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Carlos Burgos, 36 Personality: stoic type, secretive and strong.

Story: 

Carlos grew up in a town characterized for its prosperity and religious identity. Since he was a kid, he strongly believed in eternity and feared all that meant being a physical being: illness, sin, chaos. 

Wanting to become a priest to get closer to the strongest form of purity, he dedicated himself to his studies until he reached puberty. That’s when the first war started, and his town, being a colony, stayed safe from it. But in one of their conversion visits, he saw black vomit being taken out by other adults and thrown into a dark, deep hole. 

He understood that death, is nothing but a method for rehabilitating souls of contaminated people. He thinks people like Jose, that want justice, or Gabriel are misguided, and that they shouldn’t judge him for the use of violence if they are being motivated by hatred. 

He couldn’t do much in the field of religion, so he got involved with politics. He is writing a sacred book that will work for the authoritarian regime that will guide people into salvation. He wants to get rid of the dark vomit, sell it to other countries and profit from the gains, killing people in the way. 

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Camila Cifuentes, 18 Personality: Eccentric, always sleepy. Likes shiny things. 

Camila lived in a distant area of the town, and her family wasn’t politically or directly involved, which is why she experienced the civil war in an indirect way. A lot of bodies were thrown near to where she used to play, and she started stealing from them: watches, necklaces, hair pins, etc. She once witnessed the murder of a priest and picked up his books and bible afterwards. 

She became interested in spirituality, life after death, and learned by collecting books from corpses left from the church, without really believing in their god. Her curiosity expanded fast, and she learned about spirituality and magic. 

When the civil war ended and she got back to school, she hated classes and spent most time in the back of the building, reading books and helping girls with love spells. She convinced a group to try possession, and with the help of her books, they all lived a pretty much positive experience that helped them view the past. When they came back to normal, all of them vomited a dark substance, that Cami kept in jars to study later. Interested in obtaining more of it, she convinced her classmates to continue with the parties, and accumulated a lot of it.

Camila is known for having bad grades, hanging out with the bad kids and being intimidating for coming up with cruel pranks and scaring people off with horror stories. She gets confronted by Dani and Fabian, but they negotiate to help each other. Still, her knowledge and antagonism for Gabriel and outsiders grow. She believes souls should be purified to release energy, not condensing it in solid matter. Accepting death and tragedy is part of spiritual growth, and she values the consequence of what happened as an important part in the path to transcend. 

In the course of the story, her power becomes so intense that she's able to communicate with some dead souls, and give shape to them as solid black matter, in the shape of small children. They're her assistants too, and she refers to them as her sons.

Long story:

Beliefs: She thinks that things beyond human reach shouldn't be challenged. She also believes that accepting death and tragedy is part of the course of things, because pain lets you feel love as well and be more human. She validates the painful experiences in her town and values something immaterial: people’s feelings and ideas. Death is important and should be respected, what really matters is what comes after you die for your soul, but also what happens to the people you left behind. She thinks Gabriel is too materialistic and foolish.

Story: The civil war started when Camila was still too young, and their parents weren't politically involved in any side, plus she lived in a rural side of the town, so she was mostly isolated from the whole thing. But because it was an isolated area, corpses where often thrown nearby, and she often found them when playing behind trees. She started a game where she would follow the piles to find an actual, real time murder, and she did. One day, she heard something and found a priest who was about to be shot by a soldier. The priest was stressed, but managed to smile and ask the soldier if he could take the bandage off his eyes, to forgive his soul before he killed him, that they would once again find each other in the future, and that he wanted peace. The soldier was shaking but shot him anyway. The man stayed there, and so did Cami, who only entered the scene when there was no one left. She stole the priests' bag of books, and a ring from his finger.

Her family wouldn't answer her questions about the killings no matter how much she insisted, so she had a more indirect approach to it by studying the books in the priest's bag. His determination intrigued her, and she spent long hours staring at his golden, shiny ring too. She thought that objects remained beautiful even after death, when no one could appreciate them. 

Since then, she started exploring corpses to collect jewelry, coins, books. She paid special attention to the books that talked about life after death, matter, and things that were eternal. She learned a few good tricks that left her neighbors impressed, but she only accepted thank you in objects that were beautiful, or in books. 

Camila entered school after the civil war and showed some arrogance and disinterest for school duties: all their learning seemed too fabricated, and they never mentioned the war in History class. This made her skip class a lot and spend her time kicking rocks behind the building, and sometimes practiced her embrujos. Soon, some of the students approached her with curiosity, and she started a business with them, this time: helping them with amarres, embrujos, amuletos, etc. She still had a bad attitude with them, considering most of their requests to be stupid or shallow. But it was entertaining, and it gave her some extra money.

When she learned about possessions and subjection to spirits, she decided to try it with a couple of girls who befriended her. The girls described the experience as something incredible they never felt before. Camila tried it too but prepared herself with jewels and amulets. It also turned out well, and when they finished, all of them vomited a strange, black liquid. Camila saved it in a jar, with the names of the girls attached. 

