Spooky Character Building Contest

Name: Carmen Jesen
Personality: Carmen is probably even more eccentric than most of the cases she takes as an officer for Paranormal Investigation Department . She might be patient person with sharp mind when it comes to piecing evidence together, but has bad nerves when it comes to people who are annoying, or even worse, boring. Thanks to her gift, Carmen can't be sceptical about paranormal, so she decided to be sceptical about everything else.
Backstory: Carmen's story begins in certified middle of nowhere, small town called Flurp surrounded only by cornfields, cornfields and guess what? More cornfields!
Carmen was clearly aware from an early age that she was the strangest thing that had ever happened to Flurp since its founding. As a toddler, she appeared in a cardboard box from Amazon in the middle of a field beyond the western edge of town. The child with the strange eyes was taken in by the family that owned the field. The Jesen family may have done everything they could to ensure that Carmen grew up like any other child in Flurp, but it cannot be said that they succeeded.
Yes, the weirdo with the even weirder eyes may have gone to the same school and played on the same playgrounds as the other kids, but she was also able to stand for hours on end on her porch, staring at the cornfields stretching to the horizon. Carmen is still haunted by dreams of shadowy figures that only she could see walking through them.
Weird kids sometimes grow up to be normal adults. At least that's what it seemed like at first, when she found a job as a secretary at a well-paying government company in a big city far from the cornfields. But she happened to be a secretary for the Paranormal Investigation Department in the CIA building. It quickly became clear that she was a lousy secretary, but her talent for seeing the unseen hadn't escaped her superiors, and after hundreds of hours of training and signing an alarmingly large number of non-disclosure agreements, she was promoted to junior agent.
Years passed, the number of successfully solved cases increased, and one day Carmen realized that maybe it was time to return after all these years to where it all began. To the porch of a house on the western edge of Flurp, overlooking a cornfield.
It wasn't an official investigation. Instead, she took her first vacation since joining the force, returning as a stranger to the place where she grew up.
Flup hadn’t changed terribly, but she had. Because this time the shadows weren’t just scattered among the corncobs, but standing on every corner, ignored by everyone except the stranger with the strange sunglasses. Carmen quickly realized that with every step she took westward, there were more and more shadows.
But it was her home that took her breath away. More precisely, the place where the house had once stood. It wasn’t just that it had disappeared—it was as if it hadn’t even existed. At the end of the road was a short stone wall and a lone shadowy figure sitting on it. Behind? Only cornfields and cornfields.

Name: Elvy Eld of Lorn
Personality: Born with the blessing of centaur kind, Elvy is a swift, but soft-hearted creature with a gentle, vigorous spirit and a mind stuck in the shining heavens. She is a maladaptive daydreamer, though her kin often calls her trances, "the moments when the high clouds part, and display visions of the future and past." She is patient with both young and old, tending to the weak and frail of her kind. She frequently performs in front of her village with other youthful maidens, whirling in front of a raging bonfire. With a low voice, she chants ancient ballads, spinning and stamping her hooves to a dance passed down through the generations. She is also rather gifted with the notes of a lute, enacting old stories and tales with the melodic strum of her instrument. She has a slow way of words, taking time to consider her replies before she speaks, often trailing off mid-sentence. With a mind full of fables and songs, she finds it hard sometimes to recall details of her own life, leading her to associate every memory and each of her loved ones with a special plant or flower so that she would never forget them. She keeps all of her connections penned down in an old leather journal that she keeps hung by her side, which she calls her "book of lost memories." She fears of forgetting those that she loves most, so she spends much of her free time memorizing and re-memorizing her notes. She wears a special collar crafted from silver, which was given to her by a special friend named Leofey.

