Madam Czarna

**Madam Czarna** was the name used by one Anna Twardowska, the last patrilineal descendant of the great Jan Twardowski, the 16th century Polish alchemist and magician of the deal with the Devil fame. She grew up in the mansion of Rzymski Dwor when that mansion, and her family, were badly down on their luck, and their country was as well, being carved and recarved by neighbours and shaken by uprisings. Her early life was dominated by fear: fear of foreign armies, of treacherous servants, of angry peasant mobs, of poverty and shame, of obsolescence and demise, and above all, of the horrible fate that she came to believe awaited her when she died.

She was a Shadow Centurion. She turned all that fear inside out, without ever quite losing it herself, only covering it up with a veneer of contempt and hatred. But the fear itself, which she understood all too well, became her greatest weapon. As she climbed the stairs towards ever-greater occult power, it was fear that she used: cowing would-be seekers of mystical prowess into declaring themselves her coven-slaves, frightening ghosts and spirits into servitude, and terrorising enemies, and cities, with their own fears that she wielded like whips. Her Polish aristocratic pride, the finest in the world, asserted herself through this; she always sought to put herself in the most dominant position possible, never forgave a grudge and was brutally dismissive of all those so-called forces of progress, whether technological or social, that presumed to threaten her position. The Century Club was just another such group of fools... for the most part. It did not help that they had thwarted her specifically in her quest for greater power and terror, many times.

Maybe, as Gregor had unconsciously speculated, she *was* a hottie once. (Unlike some witches though, it did not seem to bother her much that she would become immortal in her aged, wizened form if she succeeded.) (Update: she wasn't.) Maybe that explained the rumours about her and Albrecht Falkenrath, who ended up raising her great-niece Seraphine Ziemniak as his own. Maybe not. At least one untrustworthy baldheaded source has made the claim that during a confrontation in which Czarna led an army of ghosts to take over a place of power in the Alps, Falkenrath helped her get away after she was defeated by the trio of himself, Master Theophilus and Manfred von Richthofen.

Be that as it may, towards the end of her life Czarna has felt the need to make some... unpleasant alliances. The fear of death was stronger than her pride, so she joined the Shadow Federation, despite deep disagreements with Masque and Dr. Mostro that were both ideological and practical. Masque's anarchism offended her, of course, as did Mostro's singleminded materialism (though the latter conflict was of course always one-sided...); but she also despised Masque's squeamishness and Mostro's wastefulness and lack of sense. Still, she consoled herself with the knowledge that she was merely using them in her own pursuit of immortality, combining Masque's precious secrets of Ancient Aran with her own occult lore without telling them, and would betray them in the end.

Perhaps certain that no one would harm an old woman and perhaps unwilling to trust her minions unsupervised even though they were magically loyal, during much of the events that ended with the Saint Haven Incident Czarna had shown a willingness to lead from the front, or nearer to it than other Shadow Centurions but Burke. Sometimes this did not quite work out for her, as when she was knocked out during the attack on Herschel Babbage and one of her prized minions, a relative (a great-grandson according to Juan Juarez, but that implies she reproduced), was killed by Ray Freedom during his desperate escape. On the other hand, her presence in the Shadow Federation's forward base in Wapping had served her quite well; even though her ghostly invasion of the Century Club's safehouse was foiled and her hold over the pirate ghosts shaken by Lin Tsao, during the subsequent events she not only escaped reprisal, but also captured Ray, to torture him painfully for days in revenge, and marked and almost killed Viktor Vaughn; even though she returned to Saint Haven after that, the mark enabled her to mock and torment him in a variety of ways after that. Time was running out after that, however; she could not allow Masque to become immortal before she did, nor could she risk being foiled by those disgusting lower-class children. As such she focused most of her efforts on preparing for transcendance, aided in her efforts by the serendipitious arrival of the Faerie Knight who was also kind enough to help her set up additional magical defenses around her part of the Saint Haven Citadel. She even allowed Juan to ransom out Ray, though not without hurting him a bit as well, just for propriety's sake.

Just as she was about to become immortal, however, Viktor Vaughn arrived and crashed the ritual. A bidding war for the Faerie Knight's support was waged, and somehow, the boy won it, together with the right to be used as an arrow that punched Czarna into a pulp, her last mortal sensation an overwhelming terror at what she now knew she could not avert.

And then she was dead... aside from haunting Viktor's dreams, sometimes, and maybe, in a way, a certain Twardowski heirloom necklace...