Here is a place for new members to tell the rest of Duty about their characters.
Write the backstory of your character, and tell them somthing interesting about yourself.
(Post, please be IC)
*The Duty members gather around the fire. Some sit, some stand. They begin to listen to each others storys as it grows deeping into night*
Here is the story of the childhood of James Kalix.
My name is James Kalix. I used to live in a small village, the village was peaceful, and everyone were friends. The village had around two hundred people living in it, it was quite small really. The place was almost like a miniature town. We had everything you might need, from food to the police. We didn't do much travelling because everything we needed was here.
I was twelve years old. Although I was young, I was strong, my father taught me never to stand down and to be brave. I lived with my brother, Ollie. Ollie was his proper name but everyone called him Knoxie, he liked it. He was a good brother; he was younger than me; he was four years younger than me: only eight at the time. We were best friends, and nobody could separate us. Ollie was really funny sometimes, mostly immature, but he was a funny kid. Everytime something serious happened he just had to make it into a joke. We always stuck up for each other, whenever each of us were in trouble, the other would stay, and we never left each other's sides.
My memory, the bad one, is the worst one of my life. It shaped the lives of myself, my family, my friends, everybody, and the whole planet. I was playing in the park with my brother. The sun was setting, the sky was amazing. A beautiful orange beamed over the mountains, it faded into a pink, then to a dark, deep purple. The shadows drifted; everything looked stretched like it was being pulled apart, long, dark, and alone. The final tweeting of the birds drifted into the distance. The wind blew the roundabout in circles, and then stopped. Ollie and I came to a standstill. The swings stopped. The planet seemed to freeze over, nothing moved, no sounds could be heard, that's when they came...
There was a loud roar coming from over the mountains; the ground shook. An object flew over the horizon of the mountain. At first it looked like an aeroplane, then, some more flew over. My brother was speechless, as was I. I didn't know what was happening. I noticed a flame from the back of one of the objects; it was being propelled by something. Before I had time to recognise what they were something caught my attention. A scream howled over in my direction. It was my mother crying for us, she wanted us inside. I jumped off the swings, not looking up, not looking back. There was a stone wall in-between the house and the park that we usually went round. I didn't have time to make that journey. I prepared for a jump over the wall. I threw myself up and over, using my hands to pull myself over further. I landed safely, and then started running again. I was a few metres away from the front door, then I remembered Ollie, he was still at the park. A call came from behind me. It was Ollie. He was calling for me. I turned around to see Ollie trying to climb over the wall, he wasn't tall enough. I ran back over to the wall, my little legs carried me as fast as they could possibly move. I threw my hand over the wall offering to help him up. His cold hands grasped onto mine. I started to pull him. At the same time pulling him, I stared into the sky. I realised what they were now, they were rockets. I didn't have any more time to think. I pulled him all the way up and over, and then we started running together. We went through the front door into the house. My mother stood at the other side of the room shouting at us to get into the basement. I grasped my brother's hand; I dragged him along behind me. We jumped through the door and down some wooden stairs. I had never really been down there before, I was never allowed.
At the bottom was a massive iron door. The door was heavy but I managed to push it open slowly. The door moaned as it opened, we walked in.
My Mother rushed in, slamming the door shut behind her. My father sat on a wooden chair placing small pieces of wood onto a fire in the corner of the room. My brother and I sat down in another corner of the room. I remember him crying his eyes out, he knew something was wrong. My Father was talking about the missiles that were flying over, then it hit. Silence for a second, then the crashing came down. The noise, it ripped my eardrums out; I fell to the ground... then silence. I think my body couldn't take the noise; it shut down...
I wasn't aware of the time that had passed; it seemed like a few seconds. I heard my brother whispering in my ear, "James, wake up. I need you!" I opened my eyes; a crack of light beamed through my eye lashes blinding me. I closed my eyes tightly, and then opened them again slowly. I carefully adjusted to the light. I looked around, my brother sat next to me on the right, and my mother on the left. My father sat in the distance still on the same chair. I pulled myself up, as I did so my Mother and Father smiled. I turned to my brother and he smiled at me too.
