Cordelia Harper

'Cordite'

Played by: Syrmaticus

INFORMATION

Human (Bee), female, 23

Aliases: Cor, Cordie
Nationality: British
Residence: London, United Kingdom
Employer: British Museum of the Occult
Function: Administrative & Exhibit Assistant
Twitter: @lilcordite

• Buzzing Lore Entry •

• Black Signal Lore Entry •

• OOC Notes •

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT - initiate the blue-eyed signal - RECEIVE - initiate the forlorn frequency - THIS TOO SHALL PASS - initiate the faith protocol - PRAY FOR US NOW - initiate the Jerusalem syntax - WITNESS - Cordelia Harper.

Do you see the trees in a forest, sweetling? The wind blows and they rustle. Can you see which mourns each fallen leaf? Which clings to what leaves remain, because spring may not come again?

The trees in London rustle loud, far too loud. For some saplings it is always winter.

Initiate the cupule cadence.

A seed is planted in English soil. It grows in the shadow of church steeples, its branches draped in wooden and silver echoes of miracle. The axes come and two great oaks fall. The sapling remains. The wind is still and still it rustles. How can it not? Its roots run deep in green and pleasant land - by choice as much as by nature. The one begets the other. Man chooses as their natures bid, sweetling.

Initiate the shadows and silence spectrum.

Have you seen where shadows dwell under the noonday sun? Don’t look. She doesn’t want you to see. She is comfortable there, like the sapling after the rain. Your eyes are light that burns, precious, burns. O ELBERETH! GILTHONIEL! Don’t look. The solace there is not for you. Yes, sweetling, there is solace in shadows, in silence, in solitude. The canopy casts great shadows. At night she looks up to it, beyond it. What are the stars to a tree? Does the tree wonder where the sun has gone? For some saplings it is always night.

She embraces the silver glint in the night. Is it like the glint of the falling axe? She whispers the sweet nothings, so sour on other tongues. She whispers, but does she hear? There is only silence. The wind blows and the leaves fall, but the little tinkling echoes remain. They have hung there so long. They have become leaves.

She embraces the fire that burns oaks. The fire that man’s mind put in man’s hand. It smells of iron and death, of dark satanic mills. Every crack of its thunder burns the shadows. Why? Shadows are comfortable. Does the tree wish for the hurricane? No. Something else. We see it, sweetling. So should you, even if you don’t look.

Initiate the photosynthesis prerogative.

Hearing is the absence of silence. Shadows are the absence of light. For some saplings there is more than soil and air.

Sssssssssssssssssssssssss - I am the heretic codex - let me in.

Say a little prayer for you. Say a little prayer for you-you-you.

You like that, Chuck? The warm wet warmth of a far-away thought, of someone caring? Is it warmer than what’s leaking out of you as you lie there all alone?

Sure it is.

Look at her. Little Goldilocks in glasses, praying at her bedside. Praying for you. Aw. Lil’ Cor-Cor-Cor. So sweety. So goody. Kid in a man’s world. Beautiful, isn’t it? Ever wonder if this apple’s as golden on the inside? Ever feel like taking a knife to that shiny peel and scrape-scrape-scraping it back?

Maybe you should, Chuck. Maybe you’ll find that the riper the fruit, the more the maggots. Isn’t it funny when the apple hides the worms from itself? When it would rather be a seed again?

So sad, clinging to the past. But you know what’s worse? Did the honeyed buzz-buzz-buzz tell you what’s much worse? They tell you so much. But I bet they don’t tell you: clinging to past lies is much worse.

That’s right. Lies, Chuck.

Look at her. Four-pointed lie around her neck. Dragon of a million more in her hands. Every time it spits flame it adds another. I CAN DO THIS. I NEED NOTHING ELSE. THE LORD GOD-GOD-GOD TEACHETH MY FINGERS TO FIGHT AND MY HANDS TO WAR. What’s it say about a girl when a lie’s her lifeline, eh?

