- Joined
- Sep 8, 2019
- Messages
- 108
- Points
- 28
Character Name
Max Cohen
I Agree
Yes
Has this character appeared in a previous lore?
No
Age
33
Blood Type
A+
Personality
While he might not seem it from his slight build, Max has a way of commanding any room he’s in. His confident demeanor is complemented by his charisma, eloquence, and a sharp intelligence. Yet, he always makes an effort to be plain-spoken and down to Earth, careful to not let his intellect make him sound pretentious. A genuinely caring and empathetic man, Max is quick to stand up for injustice and is not one to back down from a difficult fight. He’s a restless and hectic soul, always filling his days and quite antsy when he lacks a full structure. He is very much concerned with behaving ethically and prefers to fight with the power of words and ideas.
Character Motivations
Max is a genuinely good man who feels good when he does good. He is very in tune to oppression and gets great satisfaction from providing representation for downtrodden individuals. He is particularly aware of the importance of feeling heard and has in fact dedicated his life to speaking for others, ensuring they always get an avenue to express themselves and the motivations behind their actions, regardless of the morality of those actions. He is keenly aware of his parent's egotistical, self-centered, prideful approaches to life and is motivated to not become like them. However, the truth is that was never much of an issue for Max. He may be his parent's child, but he's never much felt akin to either of them in any capacity. His goal is to continue fighting for anybody who he might be able to help through his affinity for eloquence and language and hopefully be able to foster a happy life for himself. As much as he desires to one day start a family, he has little luck in that regard so far.
Physical Appearance
Max is a short man, standing at 5'6" and weighing 136 lbs. He has the slim, toned physique of an endurance runner and is in excellent shape. He is a bespectacled man with a defined jawline and a clean shaven face.
Character Image Link
https://www.selectspecs.com/fashion...Joseph-Gordon-Levitt-glasses-in-Snowdon-3.jpg
Mechanical Occupation
Runner
In-Character Occupation
Lawyer
Biography
Maxwell Cohen was born in Brooklyn on September 21, 1979 to Rebbekah Friedman and Shlomo “Sam” Cohen. His mother is a very narcissistic, Israeli biomedical researcher who develops lifesaving medication. His father is a slightly less narcissistic, very accomplished neurosurgeon. Their bold, prideful personalities caused constant fighting and ultimately led to an extremely acrimonious divorce just before Max’s 12th birthday. His mother moved back to Israel after the divorce with his father taking full custody. As a short and sensitive kid, Max was often picked on in school. His inherently caring nature was in stark contrast to his parent’s egotistical reasons for doing good. When in high school, Max’s father got fed up with his tendency to constantly bounce his leg and snapped at him that if he was going to bounce his damn leg he might as well go somewhere. It was the beginning of his lifelong love for track. As a naturally restless, angsty person running helped expel some of that nervous energy through a physical outlet. He eventually joined the track team where he slowly began to cultivate friendships. He excelled in classes, particularly in the humanities where his natural affinity for language had him writing essays far above his grade level. He also excelled in Spanish, taking a test to get officially certified as bilingual during his senior year.
Upon graduating high school, his mother and father began brutally arguing about his future. His mother constantly liked to remind his father that she saved significantly more lives than him through the medicine she develops and she doesn’t have the compulsion to do so in such a dramatic and demeaning manner such as actually bloodying your hands in an OR. His father, who had been grooming him for medical work since he was a young boy, was adamant that he enter the prestigious world of surgeons. Neither so much as considered that he wouldn’t go into anything medical at all. Yet, Max thoroughly disappointed the both of them when he turned down his acceptance to Harvard to study history at The City College of New York. His decision was based on a visit to Harvard, where the pretentious, sanctimonious demeanor of the faculty and students reminded him too much of his parents. They both immediately cut him off financially and didn’t speak to him for some time. Max, who had become quite charismatic and outgoing since his gawky childhood times, moved into a small two bedroom apartment with three roommates and got a job waiting tables to afford the rent. A year into his studies, he changed his focus to philosophy and another year later, transferred to NYU. While he was in The City College, his father had remarried a much younger woman and gotten her pregnant during their honeymoon. His much younger half-brother would go on to go to medical school like his father had always hoped for him. His mother had remarried in Israel. Eventually, he re-established contact with the both of them but he never felt like they were too interested in having a relationship with him after his major disappointment and their visits always felt very forced.
