Tracy Winnow
{ "Did you know I once considered marrying an old vampire? So silly of me. He was at least four centuries older." }
| {Full Name} |Tracy Elaine Winnow
| {Nickname} |"The Death Witch" in Africa
*Not associated with her current name, unless someone can pin down the similarities of her underlying magic. A note for some OOC discussion.
December 8th, 1842
| {Age} |True age, 175 years; preservation spells and potions for her appearance make her look to be in her 20’s to early 30’s.
| {Gender} |Female
| {Sexuality} |Heterosexual; it’s not a particularly big or relevant part of her life, so she may experiment in the right circumstances.
| {Relationship Status} |Single
| {Role} |Witch; Head of the Northeast Massachusetts Coven
| {Occupation} |Publicly, shopkeeper at a small boutique.
| {Face Claim} |Meryem Uzerli
| {Dialogue Color} |Here we go.
| {Appearance} |Her normal appearance in public is to wear simple, one piece white dresses that follow her idea of fashion, most of which are fairly similar to each other. Her upkeep is largely her hair and her face; both are important, though not critical, for her to maintain. She is always clean, though she doesn’t mind minor indications that she doesn’t just sit in a chair all day. though if there is a risk of a particularly dirty task, she opts for black outfits and matching gloves. She has long blonde hair that catches a reddish tint in the sunlight and dark blue eyes that are often intently focused on the individual she speaks to. She finds clothes a restrictive necessity, and when walking around her home without company will frequently walk barefoot and in light clothes. She often wears bug-themed earrings.
| {Habits & Quirks} |♦ Bathes frequently. She insists upon baths, and if she doesn’t have an easy source of water, she’s inclined to make her own.
♦ Toys with her hair when she thinks.
♦ Whenever faced with stress or bad memories, she has a tendency to try and lean on things. This does not normally occur.
♦ If small snappable objects are in her fingers, she snaps them unless she’s paying attention to something important. One can find many halves and thirds of toothpicks if they’re inclined to search her garbage.
♦ Occasionally flat out ignores people if she is concentrated on a single task or conversation.
| {Hobbies} |♦ Toothpick genocide.
♦ Collecting stones. They don’t have to be fancy, just little rocks that she can place into nooks and crannies when she’s not otherwise busy. There’s a lot of stones in her house, and there’s a fine row of stones trailing around the edges of her house. Some may suspect some spell is involved, and she does a poor job saying what they’re for – but ultimately, they’re just her hobby. There’s a little spot in the back she hasn’t quite filled yet...
♦ Studying earthworms. They have no magical value, it’s simply interesting after she gardens.
♦ Gardening. Her lawn must be well kept.
♦ Reading. Though, instead of the educational literature one such as her should probably be reading at her age, she tends to opt for the latest sappy romance novel.
♦ Gaming. That’s right. She’s murderous if you run across her in an FPS at 8’o in the evening.
| {Likes} |♦ Baths.
♦ Gardening.
♦ Looking into her neighbor’s windows when she thinks nobody’s looking at her.
♦ People with socially underwhelming jobs. Fast food workers and the gentleman picking up her garbage every week have her respect.
♦ Effort. While she prefers people know what they’re doing, she’ll settle with a good effort if she can easily handle whatever is lacking.
♦ Toothpick genocide. This wasn’t mentioned yet, was it? She doesn’t really think about it, it’s just a good feeling...
♦ Small trickery. She’s a good sport if someone nails her with a joke or trick, so long as she gets to do it back.
♦ Puzzles. Some would say she has a million boxes. She only has 263 of them in the basement.
| {Dislikes} |♦ Drama. how ironic
♦ Voodoo witches, magic, hair, footprints. She can’t stand the bitches. She’d flay one with pleasure if she was pissed off far enough.
♦ Hunters. Ignorant fools who should join voodoo witches in an underwater cage with electric eels.
♦ Dark magic man, the irony is leaking all over today
♦ Large tricks. If she’s bamboozled, she’s pissed.
♦ Young witches presenting themselves as better than her or otherwise being cocky, without knowing what they're talking about.
♦ Blood-based rituals.
♦ Most tulips.
♦ Being in the dark about a certain topic or issue.
| {Fears} |♦ Fire, above all.
♦ Death.
♦ Any scenario she can think of with her ending up dead.
♦ Vampires, though she hides it well.
♦ Exposure of her true appearance and past in her community.
| {Secrets} |♦ She may have had a rather extensive run-in with dark magic in her earlier years that made her a very wanted witch in Africa.
♦ Her preservation spells and small potions save her from looking the way she really does. Her real form is, simply put, terrifying and demonic.
