Maximus

Hello, this is Maximus. I'll call you back when I get the chance.

Player: Trystan
Contact: NewKillerStar or PM this journal
Age: Yes, I’m an eldritch Millennial.
Other Characters: Edward Courtenay, friendly neighbourhood man-spider

Name: Maximus (Max)
Canon: Fallout, the Amazon TV show version
Canon Point: At the very beginning of Season Two, where the Brotherhood has uncovered Area 51 and are being stupid about it. This canon point is chosen because Max’s outfit is sexier in Season Two and I want him to have his hot guy jacket in the game.
Age: Not given in canon, but he has been shown as a child in flashbacks during an event that took place thirteen years prior. His child version looks like he’s between about six and eight, so that would put him at around twenty years old.

Backstory: Please note, contains spoilers for Fallout tv series!
Max is from the Fallout universe, born roughly two hundred years after a major nuclear exchange wiped out most of humanity and civilization. He had the good fortune to be born in Shady Sands, a thriving community on the California coast that was trying to start over, to two loving parents. The good times didn’t last; Shady Sands was bombed when Max was still a young child, killing his parents and most of the people living there. Max himself survived and was found by the Brotherhood of Steel, a paramilitary organisation who searches the Wasteland for pre-war technology and wants to control the remnants of humanity.

Max spent the next twenty years with the Brotherhood, San Fernando chapter, being trained to eventually become a Squire, which is essentially a human pack mule to a Knight, one of the guys who runs around in the giant silver power armour. His Knight, Titus, turned out to be a real dick, and when faced with saving Titus from injuries and then being killed himself, or letting Titus bleed out and stealing his power armour, Max decided that he was one of the three major protagonists in the series to let Titus die to save himself. He stole the power armour and continued the mission Titus had been given, which was to find an artifact of great power. This mission led him to meet the show’s other major protagonists, Lucy and the Ghoul, and for Max to fall head over heels for Lucy.

Season One of the show ends with the trio separating as the Ghoul and Lucy head to New Vegas to track down Lucy’s father, and Max realising that the Brotherhood now has possession of cold fusion, and the ability to have limitless power for the entire world. He has also, through meeting other people and being on his own in the Wasteland, come to realise that the Brotherhood might not stand for all it claims, sowing doubt about the organisation in his heart as he enters Season Two.

Personality:

+Default emotional state and temperament:
The Brotherhood is not a nice place to grow up. It’s a rigid hierarchy, and Max was often towards the bottom of it. Other recruits his own age relate stories about bullying and abusing him when he was younger, although there was no real malice behind it; they did so simply because then they weren’t at the bottom of the hierarchy anymore. Max only had one true friend in the Brotherhood, another recruit named Dane, who was more known for being smart than particularly big or tough.

With this as his background, Max’s default emotional state is to turn himself off and present a bland, stiffly stoic façade to the world. This was done as a survival mechanism; we get the impression that any weakness or signs of emotion were brutally beaten down and surpressed by the older Brothers. That said, Max isn’t terribly good at this type of masking; while he might not externally react to things, he has deeply expressive eyes that are almost always forlorn and depressed when he’s dealing with the Brotherhood. It’s unclear if Max even realises how sad being in the Brotherhood makes him, since it has all he’s known since he was a child.

It is telling, though, that when he’s away from the Brotherhood and allowed to be more natural, Max blossoms. When he travels with Lucy, he smiles, laughs, and is in a much better humour. He isn’t as expressive around the Ghoul, but he does speak his mind more and have opinions when they’re together. This culminates in Season Two, when he and Thaddeus, another young Brother, accidentally start a Brotherhood civil war and escape with cold fusion. Max lets himself laugh and joke with Thaddeus, and expresses the opinion that he just wants to be a good person and help people.

This is the dichotomy of Max: he’s a trained soldier who grew up in the Wasteland, and can be lethal and dangerous in the right circumstances, but at the end of the day he’s someone who wants to do the right thing and make the world a better place. When he’s in a place where he feels safe and protected, he’s sweet, eager to please, and friendly. When he or someone he cares about is in danger, the switch flips and he becomes laser-focused and deadly. And finally, when he’s being actively crushed under a militaristic regime, he retreats inward and tries to shield all his pain from the world. Hopefully in game, he’ll get to experience that first side of himself more.

+Motivations and goals:
In his day-to-day activities, Max is mostly focused on survival. He’s from a harsh franchise where not everyone gets out alive, and simply living to see tomorrow is a regular concern. This is particularly harsh for Max because he remembers his life before, when Shady Sands still existed and good people ran it. He is adept at pushing down his own wants and desires to push forward and survive another day in the Brotherhood, but the audience can see that it’s quietly killing him inside.

Max’s larger goals revolve around helping people and doing the right thing. When those goals are challenged, he may respond with violence, but only as a last resort. Max isn’t without his dark side: he lets his Knight die to save himself, and isn’t above shooting people or attacking with the power armour to get what he wants. But when he’s being himself, he’s an earnest person who remembers what it was like living with good people (and has the comparison of living with less-good people), and seems to genuinely want to do the right thing. When Thaddeus suggests they sell the cold fusion technology so they can be rich and retire in peace, Max is against it, insisting that they need to give the technology to good people. Who those good people are remains to be seen.

He also never seems to have Lucy far from his mind. They only knew each other for a couple of weeks, but Max is completely and totally smitten with her. She asked him to come live with her in her Vault, and he easily agreed. It’s unclear if, knowing what they know now, either of them would be willing to return to a Vault, but Max keeps pushing forward because he wants to see her again.

