Ratlines and Relics [OOC / OPEN]

[Reverend Norv]

• While all aspects of this RP will remain consistent with forum rules, this is also a historical thriller that deals with the period immediately after the fall of the Third Reich. This was a time marked by immense suffering, but also by the world’s reckoning with the enormous crimes of the Nazi regime. It is also a time in which Soviet atrocities continued apace. We will not necessarily dwell on those horrors, but neither will we ignore them. So if graphic content is traumatizing to you by reason of age or past experiences, then I advise you to follow or participate in this RP only with due caution. Thank you.
  
• This RP is anchored in a particular time and place in history: Berlin in late 1945. I will try to provide a feel for that time and place, both in the OOC and in the IC, but I also expect you to do the research to fact-check your own posts, and to edit those posts if I find egregious errors therein. If this is unacceptable to you, then you need not waste your time by reading any further.
  
• This RP involves some occult elements, and draws in part upon esoteric and conspiratorial theories about the Third Reich. This does not represent any assertion that those occult, esoteric, or conspiratorial ideas are historically valid. They are not. We are dealing with them because a small number of Nazis did subscribe to such views, and because they make for a good story – not because they are respectable or responsible ways to see the world.

RATLINES AND RELICS
WINTER IN BERLIN

Spree-Athen

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
James Joyce

* * *

COL. FRANK HOWLEY, ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES

The war is over.

What a thing to be able to say, right? Still, even now, five months on from V-E Day. Taste it on your tongue. The war is over.

It cost us – cost the whole world. Fifty million dead, they’re saying now. Civilian, military, from every nation. Half of Europe and most of Japan turned into smoking ruins. And now we know that there was worse: these camps in Germany and Poland. I’ve been fighting across Europe since D-Day. I saw some pretty bad things, but nothing – nothing – like this. A horror beyond belief.

All for one man’s madness. And we didn’t even get to hang the little rat bastard.

And now here we are: Berlin. Spree-Athen, they used to call it: Athens on the Spree. It doesn’t look much like that now. The Germans have paid for their crimes, and this city is a ruin. One third of the homes and apartments in Berlin are just gone: annihilated in the bombing. There are 75 million tons of rubble – 27 tons of rubble for every surviving Berliner. The Soviets, in their sector, conscripted all women between 15 and 65 to start clearing it up. They still estimate it will take twelve years. It doesn’t help that the Red Army keeps raping the Trummerfrauen – the rubble women – when they show up for work. There are still sixteen women in Berlin to every ten men.

We’re still trying to get the electricity, gas, and water supplies running again, but the lines have been broken in so many places by the bombing that it’s more a matter of replacing them than repairing them. Until then, there’s little enough fresh water that we’ve had to make it illegal to take a full bath or shower. Most people are relying on the river or stagnant water, and hundreds are dying every day from cholera and diptheria. Refugees from the east continue to flood into the city, with no end in sight.

It can take an hour to travel a mile, because the roads are choked with rubble and the underground stations are completely flooded. There are still probably at least ten thousand corpses unburied in the city; the Trummerfrauen find them every day. We are trying like hell to feed everyone – ration cards are what passes for currency in Berlin right now – but the average Berliner remains close to twenty pounds underweight, and most people have to rely on the black market. We’ve even had confirmed cases of cannibalism. There are about 240 robberies and five murders a day, sometimes many more, and everyone knows that the Soviet sector is still a zone of mass rape. Nowhere in Berlin is safe after nightfall, and big parts of it aren’t safe during the day.

And now there’s winter coming on. It’s just November, and we’ve already had snow twice. And we haven’t gotten the heat back on or the ruins patched. We expect thousands more to freeze to death before we see 1946.

You may say they deserve it. I’ve been to the camps, like I said. I feel that way too, sometimes. But the fact is, we are in charge of this city now: you break it, you buy it. We are responsible, each in our sectors: Americans in the south, British in the west, French in the north, Russians in the east. The Allied Kommandatura coordinates everything from Dahlem, run by four commandants: Bourne for the Brits, Kotikov for the Russians, Ganeval for the French, Keating for us. This week, anyway; nobody wants that job for more than a few months. All of us are trying to get the lights back on, to get cholera under control, to clear the rubble, to keep people from starving to death, and to make the streets safe to walk. Even the Soviets are doing their best, as they rape and rob their sector blind, if only because Stalin doesn’t want to rule over a wasteland.

And there’s more to do besides, especially for my military policemen. We disbanded the Berlin police – they were Ordnungpolizei, OrPo, an SS branch. Now we’re frantically trying to de-Nazify them, since they are the only ones who know the city well enough to police it, and we badly need the manpower and expertise. Pretty much anybody who worked for the old government needs a denazification certificate to get a job again, and we’ve got a backlog of four million applications for those certificates: there’s an IBM data machine in Paris doing round-the-clock background checks. Meanwhile, 2 million Germans – including almost all of this city’s former police and administrators – are now forbidden from any work except manual labor. Which leaves my boys walking their beats through the rubble and investigating hundreds of murders in a country where they don’t speak the language. Most of them just want to go home.

Then there’s the manhunt. The big war crimes trial is due to start in Nuremberg this month, and although most of the top Nazi leadership is dead or in custody, there are thousands of others – senior SS and Gestapo and Einsatzgruppen commanders, Wehrmacht generals, NSDAP officials, and more – who are still on the run. It’s our job to try and catch them. But you’ve seen what it’s like here: this is a city of two million squatters hiding out in ruins – no addresses, no phone numbers. Any one of those guys picking through the rubble for broken furniture to use as firewood – he could have run one of the camps. And we know that the real big fish have some secret ways out of Germany – you’d need to talk to Major Abrahams about that, up in Spandau at the British Headquarters. He knows more. All I can tell you is that a bunch of lawyers in the War Crimes Division keep commandeering my GIs to chase SS guys through the flooded sewer while I need every man to stop riots at the bread lines.

Meanwhile, our allies are – not as helpful as they could be. The Brits, up north, are starved for manpower and cash and are trying to withdraw as soon as possible. They’re working very closely with the locals, more closely than any of the rest of us, mostly because they need all the help they can get to make anything happen. The French seem hell-bent on ransacking what’s left of their sector for “reparations,” but they don’t appear to have any interest in denazification at all. I chalk that up to the fact that half the French officers in Berlin right now were working for Vichy two years ago. They hate the Germans’ guts, but they don’t seem inclined to distinguish between former Nazis and everybody else. We can all work together through the Kommandatura, but things aren’t exactly smooth: it isn’t lost on anyone that we all have different objectives here.

And the Russians? I think the Russians are the enemy now. It’s a tough thing to say so plainly, I know: we’ve been arming them and cheering them on for years now, and they’ve lost sixteen million people to get all of us to Berlin. But what they’re doing in the east of the city – if that doesn’t make them the enemy, then Christ, I don’t know what would. State terror: mass rape, abduction, murder. Red Army troops are completely above the law, as far as I can tell; their commanders only care about removing what’s left of East Berlin’s industry to Russia. What rebuilding is happening is driven by forced, unpaid labor – slavery, let’s call it what it is. Thousands of old men and boys are rounded up and shipped to the gulag for reeducation. They generally won’t let my GIs, or engineers, or even American Red Cross into their sector. For the hundreds of thousands of Berliners over there, it’s getting very hard to cross out of the Soviet sector, either. The Reds clearly don’t trust us, and don’t want us to see what’s happening over there. And that tells me that we can’t trust them, either.

So that’s why I’m cautious about the cable. If the Russians are inviting us in, then they have their own reasons for doing it. I’ll send you anyway: whatever happened at the Nikolaikirche must be important, if nothing else. But I want you to keep your eyes and ears open while you’re east of Kreuzberg. The Nazi holdouts aren’t the only danger in this city, not anymore.

* * *

Black Sun Rising

“Horror lurks always at the bottom of the magical world, and everything ‘holy’ is always mixed with horror.”
Passaged underlined by Hitler, Magic: History, Theory and Practice (Ernst Schertel, 1923)

* * *

MAJ. HENRY ABRAHAMS, BRITISH ARMY INTELLIGENCE CORPS

Don’t get me wrong, old boy: Colonel Howley is a good man. But he doesn’t know the half of what is going on in this city. He never really understood what he was fighting, you see.

Madmen. We were – are – fighting madmen.

Consider: there are still thousands of officers of the SS and Gestapo, individually identified and wanted by the War Crimes Division, on the loose. Himmler was in supreme command of both the SS and the Gestapo. I assume you’ve heard of him.

Most of us have been to the camps by now. For your next field trip, I recommend the Wewelsburg: Himmler’s personal castle. That’s right – castle. It is laid out in accordance with some cockeyed interpretation of the mythology surrounding the Holy Grail. Himmler, you see, believed that there is a whole world of secret power that undergirds our own, with its own secret history to match. And the Aryan race had a unique role to play within that world: an occult destiny.

Here's a name you will not have heard: Karl Maria Wiligut. Himmler’s personal magician – again, you heard me right. He was the one who designed the Wewelsburg. According to him, Germanic civilization goes back to 228,000 BC, a time when there were two suns and giants walked the Earth. The Aryans drew their power from Santur, the second sun, and their god was Krist – whose divinity was forgotten and garbled until his religion, Irminism, was finally appropriated by Christians. The Ice-Kings of the Aryans flourished for as long as Santur shone, but in the end their second sun burned out, and their power with it. Since that time, secret cults – the Freemasons, Jesuits, and Jews – have worked tirelessly to undermine remaining Irminists and crush the Aryan race. Only the ancient Irminist runes retain magic power. But some day, the hourglass will turn again; Santur will re-ignite; and the power of the rune-wielding Herrenvolk will become unstoppable, when the Black Sun rises.

