Writing Reveries

Name: Revy Nightingale (Alias)

 

Age: 27

 

Occupation: Information Broker/Guide/Assassin

 

Species: Human

 

Personality: Jaded, Sarcastic, Distrustful, and the owner of a Happy Trigger Finger. She wants the world to become a better place, but is fluent in the way society works currently.

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Bio: The world used to be a relatively safe place—well, at least there was once a time when you could walk out your front door and not be concerned about every person nearby wanting to shank your ass and leave you to rot in the gutters. Those peaceful days were over, ever since HAVEN nuked the planet and more or less took over everything and redefined the pecking order; nowadays there were only the Bureaucrats—wealthy pansies who could get everything they wanted—and then the common folk who were all practically peasants, struggling to survive each day. Needless to say, the concept of ‘happiness’ was rarely acknowledged by most people these days. No one has been happy in decades.

 

Civilization isn’t extinct, but much of the earth is in ruins and most people tended to stay clear of those areas since they weren’t exactly thriving with life. Society began to band together into areas that had been less affected, creating widespread poverty and a general lack of resources to go around. These pockets of civilization existed within the ‘safe’ confines of massive concrete and iron walls that secluded them from the harsh elements of the desolate landscapes in the world. Most places were run down, junky, and full of various degrees of crime. In this new world, being a criminal was the standard… it was the only way to make enough to survive.

 

This was the land that Revy had known most of her life. She had been five when the takeover had occurred. She has vague memories from her childhood of the kind of life that her family had once been privilege to—your standard middle class home with a yard big enough to play in and just enough in the budget each year to take a small family vacation to a chosen destination, usually still within less than a day’s drive. Even cars were a rarity to find today, ones that worked anyway. No one could afford fuel, so they’d been forced to find other means of travel. It was almost like living in the classic “Old West” again… only this time it was even more dangerous.

 

HAVEN doesn’t take lightly those who oppose them, and have their police enforcers posted in every drab excuse for a city or town that exists, and even some teams were tasked with patrolling the wastelands.

 

Naturally, as humanity often does, there were still those who were crafty and gutsy enough to challenge and outsmart the system. Revy is one such individual, and it was a talent she discovered at age nine. She is clever, intuitive, and most of all… patient. Growing up largely in this dystopic society, she was a quick learner when it came to getting the things her family needed for survival. Money has little value when there aren’t enough resources to go around, so she learned the art of trading… and of stealing. In this dog-eat-dog world, it was simple for her, as an innocent looking child, to con people into letting their guard down. She supposed she was fortunate she had been so young at the beginning of this new world, because back then people were more inclined to help each other, whereas nowadays a child would receive the same skepticism and scorn as a silver-tongued adult would get.

 

Her skills increased as she grew older, and by age eleven she had even killed her first person with the revolver her father kept stowed away. It had been self-defense, as the receiver of the bullet had attempted to rape her, but no one cared about reasoning anymore. Dead people were found every day, the only time the law cared about a crime was when someone from the upper class was victimized… this new system couldn’t care less about the strife of the common people. For months the image of her assailant haunted her, his sunken eyes displaying shock while blood began to dribble from his lip as his body began to lose feeling, his life’s essence pouring out of the hole in his gut. In addition to learning marksmanship, Revy took to wielding daggers and even dabbling in poisons. She would do anything to survive.

 

By the age of fifteen she was selling her skills, offering to do dirty jobs for decent pay. She became incredibly proficient at her trade, and even expanded to becoming a bodyguard whenever people wanted to move locations. It came as no shock to her that she returned one day to find neither of her parents home, a layer of dust covering their rundown shack, and instead locating their names on a simple stone in a joint grave. She had expected it sooner rather than later, the transition into the new world had been hard on them and she always got the feeling that they would welcome death with open arms if it meant they could escape their current hell. She was told they died from a disease they’d each contracted. Part of her was thankful for their passing, as it meant they no longer had to stare at walls with such blank and hopeless expressions.

 

Without her parents having to depend on her any longer, Revy transitioned to focusing on work. She abandoned her hovel of a home, leaving the restricting walls of the city for the openness and adventures that awaited beyond them. She became a wanderer and during her travels she built a reputation for being a reliable contact for those of rebellious organizations, and a damn good bodyguard or assassin… sometimes both on the same job. She’s had her fair share of close calls with the law, sporting a few battle scars from their spats, but has yet to find a situation she couldn’t overcome. If things got too wild, she would find a nice, quiet place to lay low for a while until the heat was off her and she could move freely again. The forgotten lands of the now called wastes were her territory now. It was here she planned to stay until change could brought about and balance could be restored to the world.