You know your story telling is top tier when you get sad at your own lore
(Text wall time :3)
Name: Greta Hoffman
Birth year: 1895
Nationality: German
Former occupation: Soldier during the First World War
Current identity: The Gas Angel, an immortal witness to the suffering left behind by war.
1. Childhood and Early Life (1895–1913)
Greta was born in Germany in 1895. She grew up in a world shaped by military tradition, rigid expectations, and the growing tensions of pre-war Europe.
Her father held a Prussian military administrative position. Through him, Greta became familiar with military life, uniforms, paperwork, and the culture surrounding the German armed forces. She cherished her father's old military hat, which would eventually become one of the few possessions she carried through her long existence.
Greta was curious, observant, and more interested in understanding the world than conforming to what others expected of her. However, being a young woman in her era placed strict limits on what she was permitted to do.
In 1913, Greta discovered a mysterious green, bullet-shaped crystal. At the time, she had no idea what it was or what role it would eventually play in her life.
2. The First World War (1914–1918)
When the First World War began, Greta wanted to serve. Because women were not generally permitted to enlist as ordinary German soldiers, she disguised herself as a man and entered military service.
She experienced the war firsthand: the trenches, the artillery, the exhaustion, the injuries, the fear, and the constant uncertainty of whether the person beside her would survive the day.
Greta grew attached to the ordinary things that remained amid the horror. She found comfort in horses, especially the animals that pulled artillery and supplies. They did not demand explanations from her, judge her, or ask her to put her experiences into words. Their presence offered a rare kind of uncomplicated companionship.
But the war steadily took its toll. Greta witnessed people die in circumstances no one should have to endure. She heard the screams of wounded soldiers, watched friends disappear from her life, and learned how quickly a familiar face could become a memory.
During a chlorine gas attack, the mysterious crystal became embedded in her chest and saved her life in a way she could not understand. The event marked the beginning of her transformation into something beyond an ordinary human being.
Greta survived the war, but survival did not mean she escaped it.
3. The Years Between the Wars (1918–1939)
The armistice ended the fighting, but Greta's experiences did not end with it.
She carried the psychological consequences of the war into the years that followed. Memories intruded without warning. Sudden noises could bring the trenches back to her. Whistles, explosions, and the sounds of people in distress could leave her tense, frightened, or unable to distinguish the present from the past.
The world around her continued changing. People rebuilt their lives, found new routines, and tried to move forward. Greta struggled to understand how anyone could simply continue living when so much suffering had happened.
Her condition became increasingly complicated by the supernatural burden connected to the crystal. She was no longer merely remembering the dead she had personally known. She became a vessel for the voices and suffering of countless forgotten soldiers.
She could not simply leave those memories behind. Nor could she explain them to ordinary people without sounding impossible to believe.
Alcohol gradually became one of her methods of coping.
At first, drinking offered a brief interruption: a way to dull the sharpness of her memories, quiet her thoughts, and make the present feel less unbearable. It did not resolve her trauma, but it gave her temporary relief when she could find little else.
Over time, that temporary relief became dependence.
4. The Second World War (1939–1945)
When the Second World War began, Greta was still alive.
She witnessed another enormous conflict unfold, with new battlefields, new weapons, and another generation of soldiers sent into danger. The horrors of the first war were not replaced by the second; they accumulated.
Greta recognized familiar patterns: frightened young soldiers, devastated landscapes, the loss of people who had barely begun their lives, and the way military necessity could make individual suffering seem insignificant.
She encountered more death than she could emotionally process. The number of voices and memories associated with her existence continued to grow, leaving her with even less peace than before.
By the end of the Second World War, Greta had endured two world wars. She had lived through experiences that would have been overwhelming for any ordinary person, and she was left with no natural endpoint to her suffering.
Other people could grow old, retire, forget certain details, or eventually leave their wartime experiences behind. Greta could not rely on time to provide that kind of distance.
She remained.
5. The Decades After 1945
The world entered a new era. Technology advanced, societies changed, and new generations grew up with no personal memory of the wars Greta had witnessed.
For Greta, however, the past never became entirely past.
She continued carrying the memories and voices associated with the dead. Later conflicts added further reminders of the same cycle of suffering. Even in peaceful surroundings, she could be overwhelmed by memories of places that no longer existed as she remembered them.
Her outward appearance could seem deceptively ordinary: a small, somewhat disheveled German woman with messy blond hair, oversized glasses, a medical eyepatch, and an old military cap. She could read, draw military vehicles, explore modern technology, or sit quietly with someone she trusted.
Yet beneath those ordinary habits was a person who had spent decades trying to live with an extraordinary and relentless psychological burden.
Greta's relationship with alcohol deepened during this period. Drinking became familiar, predictable, and readily available in a life where almost nothing else could reliably quiet her mind.
It also became a habit she could no longer easily separate from her daily routine.
6. The Modern Era
In the modern world, Greta is surrounded by conveniences and possibilities that would have seemed extraordinary during her childhood. She can explore new places, learn about modern culture, read, draw, and occasionally enjoy simple pleasures.
She can also form relationships with people who treat her as a person rather than a weapon, a monster, or an impossible historical curiosity.
That kindness matters to her, even when she struggles to accept it.
Greta remains affected by severe trauma, nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance, and the ongoing burden of memories and voices. She may insist that she is fine when she is clearly exhausted or distressed. She can become irritable when someone suggests that a simple conversation or a few therapy sessions will solve a lifetime of suffering.
Her resistance is not necessarily a belief that help is worthless. It comes partly from exhaustion, mistrust, and the fear that someone who has never experienced anything like her existence will misunderstand her.
She has lived far longer than the people trying to help her. She has also spent much of that time hiding what she is and what she has endured.
Being offered help can feel unfamiliar enough to make her defensive.
7. Why Greta Needs Alcohol
Greta's dependence on alcohol is rooted in trauma, not in a desire to appear edgy or mysterious.
She has spent more than a century living with the psychological aftermath of war. Her memories include experiences from the First and Second World Wars, later conflicts, and the suffering carried by the dead associated with her supernatural existence.
She cannot simply forget what she has seen. She cannot count on aging to put emotional distance between herself and her experiences. And the voices and memories can intrude even when she desperately wants quiet.
Alcohol became a coping mechanism because it offered something she struggled to find elsewhere: temporary numbness.
When she drinks, she may feel that the memories have become more distant or that the constant pressure in her mind has briefly lessened. She may find it easier to sit still, ignore an intrusive memory, or avoid confronting emotions that seem too large to manage.
But the relief is temporary. The memories remain, and the underlying trauma is not treated by drinking. Her dependence can leave her caught in a cycle in which distress encourages her to drink, drinking becomes increasingly familiar, and the possibility of facing her feelings without it becomes frightening.
Greta may understand, at least partly, that alcohol is not truly fixing anything. That knowledge does not automatically make it easy to stop. She can resent her dependence while simultaneously fearing the loss of the relief it provides.
This contradiction is central to her character.
She might throw away a bottle in a moment of frustration, declare that she is finished with drinking, and then find herself craving it again later. She might reject a therapist's offer because she expects to be misunderstood, then privately wish someone could make the voices quiet without asking her to relive everything.
Her supernatural nature does not make her immune to addiction or psychological distress. Even if her body is protected from certain physical consequences, she can still become intoxicated, experience impaired judgment, and suffer the emotional and behavioral effects of alcohol dependence.
