Full History to S2 M27

[voiceinthedark]

Sam was born and raised in England, the eldest child and only son of a Chinese father and Chinese-English mother (he mentions specifically that his father is Chinese, but never mentions his mother), and with one younger sister who he was very fond of. It's probable that he grew up not too far from the area that would become Abel Township (he seems to be very familiar with the surrounding area, including knowing a specific pizza place and the locations of multiple comic and hobby shops), if not in the town itself, then in one of the surrounding villages.

Although his family were generally loving and took good care of him, his relationship with his father was never the best. He was pushed to excel in academics from a young age, with his father making his disappointment known whenever Sam didn't live up to expectations (Sam states that his dad got so angry when Sam didn't get good grades in French, telling Sam that he had dishonoured his family, and that was a subject his dad didn't even care about). While Sam put in a lot of work, it was likely to the detriment of his social life and led to a huge amount of insecurity and need for approval. With so much pressure to succeed and likely little time to spend with friends, Sam turned to the internet and other solitary 'geeky' activities instead. He's canonically shown to be into comics (DC and Marvel), and has a working knowledge of internet lingo (calling Runner 10 a BAMF).

He lived a relatively normal life for the most part, managing to keep up his grades a reasonable amount. It's during high school that he developed an interest in the radio, expressing an interest in becoming a DJ to his parents. This met with fierce disapproval from his father who insisted on a more academic career and so Sam ended up applying for an engineering degree. He managed to get good enough grades to get into university and when the time came, went off to college.

It turned out that he was awful at engineering. He had no interest in the subject, and while he tried very hard, he just could not deal with the subject, barely scraping by each year. While he mostly managed to hide his poor grades from his father, it was obvious that he wasn't doing very well and certainly wasn't enthusiastic about the subject, leading to rather intense disappointment and upset from his family. Despite this, he kept on at it doggedly, even with his lecturers advising him to switch courses, just because he knew his dad would never forgive him if he did switch.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though. While at university, he did manage to make some friends and got the chance to indulge his more geeky hobbies. He was introduced to tabletop roleplaying (Demons and Darkness) and even to cosplay and conventions (He says that he'd cosplayed Aquaman only because his girlfriend at the time really liked him, but it's fairly obvious from his reaction to possibly getting D&D costumes, that he was at least as enthusiastic as she was). He also spent a lot of time hanging around at the student radio station, learning how to use the equipment to broadcast, something that he enjoyed much more than his degree.

That last Christmas before the apocalypse was very uncomfortable for Sam, with praise heaped upon his sister while all he got was disappointment. Understandably, this made him feel rather jealous of his sister who was top of the class in her law degree and enjoying every minute of it.

The Grey Plague hit in November (from one of the radio segments with Father Michael) of his fourth year of university while he was visiting home for the weekend. It seemed like nothing at first; likened to Swine Flu or SARS, with authorities convinced that they could contain and cure it. Of course, this didn't quite work out when the dead began to revive, thoroughly destroying any quarantine procedures and spreading the plague further. Sam stayed at home instead of going back to university as the plague worsened, unable to contact his sister by phone or email. And then the inevitable happened; Sam's parents became infected and turned and Sam was forced to kill them in his own house.

(From this point on is mostly educated guesses as little is said about how Sam arrived in Abel or the early days)

By this point, civilisation was falling apart; people fleeing cities in terror, turning on other people, killing anyone displaying event a hint of a cough or a sniffle. Misleading advice was everywhere. And Sam was alone. He armed himself with an axe and was forced to scavenge to survive, avoiding zombies and holing up wherever seemed safe, no particular aim except surviving.

Sam managed to survive for at least a few weeks until he was picked up by Major de Santa and her military crew who were retreating northwards to the military base. She took him in and transported him to a farm outside of the town, which would later become Abel Township. It's there that the survivors holed up in a bunker for around three weeks, fighting off the hordes of the undead.

Even once the initial assault was over, there was a lot of work to do, building walls and defences that could stand up to further zombie attacks. Sam got a lot of use out of that axe. With all of the military personnel needed for defence, that left Sam as the only civilian with any real experience of radio and so he got shoehorned into the position of chief operator, in charge of guiding runners around the countryside in search of vital supplies.

