Name: Gerhardt Koenigsbauer

Age: 38

Height: 5' 7"

Weight: 134 lbs

Nationality: German

Tank Role: Mechanic

Infantry Role: Mortarman

Personality: Gerhardt has been an avid learner since he was a small child, constantly getting in trouble scouring ruins for books and anything not annihilated in the wars. He loves taking things apart and putting them back together, and has done so his whole life. He has always been optimistic and a dreamer, spending most of his youth with his head in the clouds and nurturing the small animals that survived the decades of war. It is only in the later years of his life that he has start to come to terms with killing, but more than anything he desires to discover and build. He is naturally a bit eccentric and his passive tendencies put him at odds with most people more firmly rooted in the cruel reality of this life.

Bio: Gerhardt was born an only child, or at least, he knew he had no siblings growing up. He, his father Richard and Mother Catherine all lived in a fortified town east of the ruins of Nuremberg along the Danube. One of the last remaining settlements in germany, it was rather large considering it was built with hiding from the AI in mind.

From the age of three and onward his parents, both of whom were well educated, began to teach him to read. He took to it voraciously, and started reading anything and everything he could get his hands on. As soon as he finished every book in his house, he started scouring the town- any neighbor, any official place or unofficial library, none was safe from his quest for knowledge. He wound up worrying his parents sick and frankly it is a miracle nothing bad ever happened to him.

Because of all this reading, however, he made no friends. He began to pick up a reputation as a weirdo and a recluse. On the few occasions he attempted to socialize or make friends, he was driven away mercilessly. And so, he retreated further onto his books. Even when he started attending school, he was very careful to avoid the other children, and they returned the favor.

Not to say he had no human contact, however- his mother and father spent most of their time not working (his father designed new expansions to the town, and his mother was a lab director charged with researching the effects of the mutations on the human psyche and physiology) nurturing and teaching their son. His mother was especially dear to him, and she taught him all the wonder and beauty and hope that still existed in this god forsaken world. His father taught him strength and virtue, and encouraged his adventurous side and his thirst for knowledge despite the anxiety it gave his mother.

For his tenth birthday they gave the Gerhardt his very own tool set, and immediately set to work taking apart anything in the house he could touch, under his fathers careful supervision. (The only thing they wound up not being able to put back together was an old clock, which chagrined his father as it hadn't been cheap.) To avoid the dismantlement of his home, from then on Richard allowed Gerhardt to come to his work after school. There, instead of sitting up in the office with his father designing things on paper, he spent his afternoons on the line with the men who made it happen.

He would've spent the rest of his life like that, doing nothing but reading and building and making; but reality stepped in at last. At age 16 he was conscripted, like all children his age, into the landwehr. For a year of his life, he was taught to follow orders and the only thing he took apart was his rifle to clean it. He was taught of all the enemies that faced them and was encouraged to be brave. But the sound of gunfire scared him and the thought of death was something that to him had only ever existed in a book. He was a sorry excuse for a soldier and when all was said and done, they put him in supply. He did not volunteer for full time service- merely fulfilling his duties in the landwehr.

But this didn't last very long. Not six months had he been removed from his initial training did one day a large force of the AI's drone and tanks show up on their doorstep. His mother and father, being valuable citizens, were sent to shelter- but he, having not even completed his education yet, was sent to the walls. He barely had time to grab his toolbag before being hurried along to the fighting.

It was hell. Explosions, screaming, the buzzing of drones and the chatter of machine gun fire. He cowered behind his parapet, occasionally sticking his gun over it and shooting blindly, flinching back as fire inevitably came back his way. Suddenly, the wall next to him crumbled to peices, and through it rolled a tank; he acknowledged it with hopeless doom.

But thankfully his comrades had that traditional german warrior spirit. With incredible timing, two young men charged beneath the tank's turret depression. The first struck the armor with lance that had a copper EFP (explosively formed projectile) that cut through it like butter, destroying the farraday cage protecting the circuitry inside. The second one tossed a high radio frenquency emitter inside, frying the circuitry. The two young men shouted their jubilation on the kill, and moved on.

Gerhardt sat there, dumbfounded, staring at the hole in the now immobile tank. He looked inside and saw that instead of some murderous device, it was a machine like any other. And before he realized he was doing it, he leapt through the hole and did what he did best- figuring out what made this machine tick.

After a couple misfires, he managed to determine how to rotate the turret, initiate the reload mechanism, and fire the gun. He timidly stuck his head outside the tank, and was greeted by a terrifying sight- a massive machine was laying waste to the town, flames spitting from two appendages and a massive cannon opening up with reckless abandon. Realizing the town had expended all its heavy ordinance that if he didn't do anything, that machine would kill his parents. He did his best to line up a shot, and squeezing his eyes shut, he fired.

Through a miracle, the shell penetrated and ignited one of the fuel canisters for its massive flamethrowers. In seconds the monstrous machine was up in flames. He smiled to himself, thinking he would be a hero. Suddenly, one of the full time soldiers came up to him as he stuck his head out of the tank. He told gerhardt to make for the river, and to help the civilians evacuate. Remembering he was in a war zone, he scrambled out of the tank and ran. Behind him, the brave sons of germany fought to their last breath on the crumbling walls, singing of valhalla.

By happenstance, he and his father boarded the same ship on the danube. His mother, his father said, had been separated from him, but he assured him they would search for her among the other refugee ships along the danube. Gerhardt never saw her again.

For five years, father and son wandered with the other refugees from place to place, attempting to find a place to build a new life. On several occasions, they fought back to back, his father's cool headedness keeping his less stalwart son safe. Eventually, after much searching, they came to japan- sick and malnourished. They came into the town of Izayoi, and in exchange for items Gerhardt had made out of salvaged drones, they received food and treatment. But his father was old and his body worn down by the journey. His body gave out there in that little village, and Gerhardt buried him alongside the local's countless dead.

Two weeks after arriving, the village elder came to him with one of his devices in hand; he told gerhardt they had use for an enterprising young man like him. Gerhardt, in nearly broken japanese, said he would do anything.

And that is how he came to help build the bastion.