Evelyn Hecke

Evelyn Hecke (also known as Reverend Temperentia) was a powerful German magician and reverend in Zweihander. Her skills pertain primarily to soul projection.

Appearance
Evelyn Hecke has the appearance of a beautiful young woman.She has wavy blonde hair and stunning, crystal-clear blue eyes. Her face is soft and sensitive-looking and her body is slender and well-proportioned. She looks to be in her early twenties, but is actually over 300 years old.

She wears a golden locket, which contains within it hundreds of vengeful souls which she has collected over the years.

Early Life
Evelyn Hecke was born in Drais, a village near Mainz, in 1606, the fifth of twelve children. Her father was a prominent blacksmith and her family lived comfortably for much of her childhood. As a child she befriended a local magician named Lara Nessel, who taught her how to read and also the basics of magic in the hopes that she might inherit her legacy, as she was dying.

Her research pertained primarily to the projection of souls onto inanimate objects, a process for which she developed a spell remarkably similar to that employed by the early Hyperboreans. She taught the spell to Hecke at the age of 10, telling her to use it only in dire emergencies. She passed on a week later, leaving Hecke heartbroken. Little did Hecke know, she would have use for the spell very soon.

Sack of Drais
Prior to 1618, Drais was a quiet little rural village, but all of that changed with the coming of the Thirty Years War. In 1620, a campaign by Amborgio Spinola entered the town of Drais. The soldiers wreaked havoc on the local population, burning down buildings and systematically slaughtering many within the village. Hecke's family helped many of the villagers to hide from the attacks, shoring them up in their home. They were eventually discovered, and the people hiding in the house were brought out into the main room to be executed. Hecke, however, remained safe by hiding in a cupboard. She was forced to watch as her family and friends were beaten, raped, (in the case of the woman) and butchered in front of her. Forty people were killed that day, and Hecke watched them die, barely able to contain her screams.

After the soldiers killed the last of the people in the house, they began to search for any survivors. One came close to opening the cupboard she was hiding in, but in that moment she remembered the spell that Nessel had taught her. Uttering it quietly, she captured the fleeing souls of those killed in her home and projected them onto a set of knives her father had been working on. Exhibiting considerable magical skill, she took control of the knives and killed the soldiers in the house, butchering them like they had butchered her family. Then, taking the now enchanted knives with her, she fled. Upon reaching relative safety in Munich, she swore revenge on Spinola.

Munich and Revenge
While in Munich, Hecke studied extensively both in the magical arts and in matters of the world, looking for ways to take revenge on Spinola. Here she expanded on her already considerable natural talent, growing into an extremely powerful magician and by far the greatest human practitioner of soul-projection in the world. It was also here that she discovered Johann Reuchlinn's Life-draining Spell, making her effectively immortal.

Hecke also spent these years in search of soldiers from the attack at Drais, whom she murdered in cold blood. She also worked to orchestrate the ruin of Spinola. By manipulating the banks in Spain, she was able to rob Spinola of his entire fortune, humiliating him and robbing him of his prestige. By 1630, he had fallen deep into a quagmire of debt, despite his outward reputation as a war hero. In 1630, Hecke slaughtered a group of Spinola's soldiers during a campaign in Spain, projecting their souls onto various sets of armor. She then forced the suits of armor, possessed by the spirits of Spinola's own soldiers, to brutally murder him in his tent. The murder was subsequently covered up, but Hecke had achiever her aim.

In the years ensuing Spinola's death, Hecke wandered Germany, taking up work as an assassin and studying in some of Germany's greatest magical libraries. She took up the cause of those who were weak and destitute, promising them justice, taking revenge for them. Yet she still felt unsatisfied.

Zweihander
By 1632, she was already a well-known magician in Germany, immediately attracting the attention of a newly-formed Zweihander. On the strength of her groundbreaking research into soul-projection, she was brought into Zweihander as its first reverend, who provided her with connections and legitimacy to help her with her business as an assassin in exchange for her services as an attack-dog, serving Zweihander interests in Germany and abroad.

She would continue for centuries to help those who were unduly wronged to find justice, all the while growing more ruthless and cold. She also helped Zweihander in its early years by threatening its enemies with violence, essentially working as Zweihander's one-woman army. Yet she continued to isolate herself from the world, increasingly finding refuge only in the lost souls contained within her locket, finding their fury and rage her only comfort in life.

In 1912, she was assigned to Sisimut, holing herself up in a nearby mountain and sending the spirits under her control out into the town at night to make sure nothing suspicious happened.

Weapons

 * Knives (x20): 70%, damage 1d4+2+db

Spells

 * Soul Projection
 * Soul Puppeteering
 * Steal Life

Skills

 * Anthropology 20%
 * Archaeology 40%
 * Climb 50%
 * Conceal 90%
 * Hide 90%
 * History 50%
 * Library Use 70%
 * Martial Arts 30%
 * Occult 30%
 * Physics 10%
 * Sneak 90%
 * Spot Hidden 80%