Creative Backer Levels - General Discussion

Hey guys,

Good day and I hope you are all well. I've really enjoyed your writing and look forward to reading more. Here is my Leader I hope you like her.

Cully

Backer name: Culwych
Level of backer: Leader
Area of Operations: Any to fit the backstory
Character Name: Catherine "“Cully"” Parham
Theme or motif: Settlement Leader
Description
Approx 40 years old. 5'’3"” tall, petite and slim of build. Blonde shoulder length hair with a pretty face slightly lined with age and bright blue eyes.

Demeanour
Quiet, shy and friendly once she feels comfortable around a person and happy to let others lead with their views and ideas preferring to encourage others to decide their own minds rather than give instructions. Will attempt to defuse or avoid conflict unless the community is threatened where she will become direct and resolved. She often seeks to deflect attention from herself to others and prefers to influence rather than control. Her calm, friendly nature influences those around her and encourages trust and cooperation.

Backstory

Pre-outbreak Catherine was a working mother of five children and loving wife to her husband who juggled her home life with her job as a nurse and skilled midwife. As content with her life as she was she had to be highly organised and dedicated to manage both her busy home and her responsibilities at work taking to it with a passion and enjoying every minute of it. Her husband, a career cop whose job took him away for days on end left her mostly alone to manage for herself but when he was home they were happy and content. Her husband’s job made him a careful person and his involvement in advising government on disaster recovery often came home with him. He insisted that the family was to hold tinned food, water and have a plan of evacuation should the need demand. Catherine found his ideas fanciful and ridiculous but nevertheless she went along with her husband to make him feel better making sure that the family home was well stocked and that should the need arise she was familiar with the route for his family evacuation plan for their flight to a cabin high in the ______ mountains which the family had owned for generations should the need arise.
Catherine only knew about “the collapse” hours before the rest of her community after receiving a panicky telephone call from her husband who was at the time based in the capital. Insisting that she should trust him and leave immediately according to their plan a worried Catherine hushed her children as she packed her car with the food, water and basic medical necessities they had stored before leaving with the children in her car and heading for the freeway. Though the road was busy with normal rush hour traffic and the news channels were reporting civil unrest in the nearby city Catherine was able to be ahead of “the exodus” by a couple of hours riding away from the city whilst listening in horror as the news of the outbreak unfolded. As the world fell apart around her she quelled her rising fear and kept a brave face to keep her children calm as she drove towards the cabin listening all the while to the news trying to make sense of what she was hearing. After hours of traveling she began to see in the roads around her evidence for herself of something terrible that was happening and that her family was in the middle of it though thankfully had managed to flee the city before the exodus and avoided being caught in the massacre that was occurring behind her. After two days of dangerous travel Catherine made it to the cabin where she and her children waited to recover from their ordeal and wait for her husband to catch up. Though her husband’s actions had undoubtedly saved her she was never to hear from him again.No sooner had the family settled in the cabin they were beset by a roaming pack of infected but Catherine, with a mother's instinct and a ferocity that surprised even her, she managed to fight off the pack though tragically lost her youngest child in the process. Grief stricken but determined she continued to build defences and a new home for her and her family and wait out the epidemic that was happening around her. Days later, upon hearing a cry in the woods Catherine came across a two families who were fleeing the outbreak and of which one was in labour. Catherine gave them shelter and helped with the birth to the gratitude of them all keeping both mother and baby alive in the process. The families asked if they could stay and Catherine, driven by the need to protect her remaining children agreed. The new families came with guns and skills and were soon building a walled enclosure and extra room for the small community whilst Catherine provided them with food and healthcare. Her calm but determined nature worked well with the new arrivals who would often defer to her as she helped them plan a new life in the mountains.
Over the next few months more survivors were located or arrived within the community. Most were sick, undernourished and scared and Catherine turned none away. Organising committee’s to lead working teams for building, carers for the young, old and sick, hunting groups for scavenging and Catherine herself leading a team to a nearby hospital to collect medical supplies and before long the community of _________ stabilised under her care. Over the years it has grown, its size swelling due to the arrival of the survivors and an army convoy made up of trainee soldiers, their families and what equipment they had managed to bring. This boost in personnel and the organisation of the new “government of _____” has allowed for _______ to survive not only the outbreak but also the lawlessness of the new land. Catherine herself takes none of the credit for it, preferring to tend to the health needs of the community as well as bringing up her remaining children though it is widely known that the elders of the town defer to her for advice when needed. If you ask anyone in the community about their survival they will all without an exception say that Catherine saved them and gave them shelter and whether she likes it or not she is revered in the town both for her wisdom, charity and her medical skills which in this new harsh land are the difference between life and death. They have even given her the pet name of Cully which she accepts and is both pleased and a little embarrassed about.
People have noticed that she kept a close watch over the nearby woodshed which backs on to her cabin and which she keeps locked with a hefty padlock. She avoids any discussion of it though some have noticed that she is prone to spending an unusual amount of time in there. If you listen closely by the door of the woodshed you can just faintly hear her singing nursery rhymes and lullabies though who she is singing to is unknown.
Catherine takes this her position within the community in her stride and prefers to remain away from the centre of things. When the community is threatened or disaster strikes you will find her at the centre, organising, motivating and offering hope to people but when the community is at peace unless she is at work at the small but functioning hospital or with her children you will find her by the walls of the settlement looking into the distance, some say that she is on guard whilst others say she is waiting for someone who never has arrived.