Max ultimately graduated magna cum laude from NYU with a Bachelor of the Arts in Philosophy and a double minor in Spanish and History. Unsure what to do with his newfound degree, he ultimately settled on a job as a translator for the New York County courthouse. He immediately fell in love with the environment and within two months of his new employment started to study for the LSAT. He excelled on the test and ended up accepting an admittance to NYU’s law school with an excellent scholarship. He did well in law school, although he was not the top of his class like during his undergrad. His naturally eloquent speaking skills got refined and the critical thinking skills developed during his study of philosophy got expanded. He got more committed to running as an outlet for the massive stress of law school, ultimately completing the New York City Marathon. During his 3L year, he got an externship at the Public Defender’s Office where he ended up gaining employment upon graduation. He was extremely overworked and extremely underpaid but he adored the job. He got to genuinely help underserved populations in tight spots, providing good representation for people who otherwise wouldn’t have it. He learned the complexities of working with diverse populations and cultivated positive, caring relationships with many of his clientele, who he always defended with passion and conviction. Despite his unreasonable workload, Max did everything in his power to give every case as much attention as he could. He managed to avoid burning out due to a genuine and deep-hearted love for the work he was doing, however the massive amount of time put into his work made it extremely difficult to date or work to start a family.
An exceptional litigator, he had impressive success rates in the courtroom. This caught the eye of a large private defense firm who specialized in white collar crime, who approached Max with a job offer. He would be making exorbitantly more than he currently brought in for doing much less work and the firm had a good record of doing pro bono work, something Max was passionate about. All the same, Max declined the position, much more interested in doing meaningful work than pursuing wealth.
Nine years into his work at the public defender’s office, Max was contacted by an old friend from law school. His friend, Carlos Gutierrez, was a partner at a large immigration law firm in Louisville, Kentucky. As it happened, a junior partner in the firm had just died in a tragic automobile accident and, remembering Max’s passion in law school for immigration law and his fluency in Spanish, Carlos recommended him as a candidate for the position. The pay was relatively modest for a partner, but significantly more than he was currently making even after 9 years of service and the hours were much less. As much as Max still loved the work, he was beginning to get burnt out on the horrors of criminal law and he felt himself developing compassion fatigue for his clients. Besides, he wanted to have some time to begin looking for a wife and cultivating a family. That said, he was quite reluctant to leave his current job and was fairly confident he would not end up taking the position. All the same, he knew he should at least come down for an interview and check out the firm. Upon doing so, he was almost disheartened by how much he liked it. He had forgotten how much he missed his old friend and was excited by the idea of working with him again. The firm was extremely civic minded and he would get to do meaningful work protecting immigrants. And all for much more pay and much less hours. Still, he didn’t want to leave New York and while he had become much more secular in his adulthood than his more observant Jewish parents raised him to be, he still would prefer to marry a Jewish girl and was skeptical about his ability to find one in Louisville. Max was thoroughly torn over what to choose.
Max was so busy with work that the news reports about the outbreak completely eluded him. He had little time for news, nor much interest. He read about enough horrible things in the constant pile of police reports he always had to get through. He still tried to keep up with current events like any responsible civilian, but it had become harder to do anything other than work and running as of late. A couple weeks back, he had called his mother who first brought it to his attention. She was extremely excitable, almost manic, about her research developing a drug to combat a new, horrendous virus that emerged in Saudi Arabia. She assured him this was going to be big and she was saving the world. But Max’s mother always was certain her work was the world’s most important thing and it was not uncommon for her to become almost manic with excitement about her research, often serving to stroke her own ego in the process. Max thought little of it, for the most part. However, something strange did catch his attention. His mother told him if he should ever come into contact with somebody with this virus, which she referred to as Corto Virus, that he should keep his distance and that he could recognize them by their lifeless eyes, shambling gait, and the heterotopic ossification of their muscles.. In all her years of research, she never once gave Max advice about his own safety or showed concern for him in regards to what she was working on. However, the man simply chalked it up to her becoming more sentimental in her older age and went back to his busy life, vaguely logging the information in the back of his mind. In hindsight, he can’t believe he didn’t ask more questions.
