Tank Dempsey

“Tank” Dempsey is the mode’s founding voice of unearned confidence: a United States Marine Corps corporal captured at the Verrückt asylum in 1945 while extracting the spy Peter McCain, handed to Group 935, and remade as Richtofen’s test subject in place of the dead Pablo Marinus. Steve Blum voices both his incarnations — the brash Ultimis original who nicknamed the Wunderwaffe the “Wonder Waffle”, and the WWI-era Primis marine, the same swagger under better discipline.

His war

The Ultimis arc carries him from the swamp to the Moon and, after the Grand Scheme, into a Groom Lake holding cell until Primis comes recruiting for the Great War. His hardest scene belongs to Der Eisendrache: Primis Dempsey personally shuts off the life support on his own cryogenically frozen Ultimis self so the soul can be banked for a better tomorrow — Richtofen catches it in the Summoning Key, and, uncharacteristically, offers comfort.

The campfire

His story ends where the saga does, at Tag der Toten’s campfire: describing his ideal afterlife over a drink Nikolai has already poisoned. He drinks with his friends, which is how he would have chosen it.