Meet the Main Five! The Heroes of 365 INFANTRY!
Learn About the Toughest Protags in The Game!
OVERVIEW
It’s high-time we introduce the newcomers and refresh old-timers about the core cast that makes 365 INFANTRY the pulp power-hour it is. Heroes you can root for, explore, and learn about as the series rolls on. While I talk a big game about our old-school episodic intentions, our commitment to affordable entertainment, I’ll admit that I sometimes forget to put a word in edgewise for characters whom I love visiting and revisiting every time I write. Let’s fix that, shall we?
Lt. Gibson Blanc in THE WAR
In the city of Haven, he was just another citizen. Another consumer of blind pleasures and a victim of his world’s decadence. Not even his name mattered, for everyone was simply “comrade.” It was only when the veil lifted from the Party’s façade, and A.C.E.S. continued to spin out of control, taking friends and loved ones out in “accidents” that drove him over the edge.
He escaped on foot, running into the Wastelands, unsure of his future. On his travels, he crossed paths with a dying hound who, with his last breath, asked him to take everything he had. The young man obliged. He rode off into the desert, clad in his leather jacket and boots, wielding the stranger’s duel pistols, and riding his vintage motorcycle, “Exciter.” He even took his name: Gibson.
When the Indian wolf made it to the Force’s base on accident, he decided to enlist, and was taken under the wing of General Adam Knox, both finding kinship in their status as Haven refugees. During training, he found faith, a knack for wielding his guns and bike, and love. A smothering, playful love in the form of Auto Corp driver Evelyn “Teddy” Blanc.
After years of service in the Moto Corp, and the devastation of the Black Country’s first attack, Gibson was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, and now serves as a model soldier. He can be hot-headed from time to time, but he always aims to be affable, supportive and energized for the all-day, everyday fight against A.C.E.S. and the desert’s own bizarre villains.
Gen. Adam Knox in THE WAR
General Adam Knox is a complicated fellow.
Once upon a time, he was a Haven police officer. He never stepped out of line, never questioned the chain of command.
Then his partner died. An upstanding officer rubbed out in an “accident.” When Knox found out the truth, he was put on protest detail, and his arm was pulled out in front of a speeding gate. The arm was severed, and replaced with cybernetics. This too was an “accident.”
Bitter and resentful, armed with only his gun and Hemi ‘Cuda, he fled into the Wastelands. There, he happened across the love of his life, a white wolf in a gorgeous Porsche. Known as “Angel,” the two spent many happy years together, ultimately joining the Resistance and introducing new gadgets and ideas to their operations. With time, they rose through the ranks, with Knox hand-picked to take over from his elder, General Leonard Ford Godred.
When Angel sacrificed herself in their largest battle, the 2466 Centurion Offensive, Knox turned his loss into a burning rage and hatred for A.C.E.S and for the corruption that Haven stood for. He’s a contemplative, gruff commanding officer who rules with his iron fist, but does his best to maintain morale among his troops. The only point of sensitivity he affords himself is his bond with Gibson, a surrogate son for the family he never had the chance to build.
Valentina in THE HUNT
She was an ordinary girl as far as the Wasteland went, palling around in her trusty Humvee, left to her by her ailing father. Then came the day they took her away, the day the games began.
Abducted by mysterious figures, she awoke in an old Roman Colosseum, her Humvee chained to the ground, and herself strapped to the driver’s seat, stark naked. In a bizarre gladiatorial game, she was set loose to slaughter those in the arena, before thousands of citizens. She managed to escape the tournament and returned to the Wastelands traumatized, with only a pair of Roman sandals left by her captors. She was discovered and befriended by a mechanic, Eric, who through his help, allows her to understand the bizarre conditioning she has undergone.
After meeting a far more troubled survivor, the kind-hearted but unstable Marcus, and falling for the quiet martial artist Brennus, she assembles a team to put a stop to the madness once and for all. Valentina is a determined young gal whose plight to destroy the Colosseum recalls the obsessions of Captain Ahab and his white whale. She grows tougher, stronger, more sure of herself throughout, but never forgets the value of kindness in her struggles. Even when most of the mental damage is undone, and warriors are made anew, the road ahead is fraught with peril for both body and mind on this incredible journey.
Lita in THE URBAN AVENGER
She stalks the streets of Haven, her V8-powered Bug pounding the tarmac, her guns aimed at the corrupt system that courses through her city’s vein. And yet, the crazed twists and turns Haven’s Artificially Controlled Eco-System takes always make the fight twice as hard, and twice as fun.
Lita is the embodiment of the series and its freewheeling spirit. She’s dressed like a hippie, drives like a maniac, and shoots like a sniper. From her punk mohawk to her crimson-colored VW Bug, “The Red Devil,” the dark gray 20-something is a rebel with a cause, chipping away at the powers that be with a grin on her face, a joint in her mouth, and a sandaled paw flat on the throttle. She has a small sadist’s streak when dealing justice, but the punishment usually fits the crime. Lita often contends with shady characters that are twice as deadly, cruel and despicable as she could ever dream of being, and the darkest days of the job toughen her up, and make the bright spots shine all the brighter.
While alternating between hot-headed, stone-cold serious, and relaxed, Lita serves as a contact for many players in the fight for freedom. She assembles the many vigilantes of Haven into an organization, The Avenger’s Creed. Everyone from biker gang leaders like Mack Malten to North district hero Professor Smith, and more, work together to fight the powers that be.
She became a point of contact for the Force early on in life, and late into the reign of General Leo Godred, and later on, became the handler for Recon Agent Roger Steele in his plight to locate A.C.E.S.’s base of operations. And through it all, she maintains a long-distance romance with cowboy lawman Nic Ridgefield, right thru into his days as Chief Engineer in the Infantry, a passionate romance that never fades, even as the war drags on.
Nic Ridgefield in THE SPEEDFREAK FILES
When he’s with Hell Patrol, he gets his hound by hook or by crook. When he’s on the Force, he’s the man to beat when learning about A.C.E.S. and her rogues gallery of bizarre vehicles and reappropriated designs. And when it comes to heavy rock music, he and his trio Metröpolis are an unstoppable speed metal monolith, delivering searing sets on the stage of popular solar joint Doc’s Oasis, every night they can.
Nic Ridgefield, codenamed “Speedfreak,” is another junction point in the world of the Wastelands. The black wolf is one of the true renaissance men of the desert. A hound with a sprawling knowledge of machinery and gadgetry who got his start fighting crime in Hell Patrol, the desert’s semi-decentralized law enforcement agency. On the job he met white biker Rory “Madskins” Armstrong and the teenaged brown mutt Harrison “Richter” Garret, and after discovering the former’s talents at the drum kit and the latter’s guitar prodigy status, he knew he had a power trio to rule the Wasteland stages and airwaves.
It was through General Godred’s daughter May, a fellow Hell Patrolwoman, that he was brought in as Chief Engineer, partner Harrison Garret following a few years afterwards as Security Chief, leaving Rory to foster the next generation of lawmen and women. Through it all, he’s kept one love near and dear to his heart, the Haven vigilante Lita, whom he always goes through hell and back to see as often as possible.
Lover, fighter, drunkard, bassist and part-time genius, Ridgefield is a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of quite a few. A hound who always plays it cool, and who always gets the job done, no matter what it takes.
Without these five, the heart, soul, humor and power of 365 INFANTRY is lost. Raise a glass to this badass quintet, and as the great General Knox always says:
May God Bless You & This Force. Be seeing you!
Awesome~
It's good to have character introductions since these things tend to fly over my head if not explicitly stated...
A good outline of your fictional universe and an example for me to talk about mine.