Corey Griffiths

*Brat Pack Changeling*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* 'Ships
* Logs

 Ooooh, this could be fun.

— Corey Griffiths

An attractive and charming young man who bears a remarkable resemblance to a famous teen actor from the 1980s, Corey is a great deal more than he seems.

## Personality

Corey is generally bright, charismatic, and optimistic, not prone to mood swings and almost never subject to depression or melancholia, no matter the setback. He's also very charming, seductive, and almost supernaturally persuasive.

## SKILLS

Corey has a basic high school education, provided primarily at the television studio's school, and his eidetic memory allowed him to ace his tests and graduate at 16.

Corey is a phenomonal actor for his age. Part of this is due to his eidetic memory, but most of it comes down to his supernatural charisma, which allows him to almost effortlessly make people believe what he's saying.

Corey keeps himself in excellent shape, working out daily with a personal trainer. However, due to his unusual childhood, he has never played any organized team sports, concentrating instead on perfecting his own body.

## CASTING

Corey is capable of casting cantrip-level or Basic magic to wide and varied effect, allowing minor, aesthetic, or basic functional applications that are not especially powerful or dangerous but certainly have their uses. This might mean levitating a cup of tea, lighting a fire with the flick of his wrist, conjuring a light, drawing forth water from the earth, curing simple injuries or ailments and enhancing healing, or other simple acts of magic.

One of the most powerful abilities he inherited from his father is the talent for creating intricate and believable illusions, which are not only visual, but also auditory and tactile, and with enough concentration, even olfactory. The larger the illusion, the more effort and concentration he must expend to create and maintain. If his concentration is broken, most illusions begin to fade immediately, but take an hour to be fully dispelled. Corey can also use this ability to cast glamours upon himself and others, changing not just appearance, but the sound of voices as well. Again, the more complex the glamour, the more effort and concentration is required, and a break in concentration causes the glamour to begin immediately to fade. He can dispel his illusions and glamours instantly by shifting his focus and dropping the concentration needed to maintain them.

## POWERS

Thanks to his divine father, Corey is nearly immortal, and most physical injuries heal within a matter of minutes, while damage that would otherwise be fatal can take a couple hours to heal. Through a quirk he doesn't understand, he is also able to regrow lost limbs, though these can take anywhere from a few hours (for fingers and toes) to a day (for arms and legs). Severed limbs crumble to dust as the new limbs grow, leaving behind no physical evidence. Additionally, Colt will never age nor suffer the normal physical effects of aging.

Thanks to his divine parentage, Corey's body is a lot tougher than a normal humans, able to absorb damage which might otherwise cripple a human.

## ADVANTAGES

While so-called photographic memory is an ability one is born with, it is also a skill which must be honed through practice and repetition. Once Corey realized he had this ability, he spent years perfecting it, to the point where he routinely memorized entire scripts, not just his parts, but those of every other actor in a production, often long before filming was to begin.

To offset his Fame weakness, Corey has a new legal identity as Corey Lucas Griffiths, a guy who may look like that famous actor from long ago, but apparently has no connection to that person. This identity claims he was born an Iowa farmboy, but ran away to the Big City on the West Coast, where he was eventually taken in by the kindhearted Rey Devoss. His drivers license lists his age as 21, though he actually looks no more than 17 or so.

Corey has no place of his own in the human world, nor any means of income. Instead, he is dependent upon Rey Devoss, who provides him a home and money to buy whatever he might need, as well as free access to his nightclub, all in exchange for companion- and friendship.

Like Gwydion, Corey uses a physical object to help him focus his concentration when casting magic that's more intricate than simple cantrips. Corey's wand is about a foot long, made of hazelwood, and tipped at both ends in silver. It is supernaturally indestructable, except by very powerful magical means. Corey doesn't need to wave, flick, or otherwise gesture with the wand to focus his concentration. Simply holding it in his right hand is enough.

## WEAKNESSES

Corey was away from Earth for 30 years, and while he's trying to catch up on the history he missed, things like pop culture references go right over his head. He still hasn't seen the new Star Wars movies, and he can't quite wrap his head around modern politics at all.

Corey has zero assets of his own, relying entirely upon Rey Devoss for food, shelter, and other necessities.

30 years ago, Corey Ames was insanely famous and easily recognized. During his career, this was an advantage, but now being recognized could lead to the very real danger of drawing attention to the supernatural world.

