| “ | I thought I'd been through hell before. I'm a fireman. I've entered blazing buildings to save lives more times than I care to remember. But back then I had people teamed up against a common foe, namely the fire. Nowadays, your former neighbor can kill you because your grandparents spoke a different language than his. This is true hell on earth. | ” |
–Marko's Description | ||
Overview
Marko was a firefighter from Pogoren. Prior to the war, he helped rescue a young lady from her burning house and later married her. They had two daughters and his family lived together happily until the war broke out. Marko's wife and kids took refuge at his mother's house in the countryside, while he stayed in the city to help people. As the war continued over the next 3 years, he eventually lost contact with his family.
Marko has no addictions.
He also has an inventory size of 15.
Traits
Marko has the Skilled Scavenger trait, which gives him his 15 inventory slots. His high inventory size is only bested by Boris who has 17 inventory slots. Being described as a Skilled Scavenger, his trait gives a second discount bonus when scavenging, and some fraction of total time spent discount in looting a corpse and clearing out rubble with his bare hands.
Role
Marko is a tier B combat proficiency character, which includes Emilia, Marin, Bruno, and Pavle. He can perform an instant kill backstab while hiding by using any melee weapon but cannot do so from behind the target.
Marko has 2 fewer slots than Boris and is both less proficient in combat and has less health, but Marko moves significantly faster and makes less noise while performing actions. For this reason Marko may make a better scavenger during the first time you're exploring a location, whereas Boris may be better for cleaning it out of known supplies later.
He is decent as a guard.
Solo Run Strategies
Marko is the starting character in the solo run scenario. While other characters may eventually join Marko, it's not unusual for him to spend the first 15-20 days alone if not the entire run. This requires strategies that may not apply to other scenarios that start with multiple characters.
During the first week Marko will usually be visited by a few different neighbors who help out with food, wood, and books. This allows for Marko to focus on gathering components and parts, as well as items with high trade values for buying supplies from Franko.
Staying in the shelter to guard it with only Marko is generally not a good idea. A couple bad raids with Marko being injured can result in a chain of events that leads to death, as he won't be able to sleep in a bed overnight to heal. Guarding will also miss out on a potentially lucrative night of gathering supplies for important upgrades. As a result it's a good idea to focus on gathering the resources and building particular upgrades quickly, rather than hoping to store a few resources from each run until you have enough.
Anything Marko has on him during a scavenging run cannot be taken, so if you have particularly valuable things you wish to keep for trading (medications, bandages, etc) it's a good idea to carry them with you. If you have the choice, try to focus on valuables that stack to maximize space - tobacco and broken toys can stack in groups of 4 which have the equivalent total value of 20 components, whereas a bottle of moonshine cannot stack and has a value of 13.5 components. Marko's 15 slots allow for carrying some valuable items while still having room for plenty of scavenged resources.
Craftable items that have been made but not picked up cannot be stolen, such as cooked food, moonshine, or even raw food and vegetables in traps or gardens. Making a large batch of moonshine (up to a max of 5 at a time) and keeping the bottles on the distillery until Franko comes is one way of making sure you have things to trade for his resources, and cooking multiple meals at once rather than leaving the raw food or vegetables will ensure that you don't go hungry from losing your food to raids.
Marko will be raided frequently and has strong reactions to stealing or killing civilians, so keeping depression at bay is important. Good deeds such as trading medications to the garage or giving food to the homeless man at the decrepit squat will help, and building mood-boosting items such as the radio and armchair will help as well.
Note that boarding up holes in the shelter or building the reinforced door has no impact on shelter defense if no one is present to guard it, so these upgrades should be saved for if another survivor comes along to allow for guard duty.
Personality
"Those guys at the garage... I'll make it up to them after the war...some how" -Marko's feelings after stealing from the Garage
"I must do all I can to save my friends from the disease!"
"This might be it, my friends... Promise you'll hang on even if I don't make it..."
He will most likely not take supplies with him if he leaves the shelter while depressed.
