Population: You application

[becamehim]

PLAYER INFO

Name: Nagia
Age: 30
Contact: shok_chama
Other Characters: Makimachi Misao, over at amnotaweasel

CHARACTER INFO

Journal: becamehim
Name: Cole
Age: n/a
Canon: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Canon Point: Mid-DAI, pre-personal mission

Canon World

The important things about Thedas: magic is real, people are still cruel, and it's actually two worlds. One world for the waking, and one called the Fade. It's the source of magic, the place you go when you dream, and chock full of spirits, many of them benign or even positive, but many of them twisted into darker, demonic versions of themselves.

Also, Thedas' version of the Medieval Catholic Church aka the Chantry likes to lock mages in prison-like trade universities where the wardens are all addicted to a drug the Chantry controls. Oh, and when they strip a mage's soul out, they put that mage to work and make a killer profit off their slave labor. These facts will be important later.

Perhaps most important is the link between spirits and demons. See, spirits are demons. Or, to put it better: demons used to be spirits. When interacting with the waking world (or, theoretically, under special circumstances in the Fade), a spirit who cannot fulfill its original function will, essentially, go insane and start performing a different, related, but generally unpleasant function. There are spirits of Faith who become demons of Fear; spirits of Wisdom and Purpose can turn to demons of Pride and Desire.

A spirit of Compassion might, if its compassionate nature were denied, or it were forced by unscrupulous mages to act against it, turn to a demon of Despair, overwhelmed and maddened by the pain of others around it... and lashing out because of it.

Canon State

• "Canon" Warden was a female Surana who mysteriously survived the death of the Archdemon and wandered off with some ridiculous Antivan elf.
  
• "Canon" Hawke was a female purple mage Hawke who sided with the mages, couldn't bring herself to kill Anders, and fled Kirkwall with a mysterious Tevinter elf.
  
• His canon Inquisitor was a desperately insecure Trevelyan who tried to imitate what she knew of the Champion of Kirkwall, who had brought the Mages on as allies, reunited Empress Celene and Briala at the Winter Palace, and taken him to Adamant and into the Fade. They had since returned to Skyhold in the middle of spring... when he found himself in a snowy, foggy hellscape.

History

Link is linked.

Bullet points if you're as link-averse as I am:

• So like 20 years ago a kid named Cole was born. His parents were your pretty run-of-the-mill abusive peasant stock who hated both their children for having magic (not unusual in the setting) and Cole-the-human took to hiding with his baby sister in a cupboard until the rages passed.
  
• Eventually, his baby sister died (implied accidental asphyxiation while hiding), and Cole-the-human took up his mother's dagger and killed his father, and was later found by the Templars and taken to the White Spire.
  
• Rather than put Cole-the-human through any sort of intake process or allow him to begin his life as an apprentice, they shoved him in a dungeon and literally forgot about him. He starved to death in a dungeon with no light, and as best he could tell, no one heard him scream...
  
• ...except Cole-the-spirit (from henceforth: Cole), who's a spirit of Compassion, and was drawn to Cole-the-human's suffering. Cole couldn't do anything to physically help the dying boy, but he did hold his hand, and eventually took on the other Cole's appearance and identity.
  
• After this, Cole became the Ghost of the White Spire. Very few could see him, nobody could remember him until Rhys, and Cole killed many mages as both a mercy and because killing them made him "matter" and feel real.
  
• Cole followed Rhys to Adamant Fortress, where Lord Seeker Lambert, the leader of the Seekers of Truth, threatened to kill the mages who discovered that the Rite of Tranquility (a personality and free will erasing procedure that has the happy side effect of removing a mage's access to magic and the Fade) could be reversed. Lambert exposed Cole for what he was: a spirit, or possibly a demon.
  
• The mage rebellion began in earnest, Rhys had to flee, and Cole separated from the party. Until the Temple of the Sacred Ashes blew up, he'd been wandering around, helping people, following the Templars to see what horrible shit they'll get up to. After the Temple blew up, he followed Lord Seeker Lambert to Therinfall Redoubt, where he watched the Templars descend into madness.
  
• He has since joined the Inquisition since the Templar threat is taken care of (one way or another) and he still wants to help people.

Personality

The most important thing to remember is that Cole is a spirit of Compassion. It's his very nature to want to help others -- generally more than he even wants to live. It is extremely, extremely difficult for him to see pain and not immediately do something about it. There's pretty much one person ever that Cole sees neither anything redeeming nor sympathetic in, and that's Livius Erimond (whom he straight out calls "an arsehole").

The chances are, if Cole is interacting with you, he cares about you very deeply, at least for that interaction, and maybe forever after, in a more limited way. If you're in physical pain, he wants to alleviate it (or offer you a softer, more merciful death); if you're in emotional pain, he'll try to make that better. If you're scared, if you're anxious, he wants to allay your fears and settle your anxiety.

He tries not to focus too much on his own feelings (and it's really debatable whether he'll even acknowledge that he has feelings). His experience with Cole-the-human has left him hating it when people are imprisoned, and he approves of people who go out of their way to help others, especially the helpless. He regrets his past actions and never wants to commit them again. He disapproves of blatant selfishness and believes strongly in punishing those who harm others. If you go around Kicking The Dog all the time, Cole will want to kick back, and may also want to murder you for the betterment of society/the safety of others.

The thing he fears most -- aside from Despair itself -- is turning back into a demon and hurting others rather than helping them. He's afraid that mages might be able to turn him against his purpose, especially after Adamant, and cause him to start killing again. In canon, this sent him into the kind of emotional tail spin that concluded with him asking someone he trusted to literally remove his free will and bind him forever to his purpose. Naturally, that friend refused, but the refusal distressed Cole even more than the idea that mages could make him hurt people again, and he had what looked a lot like the awkward-spirit-boy version of a complete nervous breakdown.

His presence in this new town, that's so very much like the Fade, without his greatest fear resolved, is very likely to send him careening toward a similar break down. Only this time, it's the Inquisitor he'll be asking to dabble in blood magic and bind him.

Thankfully, I'm sure Silent Hill will provide him an excellent opportunity to confront that fear and move past it, becoming either more human or more spirit in the process.

Special Abilities

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Cole is basically a souped-up version of the Assassin specialization. He's capable of reading the thoughts/sensing the feelings of others (so long as it's related to some physical or psychological/emotional injury) and making other people either neglect to notice him or forget him. He's also able to enter a spirit state where he becomes invisible and mostly intangible.

I'm going to leave his telepathy/empathy alone, because it's informs so much of how he sees and interacts with the world. However, I would like to strip his super-stealth and intangible abilities and also his power to make people forget him. No more second chances for Cole: he's gonna have to do it right the first time.

SAMPLES

Sample 1 || Sample 2 || Sample 3