[CHAR] The Weirdest World War

[Lady Selune]

Roland James Darwin

Name: Roland James Darwin (Tenuous relation to Charles Darwin)

Gender: Male

Arms:
Amoung other things, Roland uses a Canadian-made Browning Hi-Power, bought for him by his father, as well as a commissioned Rifle No. 5 MK.1, as well as a cavalry sabre, as is traditional for commissioned officers within the British Empire’s army.

Personality: To say that Roland has a slight superiority complex would be saying that a bullet to the head would hurt a little bit. The name Darwin carries a significant amount of weight in the Empire, and the fact that he’s actually related to the man himself adds even more weight onto the already hefty burden. He’s an arrogant, aggressive and boisterous bastard who firmly believes himself to be the best man in the regiment- nay all of the cavalry, but you don’t become a commissioned officer if they don’t see anything in you.

History: Anyone with the name Darwin tends to have a rather good life, and Roland is no exception. Born to a wealthy family, he had an excellent education, and is highly literate and intelligent. Minor genetic modification left him with an increased muscle mass and propensity for violence, so nobody was surprised when he entered the military, although when they found that he had managed to pass the tests for acceptance into Sandhurst, a few jaws were dropped.

Talents: Roland is really dammed good at fighting. He has an intuitive relationship with his mount and has absolutely no qualms about killing a man. He leads from the front and is remarkably good at countering a rout or retreat, even if it requires a few gunshots and spittle.

Otto von Sturm

Name: Otto von Sturm (Not his actual surname, but nobody’s seen his files.)

Gender Male

Arms: An SS Commissar has a lot of leeway when it comes to weaponry, and in the case of Otto, this involves the brand new Sturmgewehr 40, and the Luger Pistole Parabellum. When In his MIA suit, he instead has a tesla barrage gun, which uses incredibly high voltages to send out a burst of electricity that can be ‘chained’ between targets that conduct the electricity. It is highly effective against infantry and light armour alike, and can cause some engines to combust. He also has a small wrist mounted flamethrower for emergency situations, or situations where he just wants to burn something.

Personality: Otto is the textbook definition of a commissar. He preaches with zeal on and off the field of battle, has no concern for his safety, only that the aims of the Reich are achieved, and that he can convert any and every prisoner that is somehow left after the Nazi rampage to the view of the German Empire.

History: Whilst nobody in the battalion knows exactly where Otto comes from, it’s for a good reason. The commissar had a humble beginning, the son of a butcher and a washerwoman, and hates his heritage for it’s mediocracy. He joined the German army midway through WWI and his particular talents were quickly found to be highly appropriate for commissar training. He’s never looked back from there.

Talents: Otto is one hell of an orator. His voice can always be heard, be it in the middle of a battlefield or in a mess hall, and always knows the right words to say to say. He’s also an excellent shot with rifle or tesla battery, and his unflinching devotion to the cause leaves him unafraid of death.

Father Jaques

(In white)

Name : Father Jaques Berger, or just Father.

Gender: Male

Arms: Father Jaques uses a Ruby pistol from his days in the trenches, along with an outdated Infanterie Anti-Armure Mk. I. Unlike it's modern cousin, the MK I has a lot more bang in one rocket, but is slow to reload and only holds a single shot, and is incredibly heavy to boot.

Personality: The good Father lives up to his name, taking the spiritual and emotional health of his men as his singular purpose- he figures that God will help them with their physical health. He's always pitching in with the rest of the men if he can, and is as zealous on the field as any of them, especially when he gets to blow up some fancy German armour with his launcher.

History: Father Jaques is a man who can survive. He lived through the hell of the trenches, and was there when the French found their religious spirit once more. When the Catholic Revolution swept the nation, he was there alongside his fellow priests, preaching and practising his aim for the next war, and now that that one has rolled around, he's prepared to fight the kraut bastards again.

That being said, in between the wars, he was busy. He has three children, one who's joining him in the Parisian 305th, and one who already has a child of his own, and he's not always considered to be the best of fighters any more.

[DepressedSoviet]

Heinz Edelmann(Germany

Name: Heinz Edelmann

Gender: Male

Arms: Heinz carries a gauss rifle on the right arm of his MIA suit, with the name "Gungnir" painted along its length, on the opposing arm, a grenade launcher with the name "Mjölnir" painted on it. On the armor of his suit he has various German battle cries painted on, such as "Gott Mit Uns", or "Deutschland Uber Alles", as well as the Iron Cross of the Heer. Under his armor, in case of emergency, he carries a holster with a Walther P38 and two magazines, as well as the one inside the gun. He wears the standard uniform for MIA troops as well.

