Nate Turner

Name: Nate Turner

Gender: Male

Age: 16

Grade: 11

School: Cochise High School

Hobbies and Interests: Acting, cooking, soccer, swimming.

Appearance: Standing at 4’6” and weighing 83 lbs, Nate has proportional dwarfism caused by a hormonal disorder. His brown hair is cut short, to the point that it rarely needs combing. He has thin brown eyes, a straight thin nose and a straight lipped mouth, as well as a rounded face with small ears. As a result of his disorder, Nate looks younger than his actual age and more closely resembles a thirteen year old, in part due to his smooth features and leaner frame.

Nate wears handed down clothes from his older brothers, so his outfits have evidence of repair jobs and leftover stains. He generally favours t-shirts and jerseys with solid colours or generic designs on them, as well as sweaters in the colder seasons. He wears jeans when he has to, but prefers to switch to cargo shorts as soon as the weather warms up, and keeps to the same pair of worn black sneakers all year round.

On the day of the abduction, Nate was wearing a green t-shirt with orange horizontal stripes. a pair of light khaki cargo shorts, and his black trainers.

Biography: The youngest of five brothers, Nate Turner was born in Kingman, Arizona to Jessica Turner née Smith, a senior pastor for a local Methodist Church, and Kevin Turner, a floor manager with an accounting firm at the Kingman Industrial Park. Nate’s older brothers, Kevin Jr., Simon, Paul and Toby came eight, six, four and three years ahead of him, respectively.

As the baby of a family of five, Nate grew up in a house full of hand-downs and roughhousing. Whilst the family were able to keep themselves afloat thanks to Kevin’s careful budgeting and Jessica’s creativity with entertaining the kids, the three bedroom house was cramped for the better part of Nate’s life, something he became very used to as a young child.

When he was around the age of three, Nate’s parents began to grow concerned with his slow rate of growth. After consulting with his doctor, he was diagnosed with his hormonal disorder, caused by a defect in his pituitary gland that was resulting in his restricted development. This surprised Kevin and Jessica, given the relative health of their other children.

The immediate concern was the financial implications: as a family already on a tight budget, the cost of long-term medical treatment was at the front of Kevin’s mind, and he quickly realised that, partly due to his company’s subpar insurance scheme, they didn’t have the budget to provide daily shots in the long term. As a result, Nate was limited to three hormone injections a week.

Even with the reduced number of injections, the cost of the treatment took its toll on the family; spare cash became a luxury that Nate’s older siblings rarely got to see the benefit of, something that became particularly irritating for Kevin Jr. and Simon. Whilst Jessica reminded her older children of the importance of familial love and not to blame Nate, which they obliged with for the most part, it was a frustrating situation regardless. Nate remained relatively unaware of the implications of his treatment’s cost due to his young age.

Whilst the house was relatively small for a family their size, they were fortunate enough to have a large yard that the boys spent many hours in, Jessica spending her free time coming up with new games for them to play when she wasn’t inventing stories for them. Though Kevin was generally too tired from work to join in the games, he and the boys took many trips to the park at the weekends whilst Jessica did the shopping or attended to her clergy duties.

With a pastor for a mother, the Turners were a devoutly religious family. Nate grew up attending church every Sunday with his family, and the values of his religion would reverberate with him as he grew older. He grew to love being part of an extended community beyond his own family, and as he got older he would come to idealise the notion that everyone could be saved, taking comfort in the optimistic belief.

When Nate started school, he enjoyed it immensely. Never shy as a child, he was quick to befriend other kids and take part in the class. Though he didn’t stand out academically, his energetic and upbeat personality saw him through the initial few years.

His favorite class in elementary school was P.E. class: having spent countless hours playing with his brothers, he’d already developed a love of sports that saw him looking forward to the time exercising and being active with great enthusiasm.

It was during his fourth year at elementary school that he began to experience difficulties, however. A new arrival to the sixth grade, having moved in from out of town, chose Nate as her target for bullying, picking on him in particular due to his notably small size. Whilst the faculty was quick to step in on her ridiculing, and Nate’s friends tried to make him feel better, his first experience with a bully shook him to the core and caused him to withdraw. The fact that she was relentless in her teasing, as well as influencing other girls around her to follow suit, made the situation even worse.

Whilst Nate’s parents were called in to discuss the issue, they had difficulty coming up with a solution beyond the school’s existing method of handling bullying. Eventually Nate’s bully graduated to middle school, but the damage was done and his outgoing nature took a hit, as he began to become insecure about his lack of growth.

