BC09: GREGORY MILLER [DECEASED]

[Rattlesnake]

DECEASED


Name: Gregory Mark Miller
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Grade: 11
Hobbies and Interests: Beekeeping, RTS games, medieval history

Appearance: At 5’5 and not having undergone a growth spurt yet, Gregory is of small stature and weighing 120 lbs, he’s at a healthy, if a little low, body weight. Even with him helping his grandfather out at his apiary with lifting heavy boxes, he has a slim and lithe build, not much muscle on his body at all despite his efforts to gain some. From working in the Floridan sun he has developed a suntan on his otherwise pale skin, which he carefully manages with sunscreen to make sure that he doesn’t get any sunburns or anything that might blemish his skin. From growing due to puberty, he has a few stretch marks on his lower arms and belly that still haven’t fully faded yet. Gregory is predominantly Caucasian with predominant English ancestry.

Gregory’s face is oval-shaped, with thick, shaggy eyebrows above beady hazel eyes and a small upturned nose. Despite his thinness, he has dimpled cheeks and a little bit of residual baby fat in his cheeks, which become more prominent when he smiles, giving him a very friendly appearance. Combined with his small ears, this gives his face the appearance of a chipmunk sometimes; his grandfather affectionately refers to him as Chip, which he dislikes. He takes special care of his teeth, brushing them rather vigorously every day and night and using whitening toothpaste. He has a strong chin, but his jawline and cheekbones are rather soft, giving his face a soft appearance. There is no hair on his face apart from his upper lip, upon which is a peach fuzz mustache, which frustrates him as he wants to have more facial hair and to grow a goatee. To his dismay, all of the creams he buys that claim to promote facial hair growth don’t work, but at least they keep his face spot-free.

Gregory’s hair is a caramel colour, and is thoroughly brushed every morning to keep it soft and light. It’s his pride and joy, and he often uses conditioner on it to make it shiny, taking utmost care of it. It’s also cut regularly to keep it short, as it grows very quickly and if he doesn’t keep it short it gets into his eyes and is annoying. On occasion he will use some hair wax in combination with his brushing to give his hair a slicked back appearance in an attempt to look cool and fashionable, which also helps keep his hair out of his eyes.

Gregory tries to keep up with the current trends while making sure his outfit is both suited for the Miami weather and fashionable. At the moment, this normally means colourful shirts paired with joggers and sneakers, along with a light jacket if the weather isn’t looking good. On Casting Day, Gregory was wearing a yellow t-shirt with a smiling cartoon bee on it outlined in black and ‘Save The Bees!’ written under it in black text, grey joggers with the number ‘86’ embroidered on the legs near the pockets in white and white trainers.

Biography: Gregory Mark Miller was born in Miami, Florida on the 30th of April, 2004 to John Miller, an accountant at a local law firm and native of St. Petersburg, and Maria Miller née Smyth, a hydrogeologist at an environmental consultant firm and native of Tallahassee. They had met at the University of Florida while studying for their careers in 1995 and had hit it off almost immediately, getting married in 1999 and waiting until their careers had taken off and they were earning enough money to live comfortably before having a baby.

The Miller family’s work schedule was tight, but with John’s job offering him the chance to work from home, they always managed to have one of them looking after baby Gregory. From a young age, they could note that he was disruptive when he didn’t get his way – throwing tantrums whenever he didn’t get a toy he wanted or the kind of food he liked the most. As he grew a little older, these behaviours partially stopped, but they were replaced with a tendency to sulk in a corner and huff when he didn’t get what he wanted.

This behaviour continued when he started to play with other kids on the street of the Miami suburb in which they lived. When he got caught in hide and seek or tag, or when the games that he wanted to play didn’t get picked, he would often go off and sulk in a corner or on occasion, act entitled and demand that they play the game that he wanted to play. As Gregory was fun to play with when he wasn’t being huffy, his fellow kids quickly learned to just agree with him whenever he started acting out. Satisfied with the results, he quickly began trying to use this tactic at home, where he encountered much more resistance in the form of his mom. She was much sterner on him, thinking that all this misbehaving was just part of him growing up and believing that if she stamped it out, it would go away quicker. Gregory instead realised that his mom wouldn’t let him get away with it and reserved the tactic for other kids.

