Crow Moirai, the head of the Royal Novosel Bestiary, was a learned woman of many disciplines. She dabbled in alchemy, biology, the nature of the Earth and life itself. To Dr. Moirai, the nature of consciousness was a puzzle, and she was determined to unravel as much as she could, for the sake of her country and for humanity as a whole.

Projekt Marieta was a crude attempt at 'reverse-engineering' life, and creating it in turn. Dr. Moirai spent months examining cadavers, sticking electrodes into flesh, studying the very mechanics of life. When she was certain of a function, she would implant it into the New Body, a strange doll that mixed the biological and mechanical. With the aid of her Ottoman university-mate, Nesrin Ozil, Dr. Moirai spent her free time on the project, building a body and imbuing it with life, both alchemical and biological.

On the twelfth of July, 1904, Marieta took her first breaths. Her nature was unknown to her, straddling the line between doll and girl. Her skin was lifelike, her joints stronger and healthier than any natural human's. Her eyes shone like sea-blue marbles, and her hair fell about her shoulders in wheat-gold bunches. Marieta was alive, she was life, breathed into that which never lived.

The cover story was negotiated well in advance. Marieta was set to live in the Black Forest cottage of Grzegorz 'Gromm' Bruzcenzka, the homosexual Chief Engineer of the Royal Engineering Corps. As Gromm had no family of his own, Marieta would be his granddaughter, a presence for him to protect and give his all for.

Marieta was a dutiful granddaughter, keeping the cottage in good order, and spending her days playing with dolls of her own creation. Even as Gromm's co-workers and close friends visited the cottage, Marieta had little need for socialising, as her dolls 'lived' in their own way, bound to the invisible strings on her fingers. The area around Gromm's cottage became known as a safe refuge in Novoselic's wilderness, as Doll Soldiers began to drive back the Beasts that once called that stretch of the Schwarzwald home.