Joel Dresden

Joel Dresden is the player's character (PC) in Chasing Beth (2021), the sixth game in the Elsaverse. He is a journalist who currently writes an advice column for a local newspaper, "The Sangrive Times", although in the past he was a reporter in a war, where he experienced a traumatic event that has caused him PTSD. Joel is in a relationship with Serena and has an unnatural ability that allows him to communicate with the dead, although he wasn't aware of being a medium until the events in Chasing Beth.

Personal
Born and raised in Sangrive, Joel was always interested in the human aspects of stories and cared about the people. Kind, smart, and empathic, in college he went into journalism so that he could tell the stories he wanted to read, and he started getting really good at finding the human side of any story. At some moment, a war erupted after a far, desert country attacked the nation Sangrive is a part of, and Joel went there to cover the military operations. He was embedded with a Special Forces unit and, unarmed, faced the same threats and challenges as those professionals while focusing his reports on them as actual people with hopes, dreams, and fears, instead of talking about bombs, guns, and bullets. Joel was especially successful in bringing closure to the friends and families of those who fell in the desert: when those soldiers died, he knew them well enough that Joel was able to write his reports about them as if they were still talking to him.

One day, while traveling with the rest of the unit, Joel's transport stomped over an improvised explosive device. The explosion left Joel dazed and the transport stranded; when he regained consciousness, the enemy was getting closer and closer and their fastest way out was a medivac chopper flown by a female pilot, callsign 'Tainted Arrow', who had to argue with their base commander to get permission to rescue them, as women were a major target for their enemies. While trying to get to the helicopter, Joel got shot and lost consciousness; one of the Special Forces soldiers, Zach Sinclair, carried him to the chopper and the pilot managed to exfiltrate them. Badly injured, Joel spent several days unconscious and when he woke up at a field hospital, he noticed that, in his mind, he could see and hear two people interacting with him: a happily married couple, Tanya and Tony, which he took as a creation of his shaken mind to help him cope with the fact that he had been so close to death. Deeply traumatized by his experience, Joel came back to Sangrive as soon as he was physically recovered and wrote an article about Zach Sinclair's heroic actions in the war. This touching article, combined with all of the rest he had written before, showed Joel's ability to find the human side of stories, and he was offered a position in the local newspaper "Sangrive Times".

An undetermined time later, when he is introduced in Chasing Beth, Joel is still experiencing nightmares and other consequences from his PTSD, yet he has never looked for professional help, as Tanya and Tony in his mind are a useful way to get on with his daily life, at least when he's awake. They comfort him, give him some tips, and also help him to get insight into other people's situations when he asks them: this new version of his character's quirk to find the human side of stories allows him to write a successful advice column for his newspaper that is published under Tanya's and Tony's names, so readers think they are real, existing people. And, when a beautiful and smart lawyer named Serena learn that this handsome, kind, creative, and badass man was the actual writer of that column, she fell immediately for him. But, after a few months together, their relationship faces a critical moment when Serena is involved in a car accident that lefts her with almost constant pain in her hips. Although they are trying to support each other, he hasn't told her about the reason for his PTSD yet, and she is also hiding an important emotional secret from her past.

In that context, Joel gets a new assignment from his chief editor, Hanne: she wants him to cover the story of the mysterious vigilante that has started to act in Sangrive. Thanks to Hanne's confidant within the local Police Department, Joel learns that the vigilante is using the callsign 'Tainted Arrow', and he quickly realizes that this vigilante might probably be the chopper pilot who saved his life in the desert.