(no subject)

Colt Forester

name
Colton "Colt" Forester
age
36
sexuality
pansexual
occupation
medium
played by
Boom Desjardins

history

CW: a brief mention of suicide

Colt was born in Statesboro, Georgia on February 2, 1983, the only child of his single mother, Liz. Conceived by sperm donation, he has never known the identity of his father, but his three uncles, Vernon, Eddie, and Mearle, played a large part in his upbringing. His early life was spent fishing and hunting the backwoods and marshes of Coastal Georgia. Thanks to his Uncle Vern, he was able to attend Bethesda Academy, a boarding school for boys in Savannah, and experience life on a working farm while getting a fine education and the stability of living in one of the cottages there. His house parents, Adam and Julie Dandridge, were like surrogate parents to him on the weekdays. He needed that stability, coming from a family of hard drinkers, and though he knew his mom loved him, she wasn't the settling down sort. Having a son didn't change that.

He has no direct memory of the first time a ghost rode* him at the age of 8, only the aftermath of his friend Steve's mother's hysterical crying and demands that he go home and never come back. Only through a mixture of pleas and bribes could he get Steve to tell him what happened, that his eyes rolled back and he started talking like Steve's dead grandfather, not in the old man's voice, but his exact inflection. He said things only he'd know and apparently had a lot to say about an affair Steve's mom was having that he didn't approve of.

(*Not like that, you sick fuck.)

After that day, it was as though the floodgates opened. Colt had no control of when a ghost would take him, or where. He channeled in the grocery store, at school, on the soccer field, in his own home and that of friends. Soon enough, invitations to visit dried up. At first, his teachers believed he was faking and threatened him with suspensions and worse if he didn't stop disrupting class.

However, Vernon intervened, an influential alum with some pull with the board. He said he'd have Colt tested at the Institute for Paranormal Psychology and Research up in Atlanta. If they declared him the real deal, he should be able to return to school with special consideration for his condition. If he was faking, he'd hide the boy himself so badly, he'd never even think to say the word, "Boo," again.

In the end, they declared Colt an involuntary medium with some degree of psychic empathy and budding telekinesis. They hypothesized that when he grew older and more experienced, he might develop more control of when the spirits were able to ride him and be better able to retain memories of the episodes. They provided him with a manual of exercises for developing his control and wished him luck. He felt he was going to need it.

Puberty brought the added complication of poltergeist activity, always followed by migraines that could last for days. Exasperated with the chaos in her house every time her son came home, Liz stopped picking him up on weekends. More often than not, he wound up staying with the Dandridges or sometimes sneaking out and hitching a ride into downtown Savannah. He fell in with a group of SCAD students who were heavily into the paranormal and all too ready to accept him as soon as they realized what he could do. They plied him with weed and booze to "open his channels," an experiment that led to his first full possession. It lasted for three days and saw him awakening in a boarded up house wearing a dress that smelled of camphor and rot with no memory of how he got there or what he had done.

Despite his Presbyterian upbringing and schooling, he fled to what he saw as a bastion against the paranormal, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It was the right decision, not because of anything supernatural or some power of the church, but because Father Mallory knew a very gifted and experienced medium he put in touch with Colt.

Paul Anson changed his life. He struggled to master the mental discipline Paul touted, but by the time he was 18, Colt was more in control of his gift than he had ever been before. He couldn't always keep the ghosts at bay. He could keep most of them away, or at least channel them in a way that left him in partial control of himself, what he said, and where he went. He retained memories of the encounters now, and except for the most violent and angry spirits, he could prevent them from making use of his TK and wreaking havoc.

His grades at Bethesda weren't good enough for him to earn a scholarship. Disappointed with his lackluster efforts and what he saw as a lazy attitude, Vernon refused to foot the bill any further for his education. He had no intention of returning to Statesboro, now estranged from his family. He settled in downtown Savannah with two of the former SCAD students he'd connected with earlier in his life, working odd jobs just enough to pay the rent and keep himself in booze and weed.

It was a directionless time for him, drifting in and out of superficial relationships and chasing the next pleasure of the moment. He came to prefer channeling drunk. It kept him from connecting to the pain of the ghosts and their living targets. He probably would have continued down this road indefinitely were it not for the very public death of Paul Anson.

It was a mystery that had the paranormal world in an uproar with psychics and mediums coming out of the woodwork to try to connect to Paul's ghost and get answers. Someone clearly poisoned him, but who? Not all of those seeking answers were charlatans or in it for personal gain. Paul's widow was a powerful clairvoyant. When she approached Colt, telling him Paul had always had a soft spot for him, he couldn't say no.

He had never deliberately tried to connect to a particular ghost, had always avoided seances and the drama of that theater. Channeling drained him, but for Rhea, he did his best. Just like every other medium all across the country, he came up dry. It made no sense. Paul had always maintained that when he crossed over, no one would be able to shut him up about the other side. Other ghosts had plenty to say, yet none of them had seen Paul. It wasn't until he and Rhea began an ill-advised affair that things changed drastically for the worse.

It was a haunting to end all hauntings, never a moment's peace in the crumbling Victorian they'd come to share and always worse when they were together. Rhea nearly burned her abilities out breaking through the veil of shadow shrouding their antagonist, only to discover the ugly truth, that it was Paul. No one had murdered him. He'd killed himself in a dark ritual and successful bid for power. It was the first time Colt became aware that demons existed as well as ghosts. He and Rhea called in an exorcist. He and the exorcist survived. Rhea did not.

