► Patrick Bates

PATRICK JOSEPH BATES
played by: Josh

the player
your online name: Josh
do you have any other characters? Blake Harper, Wes Bailey
what are your contacts? PM

the basics
full name: Patrick Joseph Bates
nicknames: PJ
date of birth and age: July 28, 1972 (40)
job: Senator
former house: Taureau

the appearance

face claim: Jeremy Renner
other notable features: Nope!

the personality
personality:

Patrick is a proud man. He is very self-confident and is not easily intimidated. He knows what he believes and is unafraid of standing up for himself. He has a difficult time admitting when he makes a mistake, and he also finds it difficult to ask for help. He has a huge ego and one that needs constant attention in order to keep him happy.

However, his pride manifests itself into something much more than just confidence. He believes that he is better than everyone else because of his familiy name. He thinks that magical people are better than muggles, and he believes that old money is better than new (which is better than no money at all). Naturally, as a pure blood (as he calls himself) and someone from old money, he thinks that he belongs at the top of society. He doesn’t like to converse with people who do not fall into these categories (unless there is something for him to gain such as votes). He is prone to bragging about himself whenever the conversation gets too dull, and he brags unapologetically.

Naturally, as a proud man who feels he should be the top dog, he is very ambitious. He set goals and he has every intention on seeing them through. And he will stop at nothing to make sure that he gets what he wants. His conviction and ambition also ensure that he is also very short tempered; especially whenever he cannot get his way. He has little patience when he feels something should be very simple but proves to be otherwise. He gets angry easily and is prone to taking out his anger on people who really do not deserve it. He hates having to wait or being told no.

He is a charmer, an intelligent man, and a very good speaker, which lends itself well to public office. He can schmooze and compliment and butter the right people up if he is so motivated to do so. He has a great memory for faces and people, and he is very detail-oriented, which means he can remember the little things like where other politician’s children work or go to school or where a person likes to go out for drinks. However, he does not do this to make others feel better or make friends. He usually does so to accomplish something he wants. He sees other people as a means to an end, and if a person no longer serves a purpose, then he will have nothing to do with them.

He cares way too much about what other people think of him. Even if he doesn’t personally think that a person is worth anything, he will ensure that they do not feel the same way about him. He is constantly wondering what the public thinks about him and if he is in the good graces of other members of the Senate. Even though he is usually a confident man, he can be insecure and easily upset if he cannot manipulating someone into liking him.

He is also very loyal to those who are loyal to him. He believes that loyalty is one of the most important traits a person could possess. He admires it and demands it from those who are close to him. If he thinks that someone no longer has his best interests or the interests of his causes at heart, then he will completely remove them from his life. But to those people who are loyal to him, they will find a fierce ally and maybe, if they are very special, someone who considers them a friend.

family & history
family members:
Evelyn Baker-Bates – Mother
Gregor Bates – Father
any other family member of importance:
Esme Bates – Paternal Grandmother
place of birth:New Orleans
social class:Upper (Old Money)

history:
The Bakers came from new Muggle money. The Bates from old wizard money. One would never think that these two family paths would ever cross, but as anyone who has spent any length of time in this world knows, unexpected things do happen. Evelyn Baker, the young daughter of an oil tycoon from Texas, found herself the recipient of an odd letter that informed her that she was, in fact, more privileged than she had come to believe. She was a witch, capable of mastering the magic that flowed through her veins, and had been accepted to a wizarding school, of all places. This had come to quite a shock to her conservative and religious family, but through much begging, pleading, and fits eventually convinced her family to let her attend this school.

Down in New Orleans, the much-anticipated acceptance letter did not fall into the hands of Gregory Bates, the middle son of a large family of witches and wizards. When his younger brother received his letter, Gregor realized that he was special, too, though not in the way that he had hoped. He was a Squib, a nonmagical person born to a magical family. He would not be attending the school that had accepted the Muggle-born Evelyn Baker and would be forced to stand on the outskirts of the magical world—always wishing to be a bigger part of it than he was.

Evelyn Baker attended Seiseux where she excelled in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions, and eventually decided to dedicate her life to becoming an Auror, a dark wizard catcher. Gregor Bates worked in a magic shop, because his parents were too ashamed of his lack of magical abilities to have him remain on their estate. It was at this shop that the two finally met in Evelyn’s sixth year at school.

Unlike most stories heard in storybooks, it was not love at first sight nor did they have a hatred for each other that eventually blossomed into a relationship. Evelyn eventually began to work part-time at the store under the management of Gregor. It was there that the two slowly came to know one another and eventually fell in love. They kept their relationship a secret for a while, but eventually Evelyn quit her job at the store so she could be in a relationship with her manager. Gregor eventually took a remedial Care of Magical Creatures class and obtained a license to handle Creatures labeled XXX and below.

Once he and Evelyn married and came into their inheritances, the two built a lavish home together not far from the school. They had one child, Patrick, who grew up knowledgeable of both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds.
Patrick had always been a quiet boy. From a very young age, he would hide behind the furniture and listen to the stories his mother told him of the strange goings-on of the darker side of the magical world. Though he knew he was not supposed to be interested in the dark arts, he couldn’t help but feel curious and desperately wanted to know more. So he nicked books from his parents’ library and hid them in his room to read late at night, he disappeared into town to look at odd magical artifacts, and he wrote to his father’s parents inquiring about the effects of potions and poisons. Before he was even accepted to school, he was well versed in some more of the austere forms of magic.

