Catherine West Incarnations

Samantha Brigsby (1860-1904)

Samantha Brigsby was a famous medium, occultist, spiritualist mage who had tried to reconcile the Dreamspeakers with the Order of Hermes. Partly this was because of her close contacts with certain Dreamspeakers, and partly due to her view that Spiritualism was the key to convincing the sleepers of the world beyond. In her day she was somewhat controversial due to her public displays of vulgar magic. However she was also admired for her ability to persuade the masses of the reality of Spiritualism, as well as her skill in gathering the right crowd to witness otherwise vulgar magics.

The last years of her life are shrouded in mystery; no one has all the details on what happened between 1892 and 1904. However it is known that she had contacts with the Sons of Ether, many of whom were starting to be convinced of the truth of Spiritualism as well as Spirit Photography. Certainly in those days you ought to keep quiet about such things.

The cause of her death remains unknown, her body seemed uninjured, but her sanctum was simply gone. After her death the Technocracy avoided talking about her and removed reverences to her in literature. Those efforts were effective enough that women like Eusepia Palladino are better known than Samantha Brigsby. However serious students into Spiritualism often run into references to Samantha Brigsby.

Hannah Johnson (1796-1844)

Hannah Johnson was born in the greater London area where her father was a well to do butcher. After her mothers death her father began to drink and the business went down hill from there. When she was fourteen he died, leaving Hannah helpless and abandoned, like many others she found a living as a petty criminal and prostitute. It was this that led to her being arrested and deported to Australia.

In Australia she made a new life for herself as a herbalist, unlike many other whites she managed to establish friendly connections with local aborigines, learning much from them. Despite coming into contact with genuine Dreamspeaker mages Hannah never awakened, but she was known for her abilities to help others.

Thérésa Léglise (1757-1777)

Some people end up as the flotsam of life, such as Thérésa the illegitimate daughter of a village priest and his housekeeper. Though her early life might be better than most, for one due to her learning how to read and write, she had no real legitimate support. After her father died her mother was executed for the crime of dealing in stolen linens. Afterwards the fifteen year old Thérésa grabbed her two younger brothers and ran off to Paris.

Paris of course is not a good place for a lone girl, so it was pick-pocketing and prostitution that let her support herself and her two brothers. To her delight though she was able to draw the attention of the Marquis de Vincoeur, how and why she was never quite sure of. In return for giving them a house and spending money, he only asked to have his pleasure with Thérésa and her two brothers. That pleasure being to drink their blood, since the Marquis was a famous vampire of his age. Soon both Thérésa and her brothers were bloodbound ghouls, yet due to their good treatment they scarcely cared.

Unfortunately that would come to a bitter end one morning, when a pair of men in dark cloaks stormed into the house, looking for the Marquis. Thérésa first refused to tell them anything, screaming for help, but none came. Somehow one of them found the secret entrance to where the Marquis rested, while the other tried to do, something, to make her stop screaming. He seemed surprised when Thérésa shrugged off what he tried to do, grabbed a heavy object, and attacked him. It was an uneven struggle which ended with her getting a knife showed through her chest, the last thing she heard was, "Such a pity, for your next life you should remember your lessons better."

Looking back on this memory Catherine strongly suspects that the two were Euthanatos.

Karin Christen (1706-1733)

Karin was the daughter of a German functionary for the Habsburg administration in Transylvania. For the most part her life was actually quite pleasant, she was a pious and dutiful daughter known for her kindness and quick wit. Her dreams of marriage were cut short when she was brutally raped by a group of bandits, after which she was forced to enter a convent. In the convent she was known for her piety and charitable nature, as well as her willingness to endure what came with good spirit. She died from an influenza epidemic.

Maria-Augusta von Wolfenbach (1633-1670)

Born into an illustrious Austrian noble family, though that was only a lucky break, for reasons unknown her father decided to marry her mother when she was pregnant. A bookish and retiring child she liked to read and study despite society's disapproval. For another she had a passion for clockwork, which she always liked to tinker with. Yet somehow she always also wondered why her family was rich and powerful while everyone else was poor.

Looking back the exact time of her awakening seems hard to place, but she was no more than sixteen or seventeen. It was a strange path that led her to the Craftmasons, one marked by biblical teaching of equality and an obsession with clockwork. Despite being young and not having learned since adulthood Maria-Augusta had a vision a way of looking at machinery from all the angles at once. Still her noble birth and certain other problems meant that she was never quite as trusted as you might think.

During the period leading up to 1670 and the betrayal she grew ever more obsessed with time. All of her calculations and such seemed to draw to a close come that year, as if something was preventing her from seeing beyond it. Despite that she failed to see the treachery coming. By some irony of fate her death was by being thrown into the enormous clockwork she'd been tending to.

Katherine Graf (1610-1632)

Katherine Graf was born to a family of minor bureaucrats working for a noble to the north of Bavaria. Her early life was pleasant enough, when she was 19 she was married, and she scarcely had a worry in the world. In 1632 the Swedish army invaded the north of Bavaria and killed her husband, raping and torturing her until she miscarried. After this misfortune she completely lost faith and hanged herself.

Ludvig Graf von Flammenberg (1492-1529)

Nobleman and awakened Magi from the Order of Hermes, his early life was a fairly humdrum affair, marked by exercise and occasional forays into war. The family was an ancient Hermetic one, which meant that he awakened young to be trusted with important secrets. What he paid most attention to was the bits about how you could gain wisdom through antinomian practise, and that true wisdom came from rejecting the limitations others would put on you.

Thus he set about gaining a reputation as an absolute monster, eager to torment and abuse his enemies in whatever way he could. For the most part it was women and happy couples that brought most of his ire, so he sought to ruin both. On the other hand he was also known as a brilliant military commander during the Italian Wars, though he also helped beat down the Knight's Rebellion and the Peasant's Rebellion. His most infamous act was the part he played in the sack of Rome in 1527, where far from trying to encourage the soldiers to relent he spurred them on to greater cruelty.

To his mind his practise had served him well and few could argue that he was not a great mage. However he kept seeing his contemporaries scurrying about, fighting petty little skirmishes with the enemy, but lacking the courage to draw the sword and take decisive action. It filled him with disgust. Over and over again he advised bold action, but this only happened if he acted himself, even then others were often shocked.

So when he found out about the Ottoman plan to lay siege to Vienna he was fascinated. In secret he set out to contact the Ottomans and make a bargain with them, in return for a free hand in the newly conquered territories he would ensure the fall of Vienna. That of course was only the first step on the way. Not to mince words his plans was to bring about the destruction of western Christian civilization and, if necessary, turn Europe into a werewolf infested wilderness. Even if he only had a partial success it'd be worth it.

Interestingly enough it wasn't the Order of Reason who came for him, them he was ready for. It was a temporary chantry of Choristers, Hermetics, and Euthanatos who wanted revenge for other offences or had gained some inkling of his plan. After bringing down his castle in the Bavarian Alps they skinned him alive, nailed the hide to a church door, and cursed him to spend seven lifetimes making amends for his crimes and feeling some of the suffering that he had bestowed on others.

The Damnatio Memoriae was so effective that today the name of Flammenberg is nearly unknown. The village and castle lie abandoned, even though they would be excellent tourism or archaeology sites. Something about the whole affair just makes people shy off.