John Kole

'Cogsmith'

Played by: DJ_Malak

INFORMATION

Bee, Male, 32

Aliases: None
Nationality: British
Residence: 2nd floor walk-up just outside of Ealdwic
Employer: Freelance
Function: Consultant
Twitter: @Cogsmith_Kole

• Biography •

• Abilities •

• Relationships •

• Appearance •

• Special Notes •

• Gallery •

The Templar legacy of the Kole family goes back generations. The family's first membership with the Templars goes back to the late 1730's with their first member, Lucien Kole. The Koles served dutifully under several "renaissance" and reinventions of the order. They moved into what would become their ancestral home several kilometers outside of Loughton in the early 1790's. The family had dedicated their lives to serving the Templar dutifully and unquestioningly.

This changed when John became old enough to join the Society. He joined at the age of 18 and out of a sense of obligation to his father and his family. His heart was never in the work, however. He completed his missions and did what was assigned but he lacked the conviction that even his younger sister Vanessa had. His identity didn't rest upon his name and the legends and legacy of people that he'd never met, nor had anyone else. He was determined to make his own legacy.

He had started his studies at Cambridge University. Old money had long reaches even though his A-Levels had been more than exceptional, something that happened frequently when he decided to apply himself. John had started studies into the broad field of Archaeological Research. He was sure that his father would bristle at his obviously poor choice. He was mistaken and his father supported him in his endeavors. This was more calculated than supportive on Alexander's part; a twist of the psychological knife.

John put his studies on hold two years from the completion of his program and went back out into the field, joining the Scarlet and Cross Institute, which his father headed from the background, and leaving it after only a few months, determined to get out from under his family's shadow. To his surprise, his sister joined him and became a Senior Consultant. John was happy to investigate and stay as a low rung employee. There were only a moderate number of expectations, which allowed him to follow some of his interests.

The other thing that had vexed his father was that John, while not wanting to be bound to his blood, immensely enjoyed the benefits that came with it. John loved to travel. John loved women. Most importantly, John loved adventure. Those tales are for an entirely different time. They are many, varied, and in various degrees of workplace safe.

One such adventure found him at the bottom of a crevasse, lost in the Himalayas. The date with a Dragon several nights before had sparked a competition amongst them. This competition found them both climbing to the summit of Makalu, the Great Black. Somewhere along the border between Nepal and Tibet, the two raced without a plan, without gear, with only the arrogance and hubris that comes with knowing that you are nearly immortal.

John didn't die when he fell through the thin skin of ice that covered the crevasse. He lay at the bottom, broken and bleeding for days until he finally expired and returned to an Anima well. The experience changed him. He realized that he needed to take this life much more seriously. He returned to Cambridge and finished his studies. Along the way, he discovered that he'd acquired an innate ability with technology. He's recently rejoined Knightsbridge Consulting with a bit more maturity and knowledge, but still that incorrigible flirt.

Abilities

John is a Bee like many of his compatriots with many of the same benefits. He's incredibly hard to permanently kill. He's able to manipulate Anima and he's able to travel through Agartha. However, his Anima has manifested differently than many others. Rather than being able to project his Anima it has focused inward, enhancing his physical abilities. When he focuses his Anima he becomes incredibly strong and nigh-invulnerable. He's able to lift around 850 pounds(385kg). He's able to swing his hammer with ease, twirling it one-handed when he decides to show off. His Anima hardens like armor, deflecting most blows with a minimal amount of injury. At various points he's taken an RPG to the chest, had a column that had pinned him down blown off using C4 and hundreds of bullets that left shallow wounds that healed quickly.

To a lesser degree, his reflexes and hand-eye coordination is improved as well.

He's recently developed an intuitive ability with electronics and machinery. He's able to build almost anything out of whatever parts he can scrounge up in the area. This ability started developing about six months ago (As of Oct. 2018). He started building simple devices at first and has developed into able to absently construct somewhat useful devices. Their usefulness seems to vary from something that cleans your clothes instantly to something turns your hair pink for three days. He often doesn't know what these particular devices do until you press the button that they all seem to have built into them.