I told you. We are fighting madmen. But they genuinely believe this drivel. Himmler made death’s-head rings for his most loyal officers, designed by Wiligut. When the bearers died, he had the rings all brought back to Wewelsburg, to bind their souls to him even after death. Ten thousand are still unaccounted for, somewhere in or around the castle. Himmler himself believed that he was the reincarnation of Henry the Fowler, a tenth-century German king who was supposedly a covert Irminist. Any occult nonsense you can imagine can be justified by this larger mythos. The Grail? An ancient Irminist artifact, appropriated by Christians. Seances? Ancient Irminist magic, powered by their runes. Anti-Semitism? The Jews are the true children of this sun, the natural foes of the Ice-Kings of Santur, and so we are all-knowing and nearly all-powerful within this fallen age. This is why Himmler’s occult “scientists,” the Ahnenerbe, wandered the earth looking for signs of ancient Aryan ruins and artifacts from before recorded time. And so on, and so forth, as they say.

Not everyone believes this, of course. Most Germans – even most German soldiers, and probably many of the SS too – are quite aware that it is drivel. But there is a hard core of true believers, and they are the most dangerous to us, especially now: because they are convinced that they cannot truly be defeated, and so they will never surrender. For them, it is only a matter of time until Santur rises again. We know that some number of them remain in Berlin: organizing, planning something. Their war is very far from over.

Many of them are not in Berlin, though, and in some ways that is the bigger problem. They have ways out, undetected. We call them the ratlines. At least one goes west, through old Vichy collaborator networks in the south of France, to Franco’s Spain. The other goes south, through Austria to Rome and Genoa. We believe that this network is actively run by Catholic priests, mostly Croats with ties to the Ustashe.

The French and Spanish route seems associated with an organization called Die Spinne, the Spider: a group of former SS officers, now self-organizing to escape and carry on the fight by other means. We have no way of knowing how closely either ratline is connected to Himmler, Wiligut, and the old occult hardliners. What we do know is that these networks are shielding highly skilled, entirely remorseless Nazis in large numbers, and placing them back in contact with each other. I very much doubt that such men intend to go quietly into retirement, and I am quite confident that the old madness will infect and spread once more, as the ratlines give it vectors by which to do so.

Unfortunately, the Russians and Americans both seem to have decided that the greater threat is each other. The OSS and NKVD are all over Berlin, without any regard at all for the zones of control, searching for German scientists and engineers. The Russians simply abduct them off the street; the Americans, from what I’ve heard, give them the choice of coming voluntarily or being left for the Russians. It’s about as free a choice as you would imagine. And nobody seems to care that many of these men developed the V-2s that rained down on London; that they should answer for their crimes; or that they may themselves secretly believe in all the hideous madness of Wewelsburg. No – Moscow and Washington are already looking forward to the next war, and they will do whatever it takes to win.

But they are wrong. Even Colonel Howley, fine man that he is, is wrong. The war is not over. Our enemy has abandoned ground that can be taken and cities that can be bombed, but he is not defeated. He is here with us now: in the crowds of starving refugees huddled amid the rubble; in his lair in the flooded underground; wearing a priest’s collar in a bombed-out church; smiling as the OSS takes him into the bosom of its counsel. He is here, not in Moscow and not in Washington. He is here, unrepentant and unvanquished in his insanity, driven by defeat ever-deeper into the alternate reality of his fantasies, ready at the first opportunity to act upon them.

So when you go east of Tiergarten, old boy, I do indeed advise you to keep your eyes and ears open – but not for Red atrocities, real though they may be. Watch for the real enemy: for lean men, desperate men, men who still know that they are the heirs of Hyperborean ice-kings. Yes, you watch for them: for the men with nothing left to loose, and everything to gain – when the Black Sun finally rises.

* * *

Blood on the Altar

“The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.”
Attr. Kenneth E. Boulding

* * *

COL. ANDREI BELINSKY, RKKA KOMENDANTSKAYA SLUZHBA

To: Allied Kommandatura
From: RKKA Komendantskaya Sluzhba [Red Army Military Police]
Re.: Homicide Investigation, Nikolaikirche
Date: 18 Nov. 1945


Col. Howley, Maj. Abrahams, Col. Duchamps:

This is to inform you that Werner Krause, No. 721 on the United Nations War Crimes Commission longlist of suspects, was found dead in the Nikolaikirche in Mitte early this morning. Preliminary investigations by RKKA officers indicate a time of death some time in the last twenty-four hours. Pending autopsy, the cause of death is believed to be massive exsanguination. RKKA authorities are treating the death as a homicide.

The circumstances of the war criminal’s death are anomalous. Its investigation presents certain unique challenges.

In light of those challenges, and because the war criminal’s body was found less than a kilometer from the boundaries of the American, British, and French sectors, Commdt. Kotikov has authorized the transfer of this case to the overall jurisdiction of Berlin Kommandatura for joint investigation.

Personnel assigned to this joint investigation may include representatives of the American, British, and French military justice systems; as well as technical, cultural, or forensics advisers, including Germans with relevant qualifications. Persons authorized to bear arms within the American, British, and French sectors will be permitted to bear them in the USSR sector exclusively for purposes pertaining to the investigation. As the crime was committed in USSR jurisdiction, RKKA rules of investigation will prevail; any arrests made by any investigating officer will be considered to have been made by RKKA authority; and any trials resulting from the joint investigation will take place in USSR courts.

Personnel seconded to the joint investigation are expected to present themselves at the Nikolaikirche no later than 1900 tonight, 18/11/1945, in order to permit prompt investigation of the crime scene before the body is removed for autopsy. Identification for seconded personnel should be forwarded to RKKA headquarters to ensure smooth access to the USSR sector.

Not one step back!

Col. Andrei Belinsky

[Reverend Norv]

THE RULES, AND GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

The OOC

• If you are involved in this RP, then this is an open OOC. Feel free to discuss anything and everything, whether it has to do with the story or not.
  
  
• This RP is set in Berlin, in November 1945, in what you should assume to be very much the real world. While I’ll accept some poetic license in deviating from historical accuracy – and you should know that I will play up certain occult elements as the story continues – I do expect you to know the rules before you break them. So you may well need to do some research of your own. But I can also guarantee you that if you have any historical questions, I will find the answers for you. Just post your question to the OOC, and I will answer it.
  
  
• This is an adventure-horror RP set in Berlin, a few months after the Allied victory in Europe. This was not a good time: the Holocaust is less than a year in the past, Europe swarms with millions of refugees, Soviet war crimes continue apace, and many Germans are not yet prepared to face the enormity of their country’s crimes. I do not intend to blink those truths, and so this RP will involve a fair amount of disturbing material. Remember that this is storytelling, and that IC events do not represent the feelings of OOC players. But also be aware that my tolerance for OOC rudeness falls in inverse proportion to the level of IC offensiveness. If you want to play a former Nazi, you had best make it clear in the OOC that you are a paladin of liberal democracy.
  
  
• I understand that people have scheduling issues. I have them myself. This will move slowly sometimes, and rapidly at other times. The key is that if you drop off the map for a few days, post to the OOC first. And try to keep the OOC lively even if the IC is moving slowly; that way, we will all remain invested and ready to jump back into the action when peoples’ schedules free up.

The Roleplay

• So at least one of you is still wondering what the hell this is. The answer: this is a noir murder mystery with occult elements set in immediately postwar Berlin. It focuses on a joint murder investigation by the four Allied powers into the mysterious death of a wanted Nazi war criminal. This investigation involves British, French, American, and Soviet military police, as well as technical advisors from all of those countries and more – including some Germans. They will uncover a vast occult conspiracy that casts the Allied victory itself into doubt.
  
  
• While there are occult elements to this story, I am the only one who will be introducing them. As far as the player characters are concerned, the occult in this story operates exactly as it does in real life: some people believe in it, but the general consensus is that it is nonsense. No character should arrive in the story with any prior experience that could be seen as supernatural.
  
  
• All players will take the role of members of the joint investigation: MPs, gendarmes, Soviet commissars, former Berlin police, Canadian forensic scientists, and anyone else who might feasibly be hired to help investigate a murder. I will control all major NPCs, and I will unravel the central mystery piece by piece, dropping clues necessary for you to move on. Your characters, however, will have to piece together the conspiracy on their own; I will not be railroading you, so you’ll need to figure out the next step from the information I provide.
  
  
• A special rule about German characters. I am well aware that there are certain players on NationStates who have mixed feelings about the Third Reich: who point to the autobahn, or the Wehrmacht’s prowess, or even just the Nazi aesthetic with guarded appreciation. If I sense any such feelings in an app for a German character, I will deny the application and ban the player from reapplying. If you can wonder whether the Third Reich was really all bad, then I don’t want you in my RP.
  
  
• As mentioned, this story will deal honestly with a disturbing time and place. But this is also NationStates, and the PG-13 rule applies. We have twelve-year-olds on these forums, guys. Don’t bring the mods down on me. Moreover, rules of good taste apply too. Don’t turn this into your chance to write torture-porn or spew your own bile out of the mouth of a German character. That’s not the point. So this is a writing challenge, you see? Imply without spelling out; show don’t tell.
  
  
• Finally, have fun. While we are going to try to deal responsibly with this subject matter, this RP also owes a lot to pulpy storytelling like the Indiana Jones movies; don’t be afraid to write with tongue in cheek from time to time. In short: if it doesn’t violate these rules, and it’s fun for you, then do it. It is that simple.

The Commandments

• We always do the stuff about me being OP, and my authoritaaah, and courtesy and self-control, and so on. I’m going to assume that if I let you in the door, you know all of this already. Don’t disappoint me.
  
