Dakota's family wasn't necessarily controlling, but they tended to follow a very traditional way of thinking in keeping to themselves and living out the best life for their community. This is largely in part to Dakota's family line possessing weak and small wings, even by brown bat standards. As Dakota's ancestors couldn't venture far away from where they settled down, they decided that not even trying would benefit the family better, keeping a close-knit group together and watching out for each other. Dakota was quite a revelation when they were born, and their parents were both optimistic and frightened. Flying became second nature to Dakota almost immediately, and they were always going too far away from their parent's viewpoint for their mom and dad to be comfortable. As Dakota grew, so did their ambitions of leaving the community and striking out into the world. This greatly disturbed their parents, and through a lot of counseling and convincing, after a while Dakota persuaded their parents to let them leave when they turned 18.

The amount of research Dakota did before leaving wasn't anything compared to what they learned along the way when it came to being on their own. They very quickly realized that the world wasn't like where they grew up at all - and that while most people were friendly, there were some that had bad intentions in mind. Through some trial and error, Dakota figured out the telltale signs of a good friend or a untrustworthy adversary, and they're keen on using those skills whenever they meet someone new. Rather than stay in a specific town or place, Dakota camps in the wilderness when they travel.

tl;dr they explore the wilderness and love traveling to new places. Their inspiration comes from studying great explorers and settlers of the past, and wanting to find unexplored areas untouched by man. They document all of their findings in nature journals and love to sketch out maps and mark down observations, hopefully they can become a cartographer one day.