A quick short character piece introducing Ludwig Flügel, Detective and down on his luck former officer.
Born in the grand capital of the Imperium in the year 1869, Ludwig Flügel had a long life of turmoil and pain. His father was a book keeper for a banking establishment of lesser note and worked well to keep his family well looked after, although this led to his death through his tireless overworking late nights at the bank and an unfortunate robbery that had been planned when no one was to be at the Bank in the early hours of the morning.
Ludwig’s mother was taken to the Imperial Hospital for the Mentally Unstable after a breakdown and attempted murder-suicide of herself and her son, whom was only aged thirteen at the time.
Ludwig’s schooling had been helped along by his fathers work and the young boy’s enthusiasm for the book became one just like his fathers. Working to keep himself afloat, the boy offered his work as a book keeper and soon with the help of some of the Imperial Underworld had gained himself a reputation for able to work the books so that no one could ever decipher what was hidden and a knack for finding what was hidden in those that did not want to be found.
With this newfound cash flow Ludwig applied for a place at the Tousir Academy of Histories and Sciences and began his student life. There he fell in love with the Histories of the world and would spend his time diving into books.
That was until the Draft came, war was a constant thing in the Three Kingdoms, the Ilmarian Imperium and the Alrussian Federation had no less than 50 years between any war for the last six hundred years. A Draft always came in for a generation.
Serving on The Front, a vast series of defences and trenches between the two Empires, Ludwig went from rifleman to Order-Runner to Radio Operator. Once the rotations were done, he was offered a place upon the Merchant Detachment of the Military, working the radio’s on the transport and military watercraft.
It was here that he gained his fear of water, after the merchant ship he was serving on was sunk and he was left adrift in the Shimmering Expanse, Ludwig was never the same. He had seen something, he told whomever would listen and they deemed that like his mother before him, stress had induced insanity upon him.
Returning from the war upon a medical discharge, Ludwig returned to work as a Professor at the Tousir Academy of Histories and Sciences, where he studied that which he had seen. When his studies were becoming too problematic, the man’s tenure as a Professor was ended and he needed to keep himself a float.
Working as a Private Eye, the now Detective Ludwig Flügel had given up all hope on ever solving what he had seen.
Until she walked in through the door.