#matthias.

Name: Matthias ‘Mats’ Christiaan Veldman

Date of birth: September 26, 1986

Place of birth: Abcoude, the Netherlands

Current location: Downtown, Ennora, New York

Occupation: Archaeologist, working at the Old Quarry

Faceclaim: Michiel Huisman

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TL;DR:

Matthias is a Dutch archaeologist who lost the two most important people in his life as a teen and then decided to leave everything he knew behind to become an archaeologist. He became pretty successful in his field at a young age and has been leading big projects for quite some time. During one of the more recent projects, Matthias met a colleague and he fell for her pretty much instantly. Though, she mysteriously left after a very brief romance. Once he found out she’d returned home to Ennora, he decided to apply for a job there himself. Hoping he could ‘accidentally’ bump into her again. Either way — life away from all the grief he suffered is everything he needs. Mats is a big camper, loves the outdoors and will likely be out on a hike with his dog Beau. He loves working with his hands, but can also often be found in a park, reading a book.

Matthias grew up in Abcoude, in the Netherlands. He had a fairly normal childhood. His father was absent for most of it, he’d left his mother when he was just a baby to start a new life with an old flame. When he was five years old, his father already had three other children with his new family and he and his older sister started to get less and less time and attention from him.

His mother was a fantastic single mother though, and Matthias never wanted for anything.

School was easy on him. Perhaps too easy. He never really had to put in any hard work and therefore had plenty of time to play around, have fun and live in his own imagination for most of the time. Especially when he’d breezed through his homework and his friends were still struggling with it.

At fifteen, he was at home with his mother when two policemen showed up at their doorstep. His sister had been in a big car accident while biking home from a party. She’d done everything right. Was the sober one accompanying her friends home and making sure everyone was following the traffic rules. A drunk driver ran into the group of three girls and none survived.

Matthias really struggled with the loss of his big sister. She was his whole world and he would’ve done anything for her. The first five months, he coped by dulling his emotions. Drinking, smoking weed and removing himself from everyday life. He skipped school and isolated himself completely.

It wasn’t until he found his mother sobbing in her bedroom, crying to his aunt on the phone saying how she was afraid her now only child would be gone soon too. Either by drinking or smoking so much he’d get addicted and distance himself from her forever, or by becoming a drunk driver himself.

He never told her what he’d heard, but he quit every vice instantly. He returned to school and had to work harder than ever to catch up. His favourite teacher made sure he could come in during the holidays to get some extra classes and help to catch up with the rest of the class.

To this day, Matthias will not drink more than one drink a day to ensure he’ll never get addicted, nor that he’ll be on the wrong end of a drunk driving accident.

Once he’d sobered up and caught up with all his school work, his full attention went to taking care of his mother. She fell ill when he was 16 years old, and eventually passed away when he was 19. He’d delayed attending university to be the full-time caretaker for his mother, but once she was gone and there was no one left in his life to take care of, he decided to apply and study Archaeology.

He’d always had a big love for history and the sciences, so it seemed like the best way to go.

After university, he landed a paid internship in Egypt and worked there for about half a year. His mentors were very impressed with his work and invited to work with their crew full-time. With his main interest in the Mediterranean area, the crew was a perfect fit. They travelled around the area and worked several big sites.

Travelling and working was most of his life, he wasn’t great at sitting still, as it reminded him of his life before work. It made him feel the emptiness that he’d been running away from through travel.

About two years ago, he worked a job in Egypt and met a woman he got to work with. Jacqueline and him were assigned the same hotelroom by accident, and since it was the tourist season, all hotels in the area had been fully booked. There were two options: make a big fuss and hope for the best, or accept that he and his new co-worker could live together in the same space for a while.

He offered to take the couch to make the woman more comfortable, but there was an immediate attraction from his end. She was more distant and had nothing but sharp remarks, which somehow charmed him even more.

After working together for a little while, the sparks started to fly a bit and the two shared a kiss. Not too long after, the woman disappeared and he never saw her again.

He had asked around and learned more about her past and eventually learned that she’d returned to her hometown. After well over a year of trying to get her out of his mind, Matthias decided to look into Ennora. He checked the job openings at the archaeology site. For five months, there were no openings, but when there finally was one, he immediately applied.

He’d been living back at his hometown in the Netherlands, but knew that it could never feel like home again without his mother and sister. A possible move to the other side of the world, while incredibly crazy, seemed more and more like a good option for him. What started as a crazy chase after the ghost of a former flame suddenly became a reality when after a few online interviews, Matthias got the job.