Cole (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lonelyghost) wrote2015-11-13 03:31 pm
lonelyghost) wrote2015-11-13 03:31 pm
Entry tags:
can you see up? can you see down? can you see the dead things all about town?
The Player
Name: Ellis
Age: 27
Pronouns: he/him
Contact: woodironbone on AIM
Currently Played Characters: Johnny Truant, Iman Asadi
The Character
Name: Cole
Age/Birthdate: uncertain, but physically speaking let's call it 20
Species: human/spirit hybrid
Gender: male-ish
Canon: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Canon point: right after the big final battle in Inquisition
Played By: N/A
Icon:
Abilities:
Many and varied. In gaming terms, he is a dual-wielding rogue, which means agile, sneaky, dagger in each hand, quick and deadly but not super sturdy. That's just rogues. Cole is another story on top of that.
All rogues can fight from stealth, which in video game land means they become semi-transparent and can escape detection. Cole's version of stealth is a bit more literal. He actually becomes transluscent, a wispy green ghost. It's a temporary state, and he generally only uses it while fighting.
Meanwhile, in a non-tactical scenario, he doesn't have to enter stealth mode to be more or less imperceptible if he likes. It's just something he is. People very often don't notice him at all, and if he interacts with him, they will forget him shortly after. He can also make them forget if he needs to. He uses this ability only to help, never to harm, though the specifics of that distinction are a little murky. For example, if he senses that someone is suffering great sadness, he can make them forget the experience that caused the hurt. Sometimes he will speak to people directly in an attempt to help them, and then he will make them forget the interaction, remembering only the lesson learned.
Cole experiences all the thoughts and emotions of people around him - in the game he specifies he can only hear the thoughts of people who "need" him, but that can still cast a pretty wide net. When he feels pain, he has a strong desire to help. He also tends to speak the thoughts he hears in an attempt to engage people directly on their experiences - he generally does this only with people he trusts and allows to remember him. It can be quite creepy and invasive, though he means well. See his permissions page for notes on this ability.
At Cole's canon point, his friends had only just begun to help him understand that making people forget their pain isn't always the right thing to do, and that sometimes it's okay to live with suffering. At present he's still struggling to figure this out.
Appearance:
Thin, small (let's call him 5'7), and pale to the point of sickly. His hair is matted and forever hanging in his eyes, and it's a kind of strained blond, like it had the color sapped out. His eyes are similar, kind of a glassy grey-green. He looks like a terribly unhealthy urchin and he dresses like it too, awkwardly stitched-together clothes, dirty handwraps serving as makeshift fingerless gloves, the works. Most notable is his hat, a massively wide brim hanging low to cover most of his face, with an iron helm on top. He loves his hat very much, though he is a little perplexed by the attention it draws. Here is a full-body shot and here is a full hat shot.
His body language varies between feverish and withdrawn, often swaying and shifting his weight, fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his arms, and pulling himself inward. He likes to perch on tables and other structures rather than sit in chairs. He rarely makes eye contact, preferring to duck his head down so his hat hides his face.
Personality:
Cole is gentle and softspoken, mumbling thoughts at a rapid clip. Most of what he says makes very little sense out of context, or at all - he processes thoughts in an unusual way and usually speaks them without any hesitation. Though he speaks about deep dark issues, he does so in a stream of consciousness, almost childlike. He often displays a lack of understanding of the finer nuances of what he's picking up - little concepts like friendly insults and metaphors are sometimes lost on him - only to turn around and demonstrate comprehension of complex experiences such as sex and death. One of the most classic Cole things I can think of is when asked his opinion on the Inqusition, he says "They talk about it like it's a person, but it's not even a thing" - meaning it is only an idea, not a tangible object, and he doesn't understand how an idea and a word can carry such immense weight.
Cole's chief concern is the wellbeing of others. He likes helping people - whether it is simply fulfilling a simple task on their behalf, or protecting them from enemies, or taking their hurt away. He has precious little concern about himself or his own wellbeing (quoted as saying "I don't matter" on one occasion, and showing disapproval when his needs are put above anyone else's). He is accustomed to people being frightened or repulsed by him, and their fear/disgust doesn't seem to disturb him, though he is quick to show pleasure when he notices a companion who has always referred to him as "it" slip up and use the proper pronoun. He has a very submissive nature and often defers to people around him, but make no mistake, he is not fearful. He can protect himself and his friends, and he will if he has to.