As his siblings grew up, Nate found them wanting to spend less and less time with him. Simon, Paul and Toby had transitioned into the awkward teenage phase, and Kevin Jr. was almost an adult in his own right. They had long since grown accustomed to the cost of Nate’s treatments limiting their own budgets and no longer harboured ill will towards him over it, but their age difference remained the limiting factor all the same. Though the family kept up to date on each other, with family dinner sessions being the time to share everybody’s news, he started to feel alone the rest of the time with his inability to continue relating to his brothers. Whilst his father continued to be active with the family at the weekends, he found himself gravitating to Nate’s older siblings, finding it easier to hold conversations with them on subjects that Nate had difficulty keeping interest in. Whilst he tried to be present for these conversations as a means to spend time with his father, he still felt left out all the same.

As a consequence, Nate found himself growing more attached to his mother. He would attend more church activities with her whilst the rest of the family were busy with their own hobbies, assisting her with running volunteer projects or doing odd jobs for her as needed. In addition, he would spend a lot of time helping her with her own jobs around the house, particularly cooking the family meals. What started as a simple way to spend more time with his mother became a genuine interest for him, as he took great satisfaction in spending time making something the whole family could enjoy.

At first, Nate’s cooking efforts were as an assistant to his mother, helping to stir the sauce or cut the vegetables as needed. In time he began making an effort to be more involved as his interest grew, helping pick out recipes for the weekly meals or preparing entire side dishes alone. Whilst he enjoyed preparing and enjoying something that he’d help to make from scratch, it was the attention from his siblings and father that really drew him to enjoy cooking, taking their opinions to heart. Whilst Jessica was quick to cover for any criticism that might’ve been innocently tossed out, Nate felt a great deal of shame for any personal failings and always resolved to try harder next time.

Going into middle school wasn’t as smooth an experience for Nate as elementary school was. He was still insecure about his size, especially as his classmates began to develop ahead of him, and as a result he was less involved in the classroom. He was also hesitant to socialise with new people out of anxiety at how they might treat him, though he retained several friends from elementary school and through the church. This time also saw a resurgence in his bullying problem, as older kids were quicker to pick on him for his stature.

It was around this time that Nate realised the value of playing himself up as a victim. As the youngest of five, he’d experienced his older siblings being blamed for things he was still partially responsible for on several occasions, and during his elementary school bullying phase he was quick to receive a lot of sympathy and support. Whilst at first he kept the middle school bullying problem to himself, feeling too insecure to start speaking up in his defence, his friends’ support and reporting the problem for him made him start to believe that people would automatically take his side in a conflict. Once he realised that, he became a lot quicker to report people who taunted him, regardless of how severe their actions might have been. This resulted in him gaining a reputation as a snitch amongst his aggressors, though he was quick to present himself as a victim to everyone else.

Though he was still anxious about meeting new people, his love of sports won out in the end and Nate decided to join the soccer team in middle school, having greatly enjoyed playing the game in the past. Though he was reluctant to compete with the team, worrying that his skills or size would hold the team back, he did so anyway at the behest of his coach and more supportive teammates, claiming that he was underestimating himself.

Nate also joined the drama club in middle school. When he was younger, he was always eager to participate in the plays put on by his school and church, enjoying the chance to get creative and act out. He enjoyed playing up character traits and tended to be over dramatic regardless of the scene, and this carried on through middle school. His mentors in the club tried to steer him away from this habit for the benefit of his performance, and whilst Nate tried to oblige he still found himself getting carried away from time to time.

Whilst Nate enjoyed PE classes at school, other subjects were becoming a challenge for him. Paul and Toby were considered the brains of the Turner family, taking after their father, and Nate found it difficult to achieve good results in most subjects. This was particularly notable in mathematics and science, due to his inability to concentrate and memorise for long periods that made it hard for him to recall the relevant facts. This became another source of insecurity for Nate, considering the attention he’d seen his elder two brothers receive from his father for their school abilities that he was continuing to feel left out of.

Once again, he turned to his mother for support. Though her responsibilities with the church and household duties limited her available time, her knack for storytelling enabled her to give Nate a lot of support with his English work, which became his best subject when combined with his creativity that he’d practiced through drama. Whilst he still struggled to perform well, the support from Jessica still made school more bearable for him.

Nate’s difficulty with memorising grew to be an issue with his drama performances, something that became more pronounced as he began to do it more regularly. Though he was used to tripping on occasional lines when he was younger and performing less often, it became a source of frustration for him as he began to take on longer plays with more complicated texts.

