How did Mothman come to Roanoke? What was his beginning like?
that’s an excellent question! let’s talk about our boy joseph moretti.
joe, unlike some of our other members, didn’t develop his abilities until a good decade after puberty hit him like a freight train.
he was in college in southern florida when he first began to notice with not a small amount of irritation that he seemed to lose everything he put his hands on—only for it to abruptly reappear in his hands either hours or sometimes even days later. this went on for about a year before one of his rooomates—joe was a member of the alpha phi alpha house on campus, so he had plenty of roommates in his time living in the frat house—suggested that he try to control it.
“dude, dude just—like. focus. do like mr. miyagi said.”
“what did mr. miyagi say that would help in this situation, chris?”
“uh—something something balance?”
“excellent, thanks for that contribution.”
“i’m trying to help you bro!”
it took practice. a lot of practice. joe had to learn how to meditate, how to train his mind to keep things very separate and aimed in specific ways. he’d never sent a person into the nowhere zone (as chris stine had so christened it around 1985), and it wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to try.
but he, like almost all of the men and women who would go on to be members of the roanoke executive board, eventually did learn to bring his abilities under his own control. … at least, for the most part. he would be a grown man before learning the more intimate secrets of the strange unseen universe that was tied to him.
now, all this wasn’t super great for his dating life (he accidentally bopped a few dates in the back of their heads with books, mugs…), but it was stellar for his frat brothers.
you need booze but don’t have an id? you need to sneak something into or out of somewhere? joe was your man. his abilities won him the coveted title of worst-kept secret on campus. worst-kept because chris couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but even with his wide-eyed insistence and stories—most of the student body shrugged it off.
physics doesn’t work like that. impossible. absolutely not. not real.
but the people who believed, the people who saw? they didn’t know it was a peek into something bigger. they just thought joe was—gifted.
and thank god that chris stine had a huge mouth, otherwise it wouldn’t have to led to one joaquin foster—at the time, roanoke’s mothman—to finding him.
of course, it wouldn’t have led to paul todd finding him, either.
once joe graduated, he had already been on the radar for some—we’ll say seedier groups of people. people familiar with drug-running, the business of underground narcotic trails and cartels.
the money was hard to say no to.
joe has not always been as… upstanding, as we know him to be. he thanks all the gods he knows that he didn’t meet louise until later in life, after all of this was nothing more than a shameful closed chapter.
and he decided that chapter would have most likely been titled ‘joseph moretti - the single greatest drug smuggler in the history of mankind.’
he doesn’t like to talk about it much. and even though it was something he was technically good at (and that paid exceptionally well in pretty much every single way you can think of), it didn’t exactly leave him feeling fulfilled at the end of the day, no matter how many people were in his bed with him, how choice the drugs, how luxurious his surroundings.
paul todd was an excellent boss. do what he said, don’t ask questions, and your reward is getting to be a mule and not having to help draw lines through the names on a chalkboard paul kept in his office.
but joaquin would prove to be a bit better.
he trailed joe for a while. a few months, at least. got to witness how easily he committed felonies, the party boy lifestyle that had become the bow that wrapped up his life. but more importantly joaquin knew that once every few weeks, joe would go to the beach all by himself around midnight and stare out into the ocean for hours at a time.
so. he waited until joe was at his usual spot, and silently walked up next to him. his face caught the orange glow of a cigarette. “… penny for your thoughts?”
looking back, joe couldn’t tell you why, exactly, he proceeded to unload every single thought he had onto this man he didn’t know.
but he reckoned that maybe it had something to do with the fact that no one had asked him even a simple ‘are you all right?’ in a very, very long time.
by the end of the word vomit that joe couldn’t quite seem to stop, the stranger had gone through his cigarette and an entire second one.
“… uhm. i’m uh.” there was no easy recovery from this one. “sorry. about that. i’ll figure it out. nobody’s problem but mine.”
and for a beat, joaquin didn’t say anything. until: “… what do you call it?”
