Alchemistress
Autumn Hartley
Christina Hartley, called the greatest chemist since Curie, realized the alchemists’ dream and perfected a wand capable of transmuting elements according to its wielder’s will. However, the process exposed her to dangerous, exotic chemical concoctions that rendered her criminally insane. She dubbed herself “the Alchemistress,” and from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s only Freedom City's superheroes and her own lunacy kept her from the power and riches she craved.
Last fall, the Alchemistress put aside the infirmities of age and madness for another escape from The Providence Asylum, only to be tranquilized just as she grasped the Alchemy Wand. In a fading moment of clarity and desperate will, she covertly formed surrounding matter into a perfect daughter, imbued with her spirit, to assume her faded legacy.
The daughter inherited her mother’s memories and her Alchemy Wand, and kept her sanity. Taking the name Autumn, the reborn Alchemistress became convinced the power to transform anything into anything makes her akin to a goddess. For her, there would be no robbing banks—not when she can turn trash into diamonds. She instead gradually expanded her circle of worshipers into a cult, the Acolytes of Alchemy, committing crimes only to expand her already awesome power. Thus is Freedom City unknowingly imperiled by one of the most powerful super-beings in existence.
Physical Description
Body Features
The Alchemistress’ transmuted form possesses enhanced resiliency, as well as her mother’s nimbleness and peerless knowledge of chemistry.
Apparel & Accessories
Her Alchemy Wand transforms sizable quantities of matter at will, and is capable of creating a variety of useful effects.
Mental characteristics
Morality & Philosophy
The Alchemistress is quiet, serious, and deliberate, accustomed to being catered to and feared. She seems surprisingly rational for a would-be goddess, unless her terrible wrath is provoked. Close observation reveals signs of her unnatural birth, like making reference to events from thirty years ago which are current in her inherited memory. The connection between a duplicated psyche and a not fully human body is also sometimes evident, yielding an odd gesture or tic on occasion.
Social
Contacts & Relations
The Acolytes of Alchemy fanatically worship the Alchemistress, and unquestionably obey her every whim. Doctor Metropolis is capable of sensing the Alchemistress’ powers altering Freedom City, making a clash inevitable.
Some sort of confrontation (or team-up?) with Doctor Azoth seems very likely given their mutual interest in and mastery of alchemy.
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