Corey Townshend

f a m i l y
[mother] Catherine Townshend (1883 – 1912). Seamstress. Corey doesn’t have many fond memories of his mother because she died when he was young, but he loved her fiercely (even to this day).

[father] John Townshend (1879 – 1924). Occupation unknown. Corey loathed his father, who was a gambler and drinker, and blames him for his mother’s death, since she worked herself to the bone trying to pay off his gambling debts.


p e c u l i a r i t y
Corey is a shapeshifter, which means that he can alter the appearance of his body. He doesn’t need an example, though it’s easier to model himself after someone he knows. He is aware enough of his own body that he can alter whatever part of it into something he wants, so long as he has a clear vision of what he wants it to look like. Smaller changes – just his face, for instance – are easier to maintain than larger ones – such as his entire body – which means that he can keep them up for longer periods of time without spending too much energy on keeping them in place. If he wants to shapeshift his entire body, he can only maintain it for a short period of time before he runs out of energy. Corey also cannot shapeshift into animals or items; he can only shapeshift into humanoid form.


l o o k s
Whenever he’s not shapeshifted himself into someone else, Corey has black, tousled hair that usually reaches his neck. He has dark eyes often shimmering with mischief. He’s not traditionally attractive – at least according to himself – but his height, a respectable 1,80m, plays to his advantage. He’s not extremely lean, though his wrists are thin, but he pays close attention to what he eats so that he doesn’t gain a lot of weight. He’s content with his body and usually doesn’t shapeshift unless it’s necessary – or he wants to mess with people.


p e r s o n a l i t y
Steadfast. Whenever Corey has decided on a course of action, nothing and no one will make him veer from it. He simply stops listening when people try to dissuade him from doing something, merely smiling sweetly or perhaps promising to think about what they’ve said. He never does, though. It has landed him in trouble often enough, but he remains as stubborn as ever despite of it.

Loyal. Only a very select number of people bring out his softer side. With them, he is more friendly, more attentive, and sometimes even fiercely protective. He doesn’t abandon his true friends, especially when they’ve stood by him through difficult times.

Intelligent. Corey’s mind is his greatest asset. He’s knowledgeable on a number of topics, though they’re not the topics typically found in schoolbooks or academic dissertations - he’s not very book-wise because he never did get a proper education. He is, however, street-smart and very good at thinking on his feet. Both his gift and his sharp senses make him a good reader of people, and he’s often able to work out what others are going to do or say before they’ve done so.

Playful. Corey likes messing with people. He’s always in for a joke, both good-natured and at someone else’s expense. It’s hard to determine when he’s being serious, because he’s nearly always smiling and laughing. There is always something unsettling about dealing with him because of this – often an undercurrent of danger and discomfort. Corey is very much aware of the effect this aspect of his personality has on people and uses it to his full advantage.

Playboy. In his life, Corey hasn’t shied away from more carnal pleasures and usually actively seeks them out. He’s not a romantic at heart but he’s good at acting like one if it lands him with a willing body to share his bed with. He’s not usually one for longer relationships, opting for one-night stands or brief dalliances, although there have been one or two people who have made him consider committing to a more serious relationship. They have been few and far between, though, and he remains perfectly content with one-night stands as long as he gets some every once in a while. He’s not picky about gender; as long as a person is breathing and has a pulse and is at least moderately attractive, they’re fair game.

Manipulative. Corey gets what he wants, no matter what he has to do to get it. He has no qualms about bribing or blackmailing people to do it, though he prefers a more subtle approach. A whispered word here, a promise there, a suggestive hand on your back. He knows your weak spots and knows exactly how to exploit them without feeling very remorseful about pushing your buttons.

Egotistical. There is one important rule in Corey’s life that anyone who aims at sharing it needs to understand and honour: Corey comes first. Even though he’s loyal to a select number of people and will do his utmost to protect them from harm, he puts himself in front of most others and doesn’t like dealing with their problems when it isn’t beneficial for him to do so. Even with close friends, he makes sure his own needs are seen to before he tends to anyone else.


h i s t o r y
Corey was born in 1906 in New York City. His mother was a seamstress who barely made enough money to support herself, let alone herself and a child. His father, who was a heavy drinker and gambler, had left before Corey was even born, not wanting to take responsibility for a child that would only get in the way of his own habits. The first few years of Corey’s life should have been carefree and happy, but Corey holds memories of them to this day in which there is only the rapid deterioration of his mother’s health. She worked herself harder than her body could handle, churning out dress after dress, day in day out, for years, to earn enough money to support both herself and Corey and – so Corey would learn when he was given her possessions when he was sixteen – to pay off her absent husband’s gambling debts.

