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Name: Mama Zouzou

Age: 71

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Kingdom/Alignment: Neutral Evil, with no allegiances.

Birth Date: Unknown

Occupation: Voodoo Witch

Pets/Creatures/Summons:

Itchy Jack - Itchy Jack is Mama Zouzou's first creation. He is her twin brother, slain by unjust men and then resurrected as a zombi, to be his sisters eternal guardian and companion. He is a tall, forbidding black man who died in the prime of his youth, with hardened muscles and a stump where his left hand should be. He accompanies her always, though sometimes not in plain sight.

Baron Samedi - Baron Samedi is the most powerful of the voodoo spirit-Gods known as loas. He is the loa of the dead. He guards the crossroads of death where the souls of the living enter the realm of death. When called by a powerful witch, he emerges from his shadowy realm, a terrible man, skeletally thin and with white skin. His nostrils are plugged with cotton, and he wears a gentleman's top hat and suit, with dark sunglasses over his eyes. He carries always a cigar or a bottle of rum, and he is capable of slaying those who he deems his enemies, or resurrecting the dead, sometimes to true life, and others, into mindless zombis.

Papa Legba - Like Samedi, Papa Legba is a loa of the crossroads. He guards the pathways that allow humans to contact the spirit world, and protects the pathways into the realm of the loa. He is the Great Elocution, and facilitates communication, speech, and understanding. Mama Zouzou calls upon him in times of need of knowledge and wisdom, to be counseled by him, or to have him cast an illusion for her. In occasions of great need, he appears to protect the spirit realm from would-be invaders. He usually takes the form of an ancient man with a cane, wearing a broad straw hat and smoking a pipe. However, when he must appear as a guardian he is young and virile, often with horns and a large phallus.

Simbi Anpaka - Simbi Anpaka is a serpent loa, the patron of herbs and poisons. She is a stealthy, black serpent that brings death to the living with venomous fangs and poisonous brews. She often appears as a tiny snake, black or green, that resides in a festering swamp. Mama Zouzou is most hesitant to summon forth this loa as she is shifty and malicious, liable to turn on her caller for no reason other than whim. However, she is a lethal and stealthy creature, and her poison is almost universally lethal.
Mama is also accompanied by a small serpect that is usually wrapped around her neck or a branch she may carry, This snake is marked with black and vivid green stripes, and is no more than a foot long. She sometimes calls it Simbi, or Annie, and feeds it live crickets from time to time.

While she can summon the loas physically to the human world, Mama Zouzou would only do so in the direst of emergencies. Typically, when called upon to come to the human world, the loas possess the body of the summoner.

Physical Description: Mama Zouzou is an ancient, withered black crone. She wears a tattered, but voluminous black dress that looks like something from nineteenth century New Orleans. On her head is a stained hat made of straw that sometimes hides her piercing brown eyes. Her left hand is withered and dead, little more than a husk of dried skin on gnarled bone, and dangles uselessly from her wrist. She wears battered beaded necklaces and charms around her neck, and dented copper bangles adorn her right wrist.

Personality Description: Mama Zouzou is a spiteful, mysterious woman. She seems to have her own dark agenda, and wends her way through many worlds, creating conspiracies and carefully controlled chaos to further her own ends. She leaves in her wake the corpses of those who feed her power or obstruct her plans, and those who interact with her are left with a cold feeling of dread that runs down their spines. To those unlucky few who know her well, she is a person to fear and respect, for her terrible power and dark wisdom.

Special Abilities: Besides calling forth the forms of her patron loas, Mama Zouzou has several spells at her command, of both black and white magicks.

Pwen - A pwen is a small doll figure that is used as an object of power for Mama Zouzou's magic. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a Voodoo Doll, used as a surrogate to inflict pain on an enemy, but rather a focus for her power and concentration, allowing her to seek the mind of an enemy or call forth greater magicks. It is also used as a channeler of energies. When Mama Zouzou calls forth a spell, it can direct that force in whatever direction she chooses.

Zombi Powder - Mama Zouzou uses Zombi Powder, a mixture of herbs, mushrooms, and the dried venom of a blow fish, as the key component of a spell that revives the bodies of the dead. It is an act that must be aided by Baron Samedi, and he presides over the ritual with the aid of the potent powder, accepting in return a gift of cigars, or rum. The zombi she animates are soulless creatures who obey her whim, and are often used to complete mundane tasks. She used a more powerful version of this ritual to revive her twin brother, Itchy Jack.

Spells - Mama Zouzou has many strange and powerful spells. These are the most potent of all her tricks.

