#original cole

I never realized how ambiguous Cole’s reveal is. when you go to hunt down the thing blocking his amulet and it turns out to be the ex-templar that killed him (well the real Cole). I mean you know Cole died of starvation, but it doesn’t really tell you how. I think it is mentioned in a codex, maybe?

But ultimately you aren’t told within the game, which I only noticed after seeing comments of how malicious that particular templar was.

And I mean all templars suck, but surprisingly that one in particular didn’t actually mean to kill Cole.

The story goes, that templar was a recruit just starting out in White Spire. He had no idea what he was doing. Cole had arrived at the Circle and it was his job to process the mage. Now, the reason Cole had been brought to the Circle in the first place was because magic was suspected in the death of his family. It is mentioned his father abused him and the rest of his family, until Cole’s magic finally flared up against the man. In such cases, those mages are to be imprisoned until the Circle can prove to some degree they were not intentionally or wholly responsible for the crimes they’ve been accused of. However, this rather green templar did not understand the paperwork that was to go along with the process and marked Cole as being a prisoner being held for crimes, rather than a new mage who needed to be investigated for crimes. As such Cole was overlooked.

When such paperwork is issued, a mage is supposed to be taken care of by the assigned templar as far as survival goes. All other contact is restricted with the prisoner.

The outcome is obvious from there. Cole was forgotten, no one was allowed to try and help him, and he eventually starved. The templar recruit felt extreme guilt over his error, but received no punishment as the Knight-Commander chalked it up to a clerical error that only hastened the inevitable outcome for "a possessed abomination waiting to happen”.