Veda Petruzzo | Strays OC

Name: Veda Petruzzo

Age: 35

Pronouns: She/hers

Height: 5’11”

Hair: Dark brown, shaggy, usually kept a little past shoulder-length and almost always pulled back into a ponytail

Eyes: Green

Gender: Cisgender female

Sexuality: Bisexual, but leans towards men due to repressed shame from growing up in a fairly conservative area where she never got the chance to date women.

Starting Outfit: Wears practical attire, usually men’s clothing as women’s doesn’t fit her well. Starting outfit is a tank top, button-down shirt, patched up jeans and sturdy hiking boots.

Other notable features: Naturally a large and muscular woman, her face is perpetually sunburnt despite her tanned skin with a smattering of freckles, full lips, various random scars on her body from after the apocalypse, perpetual dark circles under her eyes

Personality: Stoic and practical, Veda is a no-nonsense woman and is very much a rule-follower and enforcer. She’s known for her fairly neutral outlook which makes her a great mediator for arguments, but she hates drama and will make herself scarce if she knows there’s tension rising anywhere. She’s not mean, per se, but she doesn’t see the point in excess kindness or coddling and has a bad case of constant resting-bitch-face, and that (on top of her imposing frame) leads to most people assuming she’s hostile and/or unfriendly.

Speech: Veda has a very subtle country drawl and a low voice that she doesn’t raise often. She tends to speak in as few words as possible, being someone who has an easier time showing what she means through her actions than her words.

Sexual details: Veda is fairly sexually reserved due to not having much relationship experience pre-outbreak, and survival has been her main focus since. She is built for manual labor and functional strength so her body is tanned and toned, with wide hips and a large chest (F cup). She doesn’t shave her pubic hair, but she does keep it somewhat trimmed. She’s open to new experiences and unsure of exactly what she likes, so she’ll try out whatever her partner likes with the assumption “they know what they’re doing and I don’t”.

Family: Pre-outbreak, Veda lived nearby her hometown where her parents and younger siblings (twin sisters) lived. Her older brother, a mechanic named Leonardo, lived on the West Coast. Post-outbreak, Veda’s family did not make it as the virus hit the more populated area where they lived first. She is unsure if her older brother is still alive, and there’s no real way for her to ever find out.

Pre-apocalypse: Veda was raised by a fairly traditional rural family, born and bred in a small town in central Pennsylvania. From the very start she was a natural outdoorswoman, her family delighted to see she enjoyed learning about nature and going hunting with them. Eventually, Veda came to favor the compound bow, even placing in statewide competitions she entered for fun. She worked mainly as a taxidermist, but in off-seasons she’d be found working odd jobs here and there from part-time gas station attendant to working with a local Amish family in their construction business.

Post-apocalypse: Veda had the advantage of living fairly rurally, so the Mutt Virus took a little while to really become a problem in her area. Unfortunately, her family lived in the more populated area of their town which succumbed first. Veda moved in with the Amish family she previously worked for, finding it safer to live in a group, and found a good refuge on the farm. After one particularly hard winter, the group agreed to move south to see if they could settle in a slightly more mild climate. Having been in a fairly isolated area the entire outbreak, no one was prepared for the horrors of passing through ex-city centers. The group was whittled down fast and brutally, eventually leading to just Veda crawling through the woods of Virginia where the Briggs men picked her up and recruited her.

[Setting: Camp Winterbrook

(The following is an excerpt from IO’s website, see bio for information)

-Camp Winterbrook is a community of around 100 survivors, built on the foundations of an old summercamp in rural Virginia. The community is unfriendly towards outsiders though maintains trade with other neighboring community, with its major source of income being the camp’s marijuana crop, which even some members of the local GHF are known to trade for. The camp itself is fortified with high walls topped with razor wire, along which there are 24/7 patrols of armed guards. The center of camp is the large dining hall which serves as a communal meeting area, with cabins nearby that serve as residences for members.]

Veda’s role in Winterbrook: Kind of a generic handyman, Veda doesn’t have one specific role in the camp she sticks to. She’ll work the fields, the greenhouse, gathering supplies, building, etc. She’s a favorite to go hunting for big game, as she’s an excellent shot, and the fact she doesn’t need a gun to hunt (has her own compound bow she’s held on to since before the outbreak) means she’s able to go into more mutt-infested areas without drawing extra attention. She also acts as a guard quite often for the surrounding wall.

Winterbrook NPCs: -Nathaniel “Nate” Briggs (messy brown hair, eyepatch over left eye, often scowling, small scruffy beard), co-leader of the compound with his husband, Lucas “Luke” Briggs (blonde hair, blue eyes, thin scar over his nose). The two met when they were young men on the police force together. Founded the camp after defecting from the GHF due to their excess brutality. Luke is a trained combat medic and functions as the camp’s kind doctor, while Nate takes on the role of the more heavy-handed authoritarian and gruff leader. Both men are in their late 30s and over six feet tall.

[Other factions in the area: -The Global Humanitarian Forces (GHF) are what is left of the government and US Army, and have warped beyond their original purpose of “restoring order” to totalitarian dictators who force civilians to perform dangerous labour in the name of ‘maintaining society’. -Raiders, who prey upon lone survivors or those too weak to defend themselves, killing any who wander into their territory and stealing their supplies. The raider group called the Guardian Angels operates near Camp Winterbrook’s territory and there is a strong rivalry between the two factions, with skirmishes and raids frequent as they fight for control of the area.]