Investigator name: Isabel "Izzy" Cooper
Age: 23 (birthday July 2000)
Occupation: Police Detective (Detective Constable)
Development Points: 7 gained total, 5 spent
- Increased Athletics to 40%
- Learned 2nd order spell (Impello Palma)
- Learned 1st order spell (Aqua)
- Mastered Aqua
- Learned 1st order spell (Flash Bulb)
STR: 40 (20)
CON: 40 (20)
DEX: 60 (30)
INT: 80 (40)
POW: 60 (30)
Luck: Starting: 72 --- Current: 51
Magic Points: 14 --- Current: 12
MOV: 8
Damage: 0 points
Status: Fine
Advantage: Magical (major)
Common Skills:
Athletics 40/20
Drive 30/15
Navigate 60/30
Observation 60/30
Read Person 60/30
Research 30/15
Sense Vestigia 60/30
Social 60/30
Stealth 30/15
Expert Skills:
Language - English (own) 80/40
Law 60/30
Magic 60/30
Additional Expert skills (gained during investigations):
History 40/20
Combat Skills:
Fighting 30/15
Firearms 30/15
Signare: The deep contented purr of a cat; the scent of lavender; a clockwork tick-tock precision
First order spells: Werelight (mastered); Impello; Aqua (mastered); Flash Bulb
Second order spells: Candano; Impello Palma
Affluence rating: Average
Backstory:
Izzy Cooper was born at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and raised in Croydon, well within the M25 circle, to a fairly average middle class family. She was always known as a quirky sort, with a love of the morbid that would rival an Addams, but with a bright and cheerful personality and a bizarre tendency to say whatever she was thinking, mostly oddball stuff that made for a strange mix of endearing to her friends and off-putting to those who didn't know her well. She got better at hiding her quirks as she grew older, but could never push them down entirely.
Izzy had wanted to join the Met ever since an officer came to her school during her early teens to give a speech on career opportunities in the police force. Ironically her older brother had already had plenty of run-ins with the police, due to a combination of numerous petty thefts and the simple fact that he hadn't spent a day of his adult life without being high on either weed, 'shrooms, or LSD, although none of this did anything to diminish the family's love for him, considering that other than the thefts Izzy's brother was completely harmless (bordering on pacifism). Still, even with how close she was to her brother, Izzy enrolled at Hendon Police College not long after her A-Levels (two As, a B and two Cs), completing her 13 week course not long after her 19th birthday. Two years of probation later, and she was quickly tapped up to join the Murder Squad, after impressing DS Stephanopoulos and DCI Seawoll with her quick thinking and deductive reasoning.
Seawoll figured he could learn to live with her quirks and her tendency to not shut up.
Izzy's first few cases went fairly well, despite an embarrassing incident where she asked someone out on a date who turned out to be the killer they were looking for (she had to cancel the date which she already had fully planned, although it might have been a lucky escape considering the girl was a psychopath who had murdered her cousin for the life insurance). Even so, it wasn't to last. A strange case came up, where Izzy was assigned to the crime scene of a corpse that had been mysteriously drained of all fluids - blood, water, spinal, stomach acid, you name it, it wasn't there. Seawoll and Stephanopolous already suspected 'weird bollocks', but when Izzy arrived at the scene she was overcome with the strangest sensation - industrial waste, the smell of rotting sewage, visions of pig carcasses, and an overwhelming sense of regret - and just like that, she was seconded to the Special Assessment Unit, aka The Folly.
It was a shock to the system to learn that magic was real, and more so when they discovered alongside DC Peter Grant that the culprit was some type of mutated vampire dwelling under an old slaughterhouse in Rotherhithe that had since been converted into fancy apartments. When the case was closed, Izzy was eager to learn more, and with the dawning of the Folly Expansion document she was one of the first to put her name forward for transfer to the SAU. Seawoll wasn't too happy, but he could see she had her heart set on joining the Folly, and gave his grudging acceptance, sad to see one of his brightest young officers leaving his own ranks.
Since then, Izzy has been studying the basics of Newtonian magic under DCI Nightingale (taking on part of his
signare, his tick-tock precision, as her own), whilst working to serve the citizens of London through her new role as both a practitioner and officer of the Folly.
