Gar the Red, Brother in Silence's page

We all have our secrets. Some may shy away from them, while others live within them, building walls of subterfuge in which to dwell, as safe as houses. Perhaps for them, their secrets keep them safe, soothing balms to ward against the wounds of scrutiny and the oppressive eye of justice. But for others, like Gar, their own secrets are the monsters in the night, waking terrors that lurk within the dark.

Most citizens of Castorhage would deny all of this. By their accounts, they are bathed in virtue, donning veritable cloaks of snow-white bird feathers, as pure as the gods of old. But that is a fiction, a cold, dead lie as lifeless as the city itself, and as jaded as the weary souls who dwell within it. Gar, you see, has seen the truths the city has tried so desperately to conceal. He has lived them, and suffered by them.

He was drawn to the church, like so many before him, out of desperation. This was decades ago, when he had barely come of age. With no food for days, a little prayer and a bit of skin off the hide seemed a small price to pay for a hot meal. In fact, it was a downright steal. Then one thing led to another and he was accepting daily assignments, in service to the faith, acting as the hard hand of the church. His first job: rough up a few skinheads, hardheads who thought they'd strike out from the temple and make it on their own. As if Ragathiel’s message needed a new interpretation. Their conduct displeased the septons. And that, that is the last thing a man ought to do. He took to this work with little thought, for it came naturally to him and improved his position in the world. He was not a learned man, and gave little thought to rhyme or reason underlying his job.

While the temple may have been manipulating Gar, the truth is, he liked it. He enjoyed cracking skulls and breaking teeth. It made him feel alive. It set fire to his soul. It showed him the path to righteousness was littered with trash that needed cleaning. He was part of it, he learned, and that accounted for the atonements, the self-disciplines. But therein lies one of his secrets: he enjoyed those, too. But better not to speak of such things. Keep your sins secret, then no one can use them against you. He was a Brother now. A Brother in Silence.

And so things had markedly improved for Gar. He was no longer eating from dumpsters, no longer sleeping in boarded-up basements, and no longer a weak, no-named nobody. He had become someone and, despite his crude beginnings, had earned respect for himself by paying the blood price. Just like Ragathiel, the General of Vengeance.

That all changed when the murders began. There was panic among the masses. The church’s concerns shifted--its scrutiny turned entirely to the midnight menace that stalked the streets. Bloody Jack. Gar, by then a mid-ranking officer in the General’s army, became one of many patrolmen. In league with the city’s Watch, the church’s men and women stalked the nighttime streets in a desperate, failed attempt to protect against the lunacies of a maddened mind and a poisoned heart.

One night, Gar was stationed as a watchdog, assigned to protect the school. It was an orphanage, full of feral younglings with no future. Gar broke from his assignment, lured into a darkened alley by the promise of a harlot’s thighs. He never touched them, though, for the moment he was alone with her, he was clubbed over the head.

He awoke soon after to learn that children were missing.

Their bodies were found two days later in a drainage ditch.

Gar told the truth. He was compelled to do so by the methods of the septons. The temple could not let it be known that their watch had failed. It certainly would not do to disclose that one of their own Brothers had been lured away from his post by a common prostitute. And so the church lied. They fabricated a story that Gar had been overcome by Bloody Jack himself.

Gar took the deaths of the children to heart. He knew that he had failed but, even worse, he had done so because of personal vice, and so he bore the crime as his own. As a matter of law, as a matter of faith, and as a matter of redemption, he desired nothing more than to bring Bloody Jack to justice. But his church denied him, demoting his rank and giving him menial duties within the temple itself. He was forbidden to leave the temple grounds. He was branded with his sins, granted a name to remind him and all others of his trangressions. He was Gar the Red.

It wasn’t until Bloody Jack’s disappearance that his life returned to something resembling normality. Still, he was never satisfied. Bloody Jack’s crimes are his own, and to this day he vows vengeance and justice. And so he watches, and he waits, biding his time until the day that Bloody Jack Carver returns.

And on that day, he will wash away his sins in blood.

Gar’s position within the church was compromised greatly following Bloody Jack’s murder of two orphans under the church’s protection. Now, with the return of Jack, Gar’s superiors have “gifted” him the privilege of tracking down the killer and putting an end to his reign of terror once and for all. By any means necessary. Gar has been given this assignment with the understanding that, one way or the other, the church expects to see a body.

Gar is inspired by the tough, gritty anti-heroes of classic westerns. An aged, jaded man, he is the strong arm of the law, on a mission to collect a debt.