Name: FRIEDA RICHTER

Age: 30

Race: Caucasian

Sex: Female. Approximately 5’ 11” tall, with blonde hair, steel grey eyes, and an athletic figure as per her military pedigree. Objectively quite stunning in her attractiveness.

Skills: ace pilot, energy weapons

Personality: highly intelligent but generally, socially clueless. She comes off as cold and unfriendly but truly, she doesn’t have a natural propensity towards small talk and casual conversation. Smoker.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Enclave-issue plasma pistol, mismatched light armour pieces suitable for a travelling merc. Also carries a small knapsack full of items of sentimental value, such as a photograph of her and her twin brother, various medals and pins earned within the Enclave (including her dog tags), and a pocket watch featuring an engraving.

Occupation: Mercenary/security guard for hire.

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): Formerly Enclave, now unaffiliated.

Backstory:

Frieda was born seven minutes before her fraternal twin, Brian, but spent the majority of her life living in his false shadow. Their father was a high ranking official who lost his life during a mission while the twins were young. Subject to the same vigorous physical and weapons training through her life in the Enclave, no matter what she did, somehow her brother was favoured even when their skills and scores were on par. Where Frieda was more acerbic in personality, her brother’s stoic demeanour tended to be extolled. Eventually, she was to be trained as a pilot, whereas her brother was destined for the front lines and recon. Her natural ability to focus on her task at hand while under pressure and make clear, logical decisions, saw her rise quickly through the ranks as one of their best pilots.

Despite the artificial rivalry their peers and superiors tried to place upon them, Frieda and Brian were inseparably close. They celebrated each other’s achievements and differing designations. Brian was the only person in her life constantly validating her own skills, when so many others preferred to compare her to her brother. They held up and supported each other. When her brother left on a recon mission, never to return, his loss was a devastating blow. The Enclave considered his and his team’s mission a failure, and did not send a rescue team.

Frieda wandered through the months that followed in a total daze, unable to find any peace in the thought that her brother was gone for good. He had been a grounding presence in her life, and without him, she found it impossible to find meaning in staying with the Enclave. In a daring move, she packed her most valuable things into a knapsack, stole a Vertibird, and decided to look for her brother, herself. Unfortunately, she miscalculated the trajectory of a rad storm, and found herself completely off course and crashing into the woods of what used to be New Hampshire.

Alive, but without any caps to her name nor desire to return to the Enclave, she wandered east, taking small mercenary type jobs from various settlements until she reached the ocean, and arbitrarily chose to wander south. She found herself wandering into Salem, hoping the sparse settlement could use some full-time muscle, until such time she was able to begin the search for her brother anew.

Name: Celeste Brown

Age: 24

Race: Caucasian/mixed western European

Sex: Female. Barely 5’1”, with shoulder length, very dark brown, curly hair, and bright blue eyes. She carries a stout figure with a noticeably voluptuous chest.

Skills: cooking, bartending, bartering

Personality: very charismatic, friendly, and genuinely sweet to everyone she encounters.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Wasteland settler garb including t-shirts, sweaters, skirts, dresses, slacks, and sneakers. Carries small sentimental trinkets, such as a pair of her mother’s earrings and other inherited jewelry, and her father’s first set of knives.

Occupation: Barkeep/innkeep

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): None

Backstory:

Celeste has a very plain and lackluster backstory. Originally from a settlement on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, she was born to two, loving, hard working parents. Her mother operated a successful trading business, having set up at the border, and her father was a talented baker and chef. She learned the best of both occupations from a young age; the art of the deal from her mom, and how to create the flakiest pastry and well-balanced soups from her dad. Through her late teens, Celeste started to feel the wanderlust. While a steady stream of folks came through Niagara Falls between the two pre-war countries, so did their stories. Celeste started to dream of the world beyond the river and the escarpment, but for many years, seeing it for herself remained a dream. A caravan travelling from Burlington near Ronto, en route to the eastern seaboard, thrilled Celeste with their talk of the bright and beautiful Diamond City, that she insisted she go with them. She chipped in her own caps for the protected passage, said a bittersweet goodbye to her parents, and was on their way.

