Someone once told me the world is going to kill me

Fenris · August 18, 2022

Background & Details

Name: Rico Marshall previously Rico Evans

Date of Birth: October 31

Nationality: Norwegian - Moved to America from a young age

Blood Relations: Nadia Evans - Mother (Deceased 2020), Mathias Evans - Father (Deceased 2011), Dexter Evans - Brother (alive), Kari Lunn - Sister (alive), Cadence Varriale - Sister (alive), Nari Marshall - five-year-old daughter (alive), Rey Marshall - two year old son (alive), Hailee Marshall - one year old daughter (alive), Oliver Marshall - 6 month old son (alive).

Scars: Bullet wound scars on both shoulders and one on the stomach, jagged scar across the stomach from knife injury, scar vertically on the right wrist and several small scars along the abdomen from surgeries. Cigarette burn scars on arms. Majority of scarring would have faded, having been treated with laser surgery and covered up by tattoos.

Tattoos: Rico would be heavily inked with tattoos that all have a meaning. Several tattoos would be covering scar tissue, with a large memorial tattoo on his right arm in memory of his best friend Simon Jepp and a large tree depicting Yggdrasil with his childrens names hanging down from it on his abdomen. All tattoos would have nordic referencing.

Religion: Rico follows Norse Paganism having been brought up with it from childhood, mainly honouring his ancestors’ aspect of the religion.

Personality: Always tries to come across as friendly, and willing to help anyone out who’s having issues. However, will tend to step in when people threaten those he loves, which is often his downfall. Incredibly proud father when speaking about his kids.

Places of Interest: Observatory, beaches, Mount Chiliad and often any trails for dirt biking or mountain biking.

Items of Interest: Wolf ring on the ring finger on his left hand with some of his father’s ashes inside, silver chain with a cross hanging from it that has the initials SJ in the middle, Father’s Guitar. The wallet would have several personal photos including black and white photos of Rico and his best friend Jepp, or photos of his family.

Hobbies: Surfboarding, car and motorbike repairs, mountain biking, wild camping, and anything outdoors-wise.

All the time I was being beaten, I thought, "I'm not going to be fourteen forever, I need to grow up."

Rico Evans has had to survive more than most people would ever face in a lifetime. It would be easy to assume that he fell into a hard life. That would be wrong. As Rico tells it, he didn’t fall into violence; violence is where his life began.

Rico recalls a time when he was about ten and his Mom had gone on yet another drunken rampage. This time, Rico’s mother held a knife, threatening him after he had found her in bed with another man whilst his father was away for work. “I was screaming at her to kill me. It wasn’t because I wanted to die - I just wanted it to stop. I loved her but I just wanted it all to end. Maybe if she killed me she would be locked away and my brother would be safe from her. Then all the violence and beatings would stop.”

Rico’s father, Mathias Evans, was the youngest boy in a family of eight children, who were close in their own way. He was just nineteen when he enlisted in the armed forces, and his military records say he was motivated by a “sense of duty.” Mathias served just four years before being discharged based on medical grounds after shattering his ankle severely.

During his time in the armed forces, Mathias travelled to the states and met his future wife Nadia, a Russian Nurse who had moved to America as a young girl with her Father. The two soon got married, with Nadia moving permanently to Norway to work on the family farm that had been passed down through the family whilst Mathias started up his own metalwork shop.

Rico likes to joke that he was born “right beside my mother”. The point of this joke is that they didn’t really seem connected like Mother and child right from the start. If his mother hugged him and said she loved him on the day of his birth, it was perhaps the last time she did so. “My mother never in her life said ‘I love you’ to me. I was unexpected and seen as another mouth to feed that they couldn’t afford.”

Rico grew up with a younger brother: Dexter who was two years younger, and despite their age difference were inseparable, with Rico practically bringing up his brother by himself due to his mother finding solace in a bottle instead whilst their Father worked. For Rico, his brother was the reason to keep going, often shielding him from the violence at home and doing what he could to try to give Dexter a normal life as much as possible.

