Inspired by an awesome track of this name by the German EBM band Modulate, I’m creating a new homebrew character for the Sentinels universe; if I played the RPG, this character would be suitable for such use, but instead what I’m doing is basically just taking the existing Bunker character and “reskinning” him, possibly resulting in a promo character card for play with either the Enhanced Edition or Definitive Edition versions of the Bunker deck. This concept has existed before; we already have G.I. Bunker and Freedom Six Bunker, representing different individuals wearing different versions of the Bunker armor suit, with really nothing other than the name Bunker connecting them. What I’m doing is similar; Vernon Carter has no presence within the Enhanced Edition other than one character card, yet an entire alternate backstory had to be written for this character, and likewise I’m coming up with an entire backstory for a modern German version who deserves the Bunker name.
This character hails from a Disparation world in which the villain team Perestroika is at the forefront of a Command-and-Conquer style effort by Russia to conquer the entire European Union; I don’t believe that the current situation in Ukraine represents any such motivation on behalf of the real-world Russian Federation, but superhero comic books have always been all about fictionalizing and exaggerating real-world events to justify awesome battles and action scenes. In the universe where an openly dictatorial Putin would spend 2022 making an unapologetic attempt to completely dominate Eurasia, a young man named Kristian Eisenhart was born in the 1980s, the son of one member of a small cabal of German military officers who built their careers in the 1920s and 30s, displeased by the actions of their current political leaders in the National Socialist party, but believing it wasn’t their place to overthrow their nation’s duly appointed government. Uncomfortable with the state of Germany as the “second Great War” began to kick off, these generals did their duties where necessary, but looked to the actions of true patriots like Erwin Rommel who were willing to openly challenge the Fuuhrer’s increasingly obvious dysfunction. Eventually the group began to embezzle funds from the NS, sabotage activities related to the Final Solution, and smuggle their loved ones out of the country, finally creating an enclave in a politically neutral country which they could withdraw to. Fearing prosecution as war criminals in the wake of the Reich’s collapse, by militant groups uninterested in the nuanced discussion of whether they should have done more than they did, these men concentrated on ensuring their own security throughout the 50s and 60s, but by the 70s the political climate had calmed down enough that they began to look to the future.
The hunters the group had feared never came, and they had a sizeable nest egg put aside to guard against their worst fears; using this wealth, they began to draft plans for a new autonomous weapons system, inspired by the American superheroes who had helped to win WW2, not through their fighting process but by acting as living symbols. So they sought to create their own version of the Bunker suit which would represent the pre-Nazi version of Germany that they proudly remembered, and General Eisenhart’s son was raised in part with the expectation that he would eventually pilot this weapon. When the Russian troops began to roll into Ukraine, led into battle by Mecha-Stalin and Proletariat and the other supervillains of Perestroika, the cabal felt that the time for a new tradition of heroism in Europe had arrived. A mighty war machine festooned with silver eagles and iron crosses (but distinctly absent any swastikas or SS lightning bolts) was deployed to the battlefields between Poland and Romania, ready to protect civilians and support Nato forces, to turn the tide of history and ensure that there would be no World War Three, only a defensive action in which the EU could decisively prove its will to survive. Inside that ominously imposing shell of black steel, commanding weapons ranging from classic Grenade Launchers and Gatling Guns to the futuristic Omni-Cannon, sat the now-adult Kristian, a proud German patriot despite having never set foot in Germany, with a mind honed to sharp tactical genius by a childhood spent playing sophisticated tabletop wargames, and a constantly thrumming NDH soundtrack playing in the back of his mind, to ensure that he intuitively grasps the tempo of a chaotic battlefield. With the ideal fusion of German engineering and a righteous moral purpose made flesh, Das Bunker stands ready to defend democracy!