"Yeah?"

leave me something and we'll do something.

Code when I'm not on a phone

> PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: dove
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: over 18
CONTACT: pm this journal, pp prettydoes

> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Samuel "Sam" Drake
CANON: Uncharted
AGE: ~44
CANON POINT: Uncharted 4 - Chapter 15: The Thieves of Libertalia, immediately after getting shot

HISTORY: Here.
PERSONALITY:

When you meet him--well, when you meet him without staring down the barrel of his gun--Sam Drake's an affable guy. He's "the funny one" of the Drake brothers (in his opinion), a quick-witted guy full of lousy jokes and a charming smile that starts to make up for that receding hairline.

If you need a barfly friend, you could do a hell of a lot worse. If you're a lady looking for a good time, he can probably give you one. Or maybe you need to pay a guy to do some shady stuff? Sam can probably handle it--he's been getting into trouble since he was a teenager. He's been in and out of jail plenty, including a 13-year stint in Panama spent gambling for cigarettes and doing thousands of situps.

But don't mistake the beer-swilling and the prison tattoos on his neck for the signs of a dumb mook. Sam might never have gotten his GED, but he's a polyglot with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Golden Age of Piracy (whether you define it as 1716-1726 or 1650-1726) and plenty of other historical occurrences, along with Catholic dogma, the care and keeping of firearms, and anything else that takes his fancy. It's part of what makes him a good drinking buddy--he's got plenty of interesting stories to tell, some so fantastical that it's hard to believe they really happened.

And if some of them are outright lies, who cares, right?

If you know him a little better, you might. Sam's a fun guy, a career criminal, a charismatic sonuvagun full of tall tales and promises--and if he needs you for something, he can find ways to get you to do it. He's perceptive, capable of spotting people's weak spots and playing directly to them. It doesn't matter who it is he's using. He knows how to spin stories and make them sound like the only truths that ever existed.

He was probably less of a self-focused guy, probably could have been destined for a life featuring more impulse control and fewer jail cells, back before his mother committed suicide. Within the span of a year or two, he went from traveling the world and talking history over the dinner table--being one of two boys in the world who mattered to the adults in charge, having some sense of being loved unconditionally--to being part of a crowd of orphans. Not only was he in a boys' home, stuck in one place full of rules, being reared by overworked nuns without time to offer individual attention or affection, but he and his brother were the odd ones out: Where other boys' families presumably watched over them in Heaven, the boys' mother's suicide might have destined her for Hell, while their father simply didn't want them.

Sam's in his mid-forties, but some part of him is still a 29-year-old who nearly died in the courtyard of a Panamanian prison and wound up rotting there for over a decade. Some part of him is still 17, staring at the dead body of the last person who truly knew his mother and wondering if he's going to be arrested for her murder. Some part of him is still 10, trapped in an orphanage despite having a living parent, being brother and father to his baby brother because no one else can. His life has been defined by flashbulb moments of abandonment and criminality, horrible events he's lived through but never dealt with in any meaningful way.

But it's not good enough to survive moments like those. At some point, a guy's gotta grow past them, and Sam has yet to do that.

If you really know Sam Drake, the way Nate knows him, you might know he's been living a lie ever since he swanned back into the world like a slightly scruffier Jesus. When Sam wants something, he'll do what he needs to in order to get it, and he's dreamt of pirate treasure since he was a child. And he's on the verge of finding one of the greatest treasures ever to exist: the Mughal treasure stolen by Henry Avery in the late 17th century. He just needs his brother's help. And he needs his brother not to ask too many questions.

So he comes up with a story: broken out of jail by a dangerous drug lord interested in the treasure, owing millions they could--conveniently--obtain now that the one clue they need is nearly in his grasp. It's a story he knows Nathan will buy without question. It's a story Nathan will never fact-check, because Nathan trusts his brother without question. And it sounds good enough that it'll lure Nathan into running all over Europe and Africa if they need to, all because it came out of Sam Drake's mouth.

It'd be easy to say that nothing matters more to Sam than Nathan Drake. He's been Nathan's protector, his parent, his mentor, his friend; he's taken literal bullets for the guy, probably gone without a few meals so the kid could eat. But Nate's the most important thing in Sam's life is one more of Sam Drake's lies. Sam's always been the most important thing in Sam's life--what Sam wants, Sam tries to get. And sure, Sam's always wanted Nate to be happy. Sam's wanted him to be successful. Sam wants that, and he's done everything he can to make it happen.

When he arrives in New Amsterdam, Sam's coming from a low point: Back on Libertalia, the fabled pirate kingdom of Avery and his cohorts on the account, he just watched his lies fall apart in the eyes of his baby brother. Turns out that drug lord was dead the whole time--the guy who broke Sam out of jail is a rich ex-friend who did it with a bribe to a couple of guards. There's no money owed, no one breathing down Sam's neck, just the desire to find Avery's treasure with his brother before that ex-friend, current asshole, gets to it.

Sam's someone who's sought meaning in his life. He renames himself and his brother Drake, after his mother's last great historical fascination, the privateer Sir Francis Drake, and takes sic parvis magna as a motto. Greatness from small beginnings. Finding Avery's treasure means something to him. It's what got him into that prison in Panama in the first place (long story). It's what he thought about the entire time he was in there. The thing that matters, he thinks, the only thing that makes all of this pain and suffering and waiting mean anything, is finding that treasure. And if he has to stretch the truth along the way, then that's worth it. When they get to the end, when they're rolling in dubloons, it'll all make sense.

But if he wants his relationship with his brother to survive, he's going to have to learn to create new meaning for himself, outside of the past he has yet to let go of, outside of the lies he's lived in. Given a chance, here in New Amsterdam, he might just be able to make it happen--and finally grow up a little.

SPECIES: Human.
APPEARANCE: Here.
SKILLS:
• Fluent in Latin and Spanish, presumably able to follow along other Romance languages as a result
• Gun skills, marksmanship, all that good stuff
• Hand-to-hand (fist-to-face?) fighting
• Well-versed in various parts of history, especially as regards pirates, treasure, lost cities, and other semi-legitimate nonsense
• Charisma, lying, generally being pretty (using-)people-oriented
• Pickpocketing, petty thievery
• Climbing up things, sneaking through places he shouldn't sneak through, parkouring through life
• In great shape, minus the whole smoking thing, and very durable
• Can ride a motorcycle and drive a car
• Functions well in high-stress situations, though he might be antsy in the runup

NEW POWER: Sam has smoke-powered probability perception. Cigarettes, joints, vapes, meats, buildings--if it smokes/burns and he can inhale the results, he'll be able to perceive the probability. At its lowest level, it's the equivalent of I'm feeling good about [thing], the kind of perception that leads to knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em or doing better than average at roulette. He can't change the probability of one thing or another happening, but he can get a sense of what's most likely and potentially use it to his advantage.

POWER REASONING: In a lot of ways, Sam's sort of a rough draft of his little brother, Nathan--what he can do, Nate can generally do better. If Nathan's capable of changing probability, Sam's simply capable of observing it. Also, he smokes like a chimney.

> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: Here.
SAMPLE TWO: Here.