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Information
Name/Nickname: Lukas Mettbach; the Cat; the Ace of Diamonds
Gender: Cisgender male
Birthdate/Age/Sign: NA; thirties/forties; Gemini
Orientation: Heteroromantic heterosexual
Relationship Status: Single/involved (Margarethe Dannecker)
Race/Ethnicity/Nationality: Sinti; Sinti-Germanic descent; German
Class: Working (blue-collar poor)
Religion: Roman Catholic/traditional Sinti folk belief (semi-practicing)
Profession: Before the war--horse breeder, petty thief; during the war--labor camp prisoner, then resistance fighter, spy, and saboteur for the Diamond Network; after the war--odd jobs, stable boy, courier for Josef Diamant's shop
Birthplace/Residence: Germany/WWII Germany
Personality/Characteristics
[Coming soon.]
Appearance
Lukas is an unknown/mongrel breed with pricked/upright ears which are almost always carried somewhat folded down/back and short fur. He's of average height; with a thin body type (he never regained all the weight he lost while in captivity, so he still resembles a camp prisoner, with sunken cheeks, visible ribs, etc.); has heterochromatic eyes--the left one is dark brown, the right one is blue; and has rusty tan fur and black hair, the latter of which he keeps shorn during the war.
Lukas has a camp prisoner ID number tattooed inside his left forearm. He has heterochromia iridum, with one brown eye and one blue eye. He has a large scar extending from his right back around his flank, from when his kidney was removed. He usually dresses in trousers, an oversized coat or jacket, a cap similar to a newsboy cap, and the striped shirt he wore while in the labor camp, with a black triangle badge with a "Z" on it, for "Zigeuner" (his coat usually conceals this). He typically carries daggers or knives concealed on his person. He often goes barefoot when the weather permits. He's often furtive and suspicious looking, huddling in his clothes with his head down, yet is skilled at blending into the background despite his unusual appearance and going unnoticed. He's sensitive to light due to experiments he was subjected to in the camps; he often squints and blinks and scratches at his hands.
Family & Relationships
Margarethe Dannecker (Ally/Lover)
[Coming soon.]
Unnamed Sinti Woman (Lover) (Deceased)
Young woman with whom Lukas engages in an illicit relationship before the war, when he still lives in a Sinti encampment. The two are genuinely fond of each other and plan to elope as their families both protest their involvement with each other; yet the Sinti camp is attacked and destroyed and many of the residents, including the woman, are massacred by Nazi forces. Lukas survives, yet is then shuttled through a series of labor camps. For a long time afterward he feels extreme guilt, suspecting that his breaking of Sinti custom may have been the cause of his camp's destruction, and wonders if he's cursed.
History
[Coming soon.]
Lukas In Heaven
[Coming soon.]
Trivia
*The SS doctor who subjects Lukas to various experiments takes some inspiration from, but is not directly based on, Josef Mengele. Similar to Mengele, he's interested in studying the Sinti/Roma peoples, and attempts to change Lukas's eye color; unlike Mengele, he isn't a camp official, spends quite a bit of personal time with Lukas, and allows him to survive. Lukas afterward always superstitiously refers to him as simply "the Angel" (as in the Angel of Life and Death), and sometimes compares/contrasts him with Commandant Dannecker ("the Devil"). Ironically, Lukas's own actions--his stabbing of Lt. Hesse--lead to the murder of yet more of his people, when Hesse tips off the same SS doctor about the arrival of a group of Sinti prisoners at the camp.
*He adores horses, having worked as a stable boy and horse breeder in his previous life, and likes feeding them treats and brushing their hair; he even greets Lt. Hesse's Waffen-SS horse, Gewitter, with affection, and rescues her and the rest of the horses from the Dobermann estate. He tells Gret Dannecker that he has "horses in his blood." As he explains to her when she finds him sleeping in a hay loft after the war: "A horse stall can be a small heaven compared to a filthy little barracks bunk, you know that? Maybe you can't tell the difference, but horses aren't filthy. Horses are good and clean. The smell of the hay and their hair and their sweat and their breath, this is a good thing. Even their dung and their piss is far better than what we slept with in those nasty little bunks. I'd sleep in a barn with the horses a million times over rather than in the barracks with a bunch of my own kind, any day. I used to sneak out to visit the horses at night. Curl up beside them. They were big and warm and safe. Sometimes I can still smell them in my dreams. I tried to hold on to that, in the camps. Didn't really have anything else. If you have nothing to hold on to, you go mad. Those f*ckers with their swastikas shot them all, right before they rounded us up. Bullets in their heads. They laughed while they did it. Could've set 'em loose, or made use of 'em themselves, you know? They all wear those boots and those fancy riding pants, you think they'd admire some nice well-bred horses, ja? But no. They were only Zigeuner horses anyway. They set fire to everything after. Smoke and burning and scorched flesh and then the stench of the train and then, the camps. I come here to breathe this in and try to forget those other smells. Can't do that in some little room for let."
*Lukas keeps his head shaved, and continues wearing his striped shirt and black triangle badge, even following his escape from the labor camp, vowing to remain this way until every last Nazi is dead. He unfortunately doesn't get to keep this promise, as the SS doctor who victimized him escapes Germany after the war and is never found.
*[Coming soon.]
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