rp tools | hurts, pains and traumas

[pacificates]

As a Spirit of Compassion, Cole has a form of telepathy in which he can reads the minds of others — more specifically their hurts, worries, and traumas. He is drawn to those hurts, in a wish to help them. He can deal with this in handfuls of ways: often offering words of encouragement, or gentle nudging to people to act, or perhaps revealing information the person does not know. Other times he can simply take the hurt away and make a person forget it. Sometimes it may a case be reminding a person of something comforting, like reminding a dying soldier of a soup his mother made to comfort him in his last moments.

Often, Cole comments on those hurts — speaks them out loud as he comes to him, often in cryptic ways. Here are a few examples of such within canon.

"She is bare-faced, embarrassed, and she doesn't know. She thinks it's because of her. He hurts, an old pain from before, when everything sang the same. You're real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can't."
— Cole's comments on a Inquisitor Lavellan romance with Solas, had he removed her vallaslin and then broke off the relationship with her.

"An old name burns inside armor that shouldn't fit, lit by faces of the children he couldn't save."
— Cole's comments on Blackwall and his past actions.

"He sounds right again with the chains in place, but the music makes him sad."
— Cole's comments on Cullen, if he is told to resume taking Lyrium.

"A breath-caught smile from the Enchanter as the candle lights. The walls are safe; she will never be hungry again."
— Cole's comments on Vivienne's relationship with Duke Bastien.

For the sake of sanity/rp purposes, I've included a little fill out form for Cole's abilities to help me write out these pains, due to Cole's nature of speaking them aloud often — or him offering solutions/comfort to others, considering a character's pain doesn't need be something they're actively thinking about for Cole to sense it. Basically, give me food to work with! Please fill out for threads!

For Deer Country players: please feel free to add in game-specific hurts/memories /things in game that would comfort them, as well as canon ones.

<b>Character Name / Journal:</b> character name / journal here <b>Canon:</b> canon here <b>Character Memory/Fear/Pain:</b> name one, name several. feel free to add in details of memories, perhaps things like specific images, or snippets of conversation. symbols, colours, things like that. <b>How can Cole help:</b> is there perhaps insight Cole can give, maybe an explanation relating to the memory (ie. maybe character b lied to protect your character and your character didn't know this) or perhaps something comforting Cole can recall to remind your character of? or perhaps he can simply have your character forget

Comments

Viktor | Arcane

[mehanizovati]

Character Name / Journal: viktor | mehanizovati (this one)
Canon: arcane

Character Memory/Fear/Pain: (cw for ableism, terminal illness, classism, pet death kind of???)
1. viktor's grown up with pain and weakness, mostly his leg and back. in the place he grew up, the undercity, it's very dog eat dog and has a focus on being physically capable of protecting yourself or being able to sneak and run away. he was deeply isolated being unable to do these things, and then deeply isolated when he moved to the 'rich' part of town to go to the academy under basically a free ride. people looked down on him for where he was born and still the disabilities. the trench is the first place he's felt a real sense of community but there's a lingering need to be 'useful' in order to feel like he's earned his place in said community.

2. viktor put his trust in a man, a scientist, he met at random as a child. the man genetically engineered a large axolotl creature named rio, who is bright pink and purple and both looks and is quite magical in nature. she's dying, and the man says he's trying to save her. viktor wants to help too. for the first time he has friends, even if one is a shady mentor and the other not human.

eventually he comes in to find rio hooked up to tubes and writhing in agony on the ground, learning very quickly that it's never been about saving rio's life for the sake of rio, it's about saving rio's life because she's useful to research, her body is useful to research. the man expected viktor to understand, and viktor flees. metal tubing, the color purple in an unnatural glow, twitching and dying things. once again being useful is all that really matters

3. viktor is dying, and he starts working on a project that's increasingly dangerous. essentially creating a magic device that adapts itself, and as he tries to save himself or, more importantly, make one final, useful creation for the world, he does more and more dangerous things. he meets his old mentor, takes a very dangerous and illegal drug, lets the device, the hexcore, change his body. he leg is now magic and metal rather than flesh.

eventually he's testing it again when a girl comes in, sky, someone he's known for a long time, an assistant and maybe a friend. one of the few people in his life, someone who respects him and cares about his well being. she runs to try and help him, and the device kills her. she's dust on the ground, glasses with the frame cracked, her notebook. he tries to destroy the device and it won't let him swing the chair he lifts to do so.

How can Cole help: honestly i'd be very curious to have them have talks about magic and the danger around it, just magic in general. in terms of helping i think frank discussion about worth and how people don't exist to merely be useful could do him some good. even just any actual discussion about sky instead of repressing it would probably be good too.