As might be obvious, Cole is heavily coded as autistic, though I will not be playing him as literally autistic as that would be misrepresenting the situation.
History:
Once upon a time, there was a young apostate (essentially an undocumented mage) named Cole who was abused by his father and eventually ripped from his family and imprisoned, all for having magic in his blood. He was left to die in a tower dungeon, broken and frightened, until he was found by a spirit of Compassion. Compassion wanted to help him, ease his suffering, so it reached out to him and into him, eased the pain and held his hand for comfort. Cole died, but his body didn't. Instead Compassion kept his body, not entirely on purpose, more out of a naive desire to help - and the result was spirit and man blending together into a thing that is both, existing uneasily between the two - the man Cole wanted to be, a man without magic, and the lingering presence of Compassion.
For a long time, the Cole that is could not remember the Cole that was, or that he was Compassion. He only knew that he did not want others to hurt, and that he had unusual talents that allowed him to help. Most people couldn't see him, and if they could, they were quick to forget he ever existed. He was not certain he did exist.
In more immediate news, there is the Breach - a massive hole in the sky that allows demons access to the world of Thedas. It appeared as the result of a cataclysmic event that resulted in the deaths of most of the governing forces, leaving the world in chaos. Cole eventually sought out the Inquisition, a ragtag organization struggling to restore order, to warn them of an advancing threat, and afterward he was allowed to join their forces. It was a strange experience for him, being noticed and remembered by a handful of people, and even being treated kindly by a few of them, in particular an elven mage named Solas, a dwarf named Varric, and the Inquisitor himself.
After witnessing the forces of evil binding demons to humans, thereby forcing the demons to do their bidding, Cole becomes terrified that someone could do this to him, as many believe him to be a demon himself. He begs Solas to bind him, to ensure he cannot hurt anyone. Solas refuses, instead trying to find a way to protect Cole through non-aggressive means. When this doesn't work either, Varric suggests it is because Cole is more human than spirit, a notion Solas finds distasteful. Cole is eventually able to identify a location on a map where there is some kind of obstruction to his capacity to realize himself, and asks the Inquistor, Solas and Varric to accompany him to it.
At that location, Cole finds the man who had so long ago thrown him in the tower dungeon and left him to die. The memory of his/the original Cole's death is traumatic and upsetting, and he is consumed with an unfamiliar desire for vengeance ("He killed me and I have to kill him back!"). Solas urges him to let the memory of hurt go and forgive the man, as this is what Compassion would do - Varric argues that they ought to let Cole grow as a person, not to seek vengeance but to accept the pain he's in, and try to work past it. The decision is left to the Inquisitor, who after some deliberation decides that Varric's idea, while maybe not "better", is more in line with how he's been relating to Cole, as a man who simply wants to understand the world around him better.
(This is an in-game decision with no right answer - Cole can either forgive his killer and become more spirit-like, or accept the anguish and become more human. Neither result seems entirely good, there are pros and cons to both, but I chose human, partly because I think the way Varric treats Cole is more compassionate and less rife with ulterior motives than the way Solas treats him. But that's just me babbling ignore me~)
Once he becomes more human, Cole is distressed to find that he can no longer make people forget him, and people are more likely to see him, and he doesn't understand why he can't make himself or others stop hurting. Varric and the Inquisitor do their best to help him through this, teaching him that there are other ways to cope with suffering, and that his pain will eventually subside.
Cole will be taken through the Rift just shortly after the final battle of the game. The nuances of it are complicated, see writing sample. He is going to be very distressed, and on top of that, the Rift will restore some of his spirit abilities, like the capacity to make people forget him, and to go unnoticed. He'll feel like he's just taken a massive step back and it's going to be very sad because of course it will.
Writing Sample:
There is something he's forgotten, isn't there. Isn't there? Darkness where there used to be light, nothing where there was something, but now who's to say what it was. The sky is scarred but healed and quiet, and everyone is glad they are safe and you helped and you should be happy, but there is that itch of forgetting, like before, when you forgot yourself.
Can't keep the thread of that now, slipping through your fingers like fine sands, like a dream. The Inquisitor is here. Your friend.
"There've been some reports of Fade rifts in the Hissing Wastes," he says. "Would you like to go with us?"
"I've never been to the Hissing Wastes," says Cole. "Do they actually hiss?"
"I don't know about that," says the Inquisitor with a little smile. Cole likes his smile. It's friendly, and isn't forced. "Harding called it the worst place in the world, but I don't know if I agree with her on that. It's all quiet desert. I thought it was rather nice, myself. You might like it."
