Meris of the Orcades (WIP)

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TennyoCeres84
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Meris of the Orcades (WIP)

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

The bio's basically done, but I wanted your input on the history aspects, Leam. I wasn't quite sure about the part with Chambers and whether it's in character for him or not.
I'll go back over it to make sure I didn't miss any important points.

Name: Meris of the Orcades/ Meri/Mairead Aalto (current alias)
Age: 544 years old
Gender: Female
Species: Selkie, archmage

Strengths: Despite being a well-known figure in arcane history, Meris’s baseline powers are similar to her kin. She has the ability to change her change into a seal with the aid of her pelt. Along with this come the enhanced capabilities associated with the dual forms. Telepathy is the other standard gift common to selkies. Lastly, she has the siren-like ability to sing, hum, speak, and whistle power into whatever effect is desired. Obviously, this serves as a good, solid foundation for being a cantor/bard.

Being the powerhouse that she is, the roane tends to favor the school of seraphic magic the most and often uses it to tap into some of the other schools. Of course, she may also use the more traditional techniques associated with elemental magic, animation, necromancy, scribing, divination, Infernalism, and mentalism. She even has a theoretical understanding of technomancy, but she avoids actively practicing it given the sometimes volatile nature between modern technology and high levels of via.
With this extraordinary potency, her body has seemingly been frozen to that of a middle-aged woman in her prime. Wounds eventually heal, leaving no scars on bones or flesh. She can still become sick, but rest and general self-care easily aid in purging an illness from her system. She is essentially immortal.

To back up her magical abilities, Meris favors unpredictability during fights and is a capoeirista as a result of that preference. She also mingles this with standard self-defense techniques. With experimentation, she has learned to combine the kicks and punches with elemental magic. Additionally, she is also comfortable with blades and small pistols in taking out targets; she can also use rifles, but she hasn’t used them much on the battlefield.
As a result of her vagabond life, she is fluent in some languages while partly knowledgeable in others. The fluent ones include: Selkie, English, Finnish, Scottish Gaelic, Latin, and Portuguese. She has a phonetic-based understanding of the Black Speech for use in a fight against Loyalist Void Weavers and Abominations, along with it being useful for sneaking into places.

Weaknesses: Death is no longer an issue for Meris, as she has died before, and her telomeres are now frozen at a prime age. However, she still could technically die if she severs her own spiritual lifeline or someone somehow managed to cut it forcibly or push her to do it. Also, if an opponent injures her severely enough, she will have to retreat and heal before returning to battle.

As with all experienced mages and wizards, her body is a walking furnace and requires a huge daily calorie intake. She not only consumes the regular three meals a day, but with a couple smaller ones or at least snacks. She prefers to eat consume slow-burning carbs and fatty protein, such as seafood and poultry, nuts, and pasta, along with fruits and vegetables. Junk food is something she considers a last resort option. Not fulfilling this requirement increases her risk at not maintaining her body’s ability to keep up with her spells.

Much like Amazo, her highly potent body is a smorgasbord to demons and restless spirits looking for a choice arcane vehicle. Should she pass out, left without magical protection, or otherwise be incapacitated, she’s vulnerable to possession. Thankfully, this has never happened, and she tends to have a multi-layered system in place to hopefully prevent this from happening. Having Delmar around during dives into otherworldly planes also helps.
While she has adapted to being around modern technology, there is always a risk of anything manufactured after 1985 going haywire, breaking down, or otherwise exploding in the strong arcane emanations surrounding her. This disadvantage tends to happen most often when she is upset or generally unfocused.
To those who don’t know her history, her intense dedication to both the resistance and Nereus would likely seem very foolish and naïve. This could put her at odds with anybody who might think she’s still being strung along by the Augur and actually in allegiance with the Others. Of course, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Given her history, it’d be foolish to say she’s completely unscarred by some very horrific experiences. Most of the time she manages to deal with the past by talking with friends or through meditation. Occasionally, she’ll have PTSD episodes with nightmares, flashbacks, or even depression. Her triggers tend to be locations that remind her of where she was abducted from or surfaced after leaving Darlarath. In addition to this, faces that remind her of the friends she lost in Respite Point or the Augur’s palace are also instigators of episodes. Being regularly on the move, she hasn’t had time to seek professional help and might benefit seeing some form of therapist. She also has lingering doubt in regards to children. She’ll certainly be kind to them, but she also remains somewhat distant and awkward around them.

