Garesh Flangeldin Backstory

Garesh lived in the outer villages of Occulturation. Despite such an area being vulnerable to Screamer attacks. guns and fire arms of any sort, artillery or ballista were all illegal. Whhile its true that Screamers would specifically target anyone wielding such contraband, Garesh figured that if everyone had gun, werewolves and vampires and such would not target few people that had guns exclusively since they would have to distribute their targeting towards literally everyone. This premise caused the production of the illegal Outer Villages Militia. Garsh was a part of the OVM. They all used guns and were able to fend off for a time. The problem came when the central government from the cities sent an army to put down the OVM's rebellion. While the OVM engaged in combat against the city military, Screamers attacked nearby villages that had been under the protection of the OVM until the military attaked. At first, Garesh assumed that the Screamer's were simply taking advantage of the OVM's distraction and this coincidence was not a planned two-prong attack. When Garesh got shot, he started to have other ideas. It wasn't a regular bullet that hit him. It was a tranquilizer.

He woke up in a cell along with many of the rest of the OVM. He soon learned that very little of the militia had been killed. They were all in prisons. Garesh couldn't help but wonder why. The prison guards would take out a few individuals for execution every day. Garesh had doubts. When in war. When in combat. One doesn't take heavy losses to capture the enemy army alive, just to execute them later. Something else was afoot. It became clear when the prison guards were called out one day. It was apparently a holiday. But even in a holiday, there should be someone guarding the prisons, right? The keys were left just out of reach of the prisoners on a hook on the wall. If this was a way of taunting the prisoners, it was stupidly reckless. It didn't take much ingenuity to get something long enough to grab the keys from through the cell bars and unlock the door. Soon, all of the cells were unlocked and prisoners were scrambling out. Others were stayed back, planning. Garesh was among these planners. Something smelled fishy. It was almost as though the government wanted them to escape. That's when the Screams started.

The crowd of prisoners slowly turned its momentum backwards, moving inwards into the complex again. Garesh and the rest of the planners were perplexed. Had the guards come back? He didn't hear any shooting. The inhuman snarls and growls gave it away. Screamers had infiltrated the compound. Werewolves ripping through the ungulating mass of running rebels. Vampires pouncing upon those that straggle out of the crowd. Garesh and the planners could only run towards the Warden's office away from the Screamers. None of the planners had considered the possibility of Screamers attacking. They had thought of all sort of traps the government could have set for them, but who could have expected Screamers? In the Warden's office there was a heavy metal safe. Garesh and the planner pushed the giant closet sized safe in front of the metal door to stop the Screamers from breaking through. The planners doubted that it would hold long. If humans could move the safe, then Screamers would be able to do so as well. There was no there way out of the Warden's office. No windows or doors. A few planners rifled through the drawers of the Warden's desk, looking for anything that might help in the given situation. One of the planners found a hand gun, though it only had three bullets in it. Another planner found a chest where the guards had placed all the stuff they confiscated, whether it be contraband or just something they thought looked suspicious. There were a few more guns and ammunition in the chest that had been smuggled in. A few guns aren't going to make a difference against a horde of Screamers. There's not enough time or weapons to distribute the arms to the whole crowd that is getting slaughtered by Screamers.

The door starts shaking as they hear loud thumping against it. A grinding sound as the metal door is shredded and claws rip through the door at hit the safe. The safe takes a bit longer to break through. The safe falls forward, revealing a large hole in the back where a werewolf had clawed a hole. Glancing inside the hole to the Safe, Garesh and the planners saw that the safe was another container for confiscated contraband. But this contraband was the most vile and dangerous. There were many religious amulets and symbols, effigies, totems, sacred texts, and all sorts of things that appeared to be miscellaneous objects of religious significance of long gone religions and devotaries. There was even some witchery objects and other occultist relics. The werewolf surged in to strike down the planners and Garesh. The planners that had collected guns opened fire. Within a second or two, the werewolf collapsed to the floor, dead. However, the gunshots rang out across the complex, alerting all Screamers of their presence and drawing their attention. The horde of Screamers began widely to ignore the rapidly dwindling crowd of prisoners and rush toward the small Warden's office. Too panicked to conserve ammunition, the planners fired Screamers that reached the doorway. Most of the planners ran out of bullets after killing the second Screamer. Garesh pulled out a wooden stake which had been confiscated for being a weapon. The other planners that ran out of bullets also picked up impromptu weapons from the chest. As less and less of the planners had guns, the Screamers that were getting closer and closer before dying. The amount of dead Screamers in the doorway made it hard for most Screamers to get through to them. A vampire misted through the small opening over the pile of bodies in the doorway and reappeared to attack. The last gun-wielding planner took aim  and "Click, click, click." He throws the gun at the vampire, who swats it to the ground and lunges at him. Garesh forces the wooden stake through the vampire's eye when it gets close. It reels back, shocked that it had been so heavily damage without guns. It stumbled backwards, falling backwards as it trips over the scaly reptilians arm of an Animal-Shifter. The planners hack it death with a wild arrangement of weapons.

But more Screamers stream in. A ghoul upon a fellow planner, but they can't help him with that because a gargoyle strikes upon another. How can they worry about the other planners when there are nearly as many Screamers in the room as there are of them? Garesh drives the wooden stake through the spine of skeleton that's on top of him. The skeleton spine breaks in half. It's dead. A fey-touched lamia pounces on him with its leonine legs. Garesh stabs it repeatedly with the stake, but he receives several claw wounds himself. The spiky-shelled weretortoise turns to leave as it has killed its prey. When it turns, its shell slams into the lamia's face by accident. This stunning blow gives Garesh the chance to strike at the lamia's face. Soon the lamia goes limp. Garesh sees that most of the Screamers in the room have left after killing their victims. However, the ghoul notices that the lamia has gone limp. It can't see Garesh underneath the corpse, so it sruggles to lift the lamia to see if Garesh is still alive underneath. Such a ghoulish mistake. It can barely lift the lamia, but such lifting gives room for Garesh to move while also leaving the ghoul vulnerable. A simple strike through its missing nose is enough to do it in after the shoulder wounds it received from its fight with the other planners. Now Garesh fallsb ack down with multiple Screamer bodies ontop of him. A heavy lamia, a disgusting ghoul. Soon the room goes quiet.

