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Lukas Mettbach Blog Entry |
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June 10, 2022, 2:43:01 AM June 10, 2022, 2:45:10 AM June 10, 2022, 2:49:24 AM June 10, 2022, 2:53:05 AM 6/10/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." My character this week for my anthro WWII series is Lukas Mettbach. I actually made four drawings of him: Bareheaded with his ears folded back (first drawing); bareheaded with his ears pricked up (second drawing); wearing a cap with his ears folded (third drawing); and wearing a cap with his ears up (fourth drawing). Lukas is a Sinti Roma who went through some nasty stuff as a prisoner before escaping. He's now part of the underground network that helps spirit others to safety; his nickname is "the Cat" because he can see well in low light (bright light bothers his eyes) and sneak around undetected. There'll be more about him in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. I'm kind of glad to get this drawing out of the way because Lukas's design was a bit more complicated than expected, especially his ears. I wanted him to look vaguely foxlike but to not have upright ears, rather I wanted them kind of bent down, to reflect his nervous and traumatized nature. Took me a while to get them right. Notice he has no hair like my other canine characters; this is because he keeps it shaved off. When he grows it out again it's black. You can't tell from this drawing but he has heterochromia iridum, one brown eye and one blue eye. TUMBLR EDIT: Lukas Mettbach is a Sinti Roma living with his semi-itinerant camp when WWII breaks out. He has various jobs (including petty theft), but officially his family are horse breeders, and he takes great pride in caring for the animals. He also carries on a secret relationship with a young woman in the camp; both have plans to properly ask their families for permission to marry since it wouldn't be a typical arranged marriage, but for now they're just being young and enjoying themselves. That changes instantly when Nazis raid the camp, killing most of the women, children, and elderly--including Lukas's beloved--and even shooting the horses, before taking the younger men prisoner and burning down the camp. The survivors are forced onto a train and transported to a different sort of camp, where they get into a line and an SS officer tells them either "left" or "right." Lukas is sent right...to forced labor. He escapes death a second time, as to be sent left is to be sent to the gas chamber. His head is shaved, he gets a number tattooed on his arm (in my version of events this happens in various camps, not just Auschwitz), and is put in striped clothes with a black triangle and a "Z"--for Zigeuner, or Gypsy--on his shirt. Thus begins Lukas's second life, as a prisoner of the Nazis. Lukas is Catholic, but he's also very superstitious, and he finds himself looking for signs and reasons why he ended up here. He blames himself for his people's misfortune--if he hadn't broken custom with the young woman, if they'd properly asked permission of their families first, they wouldn't have ended up like this, surely. She and his family and his horses would still be alive and he wouldn't be in this awful place, slowly starving and being worked to death. Surely, he did something to deserve this, and he feels that he must be cursed. He doesn't deal well with authority and gets in trouble with the camp guards pretty quickly, but just as quickly learns how to behave, and to keep his head down and his mouth shut. He manages somehow to survive the first camp, and is moved to a second, bigger one. While waiting anxiously in the line this time, he's startled when an SS officer steps right up to him, grasps his jaw, and turns his head left and right, looking him over, before letting him go; he gestures to a guard nearby and instructs that Lukas be brought to his office, then walks away. As he's led from the line, Lukas hears the officer doing the selections lose his temper and yell for everyone else to be sent left. He escapes death a third time. If he'd still been in the line, he would have immediately been sent to the gas chambers. Lukas is brought to the camp hospital, where he sees various others being led to and fro, especially children--twins. The SS officer who'd ordered him brought there arrives some time later, introduces himself as a doctor, and starts asking all sorts of very odd questions. Primarily, he's interested in Lukas's eyes--one is brown but the other is blue. He'd like to try some experiments. Lukas can stay in a better bunk and get better food and treatment as a test subject; all he has to do is help clean up the medical facilities after procedures. Lukas dislikes this thought intensely--surely such areas are unclean according to his people's customs--but then again, his people's customs don't seem to matter for much anymore, and it means better treatment, so he agrees. Surely the experiments can't be that bad. At first, they actually aren't. After lots and lots (and LOTS) of questions and tests and measurements and taking of notes, the doctor puts