Von was born in Milwaukee, WI as a first generation American. He is of German descent, but his parents, who were bilingual, thought it would be best for him to learn English as his first language living in the United States. His father became ill and died when he was only 3 years old, and his mother never mentally recovered. He was raise to understand right and wrong, but was never pushed hard in terms of defending those values, one way or the other. His mother lost the drive to push him learn German, and his academic success, though it never suffered, was never a focus of hers or his. What his mother did pass on to him, however, was a love of the outdoors. Together they went on camping trips and on those trips she taught him basic survival skills.

While he was away at college studying engineering his mother was diagnosed with liver cancer. He dropped out of college to spend time with her, but she passed away 5 months later. It was, all things considered, a good time in his life, and he was happy to be able to create a few last memories with her. He had been funding college on scholarships, and get a meager inheritance from his mother. At this point he decided to sell almost all of his assets and travel back to Germany to learn more about his family's heritage. For a few years he bounced around, making enough money for himself to survive off of what he already had. When the pandemic first started, and being someone who was not strongly connected to any people at the time, he thought it would be best to relocated outside of the European mainland, and ended up picking Norway as a good place to camp out the pandemic. When things turned for the worst, he attempted to relocate further away from the chaos, in the outskirts of Nyheim. His focus these days is surviving now that PLIKT is closing in on and eliminating even the places he surely though would be safe for him to abide by himself.