The travel would prove to be very harsh on sweet, tender Celeste. Slogging through the terrain, surrounded by hostiles at every turn, and fearing for her life, all had begun to tarnish her shiny impression of the world outside her childhood home. Chronic optimism kept her going, but a very small part of her began to consider that she had made a huge mistake.

Celeste would never make it to Diamond City. The caravan made a stop in Salem in an attempt to top up on purified water, and Celeste would fall in love with the town. The setting, the buildings, everything felt so beautiful and comfortable to her. She had a pocket full of caps and stars in her eyes. After a convincing conversation with the caravan, who assured her that Salem could become part of their regular route, she decided to settle back down and merely travel through the wasteland as she always had: by the stories and tales brought in by others.

Name: Dr. Arthur West

Age: 36

Race: Caucasian

Sex: M

Skills: Medicine and Botany/Hydroponics. Formally educated in The Institute so has a wide breadth of knowledge for various Bioscience topics (chemistry, genetics etc.)

Personality: Generally reserved and not too keen on getting close to people. Mostly because he’s afraid they’ll discover his past and associations. He is generally friendly and polite however, and usually very willing to help. Like many in The Institute he’s very analytical and also maladjusted when it comes to wasteland living.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Has a well-worn hazmat suit that he uses to traverse the wasteland. Normally however, he can usually be found wearing a Vault-Tec doctor’s lab coat taken from Vault 88. He also wears a pair of eyeglasses, which he is virtually blind without.

For self defense, he carries around an Institute laser pistol, which he claims he scavenged off a destroyed synth, but was in fact his own personal firearm while he lived in The Institute. Which he never needed to use until recently.

(Previous) Occupation(s): Institute Bioscientist

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): The Institute. Occasionally, he still sends and receives coded radio messages to friends, family, and colleagues in Vault 88. But only rarely, given the considerable risk involved for both parties.

Backstory: Arthur was born and raised in The Institute and like most there, never saw the surface, having spent his whole life within its sealed environment. As a child, he was raised on the notion that the surface was a horrifying place: a nightmare realm full of mutated monsters and savage raiders. An idea which stuck with him well into adulthood.

After receiving his doctorate, he entered The Institute’s Bioscience division where he served as a medical assistant for some time before jumping from project to project in various research roles. Eventually however, he was pulled into a top secret classified project within Bioscience after having been highly recommended by his superiors. He started work in the FEV Lab immediately.

Arthur was a part of the FEV Program for years, working very closely with his good friend and colleague Dr. Brian Virgil, and for years he experimented on wasteland test subjects. Injecting them with the modified variants of the Forced Evolutionary Virus and analyzing the results. Subjects that successfully transformed would typically be tagged and released back out into the wasteland. Those that did not, were terminated on the spot.

For years, Arthur never questioned his work. Many of the test subjects that were brought in were raiders, mercenaries, brutes, junkies, and savages. People who behaved as less than animals. All of these served to confirm his beliefs that the surface was a brutal, monstrous place. Experimenting on them for the betterment of science and even releasing them back to the surface, therefore, made perfect sense. After all, monsters belong where monsters live.

Every so often however, an individual would be brought in which didn’t meet this profile. They were scared, no petrified even, of him. And they certainly didn’t look like brutish savages. But they too would be used and then disposed. He initially justified this with his belief that even if rare exceptions occurred, the surface was still a terrible place where the weak would eventually be killed, tortured, or eaten. If anything, turning them would help them to survive in the brutal animalistic world they had to live in. And once they were turned, there was no going back anyway. And monsters belong where monsters live.

As the frequency of these ‘exceptions’ continued without noticeable change however, his doubts soon began to gnaw at him. They grew constantly, until it became an ulcer in his life. Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore and confided in his colleague, Dr. Virgil, that he was having doubts about the program and his role in it. Far from giving him the solace and reassurance he wanted however, Virgil told him that his feelings were the same and that he felt the project was both useless and deeply wrong. Together, they penned a formal letter of protest to The Director and requested the project be shut down, but it was summarily rejected.

