Warren

### Affiliation

Father/The Undertaker (father);Warren's mother (mother);Florence;Pate Douglas;Old Ike;The Devil;Grand Inquisitor Cervantes;Childeater;

### Chapters present

Hard Times, As Good As Dead,

**Warren** is one of the Main Characters in Hard West's main campaign. A young man with a good heart, Warren and his family hoped to travel to Oregon, but a series of event left him without his mother and separated from his father. After he and his beloved, Florence, perished in a shootout with gunmen working for the Masked Man, Warren pledges himself to the Devil, and is resurrected as an undead gunslinger, bent on revenge and death. Ultimately, Warren is left devoid of much of his humanity, spreading the Devil's hellish influence throughout the West, aiming on bringing Florence back to life.

## Events of Hard West

### *Hard Times*

As described by Death, Warren's family decided to travel through the Oregon Trail when he was six years-old, but as many others, they were subjected to the West's brutal conditions and soon found themselves with difficulties. Additionally, while Father is a good hunter and marksman, he could not find any animals to provide for his family as they progressed along the trail, although their scarcity was seen as extremely odd, as if something was deliberately keeping them away from Warren's family. As supplies began to dwindle, Father hoped to sell his hunting gear to assist the family, but the town they found themselves in was overrun by a group of Satanic cultists, possibly under the command of the Masked Man, and all three family members were imprisoned. Warren's mother was taken away from Father and Warren by the bandits, who hoped to sell the two to white slavers, but Father managed to break free from his restraints and pursue after the kidnappers. After a brief firefight, Father emerged victorious, but proved unable to save Warren's mother, who had been decapitated by the bandits and had her head put in a box. One of the cultists, mortally wounded by Father, but still alive, told him they had killed her in order to fulfill a ritual that would make the Devil grant them riches in Hell. Both financially and emotionally devastated, Father and Warren decided to remain in the region, living in an old railroad building which the two converted into a farm.

Ten years after the tragic events, Father and Warren, barely surviving due to their farm, decide to return to the Oregon Trail as Warren's mother would have wanted, but require supplies in order to do so. Coincidently, gold is discovered in the region, and the two decide to engage in gold prespecting in order to finance their journey. After acquiring a gold mining license from the Masked Man's thugs, the two begin to have some success in the gold business. During that time, Father and Warren become acquainted with Florence's family, neighbors not interested in gold prospecting, and eventually Warren and Florence find themselves in love. As they continue to mine more gold, news spread of their success, and in order to ensure their protection, Father decides to request protection from the region's crime boss, the loan shark El Eshcuro, much at Warren's begrudging approval. The crime lord agrees to help if the family starts to pay taxes to him on every gold they obtained, giving Father and Warren weapons and sending his henchman Cheech to help defend the homestead. After successfully stopping the bandits, Warren sets out to check on Florence's family, leaving Father alone in the farm, as Father stays behind, possibly building a secret tunnel to the farm should the player choose to do so. During that time, a strange, well-dressed man appears and speaks to Father, who at the time had grown impatient with the gold mining process, and sells to him an amulet designed to grant them luck. Meanwhile, Warren returns with Florence, whose family had been brutally murdered by the invading criminals, and she begins to live with them.

The amulet purchased by Father, much to his surprise, does grant them luck, and in the following weeks, the family starts making a good profit out of the gold mining. However, as time went by, the increrasing amount of gold the had obtained had allowed El Eshcuro to grow more powerful, to the point where he was taxing almost 50% of Warren's family gold business. Florence, hoping to appeal to the crime lord's kindness, attempted to barter with him, but was imprisoned. Warren, Father and possibly a miner that they had hired, Pate Douglas, proceeded to the town where the criminal held Florence, rescued her and killed El Eshcuro, Cheech and other guards before escaping. After defeating the crime lord, Father is caught with an unexpected event: his amulet spontaneously cracks and crumbles in his hands, leaving him cursed with constant bad luck. Initially, the group decides to look for ways to undo the curse, such as throwing a coin down a well, speaking to a fortune teller and seeking an exorcism by Father Gervais in the nearby church. It is during this time that the group can return to the crime lord's town, which, in his abscense, had descended into chaos, to finish off the criminals roaming the streets. Eventually, as the means to rid Father of the curse all prove ineffective, he decides to leave farm on his own, hoping to avoid bringing more misery into their lives with his presence. He leaves a letter behind to Warren, stating that he is sorry for what had happened to Warren's mother, and saying that he loves his son.

However, in spite of Father leaving, the curse continued to torment Warren and Florence, who could have also hired another miner, Old Ike, to help with their gold prospecting business. Additionally, Warren could have decided to save an escaped slave, who he either let remain at the farm or sell him again to make a profit. One day, as their mining continued, Warren noticed a group of armed men invading his homestead in the distance. Seeing no alternatve other than conflict, Warren, Florence and possibly other miners decided to return home by either using the secret tunnel should it have been built, or assaulting the location directly. If Warren did not sell the slave, decided to allow him to remain in the farm and built the secret tunnel, the man will be found just as they approached the tunnel, having escaped the farm in time, and will give the posse a useful trinket to fight the invaders. Warren and his posse engage the armed men, but after the conflict ends, they realize that the invaders are actually government agents, sent by the corrupt local government that decided to strip Warren's family property over the land. Seeing as they had become criminals by killing the men, Warren and Florence decide to flee the region.

### *As Good As Dead*

Warren and Florence successfully evade the law and manage to escape the region without being arrested. While the two were on the road and essentially without a home, the two loved each other very much, and the money they had made previously had allowed them to live decently while on the road. One day, the two were on a saloon, where Warren found himself playing poker with the Masked Man, and managed to defeat the criminal lord, much to the Masked Man's anger.