theydrewfirstblood | (no subject)

JOHN RAMBO

RAVEN; LONE WOLF

• FIRST IMPRESSIONS •

HEIGHT 6'0" WEIGHT 220 LBS EYES BROWN HAIR BLACK AGE 35 (FIRST BLOOD)
37 (FIRST BLOOD PART II)
39 (RAMBO III) NATIONALITY AMERICAN (GERMAN/ITALIAN/NATIVE AMERICAN DESCENT)

VOICE

John Rambo's voice is deep and quiet. He tends to be fairly soft spoken, a man of few words based on temperament and speech impediment. John slurs slightly due to a facial nerve being accidentally severed at birth, resulting in minor paralysis of part of the right side of his jaw and tongue. Though he is reserved, when John speaks it's eloquently, belying his sharp intellect.

STYLE

Simple, borderline austere, designed for function and ease of movement. On duty, he sticks to military gear or whatever is work-appropriate. On his own time, he favors jeans and t-shirts, sturdy shoes, the occasional tank top. He is rarely without his survival knife.

MANNERISMS

John has a habit of looking around while talking to someone unless the encounter is confrontational. Generally touch starved, he's hesitant about physical contact but will not reject it once it's offered in good faith. John does not eat or drink in public, with exceptions for some rare areas where he feels exceedingly safe or considers himself at home.

• ABILITIES & SKILLS •

SURVIVAL

Learned tracking & hunting from his mother's people among the Navajo, received survival training as a Green Beret: can classify dangerous and useful flora & fauna, hunt, & as commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Trautman is quoted as saying, can "eat things that would make a billy goat puke." He can field dress game, fashion weapons and trinkets out of anything he can get his hands on, and is well versed in the construction of traps, snares, and the art of camouflage.

MARKSMANSHIP

Trained in firearms by the military, archery by the men of his mother's tribe. John is a highly skilled marksman, and a perfect shot with a bow & arrow. His range is exceptional, and has adapted his archery skills to active combat use not simply with the application of a compound bow, but with the use of explosive ordinance serving as arrowheads.

LANGUAGES

Functionally fluent in Navajo, semi-fluent in German & Italian, all pre-draft. During the war, picked up Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, * bits of other dialects. With an ear for languages, he can pick up words easily and follow conversations in unfamiliar tongues through context clues. However, when he applies himself, he can acquire relative fluency in many languages fairly quickly.

MIND & BODY

Maintains peak physical condition gained through hard work and military training. Has exceptional endurance, speed, functional strength, and a high tolerance for pain. Also highly intelligent, John can multitask easily and pick up various nuanced skills with relative ease & speed. His memory is also incredibly sharp, allowing him to recall military maneuvers from during the war to catch a superior in a lie about his combat experience. John is also highly intelligent and deeply emotional, meaning that some of his physical prowess has a 'mind over matter' component--his commanding officer often states that he was taught to 'ignore' pain, which he appears to be capable of doing up to a point.

• APPEARANCE •

John Rambo is six feet tall, with dark brown hair often worn long and kept out of his eyes with the use of a headband. He has brown eyes, a tanned complexion, and a perpetual scowl resulting from minor facial paralysis around the jaw, lips, and tongue. A rigorous training regiment courtesy of his military background and active lifestyle have given him an incredibly muscular physique with significant functional strength. He has work-callused hands, and numerous scars, among them being:

- laceration scars on his back & chest from being tortured as a POW in Vietnam
- laceration scar on his arm from falling out of a tree in Hope, Washington
- burn scar on his face from a white-hot knife used to torture him in Vietnam
- entry and exit scars from a puncture wound suffered in Afghanistan

John is rarely seen without the presence of a jade Buddha pendant hanging around his neck, taken from an indigenous agent of the US government in Vietnam named Co Bao, with whom John formed a very close relationship.

• PERSONALITY •

John is every inch the clean cut all-American man: kind, clever, charismatic, strong and ambitious...or at least, he started out that way. A little introverted, soft spoken, kind, and engaging, he was once just a small town kid with dreams that were never too big for him, but being drafted into the Vietnam war changed him a great deal.

Though he's naturally unobtrusive, he can be incredibly charismatic when he forges a personal connection. His keen intelligence has been applied to to both acquiring new languages and skills as well as the art of combat, making him a master strategist and highly gifted when it comes to improvisation.

Strength remains a consistent part of his personality, but rather than simply fulfilling the masculine ideal of physical strength and personal toughness, John has become a weapon tempered in the forge of war. With his military training and expertise as a Green Beret, he's a dangerous man, but that toughness was used against him to make him little more than that: a weapon that was disposed of when it was no longer needed. In serving his country, enduring a Vietnam prison camp, and having to embrace his training to survive, John sacrificed his personal strength to trauma and has struggled to build resilience. He now suffers from PTSD, low self esteem, and a lack of personal pride. He struggles to hold on to even the most rudimentary sense of entitlement to allow for things like comfort, companionship, and tending to his basic needs beyond simply staying alive.

Ambition has also changed for him, as the military was his ticket to see the world as a young man. Now, John has one ambition that he has trouble hanging onto due to that lack of entitlement: finding some place in the world to belong again--somewhere he can be known, accepted, and granted a moment of rest from the demons that stalk his every waking moment.

• HISTORY •

(NOTE: early history derived from the book, later history strictly movie canon.)

John Rambo was raised in Bowie, Arizona, the son of a Navajo woman and a German/Italian father. Losing his mother very young, John found refuge from his troubled home on the reservation among her people. It was there he learned to hut and fight, and became well versed in archery.

Growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father, daily life for John Rambo was fraught. John's breaking point came not long before he was drafted, when in a drunken and paranoid rage his father tried to kill him. If not for his handy bow and arrow, John might have died, and very nearly killed his father in trying to stay alive. He was subsequently sent to Vietnam, where he thought he could escape the nightmares of home. Instead, new nightmares followed him home.

For information on the basic events of the films in the franchise from which the rest of John's history comes, based on his canon point in any given situation, please go here.

• LIZ | 42 | PST/PDT | PB: SYLVESTER STALLONE | CODE •