Mistress Hyde

Freedom City University professor Maryann Beswick, a world-renowned pharmacologist, was working obses­sively on her next wonder drug when tragedy struck. In­tending to palliate neuromuscular diseases with mixtures of Manaka Root extract (including the addictive street drug “Max”), she unintentionally inhaled and accumulat­ed it in her system day after day, which triggered a terrible metamorphosis. The kind, humanitarian Beswick became the evil, bestial criminal Mistress Edwina Hyde, mocking her own Robert Louis Stevenson-like origins.
Over time, Hyde coerced her Beswick self into develop­ing more potent, long-lasting versions of the transform­ing potion and a plethora of illicit street drugs. This gave the savage Hyde capital to brutalize her way atop the Freedom City underworld and eventually gain control of the Golden Calf casino—now the headquarters of her gangland empire which extends into Greenbank, Grenville, and The Fens. Mistress Hyde and Beswick war with each other and the rival Driogano family.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Beswick’s potion painfully alters her body and brain chemistry, giving her physical strength and resistance to harm greater than even most superhumans. Though the Hyde persona lacks Beswick’s skills and memories, she is a terrifying figure, a deadly hand-to-hand combatant, and enjoys the illicit perks of a mob boss.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

Despite her civilized affectations, Hyde is an unrestrained egotist, avariciously and crudely taking the basest animal pleasures—power, food, intoxicants, lust—and grossly reveling in their excess. At times, Hyde exhibits a keen animal-like cunning, but otherwise savagely retaliates against whatever or whoever bars her from seizing what she will.
Beswick is quiet and shy, driven by an overriding com­passion and dedication to her work. Since the trans­formations began, she is burdened by guilt and fearful of what else Hyde might force her to do.

Social

Contacts & Relations

She controls the Hyde Mob, now equal in size and influence to any of the city’s crime families.
Hyde’s organization regularly clashes with the Driogano Mob (including The Silencer.)