Agent Cornfield (he/him) is a character played by Hal (he/him) in A Trip to Shade City, a Tiresian Archvies Nonfiction One-shot. He is a tabaxi revenant divination wizard/mastermind rogue with the criminal/spy background.
Description
Agent Cornfield is a 5' 10" tuxedo-patterned Tabaxi of medium build. He has a notch missing from his left ear. He wears a light blue wizard hat and a cloak over a fine white linen shirt, well-kept, tailored black pants, and expensive-looking black boots.
Agent Cornfield is, at all times, polite and professional. His demeanor is dry but friendly to friends and enemies alike. He constantly keeps eyes and ears open, looking for ways he can use his environment or potential threats' weaknesses to get out of any tough situations that may arise. After all, he firmly believes it's better to avoid letting a problem arise to begin with rather than deal with one when it happens. This is not to say he is averse to risk, however; he is confident in his ability to handle attackers or, even better, talk his way out of a scrap.
Cornfield is extremely vain, even with his decaying flesh. He will use his disguise kit to cover up any evidence of his undeath. If his clothes are torn or stained, he will lose his handle on his cool demeanor, even though the problem is easily fixed with Prestidigitation or Mending.
Without the ability to remember names, Cornfield will use a notable, readily observable feature about a person to refer to them. Bewildered and thrown off by the need, he is not necessarily mindful of whether or not this might be insulting when he does it.
Backstory
Agent Cornfield grew up as the child of petty nobles, comfortable but not particularly pampered. Through his childhood, his parents slowly saved up, and he was able to attend wizard school when he was old enough. After graduating with honors from the School of Divination, he was recruited by the national government of Nation X on the Kauvetian political map for his skills. After a couple of years proving himself as a general magical practitioner, largely acting as a translator and messenger, he was trusted enough to enter the nation's intelligence service, surreptitiously gathering information on other nations and the crown to aid Nation X in navigating the Kauvet's complex internal political machinations. Over time, Cornfield climbed the ranks, becoming one of the nation's most trusted and competent agents.
One of the projects the nation had embarked on during Cornfield's time of service was acquiring the reports the Kauvetian Navy's Observation Corps compiles on the storms that rage in the seas surrounding the peninsula. This information is typically privileged for only the eyes of the Navy and the Crown, and the nation wanted to see if it could be used to grasp an even greater control on the waters than it already has through its control of the archipelagos off the south point.
Cornfield's last mission was simple: on his way back from another mission, he was a courier for one of these stolen reports retrieved from a contact back to the capital, concealed by opening the stitching on his robes, slipping it in, and closing them up. Simple, really. No problem for an agent of his caliber. However, on the route, taking a footpath, Cornfield encountered a fatal nemesis: a freak brain aneurysm that left him collapsed, dead on the ground.
A passerby found his body on the path, searched him, and found nothing that could possibly identify Cornfield or indicate where he came from. Bearing a strong respect for the dead, the stranger had him buried with his possessions in a nearby graveyard, marked with a small, unlabeled monument.
Now, about a year later, he's awake. And he has a job to do.
Trivia
Hal has provided a reference image for Agent Cornfield, seen here.
The aneurysm affected the part of Cornfield's brain that was able to remember names, including his own. In conversation, he cannot hold onto a person's name for more than a few sentences. This issue extends to place and monument names, but Cornfield is able to describe people and locations in specific enough terms that people are eventually able to discern who or what he is referring to.
Ostho Castiron, player character in Arc 4: The Maw of Nathair, stole and sold a bundle of Observation Corps reports to Nation X during his time as a cook for the Corps, framing a crewmate for disrupting the anti-tamper mechanisms on the files.
Lore
This introduces the idea of an intelligence service for Nation X, but does not canonize it.
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