"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."
- Friedrich Nietzsche







Origin

It was Spring, nineteen forty one...

The world was at war, but you would never have known it there in central Noway, the hills mossy and green, the streams swollen from heavy snowmelt. Hans Kohler was only twenty three then...a Hauptman in the SS, Anenerbe division. For Hans who had always enjoyed the natural world, it was one of the most coveted positions in the entire Reich.

While others were wasting away at checkpoints, or mopping up resistance house by house, he got to enjoy the raw beauty of the Norwegian wilderness as part of the security detail for a team of Archaeologists, scouring the recently annexed country for scientific proof of Aryan supremacy from ages past.

Hitler himself, and by extension Himmler had relied heavily upon the premise of a glorious Nordic lineage, but all they had found so far were piles of stones, a few rock carvings and piles of rust. Still, he believed himself very lucky to be a part of such an undertaking...a belief that in time proved unfounded.

It was a dig site like any other, grids, string, sifting boxes and meticulous attention to detail. But this barrow was unlike any of the others they had found, any that they were familiar with from previous expeditions, it was isolated, it was deep, and it was covered by ton after ton of rock, both rough hewn slaps and piles upon piles of stones. Rough work, even with strong young backs and explosives on order from the Wehrmacht.

It turned out, much to their surprise, to be a pit.

Most Archaeologists are not known for their mountaineering skills, and as such Hans volunteered to rappel down in order to evaluate the need to proceed further. It proved a fateful decision, for at the bottom was a pile of bones, Human...as far as he could tell.

But among those bones, once disturbed, lay something that he could never have imagined could exist. Tiny black specks, nearly invisible among the debris and detritus of the ages, that clung to the bones and wafted upon air that had not been disturbed in thousands of years.

It was a perfect storm of conditions, so to speak. He was young and strong, the spores anemic and weak after their long starvation and inactivity. A fungus, or something very like a fungus...along the lines of Microsporidia...Parasitic, Symbiotic, and eventually lethal under all but the most specialized conditions. In nearly any other scenario, Hans's death would have followed shortly.

However it bided it's time, growing, multiplying, working it's way up from the lungs into Hans's brain, and from there it worked through every blood vessel, every organ, until it felt that it's time was right.

Hans did not even realize what he was doing until half the camp was dead...and he bore witness to the other half before he collapsed, sobbing, inconsolable, maddened and alone.

Hans played host to a guest that was simultaneously cunning and yet insensate...it could learn, in could adapt...but without him to think, to see, to move, it knew that it would not survive without him. All attempts to infect others had ended in failure, and had nearly led to the death of its host...and so unwittingly they came to a compromise of sorts. A stalemate.

In time Hans did seek out treatment, only to find that his condition was unknown, alien, and potentially very useful to the Reich. Himmler ordered Hans into Quarantine...where a proper evaluation was conducted to determine the extent of his infection...



Early Years

When Kohler was first presented to Himmler and his cadre, he did not look like much, half dead and insane. His hair was falling out in clumps, his veins were shot through with black, his lips chewed and bloodied, his body trembling, his once fair eyes now dark with faintly discernable, slowly writhing shapes just behind his wide, terrified gaze.

But where others saw danger, or a pitiable unfortunate, Himmler saw potential. Hitler had enjoyed great success with the likes of General Shmidt (aka Red Skull) and Master Man, and as such Himmler wondered if at first he might use the contagion to bolster the soldiers of the Reich. Early experiments proved tragic, and unsuccessful for all involved...and for a time the cost for such inquiries was questioned, but they persisted.

A breakthrough came when it was realized that Kohler...had stopped breathing. It was determined that the infection, whatever it was, was some how perfusing Kohler's fungus riddled brain with oxygen, circumventing the need for lungs all together. The digestive system followed (it seemed that it could break down most organic substances on it's own, even going so far as to exit the host via delicate black tendrils to ingest nourishment) as did the circulatory system and finally the heart.

