Joseph has been fighting for almost as long as he can remember. Discovering his powers at a young age, he was quickly swept up by another powered child, Hannah Washburne, who promptly pressed him into service upon learning that he was also like her. Instead of the life of peaceful, quiet life he had hoped for, he spent his childhood hunting leftovers in the forests and mountains surrounding their small town with a girl who was already loud and terrifying without her powers, which increased her physical capabilities as she grew angrier. By the time they were fourteen, there were three things he understood well. The first was how to fight leftovers of almost any kind, using creative combinations of his runes along with various forms of conventional weaponry or even every day objects to take them down effectively even when Hannah wasn't around to simply push a tree onto it. The second was that Hannah was most likely the scariest being he had and would ever encounter, leftovers and villains be damned. The third was that, no matter how scary she may be, there wasn't anyone else he'd rather have to watch his back.

However, around that time, the pair began to notice what seemed to be cult-like activity popping up around town, and quickly changed their activities, alternating between their usual hunting over leftovers and doing what they could to investigate and possibly disrupt said cult. It was during one of these missions where they encountered Eleanor Finch, a shy but excitable girl who had been a classmate of the pair since kindergarten but had rarely interacted with them, and her cousin Kyle, a sporty boy who was the type to try and cheer other people up even when he was sad or scared himself. This was currently in full effect, as the pair had stumbled upon the cults activities and been captured, where the cultists apparently intended to sacrifice them to draw in nearby leftovers, which seemed to be the object of their worship. It also turns out they had powers of their own, although theirs had only recently manifested, with Eleanor being able to give life to small inanimate objects such as dolls and have them help her with whatever she needed, and Kyle having the ability to create forcefields, which he could shape and manipulate even while projected to a certain degree.

Despite some initial grumbling from Hannah, it wasn't long before the two were absorbed into the group, and the four continued to do the jobs Joseph and Hannah had previously done before. Another boy, Louis King, occasionally lent his support by helping the four formulate their plans, although he never quite ended up joining the group properly both due to his lack of powers and the fact that Hannah, unlike with Eleanor and Kyle, never actually ended up trusting him. However, the five of them seemed to be making good progress in preventing the cult from performing any further sacrifices or similar activities against the townsfolk. This all came to a head when they were seventeen. An absolutely enormous horde of leftovers was spotted emerging from the mountains just half an hour out from the town, and it was clear that they were heading directly for the town itself, not just passing by. There was little time to evacuate, so the four teenagers knew what they had to do, no matter how suicidal it seemed. Scared for what must have been the first time in years, Joseph made the reluctant decision to use a runic array that, while he hadn't fully tested, was their best bet to carry them through the siege. This was encouraged by Louis, who knew how skilled Joseph was at creating his runes, and told him he was sure this one would function just as he thought it would. Despite some initial nervousness from Kyle and Eleanor, they both eventually agreed, reasoning that it might be their best option. Their powers had grown considerably from the early days, sure, but with this many enemies, they would need ever advantage they could get. Hannah on the other hand had trusted Joseph's abilities from the beginning, and was the first to accept his plan. And so, with their plan in place, the four unofficial heroes of Granborough set out to meet the approaching horde.

It was a disaster.

By the end of the day, the town had been all but wiped out, with over three quarters of the population dead. Hannah had disappeared, Kyle was left without an arm, Eleanor was in a comatose state, and the cult had brought about the creation of what they called their 'goddess of destruction', Calamity. All because of Joseph's runes. Hannah's distrust of Louis had been well placed, as he had been manipulating Joseph from the start. It turns out that he was, in fact, the leader of the cult, who believed that normal people were too lazy, relying on those with powers to solve all their problems and keep the world in the same boring state as it's always been. Instead, those with powers should create a new world, and Calamity would be the one to do it. Kyle, who had always believed Joseph to be smarter than the rest of them, was enraged at him, thinking he should have been clever enough to figure out the mans manipulations. Even if Kyle hadn't thought that, Joseph also blamed himself, because if he had just looked for another way, or decided to use a different rune that he knew for sure would be safe, he could have avoided all of this.

And so, after ensuring that Kyle, Eleanor and the townsfolk would all be relocated safely, he left. Abandoning his old life and identity, he wandered across the country, surviving off odd jobs. During this time, he outright refused to use any but his most basic runic arrays, for fear that there may have been some horrible side effect he hadn't considered like the rune he used in the siege. However, eventually he realised that he couldn't keep wandering forever, and has finally settled in the city of Castleburg nearly four years later. He managed to find an old storage shed he could convince the owner of to rent out to him as a cheap apartment, but he still needed a job to actually pay that rent. So, begrudgingly, he has taken a job doing the only thing he knows how.

Hero work.