Venting his frustration to his mother during one particular study session, the two began to develop a coping habit of improvisation: Jessica suggested that if Nate wasn’t entirely certain what the next line was, he should think about what the character would want to say in that situation, and make something up accordingly. Whilst this technique saw a good deal of improvement in reducing Nate’s blanking on stage, it did tend to irritate some other club members due to throwing off their own cues.

As he approached the end of middle school, Kevin Jr. announced his intentions to move to Phoenix. The family had been aware that funding college would be difficult for the kids, given their size, so Kevin Jr. had opted to work for a number of years before beginning his own studies, whilst also desiring the independence of living away from home.

Though their relationship had been much more restrained in the previous years due to the age gap, Nate was very upset when his eldest brother left the house. To compensate he started spending even more time with his siblings, much to their growing irritation. As soon as school was out and he didn’t have a club to attend to, he’d rush to wherever he knew his nearest available family member to be, even if it was just to know that he was in the same building as one of them.

His first year of high school didn’t prove too different from middle school: he once again joined the drama club and soccer team, as well as deciding to take up swimming too, mostly as an excuse to have something to do every day after school but also out of nostalgia for the trips to the local pool he’d had with his family when he was younger. At this point the physical difference between him and his peers was becoming exaggerated, which made him even more reluctant to compete than before. He fell into playing as a sub for the soccer team, a role he was comfortable with as it allowed him to still attend the club whilst minimising his perceived chance of embarrassing himself on the field.

Whilst Nate had joined the swim team more causally than his other extracurricular activities, he found himself taking to the sport quite readily. He was able to perform decently thanks to the lower body strength he maintained from soccer, with his upper body strength slowly catching up as he swam more regularly. Due to his hard working nature and regular appearance at the club, his skills improved quite readily over his high school career.

Nate’s continuing difference in size became an even bigger sore sport for him, however. Whilst the hormone treatment had allowed him to start experience puberty at age 13, his growth had slowed down notably in the past few years and he was beginning to fear that his height had plateaued. Though he was forward with his doctors and parents about his anxieties, the family’s insurance was stubborn about improving the funding so that his injection schedule could be increased to a daily rate, and even with Kevin Jr. having left the house the family found it difficult to find the cash to increase the frequency of injections.

Whilst he continued to rely on his mother for comfort over his anxieties, she was beginning to recognise his overreliance on her for support. Conflicted over the best response to the situation, she began to encourage Nate to spend more time with his friends outside of school. Though the thought of spending less time with his family was very intimidating for Nate, he did appreciate that he was spending more time with his mother than other boys his own age.

At first, Nate turned to his church’s youth group to get involved with in his free time, being already familiar with most of the members thanks to his involvement with the church over the years. Whilst this did get him out of the house more, it still resorted in him seeing his mother more than she intended, as she was involved in the group’s activities herself as the consulting pastor.

During Nate’s sophomore year, it was Simon’s turn to move out of the house. Whilst he had decided to work in the same office as his father, the fact that he had now moved out to a local apartment caused Nate to reel back from his attempts at independence, once again growing insecure as the house grew emptier.

Now in his junior year, Nate has been relieved to find that Paul and Toby have yet to announce their own intentions to move out. At this point they and Simon all work with their father, who is in the final stages of starting his business. Paul and Toby opted to continue sharing a room when Simon moved out, leading to Nate finally having a room of his own. Whilst the fact that he was sleeping in a room by himself for the first time led to a lot of initial discomfort, he eventually found that he actually enjoyed the privacy, especially knowing that the rest of his family was only on the other side of the walls.

At school, Nate continues to keep his schedule full so that he’s never alone for too long whilst continuing to enjoy his interest in drama and sports.

In the drama club, though he continues trying to improve his performances and ability to memorise lines, he still has issues with getting carried away with emotions and scenes, as well as resorting to improvising dialogue. These difficulties have resulted in him often being cast in less serious or more emotionally shallow roles, which he doesn’t mind as much due to enjoying the parts, but he still hopes for the chance to refine his emotional performances in more nuanced roles. He also has a tendency to find himself cast into roles that play on his size, often due to these characters affiliation with comic relief, which is a situation that he does quietly resent.

Generally, Nate enjoys plays with fantastical plot lines and a wide range of emotional content. He’s particularly drawn to the work of William Shakespeare, The Tempest being his favorite play, though he also likes works from more recent writers such as John Steinbeck and Arthur Miller. Whilst he prefers to participate rather than watch, he does enjoy going to local productions with friends should the interest strike them.