  
• Keep it PG-13, or put the heavy stuff in clearly marked spoilers. Yes, this is an adult story, involving a bleak time and place and real historical evil. But there are twelve-year-olds on this forum. Bear that in mind.
  
  
• Read the lore in the first post. Seriously, it will save you a lot of time. If you have a question about the historical setting, then begin by Wikipedia-ing it. If that fails, then post your question here in the OOC. I will see it and do my best to answer. If it’s a really minor thing, just go ahead and make it up. I’ll let you know if there’s an issue.
  
  
• The plot for this story will be deeply shaped by player actions, but it will also deeply shape the options that are available to the players. Don’t wander off, create your own NPCs, and start telling your own subplots tangential to the main story. Trust me: every single PC has a vital role to play in this tale. I will provide plenty to do for every single PC. Stick with me, people.
  
  
• Post whenever you can. I often write long posts. I recognize that this is not always possible for everyone. If all you can manage is a ten-minute, two-paragraph post, then give me that. If the IC action is stalling, or I go MIA for a few days, start bantering conversations with your partner – bounce posts back and forth, a few sentences apiece. Don’t let the need for quality paralyze you: quality and length are not the same thing. Write what you have time to write. Unwind and have fun!

[Reverend Norv]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Joint Investigation, Allied Kommandatura, Berlin

• Franz BECKENBAUER: A disillusioned socialist of '19 - turned black-market smuggler - turned People's Policeman in East Berlin; a cynical half-Jewish left-winger who survived the Third Reich; a man whose compassion endured the deportation of half his family, American bombs, and Soviet atrocities, and now runs far too deep for even he to admit; and an asset to the investigation whose knowledge of Berlin's underworld is beyond doubt.
  
  
• Lt. Rodolphe "Raoul" BOSC: Sous-Lieutenant of the French Gendarmerie. He served the Republic, and then Vichy, in policing his hometown deep in the mountains of the southern Massif Central, and he remains haunted by years of walking the moral tightrope between collaborating with the fascists and protecting his community. An experienced manager with a talent for negotiation, compromise, and personal politics.
  
  
• Capt. Lamont BOUCHER: Capitaine of the French Gendarmerie, and a former resistance fighter in his homeland of Brittany. A devout Catholic and a man of strong moral fiber, hardened by having both suffered and inflicted torture, he is a soul of such deep quiet as to be a stranger, sometimes, even to himself.
  
  
• Karoline "Eva" ELLERMANN: A fourteen-year-old child of the Reich, raised by an absent father and a neglectful mother and the soul-destroying discipline of Nazi society. Separated during the Fall of Berlin from her siblings, to whom she had become both father and mother, she has escaped the innumerable dangers of the Berlin ruins by serving as a local guide and informant for Captain Barry Fallon, in hopes of eventually finding what remains of her family.
  
  
• Cpt. Barry FALLON: A former crack LAPD detective who spent the war as an MP, Fallon is now a criminal investigator in the Office of the US Army Provost Marshal General. A talented sleuth and a man strikingly devoid of bigotry, he has the misfortune to possess both high principles and a creeping vulnerability to temptation.
  
  
• Diedrich Rudolph GRAWITZ: A former SS staff officer - a career bureaucrat who handled the paperwork that passionlessly commanded the ruin of countless lives - he is now cooperating with the Allies in return for immunity from prosecution for his crimes. A cordial, punctual man driven by an absolute devotion to self-preservation, self-advancement, and self-indulgence - for whom death has rarely meant more than a number on a page.
  
  
• Heinrich SCHNEIDER: A former Berlin Ordnungpolizei detective. Amoral to the point of callousness, narcissistic, utterly devoid of social skills, and obsessively brilliant at his job. Since V-E Day, he has been employed ad hoc by the various occupying powers, applying his local knowledge and investigative skill to help restore order - and hunt down his former colleagues.
  
  
• Vilen Yakovlevich OLENEV: A young man old before his time, harrowed by the blinding intensity of the Battle of Stalingrad - which leveled his hometown. Now he finds himself in another leveled city, and on the strength of a few years in the militsiya, he serves in the NKVD occupation force with an odd mixture of ineradicable compassion and willful blindness.
  
  
• Stephen L. McCARTHY: A multilingual, Manila-born FBI agent, and former officer in an OSS naval commando unit in the Pacific Theater. A cold, lonely, honorable man haunted by his wartime service, he is now attached to the US military government in Berlin in a counterintelligence capacity.
  
  
• 1SG Bradford H. McINTYRE: A career U.S. Army NCO with a distinguished record in the North African and Italian Theaters. A strict disciplinarian but a heroic leader, his alcoholism and neglect of his family have left him with little to live for beyond his men and the Army itself.

Non-Player Characters

• Maj. Henry ABRAHAMS: G2 officer to the British Commandant, Gen. Bourne. The most committed and effective Nazi-hunter in Berlin; a Jewish officer of high intelligence and enormous work ethic. His fascination with SS occultism is regarded by most of his colleagues with worried bemusement, and his objectivity is sometimes questioned because of his religion.
  
  
• Col. Andrei BELINSKY: Senior Komendantskaya Sluzhba [Red Army military police] officer in Berlin. Within the byzantine hierarchy of Soviet state security forces, he is widely regarded as a glorified traffic cop. A determined political survivor adept at making himself useful to those with more Party influence than he possesses, he looks for the rare opportunities for decency in an indecent time.
  
  
• Col. Marcel DUCHAMPS: Commander of the Gendarmerie Nationale in Berlin, and de facto G5 officer to Commandant Ganeval. A remorselessly practical man who husbands his resources carefully and is far more committed to French interests than to any abstract ideology. He served as an officer in Vichy-controlled Morocco until Operation Torch, at which point he rallied to the Free French forces.
  
  
• Col. Frank HOWLEY: G5 officer to the American commandant, Gen. Keating. Since the Americans can't seem to keep a commandant in Berlin for more than a few months, Col. Howley is de facto the most powerful US officer in the city. A former Philadelphia advertising executive, he has been continuously preparing to govern and rebuild Berlin since 1943. He is also a noted and fervent anticommunist.

[Reverend Norv]

ROLES AND APPLICATION

Character Creation

In this RP, character creation rests largely with the players. However, there are a few basic rules.

First, your character must be seconded to the joint allied investigation detailed above. This means that all characters are either drawn from the military justice systems of the US, Britain, France, and USSR; or they are outside specialists employed by those systems, such as forensic scientists or former Berlin police. In the latter case, your character must have a specific set of skills that would make him or her relevant to this investigation – though he or she need not be from one of the four occupying powers.

Second, your characters should exist in historical context. I do not expect an exhaustively researched novel for every biography, but I will summarily reject any application if I can’t tell from it that the character has spent the last six years living through the Second World War. I need to see an effort to locate the character in this place and time, and show how that place and time influenced him or her.

Third, I will not be accepting any additional German characters at this time, although this moratorium may be lifted when the ratio of Allied officers to German associates becomes more even.

The Application

Code: Select all

[b]Name:[/b]

[b]Age:[/b]

[b]Gender:[/b]

[b]Appearance:[/b]

[b]Employment:[/b]

[hr][/hr]

[b]Personality:[/b]

[b]Fears:[/b]

[b]Hobbies:[/b]

[b]Skills:[/b]

[b]Weaknesses:[/b]

[hr][/hr]

[b]Birthplace:[/b]

[b]Nationality:[/b]

[b]Ethnicity:[/b]

[b]Sexuality:[/b]

[b]Religion:[/b]

[hr][/hr]

[b]Education (if any):[/b]

[b]Biography:[/b]


[Cylarn]

Name: Barry Fallon.

Age: 35.

Gender: Male.

Appearance: Keep in mind, that he is clean-shaven excluding the moustache.

Employment: Captain, US Army; assigned to Criminal Investigation Division of the Office of the Provost Marshal General.

---

Personality: Barry would best be described as an inquisitive type of person. He has little fear of interacting with people, and all the love in the world for finding things out. He has worked himself up to respond well to violent stressors. On the other hand, he is prone to his fair share of moral misdeeds. I think his biography, in a first-person account, can do better at shedding some light into the character.

Fears: "I got a six-year-old back in LA, waiting on his daddy to come home. The war might be over, but until I am on a boat heading back to the US, I won't sleep too easily. Dumb GIs are doing dumb things, like driving around drunk as hell and hurting people. Since V-E, I have had to cover four different death investigations for GIs. None of them died from Nazi holdouts; drunk GIs did them in. That might be my real fear; surviving all of the crap that got thrown on me from Day One at Normandy, only to be turned into hamburger on the grille of some Jeep."

Hobbies: "If I am not in the field, my favorite thing to do is to put on some swing music, light up a Lucky Strike, and read a magazine or book. Seems a bit modest for a guy like myself, but I am in no way a stranger to the officers' mess. Having a drink among friends is one thing I do enjoy. Playing cards, telling stories; I do like companionship as much as personal solitude."

Skills: "I'm an investigator, or a 'dick,' as some people have called me. Ever since I was a kid, deducing what people did and why was something that just came naturally for me. Observation has taught me a helluva lot more in life than just running in with my head down and making an assumption. It takes brainpower to solve a crime, to put the pieces together and come out with the 'Five Dubyas:' who, what, when, where, and why. A lot of cops like to touch the crime scene, and you know what that does? It perverts what you're looking at. If you kick shell casings across the floor, then you no longer know exactly where your shooter was standing. I don't touch corpses or evidence until I know that I have a good idea of what the scene looked like before we showed up. It makes life easier on the lab rats, too. I have some limited forensic capability, usually in the way of lifting prints or determining ballistics."

