Name:Mother Charlene Type:Mesmerist Allegiance:The White College Origin:Low Class

Social: Style (4) Animal Husbandry (2) Savvy (2) Subterfuge (3) Command (3) Etiquette (3) Rapport (3)

Mental: Awareness (3, people) Linguistics (1) Medicine (4, native) Arts (4, hairdressing) Drive (1) Occult*(6*)

Additonal notes: Mother Charlene possesses an ability mastery in Occult (which enables her to use it as a superscience.) her native language is Creole French but she speaks and read english as well.

Equipment: Mother Charlene carries a large cloth hand bag which is stuffed full of all sorts of oddments. At times she has a few gadgets on her person which are magickal fetishes that provide personal protection for her or anyone she give them too. These fetishes only seem to work for a limited period of time before needing to be re-energized or remade entirely.

Appearance/Clothing Tendiencies: Mother Charlene is a foxy black mama of the first water. Oh sure, she may be a bit overweight but she is allways looking as sharp as she can and allways makes the best of what she has. She goes for bright colors and has the coloration and style to make even a Orange Mumu look good. Mother Charlene's nails are a thing of wonder. if they get much longer she'll be unable to use her fingers at all. Mother Charlene's hair is long and braided and tied off in the back with a violet ribbon.

House,Circle, Influence:In the poorer quarters of whatever community you decide to put Mother Charlene, She has a tendency to accumulate Influence. Her Allies are people who have directly benefitted from her work and know her true power. most of these people would kill or die for her. She is a member of the White College with all that implies. She knows many people in her neighborhood through her work as hairdresser and her word carries a bit of weight on the street. (Her contacts and Infleunce respectively. She is an Acknowledged voudoun priestess and those who follow that religion got to her for help (her followers) She has a reputation as one who can get things done and who is on the lookout for the strange and unusual. She makes a decent living from the dozen irons she has in the fire. She completely owns the building where her hairdressing shop is and the apartment above is her sanctum. the rest of the building is other aparmtents. Her Menagerie includes some spiders and scorpions. a vicious black cat named Abraham. and a 16 foot ball python named Reggie. (after her first husband.) There are usually a couple of Chickens in cages too in her house. Some are for sacrifice and others are simply payment by people to poor to pay any other way. Her nemesi are a rotating group of low level nuissance boccors(Voudoun Black magicians) and a couple of women who think they can supplant her as local priestess.

What has gone Before: Charlene was born in New Orleans from Jamaican emigres. She was born into a family who had practiced Voudou all their lives and she was found to be very gifted at a young age. As she grew up it was fairly obvious that she was being groomed for being the next priestess when her mama passed on.

It came too early. Her mama was a beautiful woman and one night she was raped and murdered on a side street. No one was ever caught and the white police seemed not to care. her father crawled into a bottle and never came out really. Charlene cared for him until he died at age 16. She put money on the table by the simple expedient of hairdressing. She found she was good at it and as her powers grew, so did her clientel...coming more for advice than her hairdressing. (allthough that wasn't bad either.)

Her Uncle Montaigne initiated her into the White College after beating her abusive first husband to death with his walking stick. After this, she began to find that certain powers that she used to have to cast laborious spells for were becoming second nature to her.

Charlene has worked very hard to get where she is in her life, and she's not afraid of most things.Only time will tell where this new age of magick will take her.

Story Uses: 

The Contact: Mother Charlene is the sort of person that makes an excellent contact (especially for female characters) She also is the type of person who's influence is so broad that she is likely to be known by nearly anyone with an overlapping field of influence (say in the occult world or on the street.) Bernie Santorelli knows her and knows her to be a capable kitchen table doctor who doesn't ask too many questions (allthough he's not sure about all that crazy voodoo jazz.) The fact that she swears that she's a good catholic girl just confuses him.

She Who Serves with both Hands:Mother Charlene belongs to the White college and as such is charged with the protection of a certain amount of area (the traditional area of influence is usually a sphere of 13 miles in diameter) because of who she is, she might know about things before the players and alert them if they are also College members, or she might bump into them in the middle of their investgations. Not being overly powerful in the arena of combat she is allways willing to ally with those willing to do that sort of dirty work.

Vengefull Justice: As a Voudou priestess she is also charged occiasionally with keeping the peace of her community. Players might stumble onto a hapless person who is suffering horrific nightmares and terrible sickness that doctors can't cure. They might be horrified to discover that loving gentle Mother Charlene is causing all this...Charlene claims that she is acting in the interest of the man's wife who he savagely beats. ( Remember, attitudes towards that kind of thing were different then.) Charlene has allready questioned the wife and is satified with her veracity (her knacks and her "Loa" can determine lies very easily. The "Loa" are actually the form her Voice from Beyond takes.) What do the player do?

Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours: Charlene repayment in kind and she allways has a dozen balls in the air. Players who are in her debt can expect to be put to work in various ways. The thing is...Charlene will not allways be benefitting from these favors. Sometimes she needs the players to do something on behalf of someone else she is helping. and this web of favors can get a little byzantine at times.