Lead a youth with superhuman powers and all-too-human problems in the world of our interwar Germany.
REVENGE: An interwar Germany superhuman quest
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PROLOGUE: ONE (BIRTH)
New
DanBaque
Let's Have Fun
- Location
- Occupied Catalonian Countries
- Pronouns
- He/Him
REVENGE
an interwar Germany superhuman quest
an interwar Germany superhuman quest
The wreckage of total war is not a nice place to be. It is even worse when it is that of the losing side. But mostly people choose to keep going, because it remains better than the alternative.
They continue to live, to struggle, to love. Or, at least, to marry. With pensions still very much insecure and weak, it remains a burden on children's backs to support their parents. Marriage is the key to future economic safety, to say nothing of the present.
In this world it was that a man and a woman found, if not love, companionship. They had made the choice to live together, and to bring forth more life into the world. They are called Hans Kraft and Greta Bauer. They are your parents. What blessing did you give upon them, that they might raise, in the year 1913!
Your father was called on soon after your birth, and the war's penury made you sickly. Never rich, your family struggled and so did you. Those four years left you a tad weaker than you would've been, less physically imposing. The following five years were hardly better.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. In you, as in many, was hidden the seed of brilliance. You might shine more than others. Or perhaps you will have another destiny behind you. One dark and hushed, feared and obscure.
Either way, that destiny will need a name and title. You will be known, though your story has only just begun.
You were raised first by your mother, and your parents' parents. But that was a sad tale. Your mother had little time to give you, with shifts increasing at her factory's work and her exhaustion always palpable. Your grandparents died one by one, so that when you reached the age of seven you only had your parents. Your father, who you had so rarely seen in the first four years of life, returned dour and unhappy. Your mother chided him, and they quarreled, but reconciled over shared passions.
They turned to drink.
Your life turned grey. You lived lonely, half a wild street child, half afraid at home. Hans and Greta had become neglectful from their shared joy, and cared only occasionally about you. When they cared, it was often with shouts and clips of the hand. You learned to be wary of the belt, and though you ought to have been inured to it, you shied from violence.
Primary school was your grand opportunity. Newly free, thanks to the republic, you entered it at age six with eager eyes. It bullied out your hopes and dreams. The teachers proved more willing to use their switch than your parents their fists, and your fellows jeered at you. Even here you were the odd one out, the ratty one who could best be picked on.
You fought, of course. It was inevitable that you would try force against your harassers. But this was not just a generation of cowards picking on the weakest. It was a generation raised by those drunk on violence. Even those sober still remained hungover, and grasped it freely. You were badly beaten, time and again, and learnt that resistance was futile. It was easier and less painful if you ignored it and turned your head, if you let them have their way.
But you never gave up hope. That, you refused to. And you were right not to, in the end.
Who is that weak, suffering child? Where do you come from, resilient beast?
[] Plan J
- [] A boy
- [] Joachim Kraft
-[] Card-carrying SPD members, of protestant faith
- [] The Ruhr
[] Plan H
- [] A girl
- [] Helmine Kraft
- [] Devout catholics, politically liberal
- [] Munich
[] Write-in
- [] Gender
- [] Name
- [] Parents' upbringing
- [] Region
Hello everyone and welcome to a superhuman quest set in interwar Germany! The intention with this is to be a heavily character-centered quest with some basic story beats planned out but not decided and of course heavily dependent on votes. It may be a little until the superpowers arrive, but rest assured they will, with the end of the prologue.
I am running this quest on both SB and SV as a test, counting votes all together. Please feel free to ask any questions you want! This first vote will probably run about 24 hours.
PROLOGUE: TWO (CHILDHOOD)
New
DanBaque
Let's Have Fun
- Location
- Occupied Catalonian Countries
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[] Plan H
- [] A girl
- [] Helmine Kraft
- [] Devout catholics, politically liberal
- [] Munich
YOU, Helmine Kraft, are six when you enter school in 1919. You are fourteen when you leave it in 1927. The eight years in between are as formative to you as they are to all your companions, but you only share part of your experiences with the rest.
Living in Munich, you of course live through the chaos of the commune and the bloodletting afterwards. But what most strikes you is the economic uncertainty of the years following, the constant fear for work or food, the inflationary crisis. You are too young to understand why inflation is ultimately a good policy that the people of Germany agree with, that resistance to the occupation of the Rhineland is necessary. You only understand that money has become a plaything, but meat remains scarce.