This was the start of the occultist parties, it had the same effect of most drugs: it was usually safe, but if someone was in a strange mental state, or if someone already developed spiritual connections, the chances of getting lost in it were pretty high. She gave instructions to her classmates, but most didn't listen. Despite that, a few of them felt intrigued and had meetings with Camila, where she told them about her collection of objects and the high chances of bringing back spirits from the civil war because they were the most recent in their history

Camila told them the high levels of resentment in them gave the town dense spiritual energy, and that they should reconnect with their history, not use the intrusion to alienate themselves. She learned more magic, learning how to give form to the black vomit, and increase the intensity of possessions and connection with spirituality. 

She meets Fabian and Dani when they confront her about the parties, they fight (lol) but later she replies it's out of her control now and that she can help them as long as they give her their charged black vomit. They agree, and Fabian becomes her friend, often learning about her magic. When Fabian and Dani find the missing students, they bring them back to Cami and she's able to restore their identities if they collect the ingredients for her potions. 

In the story, Cami becomes more immersed in the world of spirits, rejecting the presence of demons for finding them impure. She supports the historical existence of the resentment in spirits of war crimes, but thinks they should not be revived, but to be passed to the next life. This antagonizes her beliefs with Gabriel's, who believes making justice means bringing them back to life. They become enemies and manipulate Fabian and Dani to use their bodies as the receptor of spiritual resentment, in the case of Cami, and to sacrifice them to cannibal rituals, in the case of Gabriel.

Cami's power becomes so intense she's able to communicate with some dead souls, and give shape to them as solid black matter, in the shape of small children. They're her assistants too, and she refers to them as her sons.

-She has repeated the same grade 3 times because bad girl.

[mendechuu]

Gabriel de la Fuente, 31 Personality: talkative and likes money too much. Has the sense of humor of a divorced mom.

Story:

Gabriel was a tall kid with a bad personality, living with an abusive family and in poverty. Because of his tendency for violence, other kids either followed him or feared him. He became aware of his situation so, he started redirecting his anger into plans, projects, ideas, and became independent very young. He could be described as someone who has always had a part-time job and has taken any chance to make money. He used his popularity to get clueless kids to help him, the main sidekick being Dani. He also spent time with the old ladies from the town’s knitting club, because they liked his sense of humor, and enjoyed the company of girls in general. Because they trusted him, he helped some teenagers with clandestine abortions and, this became his main business as a teenager. 

This all ended when the civil war started, where he lost everything. Realizing Dani’s family was involved made him hate him, especially because he left the day military attacked his house. He lost his father and brother, and the town descended into poverty. More than a civil war, it was a massacre. 

He noticed corpses from outsiders where being thrown in his area and garden, and with hunger in his mind he decided to cut and preserve the meat. He ate the bodies as he cried from rage, knowing it was the meat of victims. The business went well, people turned out to be as desperate as him to turn a blind eye to the obvious situation. Horse meat and human meat were very popular. 

His close circle eventually learnt the truth, and they started praying to honor the bodies before eating them. In a way, the horrifying nature of their own survival gave Gabriel a sense of purpose and continuity. This dynamic slowly escalated, and when he discovered the properties of dark vomit, he had the idea of bringing his brother back to life. 

He started frequenting the capital and started a bigger business after the civil war, but his desire for revenge was as fresh as ever. He saw Dani and his family as the source of evil and planned to eat them all. 

Nowadays he's some kind of a public figure for people, who thank him for helping them get out of poverty

Longer story: 

Gabriel was always power hungry, energetic and an instigator. He wanted to be involved with the who, when, and where of things. In school, he always took the spotlight but as he aged, he became more selective and less impulsive in terms of where to impose his big personality. He didn't like other kids, and mostly spent his time figuring out ways to make money but he enjoyed hanging out with older ones, who did cruel and destructive things for fun. This, because he had little tolerance for people's mistakes.

His family was poor, and his dad was a useless alcoholic who spent most of his savings on drinks or lottery tickets. They didn't own their house and he worked with his brother to save enough money for rent, so every month their aunt visited them and took stuff from them and hit them. To Gabriel, this made no sense and was an insult to his intelligence. He wanted to spend as little time as possible at home, but he also lived with his little brother, who easily got sick because of an illness he had. For this reason, he responsibly got home every day, only to find scratches and marks on his little brother's body. This enraged him tremendously, but he was just a kid and couldn't really do much. His dad wasn't strong thanks to the alcohol, and to him, he wasn't even a man. His goal was to save enough money to run away with his brother

For all those reasons, rich pricks like Dani especially pissed him off.

He met Dani when he was 10. The smaller kid followed him everywhere, which made things convenient for him. No matter how mean he was, the boy would stick by his side because he was too lame to make other friends. To be honest, he needed someone that would take the dirty jobs and help him out. The problem began when he realized Dani became friends with his little brother and started hanging out with him in the backyard. He would hunt small animals to impress them, because their friendship made him incredibly jealous. But he also thought asking Dani to steal money from his uncle couldn't be too bad for their situation, so he let it pass. 

Gabriel's business included stealing, hunting, obtaining rare items to resell, selling his own braided hair. He also took some part-time jobs at school. One day, a girl that lived nearby asked him for abortion pills. They only existed in the capital because they were so isolated in this area, so they did it manually. After that, he gained her trust and she recommended him to other friends. This silent bond of trust between Gabriel and teenage girls became his first source of income, where he even made Dani help with some things. 