Appearance: At 5’4” and 140 pounds, the archmage is an unimposing figure to most people. A sufficient layer of fat covers toned muscle to compensate for her rapid metabolism, to act as a buffer when she is in dire straits. Her physique overall conveys a healthy and active individual.
Since most selkies bear the typical dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, there are always some variations depending on the location and how much the selkie bloodlines have mingled with the native populations. Meris is of Scottish-Finnish Saami stock. Her light brown eyes tend to be somewhat squintier, even though they still have a phocine roundness to them. Her black hair is unruly and curly, a trait that was passed on to Cole, Aislinn, and Ciaran. Despite the eternal youth, she still sports silvery spots of varying gradation along her hairline, forehead, hands and other areas of her body, the marks of an older roane. Additional features of age include faint crow-s feet and smile lines. On the underside of her right forearm, there is an old adage vertically tattooed in black ink with the rune-like letters of the selkie language. It reads, “The music of our ancestors sings in our veins.”

On a standard day, the selkie would be dressed in a shirt in subdued colors and fairly loose-fitting pants reminiscent of capoeiristas’ attire. Sneakers or boots are typical footwear for her, but she hardly ever goes anywhere without a scarf around her neck. This is a practice leftover from the days when it was common for women to cover their heads with either a hat or other covering. She’ll usually have a discreet rune stitched into it that permits her to conjure an invisibility veil when she drapes it over her head. Another item she usually has by her side is a small satchel. In the bag, there is an emergency first aid kit with basic items like gauze but also with useful items she has made. A notebook, pen, her fake ID, cellphone, and a few arcane odds and ends reside there as well. Meris never goes anywhere without a handmade bracelet that prevents demonic possession, a portable version of Amazo’s spiritual Faraday Cage.

While on an assignment, Meris has taken to wearing a hooded theriomorph bodysuit which she’s personally lined with hand-embroidered stitches. Much like Crystal and the McConmara siblings’ bodysuits, it has a series of pockets meant for small weapons and items. To keep her identity secret and add a bit of intimidation, she tends to wear a hardened mask that covers her entire face but still allows her to see. Additionally, she has a long-sleeved, leather duster that serves as lightweight armor, as it is embroidered with protective runes and sigils.
Never one for much fuss over regular clothes, she generally sleeps in a loose t-shirt or a tank top/pajama bottoms combo. Otherwise, she wears whatever is appropriate for undercover situations.

Behavior: In her early days, Meris had a relatively simple outlook in life. Her life was centered on family and survival. Her creative penchants were funneled into her singing and abilities as a healer. Despite her talent, she considered herself as just the daughter of fishmongers, not anyone of particular note. Whenever she learned something new about being a cantor, she felt a temporary nerdish glee that wasn’t fully sated. This would eventually change. Even if she knows better now, this viewpoint of herself tends to linger to this day. She thinks that any accomplished wizard is capable of becoming an archmage, yet she understands this requires an immense amount of hardship and studying. In fact, she’d tell you that attaining that much power and immortality can be something of a curse at times, depending on your outlook. However, Meris is ironically an optimist, given the strife she’s endured, but she views her history and status as a hard-earned reward with hopefully more to come.

