Mathabaeus

Information

Player: Rowgen.

Character Full Name: Mathabaeus Hode.

Character In-Game Name:Mathabaeus.

Nickname(s): "Math."

Association(s): The Horde, the Forsaken.

Race: Forsaken

Class: Rogue

Skills and Abilities: While he dislikes his size, it gives him one advantage; It makes him extremely hard to spot when he hides, excellent for avoiding unwanted attention.

Age: 27.

Sex: Male.

Hair: Black.

Eyes: Luminous yellow.

Weight: 153 lbs.

Height: 5'4".

Appearance

Math usually wears thick, grey-colored leather clothing complete with a black, hooded mask he rarely removes. His clothing is tattered and ragged, and the overall shabbiness of his appearance is further enhanced by the dried dirt covering his clothes.

Other: The two most notable things about Math are the remains of burn marks all over his skin and his remarkably low stature, which has lead to a fair amount of cruel amusement at his expense over the years. The burn marks covering his skin gives it a grey, unhealthy tone. Most of the burns are minor, while a few worse ones covers his arms, legs and back, as well as severe burns in his lower face. Bones stick out of the damaged tissue, giving him a very macabre appearance.

Personality

Quiet, curious, friendly and cheerfully pessimistic, Math's behavior is slightly surprising for a Forsaken. For instance, unlike other Forsaken, he doesn't mind the living. While he usually avoids them, he doesn't reject an offer of friendship. Though, suffering from an inferiority complex since childhood, such an offer would surprise him. The mentioned inferiority complex originates from several things: His less-than-honorable heritage, his line of profession and he is also very dissatisfied with his appearance and size, which is often a reluctant topic of conversation. Despite all this he has the desperate will to live of a hungry dog, which is most likely the only reason he is still alive. His emotions are a little crude and underdeveloped due to the lack of social interaction, and therefore there wasn't really that much of a change between his living and dead self.

History

Math was in for a hard time ever since birth, living alone with his abusive father in Brill for as long as he could remember. His mother had abandoned her husband and her newborn son, and ran off with a rich merchant from Kul Tiras. His father was an abusive criminal, so it's quite understandable she ran away. Mathabaeus resented his mother for having left for a glamorous life and abandoned him and only ever given him one thing: His name. He found no comfort in his father, who blamed Mathabaeus for his mother abandoning them. However, abusive as he was, Math's father found use for him. When Mathabaeus was five, he told him that if he wanted food and money, he'd have to get it himself.

This was the beginning of Math's criminal career. While he hated it, it was the only way he could sustain himself without his father's help. The time he didn't spend stealing he usually spent alone in the forests, praying that some wild animal would eat him so he didn't have to continue such a painful life. He had long since given up trying to play with the other kids, who thought he was a no-good thief like his father. He once tried to talk with the local butcher's daughter, in a surge of courage. This resulted in a particularly nasty scar across his back where the butcher's meat cleaver flew past him.

He was always very small of stature, even as an adult. The other children found him amusing due to his size. A very common game among the larger children was to force him into a small barrel and close the lid. They'd then set the barrel out in the forest, away from people. On one occasion he was weak and almost near-death before a group of lumberjacks found him and nursed him back to health. This was perhaps one of the few acts of kindness he ever experienced in the miserable life he lived.

As he grew older, he became more independent. He rarely ever returned to his father's house, spending most of his time in the forests, away from others. Becoming something of a lone survivalist, he would learn to track wild animals and humans alike, honing his senses and developing his skills. If he encountered travellers, he would usually help them out, unless he was very low on money and food. He eventually found that examining a person's daily routines made it easier to steal from them.

When he was fifteen, he finally decided to run away. He escaped to the east, to Andorhal, far away from Brill and where nobody knew him. There, desperate as he was, he continued his career as a thief. Although his size had been a source of much pain for him, it was extremely effective for him, able to crawl into tight spots where no one would've thought of looking for him. His activities didn't pass unnoticed, though. A group of bandits approached him and offered him a place among them. Taken by surprise, he accepted. The bandits seemed to be a closely knit group, almost like a family. Mathabaeus could hardly believe he finally had friends.

He spent two years with the bandits, honing his skills as a thief with their help. Despite his moral qualms, he remained with the bandits, afraid to lose his only friends, trying to not think about the fact that they were all criminals. It was during this time he received news that his father had died. Apparently the old bandit had finally been captured by the guards and he had committed suicide in jail. Mathabaeus received the news with mixed feelings about it, a bit ashamed about the fact that he was relieved to hear it.