Personality: Heinz considers himself akin to the old Norse warriors of the viking age, seeking to claim glory and honor for the Fatherland, and if he dies, to die in glorious battle so that he may take his place in the halls of Odin at Valhalla. He's a loud, boisterous individual, not afraid to make jokes or snarky comments, and ready to lay down his life for what he believes is right.

History: Heinz was born in Bavaria in the 1920s, to a shopkeep father and an aging mother. He attended school for most of his childhood, with his father able to afford a full education for his son. He would graduate from school an adult, and when Hitler and his regime began calling for soldiers, Heinz was infatuated with the concept of serving his country, doing what he felt was right. He joined up almost immediately, and when the time came for war, he was ready for battle.

Talents: For someone wearing a power armor suit into battle, Heinz relies more on marksmanship than brute strength and firepower. He can place the shots from his gauss rifle at well over 1000 yards, and can accurately use his grenade launcher closer to a mortar, providing low-level artillery fire onto the opposing lines.

Edward Williams(British)

Name: Edward Williams

Gender: Male

Arms: He prefers a Lee-Enfield No.5 Mk I "jungle" carbine, for its light weight and design. He also carries an Enfield No.2 revolver as a sidearm, and as a personal preference as a member of the cavalry, he carries a saber passed down through his family, well-cared for and ready for use. He wears the standard uniform for the British Riders, though often with the sleeves rolled up.

Personality: Edward likens himself to the noble cavalry officers of his family's past, though he himself doesn't hold an officer's commission. He regularly talks in mannerisms befitting the wars of old, with an officer's gait and speaking tone. He meticulously cleans and sharpens his family saber, keeping it ready for use at any time.

History: The son of minor nobility, Edward was raised by a family of cavalry officers, inheriting his grandfather's saber. His education was not lacking, and he learned plenty of both the knowledge of the world, and of his family heritage. When the war came, his parents used their pull to get him placed specifically in the British Riders, rather than be tossed away as an infantryman.

Talents: Edward is an expert rider, able to deftly maneuver even the genetically-altered beasts of the British Riders, and easily fight off of their backs with both his guns and his sabers.

Edgar Levett(France)

Name: Edgar Levett

Gender: Male

Arms: He carries the French Lebel 1886 rifle, as well as a MAB Model D, Type I pistol. The rifle bears the phrase "Viva La France" inscribed along the left side, and "Ce fusil tue les Allemands" on the right. He wears the standard uniform of the French infantry for the time period.

Personality: Edgar despises the Germans, seeing them as good-for-nothing upstarts that tried to ruin his country once, and he believes, won't hesitate to do so again. He revels in fighting the German forces, stopping at nothing until every last Kraut in sight has fallen.

History: Edgar is an older man, 36 at the time of the German invasion of Belgium. He originally fought in the Great War, lying about his age when he was fifteen, enlisting in the last year of the war, and seeing combat during the final push by the Allied forces. Seeing the destruction and hell wrought by the German invasion, he knew that they were to be his bitter enemy for all time. After the war, he continued to serve in the military as a peacetime member, seeing trips to various colonial holdings, before being brought into the 305th for service in Belgium.

Talents: Edgar has excellent endurance, resisting combat fatigue for up to days sometimes, always willing and able to fight even with little-to-no sleep. His mental will is also strong, with fear or terror having little effect on his mental state. He pushes on to the very end, and it certainly shows to others.

[BCTheEntity]

Hugh-ge Guts (British Rider)

Name: Hugh Hughes Hughson

Gender: Male

Arms: Thompson submachine gun, Colt M1911A1. His mount carries an M2 Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun on its back, fired on the move as in a moving vehicle.

Personality: Hugh is a real tough nut, with tough nuts; he's a crack shot, with some cracked shot; and he's a trauma case, with a small steel case capable of causing trauma to people he whacks with it. Really, most of his persona is defined by this sort of repetition - most of the means of describing him could also refer to something he owns, be it on his person or stashed at home, though at least part of the reason behind this is an apparent compulsion to gather materials in this fashion.

History: Born to a middle-class family, Hugh's life was probably not as bad as he makes it out to be. However, the way he claims it, he was never sent to school, regularly beaten, and generally made to feel like a bad person. Supposedly, he eventually escaped home, joined the army, and was regularly beaten there, though he eventually got into the Anglian Mounted 305th as the designated heavy weapons guy, complete with bear-sized monstrosity for a mount, and right before this big old war at that. He loves Barbara very much. Notably, the only thing giving his story credence is his adamancy that it all happened: his actual knowledge base indicates fairly high-level education, is known to have avoided beatings through conformity to all given rules throughout his time in the standard armed forces, and he shows skill in weapons indicating a former association with them unknown to the middle class. His upper class upbringing is confirmed by a rare antique on his person, a sturdy thing, but easily worth more than ten thousand pounds sterling, more than the vast majority of middle class families could hope to afford on such a trifle.