"My next best talent is, you guessed it, a way with fists and firearms. I was twenty when I fired my first gun, and I kept messing with them long after that, enough to feel exceedingly comfortable when I've got my eyes behind the sights. Be it a handgun, shotgun, or long gun, I can figure it out and use it well. The Army widened my skill with different guns, especially the 30-cal. My three years of war gave me plenty of experience shooting everything from a Tommy Gun to a Ma Deuce, usually in places where the infantry had already advanced and bypassed the Krauts. The LAPD taught me how to fight hand-to-hand, but mostly by way of on-the-job experience and painful trial-and-error. I'm a big Irish target, but even I have had my ass handed to me. It taught me some important lessons. I can smack like a tree branch and choke people out like an anaconda, but I can do that stuff decisively when I fight consciously."

"My other skills? Unlike a lot of the kids bouncing around Europe in Jeeps with no license, I can actually drive like a normal person. On top of that, I can get a Jeep out of harm's way, thanks to having been in five different car chases back in LA. I am fluent in Spanish and German. I picked up the latter through a combination of self-education, instruction from British linguists, and indulgence in German-language literature. It allows me to talk directly to the German cops who are under my command, to actually earn some of their respect with my own words."

Weaknesses: "I love gambling, which is probably the most self-destructive vice. Specifically, I love to bet on anything and everything. Back in LA, I'd bet on dog-racing and even cock-fights. On the ship over to North Africa, I lost twenty bucks just trying to guess which of the two squadrons flying overhead would pass over my ship first. Working the Red Ball, some of the other MP officers and I ran a prize pool to see who could run the most trucks through their checkpoint in a day. That was fun - but I have lost a lot of money in the time that I have been here."

"I may be a married man, but I must confess that I am not faithful. Not anymore, not since last year. Living in LA, with the vice and the booze and the tits in your face - I actually found it easy to stay faithful for almost ten years. Of all of the temptations I have ignored, I never expected wartorn Europe to awaken this immoral part of my being. As for my philandery in practice, I keep it as consensual as one can keep it when they are practically manipulating women into sex. I say the right things, make the right moves, and before long, I have etched yet another black mark into my marriage. Does my wife know that I have a mistress in Berlin? That's my dark secret."

---

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California.

Nationality: American Citizen.

Ethnicity: Second-generation Irish-American.

Sexuality: Heterosexual.

Religion: Roman Catholic.

---

Education:

• Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice, UCLA.
• Graduate of LAPD Training Academy.
• Graduate of the Class of 1935, FBI National Academy.
• Completed Army Basic Training, Officer Candidate School, and MP School at Camp Gordon, Georgia.

Biography: "My story starts back in 1910. I'm the son of Ira and Wendy Fallon, both of whom came over here on the boat from Ireland a mere two years before I was born. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. My mom raised me in that place. Dad was always out; that's the life of a policeman. Maybe he's the reason I became a cop. On the whole, I love the both of them. They weren't drunks or mooches, but real genuine people who worked their asses off. Me as a kid, I had it good, and that's all I will say about my childhood."

"At eighteen, it was time to make a go of the city on my own. I chose college at the University of California in Los Angeles. Leaving the city to start anew never made sense to me. I wasn't even sure what I wanted a degree in, but I liked my classes and did reasonably well. Paid for most of it on my own, by working as a crewman and laborer for DeMille Pictures. It was nothing glamorous; no starlet ever winked at me, the foremen were assholes, and they would often throw me in as an extra."

"The Depression changed everything. I lost my job and almost dropped out of UCLA, but it was Dad who intervened. 'LAPD's always hiring,' he said to me. He's a Captain, now. Back then, even as a Lieutenant over Traffic, my old man held sway. It wasn't hard to get a billet at the Academy. Sure, I took some time out of school for my training, but it paid off. I immersed myself in the course material far more than I ever did in college. I learned how to search a crime scene, how to interrogate people, and much more. I took it all in stride, and came out as a Patrolman. Mom still has a picture of he and I at the graduation."

"I did two years on the Wilshire beat as a Patrolman, along with my academy buddy Ricky Salazar as my partner for much of that time. Heh, those were the fun days before I got promoted. Ignorance is bliss, because when you're out chasing some thief through Downtown or running into a blaze at Griffith Park to rescue some poor sap, you don't have to think about the more negative things going on at your place of work. Saw a lot of bribes, some even handed right in front of me. I remember seeing my Captain take a bribe from some attorney to let a guy out of our lockup. Both of them were smiling. When someone tried to bribe me, like someone selling something stupid like counterfeit cigarettes, they never had a smile. Those people, mostly black and Mexican and Chinese who had to do a little extra to get by, they were scared of me. For that first year, I pushed the hard line. I called people 'negro' and did more talking with my truncheon than with my mouth. It wasn't that a singular event changed everything for me; I just got tired of treating people like shit for being a different color, and wanted to look at them differently. I was raised Irish Catholic, and whether or not I really cling to that crap much, we are all equal in God's eyes. Gotta remember that, even when you're wearing a badge. So, why treat every minority like a goon right off the bat? I never stood on a pedestal before the rest of the boys and said it, though. I'm not dumb; I kept my head down and minded my own racism, not whatever other officers did."

"I made Detective around '34, after they'd given me a commendation at the Griffith Park fire for carrying two guys to safety. First desk was Arson. We investigate fires and determine whether or not they are intentional. There are three types of intentional fires in my mind, and all are motivated by opportunity and greed. The first, and most common, are the insurance fires. Anyone, from the mobster on down to the local gas station owner, can take an insurance policy out on a joint, and then burn it all down for a tasty payout. The second, are crimes of passion, which are rare. You know, that's where someone kills their spouse or someone and wants to burn the evidence. Third, is an intentional act of sabotage. Rival mobsters, or rival businesses, might try to destroy something that the other owns. Again, rare like someone trying to burn up a family. Everything else, is a goddamn tragedy. I have done a lot of death investigations from fires, and it wasn't until I got to France that I found something far worse than a candle taking out a whole family."

"Upon becoming a detective, I saw a different world than what I had seen wearing a uniform. On some investigations, especially ones involving something with a big insurance payout, there would be guys from the Vice desk pulling up or calling me to tell me to fuck off. I wish I could say I always bit back, but that's not true. Vice was the Mayor's secret police; if Shaw wanted something, they got it for him. If you spit on Shaw's shoes, you could count on Vice paying you a visit."

"1935, I was sent off to Washington DC, to take part in the first class of the FBI National Academy. For a municipal cop, this is the top school you can attend while serving. We had officers from all over; New York, Miami, San Fran. We even had foreigners in the class. The FBI instructors diligently taught us new investigative techniques, like lifting fingerprints and learning to tell whether a document is authentic or forged. My particular area of interest was crime scene pathology. Reading the scene, knowing what things might be where, and the area where the crime scene is; meditating on those things really benefited me for when they moved me to Homicide."

"From '35 to my departure in '41, I worked the Homicide desk for the LAPD. No case that I did got any notes, until Homicide. The backlash against Chief Davis and Mayor Shaw was heightening, so the unit decided to buckle down, solve some cases, and put ourselves on the right side of the city. My first 'successful' big one was the takedown of mob gunman Alberto Sirocco, six months into my tenure. War vet who'd stacked corpses up on the East Coast, on behalf of the Italians. We ran afoul of him investigating the murder of a Greek man shot in broad daylight on Venice Beach. Turned out the Greek was in the criminal game, far in enough for someone to decide that putting them in the black book was a smart idea. We traced the .45 ACP casings to a local gun store, which then led us to Sirocco's hotel room. He was staked out for a few days, until we got some uniforms and arranged for a sting. We rushed him outside of the Cecil Hotel, and that precipitated into a gunfire that cost us three men, and our perp. First man I ever killed in the line of duty; first man I'd killed period. I was just moving as my mind was telling me to: I moved for cover when the first shots rung out, got to a squad car, snatched an M12 out, and racked two rounds into this sucker, making his torso into hamburger. I was petrified, even when my Sergeant and the Lieutenant were telling me I'd be fine. I'd seen death, never caused it. A lot of my Catholic sensibility, my trust in the Ten Commandments as the Law of God, was shattered."

"My soul would have been shattered, if it weren't for Claudette. I must've skipped a bit, but I do consider myself happily married. We met through mutual friends during my first year at UCLA; she's a typist and screenwriter for RKO, as if that actually pays any bills. Can't tell you how I woo'ed her. That woman is a mustang, independent and beautiful. Intimidating in her own right. Most importantly though, and a lot of people don't get this, but she lets me talk. If I have to get something out of my head before it eats me alive, Claudette is there listening to me. We hold each other, and the world feels a little less savage. We married in '38, had a son named Brent the following year. I love being a father, a provider. More than being a cop."

"My last big case took up most of '39 and '40. A killer was in town, abducting people and burying them alive in the Hills. All three of the victims were employees of a little pulp magazine publisher. What we found out is that they refused to publish a horror story by an anonymous author. Ironically, it was about a murderous gravedigger who - you just guessed it - buries people alive. He left passages from his short story at each crime scene.With the help of some criminal psychologists, we put together a profile on the suspected killer; white male, mid-thirties, egotistical, imaginative, experienced at hard labor especially when digging is concerned. Given that the writer was anonymous, we had to search the address from which the original story. This was a public address; a public library in Hollywood. A dead end, by all accounts - but then I decided to do something unorthodox. Taking the original story that was mailed to the company, I changed names around and had the company publish it as an original story by freelancer author 'Barry Lyndon.' We even had them publish the address of a bank-owned house for the purpose of "constructive criticism for the author.' The house was staked out inside with three detectives, two of which never left the house for six days. Myself and three other detectives often posed as bystanders or workers, taking note of any recurring vehicles parked near the house. There were several notable spots to park with a good view of the house's front window. It wasn't long until we noticed that a baby poop-green coupe kept parking one house down in the same spot. A guy fitting the suspected appearance of the killer in our profile, would periodically each day exit this car and walk around the block back in front of the house, loiter in his car for five minutes and drive off. Like clockwork. He went in for the kill at midnight, after six nights, jimmied a window open and climbed inside the house to find four gun barrels trained at him. We searched his property; found evidence in the form of shovels and items reported to belong to the deceased."

