Aaron 'Jolly Roger' Rodger

Lancers

Batavi Battalion

Mercenaries

Quad Tube General Purpose Night Vision Goggles

## Early Life

Born as the first of three children to Steve and Luann Rodger, Aaron grew up in a military household. With both his mother and father enlisted in the Marine Corps, it was clear even from an early age that he was destined for a life of military service.

Through innumerable moves across both the country and the world, Aaron would prove himself to be far more resilient than what would be expected from a child his age, an important trait that'd serve him well throughout his later life. Along side his seeming indifference towards picking up everything and moving halfway across the world on a seemingly moment's notice, Aaron was also a studious academic and naturally gifted athlete, marking him as a cut above his peers.

Throughout high school, it seemed as if Aaron was on the straight and narrow to following in his mother's footsteps and becoming an officer, with several colleges showing interest in the promising young man. However, whether to spite his mother, or merely wanting to follow in his father's footsteps, Aaron declined the opportunity to go to college, instead opting to enlist in the Marine Corps just two weeks after turning eighteen.

## Military Career

As to be expected from growing up in a military household, Aaron took exceedingly well to the military lifestyle. Being both a stellar athlete and a competent leader, through four years of exceptional service Aaron would find himself rounding out his first contract at the rank of sergeant. Although he was doing the very thing that he had always dreamt of doing, thus far Aaron found his military experience somewhat lackluster. With nothing in the way of wars going on at the time, Aaron spent most of his time conducting pointless field exercises and sweeping the motorpool, something which he hadn't anticipated when he first joined.

Unsure of if he wanted to continue his military career or not, it would be his platoon commander, Lieutenant Hubbard, who first suggested that Aaron try out for the Marine Raiders. With very little to lose, and seeking to broaden his horizons by any means necessary, Aaron put in a package to attend the selection course. Although he didn't know it at the time, this would be his first step on the path to a highly illustrious career in the Marine Raiders.

Thanks in no small part to a lifetime of athleticism and a dogged sense of perseverance, Aaron was able to make it through the absolutely hellish selection course, and earn himself a place among the ranks of the Raiders.

Over the course of the next six years, Aaron would find himself partaking in 3 official combat deployments, as well as several deployments that 'didn't officially happen', even going as far as to earn a silver star during his second deployment to Afghanistan.

From then on, Aaron's meteoric rise would only continue to soar to new and staggering heights. With ten years of service under his belt, and having just recently put on the rank of gunnery sergeant, Aaron would take to writing articles for incredibly prestigious military institutions, such as the US Naval Institute and the John F Kennedy Warfare School. Although it was somewhat unheard of for a 'lowly enlisted' to be writing articles of such a high caliber, Aaron proved himself to be a tremendous military thinker, providing critical insight into all manner of subjects, ranging from the future of warfare all the way up to the practicality of asymmetrical small unit warfare doctrine on an institutional level.

In another 8 years of service, Aaron would find himself putting on the rank of Master Gunnery Sergeant. Not only had he lived up to his father's reputation, but he had surpassed it ten fold.

## Personal Life

While Aaron's career might've been a continual and meteoric rise upwards, his personal life could hardly be described as the same. Over the course of his 18 years in the Marine Corps, Aaron would marry and divorce three times, resulting in five children.

Between crushing child support payments, poor relationships with his ex-wives, and children that had very little to do with him, Aaron was only barely managing to keep a grip on his sanity. This downwards spiral of depression, self-doubt, and guilt would take a tremendous toll on the man, resulting in his turn to rampant alcoholism. This would all come to a head during the early stages of the collapse, when Aaron would have a near mental breakdown during Operation Sword. For the first time in his entire military career, his superiors cast doubt upon the former golden boy of the Raiders.

## The Collapse

With serious doubts being cast upon his leadership capabilities, Aaron would find himself taking on increasingly lesser and lesser roles, even as the outbreak continued to spiral out of control. By the time of Operation Shield, Aaron had been relegated to minor leadership tasks around the Washington Safe Haven, such as logistics, administration, and armory functions. For someone who had at one point been standing with the world at his feet, his latest bout of assignments had been nothing short of humiliating.