drops in Lukas's eyes. That's it. Eyedrops. They sting, but that's tolerable. In between receiving the drops he cleans blood from the tables and floors in a surgical suite; the first time he cries to himself at how awful it is, but the doctor seems impressed with his work, so he keeps at it. There are a few lighter moments, too. The doctor invites him to play chess with him one day, and Lukas is about to win, but throws the game out of fear the officer will be angry to lose; instead, he grasps Lukas's hand hard enough to hurt, and says in a deadly quiet voice, "I know you let me win. Don't ever do that again." Lukas nervously obeys, and wins the next game; the doctor frowns and examines the positions of the pieces, but then just resets the board. On another occasion he plays a violin, then lets Lukas play it (something Lukas misses dearly). And he asks more questions about Lukas's old life, seeming genuinely interested. It's really not that bad, compared to the previous camp. Then the eyedrops turn to injections. Lukas wonders at first why this time, the doctor has his head immobilized before the treatment, but when he sees the needle that makes things clear. The injections aren't quite as tolerable as the drops, but what can you do? He endures this and some other, unknown shots (turns out this is the serum used in Project Doomsday, which is painful but has no other effect on him) for a while before, like with the eyedrops, the doctor seems to grow tired of awaiting results and terminates the experiment. Lukas learns the whole point was to try to turn both of his eyes blue. Apparently, that didn't work. But there are other things you can do with a test subject. The doctor has Lukas brought to the surgical suite one day and says, "Did you know that a healthy adult male can function perfectly fine with just one kidney?" That doesn't sound good. Especially since this particular doctor doesn't use anesthesia or painkillers on his subjects, though he does give Lukas a paralytic that makes sure he stays still while he's having his kidney cut out. Tears leak from his eyes because that's literally all he can do. When he's stitched back up and the drug wears off, he's sent back to work in the camp, just like that. His time as a test subject appears to be over, and he's expected to return to work as if nothing ever happened. He tries, because he sure doesn't want to go back in the hospital. Every move is agonizing but he manages...until he catches an infection and gets too sick to work. Back to the hospital he goes, half delirious; he comes to in a bed to find the SS doctor standing over him. "Fancy meeting you again," he says, and Lukas moans, certain he's going to die. The doctor claiming he wants to try out something new on him just confirms his suspicions, and he shuts his eyes and hopes the end comes quickly as he's hooked up to an IV. He doesn't die, though...in fact, he starts feeling better. The "something new" was just a new antibiotic for use on German troops. Lukas's infection clears up, he's again sent back out to work, and some time later, he's transferred to a third camp. Lukas survives his encounter with Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. This is number four. Once more, he finds himself in a line, awaiting selections, left or right. By now he's beyond exhausted, very thin, and in rough shape, yet also jittery and terrified; he wants to live, and he wants to die. He's not sure what he wants. This particular camp has no gas chambers; if he's sent left, he'll be shot. The SS officer glances at him and sends him right. He escapes death...a fifth time. While standing in a second line awaiting being assigned to a particular work role in the camp, an SS Sturmbannführer (major) walks along in front of the prisoners and pauses to give Lukas a particularly odd look before moving on; Lukas knows his eyes caught his attention, and really, really hopes this camp doesn't have a Dr. Mengele. He accepts his assignment and gets to work like a good prisoner. When it's time for a brief meal, he listens to the whispers so he can get to know what to expect better. This particular camp commandant is especially well known for his cruelty and malice, so much so that he's earned the nickname Der Teufel, or the Devil. Superstitious Lukas sees the irony in being sent straight from the Angel of Death to the Devil, and feels his insides twist. He says maybe it isn't so bad, though, since he's already met the commandant and it went okay. The other prisoner he's talking to lets out an amused sputter and says that wasn't the commandant who looked at him in the line, that was just the adjutant. He'll know the commandant when he meets him. That's all that needs to be said. One day while working in the rain, Lukas slips and falls in the mud; he flails a bit trying to get himself back up. Someone grasps him by the arm and helps him to his feet. He murmurs thank you as he tries to wipe the mud off himself, then glances up, expecting to see another prisoner or perhaps a guard. It's an SS Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel)--and he smiles at Lukas. Lukas gets one look