Appearance

Mentality

Personal history

Good Ole Boy Next Door (Childhood): Matthias Bates was the uninteresting child born to an uninteresting family in a small, uninteresting city. The Bates lived a conventional, conservative lifestyle: Boy Scouts, Little League, kickboxing, and church on Sundays. His parents were loving, if a little strict, and accepting of even the most unpleasant of his quirks – his emotional outbursts, his “overactive imaginary,” his predisposition for speaking in cryptic, primordial tongues. Still, despite his family’s best efforts, the Bates’ son felt out of place – and that pissed him off to no end.
 
As a child, he dealt with this anger the only way he knew how – lots of lashing out and tantrums. As he got older (and began to realize his raging didn’t help him or anyone else), he chose to devote himself to his extracurricular activities and his studies. He even started volunteering at his church. Anything to keep his mind off the anger. It took some time but eventually he and his parents established a stringent routine that kept him relatively content.
 
Home is Where the Heart is (University): Matt thought moving to campus was going to be the most difficult thing he’d ever do. Being away from his home meant he wouldn’t be able to rely his old methods of coping, namely following the same rigid schedule he had for years. Fortunately, having cultivated a strong work ethic, he was able to throw himself into his studies quickly and easily. He neglected his social life, but his hard work paid off as he was invited to join the university’s honor society, [Insert Fraternity Here], the following semester.
 
For Matthias, frat life was largely no different than his first semester, albeit with more sexiling, awkward study groups, and rainchecked social gatherings. Throughout his second semester, the freshman/first-year befriended a couple of his frat brothers, one of which being Aton Couch, a sophomore/second-year with something of a reputation. Whereas Bates was considered studious and reserved by his peer, Couch was seen as easy- and outgoing; he was certainly not a bad student, but it was no secret that he was at risk of being dropped from the fraternity. The two promptly connected over their mutual interests, of which they hand many. As the weeks passed and the pair grew closer, Matt noticed he felt less angry – and less compelled to work himself ragged – around his fellow frat mate.
 
The bond they developed was far from romantic, but it was not strictly plutonic either. Many a “no homo” was uttered between them, though with progressively less sincerity each time. By their final year together – Matt was expected to graduate early, the two were inseparable. That is until the night of the annual frat-hosted homecoming, the night of his First Change.
 
Beast and Kindred: Killing your closest friends and first love interest has a way of really fucking with your self-image, and while his memory of that night is foggy, the guilt of that transgression has stained him since then. [vampire coverup, a couple of favours for an influential Kindred – helped fill a power vacuum, shipped off to Nova Secundas – part recompense for his help, part getting rid of a very dangerous potential enemy]
 
Career Boy: Being an unreal monster discarded by despotic Kindred and relocated to an inexistent metropolis on the eastern seaboard was the hardest thing Matthias Bates had ever done, especially since, after all he’d been through, he just wanted to go back to his normal angry life and boring routine. Either by chance or Luna’s will, Lady Luck – or at least her ephemeral facsimile – would smile on him one last time and he would get his wish, a least partially. His contact in the city, an aged Mehket by the name of Father Eli, was well-connected and more than willing to help. It only took a minor exercise of his influence and authority to get him an internship at a local, indie news outlet. And from there the Bates child – lonely, angry, and afraid – was able to start a new routine, albeit one of less banality, his priorities having been shifted by his recent brush with the occult.
 
Recently, Matthias has been running into people he thought he’d never see again: His fraternity brothers from that unfortunate homecoming, Kindred he’s killed with his own hands, even his mother’s late brother, who died long before Matt was born. None of them seem know him or remember what he did, and sometimes they don’t even seem to be the same people. Nevertheless, the experience has been unsettling.

Personality

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