He asks when he doesn't have to. He is the Inquisitor, he can make anyone go with him at a word, but he always asks. He is a good friend. Cole hopes he never forgets.
The Hissing Wastes do hiss a little, wind whistling woefully over the sand. Cole does like it there, dark and cool and mostly quiet, traveling with Varric and The Iron Bull, neither of whom call him 'it' or 'thing', or seem to mind what he is. When they come upon the Fade rift The Iron Bull laughs and Varric says something funny, in the wrong order, and Cole's mind is mired elsewhere because this one does not feel right. The others don't notice, can't feel it, but this rift is two rifts, one inside the other, something else beyond, reaching and grasping.
He shouldn't, knows he shouldn't. Nobody should. But Cole reaches back.
It's what he does; he helps people. The others can't sense it, don't see that this rift wants more than to let demons out. It wants to pull them in. He can't let that happen to his friends. He won't. There is no time to warn them and no time to stop it so Cole pushes forward and offers himself, gives up himself gladly, to save them all.
"Cole!" the Inquisitor cries out, startled, confused, why is he going, why is he doing this, but Cole can't answer him now, can't turn back; if he were more like a spirit he could fight it, but he's not, and so he can't. He lets it swallow him up, and he is afraid: he doesn't want to go to the Fade, he doesn't want to be alone.
It is over very quickly. But it is not the Fade where he finds himself. This place is real. Whole. But it is not the world he knows. It is something different.
He is sitting in grass, real grass but different grass, feels different, remembers hundreds of different years, and millions of lives, nothing Cole's ever felt before. This is somewhere new. Not Thedas and not the Fade.
He does not move, sitting in the middle of the grass, surrounded by people who ignore him, even though he is wearing his hat and he just appeared, no one sees him, nobody sees. He's like he was.
Afraid and alone, adrift, absent. Cole curls inward and tells himself to wake up. It will not work. It never works. This is no dream.
Wake up, please.
The Game
How did you find out about Big Applesauce?
y'all know me
What interests you about the game, and your character's place in it?
oh I look forward to Cole being sad and scared and weirding people out and trying to help them, he will also have very strong and interesting feelings about the dreaming and the Rift
Anything else?
here is Cole coping with his newfound humanity
my child
Name: Ellis
Age: 27
Pronouns: he/him
Contact: woodironbone on AIM
Currently Played Characters: Johnny Truant, Iman Asadi
The Character
Name: Cole
Age/Birthdate: uncertain, but physically speaking let's call it 20
Species: human/spirit hybrid
Gender: male-ish
Canon: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Canon point: right after the big final battle in Inquisition
Played By: N/A
Icon:
Abilities:
Many and varied. In gaming terms, he is a dual-wielding rogue, which means agile, sneaky, dagger in each hand, quick and deadly but not super sturdy. That's just rogues. Cole is another story on top of that.
All rogues can fight from stealth, which in video game land means they become semi-transparent and can escape detection. Cole's version of stealth is a bit more literal. He actually becomes transluscent, a wispy green ghost. It's a temporary state, and he generally only uses it while fighting.
Meanwhile, in a non-tactical scenario, he doesn't have to enter stealth mode to be more or less imperceptible if he likes. It's just something he is. People very often don't notice him at all, and if he interacts with him, they will forget him shortly after. He can also make them forget if he needs to. He uses this ability only to help, never to harm, though the specifics of that distinction are a little murky. For example, if he senses that someone is suffering great sadness, he can make them forget the experience that caused the hurt. Sometimes he will speak to people directly in an attempt to help them, and then he will make them forget the interaction, remembering only the lesson learned.
Cole experiences all the thoughts and emotions of people around him - in the game he specifies he can only hear the thoughts of people who "need" him, but that can still cast a pretty wide net. When he feels pain, he has a strong desire to help. He also tends to speak the thoughts he hears in an attempt to engage people directly on their experiences - he generally does this only with people he trusts and allows to remember him. It can be quite creepy and invasive, though he means well. See his permissions page for notes on this ability.
At Cole's canon point, his friends had only just begun to help him understand that making people forget their pain isn't always the right thing to do, and that sometimes it's okay to live with suffering. At present he's still struggling to figure this out.
