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Joe Salinas

A former Jabberwocky, Joe managed to flee Stronghold with his skin more-or-less intact (minus a few Infected-inflicted wounds) after a deal gone wrong and make it to no man's land. Scraping by alone was tough at first, but after joining a group of drifters he's found a sort of home base. He's not planning on staying with them—they're nothing but tasty meat to roving groups of Infected, after all—but for now, they'll do.

Played by N/A

Offline	Created 09-15-2021
5 Posts	1 Threads

No Content Restrictions

in my end is my beginning

☢ content warning: references to sex/violence/drug use ☢

He wasn't supposed to be on the outside. He wasn't meant to be on the outside, and even after the last wounds had faded—even after the fever, brought on by infection rather than Infection, had cleared and he found himself nothing but human—Joe couldn't shake the feeling that everything had gone wrong. That the foundations of the Universe itself had shifted, tottering, and that this stark Wrongness must soon be rectified.

It had to be. This wasn't his place. It couldn't be.

Nevertheless, it was.

☢

He would never be able to trace the trajectory of his own downfall with any accuracy. Of his current setback, rather, for Joe was not keen on accepting the idea of living outside of Stronghold forever. He was a city creature, as were the past generations of scrappers and survivors that made up the tangled tree of his lineage. The occasional trips Outside with the Clubs, terrorizing unlucky drifters and looting their camps or picking over the bones of the old world, were an acceptable risk. Refreshing, even. A challenge, one that set his nerves sizzling and sent raw thrill arcing along his veins.

Actually living in this shit, though? No. Fuck no. He hated it, hated the uncertainty and the muck and the long stretches of silence and loneliness with nothing to keep him company but his own thoughts. He made pretty fucking poor company, yeah? Despite his outward arrogance, Joe had never found anything especially worthwhile in himself.

He had to get back to Stronghold. Somehow, he had to get back. He'd paid his dues, yeah, anyone could see that. He'd done his fucking time. He was a survivor, a fighter. He hadn't gone down in that fight, hadn't buckled and crumpled and been torn apart before those ranks of avid, bloodthirsty eyes. Less human than Infected, somehow. Bastards. Bitches.

He hadn't conveniently died then, and he hadn't died of the wounds that had seen him tossed out beyond Stronghold's defenses like so much rubbish for fear that one of the deep furrows scratched into his flesh hid a bite. So: he'd paid his dues. In time—perhaps with a bribe or two of sufficient value, ha—he'd make his way back. Ooze back into Stronghold. Back into the Clubs, where he rightfully belonged.

☢

Back to the trajectory, though. That was the puzzle. The spiral he couldn't quite trace with his fingertips.

Perhaps he'd fucked the wrong man's girlfriend, or wife. So fucking what? He'd fucked a lot of gals, yeah, many of them attached. Perhaps he'd mouthed off one too many times. Made a nuisance of himself (he was good at that). Joe was vicious, efficient, and outwardly loyal to a point, but he kept his own counsel. Followed his own brand of morals. Looked out, above all, for number one. Or perhaps it had been none of those things, and someone had been thrown to the wolves to serve as an example, or to pay a debt.

Didn't matter, did it? Done was done.

It could've begun before that, really. It wasn't exactly a safe and comfortable life, running with the Jabberwockies. It demanded a certain indifference towards suffering and shame, coupled with the willingness to mete out additional suffering when the occasion arose. Joe had been good at that. He'd been a splendid bastard, aggressive and willing to resort to violence on slight provocation. He'd been good at indulging in vice, too, particularly the sort the other branches of the Jabberwockies offered.

Not a safe line of work, yeah? Ha. Not the sort of lifestyle that made one popular with the more morally upstanding citizens of Stronghold (or with the fellow scum he'd wronged in the course of things).

Or—going back further, now—perhaps he'd always been destined to end up thoroughly fucked, and not in the pleasant sense of the word. Before clawing his way to the top of the slums he'd been just another skinny kid running around underfoot, yeah. Poor, hungry, wearing too-small shoes that pinched his feet and trousers that rose above the ankle. Hand-me-downs, discards, worthless things. He'd been a worthless thing himself, doomed to labor for a pittance if he wasn't snapped up by the city, thrown into some blood bank to serve as food for freaks or worse.

Happy endings weren't common for his sort, were they? Ha. No. Not hardly.

