Kurt Messer

> Oh Scheiße, jetzt geht es wieder los"
>
> Kurt Messer, at multiple times in his life, when things got considerably worse.

## Pre-Apocalypse (Pre-Season 0)

Kurt was born in Bottrop, 1964, peak of the "Wirtschaftswunder", the economic golden age of West Germany after the second world war, as the oldest of three sons and a single daughter. But just like it ended in the 70s, so would the fortune of the Messer family end with the turn of the 60s into the 70s. Kurts father, died in 1969 in an accident at his workplace, a cuckoo clock factory, leaving his widowed wife to take care of four children, all the while the region more and more impoverished.

Kurt grew up on the ugly streets of Bottrop, playing football between Pizza Parlors of Gastarbeiter families, rundown drinking halls full of aged traumatized veterans of the war, and an always gray sky, dirty from the many coal mines of the Ruhrbasin. Lacking the money to buy a costume, Kurts Mother made him a cowboy outfit a year after his father died, for carnival, a costume he would wear till he had utterly outgrown it, cementing his love for everything remotely connected to the wild west. In a way, it helped the young boy to cope with the death of his father, by embracing the personality of a lone cowboy. Having his grandmother read him the Winnetou novels, and also never missing a chance to watch it, whenever it was on TV, further fueled in the young Kurt, a dream of moving to America and be a real cowboy. A dream that stuck with him, even when he grew older. It did however also lead to some ridicule from his peers, that together with his impovrished upbringing, led to Kurt to develop a violent temperament, easy to lash out, and later in his schooldays, becoming a bully, using his tall size and natural strength, to steal money from his weaker classmates.

Kurt went to a vocational school, becoming a trained chef and butcher, before serving his mandatory conscription in a Bavarian barrack, mostly peeling potatoes. But it was during that time, that he spend every chance he got, to study English, trading cigarettes with nearby stationed British soldiers to get some conversation practice. After he was discharged, he made use of a work-visa program for discharged conscripts, allowing him to fly to the United states. So with little more in his bag than some cloths, a cheap airport bought book titled "How to pick up American girls" and a big dream, Kurt made for Ohio.

Kurt spent some years working as a chef for multiple restaurants and catering agencies. It took him years of hard work to save up enough, but recalling his love for cowboys and westerns, Kurt had an ambition. He wanted to open a steakhouse, a real American cowboy steakhouse!

Rosewood was a small town in Kentucky, that Kurt found a cheap bar for sale, with the matching rustic wooden look he had always been thinking of, when picturing his steakhouse. And so, in 1988 it was finally time for Kurt to open up his dream to the public.

There was no real wealth in it, but the Steakhouse made a modest profit. However, for Kurt, it was more important to live the American dream. Becoming a popular figure in Rosewood, never missing out a single cookout, and becoming the assistant coach of the Rosewood High Baseball team. His plans of settling down, clashed a little with his bachelor lifestyle but Kurt was content and happy. That was, until Thanksgiving 1990.

In an attack, targeted at some bikers that frequented Kurts Steakhouse, regularly that left seven of them dead, Kurt was caught in the crossfire and heavily wounded. Flown to Louisville by helicopter an emergency operation saved his life, yet he spent two months recovering, and couldn't eat any meat for two years, which ironically, might have saved him from becoming infected with CHD. He had to sell his Steakhouse far undervalue, to cover his medical bills, and afterward stayed in Louisville, returning to his trade as a catering chef, but with the general decline in trust in meat, he also took up work as a bouncer at his favorite strip club.

It was here, that when the city was placed under quarantine, he would enter a bus, bringing him to a PNDRA safe site.

## Early Louisville (Season 0)

Following the disaster of Arrival Day Kurt found himself alone in Louisville, but also well-prepared for what the city had become. Blessed with a strong swing of anything remotely bat shaped, basic military training and enough brawn to use both, Kurt became adapt in killing Feeders, and joined the many others in looting the city, as order fully broke down. Settling down for the first months in a mansion near the river, it was a time of excess. Drinking the best booze he could loot, cooking fine meals and riding a nice sports car, a trade run to the Bazaar, ended with Kurt being hired as muscle by Jenny, soon becoming her chief of security of the place.

Kurt had a good life at the Bazaar, with drinks not running out, food staying of good quality even the power of the city was cut, and the company being preferable to being on his own. However, there was a desire for him to leave the City, like with most trapped in it. And during his many patrols on the outside, Kurt found a sewer system, that seemingly could provide him with a potential escape route.

Secretly dividing supplies from the Bazaar, as well as scouting out his path of escape, Kurt finally put his plan into action, after having been at the Bazaar for almost half a year. In a moonless night, he slipped out, planning never to return. He didn't told anyone about his plan, telling himself that it was too reckless to get others involved and potentially killed, but deep down, he knew that he just didnt want anyone potentially mess things up for him. Little did he knew, that someone would just do that.

