Background

Maybel-Joanne Lenore grew up in the deep, rural forests of Knox County, having lived a mostly average, isolated life with her family. While attending public school she was always a loner, since it was less scary to be alone than it was to try and fit in and face potential rejection, and she reached adulthood without making any significant connections to anyone. Some of her hobbies included exploring and foraging in the vast woodlands surrounding her home, tending to the herb garden, studying the occult and various other folklore, making dolls of both the regular and voodoo variety, watching late-night mystery shows on TV, and later, with the limited use of their dial-up connection, even managed some internet time now and then. While she always claimed to have felt more at peace among the dead while alone in the old church cemetery than around other people, deep down, the desires to be accepted and understood still drove many of her motivations. She never exactly believed in ghosts, and most of the occult stories she read were just stories to her; a means of entertainment and a way to pass the time... at least, before the rifts appeared. Maybel was only 17 when it all began. During that fateful spring day, when the thunderous pounding of the rifts rattled the through the deep woods, terror replaced an otherwise calm, quiet existence. She was alone at the time; the parents that had trusted their near-adult daughter who was still in school to remain at home while they traveled abroad. They would never be seen again. She had been somewhat close to the neighbors, and unfortunately their screams alerted Maybel to the horde that emerged. When she first heard the commotion and looked outside, she witnessed violence and deaths from a distance, so she hurriedly barricaded her home before gathering food and supplies before fleeing into the forest. As the world she once knew unraveled, the knowledge she used merely as a hobby suddenly became her only means of survival, and while the trees slowed down any potential pursuers, she knew that she couldn't hide forever. She had to seek a defensible shelter and other survivors; even the quiet loner knew that there was safety in numbers. The year that followed would bring a new set of trials. A network of caves pocketed the mountains that she fled to, and while taking shelter in one she thought was empty, a group of survivors stumbled upon her as she slept. She was malnourished, barely alive, and they took one look at the terrified youth and accepted her among the other children they had saved. This would deepen the set of skills that would allow her to contribute to the group, and gave her a semblance of safety for the first time in weeks. She was eager to learn whatever she could and took any task she was given seriously, even when it was merely keeping watch and using a clever network of bells tied to strings to lure the threats away from the cave entrance. Where she once would have lived her entire life without harming a fly, now, after some reluctance, she was taught to use firearms to hunt and for defense of the tunnels, as well as trapping and processing game animals. Even with all of the skills that everyone in the group had brought, it was still not enough. The scarcity of prey and the lack of agriculture on the mountains outside the cave created a lack of nutrients, and every injury that was brought back caused the fatigued and malnourished group to suffer more and more until its inevitable breaking point. While some of the others were not so fortunate, Maybel was one of the few that managed to make it out of the caves, and had carried just enough food to make it through the deep woods and into the first urban areas. Separated from the group and once again miserably alone, it was here that she arrived in the outskirts of Louisville and began to scavenge for supplies in every house she was able to enter, until finally encountering other survivors.