The trust he put in Dani felt too dangerous for him, so he started becoming a little more violent as he grew up, as if to make sure he wouldn't leave his side. Watching his brother get worse sure did stress him, but he didn't think something worse would happen. Lately, his brother only felt dizzy at times and took long naps. No more pain in his sleep, and his father was also calmer since he started gaining money. If he kept this that way for a bit longer, he could give them a better future. 

The problem began when his dad had an accident when drunk and couldn't walk anymore. His aunt visited for the monthly rent pay, and because Gabriel had extra spendings, she kicked them out of the house. She offered a way shittier apartment that had no water. 

This situation made Gabriel fall into a cycle of bad thoughts, where he built even more resentment for other kids like Dani, who didn't have to face this type of problem. His father's lack of hope angered him, but he could do nothing about it. The recent political tension also made it tight with his business with girls because they had no budget for his stuff. He was desperate and considered selling his body to them or kill his own dad to save the extra spendings because of his disability. He needed change desperately. He decided to do the first and went to an older woman's apartment. He was 14.

When he was about to do it, there was a fire near his house, and he ran there only to find that his dad was burned alive and his brother was missing. It was a civil war, the start of it, and they started burning the houses made of inflammable materials, like his own. One more time, his chances of a better future were taken from his reach.

His brother gone missing didn't let him think, and when he tried to find Dani, he found an abandoned house and no trace of his friend. The military invading them looked exactly like Dani's pajamas... like his uncle's uniforms, which angered him to the point of not forgiving his friend for leaving when he really needed him.

Now he really was alone, and the town fell into poverty, but because of his name he was an easy target: his family belonged to the opposition, mostly as a formality, but they didn't care. He couldn’t really move, or they would find him. He buried his dad in his backyard, and obsessively spent time working on it, to make it neat, presentable, like a beautiful garden where nothing happened. 

One morning, he noticed his garden was destroyed, marks of cars or something, holes…when digging into them, he found corpses. Of people he never saw before. They were using his garden as a cemetery. He started to understand that this town’s vulnerable position made it the perfect place to hide crimes. This is when he had an idea. 

People were starving, and he was a hunter. 

Selling human meat felt grotesque at first, but after the most disgusting parts got done, he felt a strange sense of relief. The clarity of turning horror into hope, abandonment into a source of strength. It felt sick, he realized it, but it felt familiar to what he always did to survive. He just wished very strongly he was eating the criminals’ meat instead of victims. The anger alone revived his appetite. He got to work and started reselling the meat at a very cheap price and worked on the skin to make shoes. He didn’t have the talent, but he knew a lot of teenage girls shared secrets they could get in trouble with if their families found out. He heard rumors of a girl who got rejected by their family and had to survive in the mountains eating grass. He didn’t know if it was true, but it would work to scare girls enough to help him.

The business went pretty well. He thought he would get betrayed because this was a huge risk, but other people turned out to be in a similar desperate situation. He found a new family in all the people of his town, after all, he was feeding them. He felt like a father to them. In his close circle, they prayed and honored the meat before eating it. Seeing death daily became familiar, horrifying, but Gabriel always tried to be reassuring, to remind them to be thankful for what they had, and to never be cruel to a victim. But, to himself, he kept thinking that one day he would make a fancy dinner made of the head criminals who did all this to his people. While he did feel relief knowing they would survive, he also felt like something was missing. Justice, and his brother. 

Gabriel even contacted some of the truck drivers and made them pay him for his “cleaning services” regarding the corpses. He was really willing to do anything, which is why, with enough money, he started frequenting the capital to find ways to make business that would fuck militars up and not his people’s psyche. Having a bigger perspective on things made his anger calm down, and even if his life was far from a normal one, he felt at peace, like he found a place. 

The only problem were the recurring nightmares about his brother. He had to be dead, right? If he was injured, disabled, he would take care of him. He had done it before, with their dad. Now he had things to offer him. The thought of him not being by his side didn’t let him sleep, so he started praying for him to appear in the pile of corpses one day, for them to meet again. Then he prayed for him to come back in one piece, alive, healthy.

The fantasies started becoming really intense, so Gabriel had a switch in his mind where he would go from extremely functional to having the nostalgic look of an insane man. He had psychotic episodes over this situation, where he had mistaken his reflection for his brother’s, or sleepwalked. 

He found peace the more he prayed, and the more he consumed meat. His cannibalistic urges started to feel like a ritual for inner peace, and people followed. It was a shared agreement between town people, who also believed they got rid of the corpse's darkness and crimes by eating them. 

One night, Gabriel was walking home when he found a witch named Cami. She asked to read his future and told him “Your soul is a splash of color in a paper white world, that will consume it all whole”. He got scared and told her to fuck off, but then she told him there was a way to see his brother again. He needed one soul marked by evil, and a body marked by transition. 

He found his brother’s corpse next morning in his backyard.  He was disfigured, abused in many ways, but he was familiar with scars. It meant nothing compared to his feelings. He was buried at the center of his garden.

He had a plan, and a deeper connection to life and death than ever. And he had his first objective: a soul marked by evil, Dani’s. 

