Weight: 200

Apparent Age: 55

Archetype: Mercenary

Preferred Weapon: Aries Laser Pistol

Runner Song:

Bio: Winter Rat is the leader of the savages and he is real monster, This man is the sane one of this bunch and that’s not saying much since the whole lot of them are bat shit insane. Rat just likes to kill and create panic, and he does it well, he will storm a daycare facility for fresh meat and I mean he will eat your children. This man is a cannibal and proud of it, he is reported to have some ability to control devil rats and regular sewer rats, but this must be myth since he is cybered and not magical. What I can say about Rat is stay the hell away from him period he is no good and would rather kill and eat you then look at you.

  <<UPDATE February 6th 2074>>

         The man known as Winter Rat is has had a far more complex life than anyone could imagine, this street killer and leader of the Savages has a deep and dark history cloaked in mystery and those shadows have begun to fade away to revel the true man behind that white rat mask. Actually my heart goes out to Winter Rat and what this man has been through and what he was forced to become, this man was once a loyal and dedicated member of the United States Military and decorated officer who served in countless wars, even earning the Congressional Medal of Honour for his bravery during one engagement deep in the wilds of Afghanistan. He was a family man, a officer and a gentleman; Colonel O’Bannon was beloved by his wife an children as well he was deeply committed to lives of his children and when ever he was home he would make sure his family was well cared for, and his children’s education was foremost, he was active in his local church and would always make time to help his brother Alfred with his disabled son and even funded the programs needed to help in his nephews development. Colonel O’Bannon would give you the shirt of his back and was an all around good man, he was the man that many parents wish their children to grow up to be and he was the role model for many in his neighbourhood; for Colonel O’Bannon was what one would call a true American Hero, and he was centre of his nephews world as well his family was everything to him.

     So how do we go from a man that could be considered a true American Hero, Patriot and dedicated father and family man to the hardened soulless killer known as Winter Rat; well for that I need to take you back in time, we need to take a close look at the early days of the UCAS, the Great Tragedy of 2018 and events of the Purge. During the time of the Tragedy and the rise of the UCAS Colonel O’Bannon was deep within the jungles of some forgotten and deeply classified mission, he was on rescue operation to free American citizens and diplomats from a sudden military coup that had overtaken the local Embassy and resort. The rebels where threatening to begin executing the hostages if their demands where not met, the US government was slow to act in the public eye, yet behind the scenes a small unit of special forces soldiers were being debriefed and getting ready to be shipped out once again. Colonel O’Bannon kissed his wife good bye, hugged his children and even gave his beloved nephew a hug and one of his medals to hold onto for good luck like he did every time he shipped out.

     The people were all tuned into there televisions watching their favourite program, ignorant to the real danger that was lurking on the horizon and in the dead of night Colonel O’Bannon and his team would board a military cargo plane to embark on their rescue mission. According to the intelligence received all was going to plan and they would High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) drop into the jungle and crawl the 20 kilometres to where the rebels where holding the hostages; their mission was to rescue the hostage and remove the rebel threat. Though once Colonel O’Bannon stepped out of the plane and began his decent; it is reported that he had a bad feeling and something just didn’t add up (The audio documents of his reports where later found within his recorder by a group of college students studying the remote regions biological life.) Once Colonel O’Bannon and his team made land fall it was go time and they had only one objective and that was to rescue the hostages and return them to their families alive; though Douglas couldn’t shake that bad feeling and that something just didn’t sit right, he looked at his watch and saw that they hadn’t been in the air long enough to travel halfway around the world; though the terrain was just as described in their briefing and he just figured his watch had stopped or it was running slow for some reason.

      Colonel O’Bannon and his team crawled through the foliage like ghosts in the night, a storm had rolled in off the coast, the winds tore through the jungle followed by torrents of rain, thunder and lightning. Unshaken by the storm they ventured forward with only their mission on their mind and keeping radio silence like each other time they would be on a mission; Colonel O’Bannon lead a team called Ghost Team Six and they where the most successful and popular of these units, it was a united team from multiple different special forces units from all the branches of service. The Ghost Teams had become known when a former commander broke silence and wrote multiple novels about his experiences and described Team Six as the best in the business. Well everything was about to change on this single mission that would become their very last, after many hours of slow travel through hurricane force winds and treacherous terrain the team would have their targets in their sights. Colonel O’Bannon would give the signal for the men to spread out and take aim on the guards; the Embassy was under lock down, the American Flag burning on the pole as it flapped in the wind for the last time before falling to ground as ash, Militant rebels patrolled the roof, walls and gate. Colonel O’Bannon knew it was go time and he signalled his men to strike; using the rumbling thunder as cover they took their first shots bring down the rebels on the roof and at the gate in mere seconds a second volley of fire would take down the roving sentry guards and the team would begin advancing into the grounds. The team would breach the Embassy grounds and find the windows blown out, the building having taken heavy damage from a recent bombardment and many downed soldiers and guards littering the courtyard.