This hardly helps you grow big and strong, and your fellow girls tease you for it at school. But you are hardly a complete wallflower, and you do find friends. You giggle with them after Sunday Mass and play with them in the afternoons. More often than not, you search them out rather than remain at home, where your parents have grown worse.
It is a sad thing of the time that corporal punishment is normalised and agreed with, even by the most loving parents. But you do not have that luxury. While Hans and Greta both increasingly seem to care for each other as friends and partners, you are an odd one out in the family. You do not know why, as a child, and indeed it is ultimately irrational. As the years pass, and no further children come, labor and expectations are thrust upon you. No warmth comes with them.
With time, you learn better than to rebel. You will snap, or plot, but you are a child. Once you run away, only to be brought back by hunger. You are belted thoroughly for that. You begin to look forward to adulthood, that inner hope of yours never quite dying. Perhaps in part this comes from your parents' ideals.
Much as they are self-evidently worthless to you, the hope of truth and happiness and freedom to live remains ingrained.
When you are ten, you suffer another blow. Having finished grundschule (elementary school), you and your friends are split up. The increasing solidity of political catholicism in Bavaria convinces your parents to send you to a religious school for your advanced studies, one that only some of them come with you to.
There you learn a lot. The first thing you learn is discipline. No matter how much you disliked your past school-teachers, they are amateurs compared to the nuns. Perhaps that is in part due to belief: these women hold their educational mission firmer to their hearts, and live in such cloisters as would terrify you.
Other girls, your fellows, still rebel. They play behind the teachers' backs, daydream, and act out. You do not. Your spirit is ebbing. You have come to wonder if there is really anything more than submission to God and authority both.
As you are learning what is proper for a wife to do, household tasks, and theological matters, your father gets into an accident. He is made lame for months, and you are pulled out of school. The money is needed at home, and so are your arms. You take up odd-jobs, children's jobs, and slave over your ungrateful father when at home. When you return to school, your friends and classmates have graduated and you feel alone.
Your last year in school is worse than all the rest. You have been pushed further behind your companions, though most of them you will not really miss. You have been pushed into uncertainty, and surrender again to authority. You obey the nuns and pray each night for a way out.
Then you graduate. The future is all before you, open but narrow. There is only one choice before you, and that is marriage. But that is for the future.
First, the present. In your childhood, now changing to adulthood, you evolved and became a true person, a union of id, ego, and superego. And you learnt something about yourself.
What path did your journey take you towards most?
[] Education: With all your hard work, you excelled in your studies. You made friends with swots, and talked to each other about the strangest of matters- literature, algebra, Max Plank.
[] Sociability: Thrown into the deep end, you learnt to act. Perfect before the teachers' eyes, you held forth a charisma that found you hangers-on always and invoked the jealousy of many.
[] Physicality: So what if you were small? You could be fast, you could be sharp, you could jump and skip and run with the best of them. In these modern days even women can be athletes, and perhaps you could be one.
Who made butterflies crop up in your belly, and cause you to blush at the oddest of times?
[] Boys, when you see them sweating at work and playing with balls, speaking only rarely and oft chaperoned.
[] Girls, so innocent and so wicked at turns, laughing with you at a joke or kneeling beside you at prayer.
[] No one. Frivolity? Another aspect of your strangeness? Chasteness is a virtue you have no trouble with.
5 votes on SB and 4 on SV for an overall majority for 'Plan H', though 'Plan Z' might've won given another day, who knows. Had some early time so wrote just now. Feel free to vote for the options jointly or separately. Hope to write again in about 26 hours, and if not perhaps the day after.
- [] A girl
- [] Helmine Kraft
- [] Devout catholics, politically liberal
- [] Munich
YOU, Helmine Kraft, are six when you enter school in 1919. You are fourteen when you leave it in 1927. The eight years in between are as formative to you as they are to all your companions, but you only share part of your experiences with the rest.
Living in Munich, you of course live through the chaos of the commune and the bloodletting afterwards. But what most strikes you is the economic uncertainty of the years following, the constant fear for work or food, the inflationary crisis. You are too young to understand why inflation is ultimately a good policy that the people of Germany agree with, that resistance to the occupation of the Rhineland is necessary. You only understand that money has become a plaything, but meat remains scarce.
This hardly helps you grow big and strong, and your fellow girls tease you for it at school. But you are hardly a complete wallflower, and you do find friends. You giggle with them after Sunday Mass and play with them in the afternoons. More often than not, you search them out rather than remain at home, where your parents have grown worse.