♦ Every so often, a little piece of the aforementioned form shows up.
♦ Her blood while inside her body appears normal. However, outside of her body, it is a thick black substance.
♦ She has a daughter somewhere in the world.
| {Abilities} |Tracy specializes in manipulating water and electricity to an advanced degree. She is also capable of masking her scent and her pure appearance with a minimal degree of exertion. Her blood is very potent, making it quite useful for blood related magics; as those are typically relative to voodoo spells, she doesn't use it often. Instead, it serves as a boon to her existing abilities. She is quite knowledgeable about a variety of magical topics.
She also has a very good handle on dark magic, which she avoids using, and especially revealing how she learned of it.
| {Limitations} |Tracy specializes in manipulation. An existing electric current or water source must be present for her powers to have much use. She is, however, able to use a limited degree of water manipulation due to the inherent moisture in the air (though with difficulty), and it is possible for her to manipulate water inside living beings, though it is quite difficult on normal humans, and next to impossible to do on supernatural entities. Her masking of the potency of her blood is not impervious and only protects against simple detection used by hunters. It has virtually no effect on vampires, werewolves and other witches, to whom she is in fact a little more noticeable than usual. A spell designed to pierce illusions used on her can reveal a very different appearance, one that very few truly know even exists.
| {Personality} |
♦ Focused on her tasks♦ Overtly paranoid ♦ Caring for fellow witches of her type♦ Xenophobic, both to other supernatural types and voodoo witches ♦
Tracy has experience with every race and hunters, including bad experiences. Her earlier years are a haunting influence, and she works daily to push them out of mind. Yet they always come back, especially when interacting with other supernaturals. She has a burning hatred for voodoo witches and hunters; she is patient enough not to strike them directly, but doesn’t need much encouragement to work however she can to undermine both groups. She has difficulty forgiving and truly trusting other individuals; the exception, and her weakness, is witches of the “normal” variety. For them she is willing to go a far distance, and she does not stand for any acts committed against them. They are even welcome to stay in her house if necessary.
Typically, Tracy is outwardly patient and an understanding individual, who is especially empathetic with fellow witches (that aren’t voodoo). She treats her customers well, even if she knows some are more than they appear to be. Inside she has a struggle to control her old memories and darker inclinations, both of which would be horrifying to any normal witch were they exposed. They have not, as of yet, and she is considered a pillar of leadership to the regular witch community – the face at odds with the lead of the voodoo witches, who she is more than willing to paint as the epitome of evil.
| {Place of Origin} |Paris, France.
| {Background} |Tracy was born as Katherine Myagi in Paris, 1842 to a foreign head coven witch and a well off local merchant in the midst of a chaotic political period. Her family held itself together for years in the heart of the city, though her earliest days mostly saw her indoors and sheltered from the near constant state of war just outside their front door. She was raised with the expectation that she would have abilities. Her mother was not disappointed. Her daughter showed signs of potent powers, and her mother believed she would go on to perhaps lead her own coven one day. Katherine was pushed hard as a young girl to learn as much as her mother could force into her head, and her father, fully aware of what kind of wife he had, was a passive early influence. His greatest contribution was hiring guards to provide security that wouldn’t bring the sort of attention as witchcraft. When a wave of riots moved through the city when Katherine was 11, the family, as well as most of the coven, moved away to avoid losing their homes and to throw off the scent of regional hunters.
They settled in the southern French countryside. Her father had enough finances – with some help from coven members and friends – to purchase a sizable home, the size of a small mansion. Katherine’s mother was accustomed to the best in life, and she would impress the value into her daughter one way or another. Her daughter wasn’t as inclined to listen. She frequently escaped the house, using one of her newly developed abilities to mask her potent energies. Her mother was constant in pursuit of her troublesome daughter, as was most of the coven some days. That was the time of a pair of powerful hunter groups making a bloody swathe across the north, exterminating witches left and right. Katherine’s mother was convinced they wouldn’t make it to the south and that they could be handled, and so Katherine grew up in relative peace for several years. She tamed, though only a little; at least, she wasn’t as inclined to wander the forest as often. Perhaps it was maturity; perhaps it was an old creepy vampire she insisted she met in a cave. Her mother thoroughly searched the cave and found nothing, and the story was considered a figment of Katherine’s imagination. Eventually, Katherine believed it too, though her phobia of vampires would never fade.