Becoming the healer of the Augur changed her life completely. Her passion for arcane and intellectual pursuits was a couple of things that were awakened within her, but the drive to fight for a broader cause was cemented with her love for him. Having a future with him is linked to her well-developed determination. This factors into how she behaves on the battlefield. While Archibald and Bucky feel the gleeful thrill during a fight, she mostly acts like a cold, focused machine. She tries her best to avoid collateral damage and not turn apathetic over the loss of innocent lives, believing she must maintain her most important core values or else risking her true self and what she holds dear. On the other hand, she understands that her life has caused her sense of morality to be gray, rather than black and white. She prefers precision attacks that deal the quickest and most efficient blow with the least amount of power possible. Of course, this is not always feasible, and she has to adapt to the situation. If a plan doesn’t work, unpredictability is another tool in her arsenal. She’ll turn into a spinning, flipping, and elemental magic-throwing dancer in order to confuse her foe and hopefully wear him or her down. That’s also a reason why Meris’ codename within the White Brotherhood and the Promethean Order is “Triple Threat”. For much of her life, she often used society’s notion that women were weaker than men to her advantage and acted as she needed to get close to a target. Her singing offensives rival that of the Banshees in that she has been known to instill fear, panic, or bravery with her voice.

For most people, she usually comes across as a cordial if forgettable type, which is what she wants. Her circle of friends is limited, as she’s leery about getting close to people who might be used against her as leverage. Yet, once you get to know her, you’ll never meet a more compassionate soul. Severe wounds and illnesses bring out the experienced and resolute healer. If Amazo dazzles an audience at the onset, Meris will mesmerize an intimate setting of friends with her storytelling and camaraderie. They will get a glimpse of the woman who was able to charm and love the man who is now known as Xenophon Thanos. They’ll come to see her lasting guilt over the loss of her two children, which she subconsciously still battles. Sights like these will break the image of the enigmatic figure whose history is based more in legend than hard fact, a woman able to rally people to her cause with just her words.

As for her voice, her Orcadian accent has been weathered by her travels. It’s obvious she comes from somewhere in Europe, but pinpointing where is extremely difficult. Now, this tends to change when she is upset, angered, or in the middle of a PTSD episode, as thick, lilting tones will take over.
Honestly, she craves the normalcy that was tossed aside when she was still in her teens. She is exhausted from killing, plotting, and traveling. She’d like for people to break through her almost workaholic devotion and just have a cup of tea with her. Realistically, she knows this will never entirely be the case, but having it become a mainstay of her life would be an actual delight.

Goals: To prevent the world and the rest of existence from being obliterated by the Others and Their allies’ machinations. She’s been at this objective for an unbelievably long time, and she senses that it’s all coming to a head. This is deeply connected to her being able to reach Nereus, who she knows is at his wit’s end, desperate for a solution, and ensnared by Amaxi’s lies. She understands the recent attack on Hope is a test to see how well the local superheroes react and a stepping stone to larger threats. Reaching her beloved is her deepest desire and a turning point in the war, and she knows she has to get to him, no matter the costs.

History: Meri was born to Cairbre and Ilta, respectively a Scottish fishmonger and a Finnish weaver, in 1481, in the frigid northern Atlantic waters off the coast of the Orkney Islands. She was the eldest of five children, one sister and three brothers. Her now well-known name was the result of her youngest sibling being unable to pronounce his big sister’s name without a lisp. The resulting ‘Meris’ stuck. The betrothal of Margaret of Denmark to James III of Scotland started a shift in power for the working classes, who called themselves the comunitas Orcadie. This is during the time when the Orkney Islands were a hub for foreign fishermen selling their wares in the markets. Wanting to come out of the shadows, some selkies opted to sell items and slowly purchase land that had previously been owned by leery humans and anthros. Of course, they stuck to the shorelines and built their houses and docks away from the main towns. As soon as she was able to walk and speak basic sentences, her parents had her with them, acting as a curiously effective advertisement. They would let her sing with her doll in the stall and encourage her to invite customers to buy fish or the beautifully knitted garments and items. The young girl’s cuteness and potent voice was a boon for them.