Appearance:
Thin, small (let's call him 5'7), and pale to the point of sickly. His hair is matted and forever hanging in his eyes, and it's a kind of strained blond, like it had the color sapped out. His eyes are similar, kind of a glassy grey-green. He looks like a terribly unhealthy urchin and he dresses like it too, awkwardly stitched-together clothes, dirty handwraps serving as makeshift fingerless gloves, the works. Most notable is his hat, a massively wide brim hanging low to cover most of his face, with an iron helm on top. He loves his hat very much, though he is a little perplexed by the attention it draws. Here is a full-body shot and here is a full hat shot.
His body language varies between feverish and withdrawn, often swaying and shifting his weight, fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his arms, and pulling himself inward. He likes to perch on tables and other structures rather than sit in chairs. He rarely makes eye contact, preferring to duck his head down so his hat hides his face.
Personality:
Cole is gentle and softspoken, mumbling thoughts at a rapid clip. Most of what he says makes very little sense out of context, or at all - he processes thoughts in an unusual way and usually speaks them without any hesitation. Though he speaks about deep dark issues, he does so in a stream of consciousness, almost childlike. He often displays a lack of understanding of the finer nuances of what he's picking up - little concepts like friendly insults and metaphors are sometimes lost on him - only to turn around and demonstrate comprehension of complex experiences such as sex and death. One of the most classic Cole things I can think of is when asked his opinion on the Inqusition, he says "They talk about it like it's a person, but it's not even a thing" - meaning it is only an idea, not a tangible object, and he doesn't understand how an idea and a word can carry such immense weight.
Cole's chief concern is the wellbeing of others. He likes helping people - whether it is simply fulfilling a simple task on their behalf, or protecting them from enemies, or taking their hurt away. He has precious little concern about himself or his own wellbeing (quoted as saying "I don't matter" on one occasion, and showing disapproval when his needs are put above anyone else's). He is accustomed to people being frightened or repulsed by him, and their fear/disgust doesn't seem to disturb him, though he is quick to show pleasure when he notices a companion who has always referred to him as "it" slip up and use the proper pronoun. He has a very submissive nature and often defers to people around him, but make no mistake, he is not fearful. He can protect himself and his friends, and he will if he has to.
As might be obvious, Cole is heavily coded as autistic, though I will not be playing him as literally autistic as that would be misrepresenting the situation.
History:
Once upon a time, there was a young apostate (essentially an undocumented mage) named Cole who was abused by his father and eventually ripped from his family and imprisoned, all for having magic in his blood. He was left to die in a tower dungeon, broken and frightened, until he was found by a spirit of Compassion. Compassion wanted to help him, ease his suffering, so it reached out to him and into him, eased the pain and held his hand for comfort. Cole died, but his body didn't. Instead Compassion kept his body, not entirely on purpose, more out of a naive desire to help - and the result was spirit and man blending together into a thing that is both, existing uneasily between the two - the man Cole wanted to be, a man without magic, and the lingering presence of Compassion.
For a long time, the Cole that is could not remember the Cole that was, or that he was Compassion. He only knew that he did not want others to hurt, and that he had unusual talents that allowed him to help. Most people couldn't see him, and if they could, they were quick to forget he ever existed. He was not certain he did exist.
In more immediate news, there is the Breach - a massive hole in the sky that allows demons access to the world of Thedas. It appeared as the result of a cataclysmic event that resulted in the deaths of most of the governing forces, leaving the world in chaos. Cole eventually sought out the Inquisition, a ragtag organization struggling to restore order, to warn them of an advancing threat, and afterward he was allowed to join their forces. It was a strange experience for him, being noticed and remembered by a handful of people, and even being treated kindly by a few of them, in particular an elven mage named Solas, a dwarf named Varric, and the Inquisitor himself.
After witnessing the forces of evil binding demons to humans, thereby forcing the demons to do their bidding, Cole becomes terrified that someone could do this to him, as many believe him to be a demon himself. He begs Solas to bind him, to ensure he cannot hurt anyone. Solas refuses, instead trying to find a way to protect Cole through non-aggressive means. When this doesn't work either, Varric suggests it is because Cole is more human than spirit, a notion Solas finds distasteful. Cole is eventually able to identify a location on a map where there is some kind of obstruction to his capacity to realize himself, and asks the Inquistor, Solas and Varric to accompany him to it.