It's a job with a high rate of fatalities and Sam oversees most of them. Pre-game, he's lost 3 Runner 5s, 1 Runner 3, 2 Runner 4s, at least 1 Runner 7, and from Esteban's comments asking how many Runners Sam has lost compared to Nadia's 3, we can probably assume that there have been a fair few more, so by the time of the game starting, he has seen a lot of people die, and taken out a fair few zoms himself.

(Back to canon from here)

One runner, Alice Dempsey, Runner 5, particularly stood out though. Ex-military, having moved into a lucractive private sector job, Alice was tough and charismatic and Sam was instantly smitten. He says that they had a 'thing' and is obviously fairly invested in her, although one gets the impression that it was more of a 1-sided thing on Sam's part, with Alice just not rebuffing his infatuation, rather than reciprocating. They got on well enough whatever their relationship, with Alice teaching him how to use a sidearm.

Sometime shortly before the main storyline, Sam sent Alice on a mission to the hospital in town where she went missing, presumed dead.

Abel Township was contacted by a military helicopter bringing in supplies from the military base up north. Sam took the call, giving them the all clear to land, just in time to see the helicopter be shot down by a rocket launcher. Despite the shock and panic, Sam managed to contact the survivor of the crash (Runner 5, the player character) and give them directions to escape the horde of zombies approaching, giving them the title Runner 5 in the process. He successfully guided them back to Abel, even with a detour through the hospital where Alice had died. Just before Runner 5 reached the gates however, a fast zombie appeared, one that had once been Alice, and Sam had to watch as she was shot down by the snipers at the gates.

Sam did not take this well. While he attempted to work through the grief, involving himself with training the new Runner 5, his behaviour became more and more erratic until he put both himself and 5 in danger, having them running over and over the spot where Alice had died. Following this incident, he ended up having a PTSD triggered breakdown and was confined to the hospital by Maxine to rest and recover. We know that he at least was suffering from flashbacks.

Life continued pretty much as normal, or as normal as it can get in the zombie apocalypse with many missions run. It was during one of these that Runner 5 was ambushed and trapped outside overnight, when the zombies were more active. Not knowing whether 5 was living, dead or undead, Sam stayed up all night broadcasting, talking to Runner 5, begging them to come home.

Shortly after this, Sam guided Runner 5 on a mission to pick up medical equipment. A routine mission seemingly, except when Runner 5 picked up a box intended for Maxine Meyers, Sam's best friend and Abel's resident doctor. The box contained records from scientists who had been working on the virus, including Maxine's girlfriend, Paula.

It proved to be vital information, and Sam helped with further missions, giving Maxine time to listen to the CD Paula had left and for the two of them to recover files about Patient Zero from a secret military location. The plot thickened when Runner 5 only narrowly escaped armed men who destroyed the facility.


Following this, Sam controlled a mission to gain more information about Van Ark and the events leading up to the Grey Plague, sending out Runner 5, Runner 8 and Maxine to gather information, despite knowing that the Major would not have let the Doctor out of the compound. During these missions, they met with Professor Van Ark, who seemed to have been involved in the research which led to the plague. Unfortunately he was bitten, leaving them only with a mention of Jeffro Complex, a research facility still working on a cure.

En route to Jeffro, they encountered a man called Ephraim who agreed to help them get inside, and also warned them that New Canton had sent a raiding party, 130 people, to assault the complex. While Sam told his runners to return home, Maxine and Runner 8 refused, heading on to the complex.

After entering the complex, they realised that they'd been betrayed, and that Van Ark had not actually died or turned, and had led them into a trap, intending to capture them. Thanks to Runner 8, they managed to escape in the confusion, but not before hearing Paula's voice, although it turned out to be a recording, and seeing some of the inside of the facility, people kept in strange tanks and Van Ark's healed zombie bite.

After escaping, they were approached by Archie, New Canton's Runner 20 who passed on vital information, including that Paula was alive and working with Van Ark, albeit, unwillingly, as he has the only method to keep her from becoming a zombie.

