Channelers

Long ago, an old woman stood at the bank of a river on a chilly, windy day. Her favorite cloak, her source of warmth on days like these, had fallen into the river--by sheer luck it had snagged on a branch, otherwise it would have been swept away by the current. Fretting that she might lose her garment forever, she called out to a man walking along the nearby road.

"Sir, please! A moment of your time. Could you please retrieve my cloak? It's just slightly beyond the bank. I fear I am too frail to retrieve it myself without succumbing to the current."

The man, a well-dressed and dashing gentleman, looked at the woman as if she'd gone mad.

"And ruin these shoes? Certainly not! You can buy a new cloak for far less than the cost of my footwear."

Scowling for a moment, the woman regained her composure with a deep breath. "Sir, the cloak has much sentimental value. If you won't simply remove them, I'll pay for your new shoes, you don't appear to be in any hurry otherwise. Please, the branch could give way at any time!"

Despite lacking any other compelling excuse, the man still refused. "You'll just have to wait for someone else to be bothered to help you, ma'am. I'm not going to waste my time fishing a tattered lump of fabric for a stranger."

A strange purple energy gathered in the old woman's hand as she pointed a bony finger toward the useless gentleman. "A curse upon you, then! For the lives of you and your children and their children in perpetuity, you'll never be able to refuse a being in need, from the smallest ant to the noblest king! You shall become their vessel so they may overcome their hardships with your very hands! If you will not be of aid by choice, your body shall be of aid, by !"

The woman held out her hand, and the purple energy shot forth to surround the man. He struggled briefly, using more energy conjuring his foulest expletives than he'd have needed to simply fulfill the elderly woman's wishes, but in the end he could not resist the magic any further. As the curse took hold, his eyes seemed to glaze over, as he wandered toward the woman, an arm outreached.

Once he touched her shoulder, the woman vanished in a brief pulse of light. The man looked down at himself, flexing his strong arms and hands in front of his face, with a satisfied smile. "Well, good sir," he said to himself, catching the reflection of the woman's green eyes in the shimmering water which had replaced his brown irises, "I know you'll carry out many good deeds in your life--whether you want to or not."

The man strode into the water, retrieved the cloak and delivered it to the woman's home. Although, he didn't realize he'd done any of these things--he'd simply woken up outside a nearby pub with no recollection of the day before, wearing a pair of utterly destroyed shoes.

Or, so the legend goes.

There are people throughout the world with a peculiar curse, all of whom trace their lineage back to a Benedict Cobbler who was said to have angered a particularly powerful witch. His curse was simple: from that day forward, any creature with a need that they could not fulfill on their own, if he could assist them, Benedict would be compelled to let their spirit enter him and take control until they completed a task that satisfied their needs. He'd spent many days providing selfless aid to other creatures upon the Earth, against his will: whether he was rescuing patients in a hospital from a fire, or merely helping a family of ducklings cross a particularly dangerous road, he always did it under the control of some other being.

And just as the witch promised, his 'legacy' lived on. His children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren all suffered the same fate. They called themselves Channelers, as they would seemingly channel the spirits of other living beings into themselves and let them take possession of their bodies temporarily. While many have found ways to cope with their curse, others still search for a cure that might one day rid their family line of their involuntary selflessness.

This is where your story begins, either as a Channeler yourself or as an acquaintance of one. Either way, your life might be turned upside-down from the result, as after a task is done, who knows what a Channeler might do while under the influence of someone else!