Backstory: Elvy lives in the quiet centaur village of Lorn, where the pathways are littered with bright leaves and the giant skeletons of old beats, and the fields are filled with dancing children cloaked in black robes. Lorn is hidden in the high knolls of Wolyns, tucked away from the warring peoples of Yew. The centaur's keep to themselves, drinking, feasting, and performing the eerie plays and songs created by the ancient ancestors, who had resided in Lorn before them. They find it is their duty to entertain the restless souls that also dwell in their wood, who echo and scream words of hungering and blood. Despite the wars, they are untouched by death, yet haunted by decay, turning a blind eye to the petty battles fought between the long legged-folk (humans, respectfully,) and the giant, wrathful drakes of the West. Elvy is regarded as one of the village seers, as she is blessed with accurate predictions of the weather, harvest abundance, and illness outbreaks which are revealed to her whilst she dreams by a sacred higher power. There are times when she does not understand a vision, and mumbles the revelations beneath her breath in a slow chant, in hopes to uncover the meaning. On occasion she becomes fearful of her abilities, afraid that the destruction of her people will one day be revealed to her. In these moments, she turns to her special friend, Leofey, a blind centaur who offers her insight and consolation on her darkest of days. He is rather gifted with the weaving of precious ores and metals into jewelry and adornments, a skill that only centaur kind is capable of.
When an ill-fated omen is given to her, and the war of the Yew-folk wreaks havoc and destruction on her village, Elvy finds herself on a road to unearth the secrets and the betrayals that led to the terrible war, and why their ancestors concealed themselves all those years ago. With Leofey loyally by her side, the pair sets out through the bogs and valleys of Wolyns, and up through the high, cragged peaks on the outskirts of Yew. They are trailed by anxious souls who shriek of death and silence, unable to be put to rest. Elvy's dreams are soon filled not with hopeful interpretations for her village's welfare, but nightmares wrought with decayed flesh and blood pools seething in the fields.
In their long wandering, Elvy begins to struggle to recall the members of her kin, and the people that she loved most, the lines between dream and reality beginning to blur. Leofey offers as much consolation as he can, but is weakened by an illness that arrests him while they travel.
The pair is forced down into a small village of Yew, where a kindly family takes them in and helps nurse Leofey back to health. The family shares their history, and Elvy learns that the humans had been victims of the wrathful dragons for many centuries because of an ancient blood-feud that had begun long ago, and they had not been able to drive them away because of their lessening numbers.
It was because of this feud that the centaurs had fled all those years ago, abandoning the humans to their fiery doom. Ashamed, Elvy insists on being taken to one of the towns that had recently been attacked to offer her services. She aids the humans by determining where the dragons would attack next with her visions, and Leofey helps by healing those injured, and burying those that died.
After several years, Elvy realizes that even with their help, the humans still have very little chance, and, determined to rescue the suffering race, returns to her village with Leofey by her side. Trailings of the haunting souls flit after them, bringing melancholy decay in their wake. The two of them tell their stunned people of the horrible ache that they had witnessed, demanding that they come to aid them in their battle.
Many months pass full of refusals and denials, but the pair eventually arouses a large collection of willing fighters, healers, and metal weavers who become excited to join the cause. They travel to the towns of Yew and help the failing humans, bestowing them weapons crafted of silvery ore, and aiding in battle with arrows lighter than feathers, yet stronger than dragon scales.
Year after year goes by, and the humans and centaurs toil and fight with unending determination, and one by one, each of the great dragons fall, and the rest of the drakes flee back into the west with whatever strength was left. Finally, a wistful peace is bestowed upon the humans, and the weeks are spent mourning the countless slain. Having spent a majority of her life fighting this war, Elvy weeps for the dead, unable to fully recall the details of her beloved childhood through the confusion and turmoil from the battle. She wanders the forests on the outskirts of Yew in a quiet reverie, with only the shrieks of the undead to console her. She passes beyond the border of life and death, before returning to the towns, where sweet Leofey patiently guides her home. They finally settle down together in a small neck of the wood in Lorn, beside a gurgling river, where they spent the rest of their years in a bittersweet happiness.
Though, they never did wander far from home, for the wailing of the restless spirits accompanied them evermore.

Name: Spencer Calloway
Personality: He seems cold and distant at first but if you compliment his art or ask him more about who the beings are, he’ll warm up to you. He’s only quiet because he doesn’t trust others a lot. He loves to make art and the smell of apples and corn and he’ll happily let you into his life if you aren’t so quick to judge.
Backstory: Spencer loved his family’s cornfield. How one could get lost in it. How he could speak to his friends in peace, without the judgement of others. Growing up, Spencer loved to make art that used bright, bright splashes of colors, with pictures that resembled shapes no human should have ever been able to see. He didn’t like how dismal his town was, how there wasn’t much to do, so he used art and the beings to keep him company. Spencer does not know what the beings are. They could be ghosts or demons, but either way, he lets them all in, because as strange or off-putting as they seemed, they still deserved to be heard and he wouldn’t shut them out. They weren’t like the people in his neighborhood, who pointed and gave odd looks at him as though he were evil incarnate. Evil! The pure ridiculousness of it! Spencer would have laughed at it if he didn’t feel so empty, if he didn’t feel so sad. The happy moments with the beings and the cornfield were cherished, but fleeting. If only Spencer could make them all understand that the beings were not to be feared…nobody knows how, but every October, the people who live in the houses next to the Calloway cornfield swear that they can see bond pale hands pulling at their face, trying to tear their skin off. They all describe it as a “nightmare”, but when October is over, they grow disinterested about their own lives, disconnected from the world, eyes glazed over like a corpse, until…until they’re just gone. But Spencer can see them. Spencer is always willing to listen.

Not so fun fact: Spencer didn’t always have luscious hair like you see in the photo. Many say that his hair is golden and coarse like the corn stalks. As he grew into his teen years, he’s had to sleep in the cornfield. Sleeping in a bed is uncomfortable for him. When he’s out of the cornfield, his hair will look as if it’s grown an inch.