Name: Andrea Markham Occupation: Psychiatrist Age: 48 Sexuality: Pansexual Species: Witch Clan/Pack/Coven?: Phial Hometown: New York, NY Relationship Status: Single Personality Traits: Vindictive, Clever, Visionary, Selfish
Biography
Brooklyn, New York. ENTER: Andrea Markham. DOB: 01/09/1976 TIME OF BIRTH: █████ ADMINISTRATIVE USE: ███████████████ MOTHER: Phial witch. Carnivorous plant specialist. FATHER: Biochemist. Significant research in membrane fusion & exocytosis.
AGE: EIGHT
Andrea's first experience performing magic was tending to her mother's plants in their small rooftop greenhouse of their brownstone. Her fingers brushed against a bladderwort sprout and watched as it grew before her very eyes - bigger than the others around it. Unsure what had happened, she fled from the gardens and right into her mother's arms, afraid that she'd ruined them. Her mother simply seemed delighted and explained that she had a gift that they would practice together.
She sat on her father's lap while he stared at books and papers with equations and symbols far too advanced for her to make sense of. He explained when she pointed and asked, but most of the verbiage went over her head. But the fascination with her father's experiments began there — and only worsened when he was forced to bring some petri dishes home due to lack of storage in his lab.
AGE: SIXTEEN
A few months after her sixteenth birthday, her mother bought her a botany textbook and took her on a trip where they could be fully immersed in nature. There, Andrea learned more about the work her mother did: not just botany and research into carnivorous plants, but how her magic manifested and how she was developing seeds for the Circle of the Phial to be made into undetectable poisons that would leech a person's personal magic. Andrea understood the process, but not the reasoning. The reasoning was the important bit. Through her questions, her mother began to train her - every step she made in her magical journey led to another answer about the Phial's secrets. She learned of old grimoires, learned of stories that have only been passed down through oral tradition, and above all, learned how to use all of this knowledge in her own work.
At the same time she was undergoing training to hone her magical skills, high school was bearing down on her — though that came much, much easier. Far ahead of everyone else in her classes, she delved into scientific extracurriculars: some earned her college credits and others were simply to learn more to push forward her other training. Eventually, she started to use the mundane skills to further along her mother's teachings.
AGE: EIGHTEEN
The summer after high school graduation is partially spent in preparation for college, and partially spent in the greenhouse on the roof. She feels as though she's near a breakthrough with her mother's seed project, and dedicates an inordinate amount of time to completing it. It's finished three days before she moves out, and her mother presents the Parasite Spores to her coven.
Undergrad is undergrad, but Andrea finds a home in the study of medicine. She considers many fields from biochemist like her father to a surgeon. but eventually it's the mental health field that calls to her. More specifically, the use of medication within the mental health field.
AGE: TWENTY-TWO
Medical school brings much more challenge than expected. Her peers call her a prodigy, just like they had in previous schooling experiences, but Andrea doesn't tell them that she spends every waking moment with her nose in her textbooks and any other scientific study or journal she could get her hands on. She absorbs it all, chews on it, and takes notes of her own making to compare. What exactly are the mechanism of actions for medications that treat certain mental disorders? Could there be other treatments that could work? Being as young as she is, even the most rudimentary questions feel like hurdles that she becomes fascinated with. Through this study of medications, she starts to work on the idea of making the spells she can cast into something like an enchantment.
If she could develop something chemically that would produce the same effect as a spell and metabolize through pills ingested, how would that change the study of mental health? She becomes obsessed with the idea of making spell components small enough to fit into capsules and mass produce. The first trial run begins with her simply ingesting herbs with no change, which turns into her using the idea for her mother's parasite spores to grow plants with a natural spell woven into their limbs, leaves, and roots.
The first successful spell is simply a detection spell that only lasts for thirty seconds before fading, but it's a success nonetheless.
AGE: TWENTY-SIX
She begins her psychiatry residency not long after medical school, placed in her dream clinic in Brooklyn. It's through this work that she meets Graham, a friend of one of her bosses, and they immediately hit it off. Andrea becomes enamored with his soft eyes, the shape of his jaw, and the way calloused fingers brush against her wrist during one of their first few meetings. She tried to play it safe and easy, but the charm was too much for her to resist. She gets swooped up in him and the world he inhabited: one of hunters and creatures not unlike witches.
When she falls, she falls hard and fast. Her heart beats for him, and he treats her like royalty. The Brotherhood does not exactly welcome her with open arms, but instead with apprehension. She is a witch, and they dedicate their lives, she learns, to eradicating those who would harm human life. She learns, through them, of the creatures called vampires and werewolves and what dangers they bring to the world. It's through them, that she finds funding to dedicate more time and effort to her capsule prototypes. The capsules, they decide together, would be an excellent way to buff themselves, protect themselves, and avoid excessive harm during the hunts.
After learning of vampires and werewolves, though, she begins to grow curious about how their minds would work compared to human minds. The information the Brotherhood gives her is a significant starting point, though — how does one treat something that lives but does not live for their mental health problems? How does one treat something that metabolizes alcohol in the snap of a finger? The questions intrigue her - so she begins to use Brotherhood resources and Graham as a reference to study. They bring her cadavers (when they exist - she can't use ashes in her study) to autopsy and study. For the most part, she can find no difference between a dead human and a dead werewolf. It only intrigues her more.
It is also through these resources and study that she finally completes the first prototype of her capsules.