"Now, rather than talk about my glory days in the LAPD until you ear falls off, let's jump into the present. A cousin of mine died ay Hickam Field during the Jap attack, and the next day, I saw tons of people filling up the recruiting stations. I figured that I'd be drafted anyways; Roosevelt had been calling up men the year before. Claudette didn't seem to think so, but it didn't matter once I had signed my papers for the Army. She never said that she was mad, but I could see it in her eyes when I shipped off to Camp Gordon. Leaving her with a two-year-old while I went to war; I don't know if it's the fairest thing. But I know now that I would have hated myself for staying on the Home Front, for not going overseas."

"They initially put me in as an enlisted MP, but right after Basic, I was sent to OCS, which I graduated and was promoted to Second Lieutenant. First stop was England, where I did a combination of training and police work. There were some other cops in the contingent, but not nearly enough. Most of the rank-and-file enlisted were draftees, responsible for policing other draftees. When we weren't pulling traffic duty or keeping the GIs from getting too rowdy, I was running my boys through what it meant to be a cop. By the time Normandy rolled around, everyone took their job seriously. We escorted the convoys, both real and fake. When the GIs and the locals crossed paths, it was us who settled the disputes. There were problems, sure, but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Just the vehicles were bigger and everyone packed heat. Normandy was where the game changed."

"My platoon was posted with the 116th RCT at Dog Green, on Omaha Beach. There were DDs and other vehicles that were to come ashore. The armor was supposed to support the infantry in breaking out from the beach through the German lines. The landing was as chaotic as you might have heard; artillery and machine guns pounding the beach, men running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Platoons and companies lucky enough to reach the shore quickly found themselves scattered about and leaderless. Half of my platoon died in the first thirty minutes of being on the shore; one-half of the remaining half tried in vain to engage the Germans in the bunkers, while the rest stuck with me and attempted to give some semblance of traffic control for the tanks and vehicles that did make it onto the shore. The wet sand was like glue; just holding Jeeps down and allowing for engines to get swamped. My goal that day was to keep the wheels rolling towards the German lines, and often that took me personally reconnoitering routes through the bodies and obstacles for the tanks to go through. Goddamn nerve-wracking, to not be able to make a difference with your own gun when a hundred yards away, some Kraut is shoving a meat grinder directly into you. Took a bullet, some shrapnel, but I closed my leaky holes and kept fighting. A colonel gave me a rifle platoon at random towards the end of the battle, and we successfully took out two German mortar positions. I killed three men personally during that engagement."

"After Normandy, came the Red Ball. Our boys were pushing into France, and for them to tunnel deeper and deeper into occupied territory, it would take supply lines. Lemme tell you, it was the blacks that drove those trucks, and the blacks saved a bunch of lives. I ran security for the trucks when things first started rolling. The main RCTs were bypassing German forces, and those forces in turn would harass the supply lines. We fought off ambushes and assaults on the patrols and checkpoints we had established, and while it was in no way a pleasant fight in hot-ass France, things got easier over time. Learning German allowed me to call for surrenders. As time went on, more Germans surrendered to us. We took their names, their units, and marched them down the road opposite of the passing trucks. Even when Red Ball was dead in name by the time of Bastogne, I was running security for the supplies going to the 101st."

"Bastogne was the last time I would see a pitched battle. After that, I dealt with isolated pockets of resistance in France, and later Germany. The CID - Criminal Investigation Division - picked me up on account of my pre-war police record. This task had me on the move throughout the different zones that we liberated, as I was charged with identifying Nazi officers changed with alleged war crimes. I nabbed low-level guys; highest rank was an SS Major that some paratroopers had found in a barn, pretending to be an old woman. I saw Dachau during this time, and I am not ashamed to say that I wept at the things I saw."

"Presently, I am under the command of Colonel Howley, assisting what remnants of the police we can muster. I want to go home, and I am tired of doing wrong. There is temptation in this place, temptation that I have acted upon. While my wife waits for me to come home, I willingly sleep with another woman - Greta. The two of us have different motivations; she seeks me out because I can give her increased rations, and I need the hold of a woman, especially right now. It's slimy, and I know just how slimy it is."

"A kid was passed into my custody. Young girl, calls herself 'Eva.' I don't know much about her, other than she came from the Soviet sector. Last thing I want to think about it what she went through over there. However, if I ever have a daughter, I hope she'd be something like this girl. She's observant, willing to chew my ear off for hours about who she may have seen go by our post. Hell, she sat on the hood of my Jeep with me and pointed out several bystanders who passed us, people she knew had worn an SS uniform. Not like it did much good with the ratlines and whatnot, but that girl has a sharp eye. I don't want to be here for long, but at the very least, I hope to instill something in her. In twenty, maybe even ten years from now, that girl is going to be a very productive woman - whether here in Germany, or in the United States."

Just getting my foot in the door. Well done, my friend!

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

I am so stoked for this. I'm still wondering about characters, since I have been reading about the post-war Volkspolizei, but I hope to have an app up by tomorrow.

[Agritum]

I reiterate: this is brilliant & and an app is coming soon.

[Wolfenium]

I'll think of something, most definitely Soviet.

[Agritum]

Name: Rodolphe "Raoul" Bosc

Age: 26

Gender: Male

Appearance: A pensive, tortured Jean Gabin.

Employment: Sous-Lieutenant, Gendarmerie Nationale, détachement de Berlin, Troupes d'occupation en Allemagne (TOA)

---

Personality: Supine and taciturn, Sub-Lieutenant Bosc would normally not be considered officer material. The times are however scarce, and the amount of completed and meticoulously filed paperwork in Colonel Duchamps' cabinets attest to Bosc's value as an executor of orders. His reserved attitude is opposed by his tender amicability with strangers and a penchant to forming connections in all sorts of social areas, institutional establishments and in the occupation zone's varied community of grunts and scoundrels. A man of restraint and pondered action, Bosc's dependability has resulted in his on-field promotion to a senior inspector, often aiding Colonel Duchamps in the difficult bargains and negotiations, formal or otherwise, of Berlin and its rotten underground.

Fears: "The evil of man used to shake my heart at the seams and zone me out from the entire world. Nowadays, not much can give me that feeling anymore. Berlin's cold and dark nights and its urban rubble are still better than the human hell of the occupied Massif Central. Even then, I fear the wolf's call, and the devil's laugh. Many men in this city are wolves, or other fiends who dwell in the darkness. But there is something scarier lurking beyond them."

Hobbies: "My youth in the mountains of the Massif Central and its rigid winters have taught me to cultivate easy but thorough hobbies. I used to carve small toys and figurines of carts and farm animals as a young boy, and I still find myself reaching for small blocks of firewood to sculpt with my father's knife. My other solace has always been reading. I was lucky to have become literate early in my life, enough to piece together the two grand Germanic languages of Europe and their poets. Shelley and Goethe sit atop the shelves of the Gendarmerie station in Mende, my former dwelling."

Skills: "Gendarmes are taught and somehow conditioned to be soldiers before policemen. My physique has not rusted, but I cannot claim to have been involved in the grand battles of the Legion in Africa. Holding together my platoon in the rural mountains of Lozère as we negotiated with the SS and their Milice auxilia, and stood as an human wall for our fellow Frenchmen, I learned to value lowly subterfuge and high parlay. I have been told that I am able to keep discipline amongst lower ranks, inasmuch as I believe it is important to vigorously apply laws and codes of conduct, which are often scantly followed in occupied Berlin. My entire career has been defined by managing and ensuring public order."

Weaknesses: "The occupation of France was hell for Gendarmes. We were renamed Gardes, guards, and put to work as the unwilling collaborateurs of the strikingly fascist Milice and their Nazi backers. I am troubled by my experience as a departmental Gendarme during the occupation, regardless of the lauds and encomiums I received from the new provisional government for my conduct. I would like to think of myself as an honourable, kindly-minded man who stood by his values even under an inhuman regime. But just thinking of that time, or the things I witnessed being done to innocent men and women, puts me back into the darkest recesses of my mind. I had never heard of the Nazi occultism before my deployment in Germany: it feels like the devil worship of too many sorcerers in the tales of rural Occitania."

---

Birthplace: Mende, department of Lozère, southern France

Nationality: French

Ethnicity: Occitan French

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Religion: Catholic

---

Education (if any):

• Baccalauréat de l'enseignement du second degré ès Lettres (roughly equivalent to an American high school diploma with an heavy slant on Humanities)
  
• École de sous-officiers de la Gendarmerie nationale
  (12 month training academy for non-commissioned officers)

Biography: "My roots are in the mountains of the Massif Central, in the region once named Gévaudan and now christened Lozère. My parents are honest farmers and keepers of cows, which they milk for the small time bottling industry in Mende, and fatten up for the slaughterers who send their product upstream to Parisian rotisseries, or east to the shoreline restaurants of Monaco. The people of Lozère, like myself, are far from Paris in location and tongue. We're the heirs of the ancient French Langue D'Oc, the borderlands with the Pyrenees, the people of Guasconia and Catalunya. Alas, we showed them little mercy when they poured from the border in 1939, asking for an haven and receiving interment camps. I was twenty and already a man of the Gendarmerie, that year.

