@ChronicleManPlease review at your leisure. If it's okay, I decided to make the backstory in first-person, as though it were a journal entry. I wanted to give it a personal/noir vibe, since that's how I envision the character, especially during that era.
I can update to third-person if you'd rather I go that route.
Emil Weiss
Gender: M
Age: 47
Nationality: German
Personal Effects:
- Walther P38 pistol with leather shoulder holster
- Extra loaded magazine, secured in a small belt pouch
- Leather gloves, carried in coat pocket
- Small canvas evidence pouch
- Leather police identification wallet
- Leather notebook with pencil
- Small folding knife
- Tarnished silver pre-war pocket watch
- Pack of 6 hand-rolled cigarettes
- Dented brass lighter
- Handkerchief
- Coin pouch with a mix of Reichsmarks and Allied currency
- Pack of chewing gum, courtesy of American GIs
- Small water-damaged portrait photos of his late wife and missing daughter
Background:
What is your job Homicide Detective with Kriminalpolizei.
BackstoryConfidential Journal Entry - 1947
I was born on a quiet street in Charlottenburg, back when Wilhelm II still had his portrait hanging in every schoolhouse. My father was a train conductor, and my mother worked her fingers raw just to keep soup on the table. When the Great War came, he marched off with a crisp salute and a promise to be home by Christmas. We buried an empty box two years later. After that, it was just me, my mother, and my little sister Anna. She was the light of our house, sharp as a tack, always humming something sweet.
Sadly, Spanish flu took her early and fast, and I never had a chance to say goodbye.
In 1924, I joined the Kriminalpolizei, or “Kripo” as it was shortened to, figuring if I couldn’t fix the world, maybe I could at least hold a corner of it together. I worked homicide mostly, focusing on murders, disappearances, the kind of cases that crawl under your skin and stay there. I wasn’t the fastest or the loudest, but I had a nose for the truth, and I kept my reports clean. Didn’t take bribes, didn’t look the other way. That made me a pain in the ass to some, but reliable to the ones that mattered.
Then the Nazis came, and the whole department turned sideways. Half the force put on black uniforms and started sniffing out “undesirables.” I kept my head down and my file thin. When the war hit full on, I reenlisted just to get away from what Kripo had become.
Now it’s 1947 and I’m back in Berlin, walking beat-up streets that don’t know if they’re dead or just sleeping. My wife, Klara, didn’t make it. I was told exposure to something nasty during the final raids. My daughter, Lotte, vanished in the confusion when everything fell apart. Some nights I hear her voice in my dreams, calling from somewhere deep underground.
I keep working cases though, which keeps my hands busy, my mind half-sharp.
The city talks to you if you know how to listen...broken windows, blood on the bricks, whispers in the ruins. Something’s wrong here, more than just war trauma or ghosts of bad decisions. The air feels...
tight. Like Berlin’s holding its breath, waiting for something to crawl out of the dark.
Despite all of it, I keep showing up...
