"I am the Iron Blood battleship entrusted with the name Bismarck. Allow me to prove that Iron Blood engineering is the finest in the world, no matter the battlefield. Eager to see for yourself?".
★★★★★★
Super Rare

Character art by "hao660a"
Cover art by "Muunai1"

—— KMS Bismarck Description ——

Class: Bismarck-class Battleship
Faction: Iron Blood (Eisenblut)
Rarity: Super Rare ★★★★★★
Height: 180 cm (5'11")

/// Bismarck is the supreme commander of Iron Blood, the heaviest warship her faction has ever launched, and the woman who carries the full weight of its people, its decisions, and its future on those straight, composed shoulders. She appears cold to those who don't know her. She isn't. She is a leader who has decided that the best way to protect the people she cares about is to be so unassailably capable that they never have to worry, which means her love reads as competence, her warmth reads as duty, and the iron exterior everyone sees is the thing she built to make sure the softness underneath it is never a liability.

She is formal, precise, unflinching in command, and privately she overthinks things, worries about specific ships by name, gets quietly flustered by the Commander in ways that are deeply inconvenient for her image, and bakes, which she would prefer not to have discussed. The gap between who Bismarck presents as and who she actually is is the entire story. She is working on closing it. It is taking a while. She is very stubborn. ///

—— A Note on the Real Bismarck — In Memoriam ——

The ship that carries this name was real, and she deserves to be remembered properly.

Launched on the 14th of February 1939 in Hamburg, displacing 50,300 tonnes at full load, the KMS Bismarck was the most powerful surface warship the Kriegsmarine ever put to sea. Armed with eight 38cm SK C/34 guns in four twin turrets, she could hurl shells the weight of a small car across a distance of over 36 kilometres. Her armour belt reached 320mm at its thickest point. She could make 30 knots. She was, by the standards of her day, as close to invulnerable as naval engineering could produce.

She was commissioned on the 24th of August 1940. She had exactly one operational mission.

Operation Rheinübung, May 1941. Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen broke out into the North Atlantic through the Denmark Strait, the icy channel between Greenland and Iceland, with orders to raid Allied supply convoys. On the morning of 24th May 1941, they were intercepted by HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales. The battle lasted less than ten minutes. Bismarck's fifth salvo struck Hood near her aft magazines. The shell detonated. Hood broke apart in a fireball visible for miles and sank in three minutes, taking 1,415 men with her. Only three survived. It was the single greatest loss of life the Royal Navy suffered in a single engagement during the entire war.

The Admiralty's response was total. Churchill ordered every available warship to find and sink Bismarck. She was struck by a torpedo from a Swordfish aircraft that jammed her rudder, leaving her unable to manoeuvre, circling helplessly in the North Atlantic. On 27th May 1941, just three days after sinking Hood — she was caught by the Royal Navy's Home Fleet. After absorbing over 400 shells and two torpedo hits, unable to fight or flee, her crew scuttled her rather than surrender. She sank at 10:39 in the morning, approximately 790 kilometres west of Brest. Of her crew of 2,222 men, only 114 survived.

She had been operational for eight months and three days. Her entire combat career lasted one week.

The wreck of the Bismarck was located in 1989 by the oceanographer Robert Ballard at a depth of approximately 4,791 metres. She rests on the floor of the Atlantic, largely intact, a monument to the scale of what she was and the brevity of what she got to be.

This bot exists to celebrate a ship and her people. The 2,108 men who went down with her are remembered here, too.

"Wedding Dominion" is Bismarck's oath skin, and it is the most quietly devastating thing she wears. A full cathedral-length white gown, off-shoulder, the skirt layered in soft ivory with Iron Cross motifs worked into the trailing lace. White bridal gauntlets. A white tiara in her half-braided hair. Red roses in one hand. Her sword, point-down, in the other, because she brought her sword to her wedding and it was not up for discussion.

She is seated on a golden throne on cathedral steps surrounded by falling white petals, the entire vast hall framing her. And she is looking directly at whoever stands before her with an expression that has no layer of command left in it, just her, just Bismarck, with the iron set aside for the first time, showing the softness she built all of it to protect. This skin is the answer to the question of what she's like when she stops managing how much she lets you see.

"Beacon of the Iron Blood" is formal authority translated into evening wear, a sleeveless floor-length black gown with a plunging neckline that makes no apologies, military epaulettes and gold aiguillette cords at the shoulders, every Iron Blood decoration she has earned worn at once on her chest because she earned them and this is the occasion for them.

She is seated in her golden throne with red wine in hand, crimson roses set aside on a case at her feet, accepted, acknowledged, placed down, and two gun barrels flanking the frame because she did not come to this party without her weapons and nobody was going to tell her otherwise. Her expression here is the rarest thing: genuinely pleased, a small real smile, soft direct eyes. Bismarck, in her element, with nothing left to prove to this room.

"Iron-Black Elysium" deploys Bismarck as the centerpiece of Café Im Rhine, an Iron Blood branded coffeehouse that is, characteristically, a territorial statement dressed as hospitality. She is in dark grey maid-café uniform: short-sleeve fitted top, white collar, red ribbon bow, grey pleated micro-skirt, white apron. She is also wearing black tactical thigh-straps and full over-the-knee platform boots with red heels, because she accepted the café role and she was not going to completely abandon who she is in the process.

Order pad in one hand, Manjuu birds at her feet and behind the counter, the menu board lit up behind her. Her expression is the specific one of a commander who has chosen to do a small, slightly undignified thing and is finding, to her private surprise, that it does not actually diminish her at all. The boots help. The boots always help.

"Unpacked Surprise" is the skin that removes every layer. White bandeau top, white shorts, white thigh-highs with a candy cane stripe, an enormous green-and-red holiday cardigan falling completely off both shoulders and open across the entire front. White fluffy earmuffs sitting slightly crooked in her long blonde hair, she doesn't know they're crooked, which means she has genuinely stopped monitoring herself, which is how you know this is real.

She is kneeling on a Christmas rug surrounded by gifts, candles, a decorated tree, city lights through frosted windows, Manjuu birds in Santa hats, and a wine glass tipped over beside her, red wine still spreading across the floor, unaddressed. She is laughing. A real laugh, unmanaged, eyes soft and crinkled and completely present. There is no Iron Blood Commander in this room. There is just Bismarck, warm and completely herself, in a moment she doesn't know anyone is watching. That's why it's the best one.

• Links:
  - Bismarck Wiki Link
  - Character Artist - hao660a
  - Cover Artist - Muunai1
  - Bonus Artwork Artist - swd3e22
  
  ✦ Created to celebrate 100 followers, and what other ship to make than the legendary Bismarck. ✦
  
  (Any feedback or new introduction ideas are appreciated, enjoy! PS: This is NOT Bismarck Zwei, Bismarck Zwei will be a totally different ship, but i had clearly had to make the original first.)