Post by luilfr on Apr 15, 2010 20:08:16 GMT -7
THE HANDLER
NAME: Colette Marie Laveau
NICKNAME: Cole. Witch, Voodoo Queen
CLASSIFICATION: Human
GENDER: Female
AGE & BIRTHDAY: 27 born June 21st
APPEARANCE: Cole is not what you would expect a voodoo queen to look like. She is very normal looking choosing not to go nearly as eccentric as some of the others in the Louisiana area. She keeps her hair short, though it's a little longer on top and seems to have a spiky look to it, thought if one were to put their hands through it they would see that it was soft and not held up with a lot of hair spray.
Cole's hair is black and is uncharacteristically feathery and soft. Her skin is honey in color and thanks to her regime her skin is smooth and blemish free. Her build would be considered toned and lean, she isn't what anyone would call busty at all but she has a very natural beauty with her tomboyish looks.
ATTIRE: Off duty, Cole is the sort to wear jeans and a tank top, she prefers comfort to fashion and while she doesn't look bad in her clothes, its obvious she really isn't into the whole fashion scene. Cole is not usually a fan of shoes so she prefers to be barefoot or in sandals whenever it is acceptable. While on duty she'll wear whatever they tell her to wear which seems to typically be black slacks and a blouse, professional.
PLAY BY: Naomie Harris
THE CREATION
NAME: None
POWER LIST: Medium, Empathy, and Voodoo
DETAILED POWER: Medium: Being a medium has made talking to spirits which are so prominent in the voodoo religion very easy for the young woman. As a medium she has the ability to see spirits, see visions they send her, communicate with them, and even smell things from their past life. Unlike clairvoyance, her visions are only brought on from the deceased and not from objects or other people, her communication and visions is strictly with spirits, which was pretty hard to explain to people who don't understand the difference between communication with something they don't see and just touching something and getting a vision. There is very little that she can't see when it comes to spirits, unless the spirits don't want to be seen or speak with her, but even then she can typically convince some of them to help her help them.
Empathy: Cole has no trouble picking up on how people are feeling, it's pretty much kept her out of a lot of trouble as a child and not just with her mother. While she can't actually see or hear what people are thinking, she can sense what kind of distress they are going through and for the most part she is able to send out her own feelings to try and calm them down. She uses this ability to help her gauge how to handle and deal with people on occasion but she usually uses it to figure out how to deal with difficult spirits. There are just some who are so emotional after their death that they just won't hear reason.
Cole is a voodoo woman. She does not consider this a power because she thinks more of it as recipes for dealing with spirits and making her life and the lives of others better through natural and spiritual healing. She is not the sort of voodoo woman that curses others or uses voodoo dolls, she knows how those 'spells' work but she doesn't typically use them. Her family instilled a very strong ethical understanding of what Voodoo is really all about which is being in tune with nature and the spirits around you for guidance and not for making money like so many other voodoo practitioners take part in. Once again, it's not that she can't curse people or do other more intense spells, she has the books, it's just that she doesn't normally choose to.
Cole has the ability to offer spells for protection, spells for healing, and charms. The charms are little things like necklaces and other normal objects that Cole has worked her magic on to keep the wearer of said charm safe. These spells and charms are things that she has special ingredients for and special prayers for. Being that Voodoo is mixed deeply with spirits and nature it is typically powered by the spirits that she encounters and the spirits that she works with.
THE POTENTIAL
ALIGNMENT/OCCUPATION: BPRD; Field Agent/Spiritual Specialist
WEAPONS: Cobra Derringer
PERSONALITY: Cole has a very firm grip on her emotions, she isn't the sort to let her emotions get out of control because she knows that if she does that there is a chance that with all the emotions and feelings that she could get swept out of control. She is a strong young woman to keep her emotions in check but that means also that she has to keep herself a little distant from others emotionally unless its necessary she get involved to help them. To people who don't understand they may mistake this as her being a cold person.
She doesn't like people assuming that she's cold and distant, because it's not that she wants to be. If she trusts someone and is not in a very crowded place then she can let go of that distance she has to keep up and they can get to see the girl underneath. She is funny and sweet and desperately wants to get close to people but has only known from a young age that it's not ok for her to just let emotions run wild.
Cole really does care for all of the dead that she helps and is actually more fond of the deceased than the living, just because she can connect to them better. She has a sharp tongue and wit that can get her into trouble sometimes but it's usually just in teasing, she isn't the sort to let on that someone hurt her or that she is at all bothered with people not liking her but it truly does upset her since she feels like they don't get to know her. Not that she would let them but that is just another way to write it off as 'well they don't know me' but it's been such a long time since she could just be the girl that she is, well it's debatable that this cold distant person is who she is.