He was enrolled in kindergarten at the age of five, and his behaviour continued, acting friendly and happy towards the kindergarten staff, but acting bossy and demanding towards the other kids when they were alone, trying to get them to play the games he wanted to play. But seeing as the kids had more options to play with, he was quickly ostracised, finding that nobody would play with him at all. This caused him to act out a little more, interrupting other kids’ playtime in an attempt to force them to pay attention to him.

As he couldn’t hide this behaviour from the staff forever, this was brought to the attention of John and Maria by them. Initially John was shocked by the revelation, as he hadn’t ever really seen Gregory acting out apart from when he was younger, and thus believed that he had outgrown the negative behaviours. Maria, however, had a little more experience with him being demanding, so she wasn’t too surprised. As a punishment, Gregory had some of his toys taken away from him until he learned to cooperate and play nice with the other kids. This just taught him to not be so overtly demanding and instead be more subtle and covert about it.

This behaviour continued into first and second grade, where as a result of him being a little more manipulative and less demanding, he had more friends, and he managed to get them to do whatever he wanted. Play the games he wanted or he’d guilt trip them, or tell them they wouldn’t be friends anymore, and if he didn’t like another kid, he would tell his friends to not interact with them or they wouldn’t be friends anymore. He was still bossy and demanding from time to time, but these incidents were few and far between, and his parents didn’t suspect anything due to his demanding personality being a lot more covert. His performance in class was mostly nothing to write home about, but he was very interested in history, begging his dad to get him some history books. One of them was about medieval England and the Battle of Hastings, which he was immediately drawn to due to finding knights cool. This interest only grew with age, as he became able to read more complicated books about history.

Around the same time as he started third grade, Gregory and his dad visited his maternal grandfather, Sammy Miller, in rural Florida for a weekend. A firefighter with the St. Petersburg Fire Department before his retirement, Sammy now ran a small apiary with a couple dozen hives, selling the honey, wax and vegetables that his bees had helped pollinate along with other byproducts at a local farmer’s market to supplement his pension, as well as relocating bees from hives in Miami that were in unwanted places and shipping his bees to other farms across the US for pollination purposes. Gregory initially found their visit to be boring, as there wasn’t any internet there and he only had one book to read. But Sammy offered to let him help with a harvest, or at least observe it up close, and he was thrilled. The suit was too big for him so he couldn’t really help, but he watched in awe as his grandfather carefully harvested the honey and processed it, explaining step by step what he was doing.

Midway through fourth grade, Gregory learned he was going to be getting a little sister, which excited him to no end. He helped his mom and dad paint the walls of the spare room and assemble the cot for her and went shopping with his mom for baby clothes, excitedly chattering about the preparations they were making for the new addition to the family, who was to be named Annabelle.

However, Annabelle only lived for a few hours after being born before dying, which completely devastated Maria. Finding it difficult to cope with the guilt and depression she felt, Maria took to drinking, at first only a few glasses of alcohol a day, but soon turning to full blown alcoholism. She was a weepy drunk, often sobbing about her baby for hours in front of her husband, who had thrown himself into work to help keep his mind occupied. Gregory, not really understanding the gravity of what exactly had happened, was told by his dad to stop talking about Annabelle. John initially tried to get her out of the stupor via date nights and trying to make her feel better, but he eventually held an intervention with the help of some of her colleagues and family members asking her to seek treatment for her alcoholism. She tried to stop drinking and booked herself into rehab a few times, but it never worked. Eventually, John grew tired of trying and filed for a divorce.

