Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2015 2:35:14 GMT -6
||| COLD SPROUT |||
picture by the incredible Reed
#Name; Cold Sprout
#Age Group ; Young Adult
#Species; Earth Pony
#Cutie Mark ; Two ghosts, seemingly in the shape of flower petals
#Occupation ; Amateur ghost hunter, traveler, aspiring author; meaning, she washes dishes to pay for hotel rooms a lot of the time.
#Powers and Abilities ; Debatable. Cold Sprout claims to have the ability to perceive and commune with ghosts and spirits, both natural and unnatural, and to interact to some degree. She does seem to have some measure of knack for knowing things she’s not supposed to and having some eerie guesswork; but there isn’t any actual proof to back up her claims 90% of the time, and she isn’t a bad cold-reader. She tells ponies that her cutie mark represents her duality of spirit, being partly in two worlds; in reality it might well just be a cutie mark in telling ghost stories.
Aside from that, she has your naturally common Earth Pony touch with plants and gardening, though her affinities in that regard run toward the esoteric. Can't keep a tulip alive to save her life, but give her a box full of sick Parasprite-Traps and she'll have the cute little snappers flourishing within the week. Bugs, as well, don’t bother her in the slightest—if a gardener needs some more creepy-crawlies
#Physique ; A little on the short side, with a thin frame but a bit of pudge around the belly.
#Mane and fur color and style ; Blue-gray mane and tail, cut and combed in a simple, straight style; her bangs conceal her right eye. (On occasion, her mane and tail are fully grey.) Her coat is a deeper blue, the color of pond water in the early winter, and about equally chilly to the touch.
#Eye color ; Clear blue
#Personality ;Cold Sprout has spent most of her life being considered a weirdo, the spooky chick to those who believe her and the possible nutter to those who don’t—and those are all fair judgments to make. She purports to spend most of her time chasing after the dead, maintains a rather morbid sense of humor and amusement, and makes frequent reference to things most ponies would scoot away from even on Nightmare Night.
One thing in particular that drives her is a strong sense of curiosity. Not content to let things lie, if there’s a mystery afoot, her Scooby-Doo instincts kick in and tell her to investigate. Trouble is, she doesn’t have great sense for separating ponies from that; she will stick her nose all up in your business if she thinks something’s fishy, and make the weirdest nuisance of himself.
What is worse is that she’s hypocritical—she’s open about her spiritual leanings and working life, but aside from that, plays her cards awful close to the chest. She doesn’t cop to something if she can help it, and even when she can’t, leaves as much unanswered as she can. She’s naturally taciturn, but another part of it is that she simply likes being mysterious, feels it like a little bit of power.
Cold isn’t malevolent with her issues, though. She generally /wants/ to be helpful and do well by others, but has a very funny way of going about it. Non-invisible friendship is one of those things she’s still trying to get the hang of.
That said, if you can get past the bizarre opinions and overall eerie attitude, she’s pretty mellow and non-judgmental. There’s something unflappable in there, and she extends that to her opinions of others—ponies can be wrong, mean, and rude, but there aren’t many proper eccentricities she won’t tolerate. As a result, her friends and companions tend to be a bunch of misfits, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
#History ;On a dark and stormy night in the town of Tall Tale, Cold Sprout was born in her family home to parents Bitter Suite and Pinstripe Stitch—along with her identical twin, Snowy Sprout. A year later their little brother came along, Creepy Crawlie (who to this day possesses a strong and lifelong affinity for entomology). They were of old blood in Tall Tale, dating back many generations—their ancestral home, the mansion estate atop Flaunted Hill, has both history and money long since behind it.
Her upbringing was offbeat, but happy—as strange as her family was, they were also all very kind, very loving, if a little ostracized by the community. She spent most of her very young days either playing with her sister or imaginary friends, being with her mum and dad, or following around their live-in gardener Mandrake as he tended their strange and sprawling greenhouses. 1
Unfortunately, school was not so pleasant an experience. She had been provided tutors before entering a classroom environment, and had some difficulties adjusting—the general spookiness of her family, especially the bond she shared with her twin, only served to make it easier for her to get the cold shoulder. Still, while she was never a social butterfly she made a couple of friends among the other outcasts, and she always had Snowy and Pungent to confide in.
She was a late bloomer in terms of cutie mark, as well. After being sent to a woodland summer camp around her tween years, she found herself in a predicament. Here were so many ponies who didn't know her, were ready to give her a chance so long as she could seem ordinary as any of them! But at the same time—she believed with a deep firmness that these woods were very haunted. (Sure, the counselors called it "timberwolves," but the tween was certain she knew what was up.)