As she grew, her responsibilities increased with the other children aboard her father’s ship. Her mother urged her to practice her weaving, embroidery, and sewing, as Ilta insisted that this would come in handy one day. She learned how to work on a ship, gut fish, and hawk the wares as good as any fishwife. When on land, she’d occasionally help her land-based relatives with their local seaweed-eating sheep. The girl’s penchant for singing while she worked continued to be a mainstay in her life, which would soon open up a whole new field for her latent arcane abilities.

The Orcades are famous for their fierce storms and gales, and it happened that Meris and her family were stuck in one on their way back to port. Her father tried to steer the ship out of the tempest, but it was futile. The frigid sea had no mercy for the family of selkies, as it tossed and shoved the vessel around like a toy. They’d either smash into the rocks or be drowned in the watery upheaval; they needed a miracle. The collective fear and desperation felt by all reached deep into Meris’ core, and she began singing with power like never before. Her parents and siblings saw her glow blue as she beckoned to the storm to allow them safe passage back home. Despite the tempest, the luminous fishing boat began to move against the current and back toward the safety of the harbor. Her Epiphany created quite the spectacle for their relatives, friends, and neighbors once they arrived. Her parents and those closest to them understood that the nine-year-old needed a way to focus all that raw talent. While continuing to work with her family, she was brought under the tutelage of the local apothecary and cantor, teaching her to put those abilities to good use in curative magic. She learned just as much about herbalism as she came to understand the fine line apothecaries walked between beneficial and lethal practices. From the bard, she would eventually understand how to channel her passion into her songs for various effects.

While she continued to learn, talks with far-off clans were in the works. Some selkies would voluntarily leave their original families in order to build stronger bonds and embolden the family tree with new blood. This particular clan was from Antarctica and carried the potency of the leopard seals. The isolated continent had its own untapped nexus, which gave the resident selkies their great stature and ferocity. In earlier periods, relations between the Southern and Northern selkies had been tense, as they had disagreed on everything from names to interactions with humans. However, this was meant to put that aside and encourage new relationships. One of the young bulls that had accompanied the party was Uthar. He was young but eager to escape home and gain new opportunities. As bookwormish as Meris had become, her parents dragged her to the gathering to meet the newcomers. The two fifteen-year-olds were quickly attracted to each other, and the friendship-building went from there. Uthar brought her out of her shell once again, and Meris gave him the close connections he had been lacking at home. They decided to build their own ship together to catch fish and allow Meris to travel to islands that needed a travelling healer. By the time they reached seventeen, they had a son together, whom they named Kai.
Life continued with relative ease for the next two years until one fateful day. The young bard’s skills had earned her a good reputation throughout the islands as well as the attention of Void Weaver slavers looking for a healer for the current Augur. It was fairly easily to lure Meris away to a supposed home on the far side of the island, away from where the boat was docked. The Void Weaver disguised as a selkie fisherman urgently begged the woman to come help his injured wife, who had taken a fall on some rocks. Grabbing what she needed, she bid her husband and child a final goodbye before never seeing them again. Upon reaching the destination, there were certainly no patients to be found. The plaintive man turned on her, followed by his unconcealed partners, and knocked her out. Taking her sealskin and anything that could’ve been used as a weapon; they hauled her aboard the tiny boat that held other soon-to-be slaves.

She wasn’t out for long, and she soon realized what her captors were, the actual boogeymen that haunted all selkie children’s nightmares. The journey to Darlarath was nearly overwhelming. Between the extreme temperature shift and immense pressure, some of her fellow passengers didn’t make it. What also weighed on her was the horrible realization that she would never be with Uthar and Kai again. Her mourning wouldn’t have any release as she was automatically shoved into a large cage with captives for a week to weed out the weak ones. Instead of going to work in the Augur’s household, because of the Chamberlain’s meddling, she wound up in the hands of low-caste Prelates that enjoyed ordering her around, taking the stresses of being peons out on her, and generally making her existence a living hell.

