Klaus Grünwald

**Klaus Grünwald**, also known as **Al**, was a participant in Group B of the Second Nonary Game.

## Appearance

Klaus has wavy, unkempt auburn hair that comes down to about his jawline. He’s a lanky man, standing at about 6’2” and weighing below average. He could also be described as puny. He has warm brown eyes that seem to sparkle whenever he talks about things he’s passionate about. Perhaps one of his most distinguishing features are mild burn scars that are most prominent on the left side of his face, around his eyes, and on his hands and lower arms. Due to damage that relates to the burns, Klaus wears glasses that are large and circular in style. Regarding the rest of his clothing, Klaus generally has a comfortable, yet well-kempt, style. When he was kidnapped, Klaus was wearing a green sweater with a cream undershirt, khakis, and loafers. He wears fairly nice looking cream colored gloves. Other mainstay outfits of his outside the game include a very stylish pair of overalls with dirt stained knees and a lab coat that he has to bleach every so often.

## Personality

Klaus is curious, having fostered an interest in the outside world and it’s many workings since he was a child. As the old saying goes, curiosity killed the cat, and his desire to know everything has often gotten him into trouble. Klaus is also intelligent when it comes to book smarts, but lacks social awareness or street smarts. He enjoys puzzle solving, but he isn’t always the fastest at coming to a conclusion and enjoys more the process of coming to an answer rather than the answer itself. Klaus tries to remain optimistic, but this often comes off as him just being naive; in a way, his optimism is just a way of tricking himself from having to truly comprehend the facts about his situation. Although he often relies of logic, he, like many, has a tendency to pick and choose what they believe, even when there is proof that their belief is false. In addition, he is a bit socially ignorant, purely for the fact that he never prioritized making friends over making discovers. He can form close bonds with people, but like with his sister, he struggles to maintain them and his top priority will always be his work. Despite caring about people, he cares about them because he knows it's the right thing to do, not necessarily because he feels a connection to them personally. It takes a long time for him to genuinely commit to maintaining a relationship with someone. He can become so goal-oriented that he loses sight of what’s important, as he did with his sister and his career. Lastly, he can be sensitive about specific topics. If his intelligence or merit come into question, he will be sincerely hurt and perhaps grow frustrated over time. He can hold a grudge, but he won’t seek revenge or act out against a person for wronging him, as he despises confrontation unless it's absolutely necessary. He will simply remember. He’s also sensitive about his scarring, primarily because he was harassed about it during high school and has been told things like, “You wouldn’t be that bad looking if you didn’t have that shit on on your face.”

## Backstory

Born to Candace Levigne and Gus Grünwald, Klaus was born on November 1, 1999. His parents, unmarried at the time of Klaus’s birth (and Klaus’s birth being the result of a one-night stand), initially struggled to decide what to do with their newborn infant. Eventually, they settled upon the decision to give custody of Klaus to his German-speaking grandparents. As a result of this, Klaus’s first language was, in fact, German. Despite his grandparents speaking some English, he would largely learn it through his education rather than in his early homelife.

Although Klaus was loved, fed, and clothed (at least by his grandparents), he was often left unsupervised as a child, allowed to follow his natural curiosities, as his grandparents followed the “just lock the child outside for a while” ideology. This fostered a love of the natural world in Klaus, and he’d often bring back flowers or old bones he’d found in the woods to his grandparents as gifts from his adventures. This led to him, at the age of six, running into an invasive plant known as giant hogweed.

The plant, which towered over the young Klaus, instantly captured his attention- from his perspective, he could barely even see the small white flowers at the top of the stem. Just as he always did, Klaus pulled off pieces of the stem until he’d gathered himself a small bushel of flowers. It wasn’t until he started running home that he began to feel a burning sensation around his face and on his arms, and by the time he got home, the skin of the affected areas started to peel away. Making the situation worse, by the time he was crying out in pain for his grandparents, he’d already rubbed the tears out of his eyes, causing them to burn, too. Rushed to the hospital, the staff explained that Klaus had gotten the toxic sap of the plant on his skin, and that this encounter would leave him with both permanent damage to his vision and scars on his body.

