During Verdant Night, the five-year-old that became Charles Stager was on a boat off the coast of what was once Canada with his family. During the night a sizeable meteor hit their boat and sunk it. Everyone on board was presumably killed, including the five-year-old. The following morning, a human child washed up on the shores of Graham Island with material from the meteor fused into his body and no recollection of any previous events. That child was adopted by the Fishing Colonies and given a first name of “Charles”. After apprenticing to help prepare the faction’s divers for their deep-sea operations, he was given the surname “Stager”. Charles Stager is completely indistinguishable from a human except for the following:

• Large portions of his body, including several internal organs are seamlessly replaced by solid Membrance.
• His irises are the same dark green as Verdants and Shattered.
• CAT, MRI, and any other neural-imaging shows almost no higher brain function The only active regions are for autonomic functions and some sensory organs, and even those aren’t running at normal capacity.
• He has abnormally high tolerances to low temperatures and head-trauma (presumably because there’s nothing essential to be damaged in his brain). 

Some argue that he has abnormally pale skin, but this is considered typical for his birth-region. The best explanation for his existence is that a new pattern of Membrance formed from the meteor, bonded with the child after he had drowned/died from wounds sustained during impact, and then reanimated the corpse as a host. This new lifeform has perfectly mimicked natural human growth and psychological development. Now 17, Charles is a healthy young man who believes that he is a human with a meteor grafted onto him, and not a novel Membrance-pattern that has become self-aware.