Even as the news reports grew about the virus in the States, they barely registered for Max. It wasn’t until his coworker from the Public Defender’s Office called him to ask if he was going to stay in Kentucky for a bit in light of the recent news that he started to realize something was amiss. His coworker informed him that New York had shut down all non-essential businesses that day. His initial instinct was to get back to New York, but he finally decided it was time to sit his ass down and research what’s going on, forgetting about work for a second. He tried to call his mom in Israel, knowing she’d have vital information, but he couldn’t get through. He similarly tried his dad, but the line was dead. Same thing with his half-brother. He got out his laptop and scoured the internet, finally seeing all the videos everyone else had seen days earlier. As he was doing his research, breaking news came on the TV in his hotel that the National Guard had been deployed to New York to enforce multiple quarantine zones. Max ultimately decided to cancel his return flight to New York and called Carlos to ask if he could stay with him for a few nights until he could figure out what exactly was going on back home. Carlos agreed and picked him up, driving him over to his suburban house in Brandenburg where Max stayed with him, his wife Mary, their teenage daughter Janie and their young son Jose. Things escalated very quickly after that with Max and his hosts stuck on the couch, eyes glued to the news. Max kept trying to get through to his family to no avail. Eventually, they were informed to go to the neighboring town of Muldraugh where they would be escorted to an evacuation center in Louisville. Max tried to figure out where exactly they would be evacuated to, but received no clear answer.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Max was exceptionally skeptical to simply hustle off to the government’s “evacuation center.” Particularly when nobody would give him information on what this looked like or where they would be evacuated too. Childhood stories from his Bubbe raced through his mind as dormant alarm bells blared. All the same, he doubted Carlos would understand his concerns and he didn’t want to leave the only familiar face he had during this extremely unsettling time. Max swallowed his fear and loaded up in the car with Carlos and his family to get to Muldraugh. Unfortunately, the freeways were jam packed with cars. They decided to take a back road to save time where they ran over a wrench on the road and got a flat tire. With Max and his friend changing the spare, suddenly Jose screamed in horror. Max turned around to see a man stumbling towards the child. He noticed the lifeless eyes and the shambling gait his mother had warned him about. The child, frozen in fear, only managed to put his arm in front of his face for protection where the infected man promptly took a chunk of flesh from his arm. Carlos took the tire iron and hit the man over the head, parental instinct kicking in. Carlos was a bigger man and hit harder than he intended, with the man lying on the ground unmoving. Max’s childhood medical lessons from his father leapt to the forefront of his mind as he patched up Jose’s arm with a first-aid kit in the car. As he observed the kid’s bite and the blood of the infected man on Carlos’ face, he could only remember his mother’s warning “don’t let them near you.” All the same, Max couldn’t abandon his friends regardless of if they were now infected. He looked to the man lying lifeless on the ground and instinctively went to go towards him with the first-aid kit, despite his mother’s warning going off in his head. However, Carlos put a hand on his shoulder, causing Max to reevaluate his decision and ultimately agree that moral questions aside, approaching the sick man for aid was an objectively poor idea. He clung to the astounding rumors that the infected people were somehow already dead, reanimated not unlike zombies, as a source of comfort for his out of character choice to not aid their assailant.
They went to quickly finish changing the tire. Oddly, Jose was not complaining of pain in his arm, but that his arm felt numb. Carlos and Mary were wildly concerned, eager to get back on the road to get their son to a doctor at the evacuation center. Unfortunately, before they could get the spare attached, a large number of infected people came out of the surrounding trees. Max tried to talk to them, but it became clear quite quickly these people were beyond reason. His friend scooped up his son in his arms and he and his family ran up the road, in the direction of Muldraugh. Max, who had been trying to reason with the infected when Carlos immediately took off, got cut off as more suddenly came out of the woods between Carlos and him.. He ran into the woods to avoid getting too close as per his mother’s advice, and by the time he got back on the road and scanned for his friend, he couldn’t find him. Max decided the best course of action was to meet them at the Muldraugh evacuation center, where they had already agreed to go. Still hesitant about the center but unwilling to not try to find Carlos and his family, he took off running in that direction, his endurance training paying off. He arrived just as night fell.
Would you like your character to start with any items?
Glasses renamed Max's Glasses
Would you like to be placed in a random group at the start of the lore?