On Katherine’s 20th birthday, four hunters arrived in a nearby town and burned a witch from a neighboring coven. Katherine’s mother immediately prepared for emergency, and heavily warded the house. The kneejerk reaction served to bring the hunters, and several more, straight to their doorstep. The next events were pressed into Katherine’s memory. First her father, armed with a pistol, was slain by one of the hunters. Katherine remembers blonde hair, a slim figure, and dark green eyes. Her mother fought viciously, but was eventually decapitated, a vision she clearly saw from an upstairs railing. Then they chased after her. She was able to escape the house and make it to a nearby stream, yet a crossbow bolt in the leg ensured she could go no further. She was dragged to the house, and promptly sentenced to burning by the leading hunter.
The fires began to consume her before she was doused by the magic of one of her mother’s remaining coven members, who was able to severely injure three hunters and temporarily drive off the rest. Katherine was freed and taken far away to a coven in Germany, one friendly to her mother. There Katherine was healed, taught more of her magic and educated on every detail of her mother’s early life by a witch called Tasnia. Tasnia knew Katherine’s mother from many years ago, and was also a powerful coven leader. Unlike the covens in France, Tasnia quickly and ruthlessly exterminated hunters rising from the local region, and destroyed one of the French groups that attempted to finish loose ends with Katherine. Katherine learned to despise all hunters and treat regular humans as inferior; and she was taught that the one thing her mother failed in was her decision to trust a human. It was the human that killed her. She spent two decades in Germany, with most of her time spent on research and assisting her ‘stepmother’.
She fell out with Tasnia after being directed to sacrifice an entire human family with ties to a hunter group in Austria. Katherine’s searches indicated only a partial connection at best, to the wife of one of the more recent hunters. Tasnia, furious at the ‘weakness’ of the witch, attempted to strike Katherine. Katherine’s reply was to use a nearby cup of water and nearly choke her mistress until Tasnia’s close family and other coven members restrained and severely beat Katherine. Typically, Tasnia brought death to those who she felt betrayed her. For her past and her family line, Katherine was banished instead.
The forty year old woman spent decades exploring. Previous years had been a little boring in their own right; she was cooped in a single neighborhood and never strayed much farther than a few miles in any direction. She traveled to Denmark, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, never spending more than a year in each country, and using that time to see as much as she could. Much of her power was spent in the effort to restrain her energies and avoid the supernatural groups of each nation. Her blood was extremely potent, and an immediate beacon to all supernatural entities. She moved to Austria in 1889, intending to stay on the far eastern side and perhaps settle down. A small group of new hunters put an end to that quickly. Somehow, a werewolf caught her scent, and determined she was a German witch. The German witches, with Tasnia still the leading figure, were infamous and hated by many hunters, but they had a special place of loathing with the werewolves of Austria after a short and bloody war that started shortly after Katherine’s banishment. The werewolf immediately relayed her location to a band of hunters – he couldn’t disturb the peace agreement, could he? – and three young hunters arrived at her doorstep. Swords drawn and torches raised, they made it to her front porch before she popped the first assailant like a melon using the waters in his body. The other two quickly fled; Katherine herself fell unconscious from the exertion. She awoke staring an old man in the face, who smiled to reveal his sharp, vampiric teeth. The terrified woman tried to beat him off, but the apparition vanished seconds later. At least she was healthy again. Still, she couldn’t stay.
Her next attempted move was to Russia, where she was able to find an old abandoned hut in the woods where she could recuperate in peace. Her first visit to a nearby village indicated she was living about half a mile away from a pack of Russian werewolves. She promptly packed up and left, and left quickly. She knew she was being pursued, at least clear until she arrived in Greece. What she didn’t quite know was that the pack was planning to kill her the evening that she left. They eventually left her alone as the distance became too great. She changed courses and moved to southern Egypt.
The community included very few supernatural beings. What it did have was a small coven of three witches, with a far larger coven several miles up the Nile. Though she was biased against them, she was able to mostly dismiss her concerns due to their origins; namely, the influences of her mother and Tasnia. The witches appeared friendly, and it only took a couple of months before they seemed best of friends. One night, they guided her to the river, where a stake was prepared for her. The three witches knocked her senseless and secured her to the stake, and prepared a ritual to try and extract her energies. They were not common voodoo witches; they heavily dabbled in dark magic, and planned to use her energies to support their efforts. Their corruption was unknown to the northern witches, who considered them a little eccentric, but as much sisters as any other practitioner of voodoo. Katherine awakened as they prepared one of the important portions of the spell, which included burning the subject of the spell. Katherine’s pyre was lit aflame, and basic protections were set in place to stop the casual use of a spell to douse them; specifically, the use of the water in her body to undo the flames. The witches underestimated her ability to control water of nearby sources. Katherine was partially burned, but she had the energy and sheer desperation to work past the sloppy execution of the restraint spell to use the vast quantity of nearby water to douse her fire and topple the stake in the process. The voodoo witches were also tossed back by the flames and rendered unconscious. Katherine was able to locate the book they used for their spells and used it to conduct a smaller, similar spell that involved executing the three of them with a special dagger to the heart. Her unfamiliarity with dark magic did not stop her from finishing the spell, even though she wasn’t quite sure what it would do. Her taste for vengeance was too great to care, and all she learned of Dark Magic amounted to “don’t use it, just because”. Pieces of the pyre were strategically arranged around Katherine’s assailants, in a design as per the instructions, and she killed the three of them as they were waking.