Illusion - By sprinkling herself with holy water and utilizing a fetish made from an old mans hair, Mama Zouzou can cast a spell of illusion over herself, causing her to appear as the beautiful young woman she once was. She uses this illusion to seduce the unwary into traps or ritualistic bacchanal sacrifices.

Poisonous Vapor - By drinking a concoction made from the strained urine of her pet snake and the blood of a poisoned sow, Mama Zouzou can enter a trance that allows her to exhale a tiny cloud of poison. She can direct the flow of this poison to enter the body of whomever she chooses. Once poisoned, the victims mind is under her control from an hour or less, depending on the will power of the victim. After the victim regains control or an hour has passed, the venom kills them quickly. This spell is draining and painful, and rarely used.

Torment - By burning a cigar like incense and saying the right words, Mama Zouzou can borrow energy from Baron Samedi, using it to inflict intense pain on a victim. She uses this ability often, for interrogation or defense.

Special Defences: Mama Zouzou is protected primarily by the reanimated corpse of her dead twin brother, Itchy Jack. Unlike most zombis, he possess a fragment of a mind, and his wholly devoted to his sister in a way no mindless creature ever could be. He was tall, determined, and powerful in life, and death has not diminished that. He carries a massive machete in his right hand, and his left ends in a smooth stump.

Her other defenses, apart from her brother and the powers of the loas, are the myriad small spells and charms of the witch. Though many are minor tools, there are a few that she uses frequently, and well.

Poisons - Mama Zouzou utilizes several dangerous poisons. She can use the zombi powder not only as a tool to revive the dead, but to paralyze the living, so that she may cast divinations or make sacrifices of them. She also carries a tiny blowgun with small darts tipped in toad venom that causes horrific hallucinations and death. She also carries a vial of venom from her pet snake that she may slip into a drink or a meal, that kills quickly, while the victim vomits up their insides.

Charms - Through the use of charms, Mama Zouzou is able to curse her enemies or protect herself. For example, she carries a shrunken crocodile head, which, when chanted over before a bowl of water, make her and all things which belong to her invisible while she sleeps, and will alert her if she is found. She also carries a death rattle, a small maraca containing the dried testicles of poisonous creatures. This curse calls a wasting illness upon any mortal she shakes it at, a terrible affliction that inflicts a long, slow, and painful death upon the victim. Her most prized charm is an ancient cigar, nearly 1300 years old, in a tiny wooden cigar box. This powerful charm will accompany her soul to Baron Samedi's crossroads, and there she will make a gift of it to him, that he may return her to life once more. If she dies while it is in her possession, she will return to life in thirteen times thirteen hours.

Weaknesses: Mama Zouzou's greatest weakness is her malice. She has no allies, save for transient tools for her schemes, and her brother is the only other she has ever cared for. Her hatred leaves her without allies or friends, making her vulnerable. Her body is very frail and old, and she would have little hope in a direct physical contest, though she does have abilities in place to protect herself if it came to that. She is also very dependent on components and objects to use her power, and without her things, she would be very weak.

Weapon: Mama Zouzou carries no weapons as such, but hidden amongst the folds of her robes and in tiny satchels at her waist or neck, she carries the components and fetishes that she uses for her craft. She also sometimes carries a dead tree branch, which she uses to aid more immediate and direct spellcasting.

Quirks: Mama Zouzou speaks with heavily accented English, or uses Haitian Creole. She is hard to understand, and is not fluent in English. When she needs to be able to speak clearly, she uses the power of Legba as a translator and conduit for her words. She lets her withered, dead hand hang in plain sight, knowing full how disturbing it looks.

History: Mama Zouzou was a twin, born mere moments before her younger brother. They grew up as twins, sharing unusual and special bonds. Her grandmother passed on the ways of voodoo to her, so that she could carry on the dying art. Though well versed in it, she used her abilities very rarely, until the day her brother was slain.

After being accused of a crime he didn't commit, "Itchy Jack" Astur's left hand was cut off. He was released, but later found again and and killed by his fraudulent accusers. When his hand was lost, Mama Zouzou's own hand shriveled up and died as well. When he died, she felt the pain of every wound, and immediately sought out his body. They were young at this time, in their twenties, Once she found his dead body, she took him back to her home, where she performed a long and complex ritual that turned him into the half-intelligent zombie he has become.

After Itchy Jack's death, Mama Zouzou began to hate. She wrought her revenge on the thugs who slew her bother, and one by one, they were all kind by the veyr man they thought gone forever. As her malice and hatred grew, so did her drive for revenge and power. Not satisfied with her brothers killers, she began to plot and plan against the entire human race.

Now, she has an unknown agenda, manipulating or killing people to further her own dark ends. She is a figure of mystery, and few know anything about her, but whatever her intent, it is sure to be a dark one, and one that will not bode well for any world.