Background

Carla was raised in rural Minnesota, adopted by a young couple following a string of good fortune involving disputed family land. A quiet child, she doesn't remember much from her earliest years; getting lost in the woods, her aunt taking her on trips, a few fights she saw her parents have. By the time she was 10, they had divorced, with her and her mother moving to Milwaukee. Through her teen years, her mother worked as a cop, and Carla found herself growing more estranged from her. She was a trouble child, particularly reckless since she figured her mother would always bail her out. She picked up Spanish as a teenager, spending more time with a tight-knit group of friends, and grew more and more estranged from her family. By the time she dropped out of highschool, she resented her mother deeply for imagined reasons, thinking she was the source of all her conflicting feelings. She ran away, at the age of 18, staying with her friends - who's graces she quickly wore through -and then her aunt and uncle, until they threatened to leave her on the streets if she didn't make up with her mother. When the fall happened, she was working under the table for a construction company, and was set on turning her life around. However, the Daisy Plague hit Milwaukee hard, the massive amounts of people attempting to flee by the lake choked the city, turning it into a labyrinthine hell before the first Winter. In the first Spring, Carla and a small group of survivors broke away from their group to steal a boat, looking to sail north to Canada. When they made landfall, they found the power and water had failed, and were separated within months, with Carla turning back southwards, back towards Wisconsin, favoring her chances at stealing a living over trying to live off of the land. She'd just about come to regret her decision, by the time she made it back to the outskirts of Milwaukee, just before the winter of 2000. She attempted to rob the first person she met, someone she thought was alone, before the rest of their group turned the tables on her. They were a raiding party from a nearby QZ, fortified in the middle of the city somewhere, and Carla was held prisoner for the next year. She was put to labor, and contemplating fleeing many times, only to reconsider every time she was forced to step outside of their walls. By the time her 'sentence' was fulfilled, she already had a place among the survivors, and stayed, volunteering for guard duty and protection work when she could. When their QZ made contact with the Coalition in the year 2007, following their broadcasts, Carla was on guard duty for some of the original meetings, and was a vocal advocate for establishing trade with them, offering her services to trade caravans travelling the corridor between the midwest and Coalition areas. When fighting between Providence and the Coalition broke out, and what was called the Northern Deadzone began to expand, Carlas life resembled nothing like it had when she was taken prisoner years ago; she had used up what good will she had among those in power, from the Milwaukee QZ, and had been kicked out of her home following a rocky relationship and explosive breakup that only ended when security forces showed up. She found herself on the road, chasing whatever opportunities brought her further from the midwest. Which is how she found herself in a caravan, heading for the Knox QZ.