It is a sad thing of the time that corporal punishment is normalised and agreed with, even by the most loving parents. But you do not have that luxury. While Hans and Greta both increasingly seem to care for each other as friends and partners, you are an odd one out in the family. You do not know why, as a child, and indeed it is ultimately irrational. As the years pass, and no further children come, labor and expectations are thrust upon you. No warmth comes with them.
With time, you learn better than to rebel. You will snap, or plot, but you are a child. Once you run away, only to be brought back by hunger. You are belted thoroughly for that. You begin to look forward to adulthood, that inner hope of yours never quite dying. Perhaps in part this comes from your parents' ideals.
Much as they are self-evidently worthless to you, the hope of truth and happiness and freedom to live remains ingrained.
When you are ten, you suffer another blow. Having finished grundschule (elementary school), you and your friends are split up. The increasing solidity of political catholicism in Bavaria convinces your parents to send you to a religious school for your advanced studies, one that only some of them come with you to.
There you learn a lot. The first thing you learn is discipline. No matter how much you disliked your past school-teachers, they are amateurs compared to the nuns. Perhaps that is in part due to belief: these women hold their educational mission firmer to their hearts, and live in such cloisters as would terrify you.
Other girls, your fellows, still rebel. They play behind the teachers' backs, daydream, and act out. You do not. Your spirit is ebbing. You have come to wonder if there is really anything more than submission to God and authority both.
As you are learning what is proper for a wife to do, household tasks, and theological matters, your father gets into an accident. He is made lame for months, and you are pulled out of school. The money is needed at home, and so are your arms. You take up odd-jobs, children's jobs, and slave over your ungrateful father when at home. When you return to school, your friends and classmates have graduated and you feel alone.
Your last year in school is worse than all the rest. You have been pushed further behind your companions, though most of them you will not really miss. You have been pushed into uncertainty, and surrender again to authority. You obey the nuns and pray each night for a way out.
Then you graduate. The future is all before you, open but narrow. There is only one choice before you, and that is marriage. But that is for the future.
First, the present. In your childhood, now changing to adulthood, you evolved and became a true person, a union of id, ego, and superego. And you learnt something about yourself.
What path did your journey take you towards most?
[] Education: With all your hard work, you excelled in your studies. You made friends with swots, and talked to each other about the strangest of matters- literature, algebra, Max Plank.
[] Sociability: Thrown into the deep end, you learnt to act. Perfect before the teachers' eyes, you held forth a charisma that found you hangers-on always and invoked the jealousy of many.
[] Physicality: So what if you were small? You could be fast, you could be sharp, you could jump and skip and run with the best of them. In these modern days even women can be athletes, and perhaps you could be one.
Who made butterflies crop up in your belly, and cause you to blush at the oddest of times?
[] Boys, when you see them sweating at work and playing with balls, speaking only rarely and oft chaperoned.
[] Girls, so innocent and so wicked at turns, laughing with you at a joke or kneeling beside you at prayer.
[] No one. Frivolity? Another aspect of your strangeness? Chasteness is a virtue you have no trouble with.
5 votes on SB and 4 on SV for an overall majority for 'Plan H', though 'Plan Z' might've won given another day, who knows. Had some early time so wrote just now. Feel free to vote for the options jointly or separately. Hope to write again in about 26 hours, and if not perhaps the day after.
PROLOGUE: THREE (ADULTHOOD)
New
DanBaque
Let's Have Fun
- Location
- Occupied Catalonian Countries
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[] Education: With all your hard work, you excelled in your studies. You made friends with swots, and talked to each other about the strangest of matters- literature, algebra, Max Plank.
[] Girls, so innocent and so wicked at turns, laughing with you at a joke or kneeling beside you at prayer.
So long as you are reading, you are safe. The flutter of pages and the smell of ink has charms the rest of the world does not, and you love them well. But you also have friends who read as you do, who share your interest in the liberal arts and the sciences. You quiz each other over the significance of Wagner and pore over mathematical equations.
Naturally, your grades are as close to perfect as possible- something to be noted, given your unfavourable home situation. Naturally, also, this leads to bullying. You are teased and harassed as a bookworm, as a teachers' pet, and though you never snitch it is not an easy time.
