Keats - App for Poly
[series]: Folklore
[character]:Keats
[character history / background]: Canonically there is no information on Keat’s childhood. In game he is a 27 year old reporter for an occult magazine called “Unknown Realms”. The magazine had a small following and he was the only reporter in the little office when a phone call came in. The message was garbled, but it was from a woman begging him for help against murderous spirits in a town called Doolin.
Skeptical, but in need of a good story, he travels to the small island town. The moment Keats reaches the town; he comes in contact with a woman named Ellen. Ellen explains to him that she is in search of her mother, who she thought had died. Together they reach a woman on the cliff, but find her dead. This starts Keats’ search for the killer. He questions the townspeople and they all blame a “witch”.
Keats does not buy the legends that the townsfolk tell him about meeting the dead at Doolin and the villagers get progressively more tight lipped. Late at night, Keats sneaks back into town to the local pub. Inside the pub, Keats realizes that the legends are true. He meets an invisible man named Belgae.
While he is half sure that he is dreaming, Keats follows Belgae’s advice on how to meet with the dead. By this time he is just satisfying his curiosity as to what happens. His curiosity, however, was his undoing. Pain racks his body and he is “granted” the ability to walk between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Belgae, in essence, tricked Keats into becoming the Guardian for Ellen, who was likewise tricked into becoming the Messenger for the dead. Despite the duality in their nature, Keats spent little time with Ellen. Instead he worked in much the same capacity while he tried to figure out the mystery of Doolin.
During his travels, Keats visits many worlds and combats many Netherworld creatures called “folk”. Defeating the “folk” gave Keats the ability to call upon their powers during his fights.
Keats comes to realize that he himself has ties to Doolin. It is unclear by the end of the game if Keats was real, a halflife (grounded spirit of a Doolin boy), or simply born of Ellen’s wishes. However, he does return to his office supposedly to write his article and continue his investigation.
I know that Folklore is a really small fandom, so if you need any more information I will be happy to supply it. There are also links here and here.
[character abilities]:Keats has the ability to travel between the world of the dead and the world of the living. Depending on where he is, his abilities change. Keats is a writer and a reporter. In the living world he is average in his fighting abilities and most physical things. He’s a decent sprinter, but he’s no track star.
While in the world of the dead, however, Keats takes on the abilities befitting a Guardian. He is extremely fast and agile. He does not have a weapon, instead favors hand to hand combat. He does have a “guardian form” that requires charging and only lasts for about a minute. He prefers to not deal in combat if it can be helped.
[character personality]: Despite his job, Keats is very practical and skeptical. He does, however, make up for that with an obscene amount of curiosity. He is calm and extremely difficult to frighten. Keats’ time in the Netherworld has left very little around to shock him and he’s more apt to display mild displeasure at things happening unexpectedly than fear.
Keats doesn’t tend to get emotional. He is extremely detached as a person and tends to only get agitated when others have been mistreated. He has a strong sense of justice that he tries very hard to hide for the sake of simplicity. Keats is a writer and not honestly out to be anyone’s hero. In the realm of the living he will try every other option before a physical confrontation. Not that he’s a coward; Keats simply has a very firm grip on his own physical abilities.
He approaches every assignment, no matter how small, with the same seriousness. Unfortunately for Keats, he also tends to do a lot of work without pay because it is the right thing to do. He has a decent judge of character, however he would rather be taken advantage of a few times than turn someone away who legitimately needs his help.
Either way, his travels always make for a good story, and that’s his bottom line.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Post Game
[journal post]:
The people that come to my door these days are a rather eclectic bunch. They vary from very wealthy people looking for a good scare to people who pretend that I take charity cases. Everyone, however, understands that their investigations will become stories. The names and dates of course changed to protect identities.
