Roger Koopman, pen name Warren Merchant, is a scientist and the in-universe author of Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse and a supporting character in Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn.
Biography[]
Prior to moving into management, Koopman was a scientist monitoring water quality issues in New York City. He was also a friend of Andrew Bartholomew Rhodes, a retired Colonel from the United States Marine Corps.
Through his associates in the intelligence community, Koopman eventually became aware of virologist Gordon Amherst's plot to release a bio-engineered virus, possibly with help from Russian immunologist Vitaly Tchernenko. However, he also learned of rogue elements within the U.S. government and military who knew Amherst's plans and saw them as a means to power, who would likely try to silence any attempts to expose him.
Reasoning that doing so would only drive Amherst underground and cause mass panic, he instead wrote and published a book, New York Collapse: A Survival Guide to Urban Catastrophe, under the pseudonym 'Warren Merchant'. On the surface, it was a survival manual covering basic disaster preparedness; in reality, it also contained various puzzles and ciphers hiding clues about his identity and whereabouts, though he didn't anticipate anyone would solve them.
Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse[]
As he had feared, Amherst's virus, Variola chimera (or "Green Poison", as it became known), was released in New York City on Black Friday, where it quickly reached epidemic proportions. When biochemist Bill Kelleher was murdered by a paramilitary hit squad on the eve of the Manhattan quarantine, Koopman realized that any obstacles to Amherst's plans were being systematically eliminated and went into hiding in the Dark Zone, sharing his location only with the Joint Task Force and select members of the Strategic Homeland Division. Through intermediaries, he discovered Bill's wife, April Kelleher, was following his clues from New York Collapse, and encouraged her with a Missing Person poster bearing her photo and a handwritten coded message.
Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn[]
Five months after the initial outbreak, April Kelleher's investigation ultimately led her to Koopman's hideout in the Dark Zone. There, Koopman explained his rationale for writing New York Collapse and shared a theory behind her husband's death: Bill's employer, Sequent Biotech Group (SBGx), had been researching broad-spectrum antivirals, which could potentially combat the Green Poison. Using her husband's research and a vaccine created by Dr. Jessica Kandel, samples of the cure had been produced at a lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Kelleher immediately resolved to travel to Ann Arbor; failing to dissuade her, Koopman reluctantly directed Kelleher to seek out the Riverside Templars, who could help her cross the Hudson River and escape Manhattan. The next day, he wrote her a letter of introduction to give to Rhodes, their leader, and instructed the local JTF checkpoint to allow her passage out of the Dark Zone.
Trivia[]
- Koopman's pen name, "Warren Merchant", is a cipher containing his location and true identity:
- "Warren" is a reference to 213 Warren Street, the address of his hideout inside the Dark Zone.
- "Merchant" is derived from his surname, Koopman, as "koopman" means "merchant" in Dutch.
- In Tom Clancy's The Division, Koopman's vacant hideout can be found in DZ07. It contains an annotated map of Midtown and a whiteboard with several names, including April Kelleher's, and a list of global coordinates.
- The coordinates are actually of various Ubisoft development studios, including Massive Entertainment, Red Storm Entertainment, Ubisoft Annecy, and Ubisoft Reflections, who contributed to the game's development.