It is made less easy by your odd feelings towards some of the girls of the school. They come and go, and feel inexplicable, but you redden and squirm and stutter. On an unlikely school trip to Berlin you find the answer: sapphism. You feel towards women as you should towards men, and are a sinner at heart. Thankfully, the confession booth is private, and the priest reassures you that so long as you do not act upon it you will be safe. At one point it even occurs to you that it will be easier to remain chaste thanks to this.
The thought does not make you feel much better.
But you are busy. After graduating, you wanted to continue your studies, perhaps at a secondary school. But your parents directed you towards work, not fully unfairly. Times were tough, after all, and an extra income coming in would be much appreciated. So you found work at a bookshop, helping organise the shelves and selling the latest trite romance novels. It was dull work, but at least you could educate yourself by reading in your spare time.
Being the source of money for your family changes things. Your parents respect you more, perhaps in part because you have grown up, and you have a stronger negotiating base towards them. At the same time, by now it is quite clear the relationship has cooled. They do not hate you, and they will carry out their responsibilities by you as necessary. They simply do not care for your welfare or your happiness.
On your part, your childlike anger has not softened, but become a hard will. Helmine Kraft looks forward to the day she sheds her surname, and with it all legal ties to her parents. The only realistic way to do this is, of course, marriage.
Marriage is an odd thing to eighteen-year-old you. There is no other real option for your future, and yet you think you will never love a man. You are uncertain about children, and the act required you fear. You do not expect much from the world, but you do expect it to be better. Maybe that is wrong of you. But what point is there in giving up?
As it is, despite your situation, you do have several suitors.
Hermann Meyer is a man older than you by two decades. He comes childless and from one successful marriage prior, his wife having died of the flu. He already has some wealth, in that he owns shares in a profitable sausage-factory and works as an engineer. He is formal, and Protestant, and inspires no passion in you. But he does have his own passion towards sports and religion, and marriage to him would mean good hopes for your livelihood.
Kuno Kuttner is just a little older than you, a Berliner who is something of a friend. He is very interested in women's fashion, and insists on buying you things while taking your old clothes away. You eat once or twice at a cafe and talk about books and politics, where he seems thoughtful. You catch them wearing one of your old shirts once, and they confess to wishing to be a woman. You smile at her and keep that secret between yourselves.
Vinzenz Boll is a farmer, Catholic to the bone. He rents farmland and works hard day in and day out. He only comes to Munich on market days and for holy processions. He is saving up to mechanise, if he can, with a cooperative organised by the local parish priest. He respects your privacy, and only speaks to you on Sundays after Mass, where he seems rigid but ambitious.
Sören Rosenfeld is a factory worker, the older brother of one of your friends. He seems more socialist than the rest of your colleagues, so you avoid politics when they come around, and talk about him with his sister, and her with him. You exchange letters like this. The letters speak to a cultured man you might well be able to converse with, and to a man used to female education. He seems noble and your friend thinks you could do worse, but then she loves him.
Who do you choose, insofar as it is a true choice, to be courted by and marry?
[] Hermann Meyer
[] Kuno Kuttner
[] Vinzenz Boll
[] Sören Rosenfeld
Majority of 3 in Education, tie between No one and Girls resolved by a random number picker. Should only be two more parts of the prologue at most. AMA.
[] Girls, so innocent and so wicked at turns, laughing with you at a joke or kneeling beside you at prayer.
So long as you are reading, you are safe. The flutter of pages and the smell of ink has charms the rest of the world does not, and you love them well. But you also have friends who read as you do, who share your interest in the liberal arts and the sciences. You quiz each other over the significance of Wagner and pore over mathematical equations.
Naturally, your grades are as close to perfect as possible- something to be noted, given your unfavourable home situation. Naturally, also, this leads to bullying. You are teased and harassed as a bookworm, as a teachers' pet, and though you never snitch it is not an easy time.
It is made less easy by your odd feelings towards some of the girls of the school. They come and go, and feel inexplicable, but you redden and squirm and stutter. On an unlikely school trip to Berlin you find the answer: sapphism. You feel towards women as you should towards men, and are a sinner at heart. Thankfully, the confession booth is private, and the priest reassures you that so long as you do not act upon it you will be safe. At one point it even occurs to you that it will be easier to remain chaste thanks to this.
The thought does not make you feel much better.
But you are busy. After graduating, you wanted to continue your studies, perhaps at a secondary school. But your parents directed you towards work, not fully unfairly. Times were tough, after all, and an extra income coming in would be much appreciated. So you found work at a bookshop, helping organise the shelves and selling the latest trite romance novels. It was dull work, but at least you could educate yourself by reading in your spare time.
