Name:Rose Marsden Tradition:Solificati

Skills:Crafts 2, Etiquette 3, Meditation 2, Survival (urban) 2

Knowledge:Enigmas 2, Linguistics 4, Medicine 3, Occult 3, Science (chemistry) 4

Backgrounds: Allies(2) Avatar,(2) Influence,(2) Library,(3) Node,(2) Resources,(2) Contacts,(3)

Adversarial Backgrounds:Apprentice(2) Enemies(2)

Arete:3 Willpower:7

Merits:

Flaws:Aging,Dark Secret (2)

Other Notes: Italian, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Alchemical Symbology (a code)

Appearance:Englishwoman, age 60, with gray hair and blue eyes. Tends toward an unkempt and scraggly appearance these days, making her look even older than she is, but "cleans up good," as they say. The kind of old lady who can project either "mean old witch" or "kindly grandmother" at need.

Clothing Tendencies:Utilitarian lower-class female dress, sporting frequent stains, scorch marks, and noxious odors from her work. Wears a crucifix with a prominent INRI inscription. (Naturally, she intends by this the esoteric meaning -- "igni natura renovatur integra" -- rather than the exoteric.) Also wears the same wedding ring she wore as the fake Contessa, hence the "Widow Marsden" appellation.

Known to:Most everyone in her neighborhood, mundane and supernatural alike, though she tries to give the impression of being a hedge-witch or at best an eccentric old Verbena rather than a practitioner of the Royal Art. Most folk look to her for advice, folk-medicinal aids, and protection against curses and hauntings. Some denounce her as a fraud or a heathen. Outside the neighborhood she is nearly unknown, though there are a handful of brother alchemists scattered throughout Europe who remember "Contessa di Crifasi."

Ongoing Projects: Keeping up with local news and gossip. Looking out for the normal folk under her protection. Growing herbs and preparing tinctures. Looking out for opportunities to acquire rare or expensive materials for her work. Studying her works of lore, and seeking out others. Trying to formulate an elixir that will return her to the age she's accustomed to (a more difficult feat than the simple age-slowing effect Alessandro achieved).

Circle and Influence:Subtle. Even within the neighborhood, she could not likely rally a crowd -- many folk would rather not openly admit they've associated with the local "witch," even if they have. But on an individual basis, her ability to gather information and have her advice heeded by the locals is impressive

House:A run-down, spooky old "house at the end of the lane" in her adopted neighborhood. Her alchemical lab is in the cellar, and she takes more care of it than of the rest of the house. One room is Mr. Barlowe's.

Library:A fairly complete collection of the classic alchemical texts, plus additional works of lore (mostly of hermetic bent, with a few recent acquisitions on more folksy herbal witchery). Includes her own lifelong multi-volume journal of her progress in the Great Work, and what she was able to retrieve of Alessandro's notes.

Mentor:Alessandro Arduini, the self-proclaimed Conte di Crifasi. Actually, he had a good dozen other names and identities in various locales and social strata across Europe, and there's no guarantee that Rose ever knew his real name. (He obviously took Saint-Germain as a personal role model. Unless of course he WAS Saint-Germain.)

Quintessence source: A black basalt stone with arabic and differential calculus symbols carved into it. secreted within her basment.

Magickal style :Alchemy. Plants, metals, minerals, and human souls alike can be brought to perfection through a repeated process of breaking down, purification, and recombination. Her magick works through the enhancement or transformation of physical substances. Ultimately, of course, she would say that these exterior works, however impressive they may be, are merely visual reminders and metaphors of the interior transmutation that leads one first to Awakening and finally to Ascension.

 Story:

Rose was born some sixty years ago in the very East End London neighborhood she now inhabits, the neglected fifth child of an increasingly large and poor family. At the age of six, her life took a strange turn right out of one of the scarier fairy tales, when a sinister foreign man *bought* her from her parents, casually paying a sum in gold that was far more valuable than everything the Marsdens owned put together. (Years later, he would joke that at least *some* of it was genuine.) Rose would not return to her birthplace -- or even her birth name, for the most part -- for nearly half a century.

