Flin Gussenhoven

"'We shall forever praise this man for his wondrous discovery of creating life from death to control. He is the father, he is the man who made Fantoccinism, he is the God on earth. A madman, maybe, but certainly a genius.'"Flin Gussenhoven marks the beginning of Fantoccinism history. The inventions that he created came to inspire the Connoisseur, which elaborated on his idea and developed it into the sadistically religious practice that it is known as today - 600 years later.

There is no information on what Flin looks like, so there is a multitude of different interpretations to his appearance - however, his death certificate did confirm his basic physical appearance to be at 5'4" while he weighed at 56 kilograms.

History
Flin lived in the southern parts of the Netherlands. During his younger years, he lost father was killed during a wagon journey when bandits came to take his trading goods and killed him in the process. This loss ultimately resulted in Flin's mother giving him up for adoption, as she couldn't sustain her child without the breadwinning father.

He was taken in by an old couple that raised him until his young teens before which they passed away with old age. From an early stage in life, Flin started to believe that family was temporary and replaceable.

Flin had reached an age of maturity where he didn't need to have any more guardians. He eventually came to marry a woman named Fantine, who he grew to love dearly and seeked to raise a family with her. Hoping for his children to not live such a ruthless life as his own, he attempted to make a deal with a dark spirit to protect his family, but his offer was denied.

Later on in life, Fantine died while giving birth to a stillborn. He became a lonely man, turning to necromancy in hopes to bring his wife and child back to life, to reinstate goodness into his life and to attempt to remove the hex that was placed on him.

However, as the years passed, that dream slowly faltered to nothing after the bodies had decayed beyond the wishes of ever trying to resurrect them. His dream was then replaced with a larger and more ambitious dream; he wanted to create living beings that could walk among man - he wanted to play God so that he could create his own family and make it into what he desired.

Kleine
In the late June of 1425, the amateur necromancer had made a 3-foot tall effigy of himself using his own blood and flesh. With a great risk being taken, he sacrificed a fraction of his own soul into the wood-flesh model, which brought it to life. This creation came to be what was technically considered as the very first Fantoccini in existence.

It could walk around and partake in activities that Flin gave it, completing tasks and following commands. Though, it just couldn't talk, and still had a lifeless aura around it.

He decided to name it Kleine, and would use him for basic, easy-to-do chores in an attempt to train it to one day have independent thoughts and ideas. Unfortunately, Kleine would forget commands promptly after completing them, and resorted to blank staring when idling.

Flin didn't want a mindless minion and was hoping for Kleine to have a sense of intelligence and self-awareness, but it still marks the beginning of Fantoccinism, and is technically the first of their kind. He had no way to communicate with it and struggled with getting Kleine to understand things occasionally. He resorted to taking his soul from Kleine's body and the effigy dropped limp.

After some future experimentaions, Flin realized that he didn't need to use his own flesh and blood for a model; all that seemed to matter was a soul to give the body life. He started pushing boundaries due to these new discoveries, and began experimenting on other humans.

George Lambrecht
A kid by the name of George Lambrecht was taken by the age of 11 into Gussenhoven's workspace in 1437. Starting off with brass and wooden reinforcements being caged around George's body, a metal exoskeleton, Flin was given full physical control of him by moving the metal limbs encasing George in any way he pleased.

The boy ended up starving to death after a few days of Gussenhoven's experiments, and he attempted to bring George back to life by using a small fraction of his own soul. It was successful, sort of, with the boy becoming a mindless husk in the metal suit like Kleine; he would follow orders and do what was asked of him, but unlike Kleine, George could talk. At least he had the capacity to talk, but would just emit groans and whines and inaudible drawling noises. Flin knew was missing something.

It was a great risk, but Flin extracted a more than just a fragment of his own soul and placed it into George's body. He had to extract at least a quarter of his own soul to place into this body. It was successful, but was very draining. George had his own conscious thoughts in his mind, along with Flin's. He found he could telepathically to communicate with George, and George could reply. Though he couldn't speak, this was the first hint of communication between puppet and master. He had to carry on with the experiment, because this was another major breakthrough in his research.

Spreading The Word
He found out that he didn't need to have his own flesh and blood in the body to be able to operate it, however, the body did need to be made from organic materials. The body can be brought to life by means of having a soul, and can mentally control the body and its physical actions through telepathic communication. These are seen as baby steps, but for him, it was at the time, a huge breakthrough and a chance to recreate the family he wished for.

He told close friends of his discovery; a dead boy encased in brass and wood that he could mentally and physically control. Many heard of this as word spread from mouth to mouth in his town, and he inspired others to partake in this sick act of killing and ensaring a body in metal to use as a puppet. Times were hard during those years, and labour was needed greatly.

Instead of being considered as immoral and bad at the time, Flin was, oddly enough, hailed, and had began a genocide, which he didn't even care to put a stop to. He taught many how to extract their own souls and put a fraction of it into the puppet's body, and Flin was dubbed as The Father as this new form of slavery took place. It was very underground, and not many people knew of such an organisation going on. Only the town knew of this.

Alas, in 1456, Flin passed away at the age of 58, extremely old for someone of his day and age. George "died" permanently as well.