Earl Ricker
Earl Ricker is the most dangerous kind of believer: one whose cause was born from real suffering. A Retrograde from Misery Bay, Ricker spent his life with skin peeling and falling away from rot and decay, shunned by other Strains wherever he went. He could not find work. He could not find belonging. Every settlement treated him as something to tolerate at best and drive out at worst. He arrived at the Arch already broken by the world, and what he found there broke him further in a different direction.
He is the founder and most aggressive leader of the Maskless, the Retrograde supremacist movement in the Arch. Where other Maskless members found pride in removing their masks, Ricker found rage. He describes himself as sub-par, below everyone else, a man with no riches, beauty, wit, or intelligence. The Maskless gave him the first sense of belonging he had ever known, and when other Strains in the Arch continued to look at him sideways even after the masks came off, his response was not disappointment but fury.
He now leads acts of violence against other Strains in the Arch, targeting anyone he considers a "smooth skin" with the accumulated anger of a lifetime of discrimination. Some who know him believe he will burn himself out, that the rage is too hot to sustain. Others see something darker: a man who has nothing left to lose and who may be leading other Retrogrades down a path that ends in mass killings. Whether the Enforcers can contain him before that tipping point remains the central question. Ricker is not interested in containment. He is interested in the world looking at what it made of him.
He is the founder and most aggressive leader of the Maskless, the Retrograde supremacist movement in the Arch. Where other Maskless members found pride in removing their masks, Ricker found rage. He describes himself as sub-par, below everyone else, a man with no riches, beauty, wit, or intelligence. The Maskless gave him the first sense of belonging he had ever known, and when other Strains in the Arch continued to look at him sideways even after the masks came off, his response was not disappointment but fury.
He now leads acts of violence against other Strains in the Arch, targeting anyone he considers a "smooth skin" with the accumulated anger of a lifetime of discrimination. Some who know him believe he will burn himself out, that the rage is too hot to sustain. Others see something darker: a man who has nothing left to lose and who may be leading other Retrogrades down a path that ends in mass killings. Whether the Enforcers can contain him before that tipping point remains the central question. Ricker is not interested in containment. He is interested in the world looking at what it made of him.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ricker was born in Misery Bay as a Retrograde, his skin peeling and rotting from the day he entered the world. Other Strains shunned him. He had trouble finding work, trouble finding a place, trouble finding anyone who would treat him as something other than a walking reminder of what the Infection could do to a body. He spent his youth moving from settlement to settlement, rejected each time, his anger growing with every closed door.
As a young man, he decided things had to change. He journeyed to the Arch, the one settlement where Retrogrades were not the minority, where the irradiated fog meant that his Strain was the one that survived. There, he found the Maskless, a group of Retrogrades who had decided their rotting flesh was a point of pride rather than shame. He took off his own mask and finally felt like he belonged.
But the belonging was not enough. Other Strains in the Arch still flinched at the sight of him. They still whispered. The sideways glances that had followed him his entire life continued even in the one place he thought he was free of them. That was the moment Ricker stopped seeking acceptance and started seeking dominance. He became the most aggressive voice in the Maskless, turning their pride into his weapon. The question now is whether anyone can stop him before the weapon is turned on the Arch itself.
As a young man, he decided things had to change. He journeyed to the Arch, the one settlement where Retrogrades were not the minority, where the irradiated fog meant that his Strain was the one that survived. There, he found the Maskless, a group of Retrogrades who had decided their rotting flesh was a point of pride rather than shame. He took off his own mask and finally felt like he belonged.
But the belonging was not enough. Other Strains in the Arch still flinched at the sight of him. They still whispered. The sideways glances that had followed him his entire life continued even in the one place he thought he was free of them. That was the moment Ricker stopped seeking acceptance and started seeking dominance. He became the most aggressive voice in the Maskless, turning their pride into his weapon. The question now is whether anyone can stop him before the weapon is turned on the Arch itself.
Founder of the Maskless, rage born from a lifetime of rejection.
Children