It'd be during the chaotic last days of the Washington Safe Haven that Aaron would contract the Yellow Flu. Realizing that the writing was on the wall, Aaron quietly excused himself during the dead of the night, slipping through the shoddy defenses in an overlooked corner of the safe haven, fully intent on taking his own life before the virus could. Diligently slinking through the shadows, Aaron avoided the masses of infected and armed bands of looters, before eventually coming across a desolate spot in the city park.

Deciding that this was the place he wanted to take his own life in, Aaron made himself comfortable and prepared to watch one last sun rise. However, before he could get to that point, the rapid progression of the virus would see him slipping into a coma.

For four days, Aaron lapsed in and out of consciousness, coming to just long enough to drink down some water and come to the realization that he wasn't dead yet, before once again lapsing into unconsciousness. By the dawn of the fifth day, Aaron started to recover from the yellow flu. Although he was extremely weakened and heavily infamished by the four days worth of intermittent comas, he had survived his dance with death.

After spending three days recuperating his strength, Aaron was finally strong enough to set out on his own, heading directly into the center of the dead city to reunite with anybody who might be left. As he'd come to find out, in the time he had been unconscious, the Washington Safe Haven had become a sarcophagus of the dead and infected. For the first time in his life, Aaron was well and truly alone.

For the next two months, Aaron would listlessly wander through the decimated remains of the capitol city. Using the cover of darkness to avoid raiders and the infected alike, Aaron moved from place to place, scavenging for resources and attempting to make contact with any remnant of the military that remained. It wouldn't be until a cold autumn morning until he'd finally get his wish, when by sheer coincidence he managed to run into an FRA foot patrol. Although reluctant at first, the foot patrol eventually agreed to let him follow them back to their base, starting his second stint of military service.

## FRA Involvement

After joining with the FRA, Aaron once again found himself on a meteoric rise up the ranks. With a serious lack of non-commissioned officers to go around, it wouldn't take him long for him to take on increasingly important roles within the organization, with several corroborating witnesses stepping forwards to attest for his pre-collapse exploits, helping with his progression through the ranks. By the end of his first eight months of service, Aaron had risen from little more than a patrol team leader to serving as the command sergeant major of the north Columbia military district, serving as an advisor to the commanding officer and personally overseeing tasks such as recruitment, training, and discipline within the ranks.

Hardly had he even had the time to settle into his new position before he was paid a visit by an old friend, Michael Hubbard; who was now the acting executive officer of the Columbia military district. Upon the strict insistence of Colonel Hubbard, Aaron was chosen to become a full fledged officer within the FRA.

Just as he had done time and time again, Aaron proved himself to be both a courageous leader and a cunning tactician, leading his troops from the front and being the first to volunteer himself for dangerous assignments. It was because of these traits, alongside his impressive career before the collapse, that Aaron would be hand chosen to lead the FRA's newest unit, The Lancers.

With a blank check and a generous timeline, Aaron was tasked with building a special operations unit from the ground up, shaping it in his own image. With little in the way of oversight or questioning, Aaron diligently set about screening and vetting the massive amount of applicants, picking and choosing those who he thought had the most potential. Once he had selected the top applicants, Aaron began the brutal selection course, which involved activities such as ruck marches through difficult terrain, and swimming across the potomac in full protective equipment in the dead of the night.

From the original 100 applicants, only 42 would be able to make it through the gruelling selection course, with a further 6 applicants failing during subsequent courses. By the time the first class finished its gruelling selection and training courses, only 36 had graduated, earning the right to be called Lancers.

## Operation Deliverance

Shortly after the first class of Lancers finished their training, they were tasked with their first real mission - Operation Deliverance.

Intel had reached the FRA High Command about a potentially partially completed vaccine located in the Unitecha Research Facility in New York City. Eager to see just what their new unit was capable of, the High Command hastily cobbled a mission together to recover the vaccine and presented it to Aaron. Despite his protests that the operation was too complex and relied too heavily on poor intelligence, his concerns were pushed aside and the operation continued.

From the outset, the Operation was riddled with troubles and setbacks. Between a complete lack of understanding of the layout of the building, and a high number of infected within, the team suffered heavy casualties as they fought their way into the underground labs. To make matters all the worse, the team soon discovered that they weren't the only ones in search of the vaccine, with the American Reclamation Front having dispatched their own special forces unit to the premises.

