Cory

Name: Cory Hale

Nickname: Some people shorten his first name to just ‘Cor’, sounding it out like “core”

Age: 20

Height:6’1”
Weight:12 Stone
Character Description (Model - Douglas Booth):  At just over six feet and 12 stone, Cory is tall and lithe in both appearance and motion.  Before he left Blackwood he was rarely seen without a mischievous smile.  That smile is still there now that he’s returned, but it often slips out of sight when no one’s looking, replaced by a contemplative sadness or confusion, as though he’s trying to figure something out.  He likes clothes and rarely wears the same thing more than a few times, his wardrobe winding up at thrift stores in nearby Portland every new season.  A dedicated vegan, he doesn’t wear real leather, though he sometimes wears cork or ocean leather alternatives, especially in the form of belts or shoes.

Supernatural type: Fae

Abilities:  He began experimenting his ability to influence emotions while abroad and has gotten quite good at it though he usually has to use his normal senses to read them.  He’s also begun to play with glamour, the ability to alter his own appearance, but also the ability to create illusions.  So far he’s only been able to produce small effects, sleight of hand type of tricks or a sense of things, the haze of heat, the cool of a breeze, the smell of a flower.  And since a child he’s always had a natural affinity for animals, befriending the lowliest to the grandest with ease and talks to them with ease, though they don’t technically talk back.

Weaknesses:  Like a lot of Fae, he’s uncomfortable around iron and steel.  Of course, the world is mostly iron and steel now, which makes their house outside of town such a comfort.  He’s also, for some as of yet not understood reason, particularly drawn to the color red.  Generally it’s a color he likes, but particularly bright and vibrant shades can sometimes draw him to distraction and he’s been known to pursue people through crowds just to get a closer glimpse.  He’s also likes to touch things, which has gotten him into trouble more than a few times, whether it’s the paint on a canvas (museums he learned frown upon that) or the fabric of a dress (he always knew women didn’t like that, at least not without a proper introduction first).

Personality: The Cory most people knew growing up was a happy though mischievous boy.  Good natured to a fault, he was sometimes teased for being overly sensitive though he usually got even with a good prank that was rarely ever traced back to him.  As he reached his teen years, he grew a bit more serious and studious.  He asked a lot of strange questions, of his grandfather, his teachers, the parents of his friends.  He usually got half answers, things put off and avoided as though he was too young to understand, though he’d since come to believe that a lot of them simply didn’t have the answers he sought.  He crushes easily, his first being Amy Ketchum, his second Catie Westwood, though he never moved past harmless flirtation with either or any of the girls in town.  Those close to him, his grandfather and sister, will have noted the change in him upon his return.  There’s more worldliness and sadness in his eyes, as though he’s seen too much, but not what he was looking for.  He hides it well, even with his family, the mask of playfulness and humor he wears not false as he truly is, happy to be home.

History: Cory never really knew his parents.  He had vague memories of bright shapes, like he gets when he rests in the sun.  They were buried by the sacred tree, though they were mostly in the tree now, a part of it.  He could still feel them there when he visited, the bark warm to his touch and sometimes he thought he heard their voices in the wind through the leaves.

He’d always known he was different.  In a way though, he wasn’t different at all.  After all, some of the others were different, just a different kind of different.  He didn’t know how or why and no one would tell him, but he knew.  Then again, in some ways they were exactly the same, orphans, abandoned, lost, depending on the stories they were told.  You could almost say the town was cursed in that way, or maybe bound to some shared fate, some shared history and destiny that was either forgotten or so private no one wanted to talk about it, even to their own neighbors and kin.

It nagged at him growing up, like a metal shaving caught under his skin, burning and festering the more he grew, the more he read, the more he sensed lurking under the surface, in the thoughts unspoken, in the blank pages of history books and old newspapers.

He was seventeen when he graduated high school, seventeen when he left town, not for college, but an education of a different sort.  There wasn’t any dramatic blowout, no fight or argument that drove him away, nothing but a few hugs and a few tears and his grandfather and sister in a car taking him to the airport.  It had been three years since he’d come home, months since his last letter, the first postmarked from New York, the second from London, the third Dublin, the fourth from some little places called Tuam and Dunsany.

It was three years before he returned.  “You look so old,” they said, noting the stubble he’d taken to growing to make him seem less like a young boy.  It hadn’t helped being around so much metal and so far from the trees.  That alone had aged him, as had the knowledge, or lack thereof he’d learned.  He’d found no one like them, though he’d heard plenty of tales.  Whether that meant they were the last, the only or simply unworthy of attention, he didn’t know.  He wasn’t done though, wasn’t done looking, learning, trying to find out the truth.  He just missed… home.

Likes/Dislikes:  Cory likes animals, doesn’t matter what kind and frequently talks to them, even if they don’t always talk back.  He loves to feel things on his skin, whether the warmth of the sun, the cool of water, the softness of fabric or another’s skin.  He likes sweet and musky scents, but dislikes bitter and foul ones.  He loves music and is a decent musician with any instrument that has strings.  He’s a pronounced vegan and though he doesn’t chastise people for eating meat or wearing leather, it makes him uncomfortable to be around it.  He likes silver and gold metals and the color red, though he doesn’t wear it often himself.  His favorite foods are any sort of berry and he counts coffee among those, though some people would argue they’re beans.   His dislikes rules and often breaks them out of principle even though he has a few of his own.  Similarly, he dislikes people stuck in their ways and does his best to push people out of their comfort zones, again, on principle alone.