Charley 'Chip' Wilson

Hi-Point C9

## Overview

Charles 'Chip' Wilson is one of the most well known scavengers in the wasteland, earning a reputation for his uncanny ability to find, and fix, just about anything mechanical in nature.

Travelling across the wasteland in a homemade electric buggy of his own design, Chip, and his partner Cletus 'Bub' Brown seek out gainful employment wherever they can find it, with their services oftentimes fetching incredibly high prices.

## Early Life

Chip was born in the small town of Ashburn, Georgia, as the second of seven children to Trevor and Jemma Wilson. Growing up, Chip's life was marred by adversity and strife. Both of his parents were severe alcoholics who oftentimes drifted in and out of prison on a semi-regular basis. This lack of stability led to Chip having to assume many responsibilities around the house to help support his family, to including working part time at a garage, and scrapping whatever items he could for their components and valuable copper.

It was here that Chip's apparent 'super natural' mechanical comprehension became evident, being able to guess what was wrong with a car just by listening to it run, and being able to repair items that others would deem irreparable.

Despite being forced to work blatantly illegal part time jobs as a minor, and juggling his responsibilities to his younger siblings, Chip still managed to attended school on a full time basis, eventually graduating as the valedictorian of his class.

## College Years

After finishing highschool, Chip received several scholarship opportunities, ultimately choosing to attend Savannah State University, due to both its outstanding mechanical engineering program and its proximity to home.

Just as he had done in highschool, Chip proved himself to be both a studious academic and a hard worker to a fault, juggling classes during the daytime, and work at an auto body repair shop in the evenings. Despite the enormous workload, Chip still managed to do well in class, appearing to be on the straight and narrow to a promising career. This wouldn't come to be, however, as The Yellow Flu would rear its ugly head before he ever had the chance to graduate.

## The Collapse

In the chaos that ensued during the collapse, Chip would first attempt to hole up in his dormitory room and wait out the Yellow Flu. As it soon became evident, there would be no waiting out the Yellow Flu, and Chip was eventually forced to retreat back home. On his way back to Ashburn, Chip would very nearly be killed by a group of bandits hiding among the miles of gridlock, only just barely managing to escape with his life after stabbing one through the neck and fleeing into the woods.

Injured, dehydrated, and lost, Chip wandered aimlessly for several days, until eventually finding his way back to the road and continuing the journey to Ashburn on foot. By the time he had made it home, he had become heavily disoriented and infamished, making him an all too easy target for his infected family members.

In a brief, but incredibly violent altercation, Chip was only just barely able to dispatch his father and two youngest sisters, unknowingly becoming infected in the process. Do to his weakened state, the virus progressed far faster than usual, sending him into a coma just three days after infection.

After two weeks of painful coughing fits and relapses into a comatose state, Chip was finally able to recover from the virus. With the rest of his family missing without a trace, and nowhere to go, he packed a bag and set off in search of a safe place to stay.

## Raider Involvement

Despite Chip's best efforts to locate a safe haven to call home, his attempts were fruitless. What few settlements he was able to find were openly hostile towards outsiders, and on more than one occasion he found himself on the receiving end of a hail of bullets for wandering too close.

After several months spent in total isolation and barely managing to scrape by, Chip wandered into a Raider camp out of sheer desperation, offering his services in exchange for a safe place to stay at night. Although completely taken aback by the outsider's blatant disregard for his own safety, the group eventually welcomed him in.

Quickly proving his worth to the group, the Raiders let Chip tag along on their meandering journey westwards, raping and pillaging their way through the decimated country.

## Corpus Christi

Having grown discontent with the Raider lifestyle, Chip began to search for an easy way out, eventually finding one in the form of Nova Roma. At the time, the fledgling Empire was still collecting itself after the disastrous War of the Dogs, and was in desperate need of new bodies and skilled laborers. Seeing this as his one shot at making an honest living for himself, Chip quietly fled from his group in the dead of the night, making it to Corpus Christi a few days later.

Making himself known to Douglass McDonnel, the chief engineer of the Empire, Chip was able to land a probationary position within the engineer corps, supervising the repair and strengthening of the city's defenses.

Proving himself to be a brilliant, albeit highly unorthodox thinker, Chip would find himself being assigned to bigger, and more important tasks within the city as time went on, eventually helping to design the hybrid generators for the city's central power station.

Things wouldn't remain good for long, however, as soon disputes over unpaid wages began to erupt between Chip and Douglass. Rather than facing up to his embezzlement of funds and broken promises, Douglass drummed up false charges against Chip and had him summarily sentenced to enslavement at the colosseum.

Unluckily for Chip, his first opponent would be none other than Cletus 'Bub' Brown, who had become something of a local superstar in the gladiatorial sports. Surprising absolutely no one, the match was a complete blow out, with Chip summarily being beaten to within an inch of his life mere minutes into the match. Had it not been for Emperor Norton's attendance that day, and his legendary clemency, Chip's life might've been ended then and there.

On the orders of Douglass McDonnel himself, Chip would be thrown into the same cell as Cletus Brown, hoping that tensions would flare between the two and Chip would be finished off. As it turned out, however, the two were able to set their bruised egos aside, finding commonality in their shared misery. It wouldn't take long for the both of them to hatch an escape plan.

Using Chip's engineering know-how, and Cletus Brown's immense physicality, the two of them were able to break out of their holding cell and escape into the dead of the night. Although neither one of them knew it yet, their two week long ordeal of survival as they tried to escape the empire would make them the closest of friends, and form an inseparable bond between the two.