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Welcome, rangers! Welcome to the dawn of the new age!

Matthias is the leader of the New Citadel.

Background[ | ]

Matthias is the end result of the Guardians' attempt to create a suitable shell for the Cochise AI to inhabit. Born in the process of experimentation on the Guardians, Dugan was one of two shells created, the other success being Matthias. When the Rangers destroyed the Guardians and took down the Guardian Citadel, these two managed to escape the slaughter. The Cochise AI was stuck beneath the Citadel, confined to a single node, while the two synths conspired to find a way to take revenge on the Rangers and free their master.[1]

They reached Los Angeles, beyond the radiation walls, where they set up the Children of the Citadel. To cover up their plans, they created a masquerade: Matthias would pose as the Messiah, seeking to uplift humans from their squalor by merging flesh with machine, while Dugan would be the terrifying robotic menace, seeking to exterminate all life. The ruse worked and while Dugan's worker bots scoured Los Angeles for supplies, fighting with the locals from time to time, Matthias built an army of half-man, half-machine soldiers in the depths of Seal Beach, the New Citadel. The ruse worked well, until Team Echo came to Los Angeles...

In appearance, Matthias is a middle aged man with pattern baldness and speaks with a soft tone, not unlike a caring father. He wears full length robes obscuring his synthetic body and carries himself like the prophet he claims to be.

Interactions[ | ]

WL2 Skill Icon Lockpicking
This character has other interactions.
  • Matthias appears as part of the final confrontation beneath the Ranger Citadel. However, he is of no consequence in the actual combat, as it's the numerous synths backing him up that are a problem. Given that he is overwritten by the Cochise AI immediately, Matthias technically dies before the player can put a slug in his head.

Behind the scenes[ | ]

  • Matthias may be a reference to the Gospel author Mathew. His use of terms as "good news", which "Evangelus" means in ancient Greek. His rambling about man and humanity may be a twisted view of the Mathew's point of view in the gospel. Furthermore, Gospel of Mathew is symbolized by a "man" in church decorations.

References[ | ]

  1. Cochise AI: "We attempted to rectify the first problem by ordering the Base Cochise robots to exterminate all life. At the same time, we determined that downloading ourself into a modified human was the best way to fix the second problem. We attempted to modify and enter various humans who came to the base, but failed. The Finster model rejected our programming, others died.
    Then a group called the Guardians found us, and because they worshipped technology, they were easily convinced to download us into this mainframe and allow us to experiment on them. Despite early failures, we created two successful prototypes, the Matthias shell and the Dugan shell.
    The untimely intervention of the Desert Rangers fifteen years ago stopped both our robot army and our download into these shells, and the rangers destruction of Base Cochise again locked us into a single node. Fortunately, the Matthias and the Dugan shells escaped and began building more shells into which we could download ourselves - including unaware shells who had been given artificial limbs and hearts. These shells will also become part of the army that will army to free us from this prison."
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