      O’Bannon knew the hostages where being held in the buildings lower floors and he would have to split his team up into two smaller units, one to head towards the hostages and the other to clear the remaining of the building; this is a tactic that O’Bannon and many Ghost Team commanders would use normally, and this was no different than any other rescue mission except for one small detail. That bad feeling in O’Bannon’s gut was correct and something was wrong, something didn’t feel right and as they breached the building and broke off, O’Bannon got to see for the first time that the building was far more dishevelled and in disrepair than an active Embassy should be, desks overturned, the sent of decomposition lingered throughout the building, the walls worn and faded and papers strewn about. The entrance of the Embassy resembled something out of a post apocalypse environment than a recently overtaken Embassy; though as O’Bannon was about to give the order to fall back and regroup automatic fire erupted from above them and from the storm cellar NATO soldiers poured out guns ablaze, O’Bannon and his team quickly fell back to the courtyard to take cover and return fire. They where in a kill or be killed situation, Ghost Team Six was trapped like rats and they had no evacuation coming for them, O’Bannon’s second called for an evacuation and was met with zero response from home base.

      The team fought valiantly during what would become their last stand, bullets tore threw the air, grenades exploding and bodies of both the NATO forces and the Ghost Team would begin to fall one by one. O’Bannon said a silent prayer and goodbye to his family as he continued to fight alongside his men, they had no where to go and no where to run; pinned down by automatic fire prevented them from retreating back into the jungle and their only option was to stand an fight or surrender, Colonel O’Bannon being a true patriot would never surrender to NATO forces and gave the order to keep fighting; he would rather go home in a box than be placed in shackles, they had been set up and this was all a ploy to remove Ghost Team Six. They fought bravely but eventually the numbers would become to great and one by one he watched his men, his brothers fall to the enemy; Colonel O’Bannon would not yield and he just kept fighting like a true patriot, when even when he ran out of ammunition he drew his combat dagger and engaged the enemy directly, he was in a fight for his life and he was going to to bring as many of the traitors to hell with him before he died.

   Bullets tore through his body, and he kept fighting with all the might of a thousand men, slashing and stabbing through the incoming NATO forces though eventually his wounds would become to great and he would fall to his knees beaten and dying, Colonel O’Bannon still wouldn’t surrender and in his last act of defiance he tossed his dagger into the head of the NATO Commander that had exposed himself for a split second; as Douglas’s dagger was in flight he was riddled with bullets and the last thing he would see would be the smug face of the enemy general seeing the dagger flying towards him and as Colonel O’Bannon would fall his blade would bury itself deep into the skull of General McAndrews. O’Bannon would lay in the mud and blood soaked ground slowly dying until everything would go black.

        When he would open his eyes again, he would be on a table within the recovery ward of some localised hospital, he could feel his soul mostly gone and the cold prescience of cybernetics within his body. He tried to rise from the table only to find himself strapped down, all he could do was look around and see that he was hooked up to multiple machines, doctors and nurses milling about and multiple soldiers wearing what he thought was an US Military uniform; for a split second O’Bannon thought he had been rescued and was safe, though that illusion was quickly burst when he saw a well dressed man enter the room saying well it seems that our first test subject is awake and the process has worked. He then told the doctors to drug O’Bannon again and he would feel the burning sensation course through him as the drugs tore through his veins and darkness once again overtook him. Again O’Bannon would open his eyes but this time he wasn’t restrained, though he felt complied and like something was telling him to be their, his memories where fuzzy and his body ached with pain. Once again that well dressed man entered the room, and O’Bannon just felt complied to call him Sir and rise to his feet to salute this man for some reason, though as he jumped to his feet pain ripped through his body and he crumpled to the floor smashing his head against the wooden table near his bed, everything went blurry in his vision, and he began to remember the battle, the NATO forces and this man from earlier.

        The gentleman didn’t even seem to be fazed by O’Bannon’s collapse and even chuckled as Douglas pulled himself back to his feet, though he no longer felt compelled to salute this man; and he knew that something was not right, Douglas just played along and saluted him anyways. The man would introduce himself as Jarred Mitchell and that he was his first test subject for his knew Freedom Task Force, he remarked that he wished the rest of the Team Six had been as sturdy as he was, though you need to break a few eggs first. He continued to go on to explain how everything was a set up and the America that he loved so much was long dead, and long gone; a new regime was in place to keep the people in line and he was going to be commanding this unit of Super Soldiers that would destroy any resistance that stood before their rightful claim to the nation. He would further tell and show video images of his family being raped, butchered and murdered by the natives, and UCAS forces,; Mitchell also explained in gory detail just what he did to O’Bannon’s beloved wife and how he so enjoyed her pussy before he gutted her like a fish.

