You might not know his face, but you most certainly know his voice. After all, he's the man behind "Good Morning Endaria," Osenstan's number one most listened-to podcast--oh, and he invented podcasts. Meet Clint D'Angelo: Radio host, inventor, Noir detective, and deadly mercenary. When he's not recording his show, he's finding the next best story. With his unsatiable hunger for knowledge and determined (though admittedly stubborn) attitude, D'Angelo will find what he's looking for... and you best not hope it's you.
Clint Mangelboden was born to a poor family in Osenstan, an only child. For the first few years of his life, his parents Gregory Mangelboden and Sylvia D’Angelo lived together with him, a humble but satisfying life, but it didn’t last. When Clint was 3 years old, Sylvia left their lives. For years, Clint didn’t know what happened to her. She could have died, she could have run away, she could have been taken. Regardless, he never tried asking his father what happened.
Without help from Sylvia, Gregory struggled to make ends meet to care for his son alone. At the age of only 7 years old, Clint would begin work with his father as an employee of Steam Corp, a major manufacturer of massive weapons and other machinery.
Life as a Steam Corp employee was a living nightmare. Starting work so young, Clint was able to squeeze into tight spaces and do maintenance that most other workers couldn’t do. As he grew up in the labyrinthine factory, he witnessed countless accidents and mishaps. Lost limbs, falling into machinery, burns and bruises from head to toe. He even ended up losing 2 fingers of his own, getting his hand stuck in a set of moving gears. The community of workers wasn’t much better. Dominated entirely by men, the working atmosphere was one where masculinity was power, where raw strength and anger were the greatest measure of reputation. If you get injured on the job, no matter how brutal the damage, you either man up and keep working or you’re ousted as a wimp.
Clint never fit in with the other workers, even the fellow children working alongside him. For the first several years, he slaved away in solitude, until, at the age of 10, he would meet his first friend: Rendyl Ray, a green-skinned tiefling with a talent for tinkering. His curious mind and scrawny frame bore an immediate resemblance to Clint, and the two became fast friends.
As time went on, the two were practically inseparable. They learned the ins and outs of the massive industrial building, even finding a hidden nook in the machinery to create a secret hideout. As they developed into their teen years, they would use their hideout to shirk their responsibilities, play games, and even steal the occasional beer from Director Ezekiel Steam’s office. When the closing whistle blew, they would run to the library and read together for hours, learning about anything and everything that piqued their interest. For the first time, Clint had found someone who understood him. Someone who wasn’t swayed by the rat race down on the factory floor. Someone who wanted nothing more than to live freely, and to help others do the same. Together, sitting at the edge of Osenstan’s great waterfall, they would fantasize for hours of the things they’d do once they’ve saved enough money to get out of Osenstan. Travel the world, go to university, maybe even try fighting a monster or two--anything but this.
As the two grew older, though, Clint saw something changing in Rendyl. Though he couldn’t fully understand it back then, he could feel that Steam Corp’s environment was getting to him. He was quicker to anger, more impulsive, more confrontational. But nonetheless, they grew closer and closer. Clint couldn’t help but feel there was… Something else going on with him. Whenever he saw Rendyl, his mood would soar, and whenever they had to say goodbye, the world was dark again. It confused him--frustrated him. Why was he feeling this way?
At the age of 17, Clint would take Rendyl out to their favorite spot by the waterfall. Rendyl had been more quiet than usual recently, and it had been all he could think about. In an attempt to lift his spirits, he hoped to show Rendyl new constellations he’d read about. They sat under the stars for hours, nearly shoulder to shoulder. After such a long time in this peaceful silence, Rendyl turned to Clint, saying he needed to admit something. Clint felt something shift in his core. Whatever it was that was going on with him… Maybe Rendyl felt it too. In a sudden, instinctual sweep, Clint leaned in and kissed him.
And Rendyl exploded. His shock instantly was overpowered by rage, hurling insult after insult to the one he called his best friend. He set into Clint a shame he’d only felt a fraction of. The same shame he felt any time a coworker told him to man up when he didn’t walk the right way, talk the right way, laughed too loud, or cried. The one person he felt he could be himself around had spat in his face.
With that, Rendyl ran. Clint lay there, looking up at the stars, unable to get up and find where he had gone. That would be the last time they would see each other for a long, long time.
Clint couldn’t bear to show himself at Steam Corp any longer. Despite his father’s protests, he left his job and his home, fueled by nothing but rage, shame, and an ambition to prove everyone who’d ever insulted him that he could do better than them--that he was better than them. Anything to get away from how helpless he felt that night.
The first few years were hard. With no money and no connections, there was seemingly no future in his sight. At his lowest points, he resorted to taking food from the dumpsters behind restaurants and sleeping against the warm walls of factories and hangars. But the fire within him didn’t waver.
Clint spent days on end learning to apply his mechanical knowledge into something different--something new. With scraps from factory junkyards, he would fashion his own radio transmitters, learning newer and more efficient methods of engineering that the rest of Osenstan had yet to figure out. With these breakthroughs, and a natural talent for sweet-talking, Clint suddenly found himself rapidly climbing the social ranks. In a manner of weeks, his inventions took him from a societal reject without a roof to sleep under, to one of Endaria’s celebrated minds.
It didn’t take long for Clint to recognize that with reputation came a platform. For the first time, people were looking his way with respect. Maybe he could use their attention to do some good. And so, he created a new form of radio communication--one that wasn’t just used for business and commerce, but for education and entertainment. He began to travel the region, finding the most interesting and eye-opening stories he could, and broadcast them to the public so that their worldview might expand just a bit wider. And thus, “Good Morning Endaria” was born.
The rest of his 20s were spent dedicated to his work. He made plenty of friends (and enemies), but none would ever stick for very long. Despite being surrounded by people looking up to him, listening to every word that left his mouth… he was alone. Nothing filled the hole that had been created when his best friend had left. As his success grew, so too did his anger, his shame. And so the cycle continued: travel, find a story, bring it back to the public, then onto the next thing. It seemed like this would be a cycle to get him through his working life--that is, until his 32nd birthday, on a fateful train ride to Autumncross…
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