. It can be an inconvenience to others traveling with her, as she will stop everything in the middle of nowhere to indulge in one of these habitual routines no matter what those around her says. It doesn’t matter if they’re on a time sensitive mission. If she can spare two minutes to check over her rations, take inventory, ect, then she will.

When Paula has her mind set on something, very little can break her concentration from that goal. Finding her father was less about being reunited with him (as she was positive she'd never even forgive him for leaving) and more about this need to find out why he left in the first place. Even if it got dangerous at times and she wanted nothing more than to cut her losses and go find a place to settle down, not knowing the reason her father/only parent left her was eating away at her. Her obsessiveness also tends to drag her into things she otherwise wouldn't be part of. She could accept a simple delivery job to make some spare caps, only to have it escalate into something more complicated. Her self preservation instincts tell her to forget it because living is far more important, but at the same time she started something and she wants to finish it. She has to know why this simple delivery turned into something more complicated, why the person who initially offered her the job lied, ect. Perhaps she’s crazy, but her obsessions have always been a good distraction for her. Because while she was obsessing over something, her mind was so preoccupied that she didn’t think about a lot of things; like her father, or the home she’d never go back to. It's the same with other things as well. If she starts reading a book, she must finish. If she hears a snippet of interesting rumors, she has to find out if they're true (that's what lead her to Oasis, after all). She obsesses over all these things and yet ignores the real problem. On the bright side to this, her obsessiveness makes her a good problem solver, mostly because she pulls out all the stops to overcome an obstacle. Over time she’s managed to grow an impressive attention to detail from constantly looking over things hundreds of times to avoid missing something. She wants things to be perfect in a stupendously imperfect world, which is both a strength and her greatest weakness.

One of her coping mechanisms aside from obsessively adhering to routine is humor. It's not always very good humor, but it's humor and the important thing is that she makes herself laugh if only a little to distract herself from the fact that there's a group of mercenaries out there with a bounty on her head. Or the fact that the next time she steps out into the open world she may very well get eaten by a deathclaw. Most times her humor borders on sarcastic and leaves a bad taste in others mouths, but this absolutely doesn’t deter here, nor does she generally care. This tends to happen most when she starts to get anxious and cracking a stupid joke or two doesn't seem to be cutting it. She feels if she can make jokes out of her life and make it seem like it's not that serious, things won't seem that bad. Because of this people often think that she doesn’t take a lot of things as seriously as she should, or that she just doesn’t care about the events going on around her. At times, this can be true, as Paula doesn’t generally care about problems that don’t directly involve her in some way or another. But it isn’t always. Joking around is just another one of the ways she keeps from breaking down.

Survival is the top most priority for Paula. She will kill if it lets her live to see another day. She may hesitate, she may not actually want to kill, but she will. She reasons with herself that it's better them than her, and when that doesn't work for her she'll go out and do a good deed -- begrudgingly, even, in a vain attempt to make herself feel better. But for the most part she's thinking about number one. There are times where she tries to be less selfish, but in the end she acknowledges that that's who she is and she can't really change, according to herself. When her journey had come to its final climax and one person had to go into the basin full of lethal amounts of radiation to activate Project Purity, her first words had been, "I'm not going in there!" Sarah Lions sacrificed herself for the wasteland when Paula wouldn’t, while she watched and thanked the stars it wasn't her. She didn’t care about this project, she had reasoned, why should she get herself killed for something her father dragged her into? Sarah and the rest of the Brotherhood are the ones that care, not her.

Paula isn't against trying to use people to get by; via her looks, money, ect. But given that her people skills are low as hell, it really only works against the truly stupid or perhaps those who have a soft spot for blondes. She's no good at pretending to be something she's not, whether that be interested in someone, or being a paragon of the wastes. She's honest in that her personality is right there for all to see, even when she tries to pretend and fails at it she gives up pretty quickly. She wears everything on her sleeve, which is probably another one of her greatest weaknesses. When she's mad, sad, happy -- you'll see it unless you're dense yourself.

Paula is very aware that she's a difficult person to deal with. Because of this, she's always been paranoid about her relationships with other people. Was her friend Amata mad at her or something else? Was she going to avoid talking to her because she snapped at her about something probably really stupid? She had to know where she stood with everyone always. Her father leaving her in the Vault didn't help this at all. Being all alone, she's a little on the desperate side for some kind of companionship. Relationships she forges don't tend to last long because of her difficult personality, so whenever she gets new ones she goes the extra mile to make sure they don't cut ties with her. Which...ends up adding to the problem, as she'll come off as clingy and needy because of this. And the relationships that do last? They’re usually not the healthiest, but as she sees it it’s better than being all alone. She lives in perpetual fear that whoever she gets close to in some way or another will leave her like her father. Paula doesn’t try very hard to change, though. She has resigned to the fact that this is who she is, even if she doesn’t care for it, and figures that she’s better off finding a way to make her personality flaws and quirks work for her instead of trying to become something she knows she never can be. “A decent human being,” is how she would put it.