Naturally, the talk of these woodsy beasts in the shadows had the other kids spooked, (and the rumors someone spread about ghosts in the woods wasn't helping). While they were gathered around the campfire she began spinning them a story to ease their minds. The details of this story are hazy; but she remembers that they were starting to calm down at first, relaxed by the simple dint of being told a story... then once she got to the denouement they were even more nervous than before, and quickly scrambled away to their respective tents. None of them got a look at her flank. But once they were gone, she got an idea in her head.
At some point between their departure and the next morning, her cutie mark was there—and she had mud caked halfway up all of her legs. 2 Unfortunately, she didn't make any friends after that story, but she came home with plenty of merit badges and a shiny new cutie mark!
Forward some years; Cold Sprout, throughout high school, cultivated and refined her interest in the paranormal. Mostly, this took the form of burying her noses in books, but she also went on "ghost hunts"—trips to supposedly haunted or bewitched places with the purpose of trying to make contact. According to her, she achieved contact many times, having taken tea with one of Clover the Clever's students in a castle in the Everfree and spent the night having a slumber party with all the spirits in the Fall Inn in Baltimare. 3
Once she came of age, she decided to continue this full-time—to take her knowledge and abilities on the road, travel Equestria's strange and backwater locales, and compile a book about them and what she finds—which she has tentatively titled The New Equestrian Paranormal Primer. Her money comes in part from her family, and in part from some small handfuls of ponies who have subscribed to a newsletter she puts out from the road, detailing some of her supposed observances and exploits.
Which is where we find her today.
Footnotes: 1 She had a particular affinity for their more unusual horticulture, the Moon Flowers and Baneful Blossoms, Spiritmint and Viscous Vine. The Stitch family prides themselves on funding and maintaining some very rare flora specimens, both in their private gardens and elsewhere.
2 She frustrated the counselors with her explanation of having gone puddle-jumping (despite it being the dry season). But they never did have problems with ghosts or timberwolves.
3 She even claims to have once been possessed by the infamous "Mad Dog" Duchess Nocturne Nightingale IV, though her companion at the time said that she just ate a really spoiled taco salad and spent the night stumbling around and howling about the Anubis.
The Roleplayer's Corner
#Nickname ; Dizzy
#Age ; Twentysomething
#Gender/Preferred Pronouns ; She/her
#How did you find us? ; Mimes
#Sample RP ;
Desert wind rustled through with the smell of dust and sweet berries, disturbing what few trees stood with their slowly drying summer foliage. There was only so much of the season left, and as what little green Dodge Junction held began inching to orange, the warm evening's winds held together the portent of chills to come.
Cold Sprout shifted her saddlebag, eyes drifting over the wooden gate to the sign above it. Black Berry Ranch. It was abandoned—had long since been put out of business by its own success, the ponies who tended the land finding more gainful work with the cherry orchard on the other end of town than they ever had trying to manage these wild thornbushes and delicate berries in the middle of the Appleoosan desert.
Beyond the gates were the old farmhouse, a supply barn, and of course, fields full of overgrown brush and crops, simply left to run amok after the land's tenders moved on. And amok they ran, grown patchy and tangled across a good deal of the earth, crawling up the sides of the dusty farmhouse and into its chimney, so thick around the
Rumor had it, though, that the land wasn't so innocent in its history. A book on the history of Dodge Junction had told her there was a plot of land cursed by the buffalo, one that was entwined with legends of the Shíca Makhá Huta—a root that cultivated grouchy or mischievous spirits for its property of growing into graves and poking awake those that rest there.
She pulled the flyer out of her bag again, looking it over. She had put a few of them up around town in the hopes of attracting a couple companions.SEEKING the Open-Minded and Inquisitive —
Paranormal investigator looking for like minds to accompany
on an excursion to find the spirits of the Black Berry Ranch.
Must be comfortable in the dark, able to climb small ledges,
not too easily frightened by spirits and other phenomena.
Inquire with Miss Cold Sprout at the gates of the Black Berry
Ranch, some time after 8 p.m. BYO torch or flashlight.
Payment around 50 bits, negotiable on results!
... She hoped that it would do. Bits were usually a fine way to get hooves, but this was a smaller town, and she worried she might not get as many bites.
Still, it was a firm rule to never go into an abandoned place alone. If she had to pay a pony to make sure nobody was hurt, so be it. She looked back towards the road she had walked down and flicked on the light that hung over her neck, casting long shadows down the dusty path...