Adam Dodd

[Shiola]

Name: Adam Dodd
Gender: Male
Age: 31, appears to be 19 years old
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Hockey, Writing, Photography, Brains, Fishing
Appearance: Looking into the remaining, sunken brown eye in Adam Dodd’s head, one gets the impression of someone haunted by their past. What remains of his orangey-red hair stick out from his peeling scalp in tattered and matted tufts, which he covers up a blue Toronto Maple Leafs baseball cap. Considering the circumstances, it’s a style that doesn’t look that bad on him.

Adam can’t help but wear stubble on his face – a recent attempt at shaving sloughed off a considerable chunk of skin on his face, exposing the skull and sinew beneath. What may have once given him a hardened look that aged him past his peers now serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the inconveniences of undeath. Though he is technically thirty-one years old, his current state of decay means that he can easily pass for the corpse of a nineteen year old, which he is. This tends to preclude him from entering most respectable drinking establishments.

Physically, Adam is showing a remarkable degree of resilience given the long exposure to sunlight and saltwater. Where once he weighed in at a decent 175 pounds, he has slimmed down to 110 due to loss of blood, tissue, and several internal organs. The dark forces that animate his emaciated form do enable him to keep up with his peers, and he can perform adequately at basically any sport that he wants to, though he often has difficulty finding a team.

In terms of wardrobe, Adam wears a bloodstained hockey jersey and a pair of jeans that at one point may have been blue. For all practical purposes he rarely changes, as this could cause more pieces of his rotting, ghoulish form to peel off. The jersey itself is pockmarked with holes cut into them by various species of sea life. A large cavity now exists in his abdomen, where a moray eel once burrowed in and made its home. On rising from the Tennessee River, the eel left and has since been replaced by a small family of rats, which Adam has affectionately named Hawley, Amanda, and Keith.

His left eye was pecked out by a seagull, and Adam has since taken to wearing an eyepatch over it. His skin is now a pale colour, almost green and rubbery, while his tongue and much of his nose and ears were nibbled away by feisty little fish. The wounds received in his last stint in Survival of the Fittest remain, though they have long since caked over with blood and pus.

Biography: Adam Dodd used to be a once happy-go lucky teenager, forever scarred by the events of Survival of the Fittest Version One. Having won the sick game, he returned to the United States traumatized and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His stint at a school in Southern California was not to be, however, as he was once again kidnapped by the Arthro Taskforce and subject to the third version of Survival of the Fittest. Despite once again facing impossible odds, Adam Dodd escaped the island. Only shortly thereafter, he died from an infection and this time, he wouldn’t return home. His body was left to the sea, decomposition buoying it on the surface. When an eel burst the body cavity, it sunk to the crushing depths of the ocean.

That was how Adam Dodd used to be.

The corpse happened to sink into the lair of the infamous sea lich, Saguaro the Vengeful. Having been an active fan of Survival of the Fittest, he was gutted (figuratively speaking) to see Adam Dodd disappear from the third version with little to no explanation. Recognizing the body drifting into his abyssal lair, the eldritch baron of darkness cursed the boy to return on the seventh version of the program (seven being the most magically powerful number).

Without any knowledge of the events about to befall him, Adam arose from the Tennessee River in 2018, shambling into the city of Chattanooga confused and upset. After assessing that he was in fact a shambling revenant laden with sea life and regret, he opted to put his past life behind him as much as was humanly possible. The first step would be acquiring his GED, after which he hopes to find an employer who would take the chance and hire a traumatized Canadian zombie who occasionally coughed up fish bits.

Fortunately, the staff of George Hunter High School took pride in their progressive, diverse and accepting environment and felt that a festering ghoul has as much a right to an education as anyone. Adam enrolled, and found himself having to start over again… for the fourth time. Everywhere he went, it seemed that the initial reaction to his presence was that of shock, on account of him being an animate corpse. He had a strange kind of infamy that almost bordered on celebrity.

However, instead of lamenting his circumstance and finding a grave to crawl into, Adam had other ideas upon what to do with his third chance at a normal life.
Today, Adam Dodd is wildly popular. The smell of rotting flesh is something of a turn-off, but the assumption that he possesses knowledge of the world beyond, or at least Survival of the Fittest, is fodder for endless questions. At this point he avoids making friends if at all possible, as in his experience everyone he meets seems to wind up dead. Given that it’s hard to miss a zombie wandering the halls, or the trail of slime he occasionally leaves behind, he does attract the odd strange look. Nobody says anything negative towards him though, for fear of him tearing their flesh from their bones and consuming it with the voracious, insatiable hunger of the damned. In fact, that's something that pisses Adam off a little bit, mainly because he feels that they aren't being honest with him.

Adam continues to be sarcastic and sardonic, though now accompanied by an eerie calm that puts most people on edge. There are still times when his prior self pokes its head through the clouds, and Adam tries his hardest to be like he used to be, but he currently lacks a tongue and finds communication considerably more difficult. Much as he would like to revert back to his old self, various religious and occult authorities in the Chattanooga area have stated this is likely impossible.

While rising from the dead may leave some quiet and reclusive, Adam has a surprising degree of self-confidence. He no longer overthinks everything, and finds himself making decisions without thinking much of it. He often tries very hard to fit in among his peers, but given that the students of George Hunter High School are (for the moment) still alive, it is often difficult to relate.

While much about him has changed, some things have stayed the same. Adam remains a good listener, and those that count him as a close friend feel that they are lucky to have him as a friend. Adam is still a naturally kind person, though it's been tempered a little bit by the icy grasp of death. He still always means well, even if it is difficult to communicate with the gurgling sound of gore and gnashing teeth.

Adam’s mental state is surprisingly stable, bordering on single-minded as he tries his best to complete the last year of high school to the exclusion of all other concerns. Some people find it hard to associate with Adam due to the well-known fact that he has committed over fifteen different murders and is a zombie. Adam is disturbed at the lack of feeling he has as a general rule beyond his commitment to finish the twelfth grade, but has learned to accept his situation. He often dwells on the past, and privately wishes to return to the islands where it all began.

Advantages: Has lived through one SOTF competition and died after another, and so he knows what to expect. He has no problem with killing and survival is no longer much of a priority. Does not require air or food to survive and has already lost most of his blood. Returned to the land of the living with the sole purpose of obtaining his GED, and mercilessly slaughtering every high school student he can get his hands on in the seventh iteration of survival of the fittest.
Disadvantages: His rotting flesh does slow him down, and he is especially vulnerable to strikes to the head. Currently only has one remaining eye. Motivators might feel that killing a shambling monster from the grave could be something that makes them better than the competition, and eliminates what would likely be one of the larger threats for them to win the competition. Isn't as well-liked as he was in his previous school given his nightmarish appearance, and his fellow students could have a hard time trusting him or looking directly at him.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Denied because he's dead.