He couldn't stay in Savannah after that. Colt became a drifter, Charleston, Virginia Beach, Salem, New Orleans, all within the space of two years. It was New Orleans that felt most like home, more than any other home he'd ever had. He fell back into bad habits. It was at the Absinthe Drip that he met the next person destined to change his life, a charismatic grifter named Tom Reilley. Reilley had connections. Before Colt knew it, he had interviews in California, a contract for a show. He thought that things were finally looking up. Reilley promised him the chance to help millions.

And he did, for a while. The problem was that he'd never been in control of the ghosts, and the ones who came weren't always the ones who were wanted. It made for riveting television, but it sickened Colt to profit from others' pain. He abruptly broke his contract and lost almost everything paying the fines and fees. Back where he started, broke and with the open road before him, he sank the last of his cash into a beat up Indian Scout Sixty, slung his Blueridge across his back, and turned his nose back east. He was done with this life, whether the ghosts were done with him or not.

personality

Colt is a man of simple needs and simple pleasures. He has been around the block more than a few times and seen enough of the good and bad in people to know what he wants and doesn't when it comes to dealing with them. On the surface, he's very easy-going, as happy drinking a Coors and shooting the shit and pool with friends as he is on his own in a jon boat with a rod and reel and time to kill. He has developed the ability to detach from the drama of the world in order to survive it.

He has a pragmatic view of death and dying. He has dealt with so many ghosts through the years, more than he can count, that any other view wouldn't make sense. Despite this, he still can't say he understands why some stay behind and others move on and has no idea what happens once someone does. He still clings a little to his religious upbringing, attending church on Christmas Eve and Easter if he's in a town at the time. It's enough to keep him right with the world, he'd say, as he hasn't forgotten the darker side and its cost.

He genuinely enjoys helping people and feels that his abilities position him pretty uniquely to be able to do so. On the surface, he seems humble, but threaded through his generosity is a subconscious need and desire to control a situation, to be the one who can walk away in the end. He's scarred from the rejection by his family and also subconsciously feels the need to justify having him around, that really, he's just not good enough without what he can do.

Adaptable and independent, he's a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. He likes working with his hands, playing guitar, riding his motorcycle, and learning new skills. He gets bored with routine or staying in one place too long. He has a pretty extensive theoretical knowledge of the occult but has no interest in putting any of it to use intentionally. He was burned badly enough the one time he did that he never wants a repeat.

He likes people who are laid back like him, able to joke around and have fun, adventurous, and confident. He dislikes people who are uptight, full of themselves, high on their own farts, or mean. He has no interest in shrinking violets. He'd rather find someone else to talk to than have to work to get someone to open up.

He's very much a night owl. The one time he might get mean is being awakened before he's ready to get up. His work ethic is so-so. Money is for buying things, not hoarding. Having had it and lost it, his attitude toward it is take it or leave it. Wealth for its own sake doesn't impress him at all.

abilities

Colt is a strong involuntary medium, meaning he cannot summon specific ghosts to channel or decide when he'll do it. The ghosts come to him. Through the years, he has developed the ability to keep all but the strongest spirits out if he doesn't want to deal with them or worries they're someone out to hurt the living. He can see and hear ghosts almost as clearly as if they were living people. There's a certain aura about them that tells him the difference.

He has mid-range empathic abilities. He can usually pick up on what general mood another is in and feels strong emotions coming from others, even when they're trying to hide it. He has learned it's best to keep his mouth shut about this most of the time, as no one likes to be read without asking for it. He can get a fairly decent feel for whether someone has bad intentions, but he can't tell whether someone is a good or bad person overall. His readings are very in the moment impressions of emotions, not thoughts or morals.

He has untapped TK abilities that so far have only manifested as poltergeist activity when he was in puberty and have been tapped into by certain chaotic ghosts, strong enough to fling objects as heavy as a chair and to do damage to anyone in the room. He can usually, but not always, wrest this away from the ghosts or expel them from his mind before things go too far. These episodes freak him out and send him down with migraines. Fortunately, they have been few and far between.

Other than this, he's a pretty typical 36 year old who has lived an active life but hit the substances a little hard from time to time.

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PERMISSIONS POST - OPT IN/OUT

Hello! If you'd be so kind as to copy and paste the following with your answers in a reply to this, it would be very helpful for our developing CR. These are in regard to Colt's powers as a medium, empath, and telekinetic.

1.) Would you like for Colt to be able to channel a ghost for your character? (If so, please give me some specifics of the character or a link to a wiki so I'll know how best to play the ghost, and give me the best way to contact you if I have questions.)

2.) Would you be all right with Colt sensing the gist of your character's emotions? (He can't mind read or sense morality, only emotion in the moment. Some people are better at shielding themselves than others, and there may be some creatures who aren't human he simply can't sense. Just let me know one way or the other so I don't flub in a tag.)

3.) Are you open to a negative ghost encounter involving TK movement of objects? (If so, are you open to your character taking damage and any other negative repercussions that might come of this? As above, please provide me your preferred contact in case we need to talk anything else through in the scene.)

4.) Would you prefer not to deal with a character with connections to the paranormal and/or occult? (If you would rather not, just leave the screen names of your characters, and I won't tag you with Colt.)