Steam name & ID: Bilack (STEAM_0:0:12479815)
Character name: Daniel Mureșanu
Describe your character's background & motives for enlisting in the National Guard:
Daniel grew up as a victim of the Communist regime. Most of his childhood comprised of being raised in orphanages, then filled to the brim as a result of Ceaușescu's strict policies. He kept on hearing from state officials about how great Romania was, how advanced it was as a country, and other similar lies that he'd see on black and white TV in the 80's in a time where basic house necessities like flour and bread were rationed. All of that propaganda didn't stick with him. By the time the revolution broke out, Daniel was 18, merely a boy, yet he was in Bucharest with a rifle in his hands exchanging gunfire with Securitate snipers.
After Ceaușescu's dictatorship crumbled, Romania was in a state of despair. The people were free from the regime, but not from the wave of nationwide melancholy that soon followed. The orphanages were still full, homeless kids were huffing glue underground, crime was rampant. It was a free yet shattered Romania, a foreshadowing of what would eventually come later down the years.
Daniel, inspired by the army's actions during the revolution, enlisted in the military himself. He served in an armoured brigade as a tank crewman for a couple of years.
(Attached is a picture of Daniel peering out of his tank during a training exercise, sometime in the late 90's.)
Eventually, burnout got to him, he decided to leave the army in order to return to civilian life. Dan skimmed across a few jobs, working an honest man, getting by as best as he could. Life was certainly starting to shape itself back to normalcy.
Until the Combine showed up.
In no time, Daniel was on a train getting relocated, and life under the Combine quickly started echoing the fraudulent howls of the regime he had fought against. Except this time, he didn't quite have a way to resist it... not for now. The seconds ticked by slowly. It was a dull cycle. Wake up, listen to Combine propaganda on the big screens around the city, eat rationed gray mush, etcetera and etcetera, until he got relocated and the cycle restarted again, just in a different city. That's how life was for him and for everyone, not too far off from how he lived under Ceaușescu's rule. He hated every second of it.
Fortunately for Daniel, he managed to luck out at just the right time, as his final relocation would end up being to his hometown, Bucharest, now known as City-45. Sure, he got on bad terms with some cops who had friends in high places, and his trip to City-45 was meant to be a punishment. Initially, it felt like it for Dan. But a new revolution broke out yet again, same as it did an odd 34 or so years ago. He really was the right man in the right place at the right time, all dots connected, and in the blink of an eye, Daniel once again held a rifle in his hands, battling against the oppressors, fueled by sheer anger and a glowing hope for new freedom.
After living so much of his life under two different yet equally brutal tyrannies, Dan was damn happy to be under the Free State, a free man, and considering he'd previously been part of the Romanian Revolution AND the army thereafter, Bloody Week wasn't quite his first rodeo. He's seen it all once and he's happy to see it again, albeit this time people weren't huffing glue in the sewers, no no. They were breathing in the wind of change, and for that, Dan owed his respects to the new leaders. He's sworn to serve them, and boy, serve them he will. It's his duty. His loyalties are cemented in stone. He fights as he hates what's in front of him (that being the CTE and the broken remnants of the Combine) because he loves what's behind him. The Free State.
It's the least he can do after they've helped liberate him from the Combine's iron-fisted rule.
Are you interested in a leadership position?: Yeah, sure. Why not?