The spell was of course wrongly initiated, sloppy, hastily done, and the result of a momentarily deranged mind. The spell sucked the three witches dry and channeled the twisted resulting energy into Katherine. Her skin hardened, cracked, and mostly fell off in the first few seconds. Her muscles became twisted, physically, and her blood became a sticky tar attached to her body that dripped in thick chunks. Then a new skin formed, a charred black material. Her body elongated, and as she fell to her knees, her appearance looked more demonic than anyone could have imagined. She was still human; yet the transformation made her a cross between a zombie and some satanic creature. Her blood turned red again, yet her heart began to pump out a replacing black substance rapidly. The substance forced her red blood through the cracks of her body, a procedure even more painful than what she had already endured. Her hair was sticky white strings, and her eyes had a red and purple glow. At the end of the transformation, she shrunk slightly to be more human in scale. The cost of her spell left her body deformed. Her powers did not change much, though she gained an innate ability to use dark magic, should she decide to. Such magic could only come at a price. Said magic empowered her and removed all inhibitions from her mind, almost like alcohol, except with no weaknesses to her ability to cause damage. She caused damage in the form of two massacred villages. She didn’t remember a thing at the time as well as immediately after she destroyed them to the last living being. When she finally collapsed from exhaustion and awakened late into the next day was when she remembered every detail. She was a rampaging monster, tearing people apart with magic and clawed fingers that felt no pain, even as they were partially opened and bleeding. The thoughts sickened her. She swore to never use it again, but it was far too late for that. Her antics were discovered the very next day by the northern voodoo witches, and they saw a witch that used dark magic to slay three of their sisters and over a hundred innocents.
She was hunted for miles, all the way down to South Africa, where she killed two of her pursuers by suffocation using water that was not associated with her darker powers. She felt she deserved to die, yet every time she thought that, a will to live made itself stronger. She was eventually able to escape to a remote location in East Africa and shield herself so that even voodoo would have trouble finding her. In the few years she managed to hide, she was able to put together a potion that accurately restored her outside figure to an illusion of what it was before – the form of a young woman, her appearance when she was in her thirties. It was thankfully simple enough for her to create without too much trouble. Each lasted a week, with the chance of small deformities temporarily showing in random places. It was effective enough to hide her darker side. Her blood returned to normal slowly, though it would always be tinged with something ‘different’. It was still carried enough of a ‘scent’ to necessitate additional spells to obscure it. Now the spells would also obscure her other side.
She journeyed across Africa with the aid of an old local vampire - different to the one in her earlier years - to finally make her way to a ship planning to travel to South America. For once, her journey was not interrupted, and she was able to go to South America and immediately begin moving north. In the 1920’s, she arrived in Texas, using the name Tracy Winnow. She stayed only for a short time until moving higher to the north. After years of wandering, she settled in Salem, three years before America’s entry into World War 2. Her integration was fairly easy; she became a librarian. She was convincingly human to hunters, yet her scent was still noticeable by other supernaturals, and it wasn’t long before she was approached by the local coven. She joined without complaints, and dedicated her efforts to the ailing coven leader, helping her and being a partner through her final decade of life.
Much to the indignation of her actual daughter, the coven leader declared Tracy the leader of the regional coven. Tracy even received the old witch's house. At first, her coven was mistrusting of the foreign witch; yet they trusted their former leader’s judgment, and most of them gave her a chance. The others split off or moved away. The majority that remained found her as a sort of motherly figure, one defensive of her flock and witches in general (though not voodoo, and not those of darker interests). She is considered quite knowledgeable about magic, and is known to influential coven leaders that are scattered across the continent. Two decades ago, she left the library and opened a shop for a change in pace, which may have also included shifting away from some supernaturals and hunters who frequented that same library.
Northeast Massachusetts Coven (to the ire of her daughter), and Tracy Winnows has peacefully been the spiritual leader of her coven for 37 years.
| {Extra} |Tracy often carries an enchanted knife that is lined on the blade with an electrical current that allows her to use that form of her magic anywhere she takes it. Deep in her basement, she also keeps the old voodoo knife that was the source of her sorrows in Africa, as well as the dark magic spellbook.
