Dr. Gottwin
By John Helmer
Art design by Brad Eastburn
Name: Dr. Ernst Gottwin
Location: Antarctica research base
Group Affiliation: Axis forces, SS science department
Powers: Ernst Gottwin controls non-communicative distortions of ethereal energy in the form of glowing green amoeboid-type globules. He captures the energy from a human shredding device that siphons off ethereal energy when the subjects are killed. He dispenses the deadly energy from glass capsules filled with minute portions of the original energy mass. When the SS doctor releases the bottled-up energy for an attack, it seeks out its human prey attempting to connect itself to the inherent energy of the living target. The resulting interaction makes the attacking energy fuse with the living human target. Since the two energies cancel each other out, they simultaneously dissipate within seconds, leaving only the human’s clothes and jewelry.
History: Dr. Ernst Gottwin was indoctrinated into the SS shortly after it was formed. He was transferred to Department VII, of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). The RSHA is the central SS-department. It controlled all official and secret police and security organizations of the Third Reich and is a multitude of departments, offices, groups, and sub-divisions. The SS-leaders of the RSHA were provided with almost unlimited power by Himmler. Gottwin was assigned specifically to Sonderkommando-H under the command of Dr. Johann Veidlin located at a mountain top retreat in Southern Germany. Department VII administered book stocks and archive materials of political, ideological, and religious content. Much of their research material had been confiscated from Jews, Freemasons, and politicians. All depositaries throughout Germany were searched thoroughly: churches, libraries, and universities. An area of interest that sparked Department VII’s attention was the theory of Shoggoth energy. Shoggoths are protoplasmic entities in a mutable form. They look like gigantic amoebae made of green tar with glowing eyes floating on their surface. Dr. Veidlen read accounts of witches and warlocks creating lumps of the material, only to be consumed by their creation in a brilliant flash from the combation of the witch and the Shaggoth energy. After several tests that yielded positive preliminary results, Veidlin sent Dr. Gottwin to Berlin to convince Himmler that they could create vast quantities of the energy and control it to crush the allied armies. Himmler was intrigued and authorized funding for their project. But there were doubters in the SS and rumors began to spread that Himmler and his Department VII were creating a division of witches and warlocks. Himmler, fearful that Hitler might pull the plug on the funding, moved the SS scientists’ experiments to the secret Antarctic base where Veidlin and Gottwin could proceed without interference. What they found out immediately was that the energy was indeed “magnetic” and attracted to the person who tried to collect it. The other troubling issue was the amount of human tissue needed to make one minute globule. Their findings were reported back to Berlin where Himmler issued an immediate remedy for one of the obstacles. Civilian ships loaded with undesirables, under the cover of refugee transports leaving Germany for South America, were sent to the base. These political prisoners and other religious persecuted groups provided the necessary organic material to harvest Shaggoth energy. The civilian ships tricked the allies into thinking the civilians were headed to a place of safety, but when they arrived, the undesirables were met with cold-hearted SS soldiers and scientists eager to end their lives. With a never ending supply of material, the Nazi scientists ground the human subjects in a flesh crushing machine and harvested vast amounts of Shaggoth energy. The globules formed into a large collective which were encased in a glass drum imbued with an Elder sign: a giant five pointed star that focused the ethereal energy. The Antarctic scientists were able to mold minute parts coalescing the globules into colonial organisms, evolving their accumulation of ethereal energy into a thousand times more massive than their first attempt. Eager to advance the project, Dr. Gottwin suggested the idea of having it form into a semi-intelligent polymer capable of being rapidly polymerized or depolymerised as the need required, but the theory was constantly revised due to the unpredictability of the energy mass and thus abandoned. Furthermore, Gottwin presented to Veidlin a colonial organism analysis concluding several theories. The first was its lifespan: the energy remained constant inside the protected glass chamber. The second was when the energy was used up; it dissipated from view, possibly into a new containment area or an unknown plane of existence. Gottwin’s theories grew popular with Himmler, thus threatening Dr. Veidlin’s status. To protect his job as director of the project, Veidlin ordered Gottwin to undergo further tests and experiment advanced siphoning of ethereal energy from living subjects. Additionally, Veidlin concocted a scenario where Gottwin’s loyalty was questioned and Gottwin soon faced a firing squad. To prove his utmost allegiance to the Fuhrer, Gottwin performed the final phase on himself to prove his life was an expendable part in the Reich’s war machine. His situation was desperate: die testing the machine and be remembered as loyal subject of the Reich, or live with its unknown effects and become transformed by the unknown. With little choice and his family’s safety threatened, he chose to gamble his life with the new machine. The experiment sucked the life out of Gottwin, but did not kill him. Unfortunately, the doctor’s energy was unable to be captured as the consistency of living energy was not the same as those of the dead. Himmler was impressed and reassigned the risk-taking doctor to another division of the SS to utilize his new skills. He was now able to handle the energy without fear of death; he had become the perfect assassin.
Description: Dr. Gottwin currently works for the SS as an agent, capable of delivering any quantity of Shaggoth energy to his intended victim. He wears a black SS raincoat, a black hat covering most of his face, and black shoes. His facial features are sunken, due to the repeated ethereal energy removal experiments he performed on himself. He cannot be attacked by the Shaggoth energy as he has none within his body anymore for it to attract to; he has no soul
