Major Charlie Shea - The Character

In one of the role playing games I ran, one of my friends made a character named Major Charlie Shea. He was a middle-aged man, pretty simple, and pretty humble. He had been diagnosed with cancer, but was at the stage of acceptance. For him, he knew he didn't have much time left, but he was about to start treatment and he wanted to learn what he could about the human body; it gave him comfort.

Major Charlie was an interesting to character to work with. In a sense, he was a reluctant hero. He didn't act foolhardy and wasn't unnecessarily brave. If things didn't involve him, he didn't stick his nose in it. In my friend's words, "Major Charlie wasn't going to find the story. The story had to find Major Charlie."

Now, I was telling a horror game that involved cults and eldritch abominations and a very motley crew trying to stop them. In the end of the story, the cultists were stopped, and every single player died.

Actually, everybody died except for Major Charlie. And that's because he wasn't present for the final showdown. He was walking to his house. Major Charlie was such a reluctant hero that he never answered the call to action. Nothing for him was serious enough for him to notice or care. And since he wasn't looking for trouble, he didn't find any.

I kind of liked Major Charlie. He amused me in the sense that he was the only rational person in the lot, and he just so happened to be the only person who lived through the game.

I hope I get to see more of him in the future.