PLAYER CHARACTERS

According to Brad’s mother, his father left as soon as she told him she was pregnant. She despised him for
leaving and Brad is pretty sure she used him as an excuse for her addiction.

Brad spent his youth taking care of his failing mother. He just wasn’t able to watch her suffer through withdrawals, and she wasn’t excited about it either. So he spent most of his youth scrambling to find drugs for her habit. Of course this kept him from school and pretty much any reasonable social groups. He learned to be
aggressive and dangerous, and fiercely determined to get what he needed.

While Brad treated his mother as well as he could, he didn’t really share any sort of real relationship with her.  She was just too far gone to have much of a conversation with. The only one he really got along with was his a puppy that he found one day. The fierce little thing was protecting his brother and sister from other, larger
dogs. Brad drove the dogs away. The puppy seemed to immediately trust him, and allowed him to take his siblings to a local shelter. From then on the two were pretty much inseparable. Argus is an eleven year old bullmastiff. Brad doesn’t seem to notice that he is just as spry as he was when he was one, but he does think
that Argus is frighteningly smart for such a beefy dog.

During this time Brad caught a bit of a drug habit of his own. He also managed to get his on/off girlfriend pregnant. He was 19, she was 18. Elizabeth Rangel, who was not an addict of any sort, left to raise the child with the help of her parents. She didn’t tell him about the child until a year later when Brad finally got clean
and he went to find her. Brad, having embraced a calm, introspective lifestyle, is desperately trying to follow Elizabeth’s wish for him to leave her and the child alone. But he is finding this difficult. His first attempt to see his daughter did not go well. Elizabeth screamed at him and her father forced him off the property.

After his mother’s passing, Brad took courses online studying to be a care worker while working as a security guard at night. During his free time he volunteered with a group that brings meals and care to folks that can’t leave the house, mostly elderly. In a few weeks he will start his first real, full-time job in a care facility. Before
he starts that job, he want’s so see his daughter.

At game start Brad came to Bath in an attempt to see his daughter. He held off doing this again for over three years, and even as he went to the house he knew it was a bad idea. But he hoped that his lasting sobriety would prove to Elizabeth that he should at least be allowed to see Leanne.

It didn’t go really well, but at least Elizabeth didn’t shout at him. He is planning to stay in Bath for a few days and see if he can win her over.

In general Brad tends to be quiet and thoughtful. Not that this is his nature, but because he needs to be this way to stay sober. He is afraid to lean too hard into his aggressive nature, the survivalist that learned how to get the upper hand on larger, older boys to get what he needed. If he lets himself be the boy that only thought of
himself and how to get what he wanted, he would quickly fall back into his addiction.

Brad’s internal focus, the goal for his life, is to not become what he was in his youth. He strives to want to care for others, and manifests this in the most simplistic way possible, caring for the elderly.

Darius grew up in the foster care system. Nothing is known about his father, and his mother was hospitalized for schizophrenia. Word has it that she claimed to be the consort of a god and held to that belief until she died while institutionalized. Darius had very few opportunities to see her before she died and his recollection of her is fuzzy, which saddens him. To this day, he still feels like part of his life is incomplete.

Darius spent time in several homes throughout his younger years. He did okay in school but was often sent to the principal’s office for fighting. In the foster system, you learn to hide or scrap, and Darius was never the running type. At the various schools he attended, he was often was teased for his dark skin (he is clearly mixed race), but managed to take that mostly in stride. His real issue was his penchant for standing up to bullies especially when they were teasing others who couldn’t fight back. Darius clearly had anger issues, which came on fiercely and suddenly when put in a situation where others were in trouble. These violent outbursts often did not end well for the bullies he fought. Not that he was overly strong, but he had the innate ability to dig deep within and would simply not give up. He was expelled from more than one school, which typically sent him back to foster care, when his foster parent would give up on him.

