PLAYER INFORMATIONName: Shade
Preferred pronoun(s): She/her
Contact:
Light_shade or Lightshade#4738
Permissions:CHARACTER INFORMATIONName: John Cooper
Canon: Agent of Hel
Canon point: In the middle of battle in the final book
Age: Physically 17, chronologically 232 (he's from 2013)
History: There is no wiki for Agent of Hel so I'll try to summarize.
Cooper died as a young man of seventeen in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 by hanging. He dared God to send him to Hell on the scaffold so that he could keep fighting. Heaven obliged but Hell threw him out for being too just, so he became an unaging supernatural monster known as a ghoul. He wandered the earth after that until he met a much older ghoul named Stefan in the late 1800s who showed him how to have better control than the ravening monster he saw himself as. What happened to him after that is unknown until 2012. After Stefan had some of the ghouls under his command in the town of Pemkowet rebel and try to overthrow him in a coup, he called in Cooper to become his second-in-command. Cooper obliged and managed to get along alright in the town until Halloween, when widespread panic of a ghost known as a "duppy" on the loose cause him to lose control and nearly drain a family dry of their emotions, causing what's known among ghouls as a "ravening".
Stefan put him under quarantine until he was able to come down, and despite his mistake, he still let him be in command. When the insane Greek goddess Persephone buys the town and plans to forcibly take control of the supernatural side of it from the Norse goddess Hel by bringing in armed mercenaries, the ghouls and many others fight back. Cooper is taken from the point in the middle of the fight when it's not clear which side will win.
Personality: Cooper's someone who wears a mask at all times. He's got this devil-may-care, mouthy teenager air about him, which can endear him to some people while pissing everyone else off. This can come from telling it like it is, for Cooper rarely finds a reason to lie to anyone. Really, it's just a front. Underneath, he's someone who is incredibly old and bitter. He got turned when he was very young and feels that he got his life stolen away from him for no good reason. He's got a nihilistic streak a mile wide and sometimes it borders on suicidal tendencies.
This resulted in him spending many years embracing being a bloodthirsty monster, and to some extent, he feels that is never going to change. His self-control is pretty ironclad, yet under the right circumstances he can still snap back into his old ways. Mainly, Cooper is just
tired. Most supernatural creatures his age stuck permanently as a teenager have already found a way to die or be turned back into a human but Cooper never will. It can easily cause him to fall into despair if he thinks about it too much.
But being a monster isn't all that makes him up. He's got a streak of loyalty that is probably his best trait. Once Cooper finds a cause or person to attach himself to, they have his undying loyalty until the end of time. His first death was caused by following a cause even unto death, and since then, he's looked for a place or person to attach himself to. At his current canon point, it's the older ghoul that has been his friend for over one-hundred years named Stefan. While he is fantastically loyal, he doesn't have the heart of a leader. He can follow orders and make some decisions on his own, but positions of power have never held any appeal for him.
Cooper tends to make snap decisions about people in his life. If he likes them, he will become extremely loyal and declare someone a friend even after only a short acquaintance. He is known in the books for being quite the charmer and the main character Daisy declares he's the ghoul she trusts the most after Stefan about a day after she's met him. He's got an easygoing, cheeky air about him that makes women giggle and men slap him on the back, calling him a pal and buddy in both cases.
On the flip side, once he dislikes someone, it is very difficult to get him to change his mind. He doesn't actively work against Daisy's other love interest Cody in the book but neither does he try to befriend him. He cheerfully declares himself "Team Stefan" when Daisy asks where he stands on her love life.
While he can be rather like a grumpy old man at times, at others, he resembles the teenager he used to be. He does attempt to get along with most people, though how successful he is at this is debatable. Even when it comes to his his enemies, he treats most them with a grudging sort of respect, unless they're shown to be complete and utter assholes. Overall, Cooper isn't someone who is made up of solely black and white shades. No matter whether someone likes him or despises him, he's not someone that's easily going to be forgotten.
Powers/abilities: So to understand Cooper's powers one must first understand what a ghoul is. And a ghoul by the definition of the series is a person who died doing the wrong thing for the right reasons or vice-versa depending on your POV. Examples in the series include a man who kills his father's murderer because it was the right thing to do, but the murderer just unfortunately happens to be his crippled, defenseless uncle who had married his mother. Another is a young woman who suffered schizophrenia and heard voices telling her God wanted her to kill herself and her baby by drowning in a bathtub. These people fall through the cracks when it comes times to judge their souls. Heaven can't take them because their souls are too corrupt and Hell won't either because they're often too pure because they believed in the righteous cause that led them to their deaths. Because their emotions are outsized and at their peak when they die, that's what they come back as: something that can only subsist on the emotions of human beings. And it
has to be human beings, feeding on other supernatural creatures cause them to lose control.
Cooper is an older ghoul, so he has better control than most. Rather than a draining sensation that's terrifying for the victim, he can make it feel almost pleasant and leaves just a calm, empty void in his wake, handy for moments when people are in the deep throes of grief or other forms of suffering. After he takes emotions from someone, he's connected to their emotional state, and can feel them when their emotions are very high or change rapidly i.e. someone who is in a high state of fury or someone who goes from being very calm to having a spike of fear.
There is a limit to what he can take before his control will crack. If he pushes beyond that point, he'll just snap, and become "ravening", a state where he'll drain a person of every single emotion they have at the moment. It's a terrifying process and can take weeks for the victim to recover from, for having no emotions is an eerie state to be in. But also being older means he has better control of himself even in this state, and if he can be isolated, he comes down from it in about a week instead of the month it can otherwise take for younger ghouls.
Ghouls are also immortal, unaging from the time they die the first time. They can be injured as long as it's non-critical, but the moment they reach a point where the injury would be fatal, they technically die. However, they always fall through the cracks, and immediately come back to life. It's compared to watching a film that skips a few frames. One moment they're dead and the next their body just resets to full health.
For the purposes of the game, his immortality and connection to people after he eats their emotions will be warped, and only his hunger and ability to take emotions shall remain.
Questions: may be written icly as the character or oocly as the player; please limit to maximum 5 sentences each
✽ What does your character consider to be their top three strengths? He has a great strength of will, which he's needed all these years to control his powers and keep from giving into despair over his immortality. He definitely considers his charm a strength as well, given how easy he can make it for people to trust him. Also his level of responsibility, given he was given control of an entire gang of ghouls and is expected to keep them all under control.
✽ What do others consider to be your character's greatest weakness? His unaging state, for one, because when your brain is permanently stuck like that physically of a teenager, you can make some pretty dumb decisions no matter how much life experience you have. Also he tends to overestimate his limits, and when he does, the results can have dire consequences for those around him.
✽ What are your character's three greatest fears? Living for even longer than he already has, for he's seen what immortality has done to even the oldest ghouls. Also committing the ghoul version of suicide, which involves literally fading into nothingness and having their souls completely disappear, neither going to Heaven or Hell or even existing anymore. Lastly, disappointing those around him when they've put their trust in him.
✽ What would your character choose for a last meal? Irish stew, soda bread slathered in butter, and lots and lots of beer.
✽ Has your character ever killed? If so, how did that affect them? If not, how would it affect them? He has, both when he was mortal and immortal. His righteous nature definitely comes into play here because most of the time he believes he's completely justified in the deaths he's caused. They do tend to weigh on his mind given how many he's caused over his long life but he tries not to let it get him down.
✽ If your character was given one selfish wish (eg. must be applied to themselves and not affect others), what would it be? That he lose his immortality and become mortal again so he could die for good.
Sample: