#candela speculation

DM Taliesin Jaffe 🖤

💀 Lou Wilson (Explorer or Criminal)

🧿 Erika Ishii (Medium or Doctor)

🍷 Aimee Carrero (Magician or Journalist)

🩸Christian Navarro (Journalist or Detective)

🪞Jasmine Bhullar (Occultist or Professor)

I'm hoping for a female majority this time around! I'm also betting towards "recent" guests to return as it happened to the other circles. I also noticed, it might be a coincidence, we've had Desi players in all three circles so far, so I'm hoping for Jasmine, specifically bc of her presence in the Doom one-shot with Anjali and work with horror. As for classes, I'm just tired of Soldier, I really want somebody to take Explorer. Travis took both Detective and Journalist but I want players to tackle them individually and lean more into the backgrounds. I think Erika would play a sick Medium and Jasmine would serve with Occultist.

Other player possibilities:

Rekha Shankar (Been in Desiquest with both Luis and Anjali, great player)

Omar Najam (Been around recently as well, a very likely possibility)

Alex Ward (Someone from VTM that would fit like a glove in the game)

Utkarsh Ambudkar (Speaks for itself, down to cause chaos)

Becca Scott (Also VTM, never played in CR I think, and I like her xD)

Abubakar Salim (He did show up in 4SD and has been in project Taliesin been in b4, probable)

But back to Cosmo thoughts, I am just imagining the first time he sees his father die, experience him coming back to life right as he started grieving, only to find out that it wasn't just a one time thing and every single time he dies, he's going to lose something close to him.

Like imagine the first time Cosmo talked to Oscar about something related to his sibling and Oscar is like "...Who?" cuz she was the price he had to pay to come back to life.

Why do you ask? Just the way Cosmo was just like chilling to the side as Elsie went into beast mode and killed his "grandson" (father) and still was like... he'll be fine, she's fine, you don't have to worry while everyone else is panicking, including Elsie because she didn't know that Oscar can come back from the dead in minutes and just... maybe everyone thought Cosmo went mad at seeing his "grandson" dying at the hands of his caretaker/doctor he viewed as a doctor and was reacting in shock only to realise... Cosmo knew all along.

He knew Elsie could go into beast mode and he knew Oscar could take it. He kinda gave them part time jobs at The Glass Cat but Madam Glask didn't know anything until the events of 'The Antiquarian'. Elsie has been working with Oscar and Cosmo only because they knew her secret and not with anyone else but still didn't know that Oscar can just die and come back to life.

Just imagine the number of times a similar thing has happened with a different circle because it is easy to trust an old man with a bookshop with his experience and the good nature he has.

Let's face it, Cosmo bought the Antiquarian when Oscar was his father and probably people would've known Oscar as his father/brother depending on the story given.

Now a few years pass and Cosmo has grown older and Oscar still looks the same, making the "Oscar is my father" introduction invalid, and making it suspicious for the people who knew Oscar as Cosmo's father cuz the elder is not aging but the younger is?

So Cosmo lies, lies his father is dead and the one you are seeing is an estranged brother who just coincidentally looks like his father in his youth. Some may believe it, some won't. But this starts a period of "Oscar is my brother" lies, which also comes to a close after a few years cuz again, Cosmo is aging but Oscar isn't.

Now, Cosmo may have been living in a different neighbourhood, may have been living separately from Oscar but they do visit from time to time, this time under the guise of brothers, which is slowly turning invalid cuz there's only a number of times you can justify that to be because "Oscar dyes his hair" or "He has the good genes"

Then comes the next story, "Oscar is my son/nephew" which will, again, look a little strange to the regulars to the Antiquarian because while they won't know the full family history of either of them, or the personal lives, they are certain to clock that the "brother" looks exactly the same as "the son/nephew" and no matter how much they tell it is the genes, it is bound to raise some suspicion.

Years pass and the "Son/nephew" image doesn't really cut it also anymore because again, the son doesn't seem to be aging but Cosmo is so comes the grandson image like "oh, he is my grandson out of marriage" or "he is the grandson of my estranged sister" etc.

So for the two of them, essentially, it has been decades of them literally being like:

"He's my father"

to

"He's my brother- oh he looks like my father? It is the genes"

to

"Oh! This is my son. Oh he's been living with his other relatives abroad and just came back to help me. It is just a coincidence he looks like my brother" or "Oh, this is my nephew, yeah it is not my brother's, it is another estranged sister's son and he has come to live with me now"

to

"This is my grandson. He's related to so and so/is my son's son and you just haven't seen him yet cuz my son is a little private. Oh, you haven't seen them both together have you?"

Just years of discussing and making back stories and fake relatives until people believe their lies to be the truth.

And Cosmo and Oscar have to also redefine their relationship through every single stage of it, Cosmo to be careful not to call Oscar his dad in front of anyone, to practice again and again so that they don't slip up in front of people, so much so they embody the lies even in the personal conversations even as they speak as father and son.

And they did it well enough that no one but the two of them except for a few Candela member actually knew that Oscar is Cosmo's dad. Even when Madam Glask and Dr. Elsie Roberts were so close to the small family. Don't remember if Cosmo was married and if he was, if his family knew the truth.

Edit: And just to the sheer number of people who have witnessed Oscar die and either come back to life in front of them or see him roaming around the next day because he has died 7 times before Tide and Bone and I don't think any of them would've been in his sleep. Suicide, maybe once or twice but apart from that? I think there would've been witnesses.

In that particular scene when Oscar describes that he has to give up Cosmo, there is a specific mention of there being a quiet gasp of surprise/panic from the person who always stays with Oscar during this barter each time and the mention of "Not all. Just some. He's everything."

And later in the 3rd episode, while Iomene talks with Cosmo, she mentions this

She specifically says that "He wasn't holding onto you, it wasn't that you were holding onto him, you were holding onto each other"

Again, warning, long rant post.

You know… With the way it is revealed that over 87 years, Oscar has died 7 times prior to Tide and Bone, I wonder how many times he died and came back to life before Candela caught onto him cuz let's face it, no way is anyone going to know immediately after the ship incident about the side effects of the ritual. Maybe Candela does approach Cosmo and Oscar as the survivors of the ritual to know the deets but that should be about it. Even if Oscar died in the shipwreck, only Cosmo would know and the first death can be brushed off as a hallucination or close call because they are at sea.

It is during the second death that either of them knows that something is fishy but let's say due to some convenient shit it is not as easy to suspect it. Another death brushed off. But now it's a little obvious that Oscar does not come out unaffected as he starts forgetting things.

The third time is the charm and this time, his death and coming back from it was totally unexplainable because it should not be possible for him to survive the thing because let's say he was crushed to death or something more severe, but he did. That is when they actually look into what the fuck is going on more in detail because now it is obvious that something is going on in the background and that Oscar is coming back from the dead and missing memories as a consequence every single time.

It is this that sends Cosmo on full gear to research more about why this is happening and what actually happened in the ritual and how to stop this from happening because by this point, everyone has started to notice that Oscar is not aging also since the accident. (I'm placing the third death to be roundabout 10-15 years after the ship incident) I would say Candela catches onto this in his 3rd or 4th death because he comes back to life after a really impossible death situation and also isn't aging a day older from the incident, and Candela have been keeping tabs on them since the moment they mentioned a ritual, so even if Cosmo and Oscar don't tell them their discovery of Oscar and his revivification, they knock on their doors about it.

Dying 4 times over 2-3 decades have notified people that something is wrong but the 5-6 decades after with no answers kinda increases Oscar's recklessness and makes him less hopeful that he's actually going to die, that he'll live on forever without peace, Cosmo, while he's happy to have his father around him also is tired of all the lies and stories he has to spin to keep Oscar close and keeping Candela away from experimenting on the man and trying to figure out answers he can't get...

And Candela's increasing scrutiny at the fact that Oscar can't die and them using it to their advantage cuz a man who can't die sent into a undercover mission to collect information with the guarantee that he won't die? Who wouldn't want that? Or who wouldn't want to keep a close eye on an immortal man who has the secrets to unlocking how not to die?

Cosmo also essentially becomes his own inside man in Candela, making connections to keep an eye on what the higher-ups think about Oscar and what they plan to do with him in order to shield Oscar from whatever experiment they might plan to do with him.

The difficulties of having an immortal parent as you yourself grow old, afraid of leaving the parent under the shitty hands of an organization which doesn't really have a moral code when it comes to figuring out stuff and doing what they want to do and just feeling so tired and done of all the secrets you can't tell people...

(At some point, I am going to make it in such a way that I am creating scenarios where every single Candela character has seen Oscar die and it's aftermath, multiple scenarios cuz why not but for now, version 2)

Malcolm and Oscar are in the same division, Oscar being sent into service as a punishment/him just signing up because he is bored and at some point in the mission, dies and has to be left behind because one can't carry a body and run long distances.

Or maybe he joined as an undercover thingy for Candela and is there in Malcolm's last mission, where his entire group evaporated but Oscar, with his luck, escapes but Malcolm assumes that he's dead anyway.

Either way, he is discharged, comes back to the city, gets taken in by Madam Glask and given a job and who's there? Oscar fucking Grimm. In flesh. Alive.

And Oscar is like "Nope, I didn't serve in the army, maybe you saw my relative" and Malcolm initially thinks he's hallucinating but nope, Cordelia introduces Oscar as a part of her security and can definitely see him so he's definitely not hallucinating.

At this point I suppose he has come in contact with Candela `peeps so he does mention about Oscar to Edgar or someone he runs with in a circle but no one has any idea on what he's talking about cuz Oscar hasn't worked with any of them until one day, Oscar fucking Grimm is in a circle with Malcolm. And dies again.

How did they even chance upon it? How did Cosmo and by extension, Oscar come to know of Elsie's secret? Was it because someone tipped off about Elsie and she became Cosmo's assignment through Candela? Was it one of Cosmo's networks that tipped him off about Elsie's nature and made him approach her, not through Candela but later became Candela business anyway?

Why did Elsie specifically ask for Oscar and Cosmo only. I get it, they know the secret, yes. But she also shows fear that the beast may do something that she'll regret and doesn't know about Oscar's deal so why was she not scared to go out with Oscar and Cosmo?

Have Oscar and Cosmo seen Elsie in beast mode before? We know Oscar hasn't been attacked by Elsie before because he specifically states that it is one thing to know and another to experience but have they actually seen her in beast mode before or was it the first-time for all of them to see Elsie like that?

And How long has Elsie known Cosmo and Oscar? Cuz she knows Oscar as Cosmo's grandson so I am guesstimating for around 10-20 years but I don't know.

So many questions... so many questions...