In the ensuing firefight, the ARF team would recover the vaccine samples and attempt to exfiltrate, trading casualties tit-for-tat with the Lancers, until it came down to only Aaron and Hilda Brescht.

Heavily wounded in the firefight, Aaron managed to get the upper hand on Hilda, using her helmet to knock her unconscious and secure the samples just in time for his extraction.

Aaron would spend the next two months recovering from his wounds. Although publicly and privately hailed as a hero, Aaron felt incredible sorrow and bitterness over the loss of his team. To make matters worse, while Aaron was still recovering from his wounds, he'd come to find out that they hadn't in fact been after a vaccine for the Yellow Flu. Instead, his team had been sent on a suicide mission to recover a performance enhancing drug known as Compound ZB-12, a so-called super soldier serum. As time would tell, the compound proved to be largely useless and unable to be recreated. What's more, despite his strongest objections, there were never any attempts made to recover the bodies of the fallen Lancers, showing both the bold faced lies that he had been fed, and the blatant disregard that the High Command held for their soldiers' lives.

Coming to the realization that they were all little more than expendable pawns meant to die for High Command's fool's errands, Aaron came to hate the FRA and everything it stood for, eventually deserting his post and striking it out on his own.

## Desertion

Despite his otherwise admirable and completely spotless track record, the High Command could not allow Aaron to escape with his life, lest information about the botched raid and their shady dealings be publicly disclosed. As such, as soon as it had become apparent that Aaron had gone AWOL, the High Command spared no quarter in attempting to catch him, even going as far as deploying a unit of Lancers to track him down.

For the next month and a half, Aaron would spend his life living as a man on the run, constantly avoiding FRA foot patrols and ambushes as he made his way west. On more than one occasion, Aaron would very nearly be caught by the men he had personally helped to train, at one point even talking a squad into letting him escape after they managed to corner him in a barn.

Only upon reaching the Appalachian Mountains would the search finally be called off, with the manhunt tying down troops and equipment that could be better used elsewhere. Although he had just barely managed to escape with his life, Aaron had found himself wandering into the middle of a warzone, in the form of the Great Jehovahite Uprising.

## The Batavi Battalion

By this point in his life, warfare had become so deeply ingrained in Aaron's DNA that he knew nothing else. With no food, very little ammo, and nothing in the way of marketable skills aside from soldiery, Aaron found himself inevitably pulled towards mercenary work.

Joining the Batavi Battalion, Aaron found himself arriving just in time to partake in the Siege of Morganstown, during which he personally led a charge on a Jehoviate Machinegun nest, earning both the respect and admiration of his fellow mercenaries. For his actions that day, Aaron found himself taking on the role of platoon leader, leading a group of 32 mercenaries of varying quality and equipment. Through the rest of the Great Jehovahite Uprising, Aaron would lead his platoon with tremendous vigor and cunning, continually increasing his prestige and pushing him higher in the command structure of the unit.

By the end of the conflict, Aaron had rose to the position of company commander, with a very real possibility of eventually taking over as the executive officer, if not commanding officer in due time. However, this wouldn't come to be, as Aaron soon became aware of a plot against his life by his fellow officers, who felt intimidated by the newcomer's sudden rise to power. Realizing that this was not the place he wanted to be any more, Aaron quietly slipped away in the dead of the night and made his way to East Liverpool, where he joined with another mercenary unit on their way to the frontlines of the ongoing The Jehovahite War.

## Legacy

Despite the popularity of the profession, the mercenary community remains relatively small and tight knit, with most mercenaries drifting from unit to unit whenever the money dries up, or they're looking to save their own skin. Due to this, particularly prominent mercenaries gain a reputation for themselves, with their names being known by many, and their exploits being known by even more. Chief among these larger-than-life mercenaries is The Jolly Roger himself.

Between years spent as a Marine Raider, being the progenitor of the Lancers, and innumerable exploits across the wasteland, Aaron has become a sort of patron saint of mercenaries everywhere. So far reaching has his tale become, in fact, that some mercenaries have taken to adopting his symbol - the grinning skull above crossed cutlasses, and even writing a folk song in his honor, titled simply 'The Jolly Rodger'.