I had spent my teenage years studying by correspondency as I helped my father and uncles in rearing the cattle, sleeping lightly while awaiting for the sheperd dog, Formidable, to yell. Formidable yelled a lot, for the Massif is still filled with packs of wolves making the forests their reign. Centuries ago, they sought men rather than cattle. My grandmother always cautioned me to never go out alone at night if I had heard their howling coming from the peaks above our farm. For amongst the loups, the garouls hide. Growing up and immersing myself in my literary studies and in the sophisticacy of Classical Studies, I started discounting the legends: my mind was filled with the epic tragedy of Homer, the moralizing of Laclos, the principled stands of Cicero, the irriverent laicitè of godless Voltaire, Balzac, Zola and the other naturalists.

My tenure at the Ecole de Gendarmerie was a year long, but intense. Uncertainty regarding the foreign affairs of the republic shook my fellow cadets just as much as it did our instructors. When I received my commission as Gendarme, Poland had already been carved into two by fascists and bolsheviks. I was spared from joining the frontline divisions of the Armee de Terre, for I was already stationed as a departmental Gendarme in my very Lozère. The fall of Paris, as tragic as it was, came to us as an echo of a distant place. Mend was really its own world, and I stood by it, a gendarme of the newly rechristened Garde, serving the new French State of Vichy. I hated the Germans for what they had done to our country, and for the many sons of Lozère which now slept amongst the dead of the war. But the Zone Libre was all too quiet, and all too unlike war, to protest enough.

I still have problems remembering 1941 to 1943. It is as if my life entered a dull, boring lull of stagnation in that period.

My memories come back, smelling like blood and iron, in 1944. The Maquis had formed a base of power in the Massif Centrale, and they were increasingly drawing the ires of both the Petainist militias, and the German SS who oversaw them. The Germans showed up in Mende, too: we had to aid them in searching for this communist free-shooter, a man known colloquially as "Robert". He was a German who had left the country to avoid persecution for his ideas. This Bolshevik man had apparently organized a resistance cell in my very department, which routinely staged attacks on police forces, the Milice, and the SS. "Robert", which I later learned was the war name of one Otto Kuhn, led us into lenghty chases in the mountains for all of spring, where the halftracks of the German occupiers could not trawl. Leading my Garde station in the town, I managed to obtain an agreement with the leader of the milice unit tasked with hunting down Kuhn: the Bolshevik and his band would've been his, if he left the honest farmer folk outside of the skirmishes.

Alas, it was only in summer that we realized "Robert" hadn't started a suicidal crusade against the Vichy state. One night in June, the Germans scrambled away from Mende. We learned soon after, thanks to the Bishop of our cathedral, that the Anglo-Americans had stormed Normandy. First by air, then by sea. One month later, Paris was free, and Vichy returned to its modest service as a spa center. We were wounded in body and soul, but happy. The Germans left, and the Milice went underground. Some, I was told, journeyed with their masters into the heart of the Reich for one last stand, just like the SS Charlemagne. Kuhn and his men remained armed, waiting for any further signals from the secretariat of the Parti Communiste Francaise. He, "Robert", had won against the Germans. Alas, the Gendarmerie of Mende didn't share said victory, but neither came out defeated.

My skill in avoiding reprisals from the collaborateurs and the SS was noted by an old instructor officer I had known while in the école. It was under his tutelage that I was moved away from the departmental Gendarmerie and made into a prevotale. A provost, for anglophones. I disciplined the men of LeClerc's division as they pushed their way into Germany. I was not a frontline fighter, but even then I could savour victory even if I had not worked to earn it. My authority as a gendarme was often ignored, alas: LeClerc's men were ruthless with any French volunteers found wearing an Heer uniform. I was supposed to shut my eyes, and ignore the lines of dead French prisoners the division's men left in their wake. We heard of Dachau just as the division liberated the forced workers from the factory ground of southwestern Germany, and my disgust for the Germans grew even more.

I was, as it's often been in my life, noted again. This time by Colonel Duchamps himself, the man in charge of the Gendarmerie of occupied Berlin. The colonel needs a good book-keeper and a seasoned under-officer to keep the rowdier occupation troops at bay, preserve the new Provisional Goverment's image, and let our claim to victory, as paltry as it is, stand against the Angloamerican and Soviet colossi. I have been in Berlin since a few months after Donitz signed the instrument of surrender.

I am told to feel triumphant and relieved.

But I feel no victory in what surrounds me now."

[Lancearc]

Gendarmerie officer turned deserter turned partisan turned FFI trooper turned Gendarmerie officer coming up

Name: Lamont Boucher

Age: 37

Gender: Male

Appearance: Lamont stands at exactly six feet, with broad shoulders and a filled frame. The left side of his neck sports a thin but gnarly scar where a bullet grazed him during his stint as a partisan.

Employment: Capitaine, Gendarmerie nationale; Gendarmerie Berlin, Forces Françaises à Berlin, Forces Françaises en Allemagne

---

Personality: "All we who call ourselves followers of The Lord ought to remain conscientious of our actions, able to reflect on ourselves without shame and know the thing we have done is the right thing in the eyes of God. 'Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.' This is why I could not fall in line with the fascists. This is why I cannot abide those who did."

"The impact of a man's actions are farther reaching and more sincere than any words he may twist. I felt no shame in being called timid as a boy, and today I remain a man of few words. The war was started and extended by flowery speeches -- intended both to turn a nation's hatred on God's people, and to convince the citizens of the civilized world that this enemy could be reasoned with. The quiet are not all cowards, though. Counting myself among the timid, I contend we make for some of God's finest tools for justice."


"While I love my country and countrymen immensely, the loyalties of all people should lie with providence first and foremost. It is He alone who is above question and judgement, who is righteous in all he does and just always. There is no government, no man, no organization I would not disobey to do what I feel is the right thing in the eyes of the Lord and in my own heart."

Fears: "War draws out the worst aspects of sin in men's hearts. The war we stand in the ashes of was the worst this world has ever seen -- perhaps will ever see. Our prisoners were treated like animals, especially we who fought the partisan's 'unofficial' war. I would rather die than be a captive again, and I cannot call myself a man of God watching a captive's skin break, bruise, and bleed under my watch."

Hobbies: "In my youth, I spent many hours laboring over the parables and verses of my family's Bible de Tours, which father says was printed in 1847. It was how I first learned to read and write. I still enjoy reading and annotating the scripture to this day. Unbeknownst to many I thoroughly enjoy the glamour and style of radio stars and the cinema, and I always strive to have a radio in my quarters, never shying away from singing along to entertain my own silly fantasies of putting aside this career for stardom."

Skills: "I must first say I am not proud of the lessons I learned fighting for France's freedom from the occupiers. The Gendarmerie never prepared us to be crack shots in the field, or to slink through the shadows adeptly, but of necessity I acquired these skills for myself. Likewise, I have leaned into...less officially acceptable forms of interrogation in order to free my home. I am not proud of this, and I wish to never do so again."

"What my formal training did instill was the ability to lead without hesitation. I was among the first officers in Nantes to refuse the olive branch of the fascists, and I feel I effectively drew many of my men to fight for their principles."

Weaknesses: "The horrors of the war have opened a tender spot in my heart. Many may consider this a weakness in my line of work, for keeping the peace in such a devastated place is hardly a task for the weak-willed or soft. I am perhaps more trusting than before, less willing to pull the trigger when the time comes. I question if God tests me, even now."

---

Birthplace: Nantes, France

Nationality: French

Ethnicity: Breton

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Religion: Devoutly Roman-Catholic

---

Education (if any): Baccalauréat de l'enseignement du second degré scientifique, École de sous-officiers de la Gendarmerie nationale

Biography: "My father always said I was the quietest of my siblings the day I was born. I mewled only briefly before I was placed in my dearest mother's arms, and after that I was at peace all through the night and next day. As I grew this temperament came to define me, I suppose, in a house of 2 rowdy brothers and a younger sister vying for attention and the sibling supremacy so many seem concerned with. While I was from anti-social, I was more content to be the 'old-spirited' one who kept brothers and sisters in line.

For the years I spent growing in Nantes, I always assumed my life would take me to the clergy, just like my father. A war I was far too young to remember earnestly changed that. As I grew, dinner table conversations slowly began to turn to the war, how the fight progressed (or rather, the lack of progress the first Great War was defined by), what God could be telling the world, why He was angry with us. My mother and father seemed to agree on a simple stance after it was all over -- the Germans were a devilish people, and they wouldn't be pleased until all of France burned.

I suppose I took this to heart as a teenager, when I declared myself for service in the Gendarmerie. I never felt it was God's will I go charging across the Rhine, but defending one's home was honorable and just. And so, by 1933, I had proudly become an officer. Although the Republic's stability was far from certain, marred by deep domestic schisms and attitudes towards the rest of Europe and the world, serving God by serving my nation made me proud.

When fascists and Soviets took Poland, I knew in my heart the world would not be spared their aggression. though little did I expect they would cannibalize each other in the end. Even more unexpected was the swiftness with which the Germans fell upon France. When news of Paris' fall was coupled with German air raids, and only days later the arrival of their armies, it was like a nightmare. Sudden, myself standing paralyzed, unable to act.

Afterwards, the Germans were happy enough to demand the Gendarmerie -- now called the Garde -- to help maintain their hold on Northern France, and uphold the puppet state of cowards and traitors they established in Vichy. When the opportunity arose, I abandoned Nantes in the night, alongside seven of my own men. I would not stand by and support the rape of my home, nor the fascist oppression which came with it, and I know in my heart that God would have struck me down long ago had I fallen in with the despicable men who willingly took part in the occupation. I stopped only to ensure my mother and father were alive and well, and took to the countryside, where I was assured elements of resistance were already marshaling to deny the Germans total victory.

