Queerness Abound

Ghosts

Caleb: The oldest ghost in the house (at least, the oldest ghost who actually stays in the house), Caleb was a witch who was burned at the stake in 1629. His affinity for fire and flame got him noticed by the Catholic Church and taken from his parents, but rather than being killed outright, he was then raised to be a witchfinder himself after going through some pretty severe torture in order to "remove" him of his magic. Caleb grew up to see and participate in the horrors of the early Würzburg witch trials, but he fled to England once he was forced to execute his own parents... and, well, he only had a few years of solitude and quiet before the English witchfinders caught him and put him to the pyre. Even though his ghost ability is pretty tame, all things considered---people smell smoke and burning when they pass through him---Caleb is absolutely one of the scariest ghosts in the manor, based on pure intensity alone (and, well, the fact that he's covered soot). Once you break through his walls, though, he's surprisingly sweet, and being able to talk to a Living person definitely helps him with his trauma. (Also, he can still use his magic, but he's still working through all the self-hatred associated with it.)

Fjord: He's a sailor who spent his whole life traveling the world as part of a crew of pirates before he was unceremoniously struck by lightning in 1731 after a shipwreck. For a wanderer like Fjord, being stuck in one place forever is very much not ideal (especially since he has proof that not every ghost is trapped where they die, more on that later), and the fact that he was scared shitless of Caleb at first didn't exactly help matters, but he did get to see the manor house get built, and he likes having a roof over his head. Even though Fjord was only first mate on the ship, he has a lot of leadership skills that he's kept with him in death, which means he's kind of fallen into an older brother role for most of the ghosts. That being said, he's still a pirate, and he's down for a little bit of mischief-making every now and then. It usually involves his ability to mess with electricity.

Molly: A circus performer mauled to death by an escaped lion in 1786---just a few years prior to the manor being built---Molly is definitely one of the friendliest ghosts, and they're the social glue that Fjord and Caleb desperately needed in order to become actual friends. He tells a lot of outlandish stories about his life before the circus, many of which are very hard to confirm, but the one thing that does appear to be true is that he used to be some sort of soothsayer for a noble family... and it definitely ended in disgrace. During the course of the story, Molly figures out that she's non-binary and genderfluid---which she always kind of knew, she was very into crossdressing and died in a pretty androgynous outfit, but she obviously didn't have the words for it until now. Also, Molly can visit people's dreams, which means that they are very much able to become friends with Yasha. (Yasha probably gets to see the ghosts at some point, or at least has limited interactions with them, but Molly's the first one she meets and gets close to.)

Fearne (yes, Fearne!): She's a flighty, adventurous, and drama-obsessed young lady who died of consumption in the latter half of 1819, only a short while before she was supposed to get married. Her parents were the ones who'd commissioned the house to be built, and by Regency nobility standards, they were actually pretty chill---they let Fearne have a wide range of interests, encouraged her love of studying the natural world, and were even going to let her be a spinster and have her cousin inherit the house instead---but they eventually fell on money troubles, and the only way out was for Fearne to marry rich. Of course, that never came to pass, but thankfully, her cousin was able to provide for the two of them after her death. To everyone's misfortune, Fearne happens to be a poltergeist, and she's gotten very good at using her powers to steal things, move things, and cause general mayhem around the house. She's also a shameless flirt, which Beau learns almost immediately after she's able to see the ghosts. Thankfully, Fearne also knows when to take the hint.

Essek: A distant relative of Fearne's, Essek was the victim of a "mysterious death" in 1871. His grandmother, Fearne's long-lost aunt, cut ties with the Calloway family after marrying a Black man and immigrating to Greece, where her daughter grew up and had two sons... and by the time Essek was fifteen, all of them were dead, either from illness or old age. His long-lost cousin heard about this and took him in, making sure that he had the best opportunities that he could get---nice clothes, a steady allowance, and a top-notch university education, where Essek was able to fulfill his dream of becoming an astronomer. However, during a party held at Thornwood House, Essek was drinking in the corner when he suddenly fell ill and died... and one of the first things he witnessed as a ghost was a doctor confirming that he had been poisoned, and his benefactor's son telling the doctor to rule it as a heart attack instead. Essek still holds a lot of resentment over his murder being covered up, and one of the first things he requests from Beau is for her to solve it proper---even if he's ninety percent sure it was his second cousin who did the deed, he'd pissed off enough people in academia for there to be a fairly long list. He's also very deep in the closet, but he's been harboring a pretty significant crush on Caleb for the past century or so. (Also, he can show up in photographs. Pretty cool stuff.)