“Based on true events” does leave a bit of room for embellishment. Not that I have had to lately. My most recent case was a woman searching for her daughter. It was rather cut and dry, sad as these things tend to be. The only thing of note was that there was a door that followed me about. It didn’t have the common courtesy most doors do, that is to stay in place and open when prompted. Instead it would flap its opening at me and then move out of reach. I will have to make my way back and poke at it later when the time allows. For now, however, I have to finish this article before my editor knocks my own door down.
[third person / log sample]:
Keats waited till a little after midnight, mostly for the ceremony of it all. He held the daughter’s pen and clicked it a few times to watch the tip jut in and out. “Alright then, Katherine, let me see if we can bring your mother some closure.” He closed his eyes and waited.
The feeling of his breath hitching and time slowing was soothing to Keats by now. When he opened his eyes he was in a library. Walls that were lined with books appeared to go up forever. It was a pleasing sort of afterlife.
A door clanged to his side and Keats replaced Katherine’s pen and looked at the door from over his glasses. “Yes?”
The door flapped again and then slid up the wall. It knocked one or two books over in the process.
“That’s rude, you realize.” Keats crossed the room and picked up a book on poetry. When he opened it the words on the inside were the scrawled ramblings of a child at best. A dark, “gothic” child who “no one understood”. He snapped the book shut with a sigh.
“Fantastic.” It appeared that Keats was on the lookout for one of the “oh too tragic” of his kind. The misunderstood, dark and brooding artist; Keats hoped that he was never like that as a child. Considering, though, what he did for a living most bets would be off on the issue.
Subject: REQUEST
how does he feel about actively becoming a part of the paranormal,
what keeps him doing the bidding of the people of Doolin or Ellen,
how has his experience in canon altered or affirmed his point of view on the occult
Ellen
Keats groaned and crumpled up the letter. He’d been meaning to write Ellen for far too long. There was something about the young woman that made him wish to keep in contact with her. Keats didn’t understand why he, of all people, was having so many issues writing a simple Yule Greetings letter.
Every attempt was either laced with pity or contempt. Sometimes both warred together on the page in an unsettling mixture that was nothing like what Keats felt he should say. It was as though the two of them had been hostages to someone far more powerful and unpunished. Keats lacked the ability to lash out at Belgae or get revenge on any of the Halflings or Folk. Ellen was the only accessible part of that experience.
It was unfair of him to blame her. Keats didn’t want to blame a girl for his own curiosity. It wasn’t right or fair. It was painfully human of him and that made Keats laugh at himself.
He stood and walked to his window to watch the snow drift around the street. There was an uncomfortable twitch in his chest when Keats thought of Ellen. The forced part of his body wanted to protect her and his sanity wanted to never think of her again.
But Keats was a realist and knew with clarity how impossible that was. It wasn’t as if he was her bonds servant. Ellen held no physical sway over his doings. Keats knew, however, that if she called for him, he would drop his life and rush to her aid.
It was a power that Ellen quite possibly didn’t even want. The people of Doolin were far from Keats’ mind most days. Ellen, however, never was. Sometimes nightmares would plague Keats and he’d wake up legitimately worried for her.
It was maddening. He had nothing to do with the girl before a well dressed invisible man tricked him into the painful transition of a guardian. Before, yes, he would have felt for Ellen, would have wanted her to move along with her life. He didn’t want to ache for someone who should be a stranger.
Keats was unsure if Folk like Belage could still hold sway over him. Certainly he could be forced to do something. Keats’ sense of pride was not so strong as to override his sense of self preservation. He was strong in the Neatherworld but there was always someone stronger. Thankfully his work hadn’t been physically taxing as of late. It was mostly people looking for closure.
And he had yet to meet one ghost since his time in Doolin. People were always going to be fakers. Want a big story, want to see ghosts. Seeing the earth bound in the spirit made Keats far more skeptical of stories. The dead, for the most part, want very little to do with the living.
But that brought him full circle to Ellen again, a girl who chased the dead and came up the Messenger.
Keats sat back down at his chair and wrote a simple note.
Ellen,
It was not your fault.