Player Name: Jaina
Are you 16 or older: Yes.
Contact: plurk @ effervescible, IM @ JainaX or PM

IN CHARACTER
Name: Nathan Drake
Canon: Uncharted (video game series)
Canon Point: Immediately after the conclusion of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, on the plane home
Age: Mid-thirties

History: (This app contains some spoilers for the recently released Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, but only the sections that chronologically take place before the start of that game's main storyline, as they are part of Nate's background prior to all games in the series.)

To anyone who asks, Nathan Drake claims to be the illegitimate descendant of famed English explorer Sir Francis Drake. In reality, he was born Nathan Morgan, the son of skilled historian Cassandra Morgan, who originated a much-maligned theory that Francis Drake had both faked his death and fathered heirs. When Nate was around 4 years old, Cassandra committed suicide and his father surrendered Nate and his older brother Sam to the state.

Years later, while still underage and living in a Catholic orphanage, Nate joined Sam (who had already left the orphanage some time previously) and the two boys broke into the home of the woman who had come into possession of their mother's journals after her death. After learning of Cassandra's skills as a historian and the assistant to an experience adventurer, the two resolved to follow in her footsteps and ran away, adopting the new surname of Drake.

Nate and Sam became "explorers, adventurers...mostly thieves" and tended to take turns doing stints in jail. Canon doesn't explicitly confirm it, but it is likely that Sam was jailed or otherwise unavailable when Nate found himself on the streets in Cartagena, Colombia, at age 15. During the process of stealing a ring owned by Francis Drake from a museum there, Nate encountered Victor 'Sully' Sullivan, a fellow thief 25 years his senior. Sully had been hired to steal the ring himself, but broke ties with his client after he opted to protect Nate from the client's henchmen, who tried to murder the boy to get the ring back. Afterward, Sully offered to take Nate on as his protege, and Nate accepted. The two spent the next 20 years as partners and friends (and adopted father and son to a degree).

Sully and Sam, when he was around to be in Nate's life again, did not see eye, but any friction between the two primary influences on Nate ended when Nate was around 22. While breaking out of a Panamanian jail, Sam was shot in front of Nate, who successfully escaped but believed that his brother had died. Nate continued working with Sully and became a career thief and treasure hunter of great skill. He is known to have worked jobs all over the world with a number of accomplices, but conveniently, the most important adventures he's had took place during the Uncharted video games.

As Nate's personal page on the fan wiki contains several errors and is confusingly written/organized in certain sections, I will link to the plot sections of the games' wikipedia pages and note anything pertinent to roleplay that isn't included.

Uncharted: The Golden Abyss

This is a one-off prequel side game that does not contribute a great deal to Nate's character growth, but does briefly foreshadow his decision to pursue more meaningful treasure hunts, such as in the game I'm about to link.

Prior to Drake's Fortune, Nate makes a deal with a premium cable TV channel's travel/archeology show (which is probably named "Uncharted" in-universe, let's all have a laugh) to fund an expedition to locate Sir Francis Drake's coffin, which was buried at sea 400 years ago, in exchange for footage of the endeavor. The show's host and sole camera operator, Elena Fisher, accompanies him on the expedition off the coast of Panama. Nate and Sully do not plan to bring her along on their real quest, which only starts at the coffin's recovery, but plans change quickly.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Between Uncharted and Uncharted 2, Nate and Elena enter a relationship but later break up. The reason and specific circumstances behind the breakup are never fully explained, although word of god is that it was related to Nate's lifestyle and tendency to eventually push people away, but it is implied that Elena ended the relationship and "broke [Nate's] heart" in the process. Regardless, they have already gone their separate ways at the beginning of Uncharted 2.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Between Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3, Nate and Elena get married and eventually separate (but do not divorce), likely due to his growing obsession with discovering the truth behind a mysterious period of Francis Drake's life (which took place prior to Francis Drake's discovery of the El Dorado statue). It is heavily implied that Nate was the one to walk out.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Personality: At first glance, Nathan Drake is what you'd expect from the prototypical treasure hunter/thief with a heart of gold: he has an amiable disposition, gets quippy in stressful situations (or when a humorous one-liner just seems called for), and enjoys getting flirty with the ladies without being a gross pig about it. At second glance…you pretty much see the same thing, because Nate really is a good guy who gets along well with people but also gets snarky here and there. There are just layers to go with that first impression.