Talents: Aside from the expected traits one might expect of a British rider, Hugh is surprisingly good at bringing large arms to bear against his opponents. This is presumably helped by his great musculature, contributing to his large arms capable of lifting substantial weight. Supposedly, he once deadlifted Barbara over his head for a full ten seconds; considering the weight of his mount and his general disconnect with reality, most who hear of the feat believe this to be impossible, but considering his nonetheless prodigious musculature and his general disconnect with reality, they also then tend to smile and nod and be on their way, just in case.

Can't catch these Hans (German Mechanised Trooper)

Name: Hans Feder (no relation to Gottfried Feder)

Gender: Male

Arms: Mechanisierte Infanterie Anzug suit, equipped with a somewhat unique weapon called "Der Strahlzerstörer Mark I" on the right wrist: multiple smaller arcs of ultrahot plasma are merged together in front of the firing mechanism proper, and the resulting mass of energy is then propelled via high-power laser beam and corresponding plasma channel toward whatever is being aimed at. At full power, the weapon is easily capable of piercing straight through enemy tanks, though for maximum effect the beam can be calibrated to avoid overpenetrating, letting the plasma accumulate inside the tank to ensure that whatever is within is entirely vaporised.

Both the plasma launchers and the laser are powered by a plasma generator on the suit's back, drawing in various atmospheric gases and storing them within magnetic fields in preparation for superheating the moment before firing. Incidentally, the laser alone is capable of slaying unarmoured and lightly-armoured infantry in surprisingly gory fashion, and a secondary trigger allows it to be used for that purpose by Hans when no tanks present themselves, though that is not technically the device's intended purpose. That said, the primary weapon is not designed for rapid fire: it includes a delay between pulling the trigger and the weapon beginning to fire, as the gases need a short moment to heat up, during which time the firer's arm is locked in place to avoid altering the shot; additionally, the total "clip size" is very low, and ammo generation takes some time, meaning that firing many shots in quick succession will ultimately leave the wielder without a long-ranged weapon for a while.

Attached to his left arm, extending well beyond the back of his hand, is a large titanium blade. This kills the man, as large titanium blades are wont to do.

Personality: Whilst not an idiot, Hans is also not a smart man, and doesn't really understand how his weapon works. He knows it has two firing modes, and that it uses energy beams, and that it kills tanks in the primary firing mode and people in the secondary, but the nature of "plasma" and "lasers" and the distinction between the two rather escapes him. He therefore believes that it is powered by Aryan spirits angered by those resisting the return of their kind, and thus has come to the logical conclusion that he is himself a reincarnation of an ancient Aryan ancestor of his, who in turn is protected by his ancestors-slash-spiritual brothers, because why else would they protect a soldier like him so well? Never mind that he's wearing thick armour plating and a generator on his back, that's just how they choose to manifest after all. Other than this, he is very much into the German philosophy of atheistic non-belief in any religion, and is usually very agreeable, except when it comes to Jews, who seem to have plagued his family's life for generations if his father's side of the family have anything to say about it.

History: Hans hates the Jews. His rich scientist father hated the Jews for stealing his money, and his rich homebrokering grandfather for not being the right sort of religious, and even though his housekeeping mother always preached tolerance, there was surely nothing wrong with continuing an old family tradition, right? Likewise, his teacher also hated Jews for their money-grubbing ways, and many of his friends all the way up to tertiary education also hated them. Really, it was a stroke of luck (whether good or bad) that he grew up in one of the most anti-Semitic areas of Germany prior to the National Socialist German Workers' Party's rise, but despite acquiring exceptional skill in cooking and achieving with honours a pass, he maintained that he would never cook food for a known Jew, because they would probably not like his food anyway for not being "koscher" enough, whatever that meant.

Then the Second World War began, and it occured to him that invading Western Europe would probably let him kill great numbers of Jews whether or not he knew they were Jews. As it happened, his father had been developing some kind of fancy new gun for the National Socialists, simply called "the beam destroyer", and was rich enough to influence them to let his son try out one of the post-prototype versions of the weapon, Der Strahlzerstörer Mark I, or the DS-1 for short.

Talents: ...well, he can aim his fancy gun fairly well, though that's more due to the gun's own accuracy than anything else. And he's got great cooking skills, so the unit he's in is pretty much set for that, if he's given ingredients better than what they usually get.