Being the source of money for your family changes things. Your parents respect you more, perhaps in part because you have grown up, and you have a stronger negotiating base towards them. At the same time, by now it is quite clear the relationship has cooled. They do not hate you, and they will carry out their responsibilities by you as necessary. They simply do not care for your welfare or your happiness.
On your part, your childlike anger has not softened, but become a hard will. Helmine Kraft looks forward to the day she sheds her surname, and with it all legal ties to her parents. The only realistic way to do this is, of course, marriage.
Marriage is an odd thing to eighteen-year-old you. There is no other real option for your future, and yet you think you will never love a man. You are uncertain about children, and the act required you fear. You do not expect much from the world, but you do expect it to be better. Maybe that is wrong of you. But what point is there in giving up?
As it is, despite your situation, you do have several suitors.
Hermann Meyer is a man older than you by two decades. He comes childless and from one successful marriage prior, his wife having died of the flu. He already has some wealth, in that he owns shares in a profitable sausage-factory and works as an engineer. He is formal, and Protestant, and inspires no passion in you. But he does have his own passion towards sports and religion, and marriage to him would mean good hopes for your livelihood.
Kuno Kuttner is just a little older than you, a Berliner who is something of a friend. He is very interested in women's fashion, and insists on buying you things while taking your old clothes away. You eat once or twice at a cafe and talk about books and politics, where he seems thoughtful. You catch them wearing one of your old shirts once, and they confess to wishing to be a woman. You smile at her and keep that secret between yourselves.
Vinzenz Boll is a farmer, Catholic to the bone. He rents farmland and works hard day in and day out. He only comes to Munich on market days and for holy processions. He is saving up to mechanise, if he can, with a cooperative organised by the local parish priest. He respects your privacy, and only speaks to you on Sundays after Mass, where he seems rigid but ambitious.
Sören Rosenfeld is a factory worker, the older brother of one of your friends. He seems more socialist than the rest of your colleagues, so you avoid politics when they come around, and talk about him with his sister, and her with him. You exchange letters like this. The letters speak to a cultured man you might well be able to converse with, and to a man used to female education. He seems noble and your friend thinks you could do worse, but then she loves him.
Who do you choose, insofar as it is a true choice, to be courted by and marry?
[] Hermann Meyer
[] Kuno Kuttner
[] Vinzenz Boll
[] Sören Rosenfeld
Majority of 3 in Education, tie between No one and Girls resolved by a random number picker. Should only be two more parts of the prologue at most. AMA.
PROLOGUE: FOUR (MARRIAGE)
New
DanBaque
Let's Have Fun
- Location
- Occupied Catalonian Countries
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's not unlovely to be married. But it is the oddest thing. You are married in the Catholic faith, and then noted in the civil registry, without a great fanfare on either of your parts. Your father gives you away, and it is a delight to leave his side. The economic situation is dire, after the great American crash, and so there is no wild trip of love.
But there is a honeymoon. You laugh and play together, and teasingly begin to note each others' tells. You are free with your voice and your decisions, and Kuno is deeply interested in everything you have to say. You are, in fact, married to a friend who you feel a certain attraction to. It seems that hope was right.
You both work and study in your spare time, hoping to advance in your professions. You both dress up and go to secretive clubs in Berlin on week-ends. You are beginning to be happy. In happiness, however, Helmine Kraft misses a few things.
She misses that Kuno is far more uncertain about life than her. She misses that her partner defers to her in most things, and looks up to her in an unhealthy way. She misses, when she becomes pregnant less than a year into the marriage, the pain and the grief and the insecurity in Kuno Kuttner. She misses that the power in the relationship has de facto fallen to her.
This, despite the legal standard and the income disparity. Helmine has a strength over her partner. News of an incoming child is the death knell of love. Economic anxiety afflicts both deeply, but more so Helmine, forced to leave her job. Toxicity begins to brew. As in all cases, it is the powerful who act and the weak who suffer.
Kuno suffers. Not from physical weakness, or lack of erudition, or lack of available options. But from a trap in her mind, from a circular logic that places Helmine above her and browbeats herself slowly downwards.
The children are born. They are twins, named Ernst and Trudi, and in good health. But they bring stress to the family, a constant stress that is accompanied by the increased burden on the budget, already tight. Both Helmine and Kuno cut down on their meals for the sake of the babies, cut down on clothes, cut down on everything.