Drawbacks

For all of these benefits there are a few drawbacks. Due to his Anima focusing inward he's unable to project his Anima at all. He'll never be able to use any form of magic and he's unable to infuse his weapons with his Anima like other Bees can. He's unable to use Anima Wells in the same way that other Bees can. He requires an Agartha Conduit in order to manipulate his Anima to use the wells. If his conduit is destroyed or damaged significantly he'll have no way to escape or travel quickly. This left him at the bottom of a crevasse in the Himalayas for several days before he finally expired. This raises another issue that John has; it takes him much longer to come back after he dies. After the incident in the Himalayas it took him nearly a week to return. He's come back much more quickly at other times but that is just one example of this.

John's Weapons

Unlike many other Bees, John's weapons are not Anima powered. His weapons are mundane but that doesn't mean that they're entirely ordinary. John's weapons have been built with his enhanced physical attributes in mind.

John's Hammer

John's Hammer

John's going through several iterations of his hammer over the years. One of his favorite designs was simple and rather inelegant, essentially a block of titanium at the end of a handle. His most recent hammer is designed for effectiveness and utility. This latest hammer is made from Inconel, a superalloy of austenite, nickel, and chromium. It can endure extreme conditions and high temperatures. The material is perfect for his many duties in varying climates including the Hell dimensions. The backspike is perfect for breaking armor and chitin from the various denizens of the Secret World. The head of the hammer weighs close to 20 pounds and is much denser than the former titanium hammerheads that he's used.

John's Shotgun - A Benelli Supernova

John's Shotgun

John is incredibly hard on firearms. He's had a habit of using his shotguns as a club should he run out of ammo. This has led to many bent and mutilated shotguns over the years. His current favorite is the Benelli Supernova. The shotgun is highly modular and can be outfitted for most situations. At the heart of this new pump gun is a lightweight steel skeleton framework over-molded with a high-tech polymer, making the SuperNova Tactical super-light, super-strong and almost completely impervious to any weather condition. This is important in his line of work where nearly anything is possible to encounter. As John's abilities leave him to rely on mundane weapons that doesn't mean that he hasn't found ways to compensate for this. John uses special shells lending versatility to his loadout.

• Dragonsbreath Rounds: Dragonsbreath rounds fire a plume of white-hot phosphorus fire for a short distance in front of him. While this reduces the range, even demons have to admit that these rounds are painful.
• Depleted Uranium Shells: Depleted Uranium has the stopping power of a freight train. Super dense, these rounds slam into their target leaving all but the largest targets on the ground regretting their life choices.
• Armor Piercing Shells: Armor Piercing Shells are military-grade firepower that he's only been able to get ahold of thanks to his ties to the Templar. These shells are a round within a round. An encased cone-shaped charge focuses the force of the blast to a pinpoint and shoots a projectile through the pinhole. The projectile bounces around in the target until it finds something soft to land in. Great for various creatures that may be too armored to penetrate with the other rounds.
• Anima Infused Shells: These shells need to be made for him as he has no abilities to channel his Anima into his weapon. A standard looking Shotgun shell, the Anima Infused Shells return the Anima that was used in the creation of the shell and heals him. These are what is used when the battle isn't going in his favor and he needs just a little extra kick to keep him going.

FAMILY

• Vanessa "Siryn" Kole - Sister: Vanessa is John's younger sister. They're really very affectionate though they are at each other's throats at the earliest provocation. They enjoy antagonizing each other when either of them has the least excuse. Vanessa is truly the Yin to John's Yang. While John's powers focused inward and enhanced him physically, Vanessa is an amazingly powerful Magus. She specializes in Blood Magic but has a knack for the other forms of Magic as well. She isn't very physically strong but her ability to project her anima is equally impressive as John's ability to focus his inward. She's also the bookworm of the two Kole siblings. She has always had a fascination for books and if there's something to know or to be found out about the Occult and the Supernatural, Vanessa either knows it or will know it very shortly. She is deeply attached to the Templar as well, holding a position as a researcher and sometimes as John's rescue dispatch. When the Kole children are of one mind about something it can be a terrifying thing to witness, though thankfully that doesn't happen too often.

