Application for Box

[casperdisaster]

Character Information
Character Name: Noah Czerny
Canon: The Raven Cycle
Canon Point: Right after the end of Book 3: Blue Lily, Lily Blue
History: Seven years before the start of the book series, Noah is murdered on the ley line in Henrietta, Virginia, by his best friend in an attempt to perform a proper sacrifice and wake the line. While the sacrifice ritual failed, Noah still died, and what was left of him was tied to the still sleeping ley line. He was stuck in this world instead of moving on to wherever it is that ghosts go, if anywhere (Noah certainly doesn’t know and is perfectly content to go on not knowing). The ley line gave him enough power to by physically manifest most of the time, making him indistinguishable from a living person except for being easily forgettable, easy to not notice, and incredibly cold to the touch. People would reconcile his existence with what they ‘knew’ to be true. Instead of seeing the boy with his skull crushed in at the side from his skateboard, they saw a boy with a faint smudge on his cheek that never seemed to go away. When he tried to tell them that he was dead, they didn’t seem to hear.

When Richard Campbell Gansey III came to Henrietta six years after Noah’s death looking into the ley line that ran through Henrietta to try and find an ancient Welsh king he believed to be buried on it, Noah kind of ended up drifting into his friends circle, quietly inserting himself into their lives and letting them forget how or why he was there. Gansey liked to keep his friends close, and soon Noah moved into the abandoned factory he had retrofitted into something like an apartment with his other friend, Ronan Lynch. Attempts were made to get Adam Parrish to move in as well although they were unsuccessful.

With the help of the psychic’s daughter, Blue, Gansey found Noah’s body in the woods along the ley line. What was left of it anyway. A skeleton with no flesh left on it, his Aglionby sweater’s crest, his wallet containing a driver’s license with a picture and name identical to their shy friend were it not for the crooked grin. The subsequent ‘we’re being haunted’ intervention went about as well as could be expected, considering Noah was never trying to hide that he was dead. If anything it was a bit of a relief that now they knew and were listening. Unfortunately since they called the cops his body was taken into custody and was removed from direct contact with the sleeping ley line. Noah’s soul was still tied to it, but his remains no longer being part of it made manifestation difficult. For much of the rest of the novel he’s only able to manifest when Blue’s amplification powers are actively in use, otherwise only able to function as a poltergeist. Once Adam fully wakes the ley line and the Czerny family have a funeral for their son, the group basically steal his remains and bury him on the now woken ley line. This allows Noah to manifest again like he did before.

For various problems that are new to both books, Noah gets regulated to the background supporting cast for the second and third novels, participating little in either of them. In the second novel there is a different power source sapping from the ley line leaving the power surging and then blacking out, so Noah is often sputtering in and out of existence. When he is present he spends time keeping Blue company while Adam and Gansey are away from Henrietta, letting her into Monmouth Manufacturing and spending the evening there with her, eventually giving Blue her first kiss since she is doomed to kill her true love when she kisses him and Noah is already dead. When they are alone together, Noah also confesses that sometimes he likes to pretend he is like the other boys and still alive.

When Ronan goes street racing in Gansey’s car, Noah attempts to talk Ronan out of it. He fails rather spectacularly, but the attempt is none the less made, and when the night terrors attack Ronan, Noah does not simply vanish but stays with Ronan so he doesn’t face them alone before he expends all the energy he has to fight one off for his friend.

Once THAT problem is taken care of, Noah uses his newfound freedom to spend a lot of time with Blue in book 3 instead of just quietly haunting Monmouth Manufacturing, or assisting Adam in maintaining the ley line when he can. When Blue intends to otherwise strike out on her own Noah tags along to keep her company. Her presence makes him even more stable and also he genuinely adores her. This unfortunately leads to Noah’s problem of the book - there is something else in Cabeswater now, something magical and sentient and possibly dangerous, and when they get close enough to it Noah becomes prime real estate for possession/manipulation by it. After one very creepy run-in while tagging along with Blue, Noah otherwise sticks to the sidelines to avoid being manipulated into hurting his friends. For good or for ill, he is not around to help.

Personality: Noah lost much of himself when he died, personality faded and stripped away like the flesh from the bones of his corpse. There’s a constant vagueness about him noticed by everyone who notices him, like he’s not quite all there. He is at least somewhat ashamed of this, longing to be more than a photocopy of a photocopy compared to how he used to be. Sometimes he pretends he’s alive, though usually only when he’s alone. He will also freely admit that the person he used to be probably wouldn’t be someone his friends now would like to be around.