+Regrets and fears:
Max doesn’t want his choices to make life worse for other people. He’s aware that he has, at times, done exactly that. At his current canon point, he’s aware that his paramilitary organisation has a power that could change everything for the better, and he’s deeply uncertain about what they might do with it (answer: nothing good). He’s afraid that the Brotherhood might not be the guys to have cold fusion (they aren’t), but he doesn’t know who should have that power (no one he’s met yet, but there are still two episodes of this season left to go).

He doesn’t have many regrets, though. Once he’s made a decision, he runs with it, whether that’s stealing power armour to avoid his own death and chase after a relic, or capitulate to Lucy very easily to give a power core back to the Vault they’d just been kicked out of. The second choice may seem like him giving in to peer pressure, but he never brings it up again, and doesn’t seem bothered by the decision to give back the power source that made his armour operational. He knew everyone in the Vault would be sentenced to death without the power core, and it takes very little nudging from Lucy for him to give it back; he just needed a tiny push in the right direction. Later on, even though it starts a civil war within the Brotherhood, he seems unruffled by the decision to save ghoul children from a massacre. He’s not someone prone to second guessing himself, and thus doesn’t regret his choices.

+Breaking points:
Injustice is something that will spurn Max to action, as is violence against people he thinks don't deserve it. Being raised by the Brotherhood gave him a hammer, or violence, as the only tool in his toolbox; the time he spent with his parents in Shady Sands gave him the thought process to understand that he shouldn't always resort to using it. When he's feeling protective of someone, he'll do whatever it takes to help them, even if it means making things for himself worse.

+Values:
For all its flaws and faults (and they are many), the Brotherhood has solid principles at its core. Their core tenants involve gathering and regulating technology use, as they believe humanity will destroy itself again if people have the ability to do so (when considering Shady Sands and what happened to it, it’s difficult to argue that they weren’t somewhat correct in this). Other Brotherhood chapters throughout the franchise help civilians, battle against other, nastier factions, and are trying to reestablish civilization.

Max has internalised parts of this: he does genuinely seem interested in helping people, in being the ‘white knight’ that swoops in and saves the day. He also rejects other parts of the Brotherhood doctrine; when witnessing another Brother preparing to kill ghoul children, Max attacks and kills him to prevent the slaughter. He also believes cold fusion should be used to bring civilisation back, rather than hoarded by the Brotherhood and used to further their aims.

Ultimately, Max is someone who is trying to be a good person in a bad world, and tries as hard as he can to be someone others can look up to.

+How do they handle change and trauma?
Max’s life up until this point has been trauma. Changing into a monster isn’t even all that weird in Fallout canon; anyone can become a ghoul with enough radiation exposure, so suddenly growing wings or fangs or whatever won’t phase him. If anything, he might find these changes interesting and fun to play around with, since they’re not the more negative changes that happen to people in Fallout.

+Closing statements:
For someone raised primarily by paramilitary nutjobs, Max is surprisingly well-adjusted, and has managed to maintain a moral compass. At the end of the day, he wants to do the right thing, help others, and see cold fusion go to someone who will use it responsibly. He is, ironically, exactly the kind of person the Brotherhood needs in a leadership position, even if he doesn't realise that himself.

Powers/Abilities:
Max is just a guy! However, he is pretty good at the following three things:
--Mechanical knowledge: specifically relating to the power armour
--General military training: shooting, rucking across various terrain, other assorting military knowledge
--Generalised toughness: can take a punch, and does so frequently

Inventory:
--One Brotherhood flight suit, dark red
--One Brotherhood Knight outfit, complete with dark red jacket
--One cold fusion glowing rice cell in a little jar, which will be completely useless here except to cause him anxiety (note: he doesn't actually have this on his person at the canon point I've chosen. I'd like him to find it in his pocket and freak out about it, because he knows exactly what it is and what it means. I'm planning to use it as a plot device to talk Wasteland politics with the other Fallouts.)

Game Plans:
I am once again coming to you with a character where the game world is a marked improvement from their actual world. Max’s plans will be to fit himself into the convoy and just go with the flow. And why wouldn’t he? He’s got his girl, some new Fallout friends (he is going to follow Danse and Deacon around like a puppy), and some sweet new monster features. No one here is trying to track him down (at least, not more than anyone else), he doesn’t have to worry about a brewing civil war, and the food isn’t all irradiated. This place is great!

Unrelated to Max, I personally don’t find it fun to play characters who are constantly trying to break the game setting and insisting on going home, so anyone I play will fall in line with the game rules and mechanics without any real fuss. Case in point: Edward, who really should have been more upset about turning into a spider and yet just completely ran with it. Max will do the same.

Monster Choice:
This kid has Celestial written all over him. Consider: angels are all about order and righteousness, which is what the Brotherhood was trying to impose on the Wasteland. They’re also not above resorting to violence to get their way, much like the Brotherhood. Unlike the Brotherhood, they’re also healers, which is something Max himself strives towards, wanting to find good people to give cold fusion so the world can be healed from two hundred years of constant warfare. I also had the stupid and hilarious idea to give him little angel wings that twirl like vertibird/helicopter blades and I stand by how funny that is.

If Celestial is off the table, then Taurus would be my next pick. They’re the tanks of the monster options, and Max with his power armour is the tank of the Fallout show. They also have centaurs, which means something really different in Fallout and would horrify Max until he realised it meant having a bull body instead of the flesh gollum he’s picturing.

For a third option, randomise me! I’ve been stupidly happy with Edward’s spider self, and it was an option I never would have considered on my own.

Vehicle Choice:
This pre-war beauty, before a gang of idiots blew it up, with the attribute Tough.

Sample: Here he is interacting with someone who isn't from his canon, and here is his top level, where he's mostly talking to other Fallouts.