Fortunately, the bruised and battered roane was only with them a month until the pontiff realized the Chamberlain’s connivance and found her. He purchased her with more seafood than the commoners could have ever dreamed of and allowed her to recuperate with the concubines. With bones mended and given a scanty wardrobe, Meris was given the responsibility of restoring the Void Weaver’s bill of health. While he didn’t harm her like her previous owners did, she assumed she would eventually become a toy for the corpulent man. She kept her head lowered and her demeanor submissive while she treated his wound, bathed him, and otherwise did her best to nurse him back to health. During these moments of weakness, she could have ended his life, but she knew that would end with her death. Besides, a part of her felt that it was wrong, despite how awful the Void Weavers seemed. However, she would eventually see her assumptions were wrong. The Augur obviously wanted to pass the time and talk with her, which passed from chit-chat to deeper conversations. The Squid’s vulnerability permitted her to see him for who he truly was, not a façade he had put up. Nurse and patient turned into pupil and mentor; from there, they became friends, then confidants, and lovers. At the same time, through his servants’ link to Respite Point, she came to know Delmar the Revered, learned how to combat the Black Speech, and learn of the entity known as the Architect. It was also a time for lessons in self-defense. She was being groomed for the point in time when she would take Delmar’s place. The created space in the Darkhallow gave her and Nereus a chance to dream of life together, free from the Others. These were some of the dearest moments to her, but she ultimately kept a secret from him. Delmar’s body passed away, but not his mind. It found refuge within Meris’s psyche and stayed in the lighthouse of her and Nereus’s shared space in the Darkhallow. He would continue to be there for the cantor as a friend and mentor. She figured she would tell him at some point but only when she didn’t have to worry about the elder’s safety. This has continued to be a point of conflict for her. On one hand, she wanted to be truthful to her husband, but, on the other, their love and future together depended on being rid of the Others, in which Delmar played an important part. She couldn’t forsake thousands of lives merely to run away to be with Nereus.

Meris spent a century of her life with him, eventually rising to the title of Consort. She and the Augur worked together to improve the overall quality of Darlarath. Healers were trained to bolster the health of slaves and Void Weavers alike; medicinal gardens became a common sight. This was all done to gradually adjust the cephalopod race to life on the surface. The White Brotherhood aided them in taking out influential naysayers and relaying information, which the kind and reluctant lord slaver Lulroth reported to Nereus and Meris. Unfortunately, the time of prosperity was drawing to a close.

Despite all the hard efforts in progress, the Chamberlain had infiltrated the White Brotherhood and planted moles within various levels of the resistance. Lulroth’s household and the White Brotherhood’s main contributors had remained untouched, but the framework of the rebellion was shaky. As for the power couple, they had grown close enough to make love in the physical world and conceive a child. During that time, she confessed to him that she had had a mate and a son back in the Orkney Islands. Even with that awkwardness between them, she still continued to care for him. The relationship she had with Uthar was entirely different from the one she had with Nereus. In fact, she had connected with him on a far deeper level than she ever had with her former mate.

Nine months later, she gave birth, via an early form of a C-section, to Chonogorroth, whom would earn the name Chauncey. She was able to nurse him briefly in her arms until the rapid Void Weaver growth kicked in. The initial plans had been for Nereus and her to go to the surface world, while their son would lead the Council of Oracles in his father’s absence, but this was not to be. Not long after giving birth, the Chamberlain had pulled Chauncey’s soul from his body and replaced it with Nikolaas Buck’s demented and fractured spirit. His plans went from there; many of the Respite Point refugees and White Brotherhood agents had lost their lives. The Chamberlain presented his falsified evidence of Nereus’s “true” intentions for her, which felt like the proverbial punch to the stomach. Her husband had not had a chance to tell her the detailed and complex lies the Chamberlain had woven over time, and she was locked up in a cell until she was brought before the Augur to be charged for her “crimes”. She rattled off a Black Speech koan that broke the mind of the elderly guard and managed to dodge a vocal blast directed at her by Nereus, which coincidentally missed her. During that time, she was able to rescue her pelt and a satchel filled with items she felt she might have needed. Remembering a nearby brine pool that led to the Atlantic Ocean, she donned her sealskin and dove to the bottom, knowing Arbiters would be after her. She tenaciously fought through the intense pressures and made it to the surface. Unfortunately, she was still several hundreds of miles from any coast and had to swim for a while to make much distance with a pack of Void Weavers after her. There were a couple times they managed to catch up with her and injure her, but she gave them the slip. However, swimming for so long and being hurt caught up with the selkie. Just as it seemed they would catch her once again, an enormous waterspout appeared from nowhere.