Researching some more, he found out that souls are charged not only as individuals, but in a historical way. Because Dani’s last name was connected to many war criminals, he would be the perfect sacrifice. He just needed to make sure he got triggered by the same violence running in his family or showed the worst part of himself. 

(next stuff goes into general story)

Trivia: 

+One of the older kids Gabriel hanged out with let him sell some drugs and drinks to younger kids; he would also accept money to lock a girl or a boy with someone who wanted them in the school showers so they could have their way with them. This gave him a lot of money, and some sort of twisted entertainment for the older kid. 

+They found his little brother’s corpse a few years after, but it was unrecognizable.

+People in town are thankful for Gabriel’s efforts and his cannibalistic practices are a known secret. In a way, the religious aspect of his cannibalism made it easier for people to accept it. 

+Gabriel’s delusions represent his need to go back to the status quo previous to the civil war. Same about his desire to revive his brother.

+Gabriel believes that for justice to be restored, evil people's legacy needs to disappear. One death or cruelty is not enough. They need to be erased and hope needs to be reborn

[mendechuu]

Fabian Gajardo, 15 Personality: Stubborn and impatient, church girl (XD)

Story: 

Fabian spent their childhood living in the church, which was used as an academic facility during the civil war. They lived with their grandmother, and helped the nurses and nuns after their lessons, then spent the night playing board games with their grandmother. Because of the strict education, Fabian was a shy and quiet child, but their curiosity slowly made them gain the respect of their teachers and especially, nurses. 

Fabian was afraid of God, despite pretending to follow him, and prayed at night for their safety. Because of a political conflict, their church also became an enemy of the state, and they had to run away. But Fabian’s grandmother was still inside, so they stayed. A lot of the older nurses got killed, so they hid in a pile of corpses. Fabian blamed this all to God’s cruelty, and frantically prayed every night in the abandoned church. 

After the civil war, they joined the rural school but was deeply depressed and attempted suicide 3 times. That’s where they met new friends, including the boy who would become Fabian’s first boyfriend. The guy was a junkie and a loser but gave them a place to stay and was kind to them. They felt a lot of gratitude. 

When the rituals became popular, their group of friends were very excited and joined immediately, becoming more and more interested in occultism. Fabian felt deeply scared and had some strong reactions in front of them that repelled them. They got in a big fight with their boyfriend but decided to follow him. 

Their possession was so intense, that they were lost for two weeks, and ended up merging with the spirit after coming back. When they gained consciousness back, they realized all her friends were missing, and became determined to rescue them. In the story, Fabian learns that they have the ability to shapeshift, and starts helping Cami after school to learn about it some more.  

Long Story: 

Fabian lived with their grandmother, who got very sick when they were still a kid. Because of their financial problems, they started working at a nursing home that belonged to the church that also provided care for their grandmother. The education Fabian received was strict, which made them mostly a quiet and shy kid. They took care of older people and enjoyed the presence of other nurses: unlike nuns, they were cheerful and quick to find solutions. Sadly, they only spent time with them after their daily duties, which was a very short amount of time.

Fabian had a pretty good relationship with their grandma, and they prayed to the religious statues daily for her health. They also played games together late at night and learned embroidery. Because of their good attitude, other nuns and nurses liked them a lot, and shared some of their education with them. 

Things changed with the civil war. Because of the church’s support of the previous government, the kids got sent to a facility to be re-educated. Fabian was too “old” to be re-educated, so they interrogated them instead, luring them with candy and toys. They knew they were going to kill her, when they saw the pile of bodies of her older friends in another room. The interrogation lasted for more days, and when they got the chance to escape, they played dead together with the other corpses so they wouldn’t notice.

After the civil war, Fabian started going to school again. At first, they were extremely quiet, and attempted suicide 3 times. 

That’s when they met their new two friends, and their boyfriend. They didn’t have much, and their grandmother’s state was debilitating, so in a way, they clung to them like they were all they had. After their grandmother died, they started living with their boyfriend, who was pretty much a bad kid but still cared about them, and, after their strict education and big responsibilities during childhood, they needed that energy to free them from their shell. More than really loving him, they really needed that liberation, but they often got jealous or too obsessed with him.

Most of the time, their boyfriend’s friends found them too boring or too much of a good person. This hurt Fabian’s pride.

When everyone got into occultism, Fabian felt especially scared because of their intense religious education. But after talking to their boyfriend and friends, they understood what they meant. After what happened in town, they wanted to reconnect with their history, but in a way that didn’t feel as heavy. They tried to understand but praying at night felt more natural to them. To be honest, the idea of demons frightened them, so they started praying at night, which freaked their boyfriend out and got them into an argument. They told him he didn’t have to play with death like that, and he replied that kids in the town had no future anyway, that this was all they had to feel connected to something. Fabian felt guilty and pressured and agreed to try the possessions.

That party was like the usual: teenagers drinking, making out, reading occultist books, cutting themselves, praying to demons, etc. It felt very opposite to their childhood, it frightened them. When they got possessed, it was by a strong demon that opened a hole in Fabian’s soul, which should be filled with spiritual energy. Fabian’s consciousness merged with the demon so that they functionally cohabited the same body for a week, until Dani found out, and being subjected/possessed by Jose turned them back to normal. The hole in Fabian’s soul remained open, causing them to experience chest pain and the feeling that they’re missing something. 