Gregory, not understanding what was going on at all and stressed with the constant weeping and drinking from his mother and the constant arguing over the divorce proceedings, became a lot more cruel and bullying in school, harassing classmates that he didn’t like over petty things such as the way they spoke or the clothes they wore while the staff weren’t looking and threatening that if they told the teacher or their parents that they were being bullied, it would only make it worse for them. Gregory found that he enjoyed the feeling of power over someone and being able to do something to feel like he had control over something while his life was in such disarray. Eventually, it was finalised that John would have full custody of Gregory, and they moved to a smaller house in Miami. At home, Gregory became more introverted, heading up to his room straight after coming home and spending hours on the family laptop, watching YouTubers such as Pewdiepie and DanTDM to distract himself from the negative thoughts he felt, not wanting to talk to his father about it. His grades fell in class as he stopped doing his homework, leading to a meeting about it with school. John was harsh on Gregory for it, causing him to withdraw even further into himself.

It was around this time that he started watching SOTF-TV. He knew what it was, of course, but his mom had never let him watch it, deeming it unsuitable for his young eyes, and his father had agreed with that. But online, he could find highlight clips and episodes of seasons, and he quickly got immersed in them. He wasn’t really one for the killing part, as it made him a little queasy, but he enjoyed watching the characters react to the events of the episodes and how their emotions and relations from before the game tied in with one another to make the people killing each other more impactful and emotional. Seeing other people feeling horrible He began talking about it with his gang at school, making bets and theories on the currently-running Season 30 with each other. The twist ending of that season only further entrenched Gregory’s love for the character reactions in the show.

The rest of his elementary school life passed without much incident. Eventually Gregory and John both calmed down as things slowly got back to a new normal. Most of Gregory’s gang ended up breaking up as he matured a little, realising that he had been a bully just because it made him feel good and he needed some way to relieve stress. A couple of them also ended going to different schools than him, and the ones who did ended up distancing themselves from him, uncomfortable with how he had become a bully. Gregory felt remorseful about what had happened, but he didn’t know how to reconcile with them or those he’d bullied. Wanting to apologise for how harsh he had been due to the stress of the divorce, John got Gregory his own laptop so he didn’t keep stealing the family laptop, as he used that for work.

He used this laptop for a lot of stuff; researching stuff for homework, watching SOTF-TV clips from older seasons and the live feed when there was a season running, and looking up things about history that he was interested in. Of particular interest to him was the Western European kingdoms and their history; the Irish kingdoms, the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, all of them interested him. From reading up about them, he learned about the Total War series of real-time strategy games. Pirating Medieval II: Total War, as he didn’t have any money to buy it with, Gregory was engrossed in the struggle of building an empire and the challenges that came with it. He often stayed up late playing the game, until John realised and started taking away his laptop at night.

During a rare visit to his grandfather, Sammy offered once again to let him help with harvesting the honey, now that he was a little older. Gregory eagerly accepted, and as the suit actually fit him now that he was a little older, he was able to help with harvesting the honey. Placing the frames in a plastic tub and scraping the cappings off them with a knife, putting the frames into an extractor and cranking it until all the honey was out of the frames, and then finally bottling it. He didn’t have enough time to watch his grandfather render the beeswax, but he was able to take home a bunch of bottles of homemade honey, which he found much tastier than store-bought.

Starting middle school, he tried to turn over a new leaf. He had the idea to give some of his old friends and some of the people he had bullied bottles of honey as an olive branch to try and make amends. He was treated with suspicion by the majority of them, but a few people were happy to accept the honey and the idea that he might be improving. There was still that reputation of being a bully circulating among some of the kids from his elementary school, but he tried to challenge it by acting friendly towards his classmates. It never really went away, but most of the people who he had met in middle school just saw him as a decent guy, one who was really passionate about bees and history. HIs friend group was a lot smaller, mostly linked by the fact that they sat together in classes or that they were the few people that had accepted his apology, but he found that he was a lot happier with them than he was with his old bullying gang.