The war at times felt like a blur, and at others seemed to drag by in long years. The earliest days of my fight with the resistance seemed more like a countryside retreat than anything else, at least until organization improved and we were able to effectively lash out at supply lines, German officers, and conduct other smaller-scale operations. In 1940 I was captured by the fascists, and this dark period I am not eager to remember. Cruel blades, beatings and the sensation of drowning are the things that defined my imprisonment. I suppose I was lucky enough to be identified as a 'leader' among the partisans, else I would almost certainly have been executed immediately.

This went on for three months, I was told, before elements of a greatly expanded and more ferocious resistance discovered I was being held on a sheep farm south of Nantes proper. My rescue was bloody and swift, and resulted in the capture of our own prisoner, a ranking Wehrmacht officer. Here I most disappointed the Lord. I expect I will pay for my sins for the rest of my days.

Consumed by a sinful desire for revenge, I turned the cruel blades on this nameless man. I took my turn cracking his ribs, stuffing his mouth with a rag and dowsing him with water, learning everything I could of the occupation in Nantes to facilitate expanded resistance presence in the city itself. To begin its liberation.

This wouldn't be the last time I did so either. Five, or perhaps six sons, brothers, and husbands were victims to my ill-considered rage. I received my punishment soon enough, when the Germans retaliated after the assassination of Feldkommandantur Nantes Karl Hotz by trying and executing dozens of innocents. The reprisals did not end there, as arrests and deportations carried on for weeks. I never heard from my sweet sister afterwards, and still have not.

When the Americans, British, and others finally crossed the channel it felt like a victory in itself. By that time we who had so long ago abandoned our official postings were able to finally call ourselves soldiers once again under Président de Gaulle and the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur. By war's end, after Nantes was slowly abandoned by the fascists, myself and my companions who originally fled were reintegrated into the Gendarmerie.

Perhaps as further punishment for my vile sins, after recounting my experiences as a partisan I was sent to Berlin to maintain order and continue my service, rather than being granted a peaceful return home. Col. Duchamps seems convinced of my ability to instill discipline in the occupying forces where necessary and to extract information from elements of resistance that may remain.

So here I stand, as winter descends on the ruins of Berlin, likely to spend another Christmas away from my family."

[Reverend Norv]

Two Frenchmen already, albeit from very different regions and apparently with very different wartime experiences. It will be interesting to see how they get along.

[Lancearc]

Two Frenchmen already, albeit from very different regions and apparently with very different wartime experiences. It will be interesting to see how they get along.

I noted that with some excitement when I submitted my own post. Lamont will almost certainly have a very harsh opinion of those that stayed on with the Vichy and occupiers.

[Agritum]

Two Frenchmen already, albeit from very different regions and apparently with very different wartime experiences. It will be interesting to see how they get along.

I noted that with some excitement when I submitted my own post. Lamont will almost certainly have a very harsh opinion of those that stayed on with the Vichy and occupiers.

Great, we have our own miniature post-Vichy drama set up.

[Rudaslavia]

Dropping this little WIP here. A White Russian émigré whose unwavering hatred of Bolshevism and defense of the "true Russian spirit" will surely provide some ideological counterweight to prospective Soviet characters.

Name: Theodore Alexander "Teddy" Kapa

• Birth-name: Fedor Aleksandrovich Kapanadze (Russian: Федор Александрович Капанадзе)

Age: 35

Gender: Male

Appearance:



Employment: Before his recruitment by the OSS in 1943, Teddy worked in France as a senior editor for the Nash soiuz, a White émigré publication espousing far-right and anti-Semitic views. He began as a minor contributor shortly after moving to Paris in 1932, and often wrote under the penname "Viktor Samuilovich Yartsev" (which later became his primary alias while working as an agent of the OSS). By then, Kapa had already established an extensive network of contacts and connections within the émigré community at large. His "opinion articles" proved popular among younger generations of exiled Russians, who had strayed away from the tsarist orientations of their parents and grandparents.

During this time, Teddy became an active member of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Russian: Национально Трудовой Союз, tr. Nacional'no Trudovoi Soiuz), or "NTS" -- an anticommunist organization of White émigré youths seeking the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. The NTS had several chapters operating across the European continent, including the Parisian-based branch with which Teddy became involved. Despite his young age, Kapa became an indispensable asset to the Solidarist cause as an unofficial agent of counter-intelligence. Soviet authorities took the threat of the NTS seriously, and the OGPU invested a significant amount of resources into compromising the organization and its plans. Teddy was among those tasked by NTS leadership with rooting out Soviet infiltrators. Between 1935 and the fall of France in 1940, Teddy uprooted more than 15 Soviet agents from the ranks of the Parisian NTS. His cunning mind, copious attention to detail, and sheer brutality in his pursuit of communist moles earned him the nickname "охотник за шпионами" (tr. okhotnik za shpionami, literally "hunter of the spies") among Soviet officers. A recent defector from the NKGB and veteran agent of the OGPU has said of Teddy, "He [Teddy] was the only one we actually feared."

From 1942 to 1944, Kapa was employed as a part-time columnist for the Parizhskii vestnik, a Nazi-sponsored propaganda outlet for Russian émigrés in Paris. This allowed him greater leeway to act without intensive supervision by the Germans, who considered him a trusted propagandist for the Nazi regime. Teddy's work for the Parizhskii vestnik ceased following the Allied liberation of France, after which he continued working with the OSS until he was assigned to the Kommandatura's task force. He was chosen by the Kommandatura due to the investigative prowess he demonstrated with the NTS, as well as his fluency in the English, Russian, French, and German languages.

---

Personality:

Fears:

Hobbies:

Skills:

Weaknesses:

---

Birthplace: Mariupol, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Stalino Oblast, Ukrainian SSR)

Nationality: Teddy Kapa is an American citizen, but he hardly self-identifies as American. When asked, he often refers to himself as "stateless."

Ethnicity: Through American or Western European lenses, Teddy Kapa is typically identified as Russian. But a closer examination of his heritage unveils nuances that make him a prime exemplar of "Russification" -- the Russianization of ethnic minorities within the Soviet Union and the former Russian Empire. Teddy's original surname, Kapanadze, is demonstrative of his father's Georgian progenitors. Teddy's mother, however, claimed descent from a complex intermarrying of Russian, Cossack, and Ruthenian families over the course of the past three centuries. Despite his multi-ethnic background, Teddy remains culturally Russian, and he maintains a distinct pride in his Russian ancestry (partial as that ancestry it may be).

Sexuality:

Religion:

---

Education:

Biography:

[Agritum]

I've finished my app, Norv. Awaiting review.

[Reverend Norv]

I've finished my app, Norv. Awaiting review.

Accepted, Agri, naturally. Welcome to the RP! I've added Raoul to the Dramatis Personae, along with the supervising officers for PCs from the four Allied powers. Glad to have you aboard.

[Barapam]

Looks interesting. Hopefully I have time to join. I've read some of Philip Kerr's Bernie Günther novels, and this feels like my cup of tea. Right now I'm leaning towards making either a German or Soviet character.

[Sao Nova Europa]

Interested in joining as German character, a former Berlin police investigator. App is still under construction, and as such not finished yet. BTW, I recently RPed as a detective character and my character here will be somewhat similar to the one in that RP, so if you wish to assess my posting/general ideas here is a link: Link

Name: Heinrich Schneider

Age: 36

Gender: Male

Appearance:



Employment: Former Berlin Police

---

Personality:

A lover of mysteries and mind games who becomes obsessed with his cases. Heinrich is a man who has very little life outside of his line of work; he is first and foremost an investigator. When he is assigned a case, he thinks constantly about it and obsesses over it; he can remain up for two or three days because he is too obsessed with finding clues and making connections. While brilliant in finding clues on a crime scene and making connections, he is severely lacking in social skills; he hates social interactions, has almost no friends (only acquaintances), can be sarcastic and rude, and thinks too highly of himself, to the point of narcissism.

Fears:

His greatest fear is being unable to solve a case. He thinks too highly of himself to accept failure. He also witnesses nightmares from time to time; about his brother, Sebastian, a police officer who took had joined one of the Order Police Battalions and was killed in the war, and about his time in Soviet-besieged Berlin.

Hobbies:

When he isn't solving cases, he loves to play mind games/puzzle games, to read crime fiction novels and to play his violin.

Skills:

Has a long record of success in solving murder cases. He is very good at finding clues on a murder scene, especially odd ones that are usually ignored, and making connections between the various clues, the events and the suspects to find the murderer. Most of his work as an investigator involves 'sweeping' the crime scene for evidence/clues and then trying to connect the dots to solve the case. While he is generally lacking in social skills, he is very good at realizing when people lie from their facial and bodily expressions, and he can use this to his advantage.

Weaknesses:

He is obsessive with his cases, a near-narcissist who also offends people with his rudeness and sarcasm, and while he isn't an alcoholic, he is pretty damn close to being one as he can drink a whole battle in a single night. His drinking means that he isn't always at his best, especially very early in the morning, and he sometimes has headaches. The lack of social connections and friends can also be considered a weakness of his.