Yes
Is your character a member of a group application?
No
Group Members
N/A
Max Cohen
I Agree
Yes
Has this character appeared in a previous lore?
No
Age
33
Blood Type
A+
Personality
While he might not seem it from his slight build, Max has a way of commanding any room he’s in. His confident demeanor is complemented by his charisma, eloquence, and a sharp intelligence. Yet, he always makes an effort to be plain-spoken and down to Earth, careful to not let his intellect make him sound pretentious. A genuinely caring and empathetic man, Max is quick to stand up for injustice and is not one to back down from a difficult fight. He’s a restless and hectic soul, always filling his days and quite antsy when he lacks a full structure. He is very much concerned with behaving ethically and prefers to fight with the power of words and ideas.
Character Motivations
Max is a genuinely good man who feels good when he does good. He is very in tune to oppression and gets great satisfaction from providing representation for downtrodden individuals. He is particularly aware of the importance of feeling heard and has in fact dedicated his life to speaking for others, ensuring they always get an avenue to express themselves and the motivations behind their actions, regardless of the morality of those actions. He is keenly aware of his parent's egotistical, self-centered, prideful approaches to life and is motivated to not become like them. However, the truth is that was never much of an issue for Max. He may be his parent's child, but he's never much felt akin to either of them in any capacity. His goal is to continue fighting for anybody who he might be able to help through his affinity for eloquence and language and hopefully be able to foster a happy life for himself. As much as he desires to one day start a family, he has little luck in that regard so far.
Physical Appearance
Max is a short man, standing at 5'6" and weighing 136 lbs. He has the slim, toned physique of an endurance runner and is in excellent shape. He is a bespectacled man with a defined jawline and a clean shaven face.
Character Image Link
https://www.selectspecs.com/fashion...Joseph-Gordon-Levitt-glasses-in-Snowdon-3.jpg
Mechanical Occupation
Runner
In-Character Occupation
Lawyer
Biography
Maxwell Cohen was born in Brooklyn on September 21, 1979 to Rebbekah Friedman and Shlomo “Sam” Cohen. His mother is a very narcissistic, Israeli biomedical researcher who develops lifesaving medication. His father is a slightly less narcissistic, very accomplished neurosurgeon. Their bold, prideful personalities caused constant fighting and ultimately led to an extremely acrimonious divorce just before Max’s 12th birthday. His mother moved back to Israel after the divorce with his father taking full custody. As a short and sensitive kid, Max was often picked on in school. His inherently caring nature was in stark contrast to his parent’s egotistical reasons for doing good. When in high school, Max’s father got fed up with his tendency to constantly bounce his leg and snapped at him that if he was going to bounce his damn leg he might as well go somewhere. It was the beginning of his lifelong love for track. As a naturally restless, angsty person running helped expel some of that nervous energy through a physical outlet. He eventually joined the track team where he slowly began to cultivate friendships. He excelled in classes, particularly in the humanities where his natural affinity for language had him writing essays far above his grade level. He also excelled in Spanish, taking a test to get officially certified as bilingual during his senior year.
Upon graduating high school, his mother and father began brutally arguing about his future. His mother constantly liked to remind his father that she saved significantly more lives than him through the medicine she develops and she doesn’t have the compulsion to do so in such a dramatic and demeaning manner such as actually bloodying your hands in an OR. His father, who had been grooming him for medical work since he was a young boy, was adamant that he enter the prestigious world of surgeons. Neither so much as considered that he wouldn’t go into anything medical at all. Yet, Max thoroughly disappointed the both of them when he turned down his acceptance to Harvard to study history at The City College of New York. His decision was based on a visit to Harvard, where the pretentious, sanctimonious demeanor of the faculty and students reminded him too much of his parents. They both immediately cut him off financially and didn’t speak to him for some time. Max, who had become quite charismatic and outgoing since his gawky childhood times, moved into a small two bedroom apartment with three roommates and got a job waiting tables to afford the rent. A year into his studies, he changed his focus to philosophy and another year later, transferred to NYU. While he was in The City College, his father had remarried a much younger woman and gotten her pregnant during their honeymoon. His much younger half-brother would go on to go to medical school like his father had always hoped for him. His mother had remarried in Israel. Eventually, he re-established contact with the both of them but he never felt like they were too interested in having a relationship with him after his major disappointment and their visits always felt very forced.