His grades were still middling except for in history and nothing to write home about, but he started paying a lot more attention to biology, eager to mention everything he had looked up or learned from watching his grandfather. With a little encouragement from his father, who wanted to try and get his son into the same high school that he had gone to, Mangrove Garden, his grades slowly started to climb, but he was still firmly in the middle for most of his time in middle school. Out of school, he started to watch a lot of videos on beekeeping and bee relocation, often having them playing in the background as he did his homework.

In 7th grade, Gregory started a YouTube channel for the purposes of recording his playthroughs of the Total War games. Following in the footsteps of another YouTuber that he watched, ManyATrueNerd, who explained and made comparisons between real history and the events of his campaign, he tried to do the same, but was hindered by his lack of actual historical knowledge. It only gets around 100 views a video, so none of his classmates in middle school or Mangrove High would know about it. However, he was starting to get bored of playing Medieval II: Total War, and the torrenting site that he had used to get it had been taken down so he couldn’t just torrent another game. In response to him asking for money, John made a suggestion to his father that he could maybe hire Gregory over the summer to help with the apiary in exchange for cash, which Sammy thought was a great idea.

So over the summer, when he wasn’t doing his homework and if it wasn’t a Sunday, Sammy would pick up Gregory in his truck and they would head to his apiary to help out with whatever needed doing. Most of the time, this was just heavy lifting, helping load bees onto trucks to send them across the country to help pollinate the summer fruits or just checking up on the hives to make sure that they were doing well, to look for any supersedure cells or varroa mites and to make sure that the colony hadn’t collapsed. To his displeasure, he realised that they had to wait a long time before the honey was ready for harvest. They only got to harvest honey once the entire summer, but it was very fun for Gregory! Most of the time, he ended up helping with his grandfather’s vegetable garden, hauling bags of fertiliser over to the storage or helping him harvest some of the seasonal fruits when they were ready. It was hard lifting work, yet he didn’t gain any muscle. He managed to convince his grandfather to start a YouTube channel and recorded him relocating bees in Miami a few times. The videos were popular, and so Sammy tried to film them himself a few times, although his lack of technical knowledge hindered him. In the end, he just gave up and let Gregory film them. Even now, if Sammy’s doing a hive relocation in Miami, he’ll call Gregory over and pay him a couple of bucks to film the relocation.

In the evenings, he and his grandfather would settle down after a good homemade dinner to watch some SOTF-TV. Sammy, like his grandson, was more of a fan of the character dynamics and relations than the bloody parts, so they bonded further over theorising about what the characters might do and how dynamics might affect the events of the season. Sometimes after dinner Sammy would take Gregory out foraging for mushrooms and wild berries, trying to teach him to the best of his ability which ones were good to eat and which ones would kill you, make you sick or get you high. Sammy valued being mostly self-sufficient and living off the land except for his trips to town or the farmer’s market to sell his honey and produce, and he tried to instill these values in Gregory as much as he could. This wasn’t very successful, but a lot of the knowledge about foraging for mushrooms and berries stayed in his head.

For his help over the summer, Gregory got paid a couple hundred bucks as well as a lot of honey. After having fun taking care of the bees, he desperately wanted to get his own hive in their yard, but their HOA forbade it, which was frustrating. His last middle school year passed by uneventfully, and soon it was time for the Mangrove High entrance exam. He didn’t manage to get in on his own grades, much to his father’s disappointment, but he paid the tuition fees to get his son in, warning him that he should probably start focusing on his studying a little more.

With his gifts of honey to anyone who he wanted to make friends with, combined with a friendly demeanour, he was quick to make a good group of friends. They weren’t exactly the popular group – if anything, they were the nerdy group – but he still appreciates them. They’ve stuck together through the first two years of Mangrove, and there’s been talk of a few of them getting a dorm together once they head off to university, but at the moment it’s more of a nice thought than anything.