Jester: Fearne's afterlife BFF and the self-proclaimed "life of the party," Jester's a cheerful flapper from the city of Zadar who died in 1925. She and her mother moved to England after WWI, and it didn't take very long for Jester to become friends with a lot of wealthy girls her age---granted, she still had to deal with a lot of "jokes" about her mom's occupation, but she considered them friends even if they weren't the nicest people in the world. One fateful Halloween, Jester was invited to a party at her friend Effie Thornwood's country estate, and she had an incredible time... right up until she walked in on one of the neighbors, Lord Sharpe, in the middle of a very steamy affair with Effie's widowed mother. Sharpe freaked out and shoved Jester down the stairs, and her death was ruled as an accidental fall caused by drinking too much liquor. Despite her more grisly end, Jester still keeps her bubbly and upbeat spirit, which tends to... clash with her ability to induce terror-fueled hallucinations onto unsuspecting Livings. She mostly just uses it to make the eyes in paintings move, but she can go full horror movie when pushed.

Ashton: He's a foulmouthed, opinionated punk who snuck into Thornwood House on a dare in 1974, only to fall out of a third-story window in an attempt to avoid being caught by the lady who lived there. Despite their rather lackluster death, Ashton doesn't really mind being a ghost, and their only complaint---besides not being able to leave---is that they've still got to deal with echos of the chronic pain that plagued them in life ("it was a joint thing, for fuck's sake, how can you have joint pain when you don't have any joints?"). Even though he's one of the younger ghosts in terms of years lived, Ashton has some of the wildest stories, and unlike with Molly, the ghosts are ninety percent sure that most of them are true. Their ability to interfere with radio systems---which ranges from being able to change the frequency a few degrees to straight-up being able to speak through a radio---means that they've been able to both introduce the ghosts to their favorite artists and keep their own musical taste fairly current. Ashton's still pretty loyal to the old-school stuff, of course.

Veth: A camp counselor who died in a canoeing accident in 1998, Veth is in the unfortunate position of both being the most recently dead and the only one who died past the age of forty. Despite the fact that she's only been dead for less than thirty years, she's kind of the unofficial leader of the group---mostly because, well, she was a mother of two who worked with kids on the regular, and in her experience, long-dead ghosts tend to act very similar to preteens. Veth's authority is partially motivated by the fact that she died wearing her counselor whistle around her neck (and she uses it so frequently that Beau has given up on setting an alarm), but she's also pretty understanding when it counts, and she's fiercely protective of her friends. Since she died in the freezing cold water of the property's lake, Veth can make the space she's in colder... though she doesn't really do it that often, since she's still a little traumatized about her death. Yeza and the kids live in town and visit the estate every year on her deathday, but they start visiting more frequently once Beau and Yasha befriend them.

Artagan: The actual oldest ghost on the property, Artagan is an old Celtic druid who presumably died of natural causes sometime in the British Iron Age. Due to several mysteries he practiced in life and his deep connection to the fey spirits that used to roam the area, he has one of the rarest ghost abilities of all---to be able to leave the place where he died, and to freely wander the earth. Artagan's been a roamer long enough that he doesn't strictly need to return to Thornwood House, but he shows up every now and then, mostly to check in on the other ghosts. He and Jester in particular have a pretty special connection, mainly due to their shared love of chaos.

Livings

Caduceus: While he's known by the town as one of the resident witches (though they all think it's a spiritual thing instead of an actual magic thing), Caduceus is known by the ghosts as one of the only Livings---besides Beau---who can see them and interact with them. He's been able to see ghosts ever since he got into a car accident as a teenager, and he's become pretty popular with the local ghost population... mainly because he works at his parents's funeral home, and is able to fulfill funerary specifications for the recently dead. Since there's so many ghosts and most of them are fairly friendly, Thornwood House is Caduceus's favorite one to visit, but prior to Beau and Yasha moving in, he had to be a little sneaky about it. It doesn't take him very long for the two of them to integrate him into their routine, and he's got a lot of tips on how to go about life when you can see dead people everywhere. Also, Caduceus's whole family lives in town, though he's the only one who wants to take over the funeral home (his aunt and older sister are the town doctors, his brother's the local pastor, and his younger sister is a freelance artist).