He will become happier if the snipers at the Construction Site are killed.
He can't play guitar.
Recruitment Speech
| “ | Sorry to disturb you, funny how life turns out. I'm a fireman, I've been saving people all my life. Now I'm the one that needs saving. My family fleed the country. I wanted to go to them, but the city got encircled and I couldn't. Will you let me stay with you? | ” |
Character Story
- "Everyone should choose one happy memory. And it can't be good, it has to be grand. When it gets so bad you just want to sit down and cry, when your life seems forfeit, you close your eyes and go back to your happy moment. It's not easy, but you have to try."
- "We were called to a tenement fire. I was still the new one on our team. We just started assembling the houses, when a resident shouted there was someone inside. I donned the mask, went in and carried out a young lady. Long story short, we got married after. Her name was Alina."
- "Alina gave me two beautiful girls. We were so happy. When the war broke out, we decided they would be safer at my mother's house in the country. I stayed with my team to help people. We thought all this would be over in a couple of weeks. It's been almost three years now. Phones are dead, so I've been sending letters through anyone leaving the city."
- "I've got no reply yet and I'm really worried. But I have to trust that Alina and the girls are fine and that everything is going to be alright, or I'll go mad. When this siege is over, I'll find them no matter what and I won't let anything separate us ever again. I hope that one day we can forget this war ever happened and think of it as just a bad dream."
Variant of story:
- "My father told me I should choose one happy memory, and when the life becomes miserable, I just have to close my eyes and go back to that happy moment. But what do you do when your happiest memory brings you nothing but pain?"
- "My happiest moment is a memory of a fire. I was a new addition to our team and guys used to tease me, call me names. but it was a friendly ribbing. Long story short, we were called to a tenement fire and I got lucky, rescued a young lady and became the old hand right there. And the lady, Alina was her name, became my wife soon after."
- "We had two kids, two beautiful daughters. When the war started, she took them and moved to the country, to my mother. She wanted me to come but I'd never leave my team. In times like these. We had a lot of fires to fight. Then, there were more fires than we could fight... and later on the team was no more. It turned out I couldn't leave the city."
- "I've had no word from them for months now. There is no way to reach them, no phones, no mail, I've tried to give letters to strangers, but haven't heard back. I'm starting to lose hope that I'll ever see my Alina and my daughters alive. And this slowly drives me crazy. I wish I could get my hands on whoever started this madness."
Endings
Spoiler Warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
| Ending Type |
Ending Description |
|---|---|
| Dead | "For all his efforts Marko was rewarded with a shallow grave. Maybe his wife and daughters will find it someday, on condition that they managed to survive the persecutions themselves." |
| Suicide | "Broken, Marko lost all of hope of over reaching his wife and daughters. Along with hope, he also lost his will to live on. He left them a goodbye letter. But no one passed it on to them." |
| Abandoned | "Marko slipped out of the shelter one night, leaving no notes behind. He died, betrayed by a smuggler, while trying to reach his family." |
| Rejected | "It was a tough decision but there were reasons why Marko could not stay in the shelter." |
| Karma | "After the war, Marko set out to find his family. The refugees from the city had been brutally persecuted. There was no trace of Alina or the girls. Marko hoped against the odds they did not end up in one of the many mass graves scarring the countryside. Would he ever see them again?" |
| Sad | "After the war, Marko set out to find his family. the refugees from the city had been brutally persecuted. Alina and the girls survived, but what they went through scarred them forever. Marko never spoke of the horrors he'd witnessed, either. Would life ever be normal again?" |
| Good | "After the war, Marko found his family, who managed to avoid the worst atrocities hidden away by a friendly country family. They came back to Pogoren along with other people. Normalcy returned to the city. Buildings were rebuilt. Schools and shops reopened. Life went on." |
Trivia
- Marko and Bruno are good friends.
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| Anton | Arica | Boris | Bruno | Cveta | Emilia |
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| Katia | Marin | Marko | Pavle | Roman | Zlata |