## Meeting Julian and the escape from LV (Season 0)

The tunnel turned out to be a controlled listening post of the quarantine, and Kurt soon was chased out of it. Wanting to lose his FERO pursuers in the city, he accidentally led them right into Julian Shaw and a pregnant woman. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, seeing an opening to escape, Kurt instead decided to open fire on his pursuers, defending Julian and his companion, but getting heavily wounded in the process.

Kurt spent a month recovering, and when he finally was able to walk again, he found the woman dead, and her daughter Aurora, born. Helping Julian set up, he convinced him to return to the Bazaar, which by then had already been bombed. Reconnecting with Jenny, and resuming his position of chief of security, Kurts time left in LV was uneventful. Becoming the guardian of the new base of Operation of Jenny's group, as well as her personal enforcer, Kurt was not part of the breakout of LV, but instead used the very tunnel he tried to escape in before, this time taking it all the way into Valley station. There, he reconnected with the rest of Jenny's, able to lie his way out deep questioning about his absence. It was in a temporary safehouse, that Kurt, during a patrol to secure the surrounding, that Kurt was swarmed by feeders, before being rescued, and abducted by Bikers of the Iron Rodents.

## Time among the Iron Rodents and the Rosewood Massacre (Season 0)

Pressed into service as a chef, due to some of the Iron Rodents, former All-Aryan Vanguard members, recognizing him from his time as a restraunt owner in Rosewood, Kurt was treated decently by his captors, able to stand up for himself and proving himself in more than one feeder attack. Uncomfortable with his new companions, the Iron Rodents chapter having become a war band of bikers, hill-billy thugs and pressed men like him, Kurt spend two weeks travelling with his companions through Knox, looting and robbing people. More than once, he became the voice to talk out some of the more vile members to perform wanton murder or worse upon helpless survivors, which gave him a false sense of security in his ability to manipulate his new brothers in arms.

Finally, the Iron Rodents descended upon Rosewood, in a plan to "purify" the city, and make it the capital of their new "White American Empire". Put in charge of a small group of fellow pressed men, Kurt was pushed to consume methamphetamine, before joining the battle for the city. At its end, however, was not just the killing of feeders, but also of every survivor the Iron Rodents deemed "subhuman". Gathering all at the Rosewood supermarket, Kurt, and the remaining pressed men, were formed into a firing squad, with guns aimed to their backs, and told to fire. Two refused the order and were hanged for it. Kurt, was not among them.

Traumatized by his actions and consumed by guilt, Kurt was presented with a chance of redemption, he clung to desperately, as he tried to help a family to escape from Rosewood, towards the PNDRA evacuation zone. But it failed, with Kurt being forced to watch how the family was dozed in gasoline, and set on fire.

For his betrayal, Kurt was sentenced to five years of slavery in a humiliating mock trial. Kurt, was reduced to a shambling punching bag, by his former "comrades", utterly broken by what he had witnessed and unable to fight back, he would endure unimaginable cruelty and abuse by his captors.

Finally, in a cunning rouse, the Iron Rodents were slaughtered to a man, and Kurt, was freed by Jenny. Her chief of Security, by then hardly recognizable as the man she had once known. Returned to the PNDRA evacuation site at the trainstation, Kurt remained shut in, traumatized by what had happened in Rosewood and consumed by guilt. It was mostly through the tender care of Jenny, that Kurt slowly began to recover, and return to a somewhat functional state.

## Birmingham (Pre-Season 1)

Arriving in Birmingham, Kurt spend most of his time there trying to process what had happened in Rosewood. Actual, PNDRA provided therapy by a a certain Dr. Clarke, led to slow progress, with Kurt being able to pick up a job as a diner cook, working with Jenny, which gave him an additional sense of security. During Christmas 1994 he was even able to celebrate with his friends, Primo, Julian and Jenny.

Kurt suffered a heavy relapse during the FERO takeover of the Birmingham airport, resisting being locked into the pen, and having his jaw dislocated by one of the FERO guards. Escaping from the holding cells Jenny and he were brought into, Kurt joined the Tunnel Rat resistance against the Fero takeover. Falling into manic state, Kurt began to look towards violence as an escape from his trauma and guilt, giving in to the same brutal bullying instinct his childhood had see him indulge in.

During the Birmingham Uprising, Kurt led a small fireteam, containing Jenny Honors and Morgan Walsh, in the liberation of the holding pens. While well planned, Kurt lost himself in bloodlust during the attack on the pen, and fired wildly into it, wounding multiple civilians and possibly even killing some. Likewise, he showed no mercy to any wounded or surrendering FERO personal, his sole command during the liberation of the pen being:"Kill them all!"

Leading the survivors of the Pen towards the airplane, and partaking in the final firefight against FERO there, Kurt attacked the FERO evacuation process with a captured machine gun, before blindly fireing at everything he could see, FERO, Feeder and civilian alike, in a manic fit of bloodlust.