Unsure of what to do next, and unwilling to continue their work, Virgil proposed a radical idea to Arthur. Sabotage. He made his intentions known that he planned to destroy the lab and escape The Institute if he had to, and he asked his friend to join him, knowing full well it might mean both of their deaths, but convinced that it had to be done. Arthur was shocked and terrified of the idea of leaving The Institute to live up top. Despite his misgivings about the project, he was still mortally fearful of anything above ground, and nightmares he’d had as a child about horrible things crawling around in the world above him crept back into his memory.

Arthur asked Virgil to give him a night to think about it, and they both agreed to discuss it the next morning. As Arthur lay awake in his bed however, his fear grew. Fear of being exiled and fear of what awaited him on the surface. His cowardice got the better of him, and he broke down. In the middle of the night, he reported Virgil to the SRB.

While Arthur waited in his apartment quietly, Coursers stormed Virgil’s residence. They did not find him there. A second group had moved to secure the FEV Lab, and there Dr. Virgil was found, alone, at the lab. Arthur never fully learned what transpired there that night. But from what he understood, Virgil had been up making preparations for their departure, in anticipation of his friend agreeing to join him. The lab had apparently been completely destroyed and rendered useless in the scuffle. He never saw Dr. Virgil again.

Guilt ridden at what he’d done. Both to his friend and in his work on the FEV project, Arthur requested medical leave from The Directorate, which he was granted under the circumstances. The ensuing days became a blur for him. And when The Institute was destroyed by an act of an outsider, The Director’s own father it seemed, Arthur made little protest or show of grief. Unlike most of his colleagues, he understood the reasons why this had happened.

When The Institute relocated to Vault 88, alive but resource strapped, and began the process of rebuilding. Arthur stayed for only a short while, before gathering what material possessions he owned, saying his goodbyes, and leaving. He journeyed out into the wasteland, fully expecting to die. But he knew he had to do it. After all, monsters belong where monsters live.

By some twist of fate though, he did not die. Instead he began roving from settlement to settlement and plying his services as a wandering physician, only asking for food, water, or a bed in return. In more than one instance, he had rather close encounters with the mutated monsters he’d helped to unleash. His own terrible creations. And in a few horrifying moments, he thought he recognized some of them.

Now Arthur’s wanderings have led him north to Salem. The quiet ruins of the seaside town has attracted his attention and hope that perhaps he can find a measure of peace here. Although he rather doubts it.

Name: Rook

Age: 20? He isn't sure.

Race: Super Mutant

Sex: Male (?)

Skills: Construction, hand to hand/close range combat, basic first aid, cooking skills (oddly), able chess player

Personality: Guarded, loner, distrusting of most,  fearless in the face of danger, if someone can make friends with him, there is almost blind loyalty, to the point of taking offense to those who attack those he cares about.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Rook is a monster among men, standing at 8 foot 9 inches tall, he is rather intimidating. This is further compounded by the fact he wears hand made armor, welded steel plates, barbed wire wrapped bracers, and a helmet that covers most of his face, he looks closer to the knights of old, Pre-war holo tapes.

His weapon is out that era as well. He carries a hand made pike. Plate steel welded to a steel pipe that is filled with cement and wrapped with leather. Given his size and power, it's a wonder any dare to challenge him. His only ranged weapon is almost comical. A simple, well worn 10mm pistol, and no, he is far from a good shot. He saves it for if he cannot reach something at all.
(Previous) Occupation(s): Mercenary

