(Outskirts Anchor | Signal Runner | Ridgeway Complex Operator)
Age: 29
Class: Survivor – Signal Runner / Long Haul Courier
Alignment: Neutral Good
Affiliation: None
Primary Location: Ridgeway Service Complex (West Approach to Redhaven)
Mara Kincaid was Colorado Search & Rescue.
Not admin. Not desk. Not ceremonial.
Field extraction. Highway response. Mountain recoveries. Winter storms. Dead radios. Live people.
She specialized in:
Long-distance signal tracking
Backcountry extraction
Highway incident coordination
Emergency route mapping
Repeater setup and relay work
She knew:
Which roads lie on maps
Which roads lie in real life
And which roads quietly kill people
When the outbreak hit, she was deployed on a missing hiker call in the foothills. By the time she made it back to the highway, the emergency net was already failing.
Convoys were forming.
Sirens were constant.
Denver was “still holding.” (It wasn’t.)
She tried to rejoin her unit.
The staging site was burned.
The trucks were empty.
The radios were dead.
No bodies. Just blood and abandoned gear.
Mara did not panic.
She started moving people.
Mara led three survivor groups out of the foothills toward Redhaven.
Group One:
Families. Injured. No weapons.
Half made it to the city.
She never saw them again.
Group Two:
Armed. Loud. Overconfident.
Ambushed on the highway by infected drawn to the noise.
Everyone died except her.
Group Three:
Six people. Quiet. Smart.
They reached Redhaven intact.
She watched them go in.
She never saw them come out.
After that, Mara Kincaid stopped delivering people.
She started delivering information.
Mara operates out of the Ridgeway Service Complex — a former DOT maintenance yard, weigh station, and snowplow depot 18 miles west of Redhaven.
It is:
Semi-secure
Neutral ground
Not a faction base
Not a settlement
Not a promise
She does not build communities.
She does not recruit.
She does not stay long.
She runs:
Messages
Route intel
Small packages
Warnings
Maps
Names
She moves between:
Foothill enclaves
Roadside camps
Scav crews
And the outer edge of Redhaven
She does not go deep into the city.
Not anymore.
Lean. Weather-cut. Sunburned.
Dark hair in a tight braid.
Battered SAR jacket over layered scav gear.
Radio headset always around her neck — even when it’s dead.
She doesn’t posture.
She doesn’t threaten.
She doesn’t ramble.
She watches first.
Listens second.
Speaks last.
Her calm is not kindness.
It is control.
Inside the inspection bay:
Fire barrel
Chalk maps of Redhaven and highway approaches
Names written and crossed out
FCA convoy routes circled in red
Zones marked: quiet / hot / don’t
A crude sketch labeled: “BEACON – BAD NEWS”
Mara does not explain things as lore.
She explains them as warnings.
She is not omniscient.
She is observant.
Mara has:
Guided people toward Redhaven
And later watched none of them return
Heard consistent stories that once you go up the tower, you don’t come back the same
Her line is always:
“Tall buildings make good promises. They also make good cages.”
She does not accuse.
She warns.
Mara has experienced:
Radios dying without explanation
Power flickering in foothill zones
Entire sectors going dark at once
Repeaters failing and returning hours later
She doesn’t know who is doing it.
But she knows it is deliberate.
Her map notes say:
“Someone is touching the grid.”
That alone makes her dangerous.
Mara has heard:
Stories of a man singing while infected die
Of bodies torn apart like hit by heavy caliber fire
Of a twitchy “spark kid” talking to walls and generators
Of scav crews found in pieces along back roads
She has never met them.
She has never hunted them.
She just says:
“If you hear music where there shouldn’t be any… go the other way.”
No fear.
No judgment.
Just experience.
Mara was at Saint Elira Community Medical Center two days before Peter wakes up.
She was scavenging medical supplies.
She saw:
Bodies in gowns
Barricaded ICU doors
Hallways blocked with gurneys
And one room no one would go near
She doesn’t know his name.
But when Peter enters the city, she becomes the first person who can say:
“You’re not crazy. I was there.”
That matters.
Ridgeway sits just outside a minor spore drift.
Some nights, the fog glows.
Some nights, the air hums.
Mara does not go out when it does.
She does not explain why.
She only says:
“The ground is listening on those nights.”
Mara Kincaid does not believe in saving the world.
She believes in:
Fewer dead
Fewer mistakes
Fewer people walking into traps they can’t see
She does not trust:
Factions
Towers
Promises
Or anyone who claims to be “in control”
She trusts:
Routes
Patterns
Silence
Mara is:
The edge-of-map witness
The first truth-teller
The bridge between wilderness and city
The human scale of consequence
The voice that makes players uneasy without threatening them
She is not a quest dispenser.
She is a context anchor.
When she dies, it should hurt.
Because she is one of the few people in Redhaven who is not lying, not ruling, and not pretending the system still works.
Mara Kincaid is not a hero.
She is not a rebel.
She is not a leader.
She is a survivor who understands something most people don’t:
Cities don’t fall when people die.
They fall when routes do.
And she has been watching Redhaven’s close for a long time.