Background

Sal's life can be simply described as a lucky trainwreck. A single son of a gabling addicted father and an often absent mother. Their family wasn't poor, per say, both parents were earning enough to fully support the family, but his father, Earl Gartman, often lost more money that he won while betting on sports. During his teens, Sal got roped up into a bad company for a couple of years, being taught and forced to steal by his "friends", eventually getting to a point of them stealing a car and Sal being made the fall guy for it. If it weren't for his mother, Lillie Gartner, hiring a lawyer and bailing him out, Sal would have spent his early years in prison. This moment made him change his ways, Sal finished school, but he were unable to get into college due to their family being on a low point. To help out his family he went on to working for his fathers company, getting a job as a carpenter. Working on the job for a couple of years, his relationships with his father only became worse, with it culminating in Sal moving away and cutting ties, his only regret being leaving his beloved mother as well. Settling in an apartment in Boston, Sal got into a position of a door-to-door salesman working it for 3 years,and later as a mailman, making deliveries around the city for the next 5 years. When the outbreak happened, Sal was lucky enough to evade many of the starting issues. When the Boston QZ was made, Sal managed to get in and got a job in supply distribution, thanks to him being used to carrying heavy loads. After the global tensions began to heat up in 2002, Sal managed to leave the QZ, smuggling any supplies he could with him on a truck. Moving around the country and listening to radio broadcasts, he learned more than they were told in a QZ, about people rising up and new factions popping up, but sometimes he heard pleas for help, for food, for water, that, which he had more than he could carry, especially with the truck slowly falling in disrepair. Risking it all, he decided to answer the cries and eventually met those people. It was a family of 3, the child was obviously sick, but he gave them supplies anyway and while he didn't ask anything in returned, they still payed him back with important information, telling him more about the Coalition he heard plenty of. Intrigued he ventured further, trying to ignore the future of that family. In 2004, his truck finally broke down, it was a miracle it even worked for so long, considering the many amateur repairs Sal did on it. Thankfully not that many supplies were left, with him trading and giving away most. Taking the essential he could, Sal started walking down the highway, never forgetting the skills he learned in his teens, which has saved him many times already, he sneaked and avoided infected where he could, fighting some away or running away if he was outnumbered. After almost two years of traveling on foot, Sal was constantly low on supplies, getting another car was near impossible, none were in a good condition and gas is nowhere to be found. Through this time he was once captured by raiders and somehow managed to swindle his way out if by helping them find a lost cache of supplies, then found himself helping out at a settlement of some cult that he never really understood, supposedly they called themselves the Fun Gal Followers or that's what he thought at least. But soon he was alone again and got caught in a middle of a pollen storm, hiding out in a basement of an abandoned building he thought that maybe it was going to be his last. Luckily for him, Sal finally came by a group of travelers, hearing voices of living people, he scouted them out from afar, just to make sure they weren't gonna kill him on sight. After calling out to them and meeting them, he managed to convince the survivors to let him enter the settlement, which, as he soon discovered, belonged to the Central Coalition. Curious to finally learn about the works of trading in this apocalypse, Sal soon joined up into a caravan, working on getting connections within the coalition. After working with them for around a year, Sal finally fully knew about the greater state of the world, especially about the war between the two major factions. With new knowledge and supplies, Sal went on to work as an independent trader within the coalition, eventually working close to the frontline of the war, taking advantage of the dwindling supplies there, helping out people no matter what faction the work for, all in the name of his own benefit. By 2009, Sal have became somewhat of a trader and a mailman, sometimes doing oddjobs to earn extra supplies, surveying locations, gathering information, retrieving items and similar stuff. Due to that, Sal heard of great opportunities that were gathering in the Knox County, eventually deciding to move there.