The medical team marveled at the tenacity of the parasite, and with Himmlers blessing, they continued.  They submerged Kohler in water, they tested his endurance, and eventually they shot him with a pistol only to watch as the parasite not only quickly repaired the damage, but bolstered the area with sinewy strands of reinforcement. It was learning before their very eyes...and poor Kohler could do not but plead and endure, in hopes that some how a cure might be found. Little did he suspect of course, that a cure was never intended.

Finally, a field test was devised, and Kohler (who by this time was hairless, but far more capable) was deployed to the now very active Eastern Front under observation. The results at first were less than impressive...a blast from a mortar round sent him back behind the lines for the better part of a week. But as the parasite, and Kohler himself (or what was left of him) grew wiser in the ways of war, his performance steadily increased.

Within a few months a burst from a PPsH sub machine gun barely slowed him down, and Kohler stalked the battlefields of Kursk and Kiev with an implacable tenacity. Craving warmth, and nutrients, the parasite pressed Kohler ever on, rewarding him with bursts of dopamine and other blissful chemicals every time he provided a new victim with which his guest could renew itself. The naive young man was slowly but surely being transformed into a more ideal vessel, not only by his symbiote, but by his superiors as well.

"шелуха" the soviet conscripts would whisper to themselves as they patrolled the bombed out ruins of towns and villages during the westward expansion. "Another husk", another body found riddled with wispy tendrils protruding from the eyes, the mouth, erupting from corpses half buried in snow.

Husk, as he was nor infamously known, was never the subject of the kind of media attention the other Axis "heros" achieved. It was deemed that his particular abilities were too morbid for public consumption, and that he was best employed as a terror weapon deep behind enemy lines where he could operate without the need for resupply or reinforcement. This proved especially true during the long retreat back to Berlin, but in the end, it was to no avail. The war was lost, and Kohler was left scrambling with the other Axis powers to salvage the situation.

In the end Kohler was assigned to Baron Strucker's command by Red Skull himself, where he was an active participant in the reforming of Hydra in post war Japan. Baron Strucker's own immortality in fact was derived from an irradiated immortality "vaccine" harvested from Kohler's parasite, a mostly dead version perfected by the geneticist Arnim Zola, which preserved many of the benefits while retarding the strains independent impulses.

But it was not to last, the ambitions of his compatriots grew ever more unrealistic, and after a series of humiliating defeats, Kohler retired to Argentina where he lived for a time in isolation.



Current Activities

It was only after Kohler had been in Argentina for a few years that he found that he could actually think again. In the warmer southern climate his parasite grew lazy on sultry afternoons and the conveniences of a supermarket. Sated, it began to relinquish some of the control that it seized during the life or death struggles in the east, and some of the man that Hans once was began to reemerge.

It was then, in his idle hours, that all the memories of his time during the war came back to haunt him in full force. He could barely sleep, and mused endlessly on the myriad terrors that he had inflicted over the years. In desperation, he locked himself in a commercial freezer, and waited for the end.

But it was not to be.

When he came too, his hands were but bloodied nubs laced with wads of dark, glistening tendrils, hard as steel. He had lost control, and the parasite had done the rest. It was after this that his symbiote once again began to attempt to infect others, fearful perhaps that it's host was trying to kill them both. Many died in the following months, and Hans once again became inured to the suffering that he caused.

It went on like this for years, the two vying for control, the parasite always trying to find a way to urge it's host on. It was becoming bored, restless maybe, and it goaded Kohler ever on.

In time Kohler's resolve weakened. Without the option to form healthy relationships, without a trade or a purpose, Hans began to miss the company of those few that he had fought alongside, missed being a part of something, being somebody. He had not aged, not a day, and the prospect of immortality without anything to do wore on him heavily.

How much of this growing impulse was of his own doing, and how much was another impulse on behalf of his symbiote was hard to say, but he packed his bags and moved north, north to the states following rumors of intrigue, of action, hints that perhaps Hydra had not truly been defeated back in the fifties. He wondered how many of his compatriots might still be alive, what enemies, and he began to hunger once more for a role to play in the grand struggles  that once shaped history.