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Schavitz Blog Entry |
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April 29, 2022, 3:01:45 AM 4/29/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character portrait attempt for my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline (oh my God, I've typed this so many times my autocorrect can fill it out for me word by word now) is Generaloberst (General) Schavich, or, as I've been mulling over renaming him to sound less Russian and more German because he's German, possibly Schavitz. (UPDATE, he has since indeed been renamed Schavitz.) Finally somebody without a black cap, yep? Anyway. He's still one of the bad guys and is very very skeezy for reasons I won't get into here, though this story has so many convoluted alliances and rivalries that at times he's the lesser of two evils and the--I was going to say good guys, except they start out kind of as bad guys, so now you see what I mean--the not-so-bad bad guys end up temporarily allying with him against other bad guys, then turn on him later on. Yeah, this is confusing so I'll leave it at that. A very big liberty was taken with this drawing. Schavich is actually missing his left eye; an Allied character shot it out and he wears a patch. Yet I wished to show his eye color. I thought about reversing the image but I like consistency. So, either this is him before he lost his eye, or you have to just imagine him with an eyepatch. TUMBLR EDIT: Well, I mentioned Gen. Schavich is skeezy, and yes he is. He's not one of the ORIGINAL original Trench Rats characters though he's one of the older ones, and back then he was just goofy and stupid, a Nazi caricature who was always screaming in rage about being bested by the Trench Rats. When my brain suddenly rebooted the series after decades of dormancy, I decided to revamp him, make him far more menacing. Yet he couldn't be the most evil character in the story since he not only recruits one of the bad guys who becomes a good guy, but he aids this character several times as well. (Who is the MOST evil character in the series? Hard to tell, as even nasty bad guys like Dr. C/Kammler have their reasons that they feel are legit. Two characters who come close--seeming to be evil just for evil's sake, with almost no redeeming qualities to speak of--are Sgt. Kaspar Lange, and Lt. Col. Ernst Dannecker. Schavich comes close, but even he's not QUITE as evil as those two.) So, what about Schavich makes him so skeezy? Well, he's a racist Nazi a-hole, so there's that; unlike some Nazi characters who don't seem entirely committed to the Final Solution (such as Lt. Col. Hasso Reinhardt and his adjutant, Maj. Jan Delbrück), those who are committed to it but prefer more sensible means and want to strictly follow the rules (Maj. Ludolf Jäger, who loses his s**t when he learns of the Einsatzgruppen operating in his jurisdiction without his permission--that's the bad part--without his permission), and those who are actively opposed to it (Capt. Otto Himmel), he's all in, and has no problem with anyone committing war crimes or even breaking the Nazis' own rules. He even wishes to join the Schutzstaffel, yet they won't have him (more on that in a minute). He's obviously corrupt, as he's taken up residence in an old castle and claimed the ornate furnishings and even the staff as his own (the fate of the original owners, as well as where Schavich obtained his monetary wealth, aren't clarified yet, though his personal chauffeur, Sgt. First Class Udo Eisen, is pretty sure that "dead Jews" are involved). (I'm toying with the idea of Second Lt. Frieder Dasch, PFC Klemper's commanding officer, sarcastically pointing out that the castle was "abandoned" for all of five seconds before Schavich got hold of it, and that it used to be called something like Castle Lowenthal. Hint-hint.) He's fine with committing various criminal acts of his own, such as taking liberties with the castle maids, not always with their full consent. I'm sure there are many other similar things, too. The thing that makes him really skeezy, though, is his interest in young blond women. Or more accurately, blond schoolgirls. He literally coerces Eisen into helping him procure teenage girls by showing off his big shiny black car near the schools (which he makes generous donations to, convincing school staff to look the other way) and inviting the more impressionable ones for a ride and a visit to his castle. Some of the girls like the attention and make it back home happy. Some make it back home not so happy. And a few never make it back home at all, because Schavich has a tendency to strangle people when he feels like it. Loyal Eisen--or more like terrified Eisen--acquires the new job of cleaning up his boss's messes, which includes paying off the unhappy girls, and...disposing of the unluckiest few. Oh, right. There's ONE other big thing that makes Schavich so skeezy, and that's how he meets Ratdog, his new "recruit." I've mentioned Ratdog previously--just some country rando who one day starts shooting Trench Rats and other lone Allied parties from concealment. He's really good at what he does, and Schavich recently lost his eye to Trench Rat Sgt. Black Rat; making Black Rat lose his own eye isn't good enough revenge for the general, he'd rather employ the services of whoever this is who's sniping them one by one. He manages to track Ratdog down and invites him to his castle for a talk, where he pulls strings to get him an honorary Wehrmacht rank of Oberleutnant, or First Lieutenant. He gets a nice new apartment in the city, too (Ratdog currently lives in a quaint stone house near a forest road), and an even nicer fee. All Ratdog has to do is keep killing Trench Rats, for Schavich now. Although he doesn't care for a military rank, Ratdog agrees. What's left here is why, exactly, Ratdog got in the habit of shooting Trench Rats. His motive is revenge as well. See, Ratdog is...kind of a man-whore...and one day a woman dropped off a baby at his place. Ta-da!