Rather than being discouraged by this whole ordeal, however, Klaus was left with an intense desire to learn more about what was hiding in the outside world. Most of all, he wanted to learn why and how a plant like this could even exist. His curiosity could not be deterred, and this would become increasingly apparent to his grandparents as they would begrudgingly take him to the hospital with cases of poison oak, poison ivy, and poison sumac over the coming years. “At least he hasn’t tried to eat any of the damn plants yet,” they’d grumble as they picked up his prescription for antihistamines. It wasn’t long before he wasn’t allowed to pick anything without gloves on. He’s continued to maintain that habit in his current work.

When Klaus was eight, his father had finished his degree, remarried, and become financially stable, offering to take Klaus with him after angry insistence by his grandparents, who despite caring for him, did not want to keep their “son’s responsibility” forever. Klaus felt unsure, as he’d hardly known his father for the majority of his childhood; yet, Klaus agreed (not that the choice was wholly his own), seeing it as a new adventure. What first appeared to be an exciting new journey, however, turned into learning how to babysit his two younger step-siblings, both girls, about two and four at the time, which came along with his father’s wife.

There was no thread of connection between Klaus and his new caretakers, and in his youth he couldn’t help but often feel resentful. He hated having these negative feelings constantly nagging at him, and after a few outbursts that resulted into more harm than good, he threw himself both into his hobbies and into developing an actual relationship with his sisters. Despite this new house being much smaller than what he was used to, in a cramped, city lot, he tried to focus on the little things that he could enjoy in their backyard. He would show his sisters how to use a magnifying glass to burn the grass (but never ants, that wasn’t fair to them), how to cover themselves with leaves and become camouflaged, and that dewy mornings were the best for catching slugs and snails. Although the older sister, Evelyn, was never interested in the outside world, the younger sister, Lillian, or Lily, took to him quickly. The pair were nearly inseparable even when Klaus’s guardians were around until the day he moved out ten years later.

As he grew older, Klaus began a garden that he would keep with Lillian. It was small, but it became the siblings pride and joy. Eventually, the pair even started growing plants inside the house, like aloe vera, which they would sell for extra pocket money. It all went swimmingly until it was time for Klaus to head off to college, when his old garden and his sister became less important than his new work at university.

Klaus’s interests, being clear since childhood, meant he was immediately drawn to pursue a degree in botany with a minor in entomology. Luckily, he was able to pick whatever school he wanted and whatever program due his paternal grandparents having set aside part of their savings for his education. Undergrad, to him, was easy- although his grades weren’t always the best because of negligence, his love of information and natural intelligence allowed him to fly by the seat of his pants most of the time. This natural intelligence, however, did not transfer to his social life.

He became distant from others as his education progressed, focusing only on his work and his labmates, neglecting to even acknowledge his family for months at a time. Although it didn’t bother his parents and Evelyn, Lillian felt betrayed. It wasn’t until Klaus visited home for Christmas one year that he realized the entire garden and collection of plants they’d built up over nearly eight years had been left to wither and die, despite Lillian’s initial insistence upon taking care of it. Rather than confronting her about it, Klaus returned to school as he usually would, allowing the relationship to effectively wither along with the rest of the plants.

Just before being kidnapped, Klaus was preparing to present his senior thesis in exactly a week, being: “A Phytochemical Investigation of the Toxic Plant Heracleum Mantegazzianum (Giant Hogweed)”. After his thesis, after some begging from his parents, Klaus intended to try and reconnect with the now fourteen year old Lillian, who, according to her parents, had taken upon a rebellious streak.

## Trivia

* Klaus's character was inspired by Ronnie studying invasive species in high school and taking an entomology course in college.
* He found the nickname "Al," to be rather clever, as it was a reference to the aloe vera plants he used to grow with his sister, Lily.
* If he and Ivan had survived the Second Nonary Game, they likely would've attempted to compare research and meet.