• Alexander Kole - Father: Alexander Kole is the Patriarch of the Kole family. He is quiet, cold, and exacting in his expectations. He held much higher expectations of John than he had love for the boy. John was to be his legacy and he would ensure that he was prepared. John had no interest in becoming another tier of mystery and bullshit inside of an organization already stacked to the sky with them. Alexander had his ways of dealing with his children. He simply acted more uncaring and aloof. For everything John did to anger and buck against his father's expectations, Alexander simply nodded and went about his business without another moment of thought on the subject. There were no tears in Alexander's eyes when it was assumed that John was missing or dead. He knew that his child was a Bee and that if there were anyone who would be able to find a way to die, it would be John, The slacker. His air of indifference to his son, and to a lesser extent Vanessa, continued with John's return and hasn't softened one bit despite John's increased maturity.

• Evangeline Kole - Mother(Deceased): John and Vanessa's mother died during childbirth with her daughter. John was four years old when his mother died and so he barely remembers her. What he has are memories of her face and of several special occasions. She exists only in pictures now. Whether Alexander's attitude towards the children has anything to do with the death of his wife is entirely unknown as all reports of their father indicate that he was always as he is today.

FRIENDS

• Myrios "DJ Malak" LeJean - DJ and Shopkeeper: Myrios has been a friend of the Kole children since he started DJ'ing at Radio Free Gaia. Knowing them when they were nearly new recruits for the Templar. A chance meeting at Templar Hall started a years-long friendship. Myrios is the proprietor of The Rift, a strange and magical shop located down in Darkside. After they left Scarlet and Cross, a Templar cover location that was headed by their Father, the first offices for Knightsbridge Consulting were located in the immense back room of The Rift, bringing them back into contact. Myrios has been a source of lore and information to the children, as well as a supplier of materials for John's ammunition and other rituals. Myrios will also go to the two of them for information on humanity and how to assemble Ikea furniture.

• Isabella "Nighthood" Malleus - Friend/Fellow Consultant: John recently went on an assignment in Indiana with Isabella, though due to unfortunate circumstances goes by the alias Sarah Greyson. They investigated the Demon House of Gary and formed a sort of friendship, almost a mentor/student relationship. She's young and well-trained and he sees a bit of himself in his younger years in some of her worries and experiences. He's been giving her advice on how to end up as his life had. She also is not a Bee so she needs to be even more careful.

Sparky in his normal Chassis

• Sparky - Sparky is John's trusty AI. Though he's neither trusty OR John's, he is still a close friend. John found Sparky in a shipping container at the site of a shipwreck off the coast of Maine. Originally in an Orochi sphere, John removed all of the Orochi tech and rebuilt his chassis from the endosteel frame up. John is the only one who can directly understand him. It's believed that this is only because of his intuitive talent with technology. Sparky communicates in beeps, buzzes, and trills. He's good at approximating the feeling of what he's trying to communicate. Sparky is mischievous and can quickly imprint on someone or something that he finds interesting. During John and Shanni's case in Vietnam, Sparky became enamored with the race of intelligent Lizardmen that lived in the Son Doong caves and took on a Godzilla avatar and sounds for several weeks. It's still unclear why Orochi locked him in the container but he's quickly become John's friend, even when he is creating photomosaics of Nickleback and posting them to John's Instagram account.

ROMANTIC

• None Currently

Appearance: Height: 6'1" Weight: 187lbs Eyes: Grey, previously blue. Hair: Black Description: John is a particularly handsome man and he's always been aware of his. In recent days his formerly striking blue eyes have turned grey. No one's sure if this might have to do with his recently surfaced powers with mechanics or not. His normally long, black hair has been cut into a fashionably short length. His frame is fairly solid but not overly muscled. He frequently wields a hammer and has the physique such activity would build.

• After extended uses of his powers John must use massive amounts of food. His powers seem to boost his metabolism and burn a vast number of calories.
• John's technological powers are very hit and miss. He finds himself having built things unconsciously. He has no idea what they actually do but they're there. He can consciously direct this talent but there's roughly a 50/50 chance of the item doing what he intends it to...or it may turn on Mrs. Schwartz's porch light in Germany. He won't know until he uses it. ((I use /roll determine if it works or not))
• John's abilities were formed to explain his Tank PvE role. This is why he's super tough and can swing the hammer around like it's styrofoam.

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  John and Sparky vs. the Golem

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  John's Incan Warrior Tattoo

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  John's Face Claim - Giulio Berruti

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