Never having been particularly over-confidant in life (he was described as “the most mild ambitionless creature”), in death he is awkward around most strangers and sometimes even friends. Social anxiety is probably understandable when you aren’t always sure if anyone can see you in the first place. Knowing he’s often the extra wheel, Noah prefers to stand back when possible to make it easy to go ahead without him, to leave him behind. He was content to have no purpose in life, but it’s yet another thing that makes him fearful in death. Not that this list is particularly short, for being already dead Noah is surprisingly fearful. Then again, considering that he died consumed by it, by betrayal, maybe it isn’t so surprising that he is often slow to trust new people and is always afraid.

Noah is not always an anxious mess, of course. He has a certain childlike happiness when it comes to things that fascinate him, having lost any of the pride that once held that back. Among those he trusts he is free and easy with happiness and warmth… emotional warmth anyway, since he’s still a walking cold spot. His friends are also the kind that enjoy making others happy, so when Noah is happy he makes no compunctions about showing them they have succeeded in this. The truly privileged even get to see the bit of a flirt he used to be back when he was alive. He cares about the wellbeing of his friends, and if being happy helps that then he will do it. If keeping his mouth shut about their problems will help, he’ll do that too. He is perceptive to the moods and feelings of others and knows when to push and when to let things go.

It would be more comforting to be able to say that being dead for seven years left Noah’s sense of humor a little warped, but all signs point to this being his natural way of being even when alive. As an old friend described him, “[Noah] Czerny didn’t really have a sense of humor, he just sometimes said things that happened to be funny.” Noah happily laughs at Ronan’s dumb destructive humor, becomes obsessed with an altogether horrible meme song, and allows Ronan to throw him out windows for shits and giggles. He’s more perceptive now as to which jokes are cruel and should be kept to only himself, but as long as no one gets hurt everything else is fair game. If a distraction is needed he’ll be that, if comfort is needed he’ll do that. On rare occasions, if bravery is needed he might even be able to muster that. His friends take priority over everything to Noah - he quite literally has nothing outside of them, they are the entirety of his world and making their lives a little easier makes his afterlife a little brighter. Hard edges of an annoying teenage boy with something to prove if only by apathy have been worn away. Along with being shameless in his happiness, Noah is shameless in his kindness as well.

He is above all things loyal to those he calls friends. With his current friends, who are good people if sometimes dumb teenagers who are dumb, this is a shining mark of his character and the thing that is best about him. Last time it rather got him killed. He doesn’t know how to not be loyal, though. It’s simply as natural to him as breathing, it is who he is, when everything else was lost to the miasma of death and only the blueprint of the person that used to be Noah Czerny was attached to the Henrietta ley line, his loyalty stayed.

Items on your character at canon point: Literally all Noah has are the clothes on his back (his Aglionby uniform) that he died in and has been wearing for seven years.

Abilities: Noah is dead. He has been dead for seven years, going on eight. It’s about as dead as they get. I’ll be writing them up exactly as they appear in canon, but as they are all entirely dependent on the fact that he is dead and has his soul anchored as part of Cabeswater I’m open to any/all of the ghosty powers being nerf’d and/or removed at your discretion since he’ll be given a physical living body at least.

In general, as long as nothing is drawing power away from the ley line he’s tied to, Noah is more or less indistinguishable from a normal person. He blinks, he (seems to) breathe, he can physically interact with objects around him. On the other hand, he is always cold, and when he’s particularly emotional doors slam shut and mysterious winds knock around various things in the apartment. When the ley line gets disrupted, Noah becomes less ghost and more poltergeist. His touch loses its strength or he stops apparating as a person entirely, instead settling at being invisible and knocking things over, dropping the room temperature, and generally being an annoying telekinesis-inclined pest. His powers seem heavily based on his emotions, uncontrollable by a rational mind and acting out when his feelings spike accordingly. He always creates a strong cold spot when he reappears from being blacked out.

Another strange ability, set aside from others, Noah will sometimes reenact his death. Barrington Whelk (his murderer) will be absent but his interaction will be visible. It lasts eleven minutes, the first five of Noah looking around, searching for something before he gets his face smashed in by an invisible force (skateboard) and then six minutes of him in convulsions on the ground with a ruined face as he bleeds out. Whatever part of Noah that is conscious and sentient is not present for this. He reappears afterward with no memory of what just transpired.

