Mariah Baxter-Harper

## Senator Mariah Baxter-Harper

* **Name:**Mariah Annalise Baxter-Harper
* **Position:**Senator for Minnesota in the UCAS  Senate (2072-Present), senior member of A New Century for Minnesota , member of the Board of Directors, Magical Futures Foundation, member of the Novus Ordo Seclorum initiatory group.
* **Metatype:**Human  (*Homo sapiens sapiens*)
* **Magical Tradition:**Hermetic  - Enochian  (Full Mage)
* **DOB:**6/20/2030, Waukesha WI, UCAS
* **Education:**Waukesha South High School, also a lengthy home training in magic practice and theory by the Novus Ordo Seclorum, which is accredited as an certifying body in magic by the state of MN. Did a year at University of Minnesota (2049-2050) but never finished.
* **Family:**Selby Baxter (daughter, Minneapolis MN), Ananias Harper (husband, St. Paul MN)

It almost seems redundant to write anything here. After all, everybody knows Mariah Baxter Harper's story. She rose to fame, and later power, telling it to the public. But, for those of you who've just gotten off the orbital flight from Tibet, here it is, one more time.

Mariah Baxter was born in Waukesha WI in the summer of 2030 to devout members of the conservative Wisconsin Synod of the Lutheran Church. One of the Wisconsin Synod's differences from the more mainstream ELCNA Lutherans being its complete rejection of magicas the works of the devil, rejecting even the careful Theurgy of Laestadianism as witchcraft. Which is why Mariah was never identified as a mage.

In her adolescence, when Mariah's powers started to manifest, she had no idea why she could suddenly start seeing 'demons' and auras and 'ghosts'. Several negative reactions from her family convinced her that she should keep these things to herself. And over the years the strain began to take its toll. She would project into the astral in her sleep, have to flee the room when 'supernatural' things (actually caused by her) would occur, sometimes be seen 'talking to herself' when she failed to tell the difference between something in astral and in the physical. Her family's lack of support and her own growing terror began to give her mental issues as she tried and failed to find healthy coping mechanisms for this thing that was happening to her, a spiral that would lead her family to pull