Phill Turpentine

## Pre-Apocalypse

*The following is an excerpt from Phill's PNDRA Refugee Application,*

"Phill was born in Australia after his family moved there to pursue his fathers work opportunities at the maritime museum in Sydney. Where Phill's father was contracted to carve Maori canoes in his traditional art style for display at the Museum. However after the Canoes were finished and paid for, his family moved back to rural New Zealand when he was aged 4 , he spent his younger years hunting pigs and fishing across the countryside in between showing up for the only parts of school he actually liked. Those being football and the mechanics and automotive classes. (To clarify in Rural NZ during the time period, children could and would work part time jobs during school hours or would just flat out not go to school. Unless parents ensured children showed up or they wanted to go, they simply didn’t show up sometimes. The parents could and were contacted by school administration, but legal consequences weren’t regularly administered so long as the kid showed up regularly enough. In other words during these times the school system just didn’t care enough to chase you across the countryside to get you to show up every day.

Phill was fit from the hard labor of hauling animal carcasses across the hills and forests of his home town, which attracted unwanted attention. Many of the older children noticing Phill’s muscular nature would harass him, occasionally picking fights as angry teenagers do. This is where Phill learned the importance of sticking up for himself, soon learning that aggressors only ceased when they were made to.

Phill’s father and mother were both 19 when he was born, his fathers name being Jimmy and his mothers Anna. He was an only child as his mother was rendered infertile due to complications during his birth. His family was poor but his father was a traditional maori woodworker, an art that had all but died out. So it afforded his family a lot of opportunities to travel abroad despite their poor income as his father created carved art pieces for museums in Europe, Japan, America and Australia. Phill Learning the languages or at least core parts of them during the months he would stay in each place. Inevitably however he would end up back in rural New Zealand after each trip, where his other relatives (cousins etc) and tribe(for reference a Maori “tribe” is not a tribal group, by this point in history the populace of New Zealand were well and truly westernized. Tribe is used to refer to their expansive family group) lived.

During a brief work trip with his father to Paris where his father would carve a statue for the Musee Bourdelle art museum, Phill found himself with a lot of spare time and not much to do with it. So he began to learn French from the locals, one word here. Another there, after he had sufficiently butchered their languages vocabulary enough the museum staff  where his father was working inevitably caved and began to teach him the language. However he would only later come to full fluency.

After years of occasionally beating someone or getting beat up himself amongst the brief stints of being overseas Phill came to the conclusion that his piss poor hometown was far too small for his liking, especially when just across the pond he could make big money in the mines in the lucky country. That and he’d finally get his parents off his back, So after turning 16 Phill purchased his ticket to Australia by selling possum skins. After arriving in Australia he lived with a cousin for a few months before going to work in the iron mines in Queensland. Where his love of cooking grew as a result of the poor quality mine food being provided to him. This is also where he learned basic mechanical skills during his overwhelming annoyance that the mine's mechanics would fail to patch leaks in pipes or maintain equipment, resulting in him simply doing it himself. Failing and trying again until he succeeded or someone got annoyed enough at his making a mess that they showed him how to do it properly.

Phill’s darker skinned nature earned him no respite in the racially unaccepting Australian mine, earning him multiple beatings and much contempt from the workers there. Slowly, as Phill’s aggressive attitude towards aggressors continued and his enemies only grew in number. He learnt to temper his anger, having realized that sticking up for oneself does not always constitute trying to pommel the other person into the dirt. Especially when there are a lot more of them than there are of you. This also came with the realization that jumping straight to violence as a means to an end would only encourage some people, or lose him his job.

Once Phill hit 21 he left the mines for good and headed into the small rural town of Orange, where he became a cook for the local pub. The town had everything he loved, friendly people, a river to fish at and a wild animal population to hunt. Until a drought came and Phill skipped town because he couldn’t take the heat. After pinging through kitchens and manual labor jobs for a couple of years he moved to America. He had lived there a while in his childhood and liked the people so he took the first boat over to New York before moving to Tennessee where he worked in the Forestry, fishing on the weekends and generally enjoying life. This is where he met Bree Daniels, who also spoke French. Now having a person to speak to in French he practiced more and gained greater grasp over the language, speaking in it regularly to Bree for the sheer purpose of antagonizing his other coworkers over their inability to understand what he was saying. Soaking immense joy out of their annoyed faces every time he would raise a passing comment in French to Bree, only for it to go totally over his other coworkers heads.

Then the outbreak came and zombies overwhelmed the place he called home, knowing that staying in high populous areas is equivalent to throwing yourself into a horde. He grabbed his friend, got straight on his boat and headed up the Mississippi river towards Kentucky, Eventually arriving in Louisville with a friend. That friend being Bree Daniels."

## Season 0

Phill failed to escape the city of Louisville before December 1st, 1994 and was incinerated in the December Bombings. They will be sorely missed.

## Personality

*The following is an excerpt from Phill's PNDRA Refugee Application,*

"I would say I am normally a little insular with my general emotions, I'm not unfriendly normally however I normally won’t voice large amounts of how I feel or what I think unless I'm around someone I spend alot of time with or who is my friend. If something went seriously wrong within myself mentally, I probably wouldn’t tell very many people. Additionally, depending on the circumstances, I might not say anything at all if it would be a burden to the people around me.

Normally I think people see me as reasonably friendly and as a decent guy. Though I haven't really had any reason not to be lately.

I do however look after the people who look after me as a matter of value, if it's deserved i like to try and help people that have helped me out in the past."