Gallows town is a world where the big otter is in control.. however there are distinct styles of this setting, generally they boil down into the three stages of control, I'll describe them one at a time..

Infection.. The infection stage is when Gallows moves into town, his ambition builds as he makes his plans to take over. A hand picked squad of highly motivated troops joins him in the initial foray.
Gallows ruthless methods and warped morality normally mixed with the secret nature of vore at this stage provide him complete freedom of moment. The “Crime” he does is hardly one would suspect. The infection stage has a few Goals, the first, and perhaps the most important is the accumulation of information through any means, about the power centers, the territory and so on, the amount of information that comes crawling as bulges in his men's gut can be staggering, as can the number of contacts and liaisons developed. The second goal is to start to build a terror in the streets, removing the confidence folks have in the normal trappings of civilization. Showing protections to be shams and so on. Normally Gallows himself will pick many of his targets to assassinate, leaving only cryptic traces if any at all. Letting fear of the unknown bubble up. The third Goal of this stage is to instill his own men in strategic places within the city. Generally not at the top of a chain of command..they are to raise in prominence and rank by seemingly the only and able to “Stop” problems engineered by Gallows himself.
The combination of these goals shakes the cities belief in what they thought was normal, the power centers seemingly unable to exert their will anymore..during this processes Gallows will make his first few total takeovers, creating a base of operations and a handful of secondary ones. These will seem to the outside world bastion's against the tide of fear. Chaos bubbling just bellow the surface.

The final transitional stroke in this stage is to go “Public” on a wave of devourings and terror, making sure the media see's glimpses of whats happening, realizing the horror that can happen when no one is empowered enough to stop it.. it is at its heart a very unmistakeable message..