You probably know who he was: Corey Ames, famous TV actor. Starting in 1979, at the age of 6, Corey had been on television for most of his life. He started playing smart-aleck nerd Davey Sumner on the sit-com 'Family Pains'. It was a top-rated show for a decade, and a great deal of the popularity was due to one person -- Corey Ames. He started out as just a cute kid who could deliver wiseass lines in a way that made everyone laugh. But as he grew older, his acting abilities increased almost exponentially. A good deal of his ability stemmed from his eidetic memory, an ability he worked hard to hone. He could not only clearly memorize the script itself, but also direction and blocking, meaning he could perform a scene in only one or two takes.

In addition to honing his memory skills, Corey began crafting and carefully maintaining his reputation as a dedicated professional. This work ethic began with his parents, who naturally wanted him to concentrate on his career, rather than the ordinary childish pursuit of an ordinary kid. Of course, his dedication was praised by his peers, and Corey thrived on that praise. So naturally, he continued the behavior that brought him such praise.

The result was that Corey was an unusual teen, so dedicated to acting, as well as maintaining his professional reputation, he had no time get into trouble with alcohol, drugs, or headline-making sexual escapades. Not a normal child- or teenhood, to be sure, but one that Corey seemed to flourish in.

By the time the series ended in 1988, Corey was sixteen years old and on top of the world. He had made numerous guest appearances on other TV shows, developing a surprising range beyond comedy, and he was one of the most sought-after actors of his age. He spent the next year making even more guest appearances and starring in TV movies. The problem was that he always seemed to be cast in the same sorts of roles, the All-American Boy Next Door, which he felt was a severe underuse of his talents. So he resisted the numerous roles he was offered to star as a regular in various TV shows, holding out for a part that was new and different.

That opportunity came in 1989, when the Fox network, which was quickly becoming a true competitor to the established Big Three, acquired the rights from Warner Brothers to develop a teen-oriented television series around the characters of two brothers who had appeared in a drama-comedy film as self-proclaimed vampire hunters. In the proposed series, the brothers would be a few years older and far more mobile, driving around southern California in a beat-up 1970 GTO to investigate paranormal mysteries, which often brought them into conflict with vampires, werewolves, witches, and ghosts.

Corey had nearly landed a supporting role in the film, which was given instead to his friend, Corey Haim, so he vigorously pursued a role in this new series. The part he wanted and eventually won was that one of the two brothers, who had been brought to life on the silver screen by another friend, Corey Feldman, two years earlier. A two-hour pilot was shot and aired to rave reviews, and the first season of the series was ordered. The world was truly at Corey Ames's feet.

And then the rug was suddenly yanked out from under those feet, when Corey Ames mysteriously vanished from a private Malibu beach on the night of May 16, 1989. The network had just picked up the series, and Corey's agent had thrown him a party at his Malibu home to celebrate, where Corey indulged in just a bit of champagne, though as always, he steered clear of the drugs being openly used and offered.

Sometime around 2am, as the party was winding down, Corey found himself on the beach with his best friend and co-star on 'Family Pains', Petey Madison. In the year since the series had ended, Petey hadn't worked nearly as much as Corey, and that left him time to explore other aspects of life, including his own sexuality. The very private revelation that Petey was gay came as no real surprise to Corey -- he'd grown up on Hollywood soundstages, surrounded by -- and more importantly, comfortable with -- people of all sorts of orientations. But that night, Petey made revealed a far more personal secret, that he had a massive crush on Corey.

Corey was shocked, though not repulsed. He had never taken the time to consider his own sexual orientation. Sure, he was a normal teenage bundle of hormones and sexual urges, but he channeled that drive into acting, rather than pursing any love interests of his own. He only dated when the studio set him up with a starlet for public appearances, and if a girl expressed an interest in something more than professional relationship, Corey refused -- he didn't have the time for such things, and he frankly wasn't interested in making the time.

But his best friend, someone he already loved like a brother, this was a different matter, and he found himself intrigued, and he realized he was more than a little interested in exploring this new possibility. They didn't get much farther than a few stolen kisses that night, carefully hidden from the watchful eyes of their family and friends, but by the time Petey's parents insisted on taking him home, they had already made plans for future exploration of this new aspect of their friendship.

Corey remained on the beach, less than twenty feet from the house where his parents were still being wined by his agent, but just outside the lights cast through the beach house's windows. He stared out at the Pacific under its blanket of stars, and as far as he was concerned, it was the best night of his life.
And then he vanished.

Corey blinked, and suddenly he found his surroundings had transformed from the night-drenched beach to the sunlit pink walls of the Beverly Hills Hotel courtyard, while the endless ocean had been reduced to the bright blue waters of a swimming pool. And if the sudden shift in time and place wasn't disconcerting enough, he discovered there were no windows or doors, no way to get out of the courtyard.