Patrick was eventually accepted to the same magical school his mother had been accepted, much to the delight of his father’s family, who had, up until that point in his life, kept their distance from him out of fear that their pure bloodline was completely ruined by the breeding of a Muggle-born witch to their squib son. During his first year at Seiseux, Patrick found himself wonderfully average at nearly everything he tried in school. He was not the star student in any of his classes during the first few years at Sei, and it was difficult for him, someone who had been exposed to magic for his entire life, to see the muggleborn students excel in subjects he knew quite a bit about. He became quickly jealous of them and realized why the Bates family was so against muggle integration into magical society.

It wasn’t until his second year that Patrick finally found the subject in which he would excel, and it was much to the chagrin of his father’s family. He could not explain how or why, but he excelled in Divination. The Bates family thought the subject to be one of merely guesswork and chance, but Patrick quickly saw the advantage in it. He had a knack of telling the future through Cartomancy, Tessomancy, and Xylomancy. He would never forget the first prediction he made with tea leaves. It would be the prediction that would change his life. After gulping down his tea and glancing inside, he immediately saw the shapes of a lion and what looked to be a podium. He would have great success and be a very influential person. No matter how many times he drank the tea and read the leaves, he found the lion sign at the bottom of the cup. Honor. Fame. Success. Dignity. It was obvious what we was destined to become.

Patrick Bates was going to be a politician. He was going to run for public office. With his parents’ money and the Bates’ help, he was able to procure for himself a seat in the Senate. When he had been a young Senator, he had been brash and crash in his dealings with the public. He was a firm believer that the magical and muggle realms should remain separate. He had even written a few anti-muggleborn bills which would make it more difficult for muggleborn students to be taught at Seiseux. These bills, unfortunately, did not pass.

It wasn’t until his advisor told him that he was not very favored by the public and that his prospects for reelection weren’t so good that Patrick realized he needed to make a change. The public could not identify with him. He was filthy rich and never had a hard life, something that the general public did not like about him. This needed to change. His mother suggested for him to be more lax in his stance on muggleborns. After all, she was one, and his blood wasn’t pure. Evelyn even went as far to set up a press conference in which she was going to show her support for the muggle community! Patrick was furious with her. How dare she imply that he was less than he truly was?! How dare she undermine his authority!?

He cut all ties with his mother. And when she died under mysterious circumstances a few days before her scheduled press conference, Patrick did not question it. She had been standing in his way. The whole Bates family knew that. And while he publicly wept for his mother and enumerated her many accolades in a beautiful and lavish ceremony, he was glad that her dangerous ideas had never made it in the public. And the best part was the public responded so well to his plight. Everyone could sympathize what it was like to lose someone important to them.

For an interview in which he told all about his mother (except her dirty blood, of course), the paper ran the article under the headline, “PJ Bates Tells All.” He despised the nickname. PJ was such a common name. It was childish and completely beneath who he was. But his advisors told him that maybe a little common would be good for him. Though he was back in the public’s good graces after his family tragedy, it was hardly enough for reelection. “Patrick Bates” was filthy rich and better than everyone else. But maybe “PJ Bates,” a man who had just lost his mother and who had a dream to change the world, could be reelected.

And PJ Bates won by a landslide.

His father, however, was another problem. He was a squib. It was a well-hidden secret that the Bates family had spent years covering up his magical status out of shame. And Patrick understood. Pure blood and old money were the upper echelon of society. And while Patrick had the money, his blood was a little less than pure. Luckily his father’s mother, Esme, came through with the idea. And it was so terribly simple. The family, having already covered up Gregor’s blood status for years, only needed to forge his diploma from a credited magical institution. Sei was the obvious choice, though it was out of the question because of the public eye on Patrick. So Salem became the school in which Gregor Bates graduated. Gregor, though upset his family did not approve of him, did not fight the change. The family found a wandmaker to make a wand for him, and Gregor was able to call himself a wizard. It was a win for everyone involved.

Patrick eventually found himself running aginst opponents who were easily defeated, so he barely had to worry about the campaign strategy. So his interests were able to expand. Since he figured that he had mastered Divination, the next step would obviously be Voodoo. At first, he had only performed the magic out of curiosity. He had heard that it was possible, but he had his doubts. But after his first tarot reading using Voodoo, he had realized just how powerful the magic could be.

A senator who dabbled in the dark arts was a touchy subject, yes, and one that the public would be hesitant to accept. So Patrick kept his new hobby a secret. But Voodoo used Tarot cards as well, so anyone who saw him practicing the dark arts for the most part just assumed that he was divining what he should do next. The chicken bones and cat paws were more difficult to acquire, but money could work wonders to hush people up. And Patrick had enough of that to spare. From then on out, each time one of PJ Bates’ opponents gave him a run for his money, they or someone in their family would be tragically striken down with some ailment or another and have to pull out of the race. Granted, he only had to do use dark Voodoo twice to ensure the win. But both had been very well deserved.

Now Patrick continues his quest for money in power by ensuring each and every reelection and doing everything he can to stay on top.

SENATOR
Both Ryker and I have always loved a well written villain and PJ (couldn’t resist) here is very well written!!! We’re also extremely excited to see a Senator join Sei! I like the fact that he isn’t just a bad guy who doesn’t give a crud for anyone. He is loyal to those who support his cause and he cares about how others view him (which I just find perfect for a politician!). It adds depth to him and makes him an even more interesting character than he already was. The fact that he is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure he is reelected as a Senator only intrigues me more! I’m very excited to see what happens to him as the plot moves along, especially with the senate currently under attack!

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