So, you may think what happened? Well, my Father told me everything that had happened. He told me that a war had started. He said it was World War 3, the war of the bombs, atomic bombs. He said that from now on, from this day their lives will be different. Nothing will ever be the same. The whole planet had been destroyed killing billions of people. I didn't believe my father; how could everything be gone? How? Why?
I pulled myself to my feet; I had to see what happened. It took a few seconds to get used to my feet from lying down on the hard ground. I staggered slowly to the big iron door and grasped onto the handle; it felt warm. Before I opened the door my Father told me to be careful and that a lot of changes had happened.
The door creaked open. A burning smell came from under the door. I peered through the side of the door; my father was right, I could now sense that something had gone wrong. I ascended the stairs into the house. Nothing had changed there. I went to the window but I couldn't see out, dust covered the glass. I swiftly moved to the door, and then pulled it open. Dust flew across my face as a strong wind blew through the doorway. I couldn't see much outside as there was some kind of sand blowing everywhere. I took a few steps out onto the ground. The floor felt crispy and dry. I took a look down to see what was on the floor. The ground was cracked and dry with a blanket of thick dust. I observed the surroundings. The trees were dead, the leaves had blown away and the bark scorched. Something had changed. Something really bad.
I wandered down the abandoned street attempting to look through the windows. The place was a ghost town with an absent sign of life. I wondered to myself where everyone had gone. I moved to the end of the street, there used to be an excellent view of the surrounding countryside on a cliff top. As I moved to the edge of the cliff I began to see more and more. I looked out into the barren wasteland. There was no sign of life or water anywhere. The only object I could make out was an old disused water tower over on a hill in the distance; it stood looking down on everything like a god looking over its people. In front of me down the steep crumbling drop, down there, a lake, well it used to be a lake; it's now a dry basin. It used to be full of life, now it's not.
The world has been destroyed. Everyone and everything that I ever knew: dead. Everything dead, except the most important thing to me, my family. There were other people that had survived, but nobody I knew.
My family and I tried to rebuild our lives. It was tough. We were doing all right, until they came. They had to ruin everything; they took the most important things away from me, leaving me on my own. This whole planet has turned to hell, and I am part of it...
Boris Kerechinov sits to the side, musing over things. He sighs.
I was in the army for most of my life... 1983 to 2004. Twenty one years of proud service. I got too bored of the old army routine, it just wasn't like the old army back in war.
I made some friends there, and I lost some.
God, I remember the tragedy that almost ended everything I knew.
Boris becomes grim, and talks in a slightly shaky voice.
The time was 1985, near the end of the Soviet-Afghanistan war. There we were, middle of town, not a sound to be heard, not a thing to see. Noon. Buildings all around.
Hell for a soldier.
None of us were confident that day. We all had the feeling. We called it the "Stomach Sinker." When you know something's gonna go wrong, you get the feeling that your gut's going down like the Titanic.
Boris clears his throat.
Well, we were holed up in a storefront, waiting for orders. The main force was gonna move in soon, and we were scouting the town for any activity.
All of a sudden, the area in front of us exploded.
Someone shot an RPG at the building.
We were shot at immediately, we took cover behind anything we could get. I looked around, three soldiers had died already. Three of my best friends lay on the ground, bleeding, shot to death. Tavonsky, Bortov, and Dorinder.
We eventually picked them off one by one. Thank god they didn't have any more RPG rockets. I was shot twice, both in non threatening areas.
By the end of the day, 7 people total were dead. Me and 4 others survived.
Boris holds in his hand a small necklace of spent bullet casings.
Back when we first became friends, we engraved our names in bullets.
Whenever one of us passed, we were to fire the bullet and keep the casing.
Boris clenches it in his fist.
I have every single one of my squadmates on this chain.
Boris becomes silent, staring into the fire, not saying another word.