Heh. They don’t tell her. They don’t tell her what she’ll look like with weeping wounds in her hands, with a flaming-ever-turning sword in her grasp, with the wings over her head that aren’t all white and gold. It’ll break her, Chuck. I’d tell her, but it’d break-break-break her.

And she’s so much more fun with all that praying and wishing she was seed-not-seedy, don’t you think?

Keep looking, Chuck...

Out of Character Notes

• Contactable on Twitter at @lilcordite, and on Discord at Cordite.SWL#7462.
• Can be found in-game on weeknights and weekends, GMT/UTC +8.
• Strong preference for in-game RP, especially in groups.
• No ERP (flirtation is fine) or permadeath. I also don't acknowledge RP directly tied to the game's story missions; we can't all find Excalibur, chat with Lilith atop Orochi Tower, or go undercover in New Dawn.
• Respectful of lore (in-game content takes precedence), but willing to bend it within reason.

You may notice about Cordelia...

• That she is constantly fidgeting and glancing around in social situations, often speaking at length without making eye contact.
• That when she thinks she is unobserved, she tends to stare into space, or at her phone, and mouth to herself as if making up a speech in her head.
• That her breath often carries the slight tang of cigarette smoke.
• That she is never seen without a peculiar pair of gloves on: long, fingerless, made of some sort of black metal, with thin, glowing lines running through it that form a honeycomb shape on each palm. Bees and other anima-sensitive individuals will recognize the lines as anima channels.

You may have heard about Cordelia...

• That she is a Templar Bee, and a relatively young one.
• That she works a mundane administrative job at the British Museum of the Occult.
• That she is very ill at ease with being a Bee, and with life in the Secret World in general.
• That she has a habit of feigning a blasé attitude towards death, despite being terribly shaken up by it.
• That she appears to know a lot less about the Secret World than someone with access to the Buzzing should.
• That her anima-lined gloves were crafted for her by a close friend, Templar Inquisitor Lady Alexandra Salomon, to help with a "condition" she suffers from.
• That she was raised a very devout Catholic, but became a staunch anti-theist after the events of Kaidan.
• That she gets deeply uncomfortable around anything demonic, even discussion of the subject, and reacts even more poorly to anything angelic.
• (Templars) That her callsign is "Cordite", which was a nickname given to her by ex-colleagues for her interest in firearms.
• (Templars) That her official rank is Follower, and that she has one direct report: a Novice Paul Collins, known to be a member of a small, low-ranking fraternity of Templar sword aficionados calling themselves the Quill Lions (or Quillions).
• (Templars) That as of May 2018, she has been suspended from official field duties for reasons known only to Templars with the proper security clearance.
• (Illuminati) That she had an uncle (name classified), the black sheep of the Harper family, who got involved in some shady business in the U.S some 15-20 years ago.
• (Dragon) That she has a long-lost cousin, Amelia "Amiee" Harper, who has freelanced for the Dragon on occasion. The two were reunited briefly in Feb 2018. Amiee's current whereabouts are unknown.
• (Council of Venice) That she was once considered for recruitment due to her strong beliefs in cooperation between the Big Three, but ultimately disqualified on the grounds of emotional instability and other reasons known only to CoV members with the proper security clearance.
• (Council of Venice) That on an early field tour in Jul 2017, she was rescued from a traumatic defeat at the Atlantic Island Park by CoV Lieutenant Luke Thornley and his team.

Standing about 160cm tall, Cordelia is a slight, delicate-looking woman who could vanish quite easily in a crowd. She wears her dark blond hair to neck length, and no jewelry or ornaments except for a crucifix chain at times. Many have remarked that the first thing they notice about her is her eyes, which a poetically inclined ex-colleague once likened to "Uncut sapphires long left / To mercy of wind and sand". They peer out at the world from behind plain square glasses: tired, unfocused, as if she is perpetually distracted by something only she can see.