Name: Beth Callahan.
Age: 20 (physically), 35 (in years).
Gender: Female.
Breed/Species/Type/Lineage: Poltergeist.
Physical Description:Talents:Intangibility – That walking-through-walls thing. Spirits eventually achieve the ability to switch between being tangible and intangible at will. A sub-benefit of this is invisibility to mortals.
Telekinesis – This is what makes throwing furniture so easy. Requires emotional instability (i.e. mood swings, anger, and grief).
Possession – The ability to take control of a mortal body. The mortal usually suffers memory loss from the moment of possession to their release.
Spiritual Energies - Beth can perceive a variety of these and as such is not immune to the affects of other dead.
History:One randy night between a local girl and an Irish immigrant in 1980 led to the birth of Elizabeth Callahan. Her mother wilted under the pressure of raising a newborn and her father, never intending to stay long in the United States, developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol before she reached the age of three. To say Elizabeth grew up independent would be an understatement.
She never bothered attending high school. The “real world” taught her everything she needed to know. By the time she should have been a junior, she was a skilled thief and hung out with low-level thugs in youth gangs. Around this time her mother went missing. It was assumed, due to her mother’s lengthy history with depression that the woman had left to commit suicide. With this and the fall of the gang, Elizabeth abandoned her father and moved with the crowd to another city.
Settling in New Camden, she started from the bottom again. She stole from other gangs, working her way up to the most powerful, until she wronged someone too high up for it to go unpunished. She tried to flee the city under the protection of the millennial celebrations. She took shelter in a trinket shop and pocketed the most valuable of the items for sale, hoping to pawn them off for a plane ticket.
The owner confronted her but Elizabeth pushed the woman aside, but not before she heard the woman utter what would later turn out to be a curse. Elizabeth made a final bid for freedom and was cornered by those she’d wronged. She was beaten and shot, but “awoke” later with an incorporeal body and one of the stolen trinkets, a pendant, hanging off her neck.
Learning the ropes of the supernatural world took years. Gradually she developed a new set of skills, along with an understanding of the curse: she was to be kept in the realm of the living as punishment. Her mortal life taught her not to be so reckless in this new world, and she lived—or rather, didn’t—in civil servitude to the Court, awaiting her chance to earn favour as “Beth”.
Over the course of twenty years, she attained a vague familiarity with Count Caradoc, a place in his court—possessing the right people offered so many opportunities—and a reputation, especially among the dead. She took the pendant to a small town outside New Camden and buried it beneath the coffin of a grave marked “L. P. Withers”. Should anyone discover its purpose she knew the curse could be undone in order to vanquish her. Several years later, the aftermath of the Count’s death threatened to mirror Beth’s mortal life. Betrayed by her undead associates, she sought out those who would rally against Nemsemet.
Psychological Profile:In life, Elizabeth strived to be recognised and, sometimes, feared. It gave her leverage over those who would hurt her, and growing up with the relationships she had, she understood no one could be trusted. Everything she did, she did to protect herself. She fashioned a new identity for herself whenever it was necessary, and it was necessary so often she tended to forget who she started out as. The façade became habit.
Death provided a learning opportunity and a new beginning. The addition of new threats meant she retained her old intentions, but new abilities meant Beth didn’t need to work so hard to protect herself any longer. She became calculative instead of reckless and spent more of her time strategizing than outright fighting. Age, even in death, has proven helpful in creating a wizened Beth. After so many years she recognises the need for a system, but one that is fair and just. She is particularly sympathetic towards the poverty-stricken.
She does nothing without reason, even if that reason is simply to enjoy herself. Which she does happen to do. She considers some things to be naïve or fruitless, such as loyalty to anyone other than yourself, and control; anything you try to cage will inevitably escape. Beth’s strongest belief is in ambition and perseverance: with this, you can achieve anything.
Possessions:- The cursed pendant (buried).
Beth met Rikive, through Parael, when investigating different strains of magic and all but interrogated the deity to tell her everything she knew about otherworldly spells.
