Charlotte Quay

Lady Charlotte Quay was the Verbena representative to the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions prior to the Reckoning.

Biography
Despite her potent Arts, Nightshade was dying. For over 500 years, she had battled, loved and schemed to keep the Council dream alive. Now the Verbena Master, the last of the original nine Primi, was tired of life. At her feet, a host of elder witches waited to succeed her, from the ultra-traditional Gardeners of the Trees to the modern Moon-Seekers. Few of them, Nightshade noted, would maintain peace with the Hermetics and Celestials. What to do?

From the Shanandoah valley came a mixed cabal, the Petals of the First Frost, on an emissary mission to Concordia. Their resident healer, a young woman named Charlotte, made a powerful impression with her quick wit, enthusiasm and eloquence. The girl, fresh from her Awakening at the Woodstock festival, fascinated Nightshade. Although the elder never voiced her suspicions, it seemed as though the spirit of another young favorite, Eloine of the First Cabal, lived again in Charlotte. Eloine had lost her youth and innocence in an early Ascension conflict; Nightshade vowed that history would not repeat itself.

Charlotte herself was born in Toronto to a rich girl cast out by her family for conceiving a child out of wedlock. As Charlotte's mother immersed herself in the beatnik culture of coffee houses and cheap pot, she raised her girl to rebel. As a teenager, Charlotte followed her mother's example, ran away, moved into a commune with a guitarist from Brooklyn and went to Woodstock. The people she met there included her future cabal; at the end of the festival, she joined them in Virginia and pursued the witch's Arts. Several years later, she met her true mentor, Nightshade.

At first, she was sheltered; soon, however, the elder realized that her attentions stifled the girl's spark. Growing into her power, Charlotte was never far from Nightshade's side during the tumultuous '70s. As she rose in power and prominence, Lady Charlotte became known as "Nightshade's Voice," her favored pupil and chosen one. Until a new apprentice appeared, that is; Heasha Morninglade, 10 years Charlotte's junior, seized Nightshade's attentions in the early '80s, and it was she, not Lady Charlotte, who became the new favorite - and the elder's final heir.

Lady Charlotte, through hard work and personality, gained the Seat of Life shortly before Nightshade's death in 1988. Around the same time, the Technocracy murdered Charlotte's lover and kidnapped her children. To her knowledge, they were enslaved in the MECHA construct, and she is determined to someday rescue them.

Appearance
The Verbena representative is a robust woman with long brown hair and a determined expression. Although mature, she radiates an air of authority far older than her years and an energy that few youths could match.