In middle school, he met Ms. Laura, who he now considers mom. After one fight left two students in the hospital, Darius was provided a juvenile probation officer. His officer, Ms. Laura, saw something in him that others didn’t see. After six months as his parole officer, she officially adopted him. She got him in
counseling, where he learned skills to redirect his anger, and introduced him to mixed martial arts and football which gave him an avenue to vent his anger when the other skills weren’t working. Ms. Laura coined it “releasing the dragon”, and this ability to channel his anger made him ferocious on the football
field or in the ring with an opponent. He managed to graduate high school and could have gone to college on a football scholarship but elected to enroll at the local police academy instead.

He spent the next four years as a cop and was a good one. He was up for a promotion to lead investigator when his anger got the best of him. One day, he met a man at a bar that he knew from the job. The man was high-up in a sex trafficking ring for kids but had recently gotten off when the cop that busted him did not arrest him cleanly. The guy was drunk and bragging about getting off when Darius, who had also had a few drinks, felt his blood boiling. Next thing he remembers, he was being pulled off
the guy by several bouncers and bar patrons leaving his target in a coma for days.  He spent the next four years in jail although it would have been more had the victim not survived.

When he got out of jail, Ms. Laura had passed away from a covid-related sickness. Grief-stricken, he spends his days living off the road getting small jobs where anyone would hire him. He is currently in Maine living at a shanty that has a lot of homeless. This has been the longest he’s stayed anywhere and knows that he’s only there because there are a few homeless families that he keeps an eye on to make sure the kids are not bothered by the others who call this place their temporary home. He is currently at the festival because he was hired to set-up booths, clean the porta-potties, etc. He’s planning on using the money he earns to buy jackets for the kids back at the shanty (and maybe a few sweets) and get some decent food himself if he has anything left over.

James is a 22 year old Entrepenuer who owns and operates Skydive Coastal Maine, an adventure company. He is 5'10" slim build with brown hair and eyes. By all accounts the average dude. He wears his hair in a buzz cut and is clean shaven most days. James has some distictive features in that he has full sleave tattoos on both arms of the Greek pantheon. He has always been drawn to the stories and characters, it was probably all the comics, cartoons, movies he consumed while he was supposed to be studying. James is an only child from a single mother who grew up in Miami's South Beach area. Wendy, his mom, makes a good living running her own small shop selling beads, charms, incense to the spiritual types and turists. James never knew his father and never really missed him but always wondered about who he is. Wendy doesn't talk much about it but James knows that they only met once during a Y2K new years party.

 James has always been drawn to the sky. He gets up anyway he can, small planes, boats towing a line to a parachute, hot air balloons, skydiving in particular. His latest passion is flying with his batwing suit.

 James has some demons, he has bouts of self loathing and dispair regarding the loss of his wife. They were married in May 2020 and she died shortly after in a skydiving accident. Needless to say he blames himself. To cope with these issues James tends to push the limits in regards to his skydiving by opening the chut very late, sometimes he thinks he might not open it all. When the demons come at night he turns to the blade. James is a cutter. He hides the cuts in his numerous tattoos and is somehow soothed by inficting pain on himself. He stares at the blood and feels his soul weeping for his lost love.

 James is at the Bath Springfair Festival to promote his business by running a booth offering discounts on your first skydive. His business is about 1 hour south of Bath.

Age 20, Caucasian, thin, average height, dark hair, average looks but charismatic. Typically adorned in a black suit and skinny tie, white shirt and shoes, and black fedora hat. He often carries a case with a horn, trombone, or saxophone in it.  Drew is cheerful to a fault, exuberant and doesn’t understand why others aren’t.

Drew’s Mom, Jane Macon, was an average, if attractive, girl who would go out with her friends to clubs. On one such outing she encountered the life of the party, a man who called himself DION. She had the greatest time of her life, which culminated in two immediate results: She spent the next couple months partying every night, being completely out of touch with her family, as she tried futilely to recapture the pure euphoria of that night. And she discovered she was pregnant. Family intervention didn’t stop the partying, but the guilt that she might endanger her unborn child did.

She stopped the wild times, had the child, got her degree, and became a music teacher. She still works at Chester A. Arthur middle school in Middlebury, Vermont.  Drew has picked up her love of music, and as a joyful child, spends most of his time trying to incite this in others. He is going for his degree at Vermont College for Fine Arts,
where he is in his second year. He spends any time he’s not in class trying to “gig” with his ironically named band SAD TROMBONE (Formerly Sad Tromboner, and before that just Tromboner).

