Wesley Harris


Character's Full Name: Wesley John Harris

Created By: Lee

AKAs: John Walker, James Harper

Character Type: Immortal

Apparent Age: 30

Actual Age: 89

Sex: Male

Nationality: American

Additional Languages: Bad Spanish, Latin limited to legal terminology.

Distinguishing Characteristics: Goatee/mustache combo, height, lanky build. Bears scarring around the left side of neck and collarbone. Speaks with a bit of Texas accent that's more pronounced when he's angry or intoxicated.

Personality: As many people who survived the superflu epidemic are, Wesley is still in a something of a state of shock following the events of June and July 2002. 'Unhinged' isn't quite the word for it, but he's still recovering from the blow of watching his loved one(s) die and witnessing the collapse of society in general. It's made him a bit more paranoid, more cautious, and more apt to watch and wait than he was before. Normally, however, he's personable enough, a pretty keen guy with a something of a dry, oddball sense of humor that's recently taken on a grim/gallows edge with vengeance. He has a tendency to live frugally in manner than borders on being downright cheap, a quality he developed early on in life. He's also something of a pacifist, a attribute that's at odds with a strong survival instinct - another habit he developed early on. Wes is not old as far as immortals go, so he usually identifies with mortals and tends to relate to them better. He's usually rather cagey and suspicious of his fellow immortals until he's sure of their motives/or satisfied that they're not after his head.

Skills: Wes was a farmer for most of the first half of his life, so he's retained a knowledge of horticulture and generally living off the land, plus some rudimentary mechanical skills. All of it stems from practical experience rather than formal education. Later he became an attorney (he resumed practicing law several years before the end of the world, as it were), so he also has background in common law, legal theory, and so forth; his specialties were criminal and family law, in particular as they pertained to the former states of California and Texas. For an immortal, Wes' skill with a sword is rather lacking; he tries to makes up for it with an aptitude for firearms – M1911s are his preference, as they’re fairly easy to conceal – though he's more than comfortable with rifles and shotguns. He's pretty a quick draw and an accurate marksman.

History:
Born in early 1900s, Wesley was the only son born to James Harris and Mary Harper Harris, cotton farmers based near the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. The family had a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food on the table, but not much else. Nonetheless, they were fairly happy, ordinary family given the time and place they lived. Given the course history would take, Wesley, like most people, saw hard times as he reached adulthood. By the time the Great Depression was on, he was in his twenties and struggling with his wife, Hazel Walker, and his parents in scratching out a living with their cotton operation. Drought and the storms of the Dust Bowl eventually killed the Harris farm for good; with poor to non-existent yields, the family defaulted on their mortgage and lost their land. What was left of the family joined the legions of other destitute, rural migrants and headed for the West Coast in hopes of work and a new start. They made it California to find heavy competition for backbreaking work at low wages. Nonetheless, Wes was one of the lucky ones, so to speak; he was (usually) able to find seasonal work as a migrant laborer.

He was still working as a farm laborer when the United States joined World War II following the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941. Like many men, Wes enlisted out of a sense of patriotism, but also because he figured the military couldn't be any worse than digging up lettuce in Salinas. Or so he thought.

Though he missed the action at Makin, Wes was placed in the Army's 27th Infantry Division in time to be deployed with the rest of the unit to aid the 2nd Marine Division in the assault of Tarawa. The fighting was there, to say the least, brutal and hellacious; the Imperial Japanese Army was determined and well-armed and American forces suffered from a series of early setbacks in the form of miscommunications, neap tides, and inadequate bombardment. It was here Wesley had his first taste of combat; it would have been his last had it not been for his latent immortality. On November 20th, a Japanese sniper caught Wes in his sights and shot him, hitting him in the side of the neck and almost taking his head clean off. He was dead almost before he hit the ground. He reanimated some time later, much to his confusion and panic, amid piles of corpses and made it back to his unit. While there were witnesses to the shooting, it had occurred in the heat of battle amid what would be one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific Theater; since he was alive and hundreds of American troops were dead by the end of the day, no one bothered to investigate further.