The rest of the Screamers have succeeded in their kill and left the room to chase after the other prisoners. There had been about eleven planners including Garesh. They had killed somewhere around twenty-three Screamers in this room. Garesh struggled to get out from beneath the bodies of Screamers. It took him about an hour to escape the bodies. Then he checked to see if any of his companions were still alive. They apparently hadn't been as lucky as him. The doorway was blocked by the mass of piles of Screamers that had been killed by gunshots as soon as they had entered line of sight. He slowly moved to push and drag bodies out of the pile to clear a path for himself. In this work, he uncovered the safe that had a hole ripped in its back. He saw the old religious artifacts. He wondered why they were confiscated separately and more securely from everything else that had been confiscated. there had been guns and ammo in the chest of confiscated contraband. He searched inside the safe. Most of this looked useless. Effigies, totems, dream catchers, books, scrolls, leather-bound tomes, sealed-metal blocks engraved with ancient tongues, rocks that have faded patterns engraved in them. More varied than he can imagine. He wondered if they were valuable. Maybe they were dangerous. Garesh couldn't take it all with him, so he carried what he could in a sack. The prison complex empty, except for the massive amount of corpses piled on the ground. almost all of the corpses were human. Every once in a while, there were Screamer corpses. Most of the dead Screamer corpses looked to have been collateral from powerful Screamer attacks. A few might have been killed by humans, but it's impossible to know, since many Screamers can do anything that a human can do. He eventually found his way out of the prison. There was a shallow pit strewn with bloodied bodies. Corpses of the "executed" prisoners. He recognized some of them. They were supposed to be executed. What type of execution leaves them dismembered in a pit. It looked similar to the corpses that littered the prison. Garesh needed to hitch-hike, but how was he going to get anyone to help him? He was an escaped prisoner. Garesh had an idea. He went back to the Warden's office, took the pocket knife from his dead comrade, and cut off the head of the werewolf. He got another sack, and put the body in that. He went through the Warden's office and found clothes that didn't make him look like a jailbird. A proper uniform. When he reached the road, he was already tired from carrying two heavy sacks. One with blasphemous texts and forbidden relics and the other sack holding the head of a werewolf.

There was no one on the road for a long time. The was almost over before a car showed up. He waved down the car. The car wasn't slowing down. It looked like it was going to pass. So Garesh took the werewolf head out of the sack. and raised up as high as he could. The car passed him. Then the car screeched to a halt. Garesh picked up his sacks and went to the car. The car-driver was surprised that he had the head of a werewolf and wanted to know where he got it. Garesh ignored the "where" and instead told him about how he killed the werewolf. He hadn't actually killed the werewolf. It was the planners that had guns. Garesh was in the city. It was the only place where guns were allowed. It was also the only place you could find automobiles. Having grown up in the outer villages, such technology seemed like magic. The driver dropped him off in the downtown area. Finally, Garesh was able to consider what had happened. It soon became clear that the government wasn't negligent and poor at ruling. They didn't forbid guns un outer villages because of some misguided belief that guns cause more villagers to die. They didn't attack the OVM because they thought they would revolt against the government. No, the attack of the Screamers on the prisoners and the strange actions of the prison guards and warden proves that the government has been in concert with the Screamers. They were captured alive to be fed to Screamers. The "executed" prisoners were fed to Screamers. Garesh can't imagine why the government would work with Screamers or feed them and sacrifice large amounts of its own population to such monsters, but Garesh didn't care. He had suffered personally from the hands of these monsters, and now he knew that it was the government that was responsible. He had originally planned to sell the relics and texts he had gathered from the safe in the prison, but now he was beginning to have a new plan. They were kept in a safe. They must be dangerous. And if they were dangerous, they were what Garesh wanted. Garesh opened the sack. There was an ancient tome with a faded alien text. it was unreadable. He didn't recognize the script. There were no familiar letters. He took out the tiny dream catcher, he's not sure what use this might have, but he's sure that he wants it. He took out the rest of the contents of the sack as well: a small stone statuette of a shirtless man wearing a deer skull with antlers and holding a spear, a necklace that is made of a silver chain and holds a pendant engraved in an unrecognizable symbol that looks like three wavy horizontal lines inside of three concentric circles, a metal wreathe of thin wires that mimics a plant, three colorful scented candles, a metal disc the size of a frisbee and emblazoned with three concentric circles of sigils, a vial of foul smelling dark brownish-red liquid that could be blood that has long since expired.

Over the next several years, Garesh prepared his revenge. However, he slowly became more willing to sacrifice morals to obtain his end. His alignment switched from Chaotic-Good, to Chaotic Evil. He is no longer seeking justice and trying to make the world better by removing the government. Now he is embittered with anger, spite and malice. He will cause those that made him suffer the same suffering. He will destroy the government and then he will found a new empire to lead humans into a golden age by leading them into glorious battle against the Screamers and cleansing the world of that scourge. Such great ambitions and so many years spent in planning. You would ask if he has the will and initiative. What is he waiting for? Why hasn't he brought the government to justice? The truth is, he is waiting for the alignment of the stars and times. He has waited for the perfect time to reach the greatest potential.