He's also something of an adventure/adrenaline junkie. Up until very recently, Nate is the rare person who can say he really loves what he does. Of course, as a thief, what he does isn't strictly legal, which isn't a problem for him. Nate has a moral code, but it doesn't conform strictly with the law, and it hasn't for virtually his entire life. As a pre-teen in the orphanage, Nate is known to both disregard the rules in general (about sneaking out and starting altercations) and get in fights when someone is doing something wrong (such as taking his book and making shitty comments about his dead mother burning in Hell.) Decades later, he's still disregarding rules such as "don't break into museums to steal artifacts" and getting into fights with warlords who want to take over the world. The only real difference is the sense of scale.

So yeah, Nate is a thief and doesn't feel guilty about it. It helps that he's never seen stealing from those who would really suffer for the loss. But more importantly, while he does enjoy the challenge and sense of risk, and while he's certainly not against the money involved, what Nate loves most about his profession is the challenge of it, the thrill of successfully executing a job. Even more importantly, he loves the aspect of discovery, especially when he's trying to get ahold of some historical artifact no one else can. He's no overly charitable Robin Hood, but personal monetary gain isn't his primary motivation, either. In Uncharted 2, he's unwilling to risk his life to take a severely risky heist job until he realizes a major historical mystery is in the cards, and then he is all in. (It does help that the major historical mystery probably comes with an even bigger payout, though.) And in the first and third games, while the objects of his quest would theoretically bring him money, it's the personal connection to Francis Drake, the need to live up to a legacy, that truly drive him. His love of history and adventure was fostered by his mother while she was alive, but a few decades into the future, and it's a part of him, not just something he inherited.

Although he gets along well with most people, there are very few people that Nate truly calls friend. This is partially due to the unstable lifestyle he leads and the shady characters with whom he frequently interacts, but it also has to do with his own emotional barriers. He doesn't appear to be a reserved person, but the losses of his parents and brother have put him in the habit of pushing others away if they get closer than he's comfortable with. It's also implied that he is usually (though not always) the one to walk away from romantic relationships. But once someone is in Nate's inner circle, even if he won't voice his feelings, he will go to the ends of the earth for them—practically literally, such as when he stowed away on a plane into an enormous desert to rescue Sully in Uncharted 3. He's also inclined to give people he cares about second chances after they've wronged him, if the screwing-over wasn't too catastrophic. When it comes to people not as close to him, he doesn't think of himself as a hero, although some have accused him of playing one, but if push comes to shove and there's no one else to do it, he'll put his life in danger to save people and do what's right, such as when he fights to protect Tenzin's village and later take down Lazarevic in Uncharted 2.

So Nate is a generally good-hearted thief who gets along well with people and occasionally does heroic things. Does he have flaws? Oh boy, yes. Although he doesn't steal things whose loss will really hurt people, he's willing to screw over a partner in crime if he thinks that partner will screw him first, or semi-screw them over even if they aren't; for example, in Uncharted 2, he doesn't plan to cut Flynn out of the theoretical millions they'll make, but he's pretty okay with running off with Flynn's semi-girlfriend.

In particular, Nate has two really big flaws. The first is obsession. When he gets really, really focused on a goal, he tends to take actions that will endanger himself or those around him, even if that's not his intention. It's a tunnel vision of sorts. On the small scale, his obsessive focus might lead him to tune out his companions as he figures out a puzzle or the meaning of a particular artifact, which is really irritating. On a larger scale, his obsessive behavior has driven away friends and loved ones. His single-minded determination to solve the last mystery of Francis Drake in Uncharted 3 is implied to be the major factor in the estrangement between him and his wife, and his single-minded focus on living up to Drake's legacy is such a key part of his identity that he has a huge amount of trouble giving that up. Too often, pride or blindness keep him from recognizing this.

His other big flaw is avoidance. Nate is really, really good at avoiding difficult emotions. After he believes his brother has died, he just doesn't ever talk about him, to the point that even his wife doesn't know he had a brother. As Sully gets older and mentions that he won't be around forever, or when people point out that he might not be able to keep up with Nate (and is therefore in more physical danger in tricky situations), Nate pushes back or acts like he's straight-up in denial. And when he sees his estranged wife again and notices that she is still wearing her wedding ring, he straight up rubs it in her face like a smug asshole, even though it later becomes clear that he is very much still in love with her. Emotionally speaking, he sticks his head in the sand a lot, although the events of Uncharted 3 have helped him begin to kick that habit.

