Mother Moonlight

Anna-Marie Delgado was a well-off subur­banite, a semi-retired nurse whose divorce settlement let her travel, volunteer, and teach classes. Though her handsome fea­tures reflected her indigenous heritage, Ms. Delgado hadn’t visited her village in forty-five years and rarely spoke Spanish, let alone her native Nahuatl—the language of Mexico’s native population. She barely talked about her childhood—even her children Sebastian and Anita heard only the rarest stories of her life growing up in the Juarez slums, the old supersti­tions her own grandmother preached, or her younger sister Gabriela’s death.
The truth was grander and more terrible: Her family had long held the lost traditions sacred and kept the old religion alive, worshipping the old gods of Central America and welcoming spirits and monsters into their home in exchange for knowledge and favors. Anna-Marie’s sister was inadvertently slain in a battle between the luchadora Devil­bat’s Daughter and a momia given refuge by Anna-Marie’s grandmother. The guilt-stricken crime-fighter gifted her parents the funds needed to immigrate to the United States and start their life anew. To Anna-Marie, that heritage was left behind in the dust, buried along with her sister, and the superstitions that caused her death.
Ms. Delgado raised her children to assimi­late to American life. Anita mostly heeded this advice, but Sebastian rebelled, never finding a healthy outlet for the anger of youth. The boy sought out the ancient power of his heritage, learning magic and forging armor consecrated to Tezcatlipoca. He wreaked havoc across the Southwest as Black Sun Scar. Anita tried repeat­edly to talk her brother down, but in a devastating confron­tation with Captain Thunder and [Raven II, a massive blast of energy slew Sebastian... and his sister.
Watching the televised conflict, Anna-Marie raced to the scene, but her knowledge of modern medicine proved useless.
Her children’s deaths finally opened Anna-Marie’s eyes to the truth: that the so-called superheroes had once again killed those most important to her, stealing her hope and joy for their moment of careless glory. Consumed with anger and despair, she wandered into the Chihuahua desert alone on a moonless night and screamed to the old gods she had abandoned so long ago, cursing them for their powerlessness and begging them for her children’s souls. Anna-Marie opened her veins while chanting to Cihuacoatl, begging the fertility goddess to take her as a cihuateto—a sacred spirit-mother, pledging eternal service in return.
But she had been faithless for too long, and not died hon­orably in birth as was Cihuacoatl’s will. Only Coatlicue—the ancient, two-headed mother of the gods, insatiable mistress of death and rebirth—answered Anna’s bloody call. The Devouring Mother again wanted a presence in the world, challenging Anna-Marie that if she felt the gods of old were so useless, then it would be her burden to make them rele­vant once more. And so rose up an unliving servant: Mother Moonlight. Anna-Marie returned not as an elegant night-warrior but an abomination, with serpents and mud in her veins and a cold, reptilian hunger to remake the world, be­ginning with the “children” of those who had wronged her.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Mother Moonlight’s heart no longer beats, and she has gained incredible strength, agility, and resilience from her passage to the spirit world and back. Away from the comforting warmth of the sun, Mother Moonlight can reveal her true form—a serpentine hybrid with incred­ible strength, natural camouflage, and devastating claws. Most neophyte opponents mistake her for a vampire or lycanthrope, but she shares none of the traditional weaknesses of these western monsters, or hunting tactics. Her caress steals away goodness and courage and allows her to take on the strengths of her young victims, and her role as the Devouring Mother’s right hand allows her to churn the earth at will to trap or crush victims.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

Mother Moonlight is maternal grief twisted into hatred, self-loathing, and gross purpose. She blames all costumed champions for her children’s deaths, and by extension the wrongs of society, and they are the lens through which she will remake a just world for the old gods of Central America to rule once more. She finds delightful irony in corrupting her enemies’ children—sidekicks and proté­gés and inheritors of heroic legacies. What little remains of Anna-Marie yearns for oblivion, briefly assuaged by the anguish she delivers to others.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Mother Moonlight enjoys the favor of Coatlicue, and by extension many other gods of the Aztec pantheon. She commands a small but enthusiastic cult—some old ad­herents of the old faith like her grandmother, but just as many aimless and angry youths like her own late son, Se­bastian, following a similar route to self-destruction. She often discovers—or fashions—a variety of supernatural allies as well.
Monster-hunters number among her foes, along with those vested in keeping the Aztec Gods quiescent, such as the sorcerer Tlacaelel.