Imogen & Laudna: The two of them run a witchy coffee shop in town, and they're the only other townsfolk who are aware of the existence of ghosts---Imogen's a psychic and has always been able to see them, while Laudna's been able to see them since she fell out of a tree as a kid. (Laudna is also a witch, but most witches need near-death experiences in order to see ghosts, just like regular people.) Imogen and Beau get lumped together by the town at first as the two American lesbians, so it takes Beau a bit to actually like her... and, well, she initially thinks that Imogen's a fraud, so there's a bit of a kerfuffle when she attempts to expose her and then finds out that she's the real deal. Despite the rocky start, the two couples do eventually become actual friends. It helps that Laudna's cinnamon rolls are borderline addictive.

Percy & Vex: While it's customary for the living couple in a Ghosts story to have annoying rich neighbors, I decided that Beau and Yasha should also have some nicer rich neighbors, so... Percy and Vex are the current owners of de Rolo House, Beau and Yasha's neighbors to the right. Neither of them are aware of the ghosts---or the fact that their own house is populated by several restless de Rolos who were all brutally murdered, hence why Beau always insists that they have dinner at her place instead---but between Vex's eye for style and Percy's skills with both mechanics and finances, they're always happy to lend a hand to help the Thornwood B&B get going. When they're not busy dealing with all their kids, that is. (Also, Laudna used to be friends with Cassandra when the two were young, and the accident that led her to see ghosts happened on the de Rolo property. So... yeah, bit of a traumatic awakening.)

Mr. and Mrs. Osgood Sharpe: Unlike Percy and Vex, Beau and Yasha's neighbors to the left are very conceited, very out-of-touch, and very, very, very irritating. Neither of them approve of the B&B---or the lesbian couple who inherited it---and while they do act all nice and fake-friendly, they're always trying to find some way to interfere with the work going on. And, of course, Osgood happens to be directly descended from Jester's murderer, which means there's some extra tension mixed in there on the spiritual side... though, after a few unwelcome visits, Jester makes sure that the Sharpes know when to stay out.

Beau: She's the private eye vampire (go figure) and the youngest vampire in the story outside of Jester, having been turned in 2014. Outside of her detective business, which caters exclusively to supernatural creatures, Beau is an on-call agent of the Cobalt Soul---which, in this story, is an organization that acts as an arbiter between the various supernatural communities. They're also known for having done a lot of weird experimentation in the 50's in order to make their agents more effective, which gave rise to several sects of enhanced creatures... including Beau's vampire clan, Radian, who became daywalkers due to, well, radiation exposure. While Beau could use the Cobalt Soul's resources every time she needs to solve a case, calling on them for a favor means that she owes one them in return, so she tries her best to do her job without their help.

Yasha: She's Beau's wife and fellow daywalker, though she's from Clan Nephilhim---one of the oldest, and rumored to have gotten their daywalking powers and radiant fury from having drunk the blood of the angels (which she considers a load of crap). Yasha was turned in the 80's and didn't exactly adjust well, partially due to having a sire who encouraged mindless bloodlust above all else, but once she managed to get herself away from him, she decided to strive for a quiet, easy life. Nowadays, she runs a cafe in the same building where she, Beau, and their coterie reside, and she's fully embraced her role as the cool punk aunt. Not that Yasha isn't willing to scrap every now and then, but it's not her entire reason for living anymore.

Molly: They're a member of Clan Unseelie, a strain of fey vampires who specialize in trickery, illusions, and magical manipulations in order to spread chaos and mischief wherever they go... and yes, that's also the clan that Jester belongs to. He has absolutely no idea when he was turned, as he woke up in a grave sometime in the 60's with no memories, but based on the clothing he was wearing, his best guess is sometime in the early 1800s. Molly's the one who helped Yasha get back on her feet after she escaped Obhann, and she's also the one who suggested that the two of them move to America---which, in turn, inadvertenly led to Yasha and Beau meeting, so she likes to claim that she's responsible for that relationship. They're a performer at a speakeasy in their building's basement, which is managed by...

Fjord: Turned in the early 1910s, Fjord was a dock worker in London who made his way to America and wound up in Hollywood, starring in a series of very pulpy and very terrible Westerns before people noticed he didn't age and he had to move to Chicago. Technically speaking, he's the owner of the building, but he doesn't charge rent as long as everyone contributes to the household... and, well, everyone knows he's the coterie leader in name only. Jester, of course, immediately develops a crush on him---hey, he's a classic century-old vampire, he's nice, and he's a former movie star, what more could you want?---but it takes a bit for him to fully reciprocate those feelings, mainly because he's trying his best to do right by her as a coterie leader taking in a newly-turned fledgling still adjusting to being dead. Fjord gets won over by her charm eventually, though. (Also, he's from Clan Leviathan, who has themes around sea monsters and the hunger of the ocean, and Avantika is his sire. They broke up when he left Hollywood.)