After getting their consciousness back, they notice their boyfriend and their friends went missing too, just like in the civil war. But they think this has to be because of the possessions, and with a strong determination decides that they will help Dani and Jose if they can help them get their boyfriend back. They start learning magic with Cami and becomes quite obsessive with the link between all the practices developed in town, acting a little like a detective in the course of the story.

Fabian feels very protective of Jose and Dani, being the one to take the initiative to form a deeper friendship with them. Despite that, they often get in arguments with them, and the more they learn about the link between the practices in the town, they distance themselves from them. (They learn from both Cami and Gabriel during the story). 

Trivia: 

-Fabian pretends to be Dani’s girlfriend when they visit the capital and Dani’s family.

-Fabian got possessed by a lustful demon, which made them seduce Dani on their first week.

-Fabian feels really bad about Jose because they also spent her childhood in educational facilities, and often scolds him for being stupid. 

-Fabian develops a strong crush on Cami, and just like with their ex-boyfriend, rarely questions Cami’s methods until it’s too late.

[mendechuu]

Jose Rojas, 12 (ghost) Personality: playful, mischievous, cheerful

Story: Jose’s family was politically involved in the opposition side and got captured with his family. They were interrogated in their house for 3 days, then sent to a torture facility. They kept Jose apart, with other kids his age. They made him take blue pills and follow a routine. It was like prison. He did see his parents tied up in cells, but never actual torture.

He got shot with other 10 kids his age, then got set on fire when they were still alive. Official reports say they were shot because "they were carrying bombs." (A lie to justify the crime). Jose was buried at the school backyard in the old town. His memories are blurry, because he was young but also because some of his energy mixed with the other 10 kids. The constant confusion makes his energy weak, and he won’t be able to expand his power outside of the school until he gets his memories back.

He needs to possess people to find his murderers and recover a sense of his identity. Having a purpose, resentment, or being trapped as a ghost feels repetitive and dense, like a heavy dream, which is why Jose tries to take things with humor and have some fun pranking people, or gambling some souls with other demons or spirits. But he’s always alert to take the opportunity to possess people who seem weak or stupid enough to let him possess them when he can.

Jose’s only power is that he can transmit thoughts from the dead to people who are alive, which usually makes them faint or have panic attacks. He finds this to be very funny. His weak state makes him reject -to some degree- the bodies of adults, so he usually throws up a lot of black liquid before completing the possession.

Jose asks Dani to let him possess him so they both will gain more spiritual energy, which Dani needs to identify the people who want to kill them, but also to find the corpses of the missing doctors. In exchange, Jose can also use Dani's form to identify his killers. 

Trivia: 

+When Jose possesses Dani, the later becomes very expressive and chaotic. 

+When they kill a murderer, Jose can experience the crime scene again, which helps them find clues to send to the institution of human rights.

+When Dani lets Jose possess him, they have to share dark vomit (by spit or kissing) because they repel each other (because Jose has blood from victims and Dani has blood from criminals. 

[mendechuu]

Daniel Soto, 27 Personalidad: low profile, athletic, people pleaser 

Short story:

Dani has been a pushover since he was a kid and got picked on a lot. His “yes, sir” lifestyle pushed him into a lot of uncomfortable situations he thought he couldn’t stop. This, together with his influential family’s agenda, led him to live his life following orders, and building resentment towards his friends and family. 

When he was around 13, a civil war started between the capital of the city and several independent towns, and he left his natal town to join the military in the information unit with his father, which was a torture center. In there, other military men resented Dani for being the son of someone important and getting the easier jobs: administrative jobs and driving a truck to drive corpses away from the center. Dani was pressured to hide and commit several crimes, all to the knowledge of his relatives. The weight of his actions and inability to stop them defined a tendency to anxiety, stress and fear, which he combated with exercise and discipline, and, later in life, with drugs. 

When the civil war ended, he started to work for his uncle Pablo, who gave him an apartment and a sense of normality. But his uncle was involved with bohemian life and worked at an elite bar for important celebrities and wealthy families, like Dani’s. In there, Dani’s work was to persuade people into buying a new drug they were developing. Dani himself got addicted to it, making it hard to keep working for his source of it. 

Dani overheard Pablo negotiating with his father about a new war, but this time, he heard about the intentionality behind it, and the use of “dark vomit”. He got sent the next day to his old town, to sell this drug and investigate the territory. His cover was being a history teacher of a rural school. 

Long story:

 Dani has been shy and a pushover since he was a kid. A little too naive for his age, he got picked on a lot at school. He still wanted to be friends with other kids so he always stayed close, just in case he could be useful. 

He met Gabriel, a small kid who was always selling or trading something with older kids. Unlike his other bullies, Gabriel mistreated him but let him tag along with him in his many plans and ideas, which gave Dani a sense of fun, a danger he couldn't find at home, getting to think of Gabriel as his one true friend. This was far from the truth, and, with time, the favors Gabriel asked got more and more dangerous for him, sometimes getting hit by other kids or just putting his life at risk. Another older kid started to hang out with them and things only got worse. To be fair, his "yes, sir" lifestyle pushed him constantly into uncomfortable situations that he only endured because he didn't know to stop them from happening. That made him start resenting a lot of his family members and his school friends but he always kept a serene facade.

