Cordelia is a psychic empath, able to feel and differentiate the emotions of people around her, even if she cannot see them directly. This is a passive ability, always on, and it is sensitive enough to detect people her other senses cannot simply by feeling their emotional presense. Additionally, Cordelia is the inheritor of a mystical ring that imbues her with an ancient mantle of power which grants great affinity with the Astral plane and the ghosts trapped within it. Due to her unusual childhood, detachment from normal people, and more recent ghostly experiences she often seems otherworldly and not-quite-sane.

Inheritor of a dark and mystic legacy, and cursed by a pyschic talent for empathy...Cordelia never had a chance at normal. Her teen years were a blur of confused emotions and mental instability, unaware of her psychic nature, unable to control it, and surrounded by people who even when well meaning could not hope to help and often only made the problem worse, bombarding Cordelia with emotions and adding to her confusion. Cordelia was prone to meltdowns and public disturbances; some requiring police intervention.

But Cordelia's family had once held bushels of money, and her and her mother were the sole living scions and thus beneficiaries of a sizeable remaining chunk of change. And where there is money, there is special consideration. Thus rather than juvenile detention or jail or the street, Cordelia spent much time on the couches, settees, divans, and lounge chairs of a long string of counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. When head shrinking didn't work, they tried meds. When that didn't work, they tried more meds. This iterated a few times. Finally she was electively institutionalized, "for her own good".

Cordelia likely would have spent most of her life in a medicated state wandering the halls and rec room of a facility for troubled minds, but when she was 26 her mother died and creditors appeared out of the woodworks. In the aftermath, Cordelia no longer had the money to remain at the facility, or for expensive therapy and the prescription drugs on demand that came with it. She was left with a small trust fund sufficient to get by on if frugal, her clothes and personal effects, and some family heirlooms...including a ring that had once belonged to Cordelia's grandmother that she had always coveted but that her mother had forbidden her to touch or wear. So, of course, putting it on was just about the first thing Cordelia did once it was in her possession.

This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. The ring is no mere mundane trinket, but a powerful and ancient artifact with a long history intertwined with Cordelia's ancestry. The ring ties Cordelia to an ages old pact with otherworldly forces, granting her the protection and assistance of ghosts. Some may have been driven crazy by the ensuing ghostly visitations and interference in their life by shades of people long dead that others can not see...but Cordelia was a weathered survivor of the no-mans land between sane and insane. She not only managed to deal with this new reality, it actually helped her to master her own empathic abilities...though perhaps improvement in that area was more due to no longer being doped to the gills on prescription drugs.

Now Cordelia has a different kind of life...decidedly not "normal"...but not without its up moments. Some of the ghosts who watch over Cordelia urge her to get involved in various unusual undertakings such as helping the recently departed to settle matters left behind like avenging their murders or putting things right for a loved one, as well as more general supernatural affairs...and they sometimes even take steps to involve her if need be.