     As Mitchell continued to torment Douglas with the gory details, unaware that he no longer had O’Bannon under his thumb; the fall and head injury had jostled something loose in his head and Colonel O’Bannon could feel his old self returning, though burning with anger, rage and hatred. His soul and humanity had been replaced with metal. Though as Mitchell continued to speak, O’Bannon would begin  recording the information deep in his memory banks. O’Bannon would glance around the room seeing a needle on the table as his only weapon, eventually the gory details and burning rage would become to great for O’Bannon to handle and he would move with lighting speed grab the empty hypodermic needle and plunge it deep into Mitchell’s chest, their eyes locked and O’Bannon just spoke “Now You Die!” and with a quick thumb press Mitchell would gasp for breath as he would begin to go into cardiac failure; O’Bannon grabbed Mitchell’s gun and knife and fled the room. Alarms began blaring as Mitchell clung to the ground grasping his chest as the medical staff began working on Mitchell to save his life, O’Bannon would make his break from the hospital dressed in only the gown and armed with a Colt 911 and combat knife; the guards where no match for the new and improved O’Bannon and he fight his way to the exit only to e once again cornered like a rat. He was blocked by a sealed security door, armed guards awaited for him on the other side and more armed guards where quickly approaching from all directions; he could not only see them as red dots in his vision scope, he could feel the the tremors of their boots on the ground. O’Bannon once again tore off into another direction only to see Mitchell on a hospital gurney being rushed to surgery by the doctors, though he found a odd looking cylinder device with a switch on it laying on the ground where Mitchell had fallen. For some reason O’Bannon would pick the device up as it seemed important; he suddenly could see the entire layout of the hospital within his vision scope and multiple moving dots in varying colours.

    His vast military experience and tactile knowledge would become his benefit as he quickly plotted a route out of the hospital, though once again he would be blocked by the same heavy security door; and once again he was a trapped rat, something told him to flick the switch on the device and use it to open the door, initially he believed it was a key but to his surprise a blade of energy erupted from the handle and as he slashed at the security door it would cut trough the steel with ease. O’Bannon would side kick the sliced doors and with a crack of thunder and the might of a thousand men the solid steel door rocketed towards the armed security officers and only the sicking sounds of bones crushing and blood splashing could be heard as the guards fell dead and O’Bannon breached the hospital in only his gown and holding this odd device that for some reason he knew how to use. O’Bannon would vanish into the night and not be seen again for many years when he would be known as Winter Rat. (The records of this attack and video images were recovered from the hospital security department and stored within the office, before it could be destroyed).

     How O’Bannon would earn the name Winter Rat is unknown but he would emerge deep within the middle east many years latter, he would be an outlaw on the run from the government and police; his name disgraced and he was reported deceased O’Bannon’s family was dead and his life destroyed, his soul taken from him and his moral compass broken do the cyber surgery and attempted reprogramming by Mitchell. The gory images, details and his final stand would play in a continued loop within his subconscious and the final straw was when he learned that his beloved nephew Alfred was brutally murdered by the Freedom Task force and one of Mitchell’s new puppets Agent White. Though O’Bannon would not have the time to seek vengeance he needed to escape the country and needed to put the pieces of his life back together again, this is how he found himself within the Middle East as part of a mercenary camp called the Sentinels and working with some of the best in the business.

     He would learn that the dagger that was plunged into his back would as well have hit many within the former US Special Forces divisions as he would learn the tales of his new brothers, he would be honoured to stand with General Forscythe and work along others like the Mossad Agents Professor and Accountant, he would learn to hone his skills in battle and become close friends with Anubis, Horus and Crosshair as well as become friendly with Set while he was still in the order. By the Tattoo that Winter Rat bears on his wrist one an assume that he as well joined the Medjai, and was trained in their ancient arts of martial combat; Winter Rat was their in England when the Sentinels stood their ground for thirty days and fought the invading forces of the elven forces and their are reports of people seeing a ice blue glowing blade slicing through the elven bodies with ease.

     The more Winter Rat killed the colder and darker he became and further his soul would become just a shadow of it’s former self, he lost everything that every mattered to him and even the bond of the brotherhood within the Sentinels couldn’t fill that void nor stop the tormenting images that played in a continuous loop within his mind; even the surgeons of the Sentinels couldn’t figure out what was wrong with O’Bannon and eventually he would take his departure from the Sentinels and swearing that if they needed him he would be back; the Crimson Ghost would rename the unit the Ghost Division in honour of the bravest man he ever meet. Their are many reports of O’Bannon and his acts of valour within the Sentinels, though for him a fire burned deep inside him and he needed to bring an end to the tormenting memories and haunting nightmares; suicide was not an option for Winter Rat as he would never allow Mitchell do win like that.