Dani's family is composed of the honorable military men of the country, but to him, it was always secretive and full of silence and incomplete stories. As a kid, he found comfort in reading old letters and medals he found in his uncle's closet. He fantasized about being stronger and cooler. 

When political conflict from the capital started affecting the small town, and because of his family's influence, it also affected his daily life. His dad was rarely home, but his uncle moved there, into a now abandoned house. His uncle's range was lower than his father's so Dani saw him getting humiliated by his superiors when he failed a task, or simply, because they felt like it. His uncle wasn't specifically a good person, but he was silent enough for him to be calm. 

He started hanging out with other kids. Now, he wasn't grounded or in trouble all the time at the minimal mistake. He became friends with Gabriel’s younger brother, who rarely went to school. He was a really nice kid, and for the first time, he felt at peace in the presence of someone else.

It was a normal day when the civil war started, and his uncle drove him away from the town. No matter how many times he questioned why, he got short, imprecise answers. Back to the capital, he found his father, reading a short book with cold blooded eyes. "Is there room for evil in a 13-year-old soul?" the question froze the boy. He was told to join the military the next morning. 

At first, he liked the routine and getting to be on equal terms with boys his age. But in this setting, he got to see the missing parts his family was hiding from him all this time about how things worked. 

When they were ordered to defend something, they killed unarmed people. Dani filled a form to move to the information unit, hoping it would be administrative work where his father worked. In that unit, they interrogated criminals with any means of torture. Mostly, people his age, just like the town friends he knew nothing of. 

Dani was in charge of driving the truck that disposed of the bodies and moved them back to the town he used to live in, which was used as a clandestine cemetery. It was disgusting to him, but with time, he felt more and more distanced and numb to this reality.

That, until he noticed new type of bruises on the corpses, indicating a more brutal type of torture: setting people on fire, raping women with dogs, rats, strange bites, electricity, etc. Some of them were even pregnant women and children.

He talked to his uncle, who he trusted because he seemed as weak as himself. But he told him that he now finally had a good job to maintain his family. That he didn't have to live like a rat anymore, and that this type of thing wouldn't stop him from being a good man. 

Dani filled a solicitude to review the interrogation methods, but as soon as his father found out, he was taught a very cruel lesson. 

His official request was simply ignored, but the real punishment came from the soldiers. They resented Dani for getting special treatment for being the son of someone important, and, knowing the rumors about his homosexuality, they started harassing him, molesting him, etc.

(Tw sexual abuse; necrophilia: Dani's family perceived his requests to examine torture methods as betrayal, so they turned a blind eye to this to get rid of him. But his father did know. The group of military men made him choose between fucking one of the corpses, or to accept getting fucked as he lain on the pile of corpses on his truck. After being done with him, Dani's father showed up, to the surprise of the soldiers, who thought would pay this prank with death, and found their superior with a satisfied smile, almost proud about the punishment. He explained to Dani that things like this will keep happening unless he defended himself and hurt people back. He revealed to him that this war wasn’t a response to some sort of attack, but purely offensive. He also told Dani he still hadn't given up on him, but that he needed to understand this solid truth: evil must be exterminated even if we become evil in the way. “Next time they try to test you, you’ll know what to do”. Dani somehow felt that, to his father, his own son being sexually humiliated by low range military wasn’t as bad than him being weak-minded. 

The military men that abused Dani left him alone but started to torture random people they captured using Dani’s truck at night. If Dani protested, they would just get their way with him. With time, he became more and more quiet, almost used to it. Dani knew his father meant he should kill the soldiers and defend himself, but he wanted to avoid the situation. 

Believing he could kill them if he became a stronger soldier, he found a distraction in exercising and following a strict routine, to get stronger. That type of thing helped him empty his mind. It was hard though, because around 6am the other trucks started leaving bodies on the streets. 

He knew he wasn’t as smart to get into politics, but he could use as little space as possible and get the job done. One day, they made him drive more than usual, specifically, to his hometown. This time, he had to bury two people who were international doctors sent to his country to investigate the atrocities being committed. He felt so bad, he buried them close to his own backyard, where he used to play with Gabriel’s brother. When he got back, he killed the soldiers that used him, then runs away.

Looking for comfort, he followed his uncle to the bar the other side of his family owns, where his older relative Pablo offered him a drug recently released to the market. The pills helped Dani numb reality and from there, he was able to do his job with more clarity. He asked Pablo if his dad could transfer him to his brothel, (to escape), telling him he can help him sell drugs or whatever he needs. Pablo accepted, and told him to go back to his hometown to sell some stuff to teenagers, the easier target. “They’re also the best option, because rural kids always rebel too much, and it makes him sad to shoot them. When they’re useless, they can’t really be the enemy, right?”. Dani found this reasonable and went back to his hometown.

He signed up to be the History teacher of the only school in town, in a program to benefit vulnerable rural students, and when he got back, he noticed the deterioration of the town. Everything looked old, stuck in time. Most of his students were teen delinquents, punks and rebels. 

He followed them to where their small parties happen, but when he got there, he found himself in the middle of a cult ritual, where most of his students were getting possessed by demons and spirits. When he asked what was happening, one of the teenagers told him “we’re using war waste to get high”. Referring to the corpses. Right, because this town is being used as a clandestine cemetery, he remembered.