Politically, things are not very good either. Germany is becoming a more dangerous place. All around there are threats, the streets are full of fighting and rogue youth, and hate crimes rising. Prussia has been placed under authoritarian rule. Perhaps the whole country will be next?
Maybe this stress explains it. Maybe hurt people hurt people. Whatever the reason, an emotional browbeating shifts to shouting, then shifts to worse. One night, Helmine Kraft strikes Kuno. The shock of it drives the argument from her mind, and she apologises worshipfully. They make love, crying to one another.
Then it happens again. You are Kuno Kuttner, and you are afraid.
For once in your life, you had something good. A lifetime of uncertainty, of ill-treatment by your parents, of brutality at school, of hazing everywhere, of feeling wrong to every inch of yourself.
You thought you had found someone similar, someone damaged like you. But you had found someone who was moving past that damage, and you tried to help her, not realising you were placing yourself under her boot sole. You found someone willing to teach you what you wanted to be most, and gave yourself up without worrying about the consequences. And now you are doomed.
Things do not only get worse. There are better weeks and worse weeks. When the children start teething is a bad time. The children are, indeed, part of the problem. You may not have been sure about them at first, but now you love them. You love Ernst and Trudi more than anyone else you have ever loved, more than your wife, and certainly more than yourself.
You cannot leave them, and you cannot take them with you. You are a couple, and though it may be a terrible one you wish you could escape, the locktrap of your mind allows it no more than it would allow you to throw one of the kids in the sewer.
So the world continues to turn, and the year 1933 comes. With it, comes violence. Violence unleashed by the state upon the streets and upon the people. Adolf Hitler has become Chancellor, and the Reichstag is burning. The fear of discovery, the fear of being attacked, bedevils you both.
But it is not unity that you two achieve. It is that same violence that is being expressed in disgust and hate and fists upon you, and in February it reaches a crescendo. Lying on the ground you, Kuno Kuttner, are shaking from fear. You are a wounded animal, a mammal trapped against the wall.
Your face is bruised from a saucepan thrown at you, and your hands are covering your face as Helmine screams at you. "Look at me, coward!", she is saying. "Look me in the eye when I speak to you!". The children are crying in the doorway, unable to understand.
Sobbing, you turn your eyes up to her face, and are overcome by a relentless hate. A fury bursts in you like never before, a spite at this human beast who treats you like dirt. It bursts out of you, out of your eyes, a fire of blinding light. Helmine doesn't have the time to feel it before she falls to the ground, dead.
You stare, agape. What on earth? You bring your hands to your eyes, which feel warm and wet with tears. Nothing makes sense now. Helmin smells like burning flesh. Her face is a mess of burnt skin and pieces of bone. You sit there for minutes, staring, until you remember the children. And then you are a flurry of action.
WHAT do you do?
[] Try to cover-up the murder in the street violence.
[] Turn yourself in.
[] Hide the body and act like nothing is wrong.
Current Status
Shop assistant, widowed
Known Powers
Laser eyes?
Prologue finished, off to the actual meat of the quest now! As always, ask any questions you wish.
But there is a honeymoon. You laugh and play together, and teasingly begin to note each others' tells. You are free with your voice and your decisions, and Kuno is deeply interested in everything you have to say. You are, in fact, married to a friend who you feel a certain attraction to. It seems that hope was right.
You both work and study in your spare time, hoping to advance in your professions. You both dress up and go to secretive clubs in Berlin on week-ends. You are beginning to be happy. In happiness, however, Helmine Kraft misses a few things.
She misses that Kuno is far more uncertain about life than her. She misses that her partner defers to her in most things, and looks up to her in an unhealthy way. She misses, when she becomes pregnant less than a year into the marriage, the pain and the grief and the insecurity in Kuno Kuttner. She misses that the power in the relationship has de facto fallen to her.
This, despite the legal standard and the income disparity. Helmine has a strength over her partner. News of an incoming child is the death knell of love. Economic anxiety afflicts both deeply, but more so Helmine, forced to leave her job. Toxicity begins to brew. As in all cases, it is the powerful who act and the weak who suffer.
Kuno suffers. Not from physical weakness, or lack of erudition, or lack of available options. But from a trap in her mind, from a circular logic that places Helmine above her and browbeats herself slowly downwards.