Now, Izzy is living alone in a fairly cheap studio flat at Argyle Court, located on Seven Sisters Road just down from Finsbury Park. She is currently single (though not for lack of trying, the aforementioned murderess being her latest attempt at dating) but does share the flat with a two year old black and white cat named Freya - one of a litter of kittens born to her parents' own cat, Maisie. She is still close to her older brother, Anthony (aged 28) despite his run-ins with the law, while he lives somewhere in Camden, and her parents Anna (aged 54) and Michael (aged 56), who still live in Croydon in the house she grew up in. She enjoys going back to their place for Christmas, but most of her social life is in Finsbury Park - nights out at Rowan's Tenpin Bowl, rock climbing at The Castle Centre, and jogging in Finsbury Park itself. She has a close knit circle of friends, mostly young people from her current neighborhood and old friends from school who didn't go off to university.
Updates since Case File 1:
Izzy spent some formative months at the Folly, learning how to use magic and even mastering her first basic spell, as well as getting involved in a few minor cases under the supervision of DC Grant and DCI Nightingale. She was paired with fellow DC Leo Dansby, who had been recruited to the Folly from the force in Cambridge. Soon enough, they were sent on their first proper "weird bollocks" case without direct supervision - investigating a bookstore in Theatreland that may or may not have been haunted. In doing so, Izzy and Leo would be paired with new 'Folly-adjacent' colleagues, or civilian consultants - pathologist Jordan Schneider, private eye Skipper (Raymond Pearson, though he never told them his actual name...), and the waif and stray, Destiny Orivo, aka Des, who could apparently see ghosts, Haley Joel Osment-style.
The case seemed to go smoothly enough, and they discovered that the 'ghost' was in fact a brand new Genius Loci, similar to the river goddesses, created from the mix of children's energy in the bookstore and the lingering emotions of an old cock fighting ring once located on the site. This strange invisible chicken/toddler hybrid entity simply wanted someone to read books to it, or else it would throw a tantrum. Newly christened
Errol by the pop culture spouting team, the entity was calmed, and a plan put in place to keep it happy in the future.
Oh, and Izzy managed to bag herself a date with Alice, the cousin of her best friend, for the next day! She worried about being too tired to turn up, given she'd spent the previous night ghost hunting and cleaning up books until the wee hours, but a nap when home and a lot of coffee beforehand were enough to keep her sane. The date seemed to go well, and Izzy looked forward to seeing a lot more of Alice in the near future...
Updates since Case File 2:
A few months after their first case, the Folly Irregulars (as Izzy liked to think of them) along with Izzy herself and her colleague Leo, were sent to deepest darkest Herefordshire (well, a small village just outside Hereford, at least) in the autumn to pay back a favour for an old friend and colleague of DCI Nightingale's. Mike Butterfield, former detective and now aspiring skittles champion and retiree, wanted the team to look into a strange occurrence that was haunting his local pub's skittles team - why did they always seem to win at home, and lose when playing away? Though Izzy was skeptical at first of any supernatural involvement, the clear presence of
vestigia on site was enough to prompt an investigation. Meanwhile, Izzy also kept an eye out for anywhere nice to stay for a weekend away with Alice, by now firmly both her girlfriend and resident cat-sitter.
As they dug into the history of the village of Nennington, and the Nennington Nutters skittles team, the group ended up uncovering the tragic deaths of one Lee Snelgrove (former skittles player for the team), and a local builder, as well as discovering the existence of a very strange urn with some rather horrific runes decorating the sides. The urn allegedly contained the ashes of Lee's old scoresheets and other skittles paraphernalia. Elsewhere, Leo was on the hunt (unsuccessfully) for a nice civil servant boyfriend at the local records office, and Skipper's eye was caught by a modern lady vicar with a taste for The Cure, much to the annoyance (as everything is) of Des.
Returning to the pub, the group ended up mostly ensnared by the magic of the missing urn, which turned out to have been hidden for years in a wall cavity behind the scoreboard - with the revenant of Lee Snelgrove giving a bit of supernatural aid (in other words, his ghost was a cheating bastard) to his old team. As Izzy secured the urn for safekeeping in the Folly and further research, Leo accidentally burned down the outbuilding where the skittles games took place, with a rather errant Fireball spell. Jordan gave his best medical aid, and the group managed to get back to London without further mishaps, handing over the urn to DCI Nightingale to allow further study by the Folly's resident archivist, Harold Postmartin.
Izzy returned home to Alice where they had a rather
enjoyable late night reunion, the others all headed home to their respective abodes, and Nightingale got to watch the Harlequins get absolutely trounced by the Maori All Blacks (because of course they did, it's the All Blacks...) in the Autumn Internationals. Still, some questions remain. What did pub landlord Neil Sholto-Jones have to do with the urn? What were the strange runes decorating it, and what could they mean? And was Lee Snelgrove involved in the builder's death in some way, or was it simply an unhappy coincidence...?