Trivia:

-When Dani was a child, he wore his dad’s military jacket as pajamas, because it helped him relax and feel safe before bed.

-Gabriel’s brother went missing (was murdered too).

-Tw; sexual abuse - other soldiers made Dani wash dishes as they f*cked him. 

-Dani's dad was possessed by a demon when he was younger. The experience was terrifying, and it made him want to exterminate any source of evil. For a man of his category, he’s invaded with fear and sleeps with a bible and a gun (There's supposed to be a small independent story about this).

-Dani is not supposed to be handsome!!! which is why I have trouble drawing him lol.

[mendechuu]

OCS

General Story

Daniel Soto (27) becomes the new history teacher at a rural school in an isolated town called Niebla, a place forgotten by the country after the last civil war.

His class is full of teen delinquents and teenagers who make it hard to adapt, and after his first day he gets a series of strange emails with death threats, and the next day, a bunch of love letters. Being a low-profile guy all his life, this feels quite strange, turning his new experience into a roller coaster of anxiety.

Dani is no one to judge, though, since he's not really there to teach or help people but to sell a new drug to teenagers, as instructed by his uncle. Dani himself is addicted to it, and the only way to get more is to keep selling it. He also used to live in the town as a kid, so he knows enough to make it work.

But things have changed, and the people seem distant and secretive after the civil war. The more he tries to find answers, the more lost he feels. By following the instruction of some of his e-mails, he discovers what his students do after class and it all connects to his past in the town and the political climate of the country after he left.

In depth:  

At night, and following what seemed like a love letter, Dani walks towards the back side of the school, only to find ruins and a strange party where most of his students were. Most of them were doing what seemed like steps of a ritual, reciting words from a book in a strange language, getting drunk, having sex, cutting themselves; all while everyone laughed and listened to music like it was no big deal. Then he saw two of his students levitate and get possessed by an entity. Everyone cheered them up, as if it was the usual.

Getting possessed by a short amount of time gets them high, but when someone gets struck with a spirit, they levitate and experience an intense sensation. That means the spirit will be in control for longer, causing the possessed person to run away and disappear, or attack others.

Fabian, one of his students, gets stuck in the possession and Dani hides, doubting what he can do to stop it. Fabian throws up so much dark vomit she ends up drowning on it and disappearing. Now that he remembers better, that was the student who sent the love letter and guided him there. Is she really dead? The other kids notice his presence and tell him that if he says something, they will blame it on him. 

Dani discovers that the town was used as a clandestine cemetery during the last civil war, and most of the corpses, and spirits his students are getting possessed by are war victims, sometimes direct relatives that died there. They're just kids, and probably because of the lack of information and the direct connection of the town to the murders, teenagers got curious and started experimenting with occultism as a way to get closer to their own history.

Dani’s anxiety and freak-out moments get more obvious and intense, all his students act normal but, he feels like someone’s watching. Every day, less students show up and he knows why. Is this why there were so many substitute teachers? He’s trapped between his job, this farce and what he feels is right. He’s scared and indecisive, so he hides in a room and takes as many drug pills as he can. The overdose causes a hallucination where he starts vomiting this dark matter just like Fabian did in the ritual, but instead of drowning, something elevates from the floor to get a human form: some sort of ghost or spirit. 

He meets Jose, the spirit of a young boy who got killed in the civil war. Because of his tragic death, he can't escape or leave until there's justice, which will never come under the current situation. Jose tells Dani he stinks of death, and that other powerful spirits will come for him if he doesn't make a pact with him. Together, they can protect each other.

Dani agrees, but after the pact is done, they realize they can't really merge into one, because their souls are incompatible. Jose is stuck being visible until they can merge, but he’s still too weak. He tastes the dark vomit on the floor and ingests it as food to sustain his form and move.

That night, both approach the rituals to save a possessed student, and find who is behind all this. They capture one of them, a boy who’s older than the students and visibly scared, repeating aloud what seemed to be a murder scene from 20 years ago. Dani prays using some of Jose’s energy and stabilizes him. Back to Dani’s apartment, the guy wakes up and tells them he doesn’t remember much, but that he was hired to bring new kids to the ritual.

(Jose finds some injections, pills, and drugs similar to the ones Dani is selling in the guy’s backpack. He knows he was probably sent with the same intention as him.)

The guy thanks Dani for his kindness and tells him the kids are not the ones at fault for this. He explains a little of the story of the town, and how after the civil war he had constant panic attacks and bad memories of what happened. He tells him the kids are affected as well, and he repents for what he did.

Dani and Jose leave to buy groceries, and when they’re back they find the room empty, and a phone on the man’s bed. The phone shows a location, but when they find him, he's being absorbed by Fabian. 

A man shoots Fabian in the head, who doesn’t die but leaves them alone and saves them.

His name is Gabriel, Dani’s childhood friend. Gabriel offers them his place to spend the night as the situation regulates, and during dinner he explains to Dani the reason why he can't merge with Jose: Jose is a war victim, and Dani worked for the military. For this reason, they're incompatible.

He promises to help them find a way to merge, and suggests a risky option, in which Dani has to be at a weak enough state for Jose to enter his body. Dani has to leave all sorts of medicine for 5 days, and only drink liquid food.