There is a part of her that refuses to believe that she really has become that person.
SKILLS: Cajun cooking is something that Cole is exceptionally good at, from a young age her mother and grandmother took the girl into the kitchen and made sure that she could cook a decent Cajun meal and as it turned out the girl was much more than adequate and she loves to do it. She has a strong love of seafood and spicy food. That and there is nothing better than barbequed gator.
The young woman also speaks fluent Cajun English which is quite the feat given that it is pretty much one of the most confusing things for most American people. Of course growing up around the Cajun people it's just something that she's picked up over the years through the people and the spirits inhabiting the area.
Being that French is part of the Cajun language she is also quite talented at speaking French. She is not fluent with it but she does understand it though it might take her a second to respond.
STRENGTHS: Cole is very good with investigating crime scenes, it's something that she had to learn how to do while working with Louisiana Police departments. She is also very good with computers and while she is no hacker, she could probably get into a few places she's not supposed to be in. She is a great shot with her derringer but she is by no means a marksman with all weapons. Her knowledge of Voodoo can be a great strength when she's got to come up with something quick to make people back off.
WEAKNESSES: She doesn't connect to the living nearly as well as she does the dead, which can cause a lot of problems when trying to work with the living to help the dead. She is not a strong physical force either, she could probably hold her own in a fight for a little while but she is not specially trained in any kind of fighting style. Cole is superstitious and that can cause problems on the job site.
THE STORY
HISTORY: Cole was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Marie S. Laveau and Stephen Ellis. Her parents were married but her mother had insisted on keeping her maiden name despite the marriage to keep her family's heritage alive. She allowed her son, Marcel, to take on her husband's last name but with the birth of Colette she insisted that her daughter keep the Laveau last name as it was customary ever since their famous Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau practically ruled the voodoo community back in the 1800's. Colette is the 9th generation of Voodoo Queens in New Orleans. Voodoo has long since become an underground religion but there are very few in Louisiana today that would dare cross any practitioner of voodoo.
Cole was raised studying spells, cooking, and learning all about her heritage and about being a medium. When Colette was still very young her grandmother took the time to get her a tattoo of the African snake god Zombi on the back of her neck to instill voodoo powers in her granddaughter. To this day Cole does not really know if she believes that the tattoo gives her power but it's there so she might as well live with it. From a young age Cole had to practice voodoo spells, she learned about the curses, and even how to perform them but she never actually cursed anyone before. Her mother and grandmother explained that these were not things that she should be putting on people just because she was mad at them but that she had to learn the curses to give power to the good spells.
At about six years old Colette began seeing and communicating with ghosts and while neither her mother nor her grandmother was as gifted as she was as mediums they could sense that there were spirits that the young girl was speaking to and not just the child looking for attention. Something that did throw the family however was how strong her empathy abilities were. It seemed that the girl was overwhelmed with strong emotions. Put that together with the strong emotions of the spirits that surrounded her, well Cole had a hard time functioning as a young woman. She was forced to learn how to ignore them and forced to hold back her own emotions so that she could actually be around normal people.
She was home schooled up until high school, where she was enrolled in a public school once they were sure that she could handle being around large groups of people and control her emotions and how many emotions she would take in. It was through here that she first got her start with the New Orleans police department. A girl in her age group went missing and while at first her claims of being able to see the girl's ghost fell on deaf ears, when she led the police to the body, it became clear that there was something else going on with this girl.
The force really couldn't pin point it right away but when one of the senior detectives found out exactly who she was, well it became clear that they needed her help. Most people in Louisiana are superstitious and don't think twice about voodoo practitioners being able to do what they say they can do.
She was recruited shortly after high school to help, unofficially, with spiritual assistance on crime scenes. She has seen a lot while helping with these investigations and after six years of helping, unofficially, solve murders and crimes with the help of her friends, Colette was contacted by the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. She figured mostly that word had spread about how she was helping solve these murders and that these people, who probably understood very little about voodoo and spiritual things like she was dealing with.
She couldn't be more wrong.
It wasn't long after that she was recruited to work with the BPRD, even though she still doesn't believe that they truly understand what she is exactly she has agreed to work with them as a field agent helping them with the spirits on their missions and even having a spell or two to help them with everything they could possibly come up against.
Over the years Colette has made a number of spiritual contacts who come and go choosing to help her when they feel it necessary. Marie Laveau the original Voodoo woman that started the family is one such contact. Cole considers her to be her spiritual guide and attempts to call on her great to the 7th degree grandmother only when she is in dire need of help.