    It is reported that Set inducted Colonel Douglas O’Bannon into the Presidents Men before he left for the UCAS, but these are just rumours what we do know is that once the Rat returned to America he would done the White Rat mask and become the man that we all loath and fear today. He would unite a band of savage beasts that all have been once used as subjects of experiments and escaped their captures and are haunted nightly by the images that are burned into their memories. Tigger was the first to work alongside the Rat as they where friends and fought back to back many times while Winter Rat invaded the Nog, Tigger was a failed experiment like he was just ironic that rat and cat would become the best of friends, the next would be Nemesis Version 2.0 as even Version 1.0 was to far gone and became a threat to all humanity and finally Hammer an Orc that was forced to undergo cybermancy and genetic manipulations. This would seem to a good thing a band of misfits that was working together and would become a family, well thats the problem the Savages would become victims of their own captors, their minds would become their enemy and the only way to silence the voices and nightmares was to kill, pillage and perform great acts of evil. They would  become forsaken and banished to the underground where they would have to fight nightly to just eat, and well cannibalism was not something that was done by choice as much need. Tigger couldn’t sustain himself on a synthetic diet and O’Bannon was not going t allow another friend and comrade to perish for no reason, they couldn’t afford real food and none of the Savages could even enter a district where they could even steal it without attracting serious police attention. This was when Winter Rat made the decision that it was either let Tigger starve or hunt humans and meta’s for their meat and suddenly it became open season on anyone who would cross their path. As much as becoming a cannibal was not something Winter Rat wanted and he only started it to save his best friend.

     Now the thing with the Savages is that they are a team of misfits that have found each other through happenstance, they have done some very evil things but nothing worse than your average ghoul and anyone that shops in Little Asia, the stories of them raiding classrooms and eating children are just that wives tales; the Savages eat only those they kill in battle and yes they occasionally commit murder. Well when it comes to Winter Rat he actually can consume regular food and has gone back to eating like the rest of us, Nemesis does the same now, though Tigger just consumes his victims. Winter Rat didn’t choose this lifestyle an he didn’t want this lifestyle; this was forced down upon him by Director Jarred Mitchell and now that man will have to reap what he sowed, seeing that Winter Rat is back er I mean Colonel Douglas O’Bannon is back and has removed the white mask and has come out of the sewers, Tigger’s uncontrollable lust for magic has subsided and Nemesis has taken on a more social form; it appears that the monster men of the sewers have shed their skins and are now here to stay.

  According to reports the constant nightmares that have kept these killers killing have faded and they are working as a cohesive military unit, and the rumours about Winter Rat being a Presidents Men well they were confirmed during the battle in the Volcanic district when he removed the mask, dropped the cloak and ignited the Ice Blue plasma sword. He was wearing the same uniformed suit as the rest of them; this doesn’t mean that Tigger and Nemesis are in that unit now they are still savages and so is Winter Rat, it just means that the savages can be controlled and used properly in the war.

     Now for Colonel O’Bannon his life was destroyed, his soul long gone and the man he used to be long dead; but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for him and what he was forced to endure, this man was once a true American Patriot and Hero, he has stood tall in battle many times and never once yielded in combat. He is a man that we should learn from and try to be more like, not Winter Rat but Colonel O’Bannon; his mind has been warped and twisted by the evils of the UCAS against his will, but he still as able to unite a group of forsaken warriors and eventually break free from the savage bonds that held them down. Winter Rat is still a criminal and one that has committed crimes of unthinkable nature, but from what I saw in the footage from both the hospital and his battle camera and recorder; we could have been dealing with something far worse than what we got. Winter Rat’s memory implant is what was driving him insane, as it got stuck in a loop replaying all the brutal details of his families death and the battle where Ghost Team Six would fall, it was also replaying many of the battles he was in never giving him a moment of restful sleep and only killing would allow the images to subside, though thanks to Dr. Maples this has been figured out and corrected. Winter Rat will answer for his sins when he meets his maker and his judgement is cast, for he is not free of sin but maybe we need to take a good look into some of the other horrors that lurk within this world and maybe just maybe they can be redeemed.

       The more that I read and discover from the lost documents of the early days of the Tragedy, Civil War and Purge, the more I start to believe the stories that are being told by the rebels; the more I discover makes me think that maybe we the people have been given the raw deal and have been forced to swallow the propaganda the UCAS has been spewing forth. The documents are out their people and the information on Colonel O’Bannon still exists, the images, audio recordings and documents of the Freedom task force are out their people and so is the living proof of their first failed attempt to reprogram someone; maybe it was fate that caused Colonel O’Bannon to fall and hit his head or just dumb luck, but whatever the case may be if it wasn’t for that accident we would have never been shown the truth and for that I salute you Colonel Douglas O’Bannon a true American Hero.

Page Written By Janice Bradley <UCAS TIMES>