Deer Country App

Character Base

• Character Name: Paladin Danse
• Age: Indeterminate; appears to be in his 30s, but was probably created around 20 years prior to his canon point
• Canon/Canon Point: Fallout 4 (2015) / shortly after the quest "Blind Betrayal"
• Items Coming Along:

-- One laser rifle, running low on ammo.
-- One orange-and-tan flight suit, without hood.
-- One suit of X-01 power armor, with a single partially-depleted fusion core.

• Content Warnings for Character: Open bigotry toward sentient non-humans, particularly undead and androids/robots/other synthetic humanoids. (The latter is internalized bigotry, as he is himself a synth.)

Character Background

• History: Wiki link here.
• Core Relationships:

Arthur Maxson

Leader of the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel for the past five years, despite being only twenty years old. Danse's long career with the Brotherhood means that he's known Maxson since the man was a child, felt protective and proud of him in the manner one might feel about a younger cousin, been allowed to give Maxson counsel and remain on a first-name basis with him when other paladins can't--and therefore been all the more blindsided by the whiplash-inducing speed with which Maxson was willing to order his execution.

Scribe Haylen

The medic/techie/all-purpose nerd of Recon Squad Gladius, the ill-fated group Danse commanded on the Brotherhood's third expedition into the Commonwealth. She's saved Danse's life more times than he can count on one hand, and he praises her both to her face and to everyone else he trains as the platonic ideal of what a Brotherhood scribe should be. He is completely and utterly oblivious to her feelings for him, and somehow even more oblivious to whatever he might feel for her in return.

Knight Cutler

Cutler is a posthumous character, existing now only in the story Danse tells to explain why he doesn't like to get close to people. He was Danse's best friend before they joined the Brotherhood together, and the two of them were positively joined at the hip until Danse was promoted to paladin and Cutler wasn't. This in and of itself would not have made much of a dent in their friendship, except for the fact that once they no longer had each other for protection, Cutler was kidnapped by super mutants and subjected to such hideous experimentation and torture that Danse was forced to mercy-kill him. And that's why Danse will only address you as "soldier" and looks at you like a deer in headlights whenever you're nice to him. Good talk.

[Note: I have not included the game's malleable protagonist as a core relationship, since I am apping Danse from a worldstate where the Sole Survivor chose not to join the Brotherhood of Steel and therefore disappeared from Danse's life after their first meeting.

In this worldstate, the Brotherhood has managed to acquire data from the Institute on its own--possibly by strongarming the Minutemen into sharing what the Sole Survivor gathered--and Danse has only survived the events of Blind Betrayal because the patrol sent to hunt him down has not yet managed to find him. By extension, neither has Maxson, and therefore their final conversation has not taken place, since it requires the protagonist's intercession to keep Maxson from killing Danse. However, if anyone ever decides to app in a Sole Survivor, I'm happy to retcon and work with them.]

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

Joining the Brotherhood of Steel

Danse would cite this as the most positive and important moment of his life, even after it all ended in flames and tears and "shoot to kill" orders. His entire value system and sense of morality is inextricably bound up in what the Brotherhood taught him, and even if he has been persuaded to let himself be an exception to those teachings--a feat which does take some persuasion, because when he initially discovers himself to be a synth, he's all too willing and ready to let his pursuer execute him so that he can aid the Brotherhood even in death--he remains loyal enough to their cause that he can only bring himself to oppose them in imminent self-defense. The most he ever manages to deviate from this is when he mutters about Maxson not liking to do his own dirty work, or when he will conflictedly, confusedly approve of mild statements about synths maybe possibly sort of being actual people. Ish.

He has entertained the idea, in particularly dark moments, that perhaps he was designed to want a greater purpose and specifically programmed for this kind of loyalty, except that it was supposed to be to the Institute. He always tries to push that train of thought as far away as possible when it encroaches.

Interactions with Ghouls

The Brotherhood holds that ghouls are subhuman filth, even the ones who are still perfectly lucid and friendly and would be better sources than just about anything else for valuable pre-war knowledge and insight. Danse, loyal paladin that he is, agrees with this wholeheartedly.

Except when you run into a little ghoul boy trapped in a fridge and searching for his parents. Then Danse will fairly turn on you with disgust that you would even think about leaving this innocent child--whom he addresses kindly as "son"--alone and unaided. Deplorable, soldier.

