Wolfgang Knox

**Wolfgang "Achilles" Knox** was a participant in the Fourth Nonary Game.

## Appearance

Wolfgang has short, dark brown curly hair and an unpleasant disposition. His eyes are a dark brown. He is almost always covered up, which means he's always wearing some sort of jacket that covers his arms and legs completely, even in the summer. The jacket is high collared and the top part can be buttoned to cover the lower half of his face.

On his lower neck/shoulder area and arms are bruises and occasional cuts that come from his parent's abuse. Some of the cuts lower down on his arm are self-inflicted, but most of the injuries come from others.

## Personality

After his turbulent childhood, Wolfgang’s grown to be spiteful and angry at everything around him. Most things seem pointless and he isn’t one to pursue activities for fun, if only because he’s used to everything he enjoys being taken from him. He’s loud, sort of a bully, and very popular in just his sophomore year of high school.

He can be seen as rude, arrogant, rebellious and prickly. He’s prideful and gets offended easily. Friends can see that he’s willing to be nice to the people that he likes and trusts but he keeps himself closed off to prevent anyone from taking advantage of him. Picks fights that he can’t win constantly and barely has any sense of self-preservation. However, the older he gets the more he gets obsessed with the idea that people can come back at anytime to hurt you-- Which is why he tends to write down everything he knows about a person, just so he won’t forget and can’t get surprised if he does.

Almost all of his negative traits stem from the abuse and general instability of his household. He either gets kicked out or leaves of his own accord, but ends up coming back eventually. If he was in a kinder situation, maybe he’d step out of his prickly shell, but for now, it’s a needed defense mechanism that he refuses to be without. That lack of proper care or socialization as a child has left him emotionally stunted and he finds it hard to connect to others. He doesn’t *want* to hurt people, but if everyone is going to hurt him, why should he just sit and endure that?

## Backstory

Wolfgang’s parents led the same childhood as he did-- They struggled, received corporal punishment, and were misunderstood by everyone around them. Having a child wasn’t what they wanted to do. But it’s not like they could get rid of him, either. The parents only knew how to live by struggling, and for them, living like that was perfectly fine. They have a small house, can barely make ends meet, but at least they have each other. Struggling builds character.

He wasn’t a bad kid. He tried his best to please his parents, had nice grades and tried his best to be patient, but any kid wants to know why they can’t have as much as other kids do, and that annoyed them immensely. He learns that asking too many questions makes adults angry. He learned that most things he does makes adults angry, from struggling to become friends with other kids to becoming wholly uninterested in anything they had to offer. What do you do when a child misbehaves? Their answer was physical discipline. It teaches humility, diligence, and shows them the consequences of their actions; They turned out fine, after all!

Wolfgang only learns that violence gets people to shut up. Discipline means that you get what you want in the end, even if it means the recipient is only left upset and confused by the end. His relationships with others became worse, his grades began to plummet and his parents never understood why he was such an awful child. The only “obedient” thing he does is hide his bruises, successfully avoiding any teacher’s rising suspicion. He’s only in middle school when he starts learning to shoplift, when he starts hanging out with people he shouldn’t. Maybe if they pray harder, he’ll get ahold of himself.

At the very least, he enjoys going to school. That’s the only time he can get away from them. For once, he goes to his parents for comfort over something that’s been troubling him immensely. By the end of the argument, he’s been locked outside. He doesn’t know what he expected. He learns to get used to secretly sleeping in the empty shed in the backyard and he learns to hide that he’s gay. Life lessons. Sometimes they let him back inside the house, but any argument usually leads to him storming out or them telling him to leave.

Not having a stable place to stay, the high school he goes to began covering his expenses in freshman year. High school is a breath of fresh hair. He’s loud, impulsive and outgoing, and that’s all he needs to be to be popular amongst the other freshman. He doesn’t think twice before pushing someone out of his way or even resorting to bullying to get what he wants-- It’s not like he cares about what happens to him.

It’s only in Sophomore year that the teachers decide to reach out to him.  He does well when he actually sits down to do the work, but otherwise gets lower grades because of his lack of interest in actually doing work. This is slightly improved on by his coordinator, who suggests an alternative to school work that was much friendlier to those that didn’t handle normal work well. It’s there that she learns Wolfgang excels when he isn’t forced to do the work assigned to him, and actually picks up information easily. This shows more in how he’s the star of the Robotics club and how he was an extremely competent member of the Theater club’s backstage crew. He was just never given the chance to show it. Slowly but surely, a support system is built for him at the school, even if it only consists of two people.

Two people is better than none, right? He’s grateful that he isn’t totally alone, even if he can’t express it.

## Trivia

* Wolfgang finished the game with the most bracelet points of any participant; thirteen points.