“… what?”
he repeated. “what do you call it? the place that you keep the drugs in.”
all the color drained from joe’s face and he found himself rooted to the sand in fear.
this was not one of his college friends, this was not anyone under paul’s direction, this was someone that he’d never seen before in his life and he’d somehow pieced together his biggest secret--which joe was, y’know, pretty sure he hadn’t explained in explicit detail. his existential crisis, yes, but his powers, absolutely not.
but joaquin smiled. he looked like a wolf and joe wasn’t exactly comforted.
he watched joaquin walk closer to the water and realized this guy had no shoes on, and that his pants were rolled up and cuffed just below his knees. then he—started doing tai chi?
joe frowned, staring. nope, not tai chi. what was this dude—
he almost screamed as a glob of saltwater hit him scare in the face, sending him to his knees reflexively. it was so dark that he hadn’t seen it. but when he opened his eyes again, sputtering and tearing up, he did see a second ball of water, rotating in perfect peace a few inches above joaquin’s open palm.
“… please don’t throw that at me.” was what came out.
but what he had meant then, was oh—you’re like me.
“i have some people that are very, very keen on meeting you. and i’ll be upfront, they’re just as interested in what you can do as who you work for now. but could i perhaps take advantage of any curiosity you have in being on the right side of the law?”
“but i can’t—“
“yes you can.”
“but paul w—“
“we can take care of it.”
“but what ab—“
“joseph.” that stopped him. “… we got you.”
joaquin put a broad hand on joe’s shoulder. joe didn’t shake him off, and it felt more like a burden being lifted than a weight being set down.
of course, it took a little bit more persuasion than one inspiring speech on a dark shore. but joseph was instated as agent cambrion before the year was out.
given the space to grow upwards and outwards, he absolutely blossomed under joaquin’s mentorship.
sometimes to get the best out of a person, you just have to give them the circumstances to prove that they can be good. joseph understood that his jagged path had been his own choice, but he’d been walking around completely unaware that there were groups of people—good people, even!—who not only accepted him for who he was and what he could do, but celebrated it. they taught him how to use his abilities for the benefit of others (not the same-shaped benefits from his previous line of work, either—better. much, much better).
he didn’t like to contemplate for too long why he went with paul.
paul had given him an opportunity to be his truest self. in the wrong direction, sure. but joe at the time hadn’t seen any other alternatives, beyond getting inevitably squared into a safe, 9-to-5 cubicle job.
he chose being able to use his powers for nefarious reasons over living a life where he wouldn’t really get to use them at all. he didn’t like what it said about himself as a person, but there had to have been a point, he thought, that he was who he was. there had to have been a reason.
when roanoke found him—the reason found him, too.
of course, there remains the question: how did joe inherit mothman’s title?
joaquin got the honor of being one of the executive offices chosen to go on an initial trip to a new gateway, gate point ninety-three point one, in the early 90s. a kingdom, not too far off from earth’s own medieval history—but with the elements of magic and fantasy that roanoke was familiar with. he tagged joe to come with him.
joaquin, to make a long story exceptionally short—fell in love. both with a place, and a person.
their first diplomatic visit was a success. as were the next two.
but joaquin couldn’t bear to make the trip of a fourth time, mostly because he couldn’t stomach the thought of having to keep making returns trips to a timeline where impa never existed, nor her people, or the royal family they served.
joe was very, very lucky. a lot of agents inherit handles from mentors due to death afield, or other violent circumstances.
joaquin was granted permission to remain a permanent ambassador of roanoke to the kingdom of hyrule. this title translated to captain of king’s guard, which meant that joe wasn’t just given the name mothman in some boring way lined with paperwork—there was an entire knighting ceremony. lilith and the white lady had been one of the few human witnesses.
so. all in all. it’s sort of a good beginning and a bad beginning all in one. joe’s made peace, for the most part, that he needs both parts to make up the whole of who he is today.
and who he is today is pretty damn great, if you ask me.
not that it’s very important to this story, but i would like to point out that almost three decades later, another set of roanoke agents walked into that same castle without having any idea who joaquin was.
“welcome, travelers! i can see by your dress you’ve come a long way. tell me, who sent you?”
“oh! uh—hi! i’m agent seraphim, of roanoke. and this is agent nova and agent zenith. we caught word that something was happening in the far reaches of the kingdom. we’ve come to help. it’s nice to meet you, sir—?”
“joaquin. sir joaquin. … formerly of roanoke.”