Though the experience did a number on him, Wes might have put behind him if one of his superiors, a major by the name of Miller, hadn't sought him out. Miller was an immortal with several centuries behind him and had zeroed-in on the newly-immortal Wesley's buzz. Any other time the older man's attempt to introduce him to the Game and such probably wouldn't taken. But Wes took Miller at his word – after all, stranger things had already happened – and became Miller's student. His instruction in swordplay started immediately afterward, as no one thought much of it when Wes took a sword off the body of a dead IJA soldier; a lot of other Americans had taken to stripping Japanese corpses for weapons, amongst other things. The two immortals served together for the rest of the war, seeing more combat Saipan and Okinawa before being set to occupational duties in the Kansai region of Honshu.

They parted ways during the Occupation. Wes gladly took his separation in December of 1945 – he had enough of war for several lifetimes – and went back home to Hazel in Salinas. Wes had no desire to go back to the farming business, so he and Hazel moved north to the San Francisco Bay Area. There he took advantage of the GI Bill, enrolling in UC Berkeley to study law during the day while working nights at the Port of Oakland.

Eventually he obtained his juris doctorate, passed the state bar, and began practicing in the area. The couple lived a fairly normal life – Wes never came across many immortals while living in the suburbs and he took what measures he could to look as if he were aging – until the late 1960s. In 1968, Hazel was killed in a car accident. His wife's mortality was something he knew he would have to face at some point, but the sudden nature of Hazel's death left him stunned and practically inconsolable nevertheless. He subsequently left his job and the Bay Area to begin traveling.

Wes wandered across the US and Canada in a rather directionless fashion for close to thirty years. He met up with his teacher, Miller (now using a different alias), a few times when the other man was stateside, but for most part went out of his way to avoid other immortals. Eventually he grew tired of his rootless existence and bored at his grief for Hazel. In the 1990s he found himself back in home state, Texas, and also found he wanted to go back lawyering. Obviously, his credentials were still tied to his original identity and the first Wesley Harris had "died" in 1970. He entered law school for a second time at the University of Texas in Austin.

In Austin he met Graciela Reyes, a fellow law student. They married after finishing law school and subsequently moved to El Paso, where Grace had family, and took jobs at rival law firms. Again, Wes tried to keep a low profile as far as other immortals were concerned, but didn't have as much luck; an immortal by the name of Trey Collins came after him in 1999. Wes won the duel, but ended up having to reveal his true nature to Grace. Luckily for him, she accepted him for what he was and agreed to keep his nature secret. They lived as normally as possible until their domestic peace was shattered in 2002 - another accident, one could say, this time on the part of the government. When Captain Trips spread across the US and the rest of the world, Grace came down with the superflu like most people; despite his efforts to nurse her back to health, she died like the countless others. He buried her in their backyard, not knowing what else to do.

Wesley didn't move on from El Paso at first, for several reasons. One, with Grace and her people gone, he had no one else to seek out (Wes did try to get in contact with Miller, without success); second, with Fort Bliss practically in his backyard, he had no desire to tangle with the military, who had the El Paso metropolitan area locked down under martial law; third, the dreams he began to have freaked him out worse than anything else had since his first death in the war. The dreams, in particular, affected him badly before he found a way around them - which, for him at least, was a few glasses of neat scotch before sleeping.

After a point, however, living alone the house he shared with Grace began to prey on him. That coupled with the desire to seek out other people prompted him to set out. In time he stumbled across another party in central New Mexico, a small group consisting of a couple immortals, a mortal woman, and her adopted child. There was no real hostility from either side, precisely, but there was the specter of The Game between Wesley and the older immortal leading the group looming over their heads. All in all it was a bit too much too soon; Wes ended up a bit spooked and fled the group not long after joining them. They were headed north, towards Boulder. He set off west, to avoid trouble, not totally aware of the fact that in that regard he's managed to fall off the spit and is heading straight into the cookfire.



[ Join ] [ Create ] [ Rules ] [ Guidelines ] [ Characters ] [ Wanted ] [ Links ]