The waterspout was actually the Water Throne intervening directly. The only way Heaven had any information about the events transpiring in Darlarath was from the good souls rising to Plane of Bliss and telling them of what was transpiring. While Meris had been in the process of fleeing, Matriel had jumped ahead in time to browse all possible outcomes of the bard’s future, and all of them appeared grim. The Throne had been selected to keep an eye on the situation because of his connection to the element and its denizens, so he had been left with little time to think it all through, then taking action.

The aquatic tornado ripped through the Arbiters’ boats and killed some of them, leaving the others to hightail it back to Darlarath empty-handed. Matriel found Meris wearily hanging onto a large rock jutting out of the Atlantic. He took her to a waystation run by selkies that were the remnants of monasteries that had been dismantled in the years following the Protestant Reformation. He and Hanako had infiltrated it by wearing the veils of selkies, and it enabled them to look after her health. Her injuries would recuperate in time, but the trauma of her lover’s deception had dealt a larger blow to her psyche. The terror of escaping Darlarath, seeing so many of her friends die, and Nereus’s seeming deceitfulness clouded her mind with doubt, anger, and depression, with burnout affecting her skills as a cantor.

Once she was well again, Matriel had to get through to her. He revealed to her the events surrounding Nikolaas Buck’s contact with Darlarath through the brine pool beneath his home, as well as what Heaven had learned from its newest arrivals. He helped her reconnect with her gifts. Once her mind was clear again, she said she wanted to write a letter to Kai to give him information about where she had been all his life, leaving out the parts about Nereus. The vellum letters were an anthropological treasure trove about the Void Weavers and their way of life. He had them delivered in secret as Meris couldn’t visit the Orkney Islands without drawing the attention of the spies that had led to her being abducted over a century ago.

Now with a clear head, Meris had to figure out how she wanted to continue the fight. She had her theoretical arcane knowledge well established in thanks to the amount of time she had with Nereus in the Darkhallow. Matriel informed her of how the slave trade between America, Europe, and Brazil would give the Void Weavers ample means to gather more slaves. If they want to strike hard at them, that would be a way to do it. Of course, she would need help, he stated.

The invisible waystation she was on was in the middle of the Atlantic trade routes and would give her a chance to commandeer one and hopefully earn the trust of the slaves. While essentially learning how to apply her knowledge on the job, she was able to spook the ship’s crew into surrendering without shedding much blood. Some of the crew was made to get on the lifeboats, but others warily agreed to join her. She certainly didn’t agree with what they were doing, but she thought it wasn’t worth the time to kill people when she had bigger fish to fry. Her amiable and patient nature was able to work around the language barrier until she could learn Portuguese and a smattering of the other languages on board. From there, she built a reputation for raiding Void Weaver slave ships, allowing those just wanted to return home to do so or remain by her side. She persuaded many with her conviction and earned herself a small fleet, which she sometimes had act as a group of ghost ships. Obviously, when they clashed with their foes, lives were lost, but she made sure she honored their passing. Loyalist slavers received no mercy. They managed to get some of the refugees handed over to Lucian and his cohorts. Others were let off at quilombos in Brazil, where she picked up Capoeira. Due to the Chamberlain’s interference, Meris and her crews occasionally had close calls with Arbiters disguised as rival pirates and privateers. The wizardess’s luck was starting to catch up to her, and she knew it. Despite this, but she continued on with her goals.

