Editing Coil (section)

==Personality==
Coil is a meticulous and paranoid planner, going out of his way to make sure he is secure and protected at all times. He has ambition and pride, especially in regards to keeping his possessions safe, be they people or cities.

He is quite patient, using his abilities at great length to take preparedness to an extreme, ensuring people cannot catch him off guard.<ref name="R4">You talk about the kind of science Coil could do elsewhere on this page. But if Coil was going to be a scientist, he wouldn't have had powers in the first place. Cauldron wanted him for Terminus and used the financial leverage of him being in debt to them to position him. If he hadn't had the craving for power & authority they would have looked elsewhere.<br>Keep in mind, also, that the shards aren't inclined to let people sit around and spend months of time working on side projects without getting any dose of conflict. What happens is you get Spheres and Professor Haywires and Leets.<br>Coil was difficult to kill because he was:<br>
*Inaccessible. Coil only made limited appearances to meetings like the one at Somer's Rock. He didn't eat, he didn't drink, and his costume covered his entire body, so it's hard to apply contact poisons, get him with parasites, penetrate to get him with a mosquito, etc. In virtually any instance where one could apply such or outright attack him, he defaults back to a scenario where he didn't attend the meeting. You'd need something utterly undetectable, and either guaranteed to kill him or that you could apply enough times to actually get him.<br>
*He acted almost entirely through intermediaries. Hirelings, underlings, and people that he had otherwise vetted. Dinah later served as a way to screen these hirelings. Before Dinah, he simply allowed very few people to actually meet him and only then when he could absolutely cover his ass with his power.<br>
*Dinah, once acquired, let him actually meet and deal with the Travelers and Undersiders. She, in short, let him cover his bases on the subtle aspects, the stuff he can't foresee and avoid, and his main power (as well as Dinah) let him cover his bases on the more blatant attacks. He wakes up every day and figures out the odds of him being betrayed by an underling, people trying to be clever and dose him with an airborne poison, the odds of another faction making a move against him, etc, etc. - [https://redd.it/55dgky Random thoughts on worm] ([[Wildbow]], Reddit.com, 2016-10-01)</ref> He is fine with torturing people for information and using multiple types of physical and psychological warfare.

His power allows him to capture and torture individuals for information and as long as his targets would have no memory of what happened and he would face no consequences. He used this partially to gather information and sometimes as stress relief.<ref name="I8xe1"/><ref name="I8xc1">Ah, but here’s my question – is it truly that bad, to murder, torture, maim, psychologically scar people, if it only really happens in your head? Or in a concurrent reality that never unfolds into long term consequences/a future? <br> <br>I’m sure all of us have idly daydreamed about kicking some irritating customer/client/bosses ass, what it would take to get away with murder, etc. Is that truly so different from what Coil does to relieve stress? <br> <br>I stress that this is a hypothetical, and should not be interpreted as my actual views. Just curious how people are interpreting it. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/interlude-8/#comment-1531 Comment by Wildbow] on [[Interlude 8.z]]</ref><ref name="SV82"/>
===Relationships===
====[[The Undersiders]]====
Formed the Undersiders as a team to use for various tasks. He started them on pulling insignificant heists to test their worth, slowly building up on what the team attempted. His relationship with them was strictly professional, with the Undersiders serving as tools to his disposal.
====[[The Travelers]]====
Coil had a working agreement with the Travelers, promising to work toward a way to fix Noelle in exchange for their employment under his organization. He came up with many plans to give the Travelers what they wanted, but when these failed, such as getting the assistance of Panacea, he ultimately decided to turn their situation to his advantage, leading the Travelers on with the false promise of a cure.<ref name="R2">Coil tried it. Touched-based biology alteration vs. touch-based power/ dampening & absorption. That universe didn't work out. - [https://redd.it/39cfrs Another Comment] by Wildbow on Reddit</ref><ref name="R3">Coil develops a cure for Echidna, and... no, I'm just kidding. When everything is lined up and the PRT is strained to breaking, Coil engineers for hired mercenary capes to attack his own complex and free her, leaving Coil 'injured' and out of the picture while everything else unfolds. Echidna attacks the city, people band together to fight her, and it serves much the same role as Leviathan did, but it's controlled destruction, engineered by Coil. In the aftermath, Piggot is accused of failing in her duties, and Calvert takes over a relatively strong PRT Department. Brockton Bay stabilizes, flourishing in cape population, and the rogue elements are systematically stamped out. Calvert manages both the city and the Protectorate. He controls Armsmaster, who controls an enslaved Dragon, because this Armsmaster never found the humility, nor did he face his inhumanity. Armsmaster heard enough through Piggot to know what's really going on, but is willing to work with Coil, because Coil put him on the world stage. - [What if: BB Super-villains]</ref>
==== [[Accord]] ====
Accord considered Coil a friend, though it is unknown to what extent this was considered mutual. His personality meshed well with Coil, though, and the two worked closely together. Accord was rather upset by Coil's death.<ref name="20.ye1"/>
====[[Cauldron]]====
In order to gain his powers, Coil made a deal with Cauldron, putting himself into a years-long debt in the process. Even after paying off his monetary debt, he still owed a week's service to Cauldron, something that grated on his nerves.<ref name="I8xe2" /> He was unknowingly the focus of one of Cauldron's experiments, the Terminus project, with his ambition and meticulousness making him an ideal subject for receiving powers.<ref name="R5">Nice post. Right on the mark.<br>On the subject of why they don't always hand out powerful vials - they don't always know the power level of a given vial. They've got this landscape of Eden, they take pieces of it, make it into concoctions and feed them to people. One vial might have fantastic results in one situation and peter out or end up horrific in another.<br>So they've spent the last 30 years figuring it out, trying to get as many vials to people as they can in the most constructive way they can. When they do get a set of powerful vials, they try to hold on to them and give them to the people they can make the most use out of. Often those are people in power (ie. the mayor of a town with a lot of capes, who then gives it to [[Triumph|his son]]), people with access (an ex-PRT captain with the potential to be Director), or [[Gallant| people with money]]. - [https://redd.it/3lowq1 Cauldron SOP]</ref><ref name="20.ye1" />