--he WAS the father. Even though he had no idea how to raise a baby, he did this best he could, and even though it was difficult and kind of put a damper on his former lifestyle, he just adored his son. But like I said...he didn't really know what he was doing. Used to living in the woods on his own, he took it for granted that wandering around the area unsupervised was relatively safe. Until the toddler wandered out into that forest road one day, and was struck by a motorcycle and sidecar, which kept on going. Realizing something was amiss, Ratdog ran to the road and found his son there, dead. He was still kneeling there cradling the kid and wailing when a man came running breathlessly up the road. This was Sgt. Eisen, and he said that he'd seen the incident happen as he and Schavich drove by--a pair of Trench Rats were the culprits. He'd attempted to follow them in Schavich's car, but had lost them. The Trench Rat sergeant and corporal were known to occasionally travel in this manner, so Ratdog vowed to shoot down a Trench Rat whenever he saw one. You probably have figured out what really happened, right?...and if Ratdog hadn't been so blinded by grief, and was maybe a little smarter (he can be kind of an idiot sometimes), he might have figured it out sooner, too. Gen. Schavich has more than his big black shiny car--he also has a motorcycle with a sidecar. And yep, he and Eisen were in fact the ones who mowed down Ratdog's son. Eisen, the driver (intimidated into speeding recklessly by Schavich), panicked and wanted to stop, but Schavich let him do so only once they were out of sight, and then ordered him to make up a story so they could get on their way. He didn't care about some stupid kid. Like always, Eisen cleaned up Schavich's mess, except this time there were consequences...consequences which seemed to work out in Schavich's favor, at least at first. Ratdog hates Trench Rats now! Just like Schavich! So tl;dr, Schavich's carelessness led to Ratdog's drive for revenge...which inspired Schavich to use Ratdog's drive for revenge in his own drive for revenge. Basically, he screws Ratdog over twice, first by killing his son, then by using his grief to get his own revenge. And the whole time, Ratdog has no idea, and is murdering innocent people over it (something he wouldn't normally do, since he does have a code of honor that prohibits him from killing people in certain ways). So, yeah...pretty skeezy. Schavich has a bit more of a history than this. The main part of it being his overwhelming desire to join the SS. The SS is almost a character in itself in this storyline with how it overarches everything, similar to the Doomsday Project (which it's behind, of course). Schavich's cap color in this art is different because he's a Wehrmacht general and not SS, though he does apply to join, having Eisen fill out the elaborate application process (I actually know very little about how this was done, though they did require detailed genealogical records dating back to the 1700s-1800s). He's sure he has all the right credentials and honors...yet the SS send an officer to his castle to return his application in person, apologizing and saying they can't accept him. They promise not to cause any fuss over the exact REASON why they rejected him, though. So far this part occurs "off screen" though Eisen does hear Schavich yell at the officer, "That's a load of slanderous bulls**t, and you very well know it!" Eisen later looks through the application again to try to figure out why it was rejected and at last locates one TEENY little detail that was somehow missed, though not by the SS...Schavich actually has some Jewish ancestry. I'm not sure how much yet, since even he's unaware of it, though I don't know, maybe there was an adoption-type situation in there somewhere, or maybe the SS had some additional info in their files that he was unaware of? In any case, that's definitely a no-no for membership. Schavich obviously refuses to believe this info is true, but he can't really argue about it without drawing more attention to it, which the SS generously suggested they'd refrain from doing, themselves. (No, they're not actually being generous. More likely they want to make use of Schavich sometime in the future.) So, he's really, REALLY bitter about not being allowed in. In this respect he has something in common with Private First Class Godfrey Klemper, who's assigned as a sort of bodyguard/assistant to Ratdog and ends up visiting Schavich's castle with him: Klemper was screwed over by the SS and bitterly hates them, too. So the two of them could bond over that, though Klemper really would rather not since he's not a crap person like Schavich is. Just pointing this out to further illustrate how complicated all these relationships are. Ratdog does learn the truth, and Schavich does get his comeuppance later in the story, albeit in a rather roundabout way (hint, Ratdog isn't the one to ultimately kill him--somebody else wants revenge on him, too). There's one particularly sad bit of fallout in his story. When Ratdog first arrives alone at Schavich's castle to respond to his summons for a job, Eisen is at the door, and almost doesn't let him in because it's late and he just wants a smoke and to go to bed. Ratdog shows him the letter with Schavich's signature so he lets him in and guides him to the general for a talk. On their way back out, he says to Ratdog, "You don't remember me, do you?" Ratdog admits that no, he doesn't; Eisen doesn't elaborate. Much later, toward the end of the war and after Schavich has been killed, another general (so far unnamed) assumes his command, restores Klemper's rank and promotes him and Dasch, and starts laying out how things are going to be done differently. Eisen asks if it's true that Schavich is dead; when this is confirmed, he exclaims, "My name is Feldwebel Udo Eisen, and I proclaim that Herr Generaloberst Schavich was a criminal, not just against Jews, but against civilians, German citizens," and proceeds to spill out the details of every horrid act Schavich ever committed--the women he assaulted, the girls he killed, the Jews and citizens he slaughtered and stole from, the military rules he broke, the hit-and-run of Ratdog's son, everything. Not just that, but Schavich's personal papers are in the safe, proving he isn't of pure Aryan ancestry--something the SS can verify. Then, after adding that he himself was complicit in covering up these acts and is sorry for it, Sgt. Eisen takes out his gun and shoots himself dead. [Schavitz 2022 [Friday, April 29, 2022, 3:01:45 AM]] |