Caduceus: He's the oldest vampire of the coterie, having been turned around 1690. He and his family were Irish druids who eventually immigrated to America in the mid-1800s, and while nobody is exactly sure what clan the Clays belong to---least of all themselves---all of them have kind of become urban legends wherever they end up, with Caduceus being most well-known for starting a club for asexual vampires in the Chicago area. He works as a coroner on the night shift and occasionally volunteers at the ER, and he also happens to be a quote-unquote "vegetarian" vampire who takes a lot of iron supplements but will occasionally go into a fugue state and feed from whatever cadaver he's recently done an autopsy on. (Also, by the way---in this universe, vampires can eat food, but only iron-rich foods will actually give them nutrients, and it's nothing compared to real blood. Vampires also don't need to drain someone completely, and they can make their victims forget what happened, but Caduceus still feels weird about drinking blood from a living being, even four hundred years later.)

Veth: She's an Unseelie vampire who was turned in the 1930's, bit her husband a couple of years later, and ended up having a son and daughter post-change (vampires can reproduce in this world, it just can't happen without intention---hence why only an eighth of vampires out there were born that way, not a lot of vampires decide they want to use their immortality to start a family). Now, she's the matriarch of a vampire family that's spread all across Chicago, and a good friend of the coterie... well, she and Fjord bicker a lot, but once you spend enough time with them, you'll realize it's all in good fun. Veth's also got a habit of taking in strays, and her latest one has definitely raised a few eyebrows...

Caleb: Turned in the 1880s, Caleb started out as a familiar to Trent Ikithon, a high-ranking and very old member of the sorcery-wielding Clan Volstrucker. He was one of three familiars who received the honor of being turned into a vampire, but they all remained in Trent's service for over, acting as spies and assassins who helped pave the way to their sire's rise to power. Caleb received an odd kind of salvation after he was caught by human authorities in the mid-90's and imprisoned in a secret faculty for twenty-five years---definitely not an ideal circumstance, but it kept him away and hidden from his master's influence. Eventually, a breakout organized by another inmate of the faculty gave him the chance to escape, and after a few years of wandering throughout America and keeping his head down, he wound up in Veth's backyard. Caleb's still learning how to be a functioning person again, but he's very grateful to Veth for taking him in, and as far as the coterie is considered, he's well on his way to becoming their friend. Even if he does get a little bit feral when he feeds.

Essek: Probably the most classically vampiric out of all of the cast, Essek was turned in the Regency Era and works directly under the leader of Clan Xhorhas---also a clan that specializes in magic, though they're way more focused on necromancy. On the surface, he's every bit the stereotypical snobby rich vampire, complete with the fancy house and obsession with vampiric code, but as Beau knows well by now, that's merely a facade. In reality, Essek goes against the system whenever it suits him, and he's had a pretty wild past that's granted him all sorts of illicit knowledge and connections---knowledge that Beau uses to her advantage, which has in turn made him one of her closest friends outside of the coterie. So far, Yasha's the only one who knows the truth about him, but that is absolutely going to change.

Lady Azrael (aka Yasha): The chosen wielder of a weapon that grants its user incredible strength and power over darkness (which includes shadow control, turning invisible, creating shadow portals, and manifesting a pair of badass shadow dragon wings), Lady Azrael---or "Azzie," as the others call her---grew up in a religious cult that told her she was meant to bring divine justice to the wicked. This led to her killing quite a lot of people for a cause she believed to be just, and it took her falling in love with an outsider to realize she was in the wrong and to leave the cult behind. Yasha retired for a few years, even marrying the outsider that she fell for, but after her wife died of cancer, she decided she still had some fight left in her, and signed up for the Phoenix Program in order to put her sword to use---for good, this time. Of course, there may be more to this story than she lets on, and she can't explain the two-year gap in between her wife's death and when she turned herself in...