Or when you encounter a settlement of ghouls who have turned an old swimming resort into a cranberry bog, seeking to be entrepreneurial and helpful to society in the hopes of combating anti-ghoul prejudice. Then Danse just has to compliment them on their clever use of architecture and wish them well. Ingenuity ought to be praised, right? Right? Of course.

Or when the sad, lonely ghoul nerd running the equivalent of a comic podcast enlists you to clear the streets of crime while dressed as his favorite superhero. Danse thinks he's just trying to make the world a better place, in his own way. Shouldn't he be credited for that? Never mind, of course, that Danse thinks comic books are "ludicrous" and will complain about their stupidity to anyone else. When Kent the Ghoul wants you to put on a silly voice and fight badguys, Danse won't have a negative word to say.

It seems, at times, like the only reason he's so overtly cruel to Hancock is because the man's drug addiction and unapologetically in-your-face attitude make him one of the few sentient ghouls Danse can bring himself to treat the way he feels he's supposed to.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

Cutler's Death

Though Danse maintains to this day that he has no regrets about following Brotherhood orders, he never sounds less sure about this than when he talks about killing Cutler for having been transformed into a super mutant. He will frame it in terms of protocol, duty, order, insist repeatedly that he had no choice--anything he can say to avoid the gnawing doubts that it was really the right thing to do. His uncertainty is clear, even though this conversation takes place well before he discovers that he's a synth, and therefore he lacks that incentive to question the Brotherhood's beliefs. Never at any point does he talk about what Cutler actually wanted, only what Brotherhood teachings demanded, and the omission speaks volumes.

He feels guilty and terrified that he might only have been projecting what he himself would have wanted in that situation. And now, having actually been in a similar one, he's not even so sure it's what he would have wanted either. Gameplay-wise, one of the stronger negative reactions the protagonist can elicit from Danse is by curing a super mutant scientist of his condition with an experimental serum. Part of this is likely because the scientist is responsible for the existence of the mutants in the first place, and Danse feels that the redemption is undeserved, but beyond that, it's just all the more cause to fear that he murdered his best friend for no reason.

Confronting Maxson

Though this confrontation has not taken place at the canon point Danse is being brought from, it illustrates the conditions that are necessary for him to finally snap and disengage himself from Brotherhood prejudices. Maxson's viciousness in calling for Danse's death ultimately becomes a benefit to Danse, jolting him sharply out of his suicidal self-loathing at the discovery that he is what he's been trying to fight.

Hearing the man he's known for a decade, sung the praises of and supported through thick and thin refer to him as "it," and insist that he can't possibly have a mind or soul of his own, when just days ago he'd been asking Danse's advice and confiding in him as a friend, is too blatant a display of cognitive dissonance to let slide. For the first time, Danse challenges Maxson--in front of a subordinate, no less--and calls him out on his hypocrisy. "After all I've done for the Brotherhood, all the blood I've spilled in our name," he demands, "how can you say that about me?" It's a stark contrast between his defense of himself to Maxson's face and his earlier attempt to persuade the Sole Survivor to kill him. Going forward from this point, he's more willing to think of himself as deserving of human rights, even if he no longer calls himself human.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: Moderately enhanced endurance and healing factor compared to the average human, though the Institute's claim that his model of synth is immune to all toxins and needs no food or sleep is exaggerated.
• Blood Type: Vileblood, both because I would like to make him a Hunter and explore its usefulness and drawbacks in that capacity, and because I feel like the stigma against it might replicate some of the prejudices of his own world in a way that could help him work through his beliefs about himself.

The prejudice against vilebloods, particularly the idea of them being a sort of ticking time bomb of beasthood, is probably more analogous to the way ghouls are treated in the world of Fallout, but it's also a belief commonly held about synths ever since an infamous case in which a synth infiltrator malfunctioned and went on a lethal rampage in a city square. Either way, it's a comparison that has the potential to make Danse think really hard about a lot of things.

• Omen: Gray tabby cat, with a strong resemblance to the shipboard cat of the Prydwen
• Blessed Day: October 17, which I have decided is his "birthday"/date of creation, because a lot of significant canon events happen in October.
• Patron Pthumerian: Cloverfield, whose robotic aspects will make him uncomfortable, but his protective instinct toward children and childlike things will probably override that.
• Blood Power Manifestation: Total nerf of canon powers, since sleeper blood does all of those things better anyway.

Writing Samples

One: Here
Two: Here

The Player

• Player Name: Anna
• Player Age: 34
• Player Contact: Annalizabeth #7549 on Discord
• Permissions: Here.