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If you want to take some pictures of some fascinating witches...

Name: Sophia De La Fuente

Gender: Female (She/Her)

Race/Species: Human

Age: 27

Appearance: An olive skinned Latina with short raven hair and hard eyes. Although not unattractive, her features have a slightly feral look. Tattoos cover her arms and much of her body, though her face is unmarked. Many of the tattoos appear to be related to South and Central American religions of the Pre-columbian Period, although there are a number of gang related designs. She is slender and a little on the short side.

Personality: Sophia is passionate and intense. She is easily roused to anger, especially when she is frightened or confused. She is in the process of beginning to break down the walls that her previous life required her to build but remains a trifle aloof and perhaps a little awkward.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities: Sophia’s primary talent lay in the direction of ritual magic and thaumaturgy. After being extensively educated by her mother she traveled from her native El Salvador, absorbing various other traditions along the way. Years of involvement with gangs and narcotics trafficking have given her an insight into the criminal underworld, though it isn’t something she is eager to revisit. Sophia is also a naturally gifted sculptor and painter, though she lacks any kind of formal training.  

Background:

The smell was the worst. Like greasy meat burned in an oven. It clung to her, coating her dark skin, sheening her black hair, an oily film at the back of her throat. Even when the flashing lights gave way to the quiet interrogation room and she was permitted a few minutes to ‘wash up’, swab her filthy body with a few wet wipes and rinse her mouth out with tepid tap water, it still clung to her. A change of clothes had been permitted her, an orange prison jumpsuit to replace the rags she had been arrested in, but the bright fabric did little but accentuate the filth that coated her. The detectives that came next wrinkled their noses, struggling to conceal their horror behind the blank face of professional detachment. They slapped a paper file down on the table between them and took their own seats.

Sophia looked up with them, her eyes dark and unreadable, the fluorescent light seemed to make tendrils of smoke dance in her irises. Neither of the detectives flinched but the younger of the pair shifted uneasily. He covered his unease by picking up the manila folder he had just slapped to the table and making a show of leafing  through it.

“I’m going to be honest with you Miss De La Fuente, it doesn't look good for you. Four men burned alive… well California doesn't have a death penalty but if you don't cooperate there is no chance you will ever see the outside of a prison cell again.” It had the ring of a rehearsed statement, but that didn’t make it untrue.

“I was a prisoner there,” she said, her thick El Salvadoran accent rendering the final word as ‘dare’ rather than there. English was not her first, or even her second language but she spoke it well enough to be intelligible.  The statement seemed to move the two policemen onto more familiar ground, a perp denying a crime was more intelligible than four men burned to carbonized husks. It helped that she spoke the way she did, it fit their comfortable preconceptions.

“Look girl, we got security footage of the place, no one in there but you, and you were the only one in the building,” the older, fatter one declared. Sophia spread her hands wide, the restraints that bound the ran through the eyebolt which secured her to the floor with a musical tinkle of metal on metal.

“So your theory is I overpowered four chera and set them on fire?” she asked with a skeptical quirk of her eyebrow. The younger thinner of the two gave her a malevolent grin, clearly aggravated by her apparent lack of reaction. He leaned across the table and grabbed her wrist. From arm to shoulder her skin was covered with tattoos of various kinds, curving serpents and strange sigils atop more prosaic ink.

“You think we don’t know gang ink when we see it? You think that any jury in the world won't take one look at those MS13 tats and…”

The metalized door swung open hard enough that the gasket hissed with the pressure of slowing its progress. A flustered looking junior officer slid into the room a only a footstep ahead of an elderly man dressed in a neat vest and wearing a bowler hat. The officer was trying to make a point of leading the newcomer into the room, but there was absolutely no evidence the older man would have waited for his theoretical escort. The man swept the room with his eyes and cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Uhh the chief says you are to give Mr Priest here a moment with the pris.. I mean suspect,” the escorting officer stammered. Both detectives stood up at once, their postures of angry beligerence so identical that the movement appeared rehearsed to Sophia’s eye. One of the cheap metal framed chairs toppled over with the suddenness of the movement.  Priest regarded the detectives with a calm as cool and dry as the Atacama. Both men seemed to freeze for an instant in mid outburst, as though they had expected to find one more step in a long flight than was truly there. Angry words died on their lips in a moment of shock and confusion which transmuted to an anger for which their hesitation left them no outlet. Sofia saw the pulse throb in the heavier detectives neck. The moment passed and they stormed brusquely from the room but neither of them spoke. 