At age twelve, Rico discovered his brother had been running into difficulty at school with a group of kids who started lashing out at Dexter. Rico declared his personal war on bullies. “You’ve got to stop it before it starts. I’d stare at them knowing they’d eventually have to go, ‘What the fuck are you staring at?’ I’d go, ‘You.’ I’d know they were bullies just by watching them.”

Soon Rico found himself in trouble after lashing out at a particular kid who he caught pushing his brother into some lockers, resulting in Rico being kicked out of the school and facing severe punishment from his Mother when he got home. After the beating, he was told he didn’t deserve an education and was to work on the family farm bringing in food, alongside his Father’s metal shop until late into the night to try to bring in some spare money.

“You deal with what you’re dealt with in life. People who grow up like I grew up, you don’t realise there is any other option. It’s all if, if, if. It would have been nice to have a more loving family. I envy people - not to the point that I’m depressed- that are brought up with a loving family.”

Rico’s father Mathias always sought the comradeship he had when in the armed forces, eventually meeting up with members of the local motorcycle club in their area, becoming a patched member and spending more time at their clubhouse than with his own family. Yet the moments he did spend with his sons, he took them to the clubhouse to meet his patched brothers, sharing stories with them and teaching them in his own words, how to be a man.

Rico doted on his father, wanting to be just like him in every way including following him into the biker lifestyle. At age 13, Mathias started taking Rico to events run by the MC, getting him to serve alcohol to members attending and then clean up the mess left by the crew afterwards. Even though it was work, Rico loved being around the members, listening to their stories and thinking he was treated as part of the club. The bikers oozed an aura of freedom and power, and of rich lives that lived outside of society’s rules, which had done nothing to benefit the teenaged Rico. Something about seeing the bikers cruising past him seemed all-powerful as if they could tell death itself to fuck off, like old-time circus performers who could stick their heads into the mouths of lions and pull them out again, smiling, without a trace of fear.

For a few years, Rico was not what someone would call happy with life, but he was content at the same time. Hanging out with his father and alternating between working at the bar or the blacksmith his father owned meant that he continued to spend less time at his home. Things appeared to be settled when suddenly his parents decided that in order to try to help Nadia get over her drinking problem, they would relocate to America so she could be in an environment she grew up in.

At the age of sixteen Rico was again thrust into uncertainty, and eventually due to circumstances out of his control spent several years away from his family, learning to survive for himself throughout the worst period of his life which included losing his best friend to a stabbing incident that would continue to haunt Rico for years to come.

Eventually, after seven long years of darkness, Rico managed to push himself away from the situation and start a fresh life in San Fierro, grieving for his father who he had recently lost whilst he was away. Rico managed to link back up with his brother, starting their own business in construction to get a source of income. During this time Rico met his first wife Hana who gave birth to his daughter Nari, making Rico realise that life was worth changing. Nari was Rico’s everything and he doted on her, but the marriage soon broke down and Rico was left waking up in the middle of the night to find his wife and daughter had vanished.

It wouldn’t be until a few months later that Rico discovered both were alive but back in Korea where Hana was from, with divorce papers sent through his mailbox. Only a couple of years later would Rico get Nari back in his life and during that time in order to find a new sense of purpose Rico ended up adopting a young teenager who he found living on the streets fending for herself. In all senses, the teenager reminded Rico of himself, and from that day he swore she’d never find herself suffering again.

Fast forward a few years to the current day and Rico has yet again shown that hard work and determination means you can end up pushing past your old trauma and get somewhere in life where you are continuously moving forward. In order to help get past his childhood, Rico got his last name changed in order to help with the healing process.

Unfortunately despite the fresh start, Rico's marriage to his childhood sweetheart Xiomara broke down, with them being seperated for quite some time before the divorce went through, hidding it from their friends until it was finalised in order to protect their children. Now Rico is finding his own way in becoming happy again, learning to become the man he used to be.

((Some background story has been left out in order to prevent metagame))

This character thread covers Rico’s time from when he first moved to Los Santos and the highs and lows of attempting to be a normal civilian and working within the Los Santos Fire Department as a Lifeguard Section Chief and TEMS (tactical medics) instructor. Rico is, by all means, a flawed individual with a lot of baggage from his past, but the idea with the thread is also to show the good parts of the city and that civilians can by all means have a somewhat normal life.