All of this had to be put on hold however. A chance encounter with Lem, a New Canton Runner who had been bitten, left them with a headset to listen in on New Canton's transmissions. Through this, they learnt that New Canton was planning a raid on Abel Township.

The day of the raid left Sam definitely jittery, sending his runners out, not against zombies, but against humans. They used Lem's headset to keep up with what was going on, finding out about the heavily armed New Canton runners heading for them, as well as deceiving the New Canton Operator into believing that Lem was still alive.

Just as things seemed to be getting heated, the New Canton runners were ordered back to their settlement. Sam celebrated, but it was a premature one, when the news came in that a swarm of over 300 zombies, the dead from another settlement, was heading towards Abel.

Sam went a little to pieces for a few moments, with Runner 7 organising the others to pick off the zombies into smaller groups. Over the radios, Sam had to listen as Runner 6 was bitten and killed by child zombies, while the others ran for their lives.

Worse was to come when several zombies, moving far too purposefully for the shambling undead, produced a rocket launcher which they fired at Abel.

(this next part isn't covered in-game as Runner 5 is out in the wilds at this point, not in base)

This understandably left the base in chaos, with every hand available called up to defend Abel against the zombies, with groups sent off in different directions to hide and to guide the zombies away (we know that Jack and Runner 12, for example, ended up in woodlands a few kilometers from Abel following the attack, for example). Things would have gone worse had Major de Santa not shown up soon after with military backup.

The Major managed to broker an alliance with New Canton, allowing the population of Abel to move there while they tried to rebuild and organising several joint missions of great import. Being essential personnel, Sam spent most of his time at Abel Township, despite it still being mainly ruined.

(And this is where Season 2 begins)

One of these was a deception mission to capture several of Van Ark's fast zombies for study, using Runner 5 as bait. Sam worked with Nadia, New Canton's operator, faking fear and worry and mistrust to throw Van Ark off as to their true intent. While the mission went off without a hitch, Sam did accidentally spill that it had been Runner 5 pretending to be Lem during the attack, earning a cold reaction from Nadia.

Over the course of several missions, an alliance was brokered with New Canton and spirits were buoyed by the discovery that zombies reacted to sound (dog whistles) and by the creation of a chemical which slowed down fast zombies, greatly increasing Runners' ability to evade them. They were also constantly sending out Runners on missions to try to recover people that had been lost during the attack.

Nadia deliberately sent Runner 5 into hostile territory with the intention of getting them killed in revenge for Lem's death. Sam intervened at the last moment, fiercely protective of his runner as he told Nadia off for her actions, accusing her of being a hypocrite, because she would have done exactly the same in Abel's position. Following that, he called Runner 5 back to Abel which was still being rebuilt, promising to find them a bed somewhere.

After an SOS call from a grounded cruise liner, Sam guided Runner 5, 3 and 4 on a dangerous mission to help recover the survivors and the vital supplies. However things did not go to plan. Just as it seemed that all was lost, with the runners surrounded by zombies on all sides, they were rescued by Runner 8 who had been presumed dead, after supposedly being bitten during the attack on Abel. With her help, they were able to recover a hefty amount of supplies from the ship.

With tensions easing between New Canton and Abel, they were free to pursue stopping Van Ark and developing Maxine's zombie-slowing chemical, now produced as a spray. After discovering the location of one of Van Ark's secret bases, a decoy mission was set up, making use of a number of New Canton and Abel runners to distract Van Ark, while Five and Archie, a New Canton Runner, snuck in to find information. While at first things seemed to be going to plan, with Archie able to decode the sound devices used by Van Ark to control the zombies, everything quickly went sour when Van Ark returned and captured Archie.

A desperate attempt to rescue her ensued with the help of Archie's boyfriend, Jamie. They managed to triangulate Archie's position and patch into the bugs sewn into Archie's clothing to hear her interrogation by Van Ark, and mounted a rescue mission, planting explosives to drive Van Ark out. It all went horribly wrong however. Before escaping, Van Ark shot and killed Archie.