Max ultimately graduated magna cum laude from NYU with a Bachelor of the Arts in Philosophy and a double minor in Spanish and History. Unsure what to do with his newfound degree, he ultimately settled on a job as a translator for the New York County courthouse. He immediately fell in love with the environment and within two months of his new employment started to study for the LSAT. He excelled on the test and ended up accepting an admittance to NYU’s law school with an excellent scholarship. He did well in law school, although he was not the top of his class like during his undergrad. His naturally eloquent speaking skills got refined and the critical thinking skills developed during his study of philosophy got expanded. He got more committed to running as an outlet for the massive stress of law school, ultimately completing the New York City Marathon. During his 3L year, he got an externship at the Public Defender’s Office where he ended up gaining employment upon graduation. He was extremely overworked and extremely underpaid but he adored the job. He got to genuinely help underserved populations in tight spots, providing good representation for people who otherwise wouldn’t have it. He learned the complexities of working with diverse populations and cultivated positive, caring relationships with many of his clientele, who he always defended with passion and conviction. Despite his unreasonable workload, Max did everything in his power to give every case as much attention as he could. He managed to avoid burning out due to a genuine and deep-hearted love for the work he was doing, however the massive amount of time put into his work made it extremely difficult to date or work to start a family.
An exceptional litigator, he had impressive success rates in the courtroom. This caught the eye of a large private defense firm who specialized in white collar crime, who approached Max with a job offer. He would be making exorbitantly more than he currently brought in for doing much less work and the firm had a good record of doing pro bono work, something Max was passionate about. All the same, Max declined the position, much more interested in doing meaningful work than pursuing wealth.
Nine years into his work at the public defender’s office, Max was contacted by an old friend from law school. His friend, Carlos Gutierrez, was a partner at a large immigration law firm in Louisville, Kentucky. As it happened, a junior partner in the firm had just died in a tragic automobile accident and, remembering Max’s passion in law school for immigration law and his fluency in Spanish, Carlos recommended him as a candidate for the position. The pay was relatively modest for a partner, but significantly more than he was currently making even after 9 years of service and the hours were much less. As much as Max still loved the work, he was beginning to get burnt out on the horrors of criminal law and he felt himself developing compassion fatigue for his clients. Besides, he wanted to have some time to begin looking for a wife and cultivating a family. That said, he was quite reluctant to leave his current job and was fairly confident he would not end up taking the position. All the same, he knew he should at least come down for an interview and check out the firm. Upon doing so, he was almost disheartened by how much he liked it. He had forgotten how much he missed his old friend and was excited by the idea of working with him again. The firm was extremely civic minded and he would get to do meaningful work protecting immigrants. And all for much more pay and much less hours. Still, he didn’t want to leave New York and while he had become much more secular in his adulthood than his more observant Jewish parents raised him to be, he still would prefer to marry a Jewish girl and was skeptical about his ability to find one in Louisville. Max was thoroughly torn over what to choose.
Max was so busy with work that the news reports about the outbreak completely eluded him. He had little time for news, nor much interest. He read about enough horrible things in the constant pile of police reports he always had to get through. He still tried to keep up with current events like any responsible civilian, but it had become harder to do anything other than work and running as of late. A couple weeks back, he had called his mother who first brought it to his attention. She was extremely excitable, almost manic, about her research developing a drug to combat a new, horrendous virus that emerged in Saudi Arabia. She assured him this was going to be big and she was saving the world. But Max’s mother always was certain her work was the world’s most important thing and it was not uncommon for her to become almost manic with excitement about her research, often serving to stroke her own ego in the process. Max thought little of it, for the most part. However, something strange did catch his attention. His mother told him if he should ever come into contact with somebody with this virus, which she referred to as Corto Virus, that he should keep his distance and that he could recognize them by their lifeless eyes, shambling gait, and the heterotopic ossification of their muscles.. In all her years of research, she never once gave Max advice about his own safety or showed concern for him in regards to what she was working on. However, the man simply chalked it up to her becoming more sentimental in her older age and went back to his busy life, vaguely logging the information in the back of his mind. In hindsight, he can’t believe he didn’t ask more questions.