Additional relatives include Eloise Macon (Grandmother, a department store worker), Lester Macon (Grandfather, owns multiple gas stations), Nell Macon-Brewer (Aunt, IRS Auditor), and 3 cousins.

He lives on campus at Vermont School for Fine Arts where he is in his second year.  He has a lovely girlfriend named Jess Layton, affectionately known as “Bunny”. She is the band’s social media director, helps book gigs, and designs merchandise since she’s part of the school’s art curriculum. His roommate at the dormitory is his band’s drummer, Chet “Drum  Machine” Perry. The other band members are Dave “Sandman” Sanders on vocals, Ryan “Lounge Liz” Litzky on Guitar, Raul “The Fool” Martinez on Bass, “Sad” Sam Sanders on Keyboards (Brother of the vocalist).  He has instruments both borrowed and purchased for him. His Grandfather helps with the funding, and his schooling is on scholarship. His band has one CD that they recorded at a live performance at someone’s house party, and it is uploaded to soundcloud. Drew enjoys video games and perusing record stores.

Drew is at the festival because his band is playing and he loves any opportunity to perform and bring people up.

Virgil Ignatius Lancaster was born on October 31, 1960, in Pleasant Valley, West Virginia.  The second son of a local Orchard owner, he grew up around horses, tall grass, rolling green hills, and fruit.  Always with the fruit.  His older brother (Zach) died during Desert Storm.  Old Zach, the brother with the personality and smile.  His mother died a few years later from heart problems, and his father passed in 2000 from a brain tumor.  

Virgil attended secondary school in Pleasant Valley, and the local community college.  During that time he became quite a good horseman and farmer.  He moved from WV in 1984 when he was 24, to try his hand at rodeo.  After criss-crossing the country, living out of his truck and horse trailor and occasionally staying at cheap motels and drinking at local bars while earning just enough from competition to keep on going, and getting into several drunken and disorderly scrapes, he decided to clean thing up, take his modest earnings, and in 1990 purchased a property in Maine where he could do as his father did – grow fruit and care for horses.  So from age 30 to the present, he has pretty much been all about the Orchard. 

Why did a West Virginia man decide on Maine?  Well for a girl, of course.  He met Esmerelda when he was 29 while doing the rodeo circuit.  The two hit it off (many times) and decided that once both stopped rodeo they would find a place for themselves.  They both got out of rodeo in 1990 and since Essie (as he called her) was from Maine, that’s where they looked for a place.  The found the property for the future Orchard, but as unfortunate fate would have it – a fate with a steely grin as wide as the horizon looking down at the couple to express the ironic contempt of the universe – Essie died on the property just months after they completed the purchase.  The cause of death was fever, but to this day Virgil will swear there was more to it than that.  He rarely speaks of her, and in fact after her death he never again truly dated anyone else – choosing instead to focus his life on the Orchard and learn to forget the once love of his life.  

The next 30 years was more of a routine and just living day to day, year to year.  He ran his Orchard, achieved some modest success, and gained a little bit of notoriety in the area as having the best pears around.  He continued to own and train horses.  He never returned to the rodeo.  

Present day:  Virgil owns the Rocky Ridge Orchard, located in Bowdoin, Maine just off highway 201 near Main Street (highway 125) intersection.  (For real, check google maps if you don’t believe me.)  It is a modest spread with fruit trees (pear, pomegranate, apples), some alfalfa on the back acreage, and of course his horses.  Located approximately 10-12 miles northwest of Bath.  The Orchard employs about 8-10 people seasonally.  Virgil leaves the day-to-day operations to his manager (Cecil Rollingcampe).  

Every year he attends the Bath Springfair Festival and brings cases of his fruit to sell.  He isn’t so concerned about how much he sells.  He knows he has a good reputation for his Pears, and sometimes will tell a brief story about his rodeo days (did he ever tell you the one about when he got bucked into the second row of the stands right on top of a lady’s lap, making her spill her beer?).  He enjoys the Festival and the variety of people – both local and visitor.  Stoic in demeanor, he comes across polite but with few words.