Name: Vergil Myers
Unit: 35th Maine Regiment, B Company
Age: 19 y/o
Height: 5′ 7″
Weight: 134 lb
Handedness: Right
Birthplace: Bath, Maine

Physical Description:
Vergil is a sinewy young man with brown eyes and hair who has adopted the mannerisms of the west. The weathering, tanning, and specific calluses a cowboy develops are starting to fade, and he’s starting to look more his age despite the moustache and sideburns befitting an older man. Union blues are a proper soldier’s look, which leaves a fur-felt slouch hat more than a little out of place. But one that would fit right in with a cowboy’s attire. Western troops often keep this accouterment for the same reason he’s held onto his.

Some of the uniform is decent for the weather, but he isn’t a fan of most of what was issued, what wasn’t issued, and the need to supplement the most basic necessities out of his own pockets into the army’s coffers. He tries to gets rid of anything with heft that he doesn’t need and keeps what he does, even if it is unreasonably heavy. By no means due to the nonsense of all this rubber when oilcloth and waxed cotton are readily available.

Clothing:
Uniform, fur-felt slouch hat, grey woolen socks

Background:
Bath, Maine is a city known for one thing: ships. Yet Vergil was born in a small farm at the city’s edge. One that isn’t terribly fertile, and most of the men are shipwrights while the women and children grew what they could get out of the soil. But the plot was just too small and, as bustling as the city is, it is strangely confining in its own right.

His parents finally relent to the rebellious child who could not be bent into contributing his fair share. Maybe the extra mouth to feed could be somewhere it could earn its food. So he finally makes his way to his uncle’s ranch in the Kansas Territory which has accrued a decent number of livestock. Of course, if his parents had known the Civil War in miniature had already broken out in the region, this would never have happened.

Regardless, the work on the ranch on the back of a horse in the middle of prairie did finally give that sense of freedom Bath couldn’t offer. Open land to ride around, to feel the outdoors, to work with the working dogs was more than pleasant.

But Bleeding Kansas is only escalating. The border ruffians want it for themselves, for the simple agenda of seizing the right to own people. The jayhawkers don’t trust a kid in battle who could barely handle the recoil of a carbine, but the growing Vergil can still help in other ways. No real action, but a battle starts before it begins.

His uncle gets pulled into it, albeit with less enthusiasm than his nephew. Especially when the raids eventually reach his own land. And slave-staters are only getting more belligerent. Then Kansas was admitted to the good ol’ US of A as a free state. The true ripples of violence become more than mere gang warfare when the Tragic Prelude escalates into the full-on rebellion, with an uncle getting tired of it all and who would probably have stayed out of the matter if possible can no longer keep his nephew there in good conscience. Maine is nowhere near any front line. Maine is safe.

If he’d had the foresight to realize what the obvious result of Vergil’s return to his hometown would be, he might have reconsidered. The jayhawkers had never put a gun in the kid’s hand. But the army sure will, and his parents’ efforts to keep him from enlisting were all in vain. Of course, a regular infantry regiment is not exactly what the overeager youth has in mind—he’d been passed over when the army came through for jayhawkers to volunteer as irregular cavalry—but marching on foot is still more than he’d ever been permitted before.

And, who knows? Maybe his superiors will realize how to properly utilize a cowboy who spent more than his fair share examining the natural world around him.