AppearanceFew stick out in the dirt, grime and muck like Elena does.
Whilst she does not particularly stand out through her height and body structure, Elena had been blessed with vibrant ginger hair (a trait made even rarer after the war) and blue irises. Her checks are, like most gingered people, dotted with freckles, which are often mistaken for dirt and grime coating her skin. Additionally, Elena, too, has quite the pair of dimples, made most apparent whenever she smiles or laughs.
Regarding her attire, however, Elena chooses to keep it simple. Beneath a thick, dull gray overcoat is severely-patched German uniform, being slightly too big for a woman of her stature. On the left arm of the overcoat is a dirty band with the red and white of Hesse, to which Elena refuses to remove from the coat itself. Similarly, her worn, ragged scarf is dyed in Hessian red. On the other hand and contrary to the disarray Elena's clothing is in, her leather gloves and furred hat are relatively new—gifts from a local community for helping replenish their food stores by hunting the nearby wildlife.
PersonalityCautious ⟶ Exhausted ⟶ Forthright ⟶ Sympathetic ⟶ Temperamental
Biography"Ich grüß dich, du Heimat, du herrliches Land. Herz Deutschlands, mein blühendes Hessenland..."
Bordering the River Rhine, the Hessian lion had bled on the battlefield. Great swaths of the countryside were but an echo of the past, warped by blackened trenches, ruins, and the dead. Certainly, human life could not be sustained within Kurhessen, yet the Hessians were soldiers through and through, as they had been for centuries. If they could no longer toil in the fields of their labor, they would do battle as roving bands of mercenaries, clearing Nazi holdouts and other dangerous threats from the area in hopes it could be considered hospitable once again.
Incidentally, in the year of 2020, Elena would be inducted into one such nomadic group following her birth during a rather chilly spring. Though her parents were considered to be her "guardians", Elena, like many other Hessian children, had been a "child of the tribe", being taught how to survive in the wasteland from an early age on by anyone who could teach.
By her tenth winter, Elena would kill her first ghoul, and by her twelfth, her first man. Despite the rare human conflict, however, Elena's rifle would primarily be, as was common in the former reaches of the Rhine, used against the ghoulish hordes. Though she believed that it was humane to put them down, it wasn't usual for Elena to feel a tinge of guilt and sorrow for the radiated century-old men and women that had been twisted into feral, disease-bearing creatures.
Perhaps those very thoughts were why Elena is where she is now.
As Elena neared adulthood, her tribe had unknowingly stumbled upon a large nest of ghouls, and would pay the price for their accidental trespassing. From the woodwork the ghouls came, leaving a trail of death behind them. Elena had fought like hell, desperately trying to save who she could, and yet her efforts were in vain.
The mass slaughter broke her. Seeing the countless bloodied corpses of comrades, friends and family broke her. And so, she choose to run—to run and never look back.
She's been running ever since.