☢

quick historythe tl;dr version...for detailed info see the below sections

A typical slum kid in Stronghold, Joe joined the Clubs so he could provide protection to his family (who is, by this point, pretty well ashamed of him). He ran afoul of a powerful enemy and was sent into a fight with an Infected to die for others' entertainment. Joe won, though, and was chucked out in case he'd been bitten. On the outside, Joe has adjusted (poorly) to the life of a drifter and found a home with the Outcasts, though he is not very happy about his changed fortunes.

the slums in detail

Joe was born in the slums of Stronghold to another desperately poor family among many. The vast gulf of social inequality filled Young Joe with entirely understandable resentment, but he was a practical soul; what could not be helped, at least at the moment, must be dealt with. Revenge, or justice, could come later.

The world taught him to hide his feelings, to maintain a level of reserve despite his outward openness, and Joe learned that lesson well. Admitting to feelings, to hurt, was admitting to vulnerability, and he couldn't afford vulnerability here. So he maintained, as did many, that his goals were simple ones: money, power, luxury, all the out-of-reach things a slum kid in Stronghold might long for.

In truth, he wanted those things for his family. Above all, he wanted safety for them. For his mother, his sisters, his eternally exhausted father. He'd seen what happened to pretty girls in the slums, sometimes; he knew that sometimes people disappeared, here, and that it was better not to look for them.

That couldn't happen to his family. He wouldn't allow it.

the clubs in detail

Like many slum kids, Joe ran errands for the Jabberwockies long before he was initiated into any of their factions. He might've ended up a drugrunner if he hadn't seen firsthand how easily drugs snared people. Ate them up.He veered towards the Clubs instead, though it was tougher weaseling his way in as an underfed kid with a sour attitude and not much experience. He was a persistent little shit, he was, and eventually Joe found his place among them.

True violence, the sort dealt with weapons rather than fists in an alleyway scuffle, was much more difficult to deal with than he'd expected. He was no quitter, though, and competitive enough to want to prove himself, if not the best, then thoroughly capable. Already accustomed to swallowing his discomfort and hiding the few untarnished, essential pieces of himself that were his only possessions of any real worth, Joe hid his distaste well.

He managed to hide it from himself, too, in the end. What was the odd killing, anyways? They were only drifters, and the occasional Infected if the crew he was with ran afoul of the creatures on their way back to Stronghold. As for the rest, well—they'd likely deserved it, if not for any particular crime then out due to a sort of generalized guilt that came with living in the slums of Stronghold. He was fine with it, he told himself—and he believed it, because he had to. He made it true.

the fights in detail

Joe wasn't entirely sure who he'd pissed off, if he hadn't simply been the unlucky sacrificial lamb offered up to settle some debt, but his time in the Jabberwockies came to an abrupt and painful end when he was marched off to fight in the pits against a particularly vicious Infected. Maybe he'd roughed up the wrong person in the course of a job, ha, and that person's family had paid for it. Maybe it'd had something to do with the posh girl he'd been fucking, the one whose fiance would not have liked finding out about him.

Whatever precipitated it, Joe found himself facing both a snarling Infected and the fascinated, amused gazes of the crowd that was here to see him slaughtered or Infected, as good as dead. It was not a pleasant feeling. Fighting an Infected with no weapons but his bare hands at close range was not a pleasant experience, either, especially with the danger posed by those teeth.

It was the teeth he went for, in the end, when he managed to throw the Infected to the floor and kick the former man hard enough to dislocate its jaw. The pain didn't faze the creature, but the sudden physical impairment did, and with Joe kneeling on its back, panting, holding it down with his weight as it thrashed, it was a simple matter to bash the thing's head against the floor until the fractured bones of its skull were driven back into the soft pulp of its brain.

It thrashed all the while, of course, not succumbing to weakness or pain even as its features were rendered into an indistinct red mass. Only death silenced it.

Ugly. Brutal. Not pleasant viewing. Somewhat of a crowd-pleaser, though. It hadn't been the ending they'd hoped for—the one where Joe, bitten and despairing, howled and raged over his own ending, if he wasn't simply torn apart—but it'd still been a good show. It still led to Joe's exile from the city, as well. Following the match he was dumped bleeding and disoriented beyond the city walls to recover or die.

the outside in detail

Though he was fairly certain he hadn't been bitten, Joe had been beaten, scratched, and gouged quite badly during his match with the Infected. On the outside, those wounds became infected. He wandered away from Stronghold and, like an animal, found a safe place to curl up and die or get better.