The newcomer, Priest apparently, bent down and righted the toppled chair with quiet efficiency. This accomplished, he snapped open an antiquated looking case and withdrew a folded cloth which he unhurriedly spread on one of the recently vacated chairs. He sat down and adjusted the seat before tenting his fingers peering across at the chained, orange clad Sophia intently. There was something to his eyes, a keenness and weight to his gaze that she hadn't expected. She tossed her hair in half hearted defiance anyway, as a woman brought up in a brutal world of gangs and narcotics, it was an instinctive reaction.

“Miss De La Fuente was it?” he asked in culture Spanish. It was Castillian rather than South American in accent and idiom but perfectly understandable. It sounded exotic to her ear even elegant. She nodded her head, as powerless to prevent herself from moving as she would have been to stop a mudslide.

“That was quite an impressive piece of Thaumaturgy back there, what did you use for a flame?” The question was matter of fact and the point, the tone a man would use when asking which chisel one had selected for a particularly difficult cut. The shock moved quickly to a sense of panic. Were there police who could understand what had happened? What if she couldn’t… Priest lay a hand on hers, his hand was dry and slightly cooler than she imagined.

“No fear child, I just want to know how you did the working. Quite impressive, if a little gruesome. Now what did you use for a flame.” Sophia looked around as though afraid of hidden recording devices.  Priest merely shook his head, dismissing the fear with unarguable certainty. His eyes bored into her as though trying to draw the answer from her mind with strength of will.

“The pilot light,” she said finally, “the stove had a pilot light, those cabrons were smart enough not to use it but they didn’t know about the light.” Priest sat back on his chair an appraising look in his eyes.

“It must have taken you days to gather enough power to use such a flimsy ignition source.”

“Four days,” Sophia said blankly, her eyes focusing on the near distance. By the way his gaze sharpened he clearly understood what such a task implied. The cartels knew how to hold a Brujha. An empowered circle was easy to create, even for a layman if they knew what they were doing, and even the mightiest practitioner could only do so much with what power remained within the mystical confinement. It would have been easy to waste it in useless fury, every mote of magic had been needed for what she had done, even then one of them might have lived if he hadn’t gone into shock.

“How did you create your links to them surely they were…” Priest trailed off as the answer to that particular question revealed itself in the asking, his face frowning with distaste. Sophia shrugged her shoulders as if to imply that it was nothing that concerned her. Priest withdrew his hand and sat back, his face considering.

“I will be frank Miss De La Fuente. My … firm you might call it, has an opening for someone of your particular skills. We consult on matters regarding the paranormal, take care of problems that sort of thing.” Sophia shifted against her restraints, rattling the chains.

“Senor if you can get me out of here, I don’t care if you are reanimating corpses for your friends to fuck.” Sophia’s voice was quiet and desperate, the profanity a habit rather than an effect of anger. If she were transferred to a prison, she wouldn’t last a day. Even a Brujah had to sleep sometime and the Narcocartels had a very short way with people like her, at least, once they slipped their leashes. Priest smiled as though he had expected nothing less.

“Splendid my dear, we will be happy to have you aboard.” Sophia glanced around the room, as though imagining some miraculous means of escape was about to present itself. No mystical portal opened, now transportation spell whisked her away, she merely sat, chained to the floor.

“So how are you going to get me out? Magic?” she asked Priest as he stood and began to fold his cloth, replacing it in his case with the same neat precision with which he had retrieved it. He gave her a slightly superior smile.

“Oh no my dear, a force much more powerful and diabolical than that,” his voice dripping with a sinister menace. As if on cue, the door opened to admit a man and a woman bedecked in sharp suits of severe and expensive cut.

“Lawyers.”

It was only after he left and the lawyers wrinkled their noses that Sophia realized that Priest had not so much as blinked at the smell of charred human corpses.