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): None

Backstory: One of the first FEV experiments by the Institute, Rook used to be a normal person. He doesn't recall where he was from, his name, or anything of that nature. He knew he enjoyed playing chess however, and has scattered memories of playing that with an old woman in blue.<br>
<br>
When he was made, he was deemed a failure because of his refusal to take orders. They sent a corsair to end his life. This... did not go as planned, as Rook ripped his arms off and proceeded to beat the synth to death with them. He was eventually subdued, shot in the head, and dumped in the sewers.<br>
<br>
The Institute, with all the power of their minds, had not realized just how resilient a Super Mutant could be. He awoke in the sewers, and fought his way free once more. He spent time healing, and learning more about his abilities.<br>
<br>
His hide out was eventually attacked by Raiders. At first he planned to simply flee, but when he saw the slaves, the people being pushed around, he felt he had to do something. In the world's worst game of Hide and Seek, Rook made himself known. His massive physical strength made it easy to kill the first two, and acquire a weapon. A simple, elegant, deadly machete.<br>
<br>
By the end of it, the raiders had been slain, and he opened the door to free the people... and they freaked out. He tried to explain his side, that he was not here to hurt them, but they remained unconvinced. When they escaped, they kept looking at him like he was a monster.

He went through the raiders items, cobbled together crude armor, collected the weapons, and set off, calling himself Rook. It just seemed to fit. He spent years slowly working up a reputation among the wastelanders, who never seemed to trust him, and he grew to hate that.

His most recent job had him guarding a caravan to Salem. The town was growing, and he didn't sign back on. Perhaps he could start a new here.

Name: Brandy Lee Brooks

Age: 21

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Appearance: Brandy has lightly tanned skin, dark brown hair just below her shoulders. She is about 5'7" tall, slender build, green eyes and a scar above her left eye. She is book smart, but lacks the necessary survival skills to travel the Wasteland on her own. Even though she is good at constructing and creating things, she's accident prone.

Skills: Moonshiner and a handywoman/carpenter

Personality: Brandy is friendly, and kind. She tends to blab about the things that she has read in her pre-war books. She is a big dreamer, fueled by the books she reads. She has been relatively coddled, therefore leaving her naive to many things, and also because she longs to see the new world to resemble what she has seen in books and other prewar literature so she overlooks many negative things if the wasteland.

Weapons & armor/clothing: .22 pistol, 12 gauge pump shotgun. No armor, Brandy wears summer dresses or tan work boots, khaki shorts, pants and various tops and a dirty red baseball cap. She wears black framed reading glasses the majority of the time, though she is only slightly farsighted.

Occupation: Brandy has a small copper still that she uses to brew her Papa's Potion moonshine. She had a toolbelt filled with various tools for handy work.

Faction: None, but she has done odd jobs for the Minutemen and their communities in order to get by.

Backstory: Brandy and her brother Ricky were raised by their grandparents, Bob and Cathy, in northern Michigan.

Brandy and Ricky grew up in the family business of distilling their own alcohol, better known as Papa’s Potion. Cathy taught Brandy from mostly pre-war books, as she was the homemaker and didn't venture out to much. During the warmer months, Brandy enjoyed working with her Papa repairing and or building new structures around the settlement and surrounding areas.

When Brandy turned 18, her inquisitive nature had her yearning to explore the Wasteland. She had never been far from home at all. Ricky, now 21, had traveled with his buddies and the stories they told only made Brandy long to experience it even more for herself.

At 19 Brandy's grandfather passed away, and her grandmother Cathy told her to follow her heart. Cathy convinced Ricky to let Brandy tag along on their next expedition. Reluctantly, Ricky said he would take her.

When she was 20 years old, it was Brandy's job to set up camp and prepare meals. Other than traveling during the day, Ricky wouldn't let her do much else. He told Brandy when they started getting closer to D.C. That he would let her scavenge with them.

Her lack of knowledge and clumsiness drove Ricky and his friends crazy. One day they tried to teach her to shoot a .22 pistol. Brandy was so jittery wanting to impress him that she accidentally squeezed off a round grazing his leg. Ricky automatically reacted by swinging a tire iron at her. It nailed on the left side of her forehead leaving a large gash and rendered her unconscious. Ever since that day the guys wouldn't let her touch a loaded gun.