Somewhat to his surprise, after a couple of days the fever broke. He got better. His memories of that time remained distorted and muddled, though, and it wasn't until two months had passed that Joe finally decided there was no risk of him...turning. Becoming less than human. Something else. Losing his mind.

Even so, he remained wary. He'd stayed far away from people during those days, knowing he wasn't safe—and knowing, furthermore, that the people he saw might shoot him on sight, assuming he wasn't safe. He had to find people at some point, though, if only because the loneliness threatened to drive him mad.

Joe was quite relieved when the people he finally introduced himself to—cautiously, and at a distance—were both friendly and not especially delicious-looking. The sight of them did not awaken any sort of hellish bloodlust in him, thank God (though admittedly, Ophelia did look very appealing).

Drifters. Hardly people at all. He felt pathetic for wanting to stay with them. He felt pathetically grateful when they accepted him.

joe salinas ☠︎

Meet Joe, former scrappy slum kid from Stronghold, ex-Jabberwocky, and current drifter who isn't at all pleased with this turn of events. In an ideal world, Joe would have been a gentle, thoughtful, good-humored soul with a bit of a competitive streak. In this vastly less than ideal world, he's instead been hammered into an arrogant, aggressive man who keeps a very tight rein on his inner thoughts and feelings and may lapse into violence somewhat unpredictably. He has a short fuse and low emotional IQ and doesn't know many better ways of responding to stress, alas.

Life as a drifter absolutely does not suit him. He's an angry city tom cat dumped into the woods, okay, and he hates it out here. Life has gotten a little better since finding the Outcasts (at least he's halfway confident a pack of ferals won't rip him apart in his sleep with other people around), but he's still quietly scheming and dreaming of a return to Stronghold.

These days, Joe is much more reserved than he was in the city. He doesn't want his new group to know how much he detests living outside, and he doesn't quite trust that they won't give him the boot if they find out what sort of activity he was involved in back in Stronghold. He's deeply concerned about his family, too, though they're horribly ashamed of him and haven't properly spoken to him in ages, and is overall a Broody Withdrawn Mess at this point.

platonic acquaintances, colleagues, and others

Despite his somewhat obnoxious attitude Joe is fairly good-natured, outgoing, and capable, and is likely to have made many friends among the Clubs. He's likely to have made friends among Stronghold's lower class, as well, and among any Jabberwockies (or potentially military types) who worked with him. He's a loyal friend, though his morals are dubious, and he would've been open to befriending a wide array of drinking buddies. Now that he's on the outside, Joe is wary of strangers and unlikely to befriend anyone beyond his fellow outcasts. The possibility is there, though, and I'd love to have him bump into fellow drifters. Among the outcasts, I'd imagine he has few real friends, though he is loyal to them for now. He doesn't want to grow attached (so like, I want him to grow attached).

romantic lovers and flavors of the week

Deep down, Joe would like nothing more than the white picket fantasy. He's a deeply loyal soul by nature, and would be happiest in a committed relationship with a sweet and adoring lady. He's buried that inclination for many years, though, and after a string of sharp and stinging disappointments in his early dating years he's realized (or resigned himself to the fact) that happily ever after is nonsense for men like him, and that happy for right now is the best he'll ever get. Wary of further hurts, Joe has embraced the casual life and is thoroughly disinterested in anything serious. There could be some ex-Stronghold girlfriends here, or brief brothel flings. Or married/otherwise attached women he was with, ha. He hasn't been outside for long enough to have anything more than one or two brief flames, but I'd be open to romance if he clicks with someone. He's only interested in ladies, though an extremely slow slowburn with the right fella might be possible if they really click.

antagonistic enemies, petty and otherwise

Joe is a scrappy, reckless loudmouth who has gotten in over his head more than once. He rarely seeks out fights, but he finds it next to impossible to keep his mouth shut when he's personally offended and is more than willing to dive into a fight should one present itself. Joe can be arrogant and aggressive and isn't shy about resorting to violence when he or someone he cares about is threatened. While he's fairly open-minded and it takes quite a bit to get on his bad side, he is fully capable of holding a grudge until the end of time and shifting his opinion once he's judged someone Bad is next to impossible. There could be grudge matches from his Jabberwocky days here, simple rivalries, bar grudges, or petty nonsense. He'd quite like to find out who had him sent to the pits and then strangle that person, as well.

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