Zea Mazuo
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Roleplayer: Cobalt


Date of Birth: 1979
Phase: Skaal
Gift: Deadspeech
Calling: Fixation's Calling
Pack: Kahlite (more or less)
Rank: Omega


Summary.

Physical Appearance

Zea has thick black hair, and large brown eyes that always seem to be watching people for some part of them that even they can't see. Her skin is a warm, rich brown, and with a wide smile and quick hands she brings comfort and certainty to others that she herself cannot find. She has the look of a woman who doesn't quite know where she is, as though she only just arrived in the world and hasn't quite resigned herself to the fact that she's stuck there.


Wolf

Leggy and lanky with a grin fit to split her face wide open. Cinnamon-colored fur shades to dark grey along the back and tail. Her relatively short fur makes her look smaller relative to shaggier wolves.

Url


Personality

Zea thinks of all social relationships in terms of favors to give and repay. All relationships between equals must be founded in reciprocity or everything just ceases to make sense and is all crazy-like. Most of her formative social relationships (other than with her mother) were with the dead, and in her life… the dead work on favors. Things can be gotten from the dead, but the dead expect favors in return.

This works with people as well. Zea believes in returning the spirit of a gift to her, which means that if someone else's generosity results in her benefiting in unexpected ways, she still owes them for those unplanned benefits. If she helps a spirit and they benefit in unexpected ways, what they owe her increases.

It is near-impossible if not actually impossible to deter Zea from operating on this system of exchanges. After so long dealing in favors back and forth with the dead, she's quite solidly fixated on this as The Way The Universe Works.


Background

From the beginning Zea was always a quiet, serious-minded child. She lived with her mother and her mother's extended family, but they were not particularly interested in her because her father was… well, he was a lot of things they didn't like. He was an American, he was black, and he was a "military contractor," or at least that's what his business card said. Zea's aunt called him a mercenary and feral dog of war, and maybe it was true.

Zea didn't care. She had her mother, and she had stories about her father. A fun-loving wild sort of man, much like her mother. It was clear even to Zea that Quinn loved him, in her way. Unfortunately Zeke was not the settle-down type; his job and his temperament prevented it. Quinn said he'd have made a terrible father, but that didn't mean he wasn't a good man (of a sort).

From Quinn Zea learned self-assurance and self-reliance, never giving over her freedom to anyone, even for love. From Quinn's stories of her daughter's father, Zea learned about integrity and honor; she learned that her word was far more important than any external measure of morality and what Zea agreed to do she always did. How could she not? It was the only memory of her father she could call her own, except of course… for the blood in her veins.

When Zea was fifteen she broke up with her boyfriend at the time. The situation was… a bad one. No teenaged girl wants to learn that her "first" was only dating her because he wanted to get in her pants, and when that teenaged girl is a werewolf there are… consequences. It was after Zea had killed and eaten most of the boy that she told her mother what had happened.

A couple more nights of Zea's Phase and there wasn't enough left of the boy to identify, though his brothers always did suspect she'd had something to do with it. It was her first shift, and while Quinn had hoped her daughter hadn't inherited this particular trait of her father's, she had honestly expected it.

She expected it because Zea had other problems to deal with, and always had. She saw things, things no one else did. Heard things no one else believed. Felt things no one else could touch. Doctors said she was hallucinating, shook their head in dismay that someone so young could be struck with such delusions. Unfortunately their medicine didn't help.

The man helped. She saw him sometimes, but mainly she heard his voice over the others. If she paid attention to him, if she showed her gratitude and gave him her time and energy, he would make them be quiet. He told her his name was John the Conqueror, who could vanquish and silence the others.

It was with John that she got through her early years, her school years, her graduate education. Her degree was in botany, but her true obsession was death. Religion after religion, she devoured their stories and their rituals trying to find that spark of truth that could help her make sense of the world she lived in that no one else seemed to see.

It wasn't until she was doing her postdoctorate research that she had anything more than faith to hold onto. The laboratory was doing research on creatures that were not human, creatures who were what she was. They created a drug that could suppress the remarkable gifts of these people, these creatures, and Zea began taking it herself. It didn't matter who suffered to develop it, not to Zea. Every great advance was made on the backs of the broken victims of progress, and why should this be different?

It granted her some measure of peace, though her neglect greatly angered John. However, the research subjects eventually broke out of the lab, destroying Zea's supply of the drug. Certain that the werewolves from the facility would have nothing to do with her, they were nonetheless the only ones who might understand her. Assuming she was forsaken by them, and certainly forsaken by the familiar spirit whom she had angered by suppressing her ability, Zea fled. Once her last dose wore off, she languished for more than a day. Lost under a sea of voices, drowning beneath their pleas and shouting and the touch of their hands and the desperation in their faces, John finally pushed them back long enough for her to claw her way to the surface.


Relationships

  • Type: unbonded
  • Family:
    • Quinn Simon (mother)
    • Zeke Mazuo (father, missing)
    • John the Conqueror (familiar)
  • Friends:

Abilities

Deadspeech info and info on ghosts go here.


Calling

Fixation info goes here.

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