at that smile and those ice blue eyes, utters a quick apology, and bolts. Just as he was told, he knows Commandant Dannecker when he meets him, and he makes sure to stay well out of his way the rest of his time in the camp. He does manage to befriend a fellow prisoner, Arno Spiegel, and the two of them talk now and then, easing the loneliness of camp life just a little. A third prisoner who arrives later, Josef Diamant, isn't so lucky. He has the misfortune of pissing Dannecker off, and even a troublemaker like Lukas knows you just do not do this. He and Arno watch from a safe distance as Dannecker makes Diamant his "pet project" and attempts to break him down through physical and psychological torture. Several times they try to tell him that fighting back isn't worth it, just keep your head down and your mouth shut, but Diamant reaches the conclusion that if he doesn't escape, Dannecker will soon kill him. (An SS guard tells Diamant he's dead meat, but seeing him stick it to Dannecker, however briefly, was worth it. Yep, every-freaking-body hates Dannecker.) When Lukas starts to notice Diamant paying especial attention to a particular camp visitor--Margarethe Dannecker, the commandant's stepdaughter, whom he brings to work with him occasionally--he warns him to stop it. Diamant doesn't listen, in fact, one day when Gret glances in his direction, he smiles at her. "What the f**k are you doing??" Lukas hisses, unable to believe he'd actually flirt with her in such a situation, but Diamant still doesn't listen; he manages to pass the young woman a ring he's made out of materials he found around the camp. To Lukas and Arno, this just looks like insanity. It isn't until Gret and Diamant succeed in meeting privately near the crematorium that the situation becomes clear: Diamant plans to use the commandant's own stepdaughter to help him escape the camp. He'd intended to win her over and trick her, but when she vehemently tells him how much she despises her stepfather, he realizes he doesn't have to win her over, plus she's using him as much as he's using her. Diamant lets Lukas and Arno in on the plan, although they play no role in it themselves; Gret agrees to supply Diamant with a gun and ammunition, and asks the commandant for a ring as a gift. Diamant is a jeweler, so Dannecker sets him up with jeweler's tools near his office and he sets to work on the piece, always under the guards' watchful eyes, though Dannecker himself is too distracted by Gret, who acts even sweeter and more accommodating than usual toward him, to realize the entire thing is a setup. When the ring is finished and Dannecker asks to see it, Diamant brings it--along with the gun Gret had hidden for him. Lukas and Arno, along with a handful of other prisoners, wait near a back exit to the main building, and finally are let in by Diamant and Gret, and make their way to a hidden passage that only Dannecker and Gret had knowledge of; through this, they escape the camp. It's about an hour before Dannecker's body is discovered and the alarm is raised, but by then they're well away from the camp. They shuttle from house to house, changing their clothes and appearances along the way, though Lukas insists on keeping his head shaved and on keeping the black triangle badge. Over time they make allies among the German citizens and start ferrying other escapees and refugees to safety via hidden passages and tunnels like the one they used. And so Lukas's third life, as a member of the underground Diamond Network, begins. Here's where my history of Lukas gets scattered into bits and pieces. He basically serves as Diamant's right-hand man, nicknamed "The Cat" due to his stealthy nature, ability to see well in dimness (due to the experiments on his eyes, he hates bright light), and him apparently having nine lives. Together with Diamant, Arno, and Gret, he forms the nucleus of the Network. He gets along well with the two men; Gret is another story, at first. Lukas casually refers to her as "Nazi bitch" and she doesn't really object; indeed she does collect Nazi weaponry and flags, not because she's a Nazi, but because...well...I don't know. That's just Gret. She grew up the daughter of a Nazi soldier and then the stepdaughter of an SS camp commandant so she has some weird habits, such as walking with a distinct goosestep and wearing a black dress and black jackboots and a silver death's-head brooch and carrying her dead stepfather's SS-Degen (dress sword, which she requested Diamant to take from his dead body as a trophy) so she looks almost like a member of the SS herself. She's super Aryan in appearance, to boot (pale skin, long blond braids, blue eyes, aloof stare), and despite her actions aiding the prison break, the other Network members never trust her, Lukas especially...at least, so he claims. In fact he secretly develops a crush on her (he admires that she knows "exactly the best way to kill a man") and after the war they end up a very odd couple, but that's for later. The biggest aspect of Lukas's personality is all the trauma and rage he carries from his experiences in the camps. Of the core Network members, he's