Thus the child (quickly renamed/nicknamed Rosalba, Italian for "white rose," a common alchemical symbol) found herself the servant, foster child, and eventual apprentice of Alessandro Arduini, wandering Solificati. For the next several decades, she traveled Europe in his company, introduced first as his daughter and later as his wife. Taking a leaf from Saint-Germain's book, they frequently posed as traveling nobility, the thoroughly fictional Conte and Contessa di Crifasi. Though no longer able, in this modern age, to cozy up to kings with promises of alchemical gold, the pair spent time as the valued guests of more than one duke after a casual mention of "Italian secrets of virility" (or "ways to keep a husband from straying" to the duchess) at some high-society affair.

Alessandro's enjoyment when it came to essaying his various false personae belied his utter seriousness in matters of the Great Work. He could, in fact, make gold -- though it was an involved process and he never produced more than small quantities of the genuine article at any one time, as making convincing fake gold was far easier. He had even succeeded in producing a minor elixir to slow his own (and eventually Rosalba's) aging, though the formula for true immortality remained elusive as always. He had originally purchased Rose/Rosalba as a living example of the Feminine Principle, an aid in his efforts to achieve spiritual hermaphroditism. When he eventually realized her quickness of mind and undertook to teach her the Royal Art, he was an exacting master who insisted on turning even her personal tragedies into object lessons ("all things must experience the fire before they come to perfection").

Six years ago, Alessandro received a letter that caused him great agitation. He packed for a trip, and instructed Rosalba to do the same -- but not because they would be leaving together. Instead, she was to pack up as many of their shared possessions as she could transport, and relocate to a place that had never heard of either of them, using a new name. Alessandro would find her when his business was completed. Rosalba was taken aback, to say the least, but Alessandro employed the "have not I earned this modicum of trust" ploy, and she ultimately assented.

Rosalba spent six months living in the south of France under her new identity, when she became aware that certain gentlemen who appeared to be from Alessandro's native Italy were asking around about him and her. That eventually escalated into a violent confrontation that Rosalba just barely managed to win.

Realizing that she would not be so lucky in the future, and beginning to worry that Alessandro might *not* be coming back, Rosalba decided on a more drastic form of anonymity. She stopped taking the age-retarding elixir, and over a span of days changed from a woman apparently in her thirties to her "natural" age of nearly sixty. She then returned to London and to her birth name of Rose Marsden -- something no living person but she and Alessandro would be likely to remember after all the time that had elapsed, and certainly nothing the Italians could connect to the relatively young ersatz Contessa they were looking for.

Over the past five years, Rose has settled into her old/new neighborhood, becoming almost a fixture. The locals know her for herbal witchery and grandmotherly advice, unaware that she actually practices a highly developed and even scientific art. She has replaced the duped dukes of old with a new patron/protector, a local underworld figure pleased to pay for her talents. (It's barely enough to keep her in equipment and materials, and she lives in miserable poverty otherwise, but she doesn't mind -- she figures this is just the "crucible" part of the next stage of her spiritual purification.)

Rose continues to wait and hope for Alessandro's return, so that they can resume their partnership and she can be young and wealthy again. But a portion of her mind has already resigned itself to the idea that that's never going to happen. Perhaps that's why she has started to groom a student of her own, just within the past year -- a rather condescending university student named Barlowe, who claims to be living among London's poor in order to study their way of life. Shortly after Rose took him on as a boarder, he discovered her lab, and has now expanded his academic curiosity to wonder about the existence and motivations of a modern-day alchemist. Trying to turn *that* into the humble and respectful attitude of a proper student is no mean feat, but at least Rose now has someone to talk to, and Mr. Barlowe has agreed to keep her secret at least until he learns enough to write a paper about her.