Even as the news reports grew about the virus in the States, they barely registered for Max. It wasn’t until his coworker from the Public Defender’s Office called him to ask if he was going to stay in Kentucky for a bit in light of the recent news that he started to realize something was amiss. His coworker informed him that New York had shut down all non-essential businesses that day. His initial instinct was to get back to New York, but he finally decided it was time to sit his ass down and research what’s going on, forgetting about work for a second. He tried to call his mom in Israel, knowing she’d have vital information, but he couldn’t get through. He similarly tried his dad, but the line was dead. Same thing with his half-brother. He got out his laptop and scoured the internet, finally seeing all the videos everyone else had seen days earlier. As he was doing his research, breaking news came on the TV in his hotel that the National Guard had been deployed to New York to enforce multiple quarantine zones. Max ultimately decided to cancel his return flight to New York and called Carlos to ask if he could stay with him for a few nights until he could figure out what exactly was going on back home. Carlos agreed and picked him up, driving him over to his suburban house in Brandenburg where Max stayed with him, his wife Mary, their teenage daughter Janie and their young son Jose. Things escalated very quickly after that with Max and his hosts stuck on the couch, eyes glued to the news. Max kept trying to get through to his family to no avail. Eventually, they were informed to go to the neighboring town of Muldraugh where they would be escorted to an evacuation center in Louisville. Max tried to figure out where exactly they would be evacuated to, but received no clear answer.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Max was exceptionally skeptical to simply hustle off to the government’s “evacuation center.” Particularly when nobody would give him information on what this looked like or where they would be evacuated too. Childhood stories from his Bubbe raced through his mind as dormant alarm bells blared. All the same, he doubted Carlos would understand his concerns and he didn’t want to leave the only familiar face he had during this extremely unsettling time. Max swallowed his fear and loaded up in the car with Carlos and his family to get to Muldraugh. Unfortunately, the freeways were jam packed with cars. They decided to take a back road to save time where they ran over a wrench on the road and got a flat tire. With Max and his friend changing the spare, suddenly Jose screamed in horror. Max turned around to see a man stumbling towards the child. He noticed the lifeless eyes and the shambling gait his mother had warned him about. The child, frozen in fear, only managed to put his arm in front of his face for protection where the infected man promptly took a chunk of flesh from his arm. Carlos took the tire iron and hit the man over the head, parental instinct kicking in. Carlos was a bigger man and hit harder than he intended, with the man lying on the ground unmoving. Max’s childhood medical lessons from his father leapt to the forefront of his mind as he patched up Jose’s arm with a first-aid kit in the car. As he observed the kid’s bite and the blood of the infected man on Carlos’ face, he could only remember his mother’s warning “don’t let them near you.” All the same, Max couldn’t abandon his friends regardless of if they were now infected. He looked to the man lying lifeless on the ground and instinctively went to go towards him with the first-aid kit, despite his mother’s warning going off in his head. However, Carlos put a hand on his shoulder, causing Max to reevaluate his decision and ultimately agree that moral questions aside, approaching the sick man for aid was an objectively poor idea. He clung to the astounding rumors that the infected people were somehow already dead, reanimated not unlike zombies, as a source of comfort for his out of character choice to not aid their assailant.
They went to quickly finish changing the tire. Oddly, Jose was not complaining of pain in his arm, but that his arm felt numb. Carlos and Mary were wildly concerned, eager to get back on the road to get their son to a doctor at the evacuation center. Unfortunately, before they could get the spare attached, a large number of infected people came out of the surrounding trees. Max tried to talk to them, but it became clear quite quickly these people were beyond reason. His friend scooped up his son in his arms and he and his family ran up the road, in the direction of Muldraugh. Max, who had been trying to reason with the infected when Carlos immediately took off, got cut off as more suddenly came out of the woods between Carlos and him.. He ran into the woods to avoid getting too close as per his mother’s advice, and by the time he got back on the road and scanned for his friend, he couldn’t find him. Max decided the best course of action was to meet them at the Muldraugh evacuation center, where they had already agreed to go. Still hesitant about the center but unwilling to not try to find Carlos and his family, he took off running in that direction, his endurance training paying off. He arrived just as night fell.
Would you like your character to start with any items?
Glasses renamed Max's Glasses
Would you like to be placed in a random group at the start of the lore?
Yes
Is your character a member of a group application?
No
Group Members
N/A