The children are born. They are twins, named Ernst and Trudi, and in good health. But they bring stress to the family, a constant stress that is accompanied by the increased burden on the budget, already tight. Both Helmine and Kuno cut down on their meals for the sake of the babies, cut down on clothes, cut down on everything.
Politically, things are not very good either. Germany is becoming a more dangerous place. All around there are threats, the streets are full of fighting and rogue youth, and hate crimes rising. Prussia has been placed under authoritarian rule. Perhaps the whole country will be next?
Maybe this stress explains it. Maybe hurt people hurt people. Whatever the reason, an emotional browbeating shifts to shouting, then shifts to worse. One night, Helmine Kraft strikes Kuno. The shock of it drives the argument from her mind, and she apologises worshipfully. They make love, crying to one another.
Then it happens again. You are Kuno Kuttner, and you are afraid.
For once in your life, you had something good. A lifetime of uncertainty, of ill-treatment by your parents, of brutality at school, of hazing everywhere, of feeling wrong to every inch of yourself.
You thought you had found someone similar, someone damaged like you. But you had found someone who was moving past that damage, and you tried to help her, not realising you were placing yourself under her boot sole. You found someone willing to teach you what you wanted to be most, and gave yourself up without worrying about the consequences. And now you are doomed.
Things do not only get worse. There are better weeks and worse weeks. When the children start teething is a bad time. The children are, indeed, part of the problem. You may not have been sure about them at first, but now you love them. You love Ernst and Trudi more than anyone else you have ever loved, more than your wife, and certainly more than yourself.
You cannot leave them, and you cannot take them with you. You are a couple, and though it may be a terrible one you wish you could escape, the locktrap of your mind allows it no more than it would allow you to throw one of the kids in the sewer.
So the world continues to turn, and the year 1933 comes. With it, comes violence. Violence unleashed by the state upon the streets and upon the people. Adolf Hitler has become Chancellor, and the Reichstag is burning. The fear of discovery, the fear of being attacked, bedevils you both.
But it is not unity that you two achieve. It is that same violence that is being expressed in disgust and hate and fists upon you, and in February it reaches a crescendo. Lying on the ground you, Kuno Kuttner, are shaking from fear. You are a wounded animal, a mammal trapped against the wall.
Your face is bruised from a saucepan thrown at you, and your hands are covering your face as Helmine screams at you. "Look at me, coward!", she is saying. "Look me in the eye when I speak to you!". The children are crying in the doorway, unable to understand.
Sobbing, you turn your eyes up to her face, and are overcome by a relentless hate. A fury bursts in you like never before, a spite at this human beast who treats you like dirt. It bursts out of you, out of your eyes, a fire of blinding light. Helmine doesn't have the time to feel it before she falls to the ground, dead.
You stare, agape. What on earth? You bring your hands to your eyes, which feel warm and wet with tears. Nothing makes sense now. Helmin smells like burning flesh. Her face is a mess of burnt skin and pieces of bone. You sit there for minutes, staring, until you remember the children. And then you are a flurry of action.
WHAT do you do?
[] Try to cover-up the murder in the street violence.
[] Turn yourself in.
[] Hide the body and act like nothing is wrong.
Current Status
Shop assistant, widowed
Known Powers
Laser eyes?
Prologue finished, off to the actual meat of the quest now! As always, ask any questions you wish.
Warning: Handle Nazis With Care
New
- Location
- United States, EST
- Pronouns
- He/Him
handle nazis with care
This period of time in Germany does necessitate mention of the Nazi party and its actions. However, the thread is advised to remember that support of the Nazis, or I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Nazis in the case of trying to embrace the ideology and only repudiating the name, can depending on the context of advocacy violate either or both of Rule 2: Don't Be Hateful and Rule 6: Acceptable Content On SV. @Superstriker9999 has already been infracted under Rule 6 for mishandling of the topic in this vein. Other users are strongly advised to exercise best care in approaching this topic.
Thank you for your time, and please have a pleasant day.
This period of time in Germany does necessitate mention of the Nazi party and its actions. However, the thread is advised to remember that support of the Nazis, or I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Nazis in the case of trying to embrace the ideology and only repudiating the name, can depending on the context of advocacy violate either or both of Rule 2: Don't Be Hateful and Rule 6: Acceptable Content On SV. @Superstriker9999 has already been infracted under Rule 6 for mishandling of the topic in this vein. Other users are strongly advised to exercise best care in approaching this topic.
Thank you for your time, and please have a pleasant day.