the one with the worst experience by far, unless you'd like to count Gret, who was never a camp prisoner but WAS a prisoner of sorts of her stepfather, who creepily considered her his "true wife" (he literally married her mother to get at her--when she was fourteen/fifteen) and abused her for a few years. Yet even she's handled her trauma better than he has. Lukas has spent so long feeling cursed and powerless that he doesn't know how to deal with his anger and it often surfaces in homicidal fury toward the Nazis and their sympathizers; he always carries a pair of daggers (one of which he later gives to Adelina Dobermann, telling her to learn how to protect herself), and has no trouble using them, his preferred method of disposing of Nazis being to stab them repeatedly. For the most part he doesn't even bother with guns (like Diamant) or explosives (like Arno--though he does enjoy a good explosion, yelling, "KABOOM!")--handheld stabby things are fine by him. (Another reason he admires Gret, who likes to make use of her stepfather's sword.) I think his obsession with knives and stabbing might be related to the surgery Mengele performed on him against his will--being unable to move, or fight, or even scream is something he's never been able to move past, so he keeps retaliating against his enemies in the same manner. The fact that Mengele actually treated him humanely on other occasions just confuses him even further--when relating to Gret his experience with "the Angel" (Lukas never refers to him by his name, only as the Angel) cutting out his kidney, he immediately switches tone from impotent rage to almost childlike innocence, cheerily recounting how the doctor would play chess with him and call him Herr Mettbach, so surely he wasn't all that bad? Here's the exchange as it's written in a WIP adult scene with the additional material removed; for context, Lukas has just shown Gret a large ugly scar on his side after first attempting to hide it: Gret: "The Angel of Death." Lukas: "How did you..." Gret: "Herr Josef told me. Papa used to tell me stories of him too, he visited the camp a few times. Everyone has heard of der Todesengel." Lukas: "Ja, well I didn't tell him everything. Don't really have words to describe what it's like, to be cut open, and your insides pulled out, but you can't move and you can't scream. I stuck a bug on a pin once when I was a kid. Thought it was funny watching it wiggle. Never, never, never again. A bug on a pin, I couldn't even wiggle. Could only lie there and accept it while he cut me open and stuck his hands in me and pulled part of me out. Never ever again... You know he liked to play chess? We played chess together, several times. He got angry when I cheated once to let him win. Told me to never do that again. He liked to play fair. He was a gracious loser." Gret: "Even a monster may play chess." Lukas: "He was very polite. Always called me Herr Mettbach. You know any other Nazi bastards who'd do that? Call a dirty Zigeuner Herr anything?" Gret: "Even a monster may be polite if it gets him what he wants." Lukas: "So where do you draw the line between a human and a monster, then? Because after enough times of the Angel smiling at me then sticking me in the eyes, calling me Herr Mettbach then ripping out my insides, I'm not sure even I know anymore." Gret: "There is not always a line, Herr Lukas. Sometimes, someone may be both a human and a monster. In fact these are the worst kind." Lukas: "I think you know what I'm talking about." Indeed Gret does, having dealt with her own monster in human form. SS officer Lt. Gunter Hesse nearly becomes one of Lukas's victims, when Lukas sneaks into the Dobermann household one night--something he has a habit of doing, even revealing himself to Addy Dobermann when he stabs to death (of course) a Nazi who's attempting to assault her--and accosts him alone in a hallway, knocking him down and repeatedly jamming his dagger in his chest and abdomen. He doesn't get to finish the attack before Hesse's associate, Schulte, comes running. The household physician manages to save Hesse's life; and rather than being terrified by the experience, Hesse reacts with blind rage. He figures out Lukas's identity (the black badge he wears narrows things down) and despite still being badly injured and in a lot of pain, challenges him to meet with him; Lukas agrees, but speaks to him only from a distance. When Hesse promises to personally execute his entire family, Lukas just laughs--"What family? Your people already killed them all. What are you going to do, SS man, dig up their ashes and kill them again?" Hesse does him one better: He stops by the labor camp--the same one Lukas escaped from, now under new management--and informs a visiting SS officer that an incoming train is full of Sinti Roma prisoners he can make use of if he so wishes. That visiting officer is Dr. Mengele, who likes experimenting on Sinti and Roma such as Lukas. When Lukas learns his own actions led to the slaughter of yet MORE of his rapidly dwindling people, he's devastated; it just seems to confirm his belief that he's somehow cursed. Diamant, meanwhile, is