At that location, Cole finds the man who had so long ago thrown him in the tower dungeon and left him to die. The memory of his/the original Cole's death is traumatic and upsetting, and he is consumed with an unfamiliar desire for vengeance ("He killed me and I have to kill him back!"). Solas urges him to let the memory of hurt go and forgive the man, as this is what Compassion would do - Varric argues that they ought to let Cole grow as a person, not to seek vengeance but to accept the pain he's in, and try to work past it. The decision is left to the Inquisitor, who after some deliberation decides that Varric's idea, while maybe not "better", is more in line with how he's been relating to Cole, as a man who simply wants to understand the world around him better.
(This is an in-game decision with no right answer - Cole can either forgive his killer and become more spirit-like, or accept the anguish and become more human. Neither result seems entirely good, there are pros and cons to both, but I chose human, partly because I think the way Varric treats Cole is more compassionate and less rife with ulterior motives than the way Solas treats him. But that's just me babbling ignore me~)
Once he becomes more human, Cole is distressed to find that he can no longer make people forget him, and people are more likely to see him, and he doesn't understand why he can't make himself or others stop hurting. Varric and the Inquisitor do their best to help him through this, teaching him that there are other ways to cope with suffering, and that his pain will eventually subside.
Cole will be taken through the Rift just shortly after the final battle of the game. The nuances of it are complicated, see writing sample. He is going to be very distressed, and on top of that, the Rift will restore some of his spirit abilities, like the capacity to make people forget him, and to go unnoticed. He'll feel like he's just taken a massive step back and it's going to be very sad because of course it will.
Writing Sample:
There is something he's forgotten, isn't there. Isn't there? Darkness where there used to be light, nothing where there was something, but now who's to say what it was. The sky is scarred but healed and quiet, and everyone is glad they are safe and you helped and you should be happy, but there is that itch of forgetting, like before, when you forgot yourself.
Can't keep the thread of that now, slipping through your fingers like fine sands, like a dream. The Inquisitor is here. Your friend.
"There've been some reports of Fade rifts in the Hissing Wastes," he says. "Would you like to go with us?"
"I've never been to the Hissing Wastes," says Cole. "Do they actually hiss?"
"I don't know about that," says the Inquisitor with a little smile. Cole likes his smile. It's friendly, and isn't forced. "Harding called it the worst place in the world, but I don't know if I agree with her on that. It's all quiet desert. I thought it was rather nice, myself. You might like it."
He asks when he doesn't have to. He is the Inquisitor, he can make anyone go with him at a word, but he always asks. He is a good friend. Cole hopes he never forgets.
The Hissing Wastes do hiss a little, wind whistling woefully over the sand. Cole does like it there, dark and cool and mostly quiet, traveling with Varric and The Iron Bull, neither of whom call him 'it' or 'thing', or seem to mind what he is. When they come upon the Fade rift The Iron Bull laughs and Varric says something funny, in the wrong order, and Cole's mind is mired elsewhere because this one does not feel right. The others don't notice, can't feel it, but this rift is two rifts, one inside the other, something else beyond, reaching and grasping.
He shouldn't, knows he shouldn't. Nobody should. But Cole reaches back.
It's what he does; he helps people. The others can't sense it, don't see that this rift wants more than to let demons out. It wants to pull them in. He can't let that happen to his friends. He won't. There is no time to warn them and no time to stop it so Cole pushes forward and offers himself, gives up himself gladly, to save them all.
"Cole!" the Inquisitor cries out, startled, confused, why is he going, why is he doing this, but Cole can't answer him now, can't turn back; if he were more like a spirit he could fight it, but he's not, and so he can't. He lets it swallow him up, and he is afraid: he doesn't want to go to the Fade, he doesn't want to be alone.
It is over very quickly. But it is not the Fade where he finds himself. This place is real. Whole. But it is not the world he knows. It is something different.
He is sitting in grass, real grass but different grass, feels different, remembers hundreds of different years, and millions of lives, nothing Cole's ever felt before. This is somewhere new. Not Thedas and not the Fade.
He does not move, sitting in the middle of the grass, surrounded by people who ignore him, even though he is wearing his hat and he just appeared, no one sees him, nobody sees. He's like he was.
Afraid and alone, adrift, absent. Cole curls inward and tells himself to wake up. It will not work. It never works. This is no dream.
Wake up, please.
The Game
How did you find out about Big Applesauce?
y'all know me
What interests you about the game, and your character's place in it?
oh I look forward to Cole being sad and scared and weirding people out and trying to help them, he will also have very strong and interesting feelings about the dreaming and the Rift
Anything else?
here is Cole coping with his newfound humanity
my child