In 1693, another raid on a slave ship turned out to not be in her favor. The Chamberlain had enough of her interference in Darlarath’s slave trade and mounted a large scale excursion of the best Arbiters, strongest guards, and loyal Abominations. It was a bloodbath as her crewmembers were brutally killed, and Meris’ own defenses were worn down. Ever the micromanager and zealot, the Chamberlain wanted to see to it that the thorn in his side would be gone for good. A bullet from a Doglock pistol to her right femoral artery did her in. The significant blood loss caused her to go into shock. The Chamberlain had his men humiliate the roane in whatever way they deemed fit. She had long since collapsed, so he took pleasure in watching her suffer during the brief time. Once she seemed about ready to die, he had grown bored with the sight and thrust a final strike of his sword through her chest. He called his men back, and they boarded their respective ships, believing it was a mission well done.
However, just as Meris’ soul left her burnt and injured body, a complex ascension spell kicked in, initiated by a locket which stored the spell until conditions were right. Her spirit was pulled back into her body, ignoring Heaven’s light, and her bloodless heart began pumping once again. She entered into a peculiar undead state that allowed her to track the Chamberlain’s fleet, while her body mended the severe injuries. In about a week, she caught up with the trio of boats. Knowing she was still outnumbered, she went for a direct attack, in which the Chamberlain abandoned ship in the early moments he realized she was back. With the wind holding her above them, she summoned a terrifying but isolated storm that would give the minions the full brunt of the agony she had felt. The lightning picked them off in batches, even those that had jumped into the ocean to escape. Within a few moments, their vessels were on fire, and the Chamberlain’s taskforce was obliterated.

The new archmage took a considerable break to rest and recuperate, as she didn’t want to experience burnout again. Meris resurfaced in 1750, now in an era where magic wasn’t considered as taboo. From then and throughout the 19th century, Meris did her work on a smaller scale. She would be employed in the household of someone close to her mark and take them out. In other cases, she would simply wait for the opportune time to assassinate the target. The murder of Warren Ogilvie led to her meeting George Murray Gammell, the Architect’s agent on the mortal plane. It took a bit of time to come to accept him, but they became fast friends and partners-in-crime, as he supplied some of the instruments in her assignments.

The 20th century saw her participate as a nurse in World War I, but she offed Void Weavers infiltrating the military ranks to push their agenda. One of her notable accomplishments was she was able to keep hundreds of young soldiers from succumbing to the Spanish Flu by simply using her voice as she walked past her beds. The 1920s saw her taking out Void Weaver mobsters. A rather nightmarish clash with a popinjay Void Weaver and his band of vicious and crazy Watu in South Africa ended in a blaze. She again worked as a nurse in World War II and took out many Axis-aligned Squids posing as commanders. While Amazo, Archibald, and Bucky were in the thick of the Pulp Era, Meris remained in the shadows, as she preferred it. Things then mostly quieted down, as she traveled the world, researching the new technologies that were steadily arising. She had already branched out in her search of things that would continue to inspire her songs. Of course, she still took out offenders and kept an eye out for peaks in activity. The arrival of her beloved in the New Age scene concerned her and made her wonder how his entrance would affect matters. The experiments of Anton Azardad drew her attention, and that it was one puzzle she continues to work on to this day.

In 2025, she has come to Hope after the cataclysmic events that shook the city after the fifty year peace after the Battle of Hope. She knows that Wesley Chambers is playing the puppetmaster and manipulating Nereus on every possible level, making him a reluctant accomplice and a hostage. Somehow, someway, she understands that rescuing Nereus is a major key at bringing the Others and the Loyalist Void Weavers down for a very long time.
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