Name:  Emmaline Von Morganstern (Goes by Emma Stern)

Gender:  Female (She/Her)

Race/Species: Human

Age (Real and apparent, if applicable): 28

Appearance:

Emma is a tall Germanic woman with straw blond hair. She is pretty, although her high cheekbones and angular features seem to conspire to rob her of true beauty. She has a hiker’s  lean trim build which bespeak many years of  alpine life in her native Austria. Although her eyes are a piercing blue, they are usually kept behind the large glasses she wears to aid her with her reading.
 
Emma affects a stern masculine body language and takes pains to limit her femininity. Her hair is kept in a tight bun and her back rigid. She wears tailored suit of academic cut when she is at work but is equally comfortable in sportswear when off duty or the situation demands it. Her taste in jewelry is her only divergence from strict propriety and she is almost always seen with bracelets and necklaces made of silver or polished copper. 

Despite having lived in the United States for several years, and her best efforts, Emma has been unable to eradicate her crisp Austrian accent.

Personality: 
Emma is first and foremost an academic and her scholarly career has been the primary influence on her personality. Competition with men and the institutionalized  biases against women have encouraged her to do what she can to discount her sex. One of these tactics is to adopt the prim manners of a German Schoolteacher and her speech is frequently pedantic and over exact. Another is to keep her romantic side, indulged in steamy novels and a love of grand dramatic gesture walled away beneath her professional demeanor.

Emma is possessed of natural curiosity about the world and the people in it, which drives her closer to others the better to interrogate them. She has a dry and understated sense of humor and has even been known to laugh, though she tries to keep this under control due to her embarrassing tendency to snort when she does so.

In every situation Emma attempts to exude an aura of knowing control expected of a professor. Unfortunately the more uncontrolled a situation becomes, the closer she comes to panic.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities:

Hexen - At some point in the mysterious past Emmaline’s ancestors acquired certain powers, most notably the ability to manipulate the energies around them. The first Hexen discovered that these abilities passed from mother to daughter and each generation made its own contribution to the craft. For most of recorded history this has required covens of women to  work together but with the onset of modern mathematics this has changed. Emmaline can do the traditional tricks, like draw heat from the air to create ice, or call up a wind by creating a pressure differential, but her true calling is in the realm of curses. Emmaline has a talent for altering probability, she can, if she puts her mind to it, ensure that a particular person has a run of unusual good luck, or she can curse someone so that Murphy's Law punishes them with a special viciousness. Unfortunately in both of these cases the luck has to even out somewhere, and for every miracle there is a corresponding tragedy.

Coven - Unlike the lone witch in the woods of popular myth, Emma belongs to an extended coven of blood relations who, while concentrated in Europe, span the globe. Each Hexen is expected to make her own contribution to the advancement of the art. Ordinarily this is done through scholarship, both mundane and arcane. While rivalries exist for the most part the sororal bond is a tight and pleasant one. Emma can ask for favors from her sisters, be it magical or mundane, and provides them in her turn. Once this required summonings in the dark hours before dawn, but now it is just easier to use Zoom (or broom as the younger Hexen have taken to calling it).

In addition to, or in conjunction with, her occult powers Emmaline holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics and has lectured at several major universities. She also plays the violin with technical proficiency but a lack of passion which robs her music of zest and irritates Emmaline.

Background: 

Emmaline sat straight backed in her chair, primly sipping at the adequate wine before her. It was expensive, sure, but somehow Americans always seemed to conflate expense with quality. This restaurant was the perfect microcosm of the phenomena, aggressively minimalist and plucked from the pages of glossy magazines without a care for the ugly sterility that resulted. It probably took a great deal of money to create something so ugly.   She peered down at a napkin on which she was carefully writing an equation with an ornate fountain pen. The ink spread out through the porous medium in unlovely blobs, straining their legibility, but it would serve her purpose.

Across from her sat a nervous young man with his awkward date. There was an aura about him that spoke to her, the nervous way he ran his fingers through his hair, the slight sheen of sweat on the back of his neck. Misfortune seemed to radiate off him in waves. He was about to have the worst night of his life. Unless she intervened of course.