Abilities/Powers:

* Paula is very good with using random crap and scrap metal around her to make all sorts of weapons, like a flaming sword with a gas tank and a lawnmower blade, or a Rock-it-Launcher (a gun that launchers random objects) with parts from a leaf blower and some tinkering. This talent also extends to making traps, from pressure plate to trip wired triggered traps. Nothing is junk to her as she can probably use it for something.

* She's also good with guns, as is to be expected from someone surviving in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Though because she heavily relies on traps, explosives, and sneaking around, her skill with guns are usually passable but nothing extraordinary. She's a lot better with guns/weapons she put together herself because she's so familiar with them. But her real ability lies with finding a way out of situations most people get stuck in, mapping out escape routes in tense situations with quick observation, ect. She has a really good attention to detail which helps with this.

* She's a real science nerd, having inherited her father's love of science. She knows a lot of medical science but she strayed away from that and moved her interest into computers, energy weapons, ect. Her knowledge is limited by her somewhat brief experience in the wasteland so she's still learning.

Items/Weapons:

* Pipboy-3000
* Shishkebab/flaming sword
* Plasma Rifle

Sample Entry: Testdrive Post

Sample Entry Two:

Paula and her companion sat in uncomfortable silence outside the Citadel. Her gaze remained fixated on an invisible point in the distance as she refused to meet Charon's gaze. And she knew, really, that whether or not the ghoul had any opinion on what she just did, he would never outwardly express it. Because Charon was here because she held his contract, and he was honor bound to do what she said, and that included keeping his mouth shut about matters he had nothing to do with. But there was a big part of her that wondered what he thought; did he think she acted selfishly, or logically? If Charon were a mindless ghoul who did what she asked and felt nothing on the matter, it wouldn't bother her. But she knew he had morals of his own, ones he just kept to himself. That's why he killed Ahzrukhal immediately after he signed his contract over to Paula, right? Because he was "an evil bastard"? The very idea that Charon is sitting here judging her is very troubling. What if circumstances somehow landed Charon under someone else's employ next, and he decided to turn around and blast her head off with a shotgun for being such a selfish runt? For making Sarah sacrifice herself instead of her? For leaving all those people to die over the course of her time in the wastes because she didn't think trying to save them was worth almost getting killed? Or was he simply pissed that she didn't go into the irradiated filled chamber because so long as she's alive, he's bound by a contract? That was troubling, in of itself. What if he wants her to die? What if he wants to kill her?

What if he was thinking about how he'd do it right now?

Her gaze shifted to Charon warily. The ghoul was polishing his shotgun with an old rag, not paying Paula any mind at all, it seemed. He did that a lot. Completely ignored her until she had an order for him, or approached him with a question. Perhaps he had no opinion on her at all. He didn't seem to care about much besides whether or not his targets died fast enough. But not knowing his feelings on the matter was killing her. It could come back and bite her in the ass if she didn't know where she stood with him. And also, besides that, she just wants to know.

"Charon?"

There's a gravely grumble from the six foot ghoul, but Paula couldn't discern if it was a cue for her to talk or an annoyed sound at the fact that she was bothering him. Either way, he didn't look up.

"Do you think I did the smart thing, or the wrong thing?" She shakes her head, not liking that phrasing at all. "What would you have done if you had been there? In my shoes, I mean. I know you were outside taking care of the Enclave -- I mean, I'm not saying...I mean, I'm not blaming you for not being there at the time because you know, radiation heals ghouls and you would've been fine--" she cuts herself off and sighs, rubbing tiredly at one eye. "If you were me, what would you have done?"

The entire time Paula rambled at Charon, the ghoul continued what he was doing. By the time she was done he finally looked up at her with his filmy blue eyes, expression impossible to read due to his face rotting far too much to express emotions naturally, mixed with Charon's entire stone cold demeanor. She instantly regretted asking this question. She didn't want the answer anymore and she was about to tell him to forget it when:

"That's not relevant."

Paula's brows knitted together as she regards him with a confused stare. "What?"

"What I think. It is not relevant to you."

When Paula stares wordlessly in surprise, Charon continues.

"You made your choices. Live by them."

Despite the fact that Charon's voice resembled a broken cement mixer, those words were music to her ears. She always stood by her choices, even when they made her feel guilty or upset, she always stood by them. His response, while not the direct one she was looking for, was akin to getting permission to not feel guilty about someone else dying in her place. It was all she needed to keep deluding herself into believing she did nothing wrong. And hey, if what he thought really wasn't relevant to her, perhaps that meant he wouldn't blow her brains clean out of her skull for all the decisions she's made since taking him on as her personal bodyguard.

"Uh, okay. Yeah. That's...that's all." She pushes herself to her feet and dusts off her pants. "I think I'll just...head back to Megaton."

Charon stood when she did, tossing the rag to the side and holstering his shotgun to the strap on his back. "And I will follow."

She nods at him, staring in contemplation. When the day comes, and she finds herself no longer in need of Charon's services...

...She'll mail him his contract and make sure she's nowhere near the grumpy ghoul when she releases him. Paranoia? Maybe.

Better safe than sorry.