King Matthias

King Matthias is the main antagonist in Virus Attack and a supportive character in the former's prequel, The Lonely Prince. In Virus Attack, King Matthias is the feared leader of the Murray Pack and his main goal is to get his kind to wipe out the human species, while he's an innocent and rather kindhearted child in The Lonely Prince. He's also the mascot of the entire Virus Attack universe in general, because he's both one of the main cast and the virus the story is about.

Appearance

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Large and wolf-like. He has black colored, short, double-coat membrane proteins (fur), with somewhat longer hair on specific parts (especially around his face, behind the ears, on his hind and on the undersides of his tails). His face is triangle shaped, with a medium-long muzzle, medium tight flews, protruding upper canines and a horn on the bridge of his nose. He has somewhat pronounced cheekbones. Large upright standing ears, dark-gray color around his eyes. His eyes are a golden-yellow color and he has slit pupils. His pupils reflect a whitish-blue color when light shines on his eyes. He has red lines on his lower eyelids, . He has a torn in his right ear and a bite out of his left ear. His tails are the long, muscular and rat-like, and they're also prehensile. He has saw-like boney protrusion on chest and legs, long spikes on both sides of his neck and a teeny bit of a ruff around his neck and a slight dewlap on his throat. Rib grids and and slightly protruding vertebrae and hip bones (typical for adult virions!). His peplomers are the common pinhead shaped ones and they stand on long stalks. He has a hexagon shaped peplomer crown, with one extra peplomer in the middle.

He's often shown with a stern expression and he walks with his head and tails high up in the air, in order to show his place within the pack. He emits a strong, foul smell, similar to that of a decomposing corpse, which is merely annoying to immune cells, but nausea-inducing to non-immune cells. Many non-immune cells also think of him to be scary looking. As most SARS-CoV-2 virions, King Matthias has an insanely deep voice.

As a puppy

Small, cute, a bit chubby and fuzzy (almost teddy bear-like at some point). His ears are floppy, until they start to stand up at a slightly older age. Ears are unstable, and they often go down again, or only one goes down or they lean against each other (as seen in puppies of most dogs with uprigt standing ears). He lacks the rib grids and protruding vertebrae and hip bones until he's a teenager. He has a high-pitched child's voice.

As a teenager

Lithe and lanky. Still has a bit of a rounded puppy-face and ears seem too large for his head. He has a typical teen boy voice, until he's a full grown adult.

Personality

He's actually a surprisingly sweet, caring and rather sensitive virion. Something which he still retained since puphood and is caused by his D614G mutation. He's also protective over his children, and to a certain extend, even those of cells (he can't harm innocent and defenseless youngsters, which is why). He can also be very worried about the safety of his children, making him panic and a bit too overly protective sometimes. He's decent enough to treat hijacked cells with some level of respect, as he decided that they're actually useful and thus are official members of his kingdom.

Matthias is the total opposite if it comes to interactions with non-hijacked cells. He has zero respect for them, mostly because he was indoctrinated to act as an aggressive cell-killing machine by his adoptive wild-type family, ever since he was a young pup. His late father once taught him to love and respect all life though, yet he strongly dislikes humans. Not because of 'being taught' to hate by his adoptive family, given he does in fact still love and respects all other animals. He's simply disgusted by humans, because they're the only host that goes against Mother Nature's golden rules, making him feel resentful toward them.

Matthias even believes that he (and his kind in general) is the chosen one who will save planet Earth from humans, so that nature can heal and all animals can return to their old habitats again. Humans are his kind's main host, but he knows that they can easily return to their original bat host (or just jump to other animals) once all humans are wiped out.

Background

Past

He was born as a kindhearted virion, who never intended to hurt anyone, due to a mutation called D614G. His father, the very first D614G-mutated virion, wanted to keep him that way so he made sure his little boy never came in contact with their evil minded congeners. Loki taught Matthias everything about nature, that every living creature is connected to each other and that he only needs to show love and respect to others. According to Loki's lessons, infecting a cell is okay, as long as it only happens once, because it kills cells and their host will fall ill. Not having a wish for a child and thus not infecting a cell would've been fine too, because having pups is not an obligation in his eyes. The reason behind Loki's lessons is a vision he had, which featured an adult Matthias as the cause of a major, worldwide pandemic (good soul Loki wanted to prevent it from happening and thus protecting humans from any harm).

One day, Matthias's father died and his grandfather found him crying by his father's dead body. Lucius decided to take him with him and thus the little pup was adopted and raised by the Hannah Pack and he slowly got indoctrinated by the 'how a coronavirus should behave' propaganda and his heart got tainted. Though, his tyrannic grandfather was actually crazy and wanted to wipe out ALL life but viruses, in order to create a paradise for viruses alone. Matthias adopted his grandfather's ideals, but edited it because wiping out all lifeforms would result into the death of viruses as well (viruses NEED hosts to survive!).

Though, being indoctrinated by his former pack, he still loves nature and animals, but he has seen how humans treat the world and started to develop hateful feelings towards them. Now thinking that humans are bad (and either forgetting about or ignoring his father's lessons about showing love and compassion to every life form) Matthias decided to only wipe out the entirety of mankind, so Earth will be like before humans started to invade and destroy nature and all animals will be able to reclaim their old territories again. His species lived in animals before, so once humans are gone, they will be able to adapt to other animal hosts once again.

Current

Now an adult and finally king of his own pack, Matthias has started acting out what he once promised. Being (unknowingly) a faster spreading mutant form of his kind, he and his progeny officially caused a major, destructive pandemic, making his father's horrifying prophecy come true.

Noteable Quotes

"Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus two, or sars coronavirus two for short. I'm the virus responsible for a lethal disease, known as COVID-19."

                                          — King Matthias to cells

"No, love! SARS is my dear cousin. I'M a different, yet similar virus. Learn to properly use those huge flappers of yours, next time I tell you something!"

                                          — King Matthias to Cleo

"Young man, the only reason I don't ever want YOU to succeed me, is because of your atrocious personality and preposterous way of thinking how a king should lead his pack. YOU do LITERALLY NOT fit the role of a leader!"

                                    — King Matthias to Prince Vasiliy

"You just don't WANT to understand, do you? We are unbeatable! I AM invincible! DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME, YOU BLOODY HUMANS? YOU CAN'T DEFEAT SARS CORONAVIRUS TWO!"

                            — King Matthias to both cells and humans

Trivia

• Matthias was the very first SARS-CoV-2 character to be created.
• In early development, Matthias was actually planned to be named Korona (intentional mispelling of 'corona'). He was renamed Matthias because I just love that name and I thought Korona was kinda boring.
• His official family name is derived from the Sarbecovirus sub-genus within the Coronaviridae (coronaviruses) family.
• His birthday is April 12. He was born in the year 2020.
• Via his original host, Matthias is from London (Limehouse destrict) in England and he speaks UK English with received pronunciation.
• Because of his different accent, cells who know that he sounds British sometimes get a little suspicious when he talks to them while in disguise, but the more gullible cells always fall for his 'I'm a blood transfusion immigrant, and my former human is English' excuse.
• He has schizoaffective disorder, though this won't be noticeable until a certain devastating event much later in the story.
• Whenever he feels scared, sad, uncomfortable or panicking, he tightly wraps his tails around his body and legs.
• His design is based on the king shepherd dog, a large German shepherd dog designer mix.
• Despite not being the most friendly one of my characters, Matthias is my comfort character 🥹