---

Birthplace: Berlin

Nationality: German

Ethnicity: German

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Religion: Catholic (publicly), Agnostic (privately)

---

Education (if any):

12 months course at the Kriminalfachschule (Criminal investigation college) in Berlin-Charlottenburg
9 months course at the Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei in Berlin-Charlottenburg

Biography:

Born in 1909 in Berlin to a middle class family, his father was a police detective in the Berlin police department while his mother was a housewife. He was the third, and the youngest, child of the family. A studious but rather shy individual, he excelled at mathematics and history but came lacking in social interactions and making friendship with his fellow pupils. In 1927, he join the Berlin police department (Ordnungspolizei) as a policeman; his eldest brother, Sebastian, was an investigator at the department and this certainly aided his career.

As Kriminalassistentanwärter (detective trainee), he began his training as an intern for 12 months, followed by a 12 months course at the Kriminalfachschule (Criminal investigation college) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. At college, Heinrich showed an exceptional talent at courses and was at the top of his classes, although he sill had trouble making friends. After the college, he served for 12 months as probationary detective (Kriminalassistent aus Probe).

In 1930, he became an Apl. Kriminalassistent (supernumerary detective), until a billet became free and he was appointed to a permanent position as Kriminalassistent in 1931. As investigator, he was mainly assigned to murder and disappearances cases. He made a name for himself thanks to solving many of those cases, a lot of them in a rather speedy manner. At the same time, though, his eccentricities and mannerisms put off many in his department. As the chief of the department stated once, "if this mother***** wasn't such a brilliant detective, I would have demoted him from the department!" In 1934, he passed a civil service examination that would allow him to serve as an Executive Criminal Investigator (Kriminalkommissaranwärter). This was followed by a 12 months internship, a 9 months course at the Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and a six months probationary appointment as Kriminalkommissar auf Probe before finally becoming a Kriminalkommissaranwärter (in 1937).

In 1936, the police forces of the German states were absorbed by the Nazi central government, falling under the Interior Ministry. Heinrich didn't have an interest in politics and he was rather apathetic to the regime itself, but he was willing to show outward respect to maintain his position. His complacency towards the regime and apathy towards politics meant that he wasn't affected by this transition. When the war came in 1939, Heinrich and Sebastian followed different paths. Sebastian joined a battalion-sized police formation that aided in the invasion of Poland and then served as an occupying police officer in the region. Heinrich, on the other hand, preferred to remain in Berlin and focus on what he was best at doing; investigating criminal cases.

In war-time Berlin, he spent much of his time investigating cases such as a serial rapist and murderer, the disappearance of a WWI veteran (whose body he found, and then he was able to uncover his murderer), and other criminal cases. He also, however, undertook other, far less noble, cases. As the Berlin police was an SS branch, this meant that Heinrich also had to enforce the political agenda of the Nazi regime. More than once his investigations were not to uncover a murderer, but rather to discover and hunt down Jews, socialists and homosexuals whose only crime were being scapegoated by the Nazi regime. Heinrich didn't particularly care about the morality of such cases nor did he endorse the hunting down of those minorities; for him, it were the cases and the mind puzzles that they represented that mattered, not the morality of the cases. As long as he satisfied his need for intellectual stimulation, he was perfectly willing to hunt them down.

His reputation for efficiency meant that he was allowed to remain in the Berlin police department rather than serve in some of the occupied countries or in a combat unit. His brother, Sebastian, as a member of the Police Battalions, was responsible for the transportation of Jews in concentration camps and for atrocities against civilians. In 1943, Sebastian was killed in a partisan attack. This affected greatly Heinrich, who began experiencing frequent nightmares.

As the war turned more desperate for the Germans, Heinrich focused on his cases, ignoring the disasters unfolding around him. Perhaps this was his way of trying to avoid the unpleasant reality. As the Soviets approached Berlin, police forces were to supplement the defense of the city. Heinrich did his best to try and avoid active combat duty, instead focusing on other military wartime duties such as sentry duty, supplies, etch. He was forced though to fight and experience first-hand the horrors of war as the German forces were becoming depleting and policemen were pushed into combat action. Heinrich was one of the lucky ones, suffering a minor leg injury and staying alive until the surrender of May.

His stellar record as an investigative officer meant that the occupation forces became interested in him and gave him an offer to aid them in criminal investigations in occupied Berlin. Heinrich accepted, being more interested in solving his cases than worrying about serving the 'occupiers'.

[Somerania]

Tagged

[Reverend Norv]

Interested in joining as German character, a former Berlin police investigator. App is still under construction, and as such not finished yet. BTW, I recently RPed as a detective character and my character here will be somewhat similar to the one in that RP, so if you wish to assess my posting/general ideas here is a link: Link

Name: Heinrich Schneider

Age: 36

Gender: Male

Appearance:

([url=https://i.postimg.cc/TY0hB7Lx/51pm-Bpxsm-TL-AC-UL1001.jpg]Image)[/url]

Employment: Former Berlin Police

---

Personality:

A lover of mysteries and mind games who becomes obsessed with his cases. Heinrich is a man who has very little life outside of his line of work; he is first and foremost an investigator. When he is assigned a case, he thinks constantly about it and obsesses over it; he can remain up for two or three days because he is too obsessed with finding clues and making connections. While brilliant in finding clues on a crime scene and making connections, he is severely lacking in social skills; he hates social interactions, has almost no friends (only acquaintances), can be sarcastic and rude, and thinks too highly of himself, to the point of narcissism.

Fears:

His greatest fear is being unable to solve a case. He thinks too highly of himself to accept failure. He also witnesses nightmares from time to time about his brother, Sebastian, an SS officer who was killed in the war.

Hobbies:

When he isn't solving cases, he loves to play mind games/puzzle games, to read crime fiction novels and to play his violin.

Skills:

Has a long record of success in solving murder cases. He is very good at finding clues on a murder scene, especially odd ones that are usually ignored, and making connections between the various clues, the events and the suspects to find the murderer. Most of his work as an investigator involves 'sweeping' the crime scene for evidence/clues and then trying to connect the dots to solve the case. While he is generally lacking in social skills, he is very good at realizing when people lie from their facial and bodily expressions, and he can use this to his advantage.

Weaknesses:

He is obsessive with his cases, a near-narcissist who also offends people with his rudeness and sarcasm, and while he isn't an alcoholic, he is pretty damn close to being one as he can drink a whole battle in a single night. His drinking means that he isn't always at his best, especially very early in the morning, and he sometimes has headaches. The lack of social connections and friends can also be considered a weakness of his.

---

Birthplace:

Nationality: German

Ethnicity: German

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Religion: Catholic (publicly), Agnostic (privately)

---

Education (if any):

Biography:

I'll consider the app once complete, but I encourage you to review the special rule in the OP regarding German characters, as well as the general rule about making sure characters fit their historical context. This is a very specific time and place, and an idea drawn from another RP is unlikely to work well in this one.

[The Grand Duchy Of Nova Capile]

I'm guessing Himmler is not a playable character? Historically he's been dead for a few months, and also obviously he's rather central to the plot of the story so I completely understand if he's off limits.

Regardless, mark me interested.

EDIT: Ignore me, I am over-excite-able and do not read all the rules before posting.

[Reverend Norv]

I'm guessing Himmler is not a playable character? Historically he's been dead for a few months, and also obviously he's rather central to the plot of the story so I completely understand if he's off limits.

Regardless, mark me interested.

Nope, no Himmler, if only for the obvious reason that he would not be assigned to an investigatory team of the Allied Kommandatura. And since the question has come up before on Discord, I'll add that all the historical facts related to Himmler hold true in this RP: he was arrested while attempting to escape using false papers; identified by the British; and committed suicide while in their custody. As the plot progresses, we may be...adding elements to the historical record, but we won't be changing RL historical events.

EDIT: hah! No worries; enthusiasm is not a sin.

[The Grand Duchy Of Nova Capile]

Nope, no Himmler, if only for the obvious reason that he would not be assigned to an investigatory team of the Allied Kommandatura. And since the question has come up before on Discord, I'll add that all the historical facts related to Himmler hold true in this RP: he was arrested while attempting to escape using false papers; identified by the British; and committed suicide while in their custody. As the plot progresses, we may be...adding elements to the historical record, but we won't be changing RL historical events.

EDIT: hah! No worries; enthusiasm is not a sin.

Interesting... I'll keep thinking of more ideas, because you've hooked me here, but do let me know if you think of any interesting roles I could fill.

Perhaps a former SS/Wehrmacht man seeking to incriminate his former confederates in exchange for evading punishment for his own crimes? Then again, he might know too much to be a viable character. Again, let me know if you think of anything.

[Reverend Norv]

Nope, no Himmler, if only for the obvious reason that he would not be assigned to an investigatory team of the Allied Kommandatura. And since the question has come up before on Discord, I'll add that all the historical facts related to Himmler hold true in this RP: he was arrested while attempting to escape using false papers; identified by the British; and committed suicide while in their custody. As the plot progresses, we may be...adding elements to the historical record, but we won't be changing RL historical events.

EDIT: hah! No worries; enthusiasm is not a sin.

Interesting... I'll keep thinking of more ideas, because you've hooked me here, but do let me know if you think of any interesting roles I could fill.

Perhaps a former SS/Wehrmacht man seeking to incriminate his former confederates in exchange for evading punishment for his own crimes? Then again, he might know too much to be a viable character. Again, let me know if you think of anything.

I think an informant of that sort would work; he'd serve a useful plot purpose, though I would need to feed you information by TG in order to make the dynamic function. That said, while I know you're a good writer, you should still carefully consider the special rule about German characters. That rule does not mean that we can't have characters who were or even are Nazis, but it does mean that those characters need to be shown as the criminals that they were. I am not interested in perpetuating any myths about the "clean Wehrmacht," much less the "clean SS." Since it sounds like you are contemplating a character who is clearly a war criminal acting out of self-preservation, I'm less concerned about this issue, but it still bears repeating.

[Cylarn]

Captain Fallon is ready for judgement.