At his canon point, Nate has gone through some changes and faced some hard truths. After nearly losing the people he loves the most, along with his own life, he's come to accept that he never really had anything to prove; being worthy of the Drake name was never as important as he thought it was. As Sully advised him at the end of Uncharted 3, real greatness is what you do with your life, not where you start out, and real greatness doesn't have to mean finding awesome treasures, either. He's at the point of mending relationships he damaged and figuring out what to make of his life besides what he's been doing for the last 20 years. Honestly, it's going to be easier said than done, but he's got the willpower and determination to get there, even if he stumbles along the way.

Abilities/Skills:
-Combat Prowess - Nate is a skilled fighter who tends more toward a brawling style but who can also bust out some MMA-style moves. He can hold his own quite well against the average hired goon.
-Gun Mastery — Nate is comfortable maintaining and skillfully using a variety of guns, from pistols to automatic weapons to rocket launchers
-Languages — Nate is a polyglot capable of speaking and reading/understanding multiple languages. This canonically includes modern and 16th century Spanish, Latin, some Indonesian and Italian, and "many others" (per the games and Nate's official resume).
-Ruggedness & Durability — Nate is a 100% normal human being, but he has displayed an immense capacity for getting up and going again even after taking part in length fights, suffering a gunshot wound (which missed vital organs), and undergoing a great deal of physical punishment. It's possible he's gotten very good at coping with having his ass kicked because it has happened so often.
-Stealthy Movement — An important skill for a thief
-Climbing & Parkour — He's less than graceful, but Nate can climb almost anything without gear, provided he has something to hang onto
-Thievery — He has demonstrated proficiency in this, ranging from petty theft (pickpocketing) to planning and executing robberies of heavily-secured museums
-Drawing — Nate is a skilled artist and is able to accurately draw architectural structures (and the hints to solving the puzzles they contain) and quality portraits of people
-Sleight of Hand — He's not a master of it, but thanks to a "magic phase" when he was younger, Nate has demonstrated proficiency with this and small objects (ex. a ring)

Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths
-Improvisation: While Nate is good at crafting plans in areas of his personal expertise (ex. robbery), he's very, very good at thinking on his feet and coming up with a short-term plan to deal with whatever jam he's landed in.
-Good With People: Nate is an affable person and gets along well with most people.
-Heart of Gold: He won't go out of his way to help others on a daily basis, but when people are in real danger, Nate will put himself on the line to do what's right.
-Determination: When he has a goal in mind, he just keeps going and going and going no matter how likely he is to get his ass kicked/die.
-Intelligence: Nate is a very smart person who did a lot of self-educating and is very good at seeing connections between disparate things, and also at solving puzzles.

Weaknesses
-Wiseass: Nate tends to use humor as a front in the face of difficult/scary emotions and situations.
-Obssession: At this canon point he's trying to work on this, but he has a tendency to overfocus on things that really catch his interest, sometimes to the severe detriment of his relationships.
-Avoidance: When faced with especially emotionally difficult things, Nate will push people/problems away so he doesn't have to deal with them.
-Adrenaline Junkie: He is one, and this can be dangerous on its own, as well as a point of manipulation. He is also prone to boredom and dissatisfaction if he doesn't have an outlet for this.
-Authority Issues: He's not the type to rebel against authority just because it exists, but as a career thief, he's also not inclined to be a good boy and stay within the boundaries of the law.
-Unstable Architecture: Things crumble beneath his feat at a statistically unlikely rate.


In-Game Inventory:

Items:
-A complete outfit on his person that consists of blue jeans, a long-sleeved henley shirt, shoes and undergarments
-Titanium wedding ring lost to the Ingress
-Replacement wedding wrong
-Analog wristwatch lost to the Ingress
-A partially-filled journal that contains both sketches and other information stapled to the pages plus drawing pencils
-Passport
-Empty gun holster
-Cell phone & charger (without working service, naturally)
-Wallet containing a small amount of currency in the form of Euros, U.S. dollars and Yemeni Rial
-Two changes of clothing and some bathroom sundries
-A duffel bag to carry most of the above
-A waist pouch (kind of a man purse without straps) for the smaller items