His time with the bandits was riddled with everything from attacking travelling traders to robbing farmers. While he didn't enjoy it, he nevertheless was a skilled thief. He could squeeze himself in just about anywhere to avoid detection, he could hide in bushes the others couldn't and he was easily underestimated for his size. All in all, he was a useful addition to the bandit group. Their exploits earned them a glamorous reputation among Lordaeron's criminals and low-lives.

This free way of life eventually came to a halt when the Plague of Undeath swept over Lordaeron. The bandits nonetheless found a way to turn this into profit: Looting. Breaking into houses and manors where they believed the inhabitants to have fallen to the Plague, they stole whatever they could get their hands on. However, they quickly began to lose members. Some ate plagued food or drank plagued water, some were killed by the Scourge and some died in accidents during raids. Mathabaeus was one of the last ones.

One night, Mathabaeus and a few other bandits snuck into an old, tall manor in the cover of a dense fog and heavy rain. They thought the manor was abandoned, having heard that the manor's owner had died. However, what they didn't know was that the manors owner and all his servants had been killed and raised by the Scourge. When they reached the second floor of the manor, they found themselves surrounded. Fighting desperately to get out, someone accidentally knocked down a candle holder and a fire spread. His fellow bandits fell one by one, either burned or killed by the Undead. And while he fought them, he realized his clothes had caught on fire.

When he realized there was no way he could fight his way out before either the fire or the Undead killed him, he made a desperate attempt to escape: He threw himself out of a window and into the rainy night. The rain obviously didn't stop his pursuers and Math crawled desperately away, trying to get to the village nearby. The villagers rushed to help, but they were too late. He was already dead when they found him, badly burnt and beaten. Not knowing who he was they decided to bury him in the local graveyard, in an unmarked grave.

He was later raised by the Scourge, serving it mindlessly for the remaining portion of the Third War. In the months that followed he had no mind, no recollection of who he was. This ended when the Banshee Queen, Sylvanas Windrunner, managed to free herself from the Scourge's grasp. He was among those who regained their mind shortly after and found to his surprise that he remembered quite a large portion of his former life, unlike many of the other Forsaken. The little he remembered was nonetheless miserable, and he found little comfort in it.

When the Dark Lady had managed to achieve full control over the Lordaeron City ruins, Mathabaeus left the Forsaken forces, returning to the ordinary life of a civilian. This proved hard as flashbacks of his former life haunted him for the following years. Particularly strong were the memories of his abusive childhood, and therefore he found little to be proud of in his life. Nonetheless he lived, if it can be called that, day-to-day, taking a day's challenge at a time.

Still, his "talents" from his former life remained and he soon found that without any other source of income, he would soon have to return to thieving. Without the need for food or water, though, his desperation pretty much vanished. The only occasions he'd steal was usually when he found a target that seemed to have the money to manage without a little less. His death somewhat clouded his moral qualms, but he did still feel a certain unease about it.

His life was turned upside-down when he found that there were other members of the bandits he had worked with in life that had been freed from the Scourge. However, they had continued their greedy way of living, now plundering Humans and Forsaken alike. Wishing to better himself and feeling as if his Undeath was a sort of second, although somewhat miserable, chance at life, he decided to abandon his old friends and comrades, trying to find a better future.

Without anything to occupy himself with, he wandered within the Plaguelands and Silverpine, and kept to himself. He disliked the company of others, embarrassed by his appearance. His skills as a tracker from his youth came to good use there, as he would observe travellers and animals passing by. These observations helped him find the least dangerous roads and paths and avoiding the Undead of the area. He lived in the Plaguelands until about the end of the campaign against the Lich King in Northerend. At that point, he noticed a sudden change in the dynamics of the Scourge. Some were the same as usual, but some seemed to become almost feral, as if there was no control over them.

His curiosity as of why the Scourge had suddenly changed got the better of him and he eventually decided to return to the Forsaken, although reluctantly, trying to find the reason behind the Scourge's strange behavior. When he returned to the Undercity, he discovered that the Lich King was dead. He could hardly believe it was true, excitement he'd seldom felt in his Undeath spreading through him. Having been separated from civilization for around three years, he returned to a completely different world than the one he left. Despite this he remained with the Forsaken in the Undercity, still waiting for that better future.