Initially, Gregory was unused to the ranking system and so he was low on the rankings, but with his father’s advice to start thinking about his grades a little more, he’s managed to crawl his way up to the lower middle of the rankings thanks to a lot of studying and comparing notes with his friends. He’s not exactly happy with the system, preferring the standard method of marking grades, but he’s accepted he can’t do much about it. In particular, he excels in biology and history class, taking home a comfortable A in both subjects thanks to his online searching on both subjects.

With his studying, Gregory hasn’t had much time for his hobbies of RTS games or medieval history, although he’s been able to utilise the latter in getting a good history grade. He normally reserves some time for gaming and researching history for said game on the weekend, trying to get at least one episode of whatever RTS game he’s playing out a month for his channel. Although he hasn’t cared as much for the channel as he did when he was younger, he still likes keeping up his old videos to watch, seeing them as an archive for his tactics and gameplay.

At Mangrove Garden, Gregory is in the gardening club. He’s very eager to tell his fellow clubmates about how important bees are to the plants they’re growing and how if they didn’t have any bees at all, their fruits and vegetables wouldn’t be able to grow. In addition, the administration has permitted him to keep a small beehive in their garden, provided that he takes the utmost care that they don’t sting anyone. He makes sure to thoroughly smoke them before opening the hive to show his fellow club members what goes on inside there. In addition, he gives the honey from the hive to his friends and family as well as donating some of it to the home economics class.

He has a small, yet loyal friends group, mostly consisting of fellow science and history fans and kids from the gardening club. None of his old friends made the transfer over to Mangrove Garden, so he’s managed to keep the bullying part of his life strictly under wraps. He’s loyal to his friends, although at times this can turn into naivety, not able to see any pranks or stuff his friends are playing on him until it’s too late to avoid it. Thanks to his old behavioural issues and him wanting to rectify them, he feels bad about telling them to knock off their pranks, and so he just lets them continue with it. They casually discuss SOTF; Gregory can get a little uncomfortable around the superfans who are very eager for bloodshed, so he normally sticks to discussing it with more casual fans.

Gregory is very close to his grandfather, and looks up to him as a role model, something to aspire to. He’s close to his dad as well, and they often discuss how their day went over a milkshake at a local restaurant, but John has a lot on his mind with work and so he normally is stuck doing work, although he tries to make time for his son when he gets the chance. Most recently, he’s agreed to go to a renaissance fair with him in the summer. Gregory doesn’t really think much about his mother – she hasn’t made any effort to get into contact with him, and neither him nor his dad know where she is. Sometimes when he hears people discussing their relationship with their mom, he briefly wonders what could have been if she had gotten treatment for her addiction, but he tries not to think about that much.

When he leaves high school, Gregory wants to be a beekeeper. He doesn’t really have much of a plan on how to achieve this dream yet, but his current idea is working with his grandfather to expand his apiary to a bigger, more commercial operation and joining a beekeeping federation so they can network with more people and find places to sell their honey to. If that idea doesn’t work, his backup plan is becoming a historian, although he hasn’t really thought about that idea much at all.

Advantages: Gregory has a natural affinity for being friendly, and has a ready made group in the members of the gardening club and anyone in his friends group, so it won’t be difficult for him to find someone to team up with. In addition, he also has rudimentary knowledge of what forageable foods are safe to eat thanks to his grandfather’s teachings, and his short and thin stature means that he’ll be able to hide from other players better.
Disadvantages: Gregory has a tendency to be naive about his friends’ intentions, not wanting to doubt them or be mean due to his past tendencies of bullying. As such, the idea of being betrayed by one of his friends wouldn’t cross his mind at all. He doesn’t like the violence in SOTF as it makes him queasy, which also means that real life violence will make him sick as well.

Designated Number: BC09

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Designated Weapon: Bolas

Mentor Comment: "Another social butterfly is a more than welcome addition to the Crabs, given the, uh, interesting collection of personalities we've got. Throw in a useful weapon and a physique well-honed by hard days of lifting bees, and Gregory is a solid foundation to tie things all together.

...Wait, did I misread something?"


DECEASED