Raizel Cohen: Cursebreaker

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    Raizel Cohen: Cursebreaker

    on October 16, 2011, 03:17:49 AM

    Your Nickname: Sparky
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    Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

    Full Character Name: Raizel Chava Cohen
    Character Birthday & Age: April 19, 1981; 28
    City & Country of Birth: Tel Aviv, Israel
    Blood Purity: Halfblood
    Alma Mater: Beit Gaddol
    Job/Position: Cursebreaker

    Wand: Eight inches, acacia, with a unicorn hair core and a delicately spiraled shaft.  The wand is best for hexes and more esoteric magics; it is extremely moody and unreliable when it comes to transfiguration or spells that rely on brute power.

    Physical Description: At first glance, nothing about Raizel Cohen's appearance comes off as especially eye-catching.  She stands just under average height, with a frame that is more soft than muscular or slender.  Her long hair is naturally blond, and she normally wears it loose and flowing.  Now approaching her thirties, her warmly pale skin still sunburns as easily as she did in her youth.

    Raizel carries herself with confidence, but she is adept at changing her body language to suit the situation.  High cheekbones and dark eyes give her an expressive face; most of her surface emotions are easy to read.  She adapts her clothing to suit the situation; her travels have led her to pick flowing Muggle clothes over wizarding robes, but she seems at home in either. 

    Upon close observation, Raizel is noticeably left-handed.  The upper portions of the last two fingers on her right hand are missing; she has developed a habit of keeping that hand in her pocket, tucked out of sight.

    Personality Description: Meeting Raizel Cohen in full force for the first time often leaves one feeling as if they've just been struck by a hurricane.  Whatever she does, she throws herself into it intensely and whole-heartedly.  Quick-witted and with an obvious love of adventure, she has spent most of her life traveling around the magical world, constantly seeking out new experiences and thrilling at the rush of adrenaline that comes from always living on the edge.

    Smart and capable, likable and charismatic, Raizel is a natural actress, with an ear for dialects and an innate sense of compassion. She is capable of thinking quickly on her feet, which sometimes leads her into making spot decisions instead of carefully considering all of her options.  Hints of her once-fiery temper creep through from time to time, though these brief flickers are nothing compared to the infamous inferno that she occasionally unleashed while at school; her short time in the IDF taught her enough discipline to keep those explosions under control.  She is upfront and direct, never talking around a subject; when she wants to express her opinion, not even an act of the divine can keep her from speaking her mind.

    Raizel has a superb memory when it comes to details.  Her ability to recall obscure facts has served her well in her professional life, as even when she can't remember a spell exactly, she can often identify exactly where in which scroll she has seen it before.  She is adept with her wand, though she favors creativity more so than power; back in school, she once prided herself on her ability to demonstrate more and more esoteric curses during the dueling club, and she still loves to show off in the same way.

    As outgoing and capable as she appears, Raizel reveals little of her true feelings or motivations.  She still wants desperately to prove herself, and that inner longing to prove her worth and establish her reputation often leads her to take unnecessary risks or make careless decisions that cause her trouble later on.  Her travels have left her a little too jaded.  She sees herself as too smart to ever really commit and too wise to be taken in, but for those who recognize her buttons, she is easy to manipulate.  Raizel often projects her own motives onto others, and it serves her poorly when it comes to predicting their behavior.  Many of the problems in her life have been of her own making; she fluctuates between rushing in too quickly or cutting out too soon, and even after a decade of traveling the world, there is almost no one that she can truly call an ally.

    History: Born in Tel Aviv in 1981, Raizel was the beloved second child of Binyamin and Lea Cohen.  Her parents were both Ashkenazi Jews; her mother's parents had immigrated from Hungary to Palestine just before the start of World War Two, and her father was a Muggleborn mage who chose to settle in Israel after attending Beit Gaddol as a student.

    Raizel was the middle child of the family, bookended by an older sister and a younger brother, and her early years left her entirely happy with her place in the world.  Far more outgoing than either of her siblings, Raizel was the spark in the family, leading the way with rough-and-tumble play and providing the fire for plenty of games and rivalries with other children in their neighborhood.  The Cohens, though not extraordinarily upper class, had always been of decent means, and their three children were never left wanting.  The uncertainty of life in Tel Aviv during the 1980s was partially mitigated by the fact that Binyamin Cohen was a mage, and protective wards became a regular fact of the family's existence.

    Raizel's admittance to Beit Gaddol was entirely expected.  Her sister Eszter, two years her senior, was already a mage student there, and there had never been a question about the younger Cohen sister's affinity for magic.  Raizel hit the school like a whirlwind, a standout in even the normally brash Gibbor house, and took pride in quickly becoming one of the more well known (though decidedly infamous more so than popular) young students at school.

