Author's Note: This is my first ever blog post so wish me luck. It's the origins of some of my best human OCs: The Makara Brothers. The world lore I'm using comes from a world that's not my own, but an rpg called After The Flash. But the people and the factions, the, interactions that happen, and some of the places(any not owned by CDF). That's all original, by me. In a later blog, I'll also be continuing this story with the Striders, then the After Years. Additionally I'll be telling the story from the pov of Gregory Makara, one of the few survivors, years after the events that took place. One of the last Striders and the last of the Makara Brothers.
A basic description of post-lore Mak: A male in his early 60s with tanned skin and dusty black hair that nests loose strands of grey. He has pale green eyes and likes to typically wear jeans and a t-shirt, along with an old leather vest that has a scraped button pin on the front pocket. His arms are wrapped and concealed in bandage cloth, and there's hints of scars at the edges by his shoulders, hardly visible under his short sleeves. A pair of old combat goggles with a cracked lense hangs around his neck.
Now then, there's a lot to cover so I'll jump right in...
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First off, you need an understanding of the world, especially since you're not from it. Every thing was normal until around 2020. To start, Russia initiated a new alliance, rather suddenly, with various countries like Japan, North Korea, etc. It was called the Asian Continental Military Force, or ACMF for short. Basically, tension between ACMF and NATO increased and turned to war when Russia suddenly invaded Turkey. I actually wasn't born until long after this, so I only know the basics from what little history was taught in CDF settlements. But our main story starts in 2025. A young couple had just had a child. He was named Samuel J. Makara, after his father, a mechanic who escaped fighting in the war due to a bum leg. The child's mother was a doctor turned medic, who was on leave while she had him. The child was able to have a somewhat normal life until he was 3, when his mother was about to go back to war. Instead she ended up having a second child by the time he was 4. This new child, his younger brother, was me, born in 2029. I have no memory of these days. I was too young to remember, but I remember the haunted face Sam makes when he tries to describe to me what life was like. It was peaceful until 2032, the year the Flash occured. On November 2nd, 2032, over the span of 12 hours, the world as we knew it was destroyed by total nuclear warfare.
I still don't know full details on what happened, but we were somehow separated. Sam and our mother ended up on their own while our father took me to an old friend of his, another mechanic. At a young age, my father died. His friend, Jake Meyers, raised me and taught me to survive in the new world and I spent what should have been my childhood watching people around me die in a nuclear winter of toxic snow and ash that blocked out the sun and brought cold and disease. I was lucky to never get deathly sick. I learned to be somewhat of a mechanic and after restoring a rusted pickup with Jake, we hit the road, trying to escape a new threat: mutants. Mutants first appeared shortly after the flash, created by a radiation virus that infects humans and turns them into monsters. I was lucky enough to not have to come into close contact with mutants over these years but I definitely saw them a lot outside windows, down the street, from hiding spots on back alleys, etc. Life was a little simple during these years. I only looked out for myself and Jake and he did the same. The only rule was to survive.
My first real sensitive experience was near the end of the Nuclear Winter. It lasted nearly a decade, blocking out the sun until the last of it settled from the atmosphere around the early 2040s. As if life was trying to punch me in the face, Jake got lost in the cold one night and got sick by the time I found him. He was old, and his health declined. I buried him by a wrecked plane in Oregon, where we used to set camp. I then began my journey south. I'd heard that the rapidly rising temperatures were weakening mutants, so I wanted to get closer to the southern states near the equator where it was starting to rise faster.
Along the way, I got a job repairing things in a small town before I, ah.... had to flee south to continue my journey. You know how Jake was a mechanic? That's what he taught me. I was a mechanic, not an electrician, and.... let's just say there's a town in California where I'm wanted for accidentally burning half of it down. It was my first experience with fire.
The wanted signs were a blessing though. Having my name around the area lead me to my older brother, Sam. He ended up being really cool! And large. He stood at 6'4" back then. What happened was after we got separated during the Flash, he ended up travelling the country with my mom, learning to be a medic of sorts. We travelled together for a while and I learned I had a cousin named June Lee, who worked with technology and was based in a CDF settlement in Arizona called CraterView. Right, I should explain CDF.
After the Flash, various factions and major settlements began to rise. One of the ones was called the Civilian Defense Front. It originally started as militias and alliances between scrap and patchwork settlements that popped up around the country before expanding and creating a name. They were mainly focused on rebuilding a way of life for humanity by making protected settlements. During this point in time, CraterView was one of the largest settlements in the west. We began headed that way.