Noone shoots like Gaspard... (French Anti-Armour Gunner)

Name: Gaspard Flèche

Gender: Male

Arms: Infanterie Anti-Armure Mk. III (i.e. the French standard semi-automatic rocket rifle), with the power necessary to penetrate even a German MIA suit, given a few focused rounds (or one well-aimed shot). Of course, since they only chamber five rounds each to begin with, and reloading is often slow, this is still a somewhat risky proposition against who knows what experimental weaponry the Germans often bring to bear.

Personality: Gaspard is the usual brand of French crazy - that is, he is religiously and politically dedicated to the Allied cause, willing to throw away his life quite casually in their name, but not utterly deranged just yet even given his somewhat greater than usual age. That said, beyond his generally friendly demeanour, he is nothing less than driven and hard-headed, typically not willing to back down on a point if he feels it is not right to do so, and rarely accepting defeat in battle or that an intended goal is unreachable.

History: Gaspard was practically born into the army. The son of a French officer, he was not quite old enough to participate in the First World War back when it was first being called the Great War, though from the tales his father was nothing less than a hero on the front lines even after grievous injuries. Though raring to be so blessed in life, his education was rather standard, and ergo didn't gift him quite the skillset needed to be a brilliant man. For a while, he found himself trapped in a dead-end desk job, seemingly an eternal peon despite his drive to become something more... and when the first whispers of war started to be heard a few years before the war proper began, he leapt at the chance, quitting his job on the spot and enlisting himself into the French armed forces. Whilst he hasn't seen much action to date, he possesses as much pep as any younger man, and hopes to make his way up the ranks in due course.

Talents: Aside from following orders with gusto, Gaspard is surprisingly deft when it comes to targeting people with his rocket rifle. In particular, the slower MIA suits used by the Germans make headshots easy - and given that penetrating the body of such well-armoured targets takes four or five shots even with very good aim, whilst whatever kooky science guns they have to hand could perhaps wipe out a whole squadron in one shot, a headshot is usually considered a good idea.

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Senshi (Japanese Samurai)

Name: Takaoka Tetsuya, called "Zetsubou no Senshi" for his depressive nature and effect on the battlefield.

Gender: Male

Arms: Tetsuya does carry a katana on his person, though this is merely a sidearm. His actual weapon of choice is, to the shock of many of his companions, an oversized battleaxe, purchased centuries ago from visiting foreigners by an ancestor of his - the steel it is made of is of far higher quality than that of any Japanese blade, and the weapon is bulky enough to smash most weapons that try to block it anyway.
Even so, this is not the primary reason he is threatening. That would be the demon bound to his person - an entity calling itself Soul Sacrifice (inexplicably in English, rather than Japanese), but which Tetsuya refers to as Tamashii no Gisei, or "Gisei" for short. Though it cannot physically manifest, it can lock up Tetsuya's muscles apparently at will, and in terms of actual usefulness grants him the ability to emit bursts of raw horror, powerful enough to bring hardened veterans to their knees, whilst those of weaker will are compelled to curl up into a ball and wait for their inevitable demise. Tetsuya has gotten used to those sensations constantly shrouding his own mind by this point.

Personality: As a result of his demon's constant presence, Tetsuya is extremely depressive, far more so than you'd expect of most soldiers. Whilst he is able to function, just about, he does so with little motivation and a glazed expression, and deep down is in fact rather desperate to die. The fact that he hasn't committed suicide yet is a testament to an immense reserve of will, though every so often a sort of suicidal madness takes him, and only then is he anything other than listless, practically frenzied as he seeks his end.

History: Growing up in the Izumo province, Tetsuya was always quite upbeat, given his family's rather vaunted history as a descendant of the Sasaki clan, and through them the Emperor Uda himself. His education, naturally, was no less than stellar given where he was growing up, and he passed every class of his with flying colours. On top of the world, his drafting into the Japanese army was expected, but nonetheless fear-inducing. After all, what if the demon they bound to him tried to kill him?

This was more true that he could have imagined. It took him nearly two weeks just to start moving again, and many more after that before he stopped trying to kill himself in every spare moment he had, prevented from doing so by his own demon, and started to actually feed himself again. By that time, he was a shell of his former self, following orders essentially because he was trained to do so, and still experiencing bouts of suicidal madness whenever he failed his duties. Even then, the nature of Soul Sacrifice's power and the axe loaned to him by his parents made him an extreme threat on the battlefield, enough to merit a title of his own, though his rank within the Japanese armed forces was little more than baseline for a samurai.

Talents: If Tetsuya still has talents beyond what Soul Sacrifice provides, he's not keen on showing them off. His axework is reasonable enough, but barely any thought goes into each strike, and he over-relies on Soul Sacrifice to prevent harm to himself. The motivation to do more than this is incredibly rare indeed by now, fittingly enough for a man seeking death by any means.