His connection to Cabeswater has granted him Seer abilities similar to the other psychics in the novels. A strange mix between mind reading and prophecy, Noah is ‘removed’ from time and is able to see a greater view of it. He keeps it most of it to himself except for a few choice comments here and there to his friends to spur them into action or warn them of future danger.

Being a ghost and having no physical body means he is entirely impervious to any physical injuries, since there’s nothing there to injure. On the other hand he is extremely vulnerable to supernatural attacks and forces since all he has is his unprotected spirit.

In non-ghosty powers: Noah was a steady A- student at a school for boys with too much money to consider what to do with their lives and a decent hold of Latin thanks to his best friend being exceptional at it. He was good at freestyle skateboarding, good at kissing, a little too fond of driving fast cars. He is uncommonly awful at pool but he has fun anyway.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
+ Listener Noah is a very very good one. In the second and third books this is his primary role among his friends group, being a sounding board for problems, perceptively ferreting out that which they don’t necessarily want to admit but might need to hear and trying to offer help as long as it isn’t dependent on having a body to do so.
+ Non-threatening even when he’s trying to be rude he’s described as being more like a kitten attempting to growl with how threatening he looks. As long as he’s not reenacting his own death or is having a poltergeist episode, Noah appears as though he could not hurt a fly.

+/- Sidekick Some people are meant to be life’s sidekicks, destined to never take the spotlight but support others in their doing so. Noah is not only aware this is his role but he is perfectly content with this lot. He is not a leader by any means but is a dedicated follower. If left to his own, he tends to wait for someone to function as a leader to come along rather than striking out on his own. For better or for worse Noah is defined by the people he follows.
+/- Loyal On the one hand, when it comes to helping his friends he can overcome just about anything, even his own fear of everything. On the other hand, he literally tries to defend the man who murdered him because they were friends.
+/- Static As long as Noah is dead, Dante’s description of the spirits of the afterlife hold true with him. He cannot necessarily change or learn or get over his fears. As long as he’s dead, how he is now is how he’ll always be. On the other hand, aside from reenacting his death Noah has no other real signs of PTSD which makes him probably the most psychologically balanced of the Raven Boys. The maximum amount of damage that can be done to him has already been done, everything else kind of slides off his back as far as mental trauma goes.

-Coward For being invulnerable to physical harm, Noah is quite a fearful thing.
-Awkward While described as being a good bellweather for new people due to the amount of patience he requires to get to know, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s rather awkward. ‘His hands seem to belong even less places than other people’s’.

Samples
Network/Action Sample: Dumb teenagers being dumb on the TDM
Prose Log Sample: Noah had to focus on one thing at a time. First things first: breathing. They said it was an automatic function. Something you do without needing to think about it. The problem is if you go for almost a decade without needing it, every laborious breath inwards and outwards is cause for surprise, for overthinking the action and becoming only too aware of it. The burning feeling in your chest if you stop, if you lose the rhythm. He was acutely aware of the blood pumping through his veins. That he had them now. Noah reached up, pressed his fingers against his neck, felt his own pulse throbbing with every rapid heartbeat. Was it even rapid? Was this normal? He didn’t know anymore. Now he was doing two things. Noah drew his hand away quickly as if it had been burned by his own skin and tried to focus on the breathing again.

His skin may as well have burned. It was warm. A strange alien feeling.

Noah didn’t like being cold, dead, unable to truly connect, his existence bent to the whim of a dream forest powered by a magical energy source that was spotty at best… but it was something he was used to. A devil he was familiar with in a way he no longer was with life. He had to calm down, see if any of his friends were here. They would surely know what to do. If they weren’t here…

Another lance of panic ran through Noah. He didn’t want to think about what he’d do in this unfamiliar place, suddenly alive, surrounded by equally strange people. His friends would be here, they had to be. They had to be because otherwise -

He couldn’t think of otherwise. He’d become crippled with fear, unable to move, rooted to the spot as quickly as any corpse.

Bracing his hand against the wall behind him, Noah made an attempt to stand. His legs were filled with the tingly pins and needles feeling that gave him something entirely new to worry about - was he dying again? Was something horribly wrong? - before he remembered what it felt like when his legs fell asleep in classes. He fell back to the ground, took a few breaths, focused on the sudden pain of a bruise forming in his thigh from the fall.

“Ronan will be here,” Noah told himself, hands on the ground, deep breaths. Focus on the breathing. “Gansey will be here. Adam will be here. Blue will be here. Ronan will be here.”

He went to church with Ronan but he couldn’t remember any of the prayers from it. He’d just stick with his own for now.