He wasn't alone, however. There were a dozen or so young, beautiful people on loungers around the pool, soaking up the sun. Before he could ask any of them just what the heck was going on, he was approached by a tall, broad-shouldered man who was, quite simply, the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, with flowing blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore only a pair of checkered, woolen pants and a golden, open ring around his neck.
He introduced himself as Gwydion mab Don, a name which meant nothing to Corey, though he would later learn that he was a mythological figure who featured prominently in Welsh lore. What was most startling, however, was when Gwydion announced that he was, in fact, Corey's father. Corey didn't believe this at first, but Gwydion assured him it was true. Further, he set Corey's mind at least by revealing his mother had never cheated on his father. Instead, Gwydion had used his otherworldly powers of glamour and illusion to take on not just the appearance, but also the voice and mannerisms of the man Corey believed to be his father. In this way, Gwydion had been able to deceive Corey's mother and conceive Corey himself.

It took some time, but eventually, Corey was convinced, especially as he discovered and learned to wield many of Gwydion's powers and abilities. In fact, he had already started without even knowing it, for the thing that made him such a good actor was his ability to make people truly believe what he was saying. But now he was also learning to weave glamours and other illusions, eliminating the need to spend hours in a chair having his hair and makeup done.
Of course, he wasn't really in the Beverly Hills Hotel pool area. It was simply an illusion Gwydion had created to allow Corey to be in comfortable, familiar surroundings. In reality, they were in the Faerie world, where Gwydion had brought Corey to learn about his heritage and to control his abilities. Corey was having the time of his life, completely unaware of the passage of time...until he met a man named Rey Devoss.

Like Corey, Rey had been born in the human world, but had spent many years in Faerie, eventually being knighted by the enigmatic Erlking. Also like Corey, Rey had a divine parent and inherited certain seemingly magical abilities. But unlike Corey, Rey had returned to the human world to put his abilities to good use, and it was from Rey that Corey learned just how long he'd been gone from the world of his birth: thirty years, to be exact.

Corey had always intended to return, of course. Not just to be with his family and friends again, but to use his newfound abilities to become the greatest actor of all time. Sure, he could act in Faerie, entertaining the Fae who visited Gwydion's little Pink Palace hideaway, but it was a human audience, he knew, that he could really wow with his glamours and golden tongue.

But now he learned that three decades had passed. To Earth, Corey Ames had disappeared and was assumed dead. As a result of the publicity surrounding his disappearance, the TV series he had so looked forward to starring in was scrapped by the network. His parents had been killed by a drunk driver in the late 1990s, and Pete Madison out and proud and, sadly for Corey, in a well-established long-term relationship (and of course, 30 years older). There was no way Corey could step into his old life, even if he could explain were he'd been for the last three decades, there was no way to explain why he hadn't aged in three decades.

Fortunately, Rey told Corey about all the many wonders of the early Twenty-first century, including cellphones, smart cars, and of course, the internet. This was a dazzling new world Corey very much wanted to see. He couldn't come back as Corey Ames, so he simply invented a new identity: Corey Griffiths, which preserved the name given him by his human parents, while also paying homage to his divine father, Gwydion. He would also relocate from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and while he would avoid the sort of widescale acting he did in Hollywood, he'd be able to act on the stage or local TV, doing what he loved on a smaller scale.

But Rey had awakened in Corey a desire to explore the world beyond the very limited realm of acting. The experiences he'd denied himself in his drive to be a professional actor, the self-indulgent, hedonistic lifestyle other teenagers dream about, are something he would be free to explore. Rey's plan to possibly open a nightclub would give Corey a chance to socialize with his peers on a more personal, less strictly professional way, as well as a chance to indulge in all the selfish, hedonistic vices of alcohol, drugs, and sex that he'd always denied himself.

Logs featuring Corey Griffiths:

* 2019.01.19 - The Siege of Rowanwood: 1
* 2019.01.19 - The Siege of Rowanwood: 3
* 2019.01.18 - Waking Up at Rowanwood: Rey, Corey, Piper, Tachi, Florence, and Ryan
* 2019.01.20 - Battle Aftermath 2: Dinner, talks and magic
* 2019.01.21 - Battle Aftermath 3: Fireside Resolve, a Battle for Survival
* 2019.01.22 - The Apocalypse, Day Two: Breakfast Club
* 2019.01.22 - The Council of the Vale