When Dani mentions he feels guilty for abusing Gabriel’s kindness, he replies telling him he's attracting danger: Dani's last name and his family's history have stained his soul, to the point of mixing pure blood with dark vomit. This is the charged energy of a war criminal. Dark energy accumulated through years, and even generations, and this is why Daniel is so attractive to demons and spirits, as well as possessed people: being most of them war victims, the charged soul of the military is simply delicious. In short words, most people Dani will meet will want to kill him and eat him. 

To defend himself, he will have to learn about occultism and get Jose's help. After a week, they decide to go looking for Fabian and the other students, whom Dani deduces were possessed for a long time (which explains her love letter and strange attitude towards Dani in class). 

They manage to save Fabian, but she's been possessed for so long she made some sort of symbiosis with the spirit, gaining some of its spiritual range even after going back to normal. Meanwhile, Dani has a breakdown because of his abstinence from pills, and Fabian realizes selling them was his plan all along. 

They have a big fight, but after more students disappear, they start to find each other rescuing them together, and progressively becoming friends.

Extra information:   Dark Vomit:

-Dark vomit/ black matter is a substance that human souls produce naturally to feed themselves, it's made of dirt and sadness. An excess of this substance is bad for people, but they can feed it to someone else and it won’t have secondary effects. This black vomit is sucked out of people at medical facilities in bigger cities. 

Wealthy people buy purified capsules in the dark market to get high (Like the drug Dani consumes) but is incredibly addictive. 

Other people are gaining interest in the medical benefits of condensed black vomit, solid enough to heal bodies or bring small animals back to life. Many people find it curious how a mass made of residuals can bring so many benefits to humanity. 

Most information is kept out from the public knowledge, but people that investigate it want to use it for different reasons: while people like Gabriel use it to solidify it in bodies, Cami wants to purify it so it disappears. Carlos plans to sell it to other countries.

 For people interacting with the spiritual world, this substance can be eaten to transmit spiritual power. It’s more intense than the usual, and requires mutual contact, like kissing or biting the person until its aperture is open. 

-Black vomit manifested spontaneously after a religious war, where instead of red blood people's insides were filled by it. People of pure blood are rare and considered superior, which is the case of Dani's family (also Fabian's). (They're supposed to stay pure even if their soul is "contaminated with sin" which explains the military success of Dani’s family. For this reason, it's extra strange for Dani to be able to merge both types…)

 Politics: 

+The country in this story is shaped like a big donut, with the sole purpose of collecting black vomit in the center, which helps fertilize plants, improve quality of the air, the health of the citizens, etc. The areas closer to the hole are more advanced, richer and of more political importance. The town in which the story develops is called Niebla, where corpses who got sucked out of vomit are thrown out, which caused a lot of paranormal activity to condensate in the area, and for people to be starving for this vomit. Usually, drug dealers take advantage of this to sell in these isolated areas. 

+People from la Niebla tend to be cheerful and have a strong sense of community. Despite that, the isolation and abandonment from progress has made people not as rebellious and more accepting of their reality, often having traditions completely different from the rest of the country, and not really adapting to their official law or beliefs. 

+In terms of religion and beliefs, most people don't know about the vomit hole and just get injections to get it sucked from them, by the belief that it's toxins or contamination excess.     The political elites are influenced by the knowledge of what's actually going on, and a lot of times their religious beliefs spill from their speech. Deep down, there's a strong sense of fear of the unknown. For this reason, any religious practice outside of legality is absolutely forbidden.

+Carlos is a young lawyer hired by the military to write a new “Bible” with pure blood, something that will end the tension between small towns and the center of the city.

+The missing students are being used as fertilizer for Gabriel's backyard, that he needs for the ritual to revive his younger brother.

+Students don't die, they "disappear"

+Carlos betrays Gabriel, taking the opposite role as Fabian, but joining Dani's family side because he wants to be a pure blood. He thinks the killings are okay: "we should leave all bad stuff in the past"

+Fabian betrays Dani and Jose under the influence of Cami, "killing" herself and being reborn as Gabriel's brother.

+When Fabian kills themselves, there are two choices: one, be reborn from love. the other, to manifest in a physical form, the horrors that were driving the town insane: making visible such a great horror it can't be imagined. Choosing the latter, Fabian decides to possess and end the life of Dani’s father and people of pure blood.

+Then, Fabian merges with the curse and becomes some sort of...goo-ghost? and in robotic mode strangles Dani, who dies but is possessed by Jose indefinitely

+Gabriel, despite his success, doesn't live in a fancy house, he's not elegant. His house is big, and his gardens are bright and colorful…like someone’s grandma's house. Cottagecore king.

+After dying, Dani gets stuck on the other side of what was Jose’s 10 lives. Observing war crimes from the point of view of a child. He can never really cross the imaginary wall and intervene, which is a metaphor to how different their lives were, despite both suffering from the same thing.

+the military success of Dani’s family can be explained by all of them having red and pure blood: it means they can resist contamination better than others

+The reason behind the wars is to collect black vomit and transform it into medicine to export to other countries so they can position themselves as a nation, as well as drug pills on the illegal market (Carlos’s story).