It also brought to light the horrifying realisation that someone had most likely betrayed them to Van Ark.

That certainly put a damper on spirits in the two settlements, which was only aided when a chemical spill forced the evacuation of Abel. Sam and Nadia worked together to send Runner 5, an unusually pessimistic Runner 3 and Runner 8 to recover the materials needed for a sealant to stop the chemical spill. Unfortunately this took the runners into proximity of a dangerous gang who began shooting. Runner 3 took it upon himself to take out the snipers, a mission that seemed like suicide. 8 and 5 managed to recover the chemical however, and 3 revealed that he had survived, only to have his headset damaged. The success of the mission, and the survival of his Runners left Sam pretty much weak with relief, but better was still to come. Major de Santa made a rousing speech, explaining their plan to douse the countryside with Maxine's chemical, the first step in reclaiming the country from the zombies.

While trawling their communications, Sam received a tip off that Van Ark's men would be transporting something important and he sent Runner 8 and 5 to spy on them. Instead, they encountered Ephraim, the man who had betrayed them once before. He explained that he'd sent the communication because he had vital information about Van Ark. Sam was sceptical to say the least, encouraging 5 and 8 to leave him to be captured. Despite this, 5 and 8 attempted to rescue him, even while he was injured, only for Ephraim to reveal that there was a mole within Abel, a spy working with Van Ark, the Major's 'best beloved', as well as news that Van Ark was planning an attack.

With the attack imminent, they armed their runners with Maxine's spray and sent them out to confront the army of mind-controlled zombies, carrying rocket launchers and guns. Despite his terror, Sam managed to keep calm, even when all seemed lost when the zombie spray only made the zombies faster. He directed his runners to climb up nearby trees to save themselves and thanked them for their service, readying himself to die.

Thankfully in the nick of time (and just in time to stop Sam confessing his feelings for 5), the New Canton cavalry showed up, taking out a large number of the zoms. A strange thing occurred then; the zombies which had been doused with the spray began to fall apart. Somehow, the chemical had gone beyond merely slowing them, and instead, killed them.

With spirits running high, everyone was geared up for the next move, the plan to use the chemical to destroy the zombies once and for all. Fuel was acquired to fuel crop dusters, despite the attempts of bandits to stop them.

Things didn't all go their way however. While returning from a training mission, Runners 3 and 5 were followed by the same bandits. While Janine refused to open the gates, effectively condemning them to death or capture, Sam wasn't quite so steadfast. He ordered the gates opened, allowing 5 and 3 back inside. And the bandits followed them. Janine locked him in the comms shack to protect him while the raiders ransacked the town and held Janine hostage, looking for the anti-zom chemical. Sam managed to guide 3 and 5, along with Jack and Eugene, to Maxine's lab to find the chemical.

While they managed to save Janine and even recover the chemical when the cavalry arrived and the bandits fled, they did find that Maxine's research notes had been stolen.

In his spare time, Sam spent a lot of time looking through ROFFLENET communications and thought he had hit on something; a set of coordinates. Figuring it could be nothing, or it could be something, he sent Runner 5 out to investigate. Far from things being that easy however, Maxine decided to escape Abel for the day and accompany Runner 5. And bring bolt cutters. Not weird at all, right?

The coordinates turned out to be an old church surrounded by fencing, and inside the fencing they found Paula, Maxine's girlfriend. Maxine revealed her reasons, saying that she knew that Paula had been contacting her, using their old Post Code, something that Paula denied, suggesting that someone else had planned this. Right on cue, Van Ark and his soldiers appeared to capture them, prompting Maxine to ask how they'd known that she would be going there today of all days.

While Sam did his best to guide everyone to safety, Van Ark managed to catch up to Maxine. Despite his feelings for 5, he knew that the doctor was more important, sending 5 back to help rescue her. 5 managed to slash Van Ark's throat before he could infect Maxine with the zombie virus and all seemed well for a moment. Only for Van Ark to heal from the fatal wound and reveal that he had made himself immortal.

All they could do was flee, but it wasn't enough. While Maxine managed to escape, 5 was captured by Van Ark, their headset destroyed, and Sam lost contact.