Bloody Molly (aka... uh, Molly): Probably the most famous ex-villain of the group, Molly used to be the charismatic, cruel, and shadowy crime boss known only as Nonogan---but due to a series of incidents involving deal gone wrong, a vengeful sorceress, and their powers working in mysterious ways, they woke up in a hospital one day with their memory completely wiped. Once she was informed of her criminal past, she waltzed right into SDN and requested, in her words, "another go-round at this whole superpowered-individual thing." His powers are pretty body-horror themed---he can track people through their blood, form weapons out of his own blood, flesh, and bone, and even has some mild shapeshifting stuff involving some visceral reshaping of flesh---but Molly's also got a series of eye tattoos on his body that seem to have their own thing going on, and he's still figuring out how it works. Also, even though they don't really care to look into their past, it keeps on catching up with them in increasingly infuriating ways.

Salem (aka Caleb): A sorcerer whose magic comes from a spiritual bond to a family grimoire, Salem may be the only member of the team with a darker past than Lady Azrael's. From what little SDN and the Z-Team have been able to piece together of his backstory, he's a former henchman to a very powerful supervillain in Germany named The Volstrucker, and he fled to America and entered into the Phoenix Program in order to escape his influence. Being able to carve out his own identity as a superhero is new for Caleb---he didn't even have a proper alias, as he was just one of many sorcerers recruited to work in The Volstrucker's henchman army---and though he's slow to trust and even slower to tell people about his past, he genuinely loves being able to do hero work, to the point where he'll occasionally self-assign himself to more high-risk calls. That being said, he does harbor a bit of disdain for Cobalt, both due to her leaving the hero life behind... and because of an incident that occurred prior to him entering the Program, when he was still living on the streets.

Goblinoid (aka Veth): Biochemist, wife, and mother of two, Goblinoid quit her job at a high-profile science lab after she wound up being the unwitting test subject for an experimental serum. It's not clear what the serum was supposed to do, but it gave her the ability to transform into a feral goblin creature whenever she got overwhelmed---and considering she's got both anger issues and anxiety, that happens a lot more often than she'd like. While Veth retains her mind when she transforms, she's got less control of her instincts, and her inopportune transformations have caused her to get into a lot of trouble, mostly involving fights and public intoxication. SDN's giving her the fresh start she desperately needs, both in terms of getting her powers under control and giving her the chance to be more than just a soccer mom, and she's actually gelling pretty well with the team. Even if she's a little too eager to throw hands sometimes.

Void (aka Essek): An Earth-born member of a spacefaring alien race, Void possesses the standard powers of the majority of his species---the ability to manipulate the gravity of objects, usually restricted to anything lighter than oneself---with one notable exception: he is what is known to his kind as a Singularity, whose powers theoretically have no limit to what they can accomplish. Outside of making himself float and creating the occasional gravity well, though, Essek doesn't use his abilities very often, as he believes his real strength lies in his mind... and in the past, he's used that mind to aid the goals of supervillains, only really caring about the scientific knowledge that could be gleaned from their inventions and his expertise. He's in the Phoenix Program as a form of witness protection more than anything, having turned over a lot of his clients's secrets in exchange for a lighter sentence, but working with an actual team seems to be rubbing off on him.

Princess Pixie (aka Jester): A stereotypical magical girl on the surface, Princess Pixie's fairy theme goes beyond just wings, glitter, and powers themed around light---she's a fey magical girl, with all the trickery and mischief that comes with it. Though Jester has consumed a lot of magical girl media in her life, and she's always wanted to be some sort of hero, the being who blessed her with her powers pushed her to be more chaotic for chaos's sake, making her do a lot of reckless things even if she was targeting corrupt higher-ups in the process. Of course, both her moral compass and the consequences of her actions got up with her eventually, and she wound up quitting being a superhero for a while to focus on college... but a magical girl's call to adventure can never be ignored, so Jester signed up for the Phoenix program after graduating, both for a chance to start over with a clean slate and to actually work for a team. She and her mentor are still on good terms, though. He occasionally shows up during a shift to give Jester a hand.

Fathomless (aka Fjord): Probably the one with the weirdest origin story, Fathomless is a marine biologist and the former host of a deep-sea parasite that tried and failed to make him summon and release an ancient sea god... and left him with some powers that he's still not entirely sure how to control. While under the parasite's control, he wound up committing a lot of crimes---mostly theft and breaking-and-entering, though there was some grevious bodily harm involved---and aside from learning how to use his abilities properly, Fjord sees the Phoenix Program as a way for him to rehabilitate into society and get his life back. His powers range from being able to manifest gills to being able to control water to even summoning extradimensional tentacles, the latter of which is the result of some very crass jokes made by some of the other team members. Fjord's always the guy in the group who gets teased, regardless of the setting.