AGE: THIRTY
Four years of internship and residency later, Andrea has her own clinic, helped along by her father's money. The work on her prototypes is halted, simply because she's fascinated by the actual work of psychiatry and treatment — especially when all of her patients are exclusively either Brotherhood hunters or supernaturals. She does not feel a kindredship with vampires or werewolves, like other witches in her coven have mentioned. If anything, Andrea feels as though she's a step above them - brought on by the idea that she will one day be able to treat what ails their minds.
It's here, too, that she becomes an informant for the Brotherhood. Every vampire or werewolf that crosses into her office has their information fed straight to Graham and his sector in exchange for more funding for her research. While she cannot work directly on her spell capsules, this money goes directly towards her study of dosages for vampires and werewolves, and the healing properties of their blood.
AGE: THIRTY-THREE
Thirty three bring disaster and an entire upending of her life. Graham is killed. She does not know who or why, or the circumstances surrounding it. All she knows is that the love of her life has died, and taken her heart with it. Every drive to study or research is completely pulled from her, buried under the pressure of grief.
Graham's protégé, Finlay, is the only one who understands the weight of loss. She falls into bed with him out of a desperate attempt to distract herself from the hopelessness she feels. It helps, for a time. But she cannot bring herself to love, him or anyone. It's too soon, and it's too much. One night, while smoking, he admits his feelings, and she feels ice run through her veins. She will lose him - and her distraction - if he continues down that road. They still fall into bed together, while Andrea holds his heart in her hands, preparing herself to shred it to ribbons.
AGE: THIRTY-FIVE
Losing Graham was not the worst thing in that decade. After his death, Brotherhood hunters who disagreed with Andrea's experiments and work made a move, seeking to destroy every ounce of research and whatever she had accomplished over the years working with them.
They break into the lab on a night where she'd attempted to find the joy in it again, and immediately try to overpower her. With all her prowess in potions, tinctures, and alchemy, she had never once learned to defend herself. She throws a few defensive spells, but the hunters shrug it off. Outnumbered, she turns to her equipment, to try and grab something to throw to keep distance between them. The larger of the hunters comes at her with a knife, shredding her face and torso, but not before some of the others - in trying to destroy what was there - mix chemicals that were never meant to be combined and causes an explosion, knocking both her and her captor into the wall.
Chemicals splash and pop onto Andrea's face, burning away flesh and muscle. In the scramble, she uses her magic to manipulate the chemical compounds causing the fire - with great difficulty - enough to stop herself from being totally immolated. Some of the attackers aren't quite so lucky. As she stands, face and body raw and burned, the larger hunter grabs her leg and twists the lower half of it. Tendons twist and pop. Muscles shred. Bones crack.
Andrea falls.
The last few minutes before she loses consciousness is spent digging her thumbs into his eyes.
Treatment for the burns, her leg injuries, and the slashes is a long one. She spends more time unconscious in a hospital room over the next few weeks than she does awake. Physical therapy is the bane of her existence, but so are the creams she's given by both coven and doctor for her face. There are talks of plastic surgery, but Andrea refuses. By the time she's able to go home, her view of the hunters has been irreversibly marred.
AGE: FORTY
Despite her stint in the hospital and the forced physical therapy, Andrea does not continue it once she leaves. It develops into a permanent limp, sometimes only helped along by the use of a cane. During the long recovery, she has much too long to think about her choices of the last few years of her life. Her mind warps her work with the hunters, beginning to regret what she was able to do with them over the years. Every look or glance in the mirror reminds her of her choices and where it's lead. Whenever Finlay calls, she refuses to answer - not wanting him to see her like this and also unable to bear the idea that he might have been apart of the attack.
Isolation warps the fear into an absolute truth in her mind.
She tells her coven her fears, and they forbid her from seeing him, forming a protective circle around her: both mundane and magical, to keep her a distance away from him while she remained in New York.
Despite her refusal to accept extensive mundane treatment, Andrea begins to work on her own experiments to try and reduce the scars and pain with her magical study of chemicals. The pain eases, but the appearance does not.
AGE: FORTY-FIVE
Since the attack, Andrea had become more and more of a hermit - only interacting with her immediate family and members of her coven. Once life in the city has become too much to bear, she leaves the city entirely to be in seclusion with other Phial coven members to immerse herself in nature. She spends three years trying to heal her mind and her body, with little to no effect, but she does manage to find her way back to her roots magically.
AGE: FORTY-EIGHT
When she arrives in Port Leiry, she is simply following the rest of the coven after the conclave meeting. There had been some sort of upset that Andrea didn't quite understand, and they had told her there was strength in numbers. She does not mind, and welcomes a chance to sit by the sea to find inspiration to work once more on her capsules. There are resources and power structures on the west coast that intrigue her, both in the way of furthering her pursuits and protecting herself from future attacks.
CONNECTIONS
PHIAL WITCHES; both those she knows and does not know. Andrea arrived in Port Leiry with New York branch Phial members, so there is opportunity there.
PATIENTS; Andrea is just getting started at a clinic in Port Leiry and is accepting new patients. She will only accept members of the supernatural species, as that's where most of her passion and study lies.
TEST SUBJECTS; People of all species are welcome to sign up (willing or unwilling) to be her test subjects for her spell capsules. Most of her work has been destroyed in New York, so she is starting fresh save for a few notes she'd had from undergrad.
MORE TO COME.