Stuck with setting up camp, and bored out of her mind, Brandy would drink the whiskey they had made. Only wrecking her relationship with her brother even more. Eventually Ricky left Brandy in the Boston Commonwealth to fend for herself. She wandered into The Sanctuary and helped the Minutemen fix up the settlement. She was told of an up and coming settlement, Salem, and a couple of the Minutemen traveled with her to Salem so she could rebuild her life, and the new settlement.

Name: Ian Carver

Age: 33

Race: Caucasian.

Sex: Male

Appearance: Carver stands 6'1" with short red hair, cutting an imposing figure when fully armored and attired. His skin is dry and wrinkled, owed to having lived his entire life in Atom's light, and his face both bear holy markings of Atom.

Skills: Like many of Atom's faithful, Inquisitor Carver is learned in the practical application of nuclear physics, and as a former Zealot, he is a skilled fighter, adept with rifles and grenades.

Personality: Carver is defined by his devotion to the Children of Atom, whom he has lived among for his entire life and served loyally and dependably. Although typically more content to be a follower rather than a leader, he is undated by the task he has been given- the Children of Atom are his family, and he will do his part to protect and discipline them when Atom requires it. His beliefs represent a compromise between the ideals of Martin and Tektus- Carver is not a pacifist and understands that the blood of the unrighteous must be spilled on occasion, but Division should nonetheless not be forced upon those who do not desire it.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Like Atom's Zealots, Inquisitor Carver carries a Radium Rifle and wears a pre-war marine wetsuit with a full suit of rusted Marine armor with Atom's livery. As befitting his station, he also wears an Inquisitor's cowl.

Occupation: Inquisitor of the Church of Atom, formerly Zealot of the Church of Atom

Faction: Children of Atom

Backstory: Ian Carver grew up in Megaton, the son of two followers of Atom. As an adult, he was part of Confessor Martin's congregation that journeyed to the north and discovered Atom's holy island. For the next few years, he served loyally as a Zealot first to Martin, then to Tektus. He followed his orders to the letter and did not question his superiors, even if he privately disagreed with what they did.

Some time after tensions with Far Harbor died down, Tektus appointed Carver to the station of Inquisitor, and tasked him with finding and reining in the fanatical followers of Atom in the Commonwealth, who had been causing problems in the area and ruining the Church's image. Whether this is a sign that Tektus has adopted a more peaceful stance overnight, or simply wants to gain influence and power in the Church, Inquisitor Carver will obey.

Name: Mary Hawthorne (aka Marie Leveaux)

Age: 616 (apparent age 18)

Race: Caucasian

Sex: Female

Skills: a rather good cook, and knowledgeable about agriculture and animal husbandry. Can read and write Latin (Classical and Vulgate), German, Greek (Classical and Byzantine), as well as a couple of languages that aren't human. Passably good shot with simple firearms (revolvers, double bbl shotguns and lever action rifles), but doesn't like them and prefers melee weapons such as knives or swords. Highly skilled at what an earlier age would call Witchcraft...though she is very careful about concealing this and the subjects of her display of power normally either don't realize what she is doing or don't live to talk about it....or both.

Personality: Rather attractive by Wasteland standards, 5'6, 115 lbs, with long black hair and blue eyes. Polite and calm, sometimes eerily calm. Occasionally talks in a oddly archaic manner of speaking, especially when speaking about the past. Does not seem to be at all well versed in current Commonwealth history, but seems unusually knowledgeable of the past...can speak on colonial era Massachusetts, and Salem in particular with a particularly disturbing level of authority....and oddly enough the longer before the War the subject, the more detail and knowledge she displays. People who associate with her will know she is very literate and a voracious reader of books, not all of which are in English.

Weapons & armor/clothing: Possesses a .38 snub-nose and a .45 ACP Revolver (the latter a weapon antique by even Pre-War standards), 12 gauge double barrel shotgun, Revolutionary War sword, and several knives. Normally only carries a knife and/or the .38 revolver unless she is expecting trouble....and it is not prudent to display her "abilities". Usually dressed in standard Wasteland attire for women, if appropriate clean pre-war clothes.

