Army of Shadows: OOC

[Saint Michel]

[Army of Shadows

It's France, May 1944. While Allied armies gather over the horizon, France groans under the increasingly harsh German occupation. The country is rapidly dissolving into a war zone as ordinary men, women, and children take up the struggle to free their country from Nazi rule. Aided by Allied spies and covert operatives, these Resistance fighters face the full might of the German war machine as it seeks to wipe out the last glimmers of defiance.

Many live double lives, for as they seek to undermine the German war machine they chance discovery by their occupiers or betrayal by those they thought friends. Should they be captured they know their fate will be one of imprisonment, torture, and even death -- and yet there are still those willing to risk everything for a cause greater than themselves.

Theirs is an incredible story; one of bravery, violence, fear, and secrecy. It is a tale of common people and uncommon valor, and it is a story that deserves to be told.

* * *

Okay, I'm basically pasting this all in from the Interest Check.

This RP set on the eve of the D-Day landings in Normandy, when the Allied Supreme Headquarters called on the French Resistance to play its part in preparing for the coming battle. This army of shadows blew up bridges, derailed trains, cut telephone wires, provided valuable intelligence, and succeeded in distracting and tying up large numbers of German troops that were needed to defeat the Allied landings.

Characters can be members of the French Resistance, Allied operatives of the SOE and OSS, or Germans seeking to put down the Resistance. My one rule: no ninjas. People who are up to it would be more than welcome to have more than one character.

Character sheet:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Nationality:
Affiliation (i.e. French, American/British, German):
Appearance:
Background:



Name: Emile Stavrouche
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Nationality: French
Affiliation: Ceux de la Résistance (CDLR)
Appearance:
Background: Born in February, 1912 in a suburb of Paris, Emile's father was killed at Verdun in 1916. His mother moved to live with her parents in Haute-Normandy, and Emile grew up in the small town of Offranville outside of Dieppe. In 1930 he was accepted into the École Polytechnique, and graduated with honors. He took a position within the Ministry of Energy in 1933, and held that position through 1940 and the surrender of France.
Currently, Emile lives in Paris still works within the Ministry, by all appearance cooperating with the German occupation authorities. However, not all is as it seems. In other circles Emile is known as Ramo: a smuggler, gun-runner, saboteur, and key leader in the Resistance.


And character number two:
Name: Willi Spanzdorff
Age: 40
Gender: male
Nationality: German
Affiliation: SS-Gruppenfuhrer
Appearance:
Background: Born in the industrial city of Essen, Willi was conscripted into the Reichswehr in the closing days of the Great War. Cast penniless and without prospects onto the streets, he found an outlet for his anger in the words of Adolf Hitler. In 1925 he found a job with the Munich police, where he remained until transferring into the SS in 1934.

Willi served successfully in the opening years of the war, working closely with the SD under Reinhard Heydrich. In 1942 he was reassigned to France with the mission of stamping out the resistance, by any means necessary.

[Guest]

Name: Yves-Marie Auguste de Saint-Palais
Age: 54
Gender: Male
Nationality: French

Affiliation: Ceux de la Libération, Conservative organization later folded into the national organization.

Appearance: A lean, well-kept older gentleman with a trimmed moustache and a rather longish nose. He is slightly swarthier than some other Frenchmen, and his hair is only somewhat peppered with gray, and otherwise stays naturally black; it has not receded. He is missing an eye, which he covers with a patch in public, and replaces with a glass eye when he is doing something covert.

Background: Service in the First World War as an infantry officer, where he suffered gas injuries to the lungs and lost an eye in an artillery strike, he subsequently retired and went into the shipping and freight business, which was fairly lucrative. He went back to duty in 1940, but saw little action himself as a staff officer, owing to his age and disability. He has since worked quietly with the resistance. He has a wife, Marie, and one living son, Giscard-Henri. Three other sons and his daughter, Philippe, Jean, Charles and Charlotte, are all dead, one of the sons in 1940, another as a Spitfire pilot in North Africa with the Free French, and then the third executed by Petain's regime. His daughter suicided after her lover was executed in the same action. His wife, as a result of so much death, is bereaved and insane most of the time. As a result, he himself has much to make the Germans pay for.

He heads up a fairly extensive transportation and smuggling network, concentrating primarily on getting shot down allied pilots out of France and into Spain, though he also has a fairly well organized smuggling operation for weapons, though this has become less of a priority ever since the SOE set up a reliable method of supplying the Maquis.

He was born in the Basque country, though his mother was from much further north, and shares some of the ferocity of the Basque people. While his ancestral home is down in Pyrenees Atlantiques, he tends to operate further north, closer to Bordeaux, where his wife came into her family's old house and some land. When he is not working for the resistance, he tends to her there, surrounded by things from her childhood rather than the tragedy and loss of her adult life. It also makes for a useful landing field for emergency extractions for light aircraft, though he's only done it twice.

It is notable that he, as many Basques, is a devout Catholic. His priest, Father Betrand, is part of his immediate cell.

[Guest]

So, are we still considering this one? Otherwise, I'm tempted to post an intcheck for a conventional WWII themed piece set in the Far East, the Pacific or in North Africa.

[Saint Michel]

Yea, I want to do it, i've just been busy. I'll post something tonight and see if it catches on.

Regardless, you could do a WWII one. I'd join!!

[Guest]

I'll probably make a chart and randomly roll what theatre of conflict it would take place in. I'm gonna try to avoid making it an Ameriwank*, if at all possible, which means that any scenario involving American forces will -not- be set in Northern Europe, 1944-1945.

I'll shoot you a privmsg if/when I set up the intchk.

[Guest]

Oh, I posted my first in-character with the resistance. I figured to start right off the bat with one of the most dicey and uncomfortable activities of the French Resistance; policing their own when the Germans turn a member into an agent.

[Saint Michel]

Great stuff. Really tough situation.

[Rittermeister]

Name: Captain Roy Urquhart

Age: 27

Gender: Male

Nationality: Scottish

Affiliation (i.e. French, American/British, German): British SOE

Appearance: Urquhart is, as far as appearances go, a stereotypical Scotsman, but there the resemblences end. Tall, at three inches over six feet, and burly, he has a swarthy complexion and black hair that has often had him confused for black Irish. His face is strong and compact, the kind of face that can take much punishment, but otherwise unremarkable.

Background: Urquhart came to the SOE much the same as the other field agents; he was recruited because he posessed a skill they found useful. After graduating from the Imperial College in 1939 with a degree in mining engineering, he was called to do his National Service. With the war on, this turned into a rather longer stint than the two years expected. He spent his first two years in the ordnance department, and was involved in the development of the sticky bomb. In 1941, he was recruited into the SOE for his skill with explosive devices. After two years' service in Yugoslavia, he was informed he was bound somewhere else: France. Despite his vehement protestations, he was given three weeks of French classes and dropped over there.

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