Cordelia Chase

*The Unexpected Oracle*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* 'Ships
* Logs

 Back off, Polygrip! You think you're bad? All mean and haunty? Picking on poor, pathetic Cordy? Well, get ready to haul your wrinkly, translucent ass out of this place, 'cause lady, the bitch is back.

— Cordelia Chase

Cordelia Chase was once the meanest girl at Sunnydale High, a child of privilege who was sure the world revolved around her. And then she met Buffy Summers and realized just how big the world really was. Although it took her a while to acclimate, she spent the better part of her high school career as a member of the Slayer's entourage, helping her fight the good fight against vampires and other nasties. After graduating, she moved to LA seeking Hollywood fame and fortune; she found a new calling as a member of Angel Investigations. These days, she's as committed to helping the helpless as she once was with helping herself.

## Personality

Cordelia is a confident, self-assured person, unafraid to speak her mind honestly. Strong-willed and resolute, she has matured significantly through enduring more hardship than most and has shown herself able to withstand even things outside of the typical human experience. While she can be sarcastic, wry of wit, and stubborn at times, she also is a genuinely compassionate person who understands the feelings of others and is sensitive to suffering.

She possesses little in the way of a filter and can be competitive sometimes, even argumentative, but she's also rather pragmatic, on the whole. She brings a practicality to her surroundings that others might forget, which helps especially when her gift of visions can be chaotic and difficult to interpret.

Even in times of duress, she is still Cordelia Chase, and as far as she's concerned, that means she's pretty okay. In fact, she's better off than most in any circumstances for that very quality.

## SIGNATURE ABILITY

### Higher B

Even before becoming Vision Girl, and long before being set on the track of becoming a Higher Being, Cordy always knew what she was about. Being confronted by things outside of the normal human experience didn't slow her down. Appropriately, when Cordelia finds herself in a suitable situation, she can drawn upon both her very grounded Queen B side and her nascent Higher Being side and balance them to greatest effect. It's not something that is a conscious decision so much as it is simply in her nature: Cordelia Chase, beautiful and terrible as the dawn.

## SKILLS

Growing up, Cordelia's drive to be the best meant that she couldn't be content with excelling at extra-curriculars, socializing, and trend-setting: her grades had to be on point too. Although she could never quite make it to the top of her class, she maintained solid A's and B's(mostly; languages weren't really her strong suit). Although the chances of ever using most of that stuff in her current career are minimal, the underlying intelligence and study skills that got her those grades are valuable assets.

Cordelia dreamed of being an actress before life and/or the Powers that Be drew her along a different path. As such, while she's taken acting classes and done a few commercials and plays, she never had much of a chance to develop her craft beyond the basics. She is reasonably good at misleading/misdirecting the average person with her acting abilities, but perceptive or suspicious targets are unlikely to take the bait for long.

Thanks to many years of cheerleading, dance, and gymnastics, plus a physically demanding high school experience, Cordelia is impressively agile and coordinated, significantly above the average. She is able to rely on complex maneuvers if needed, for evasion or mobility, and keeps herself fit and able.

Cordelia is a competent fighter, having trained with Angel and picked up various moves from friends, allies, and even enemies since starting with Angel Investigations. She has also learned from stunt people and has a good memory for learning, although as before, her greatest hurdle is knowing when is the best time to put every move to use. Still, she can hold her own in a fight, though she truly excels more at ranged attacks with implements such as her favored weapon, the crossbow, and is usually most comfortable keeping herself out of the thick of things.

Socially, Cordelia is excellent at manipulation, subterfuge, and persuasion. She finds it easy to recognize attempts to do it to her, and she is able to act decisively to shut them down. The average person will often go with what she wants, in one way or another, especially if she's had time to prepare her plan of attack, though exceptional sorts may be more difficult to persuade or undermine. She can often act with authority solely because she comports herself as someone of authority, for example, and as a matter of course inspires natural followers to, well...follow her.

Cordelia once dedicated an inordinate amount of free time to tracking trends and searching for the next big thing to add to her wardrobe. Shifting fortunes and priorities have reduced what was once a deeply consuming focus on fashion to something a little closer to an intermittent obsession to be picked up or put aside as other, more pressing matters in her world allow. Although she still dedicates tons of time to trend-tracking, the need to own all the stuff she sees is manageable, if not entirely silenced.

Cordelia is an able investigator. She knows how to research based on available facts, she can trail others without alerting them to her presence, and she is able to deal with potential clients in an agreeable way, as well as other assorted, trained skills that contribute to her ability as a professional in the field.

After all the hardships Cordelia has endured, not to mention her social interactions that kept her at the top of the order, she has developed a particularly strong will. She is highly resistant to any attempts to persuade her to do things that she doesn't want to do, and it is nearly impossible to get her to do anything she is morally opposed to doing. Even those with supernaturally-enhanced abilities would find it a challenge, and probably not one worth the effort, to try and steamroll Cordelia Chase's force of will.

Cordelia, having read literal libraries worth of supernatural lore in her capacity as an investigator, has vast stores of knowledge in her mind. Even if she may not know the full story of something by a few details, she'll likely be able to figure out, given time, where to look in order to find the answer. The main problem is that there is so much information, and she lacks the training of someone like a Watcher or a professional scholar to have the practical experience to pick it out quickly or intuitively. Still, given her perfect memory and sheer volume of knowledge, she remains an extremely valuable source.

Cordelia learned the value of keeping herself unnoticed after three years of attending a high school almost literally from hell. She has done some basic training outside of this, though primarily her experience has enabled her to be decent at keeping herself unnoticed if she wants to be; for example, she can usually follow or observe someone who is unaware of her purpose.