(Previous) Occupation(s): Student/researcher/practitioner of the Arcane, medicine woman, housewife

Faction (Minutemen, Institute, BOS, Railroad, None. Etc): None

Backstory: Born in Boston, Massachusetts in November 1671, youngest daughter of Thomas Parker, a wealthy merchant, and his wife Elizabeth. Due to her family wealth, she well well-educated by the standards of the age, receiving a classical education, which included being taught to read Latin and Greek. In 1688, she married John Hawthorne, a County Magistrate and merchant living in Salem, and a devout Puritan. She bore him a daughter, Abigail in 1689 (died of pneumonia in 1691). Aside them the birth (and loss) of her daughter, her life was uneventful until the the events that led to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Her husband, was called upon to investigate the allegations being made. Not being familiar with witchcraft, he acquired what were considered authoritative works on the subject, such as the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, and A Tryal of Witches, an account of the witchcraft trials in Suffolk, England in 1663. These works had a serious impact on the still grieving John, who became convinced that his infant daughter was in fact murdered by witches and became obsessed with fighting the minions of Satan who had taken his beloved daughter from him and threatened the Godly people of Salem. They also had an effect on Mary, who, without John's knowledge, read his reference works while he in Court. The loss of her daughter, and to an extent her husband...now obsessed with the trials...had shaken her faith in God, and she found the Malleus Maleficarum's lurid depictions of women consorting with "daemons" strangely exciting. This would likely have not gone beyond prurient fantasies, if the trials had not finally unearthed a genuine "witch".

In 1692, at the height of the Trials, Mary Bradbury of nearby Salisbury, was arrested for witchcraft. Accused of casting spells on ships, and even changing into an animal, she was speedily convicted when a cache of Occult Books was found hidden in her cellar. Both her and her husband strenuously denied any knowledge of them, but Mary was convicted anyway and sentenced to hang for practicing magic. The books themselves had, when not produced at the trial as evidence, been stored in a locked chest in the Hawthorne home. At night, Mary dreamed of something inside the box calling to her, inviting her to open the chest and learn the secrets the books inside held. As she was unable to get the key, she was not able to do so. After Mary Bradshaw's conviction, the books were publicly cast upon a fire and burned before a n assembly of the whole town....at least except for one. Returning from the book burning event alone....she was astonished to find a large leather-bound book, undamaged yet smoking from the fire she had watched her husband cast it in not twenty minutes ago, waiting for her on their kitchen table. She did not realize it at the time, but the entire course of her life was dependent on what she did next. Partly due to her fear of what would happen if it became know the book had inexplicably appeared to her, partly due to to the desire to learn it's secrets, she seized the book and hid it away. The next day, she found herself compelled to read it, but she could not as it was in a Byzantine dialect of Greek that she was not familiar with. That night, she dreamed again. In this dream, she was drawn to the Salem Jail, then to one particular window. That barred window was that of the cell containing Mary Bradbury, currently awaiting execution. Mary greeted her warmly, telling her she bore her no ill will for her predicament. She then explained that the world she knew was but a tiny bubble in the vast cosmos, and the book, an ancient text of great power, was the key to opening the door to the wider universe. While the book had clearly chosen her as it's next custodian, she was not yet ready to learn the truth about Mankind's true place in the universe. However, in exchange for her aid, she would teach her what she needed to know to learn about, and survive in, the Real World. If she wished to escape her existence as a common housewife, and learn wonders beyond all imagination, all she need to was to was bring her a piece of chalk, or charcoal before the end of the night after next, as that next morning she would hang as decreed by her husband. Then she awoke, back in her bed. she thought upon the dream all day, while doing her domestic chores, and what she should do next. That night, she crept out of the house and made her way to the cell in her dream, and without a word, quietly placed a piece of chalk she had purloined from the dry goods store that afternoon, upon the windowsill. Before she could pull her hand away, a arm reached out and grasped hers from the darkness inside the cell and held her in place.