Concentration fell away in shattered shards as someone cleared his throat in front of her. With a vexed hiss she looked up and pushed the  thin rimmed glasses back up to the bridge of her nose. The man before her was of indeterminate years and he wore a suit that probably cost as much as she made in a year. Perhaps hastag-not-all-Americans.

“Professor Von Morganstern, I hope I have not startled you?” he asked in a smooth, almost liquid alto. She forced her 'professional colleague' smile to her lips, uncharacteristically reddened by lipstick.

“Of course not,” she lied sweetly, looking down at the menu to give her face time to smooth away the incipient frown.

“You are  Mr…” she began but he nodded cutting her off.

“Yes from the Agency,” he concluded before she could speak his name.  She clucked her tongue disapprovingly against the roof of her mouth. He clearly didn’t fear her powers but he was demonstrating that he knew something about them by not speaking his name. The beginnings  of a superior smile indicated that he had guessed what she was thinking.  She glanced down at the formula on her napkin and then laid it face up on the expensive table cloth. Another sip of resinous wine. The man cocked his head slightly, as though attempting to decipher the ink stained napkin, before sliding into the chair with liquid grace.

“I will be brief Professor Von Morganstern…” he began but it was her turn to hold up an interrupting hand.

“Professor Stern," she corrected, "I don’t go by my full name, also this isn’t a lecture, so you may call me Emma.” The clipped Austrian accent made the admonition seem harsher than she meant it. People weren’t always her thing. Screw it, served him right for showing off with her real name.

“I invited you here tonight because I want to offer you a job.” Emma sat back a little shocked. When she had received his letter, a vague allusion to mutual friends and an invitation to dinner, employment was the furthest thing from her mind. It was rare to meet a man who knew about Hexen and rarer still for that meeting to end well.

“I already have a job mien Herr,” she began, her English slipping, and her Germanic accent biting out the words.
 
“As your use of my honorific demonstrates you already know.” Her tone was defensive, a faint stirring of anger bubbled within her. He gave her an almost apologetic look, it wasn't pitying, but unmistakably that of a man about to deliver a message which would cause some awkwardness.

“Yes but I’m afraid that UCLA will decline your application for tenure, and there maybe little opportunity for you to earn it again. Faculty politicking I’m afraid.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. Emmaline’s stomach plummeted, years of work and academic research, dozens of papers and theorems for nothing. It was a given that his information was true, there was no lie in his voice and anyone who could discover she was a Hexen could penetrate the flimsy boundaries of University security with ease.

“There are few people with your particular talents in the United States,” he continued, his voice gentle and consoling. He waved away the waiter with an air of dismissal that a Hapsburg Monarch might have envied.

“We could use your more… ahem occult skills,” he concluded pushing a printed letter on expensive paper across the table to her. Fighting to keep her bottom lip from quivering with disappointment at losing her shot at tenure, she mechanically scanned the document. When she reached the figure printed on it her eyebrows rose in spite of herself. The elegant man set back with a satisfied look on his face.

“With bonuses,” he added with a mischievous grin, lifting his glass of adequate wine to her. She watched him for a long moment before, reluctantly, she lifted hers in tacit acceptance of his offer. 

Across from her she saw the young man tense. With a hiss, she sat down her wine and began scribbling frantically on her napkin, completing equations and closing the last few parenthesis. That task completed, she sliced her thumb on a silver ring she wore on her ring finger, dribbling a drop of blood onto the paper with a muttered word. The boy stood up and drew a small box from his pocket before falling to one knee before his date. The skeins of fate twisted around him, warped by the energies she had channeled through her napkin. In the window behind him fireworks suddenly bursts, framing him and dazzling his intended as he knelt before her. Her moment of hesitation swept away by the fireworks, she cried her acceptance and rushed forward to hug him. In the background there was a mechanical pop as the buildings air conditioner  \coughed and died. Emmaline smiled, a few hours of discomfort for a lifetime of happiness. Fair trade. All the boy had needed was a bit of luck after all.  The elegant man raised an appreciative eyebrow at her.

“I think you will make a fine addition to Priest and Hawthorne Professor Stern, a fine addition indeed.”
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