Darla Devons

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Backstory

Darla was born in the small settlement called Arsen, to a family of farmers. She had a fairly average childhood, helping her parents with the fields and livestock, and eventually going hunting with her father when she was old enough. The Devons family were invaluable to Arsen's community as their biggest supplier of meats and resources derived from the creatures of the Wasteland.

When her mother died of illness, Darla had been just 16, and took up all of her mothers duties to keep business afloat. She often daydreamed of going out and seeing the world beyond the tiny community she'd known all her life, but knew her father and the townspeople relied on her. The Devons had struck quite a few lucrative deals with passing caravans, and became renowned not for the yields of their farm, but for their hunting abilities.

People from nearby settlements had begun flocking to Arsen, often requesting that the Devons deal with troublesome beasts that were getting too close to their homes, or to hunt down creatures that had been slaughtering precious livestock. Over the next decade, Arsen had grown from a small, unremarkable settlement to a thriving, large community. Darla and her father taught anyone who asked how to hunt and track, and the two were in turn dearly beloved by their people.

Darla was 28 when her father passed. Two years later, a drifter named Fisher stumbled into town with a broken arm. Darla welcomed him into her home, and the two became fast friends. Fisher's stories of his adventures, and the sights he'd seen during his travels, captivated Darla, who had for so long felt trapped in her stable but mundane life in Arsen. Fisher would come and go, bringing Darla more tales and trinkets from his travels, and within 3 years, they married and had their first child, Cleo.

Over the next couple of years, Darla and Fisher two more children; Tucker and Trinket. Trinket had been the last to be born, but unfortunately, the months leading up to her birth would be a horrid turning point for Darla's entire world.

Fisher had begun having an affair with Darla's longtime neighbor, Sky, and the two had been conspiring on how to get Darla and her kids out of the picture so that they could take over the business. A few months after Trinket was born, Fisher put a plan into action; he contacted an old gang he used to run with - a slaver group known as The Scarlet Shackles, led by a ghoul named Duke, and struck a deal: they could have Darla and the kids, as well as a cut of the profits from the Devons Homestead, in exchange for protection and covering up the truth.

Darla was betrayed, tricked and sold into slavery, being dragged back to The Shackles' headquarters towards the north. Trinket and Tucker did not survive the journey.

As they neared their destination, however, the group was attacked by raiders, and in the chaos, Darla and Cleo fled, with Darla hastily picking up a pistol from one of the fallen Slavers. With just the faulty pistol and the clothes on their back, and already so far from home - and shaken by the chaos - the mother and daughter fled into a nearby mine shaft to take cover. What they didn't know, however, was that there was quite a bit of radiation pouring out from within the mines, which had at one point been a dumping ground for nuclear material. They didn't have long to figure out their next move, as the remaining Slavers were already upon them. Darla, finding herself and her young daughter cornered, fought back viciously, and the ensuing damage caused the mine to partially collapse upon Darla, Cleo, and the Slavers.

When Darla woke up, it was to Cleo's weak cries for help. The child had been partially pinned under debris, and despite her efforts, Darla could not free her. What else could Darla do but stay and soothe her last surviving daughter, while desperately trying every few hours, for days, to free her? As they both succumbed to the radiation, Darla sang lullabies and told Cleo stories from her childhood, of the wonderous and amazing creatures she'd seen in her days as a hunter. And when Cleo died, part of Darla died with her.

The days following Cleo's death were a haze for Darla. Radiation sickness ravaged her body. She vomited, suffered intense headaches, found it near impossible to breathe, her skin peeling and falling apart painfully, and all while too weak to move. She waited there for death, but it did not come. Instead, she slowly began to regain her strength... and her resolve to take vengeance on Fisher. Eventually, she ambled out of the shaft, and found her senses heightened. She made her way back to Arsen, and in the cover of night, slipped back into her old home, where she found Fisher and Sky asleep, and brutally murdered the couple. Their screams woke the neighbors, who rushed over to find a ghoul covered in blood and gore, standing over the mutilated corpses of Fisher and Sky. No one recognized Darla - or, if they did, they assumed her feral. The people of Arsen attacked, and Darla fled, escaping into the night, horrified at what she'd done - and heartbroken that the people she'd spent her entire life serving had so quickly forgotten her.

Darla was 38 when her body stopped aging due to the ghoulification process.

The next couple of decades all sort of blurred together for Darla. She had left Arsen as a broken, suicidal shell of who she used to be, coming close to losing herself and feeling afraid... But she found new reasons to keep going. Every so often, she'd stumble across children of the Wastes - orphaned by circumstance, abandoned, or rescued from Slavers, she took them in, protected them with a ferocity unlike any other, and taught them how to survive. Through aiding them, Darla found the resolve to live, to become stronger, and to understand what it truly takes to survive in the Wasteland. Darla raised and rescued many children over the years.

Darla was 95 years old when she stumbled into the ghouls-only city of Honeymoon, which she eventually settled into and made her home, once again providing for the people by means of hunting and working the land. A small part of Darla wanted to settle down here, to try and start over. The residents had all been extraordinarily kind to her and the children that followed her, and she was loved by her community. It had seemed as though finally, finally, Darla could call someplace home again, perhaps even start a family. She could no longer reproduce, but she had her adopted kids. Life was good.

... Until one day, it wasn't.

20 years after settling into Honeymoon, word reached Darla that a group of slavers had been terrorizing the locals of nearby settlements. The Scarlet Shackles hadn't lost all their members that fateful day when Darla lost Cleo, and were thriving after all this time as one of the biggest, most expansive slaver companies in the Wastes; what's more, Duke was still the leader - a name she recognized all too well. Darla was determined to ensure no one would ever suffer as she had; if no one else would step up to take them down, she would. It was time to settle this old score.

Darla set out alone on this mission, her heart full of anger and hatred and turmoil. She raided the main encampment, an old Nuclear Reactor, guns blazing, tearing into slavers left and right, with little to no regard for her own well-being. Duke, recognizing her instantly, fled, and Darla gave chase, right down into the core. After a long, drawn out fight with the radiation in the room rapidly healing both as the struggle went on, Darla blew off one of Duke's legs with her shotgun, and pinned the enemy ghoul under her as she tore into him with her claws, screaming and crying the whole time.

When Darla finally emerged from the Core, she felt... different. Lighter. Stronger. Faster.

She had absorbed so much radiation that she had become a Glowing One, capable of healing other ghouls and unleashing deadly radiation unto non-ghoul adversaries. But more than her newfound power, Darla found peace. She could finally move on with her life, and finish the new beginnings she had started in Honeymoon... Or so she thought. When she arrived at her home, Darla was almost instantly shunned by her community.

Ghouls already faced extreme prejudice from the other inhabitants of the Wasteland, and Honeymoon was always on thin ice with its neighbors; to house a Glowing One would be inviting more conflict. Darla was exiled, once again shunned by the people she had come to love.

But this time, Darla didn't despair. She made peace with herself, and resolved to find her own happiness. She had spent her whole life living for others, and now, finally, Darla would live her life for herself. For the past 10 years, she's done exactly that, wandering the Wastes, hunting game big and small, doing what she loves and seeing the world and all its horrible, dangerous beauty... and for the first time in her life, she's truly happy.