"Know this", Mary Bradshaw whispered, "While I blame ye not for my situation, I will have my revenge against your husband for what he has done. All the others he has done to death or imprisonment were innocent....only I was guilty of what he accused me of...and more that that...and I only fell into his hands through my own carelessness. There is no going back for you now...you've just done him to death as surely as if you cut his throat while he lay sleeping...once I have had my vengeance, we will meet again and your apprenticeship will begin." The hand then released her and she spoke one last time. "Now go, child...and enjoy your husband's bed for what time he has left. You will soon learn how ethereal everything you have been taught really is."

She crept back home, and into bed undetected, filled with dread and anticipation of the future. The next morning, the alarm was raised as one of the condemned prisoners...none other than Mary Bradshaw..had escaped from her locked cell in the night. The only clues being some sort of markings scrawled on the floor in chalk, partially obliterated by the footprints of rats, which infested the jail. The focus rapidly turned outward as it was learned her husband had also disappeared from their home in Salisbury. Suspicion turned to one of the jailers, who was believed to have accepted a bribe from her husband to let her escape, but he denied it vigorously and nothing could be proven. One year and one day after Bradshaw's escape, John Hawthorne was killed. While riding to Salisbury to hear a case, witnesses reported his horse panicked suddenly by the sight of a large blue boar on the Salisbury Road and ran into the Caramec River, and Hawthorne was carried under by the horse and drowned. Shortly after that, State officials began to intervene in the ongoing Witchcraft trials in Salem, and the cases against those awaiting trial fell apart under higher scrutiny, and the Governor pardoned the last group facing trial. At that point, the Witch trials fell apart, and those already tried had their convictions reversed on appeal....including Mary Bradshaw. With the trials having been discredited, Mary Bradshaw and her husband returned to their Salisbury home, and resumed their lives. Shortly after that the Widow Hawthorne, as her apprentice, began her studies in the Arcane, a journey she has continued on to the present day.

Having learned firsthand the perils of discovery, she maintained a low profile. Through supernatural means, she has lived far longer than any human has a right to. To evade detection, she occasionally left Massachusetts for a time, until time, now her ally, made it safe to return. The Great War found her in distant Maryland, a place called Point Lookout, where she joined a coven led by the then Matriarch of the Blackhall family, Constance Blackhall, devoted to the worship of a being known as Ub-Qualtoth. Constance herself had a unaturally long life, due to spells from a tome of great power, known as the Krivbeknih. the coven fell apart after the book was stolen from her, and without the spells within, Constance finally was claimed by old age in 2156. Mary, now calling herself Marie Leveaux after she married Simon Leveaux, a Cajun from Louisiana, meanwhile, had retreated deep into the swamp where the radiation ghoulified her. She then spent the next few decades living as sort of a medicine woman, serving the local Swamp Folk, who had come to accept her, not to mention greatly respected her power. Eventually, Constance's great-grandson, Obediah Blackhall, found a mercenary that was able to retrieve the Krivbeknih from the rival Cult that had stolen it. At first, unaware of the real power the tome had, he used things he gleaned from the book to convince the Swamp Folk he was a priest of Ub-Qualtoth and begin to revive the flagging fortunes of his family line, now down to him and his young grandson, Zachariah. His attempt to enact a ritual sacrifice to Ub-Qualtoth caused a ritual of Marie's own, using the discarded corpse of the sacrificial victim, to backfire and she confronted Obediah. Learning he had the Krivbeknih, the only tome she knew of that would enable her to recover from the predicament she was in, and that he had no idea what he had been foolishly trifling with, she struck a deal and a partnership was formed. In exchange for access to the Krivbeknih, she would take him as an apprentice, and show him things more important than mere earthly power. Obediah has used what he has learned to revive the flagging fortunes of his family, he rules all Point Lookout with a unshakeable grip. Also, in Zachariah, he found a solution to the problem of his mortality.

Marie herself, has continued her own research, and has learned of an artifact of great power, Kremvh's Tooth, whose last known location was in Massachusetts, the land of her youth. With her apprentice's help, and somewhat to his relief as his teacher is his only credible rival for power, she has journeyed back home, to Salem, to reclaim her old home and from there begin her search.