    Throughout her school years, Raizel was constantly driven by the sense that she needed to prove herself.  She was infamous for showing off in class, which was not always regarded kindly at Beit Gaddol, and she soon established a reputation as someone who never backed down from a challenge.  When fights broke out or rivalries developed in the school hallways, Raizel was always one of the first to jump in, even when she cared little about the actual disagreement.  When given the opportunity to join the school's dueling club, Raizel prided herself on her growing reputation for coming up with esoteric and unique curses, each one worse than the last.  She was never the most powerful mage, but her unending drive to prove that she was as capable as the others led to many late nights in the school library, turning pages until she happened upon the perfect hex.

    When Raizel graduated from Beit Gaddol in 2001, she was left feeling suddenly rudderless.  She had grown used to being, if not a star pupil, then certainly one of the standouts; everyone at Beit Gaddol had known who she was, for better or for worse, but suddenly, her social and academic world had come to a shattering end.  Most of her friends were moving on to internships, opting out of their mandatory military service with a religious deferment.  Raizel, who had been raised a patriotic citizen of Israel and whose employment prospects had become considerably dimmer after an incident involving a disastrous fight with her then-current boyfriend at a school-sanctioned dance, chose to make her own way by joining the IDF.

    The normal enlistment period for female soldiers was two years.  For Raizel, it might as well have been two lifetimes.  In the armed forces, she was no longer special; she couldn't cast any magic, and even with her mostly-Muggle upbringing at home, she was leaps and bounds behind her fellow recruits when it came to technology.  Being forced to abide by a disciplinary system that she couldn't charm her way out of was eye-opening for her, as was the harsh reality of life on the perimeter of the West Bank.  It was only pride and sheer stubbornness -- and the disappointment she would have had to face from her parents if she had deserted -- that kept her there long enough to settle in.  By the time her enlistment period was over, Raizel bailed without a single look back.

    Her second attempt to enter the job market proved no more successful than her first.  While Raizel knew what she enjoyed and had a fair understanding of what she was good at, she still had no idea of how to translate that into regular work.  She spent some time drifting from job to job, jumping upon whatever employment she could get -- most of which was not entirely savory, and grew less so as time stretched on.

    She fell into the job with Gringotts almost by accident a couple of years later.  At the time, Raizel had been working for a shady organization based out of Turkey, which was in the process of trying to hunt down a supposedly lost artifact.  Over the course of the adventure, she crossed paths with a Gringotts Cursebreaker, who -- after beating them to the punch -- insufferably suggested that she might want to apply for a job.  Raizel, fuming, took advantage of the offer anyhow and spent the next year training in Egypt.

    She has been an official Cursebreaker for four years now.  Though she still occasionally takes work on the side, Raizel's contracts with Gringotts always come first.  All it took was one creative "juggling" of an early assignment -- and the incidental fall-out, which unforgettably took the form of the loss of two fingers -- for her to decide that no money was worth risking the goblins' ire.  Whoever else she might run out on, it is never the wizarding bank. 

    Most of her work currently takes her to Eastern Europe and the Middle East.  She has flourished with most of the assignments given to her so far, but with a few years now under her belt and her confidence firmly established, she is itching to get her hands on something even bigger.

    Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Raizel is primarily a Cursebreaker.  She travels on behalf of Gringotts Wizarding Bank, searching out potential objects for their collections and dealing with any curses or magical protections that might be placed on them.

    She has been known to take on other employment on the side -- especially jobs that promise to be intriguing or exciting -- but she has learned the hard way never to double cross the goblins.

    Elaborate on your expertise in your field: While a student at the prestigious Beit Gaddol school for mages, Raizel demonstrated a knack for esoteric magic.  Curse-breaking -- foiling enchantments -- is something that comes naturally to her, born out of an intense love for show off and hours upon hours of practical research.  As an adult, Raizel has remained intensely interested in foreign or unique magic, and even the barest hint of it is usually enough to catch her curiosity.  She is a worldly traveller and is able to easily settle into many different countries and cultures, though she sticks mainly to Eastern Europe and the Near East.

    Raizel is still fairly new at her job, and it often shows in her techniques.  Though she has a wide knowledge of different magical types and an adept memory, she tends to leap before she looks and has a reputation of rushing in too quickly.  (Chances are good that there is an ongoing pool at Gringott's headquarters on whether or not she will really survive her first decade.)

    Writing Sample:

    Sum up your character in one paragraph: Bold and confident, Raizel Cohen has managed to turn living on the edge into a profession.  She has yet to find a true calling, but she substitutes a love of adventure for intentional direction.  Her habits of misjudging others and leaping in before thinking things through has gotten her into trouble, but as of yet, she hasn't learned many lasting lessons from her mistakes.
    Last Edit: February 09, 2022, 10:47:10 PM by Raizel Cohen
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