furious himself, since Lukas's impulsive violence jeopardizes the Network, and although he has no problem with utilizing violence, it's supposed to have a purpose; the attack on Hesse wasn't only a foolish and dangerous move, it didn't really accomplish much, either. One thing Lukas succeeds at is planting the seed of doubt in Addy Dobermann's head, that things around her aren't as normal as they seem, and Hesse, a close family friend, has been lying to her. He insists that she keep asking about the trains. She'd been told these are simply carrying war supplies, but eventually she learns the truth, and she discovers the truth about the camps as well. It's much, much worse than she could have imagined, and the world that Hesse carefully constructed for her starts falling apart. She sides with the Allies. Lukas manages to hold on to a shred of his sanity long enough to live out the end of the war, assisting in some of the Network's final activities as first the SS, then the Allies, overtake the city, taking the remaining Nazis captive and liberating the camp. (Incidentally, the commandant, Lt. Col. Hasso Reinhardt, plays a key role in this, turning off the electricity to the fences and unlocking the gates after announcing these actions to the prisoners over the loudspeaker system. He's badly wounded and he's seen the writing on the wall. Result, the camp is already almost empty by the time the Allies arrive.) He isn't able to help Diamant himself, however; after ensuring the Dobermann family's safety in escaping to the mountains, he's captured by the SS and placed onto one of the last remaining trains, to be taken to an extermination camp before it can be shut down. Lukas, Arno, and Gret can only watch helplessly as he's taken away--they were so close to making it out alive. This failure hits Lukas especially hard, since he himself wouldn't be alive, or free, without Diamant, and he wasn't able to return the favor. He comes close to committing suicide, but the news reaches the Network that Allies managed to capture the train and its crew, bringing it to a halt not far from the camp gates. All the prisoners, Diamant included, have been liberated, just steps away from death. Lukas isn't the only one with nine lives. He assists as well when Diamant and American spy Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt (whom Lukas had once threatened to disembowel, because of course) lead an expedition to the Alpine Fortress to investigate rumors of the continuation of Project Doomsday, now in its new incarnation as Project Ultima Thule; the experimental serum that Dr. Mengele once tested on Lukas has been modified, with input from Mengele himself, to have even more potent and threatening properties. The project is successfully thwarted and everyone returns to what's left of their lives. For Lukas, what's left in this, his fourth, post-war life, is almost nonexistent. His entire family, his horses, the woman he loved, are all long dead. His people are few and are hopelessly scattered. He has no camp, no clan, nowhere left to go and no one to go back to. Plus, he still suffers numerous side effects of the experiments he went through, and is saddled with years of trauma he hasn't properly dealt with. He's no longer actively suicidal (it's a sin, after all), but he's just barely surviving day to day, drifting aimless and lost, devoid of any sense of purpose or meaning; he feels like a living ghost, haunting what's left of his own life. He wanders around and takes odd jobs to get by. One day in a mountain town he comes across Inga Dobermann, who lost her husband during their confrontation with the people behind Project Ultima Thule. He tells her something Diamant told him afterwards, that before his death, Dobermann instructed Diamant to look after her; he knew the two had developed feelings for each other. Diamant had never told her. She visits his new jewelry shop, and the two begin a relationship. When she runs into Lukas again some time later, she reaches out to him, and he's then visited by his old frenemy Gret Dannecker; in their typical fashion, they have a nice chat to catch up and lob personal insults at each other. Then, Lukas unexpectedly kisses Gret. First he apologizes, but then he summons up the courage to admit he's loved her for a long time, even despite her being a Nazi bitch. Gret cuts off his awkward stumbling confession by kissing him back. She takes him to visit Diamant's shop, where she not only works now, but has a small room of her own upstairs--she shows it to him, and it's full of stolen Nazi weapons, banners, and memorabilia (because of course). She invites him to run errands for Diamant and stay with her. There's a stable he likes to visit nearby, perhaps he can even raise horses again. Lukas accepts, though he insists Gret will have to do something about all the Nazi decor, first. Thus begins his fifth life. [Lukas Mettbach 2022 [Friday, June 10, 2022, 2:43:01 AM]] [Lukas Mettbach 2022 2 [Friday, June 10, 2022, 2:45:10 AM]] [Lukas Mettbach 2022 3 [Friday, June 10, 2022, 2:49:24 AM]] [Lukas Mettbach 2022 4 [Friday, June 10, 2022, 2:53:05 AM]] |