Along the journey, we ran into a group of men lead by a man named Jack Myers. I still find that funny cause of how much Jack's name was like Jake Meyers. That's the extent of their similarities though. A major detail about Jack was that he was an Ex-Coyote. That's how I got this pin here on my vest. It represents them. Not always a good thing, as the original Coyotes as a whole was a raider faction. They were famous for the brief occupation of CraterView where they decided to gain fame by raiding the big city. This was also their downfall as it lead to multiple allied factions taking the city back and killing them off. Remnants exist and live in hiding. Jack was one of the remnants, a grunt among their ranks and numbers who mainly joined just to survive. Anyways, he was actually pretty cool. We joined and called it the Gang. Nothing else. Just the Gang. Anyways, the members included Jack, Sean, Ryan, Janneck, and me and Sam. Sean went by Tank because he had this huge suit of armor that was well known. There's a huge story behind that suit.... it's the same one I currently own and have stored in the back here.... anyways, I mainly clicked with Janneck. We got along and were inseparable. Everything was nice until the mutants surged.
This is where I... try not to speak as often, but here goes. Mutants began to thrive again and adapted to the sudden high heats after the Nuclear Winter. They were becoming more frequent and such, so we decided to made a camp near a CDF settlement, and what better one than CraterView, Arizona. We based ourselves in the Boulder City ruins, a pre-flash city that existed on the border of Arizona and Nevada, by Lake Mead. Anyways, the worst imaginable thing happened and mutants lead a siege over CraterView, actually managing to take it over. This was when we lost contact with June for a while. So mutants began commonly attacking human settlements and hideouts near the now CraterView ruins, even in broad daylight. The worst one was the Crusher...
When a human is infected by a mutant, their body slowly decays and turns into biomass before rapidly regenerating into two possible "branches". Early stages of infection and sometimes decay can bef cured with a special serum we commonly called DeRads. But the branches either lead to Leachers or Crushers. Leachers are yellow skeletal humans with extra limbs growing from their backs. Their knuckles sharpen and grow out into claws, and the extra limbs are usually tipped with spikes or second heads than can spit venomous barbs. Crushers go the opposite way. Instead of decaying to a skeletal figure, they grow. They often become like 8 feet high and their skin rapidly grows to a point where it could even stop small caliber bullets. If you're punched by a Crusher, only having all your ribs and internal organs broken is a miracle...
I can't stall anymore... So, the base right? We got attacked as was inevitable, we had to fight off some Leachers and such but weren't prepared for a Crusher. Tank got killed. Ryan got killed. Jack was injured and Sam took him to safety. Janneck was... When it came in, the Crusher. It's attacks were too fast. That's something I won't detail. I can't. But, I still remember seeing what was left of Janneck in the impact crater on the wall. I remember thinking about why mutants declined briefly when the Winter ended. They're weak to extreme heat, mainly fire.
I don't remember everything but Sam told me I jumped on the Crusher's back like a maniac and wrapped my arms around its neck. Then I lit a molotov that was in my hands, igniting it's face. That's why I got these bandages. My arms work fine, but anything below my biceps, I have absolutely no sense of feeling. Just some cool burn scars...
Anyways... After that, the Gang broke up. It was just me, Sam, and Jack. Jack went on to start a new, larger gang in Vegas. He calls them the Red Spades, and a few of them still exist today. Sam and I split up. We reistablished contact with June, who stole radio equipment after CraterView fell and restored an old radio tower in the middle of nowhere, hiding out there. Sam began headed to June while I headed out to wander on my own, as a Wastelander. This was when I built my famous Highway Rifle. It's patchwork, sure, but I know every detail and can modify it however I want. Sam inherited the armor that Tank owned, and began developing his famous Railroader, a mobile railgun that uses energy cells to generate an electrical discharge and launch small spikes and scrap. It's the heavy long rifle with a caged barrel and open chassis I have in the back.
I wont go into detail here. I mainly wandered and found small jobs here and there. Sam ended up becoming a guns for hire and got a job as a guard for a new settlement called Sanctuary. He told me about it but I didn't want to join another group yet so he didn't press me to join. I know that it became something like the next CraterView briefly before it too was attacked. Sam was among the survivors and he wouldn't want to talk about the controversies of the settlement so I want either. I do know CliffGuard existed later. It was a new scrap settlement made by the CDF with high support. It lasted and still exists today.
It was after scavenging and selling in Cliffguard for a living that Sam took us on the next step in our lives...
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To be continued in Makara Brothers: Striders
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