In sports, his love of soccer has been superseded by his new found enthusiasm for swimming.

He remains a sub on the soccer team, generally preferring to play in a winger position as his size is less impactful there, but ultimately he prefers to work on his ball control skills and enjoy casual games with his friends on the team rather than being competitive.

His swimming skills have developed notably during his time at high school; he specialises in the free stroke, but has also shown himself capable of performing the fly stroke. At his coach’s encouragement he’s become more active at meets, participating in two or three races, compared to how he used to prefer to race just once per meet when he started. Though he is far from the best swimmer in the team, he places fairly well at meets thanks to his commitment and determination allowing his skill to close the physical gap caused by his size.

He also continues to be an active member of the Christian community, regularly attending his youth group. As with his other extra-curricular activities, he takes comfort in the sense of community this gives him, as well as enjoying the time it lets him spend with his mother, though he does make an effort not to appear too attached in front of his friends.

Meanwhile, he has continued to practice his cooking over the years at his mother’s side, to the point that he occasionally cooks meals for the family in her place. He mainly does it as a source of attention from his family in the form of compliments for the dishes he cooks, particularly from his father, but he also enjoys using it as another excuse to spend time with his mother whether it be joining her on food shopping trips or looking up interesting recipes to prepare. His food tends to be decent for the most part, though he is a slow learner with new recipes and will often make mistakes on the first few tries. He usually works on affordable but filling Western foods, particularly enjoying the home-style cooking of Nigella Lawson.

Academics continue to be a weak point for Nate. Though English remains his strongest subject, he only maintains a B average in it, whilst the other subjects tend to hover around the C range. He does put a lot of effort into his work, but he still has difficulty with remembering facts over long periods. He does do better in cooking classes, however, due to his external interest, matching his English performance in that subject, with the occasional A.

Socially, Nate has regained a lot of the confidence with other people that he enjoyed in elementary school. Much more open to approaching new people, he usually makes friends through his enthusiasm and dedicated nature, but he still has a habit of becoming clingy when anxious, which can put people off. He is also still uncomfortable about people commenting on his dwarfism, whatever their intent behind it; if he’s particularly upset by what’s said, he’ll respond by looking for people he knows are supportive to cling to. However, he also still knows how to play himself up as the victim when such situations call for it, and whilst he has a much lower tendency to tell on people picking on him these days, he’s resorted to badmouthing them behind their backs instead and complaining to whoever’ll listen.

Nate continues to see all of his brothers on the holidays, looking forward to such occasions with great enthusiasm, but the age gap between him and his eldest two brothers continues to make it difficult for them to relate. Similarly, his father still favours Paul and Toby for their intelligence, and with his imminent plans to begin a business with them doesn’t have as much time for Nate. Mealtimes continue to be the height of family time in the Turner household, but even then Nate finds it difficult to find things to talk about with his family beyond his mother, much to his distress. Usually he’ll complacently listen to what topics they happen to be discussing with minimal contribution instead.

As he still has his senior year ahead of him, Nate has yet to put too much thought into what he wants to do after graduation. He doesn’t intend to attend college at present, though the prospect would be much easier for him financially with his four brothers now working full time. He has given some thought to following in his mother’s footsteps as a pastor, an idea that has received a mixed response from her due to worrying it is him being overly dependent on her once again.

Advantages: Despite his handicap, Nate remains in good physical shape from his constant activity and sports. He is involved socially in a wide number of groups, which gives him a fairly large pool of potential allies. His experience as an actor and with garnering sympathy may also allow him to avoid being targeted or manipulate events, depending on the situation and whether he can keep his acting subtle enough.

Disadvantages: Nate is incredibly uncomfortable with being left alone, becoming very stressed even at the thought of being by himself. He is also prone to becoming anxious in general, which will do little to help his coping ability on the island. In spite of his good shape, Nate is still markedly smaller than his peer group and has delayed development, which will make him an easy target in a physical confrontation. His tendency to cling to other people to deal with his anxieties may also aggravate other parties.

Designated Number: Male student No. 008

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Designated Weapon: 6-foot Bo Staff

Conclusion: Oh my god. That's just too fucking funny man. It's so much bigger than him. I hope for Frodo's sake he can use that proportional strength I've heard so much about to make the best of this.- Josie Knight

'The above biography is as written by Slam. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Slam

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Collected Weapons: 6-foot Bo Staff (assigned weapon)

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Enemies: 

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