Earnest Flemmel

Shrine to the bovine

### Position

Scholar at the School of Biosciences at the Commonwealth Institute of Technology (formerly)

### Aliases

* HR-D5
* Ithaqua
* The Angel

### Storylines

Military storyline

“*[...]I'm personally inspired by his devotion to the sciences;[...]*”
—Research Logs: HR-D5

**Dr. Earnest Flemmel** is a character in Fallout: FROST.

## Overview

Born more than 60 years before the Great War, Earnest Flemmel's scientific carreer, probably spanning decades, lead him to the School of Biosciences at the Commonwealth Institute of Technology.

As a scholar mainly involved in teaching, Dr. Flemmel seems to have not been subject to public interest nor the pressure of the institutions management, as his colleague, Dr. Richard Lerna, who headed the school within the C.I.T., was before the war.

Flemmel's teachings also involved familiarizing his students with considerations on ethics in science, probably more specifically ethics in research, as well as its political implications. While it is not known, if Flemmel was aware of the extend of scientific misconduct taking place at the time, a dismayed Dr. Lerna assumed, that his colleague intentionally interfered with his work on improving the regenerative capabilities of the human body. Lerna, possibly with a slight touch of arrogance, noted in his personal logs, that he should keep his ethical concerns out of the labs, and inside of his classrooms.

Shortly before the Great War, he purportedly turned from a voiced critic of questionable practices in research into a willing supporter of and even alledgedly voluntary participant in Lerna's experiments, where the ends seem to have justified the means more than anything else.

Held to highest esteem by colleagues for his assumed commitment, Earnest Flemmel now designated "HR-D5" is admitted to Parsons State Insane Asylum for further treatment, after being experimented on by Lerna and his team using a combination of all of the methods and technologies previously tried in isolation on different testing subjects, which included brain implants and "gene tonics", a mix of genetic extracts from various organisms exposing extraordinary regenerative capabilities.

Upon admittance, Flemmel seems to have already developed paranoia, believing his transfer to Parsons to be part of a conspiracy, and exposes further indications for mental deterioration signified by delusions about immortality and compulsive interest in bovine animals, more specifically: their remains.

Being subject to continued experimentation by a joint team of staff under control of the asylum's superintendent, a member of the Cabot family, and graduate students lead by Lerna, Flemmel's "gene tonic" is modified to include the Forced Evolutionary Virus, in the hopes of lowering cell damage resulting from radiation exposure.

In what possibly was an attempt to lure a potential liberator into setting him free from his sealed containment chamber below Parsons, Lorenzo Cabot tries and succeeds in invading Flemmel's already disturbed mind using his still developing telepathic capabilities, planting visions of him being in posession of all Flemmel could ever be longing for, which included the key to immortality.

The experiments seem to have been interrupted by the Great War, and if it had not been for the last remaining researcher, maybe also manipulated by Lorenzo Cabot, assumedly freeing Flemmel on the 24th of October 2077, he probably would have died in his cell in the asylum's isolation ward.

While it is highly likely that Flemmel at least at one point faced Lorenzo in his basement prison, either Lorenzo's intentions were not aimed at being freed, or Flemmel was unable or even unwilling to finally release him.

Flemmel, having been mutated and immunized to radiation by the FEV, possibly in combination with a serum extracted from Lorenzo's blood, left Parsons, and started roaming the surface.

About three years later, on the 10th of July 2080, two hunters, the brothers Corwin and Alan Finch out of Malden Center noticed a strange figure supposedly interfering with their search for game. After one of them tried to trap "Ithaqua", as Flemmel had been named by them, he sought out the survivors of Malden Center, and, as Alan Finch notes in his journal "Tore the whole station appart.".

Faced with what had become of Flemmel making permanent home in their parts of the underground, the few remaining survivors deteriorated into a crazed and cannibalistic tribe naming themselves Maldenmen, regarding him as a purifying Angel supposedly sent by Uq-Qualtoth, an entity worshipped at Dunwich Borers, to cleanse sins of the past.