Catherine Townshend died when she was but twenty-eight, leaving behind her five-year-old son, who was placed in an orphanage. Corey, who was a bright child even at five, immediately decided he hated the orphanage and everyone in it, and made sure to voice his displeasure frequently and loudly. He was a difficult child to handle even at a young age and his temperament didn’t improve with time and frequent punishment – if anything, he became even more unpleasant as time went on, refusing to participate in simple activities and turning any direct order into a debate that left his caretakers flustered. He was never adopted and spent his entire childhood and teenage years in the orphanage. He did find friends as he got older, though they reinforced his erratic behaviour rather than improve it. With them, he frequently snuck out of the orphanage, and he took up smoking when one of them swiped a packet of cigarettes from a passerby.

All the while, Corey grew up hating his father. As the years went by, he found himself missing his mother. Her deterioration and eventual death weighed heavy on him and he found himself thinking of what-ifs and maybes, approaching his mother’s death from every angle to find a way in which it could have been prevented. When he was sixteen, he was given whatever was left of his mother’s personal possessions, among them the letters from debt collectors addressed to the man Corey knew was his father. He took in the amount of money he had gambled away, the money Corey’s mother had tried to pay back, and found the cause for her death, first and foremost, in his father, who had left his wife when she became pregnant and left his debts for her to settle. Without his debts, without his gambling, she wouldn’t have had to work herself quite so hard. Without his debts, she might still be alive.

He left the orphanage soon thereafter, sneaking out with his belongings in a duffel bag, and never came back. He altered his appearance so that the sisters at the hospital wouldn’t find him – he had discovered his gift years ago, quite by accident, and had spent his teenage years perfecting it – and hid away in the busy streets of New York among the other homeless people. He stole money from rich men’s pockets and food from vendors whenever he could, altering his face enough that the police couldn’t chase him down, and put the money aside until he had enough to buy a modest apartment in one of the older buildings of the city. There, he spread out the letters sent to his father but tended to by his mother, pinning them to the walls on his bed. He stared at the name of the addressee – John Townshend – and vowed, there and then, that he would find his father and exact his due from his flesh. John Townshend would understand keenly what he had done to his wife and child.

It took him over a year to track his father down, mostly because he was going about it the wrong way. For the first few months, he skulked around bars and gambling houses, convinced that he would recognise his father the moment he walked into the room – Catherine hadn’t kept any photos of him, but Corey had an image of him in his mind that he was sure would be accurate. Of course, he was wrong, and he became increasingly frustrated as time went on. When he was almost eighteen, he thought of a different approach: with the amount of debt his father had racked up and with gambling being outlawed, his name must be in the police database. If he was very lucky, he would also find an address.

Determined, Corey set out, lingering by the police station to observe the comings and goings. He focused on one young officer in particular who looked like he might be impressionable. He followed the officer home when he left work, in the guise of a sweet young girl who turned heads where she went. He made a show of stumbling where the officer would see him and bat his eyelashes at him when he came over to help. But even though the officer was polite and courteous and helped Corey home (not his actual home, of course, he wasn’t stupid) he didn’t once appear interested, despite Corey suggested ‘thanking him for his services’. The next day, he waited for the officer on his way home in the guise of a blond boy with gleaming eyes and a wicked smile and looked the officer up and down when he passed by. That earned him an uncertain flicker of interest, though the officer didn’t approach him; he walked quickly past, ears burning. Corey smiled to himself, knowing it was only a matter of time.

He waited for the officer for four days before the man finally came up to him. From there, a few suggestive words and carefully placed touches were enough to get him into the officer’s home and bed. The next morning, while the officer was still asleep (Corey had exhausted him well enough during the night) it was an easy task to shift into the his form and enter the police station, smiling brightly and calling good mornings to the officer’s colleagues. When he saw an opportunity, he found his way into the archives, looking through files until he finally, located his father’s. There was a long list of charges that Corey wasn’t interested in and skimmed over. Finally, his eyes landed on a sheaf of paper that held a picture in the top left corner and all the information he could possibly have wanted – including, most importantly, an address.

His eighteenth birthday had come and gone, by then, and Corey didn’t waste any time. Getting into his father’s house was easy (Corey had enough experience in picking locks, and his father’s wasn’t particularly difficult); waiting for the man to finally come home from wherever he had gone to gamble away even more money was less so. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard the door open and close, footsteps stumbling into the hallway and from there into the living room. Corey was sat in the kitchen, close to the set of knives he could use as a weapon, and didn’t move until his father all but fell into the kitchen. He looked awful, more rumpled and ill than in his picture at the police station, and he was obviously drunk. With distaste, Corey let go of the knife he had been fingering and got to his feet. If he killed his father now, he probably wouldn’t even notice, with the amount of drinks he had had. Corey hadn’t come here to give him an easy death; he wanted the man to suffer.

It was the easiest thing in the world to bash his father’s head against the kitchen table so that he slumped to the floor, unconscious. Corey scoured the house for something to bind him with and found rope in the pantry, for whatever reason. He hoisted his father’s body onto a chair and tied him firmly, making sure there was no way he could escape the rope when he woke up. Then, he waited. It wasn’t until morning that John finally regained consciousness, taking in his bound body and staring at Corey blearily, still not completely sober. Corey rolled his eyes but smiled like a knife’s edge, and said, “Catherine Townshend was my mother, and you killed her. I’m here to collect.” He watched the words settle with his father, saw his eyes widen in understanding, and turned a deaf ear to the man’s mangled apologies and feeble excuses. He wasn’t interested.

When the man was unconscious, he had come to a decision: he wanted to make his death as slow and as painful as possibly, so that he would experience first-hand what his wife had gone through when she died. So Corey gave him nothing except his undivided attention. He didn’t feed him and didn’t allow him to drink, watched as hunger and thirst fully sobered him up and made him almost delirious, listened to the pleading fall from his lips. He sat opposite his father at the kitchen table during every meal and ate and drank slowly, watched the man’s eyes hone in on the food and drink and smiled cruelly every time. John begged for food, but even more so for water, and each time Corey merely gave him a calm look, one eyebrow raised, and took a pointed sip of water, watching the anguish in the man’s eyes as he realised he wouldn’t be shown any mercy.

It took six days that crawled by incredibly slowly before he finally croaked, skin dry and cracked, lips bloody from dehydration. Corey watched his body, slumped lifelessly in the chair, and felt satisfaction course through him like a heady drink. His father was dead. It wouldn’t bring his mother back, no, but Corey felt something unfurl inside of with at the knowledge that John Townshend had suffered in the days leading up to his death, that he had felt the degradation of his body just as much as his wife had before she passed.

After the death of his father, he left New York, traversing the country until he landed in San Francisco. During his search for John’s file in the New York police department, he had come across an unnamed file that he had picked up out of sheer curiosity, which contained, to his shock, pictures of himself – or, at least, of his guises. For some reason or another, the police had begun to suspect they were somehow linked. Out of self-preservation, Corey left New York, taking the file he had swiped from the police with him to keep them off his trail. In San Francisco, he kept a low profile, keeping an ear out for anything that told him he might be in danger.

Through this, he also heard whispers of other people like him, overheard a conversation between two of them that they were on their way to something they called a ‘loop’, somewhere within the city, where they would be safe and protected from the outside world. Intrigued, Corey followed them when they went. He stayed in the loop in San Francisco for a few years until he became bored with the place and the people. He hopped around several loops after that, both in America and in Europe, until he finally landed in the loop in Norway in 2012.


t r i v i a
» Corey has been a smoker for most of his life and has no intention of quitting.
» The more negative aspects of Corey’s personality surface more often when he has changed his appearance, as if the anonymity gives him the guts to reveal that part of himself .
» He loves kissing. He knows it’s often viewed as a romantic, even intimate, gesture to be reserved for those he has strong feelings for, but he doesn’t think of it that way. It’s simply pleasurable for him and he indulges whenever he can.
» He has a great love for tattoos, but only on other people. This is predominantly due to the fact that Corey has an irrational fear of needles.