Arbor Day Rough Drafts

Childhood

Sam(Scourge) was born with an extremely rare neurological disorder known as Veterisan Syndrome. (The disorder is described in depth under the info tab.) The syndrome is only occurring within his family line. He grew up living with more feral and primal urges, causing him to act like a wild animal at times. Sam would have episodes where he would tear up the furniture, and claw and bite at everyone around him. He was also born as a runt, making him much smaller than the average bear, and making his chances of survival much more slim.

Sam lived his childhood in a very traumatic and unstable environment, due to his father (Desmond) making it an unsafe world for Sam. Desmond was a heavy drinker, and was very abusive to both Sam, and Zaphara, being both emotionally and physically harmful to the both of them. Zaphara would try to take most of the abuse in an effort to protect her son, but more often than not, Sam would be dragged into it as well.

He was never given a decent education, and was dependent on learning everything himself. Sam was able to make one really good friend when he was younger, which was Tao. Sam would occasionally get deliberately locked out of the house by Desmond, and one of those times, Tao noticed him and came to speak with him. It was the only positive social interaction that Sam had outside of his home, and Tao was very supportive and kind to him. Sam was five years old when he met Tao, and the two of them became best friends.

One day, Tao gifted Sam an old banjo that he found when Sam was seven, and he began to teach himself how to play it at such a young age, practicing it every second that he could. He did eventually get rather good at playing it, and he dreamed of becoming a famous music star. Little did Sam know, his dreams were about to be crushed.

When Sam was only eight years old, his mother ended up committing suicide by overdosing on her anti-depressant medication. Sam walked in to see Zaphara lying on the couch with empty alcohol bottles littering the floor, and her pill bottle on the ground next to them with a few pills that had spilled out. This had changed Sam’s life forever.

After Sam’s mother died, Desmond was able to get away with a lot more than he was currently able to with Zaphara around. Desmond made his abuse on Samuel a lot more brutal, and he even began to use him to test his robots on. Desmond clearly found some sort of sick enjoyment in torturing his son.

For context, Desmond kept large cages down in the basement which was originally intended for him to keep his robots into. He began to take Sam down into the basement, and he would trap him in the cages with the robots. Desmond would then put the robots into their “attack modes”, and he would test out their combat abilities on Samuel. For example, he used his main robot, D.E.V., to test out his circular saw weapon on Sam. The robots would attack Sam for as long as Desmond made them do it, leaving the poor cub mutilated by the end of the day.

Desmond would often smash beer bottles over Sam’s head, giving him many different scars on his face that can still be seen today.

After Zaphara had passed, Sam was no longer able to see his best friend, Tao, anymore. Sam was always locked away in a completely empty and dark room within the house. Even the window in the room was heavily boarded up. The door to the room was locked from the outside with a large padlock. Tao’s concerns for Samuel grew as he hadn’t seen his beloved friend in ages. Eventually Desmond misinformed him that Sam was dead, and had died due to his syndrome. This left Tao devastated, and he quit looking for Sam.

Teenage Years

As Sam grew up, Desmond became even harsher with his methods of torture and abuse towards him, including but not limited to tearing out two of Sam’s ribs to be used as robotic parts.

Desmond also took away Sam’s banjo when he was about twelve years old, and he broke it over the poor bear’s head, knocking him out in the process. Sam officially had nothing left to entertain himself with while he was all alone.

Sam was beginning to slowly lose his mind within the room that he was trapped in, and he was desperately trying to make his way out of it. He would scratch up the walls, leaving deep gashes in them as his claws became bigger and sharper. Eventually, he wore back the skin on his hands and feet, making it so that his claws were jutting out and replacing his fingers.

Sam’s very basic needs were barely met within this room in order to keep him alive. Desmond brought him a limited amount of water and food that was barely considered edible, such as cans of cat food. Sam was very malnourished, and barely hanging in there.

One evening, when Sam was 15 years old, Desmond did leave the door to Sam’s room unlocked, and he drunkenly passed out on the couch without suspecting a thing. Sam took advantage of the opportunity and made his escape. He made his way out of his corrupted home in Arbaro Springs, running away from it as fast as he possibly could, and towards the forest.

Sam began to explore the forest, immediately in search of any type of food or shelter to at least give him some stability. He was not having any luck for the longest time until he saw what appeared to be a brightly glowing, large, yellow butterfly. The butterfly was none other than the spiritual guardian of the forest, Nova.

Nova felt sympathy for the young bear, and she wanted to do what she could to help him. Nova promised to bring Sam a nearly unlimited food source, shelter, and a fresh water source if he were to do one thing in return for her. Protect the forest at all costs, and remove those who are putting the forest at harm or risk. Sam agreed to help Nova protect the forest, and in return, he earned his own cave to live in which was next to a large freshwater lake that was full of many types of fish he could eat.

By the age of sixteen, Sam was starting to figure out how to live in the forest, which was easy for him to catch onto due to his disorder. He also became stronger and started to resort to more violent methods in order to get rid of those who were harming the forest. In fact, it was required for him to use violence since the city developed an entire army of people to tear the forest down known as “arborists”. Sam began to use his strength and his claws to kill these arborists, and after his first kill, he developed a blood lust.

Sam started to become rather unhinged, using methods of killing and torture against the arborists, and he started to grow very passionate and protective over this forest.

Sam discovered an old bunker that was hidden underground within the Deep Woods, which he began to turn into his very own torture chamber, gathering random tools left by dead campers to use as weapons of torture.

Nova was seeing Sam’s obvious potential and growing strength, and she started to collect information about certain arborists, and she would pass on the information to him on little scrolls that they referred to as “contracts”. Nova started to give Sam these kill contracts, and titled him as an assassin to protect the forest, giving him his own title to be referred to under, “The Demon of the Forest.” During this exchange, Sam was also given a new assassin name, “Scourge.” Scourge adopted this to become his chosen name altogether, and he was now strictly referred to as such.

Scourge began to get more experience with his kills, and he was even starting to become more notoriously known by everyone.

Adulthood

When Scourge was 18, he already had quite a reputation, and he was seen as a mythical creature or even a cryptid by the people of the city. It was rare for people to see him and return to the city to tell the others since he would typically kill anyone that invaded his territory.

Eventually, Scourge had a contract for someone who looked strangely similar to his childhood best friend who he had nearly forgotten about. He searched for this contract for a long time, and eventually, he found someone who matched the description. It happened to be his old friend, Tao. They have officially reunited again, and nothing had changed between the two friends.

Tao began to follow Scourge around more, but not too close as he wasn’t very thrilled about the murderous lifestyle that Scourge had adopted. Tao even managed to bring enough of his own supplies, and he set up camp in the corner of Scourge’s cave, officially moving in with him.

After many months of hanging out with each other on a nearly daily basis, Scourge and Tao began to develop a romantic connection with each other, and they began dating after confessing their love to each other at the Cliffside under the stars.

Eventually, Scourge found out that his father, Desmond had moved into the forest, and had planned on helping the city take over the forest. Desmond had once again become Scourge’s arch-enemy, and they are currently constantly battling each other.

Scourge currently is still living with Tao, and is trying his hardest to fight off both the arborists and his father in order to protect the forest.