## POWERS

Cordelia is destined for greater things. Though her potential remained largely unrealized for some time, a transcendent experience set her on her destined path. She is meant to one day ascend from the mortal plane and become a higher being, on the level of the Powers That Be. However, at the moment she remains largely unaware of this grand destiny and the small but important gifts that it affords her. Perhaps the most significant change is in her sturdiness and stamina, allowing her to withstand far more punishment physically, mentally, and spiritually than a normal human, to the point where her visions no longer always leave her with pain and disorientation.

Cordelia has manifested the basic ability of telekinesis, which allows her, with focus and concentration, to remotely manipulate objects using the power of her mind. It requires significant effort, increasing proportionally with the size and weight of the item, but she is able to telekinetically affect items of small to medium size, at perhaps a maximum of a medium household appliance. If her concentration is broken, it can disrupt the effect.

Years ago, Cordelia received a blessing and a curse from the enigmatic Powers That Be: the ability to experience vivid visions. Though they are called visions, these manifest as sudden waves of vivid sensory input, comprehensive and immersive, typically revolving around endangered innocents or imminent disasters. There is no apparent pattern, as she doesn't receive them prior to every bad thing or every innocent in danger.

With experience of having these visions, Cordelia has managed to improve her ability to interpret the visions, as well as an improved ability to handle their onset. She is usually able to tell when one is coming on, though it is typically very little warning. After a vision, Cordelia is usually tired, though stronger visions can exhaust her or even leave her with a condition similar to a migraine for hours, though these are comparatively rare.

## ADVANTAGES

Cordelia is the office manager and Senior VP of Client Relations (according to the business cards she printed without consulting anyone else) from the inception of the firm. Through Angel Investigations, she has access to a network of friends, coworkers, clients, and more. She also has access to the Hyperion, an abandoned hotel from the 1950s, and all the resources at the business's disposal such as computers, extensive files, and a formidable occult library, as well as a collection of artifacts.

Cordelia has stated that once she sees a move, she learns it. Her experience in cheerleading was only one application of this ability, but over the years, she has begun to apply it to different areas of her life. A huge benefit in investigation, research, and combat training, amongst others, Cordelia's memory is a precious asset to her and her allies.

Cordelia lives in an unassuming, single bedroom apartment that happens to come with a roommate: Dennis, the ghost of a previous tenant. Thankfully, he is a friendly and reasonbly polite ghost who helps her out with the occasional chore and never hogs the popcorn on Netflix nights.

Cordelia keeps in touch with her friends from the Scooby days, even if her responsibilities with Angel Investigation keep her too busy to spend a ton of tine connecting with them more personally.

## WEAKNESSES

After several years of frequent exposure to the suffering of others, then to the experience of fighting to alleviate and prevent such suffering, Cordelia has developed a strong sense of responsibility to the helpless, the innocent, and the beleaguered. Her enthusiasm at times can compel her to get in over her head, driving her with a need to act and act as soon as possible, which might prevent her from getting a broader picture of the situation. It is very difficult for her to resist or refuse someone in need.

At times, Cordelia can exhibit overconfidence, though she comes by it naturally. After years of life-changing work, she is fundamentally a very confident, self-assured person. However, her relative inexperience coupled with an exuberant need to help the innocent at risk can sometimes lead to serious trouble, such as mistakes in sizing up a situation or overestimating her ability to deal with dangers.

Cordelia's status as an agent of the Powers That Be can make her more likely to be targeted by their enemies. Her visions also can make her susceptible to psychic attack. Additionally, she is probably the least experienced in battle of all of Angel Investigations.

While she is experiencing a vision, Cordelia's senses are overwhelmed by the experience. It is typically sudden and with little warning, although there is usually at least a slight indication beforehand. Visions may have different levels of intensity; some are much more disruptive than others. The experience of having a vision usually leaves Cordy at least a little tired, but intense visions may exhaust her or even leave her with a condition similar to a migraine for hours, though this is rare.

Born into a wealthy family, Cordelia rarely had to do without for most of her life. When she entered high school, things were great: her family was well off, she was popular and beautiful, and despite being on the younger end of the student body, she had already quickly ascended to the top. No one dared to refuse her...until Buffy Summers arrived.

It was understandable that Cordelia disliked Buffy, though: she snubbed her and then stabbed her! So Buffy's days were numbered, as far as Cordelia was concerned. Eventually, however, the two put aside enough of their differences when Cordy figured out what was actually going on in Sunnydale...and why so many people seemed to either disappear or end up dead. Now in the know, she worked for a while alongside Buffy and her friends to fight the forces of darkness in their home town.

There were ups and downs. Sometimes they got along well, sometimes they didn't; mostly they tried to do the best they could with what they had. They weren't really the best of friends, but they were all each other had against the very real tide of evil threatening to consume Sunnydale and possibly the world. Eventually this all culminated in a literally explosive graduation day, after which Cordelia left town, heading to Los Angeles to find her fortune as an actress due to her family's misfortunes.

However, what she ended up finding was Angel, Buffy's ex-beau and, just as unexpectedly, opening a detective agency with him. Determined to achieve her aspirations of fame and celebrity, between happiness and tragedy, she continues to work to balance all the aspects of her life. Though maybe she's started to think she's become more of a hero than she used to be. Just maybe.

Logs featuring Cordelia Chase:

* 2019.02.25 - Cutscene: Tempus Fugit Infinituum
* 2019.02.27 - The End of the Apocalypse