Curtis Merka

Former scavenger, Jet dealer, and current reporter this Ghoul is a true New Yorker. Preferring to stay in with his pet, Curtis nonetheless travels the Empire Wasteland every day in search of news. While this usually gets him into sticky situations, he continues to push on in pursuit of local happenings.  
==Background==
===Pre-War===
Born in 2023 to working class parents in Brooklyn, Curtis and his parents moved to Manhattan when he was four. Curtis showed above-average intelligence at an early age, along with minor anti-social tendencies. These were amplified when his parents divorced when he was seven, causing him to retreat into books and other forms of escapism. After graduating he found work as a files clerk at a local car dealership. He met a women one day there whom he fell head-over-heels for, and began to date. The women was named Janice, and had just moved from Pittsburgh for her new job. they had a whirlwind romance and were married only six months after meeting.
They moved into a small studio apartment and lived happily for a time, both saving up to move into a house. That dream was shaked in 2038 however, when the car dealership that he worked out went out of business. Curtis was kept up by stress the next three nights, before he was approached by a frequent customer of the dealership. The man said that he was in need of a book keeper at an auto garage he owned, and Curtis seemed liked a good fit for the spot. Curtis leapt at the chance, he eagerly headed home and told his wife.
He would find out however, that the garage was just a front for a chop shop. His conscious ate at him over the next few days, worried that something would happen.
Having to make a delivery to the Washer, Curtis was in Queens when the bombs struck, thus avoiding instant vaporization. this may have been for the worse however, as he now saw the city descend into madness. After recovering from the shock of the scene, he set off for his home. A trip which had just taken him half an hour that morning now took three. The streets were filled with people looting, screaming, and generally running amok. He arrived home to find the building complete rubble. Dropping to his knees, he sat there for hours before finally leaving for the night. Finding shelter like many others in underground sections of the city, he would soon become very sick.
The cause  became evident after several days; he had Radiation Poisoning. He laid in agony for days as his skin started to peel. Feeling ready he closed his eyes one night fully intent on not opening them again, but woke later.
===Post-War===
He didn't know how much it was at first; as most of his skin had peeled off. Strangely he felt even better somehow, which he first attributed to being insane. Coming to the surface however he ran across others like himself, who told him he wasn't crazy. He was what was called a "ghoul", someone who took a massive amount of radiation but weren't lucky enough to die. The ghouls took him to a small camp of their kind in the ruins to re-socialize him, but he left shortly after he arrived.
Regular humans were less friendly however, driving him away from groups of them, sometimes violently. Retreating to a isolated apartment, he would live here, scavenging sometimes, for the next century. Working on the Fringes of the Overgrown City, he found a small, still functioning radio, which was his only form of contact with others for long periods of time. The other times of interaction would be rare encounters in the ruins, and these lasted briefly, or trips to trade with some of the nearby settlements.
Becoming hooked on the stuff (no mean feat for a Ghoul), he began to sell it. He had trouble at first, despite the addictiveness of the chem, few addicts still wanted to business with a 'zombie.' He did start to put together a small customer base however, selling around the more sordid areas of the ruins. It was around one such area in 2265 that Curtis first came across his pet, Pouches. A Mole-rat pup, it had been separated from it's mother and litter, and would likely have died if Curtis didn't adopt it. Taking it with him, the pup was fond of curling up in his backpack, leading him to name it Pouches. The two of them would come across the greatest customer of Curtis' career the next year. The man was a former dweller of vault 234, which had opened the month before in October, and this new 'explorer' had found Jet in a hurry.
He would see Curtis three times a day, quickly selling all he had for another vial of the substance. One morning came and he had nothing left except for his Pip-boy, and he offered that in exchange. The ghoul initially wasn't trying to take, seeing no need for it and not understanding how it worked. The former dweller quickly showed him on his own arm, and then said he'd need a Bobby Pin to take it off. When Curtis broke down and accepted the offer and fetched the pin, the dweller told him that his uncle showed him how to do this, a trick he learned in maintenance. The dweller then put the device on the ghoul's arm and booted it, ensuring that everything functioned. In exchange Curtis gave him ten vials of Jet, as he looked through his new Pip-boy.
This would change however, when the pair returned to find their door kicked in, causing Curtis to apply to A.R.C. as a field reporter. He successfully under bid a competitor and was awarded the job, which he took to with dedication. This would prove to be a mistake however, as he was captured and brainwashed as an assassin by the People's Republic of Chinatown. The psychotropic regiment was properly built for ghouls however, causing the implanted memories to desynch, causing Curtis to collapse in the lobby of A.R.C., minutes from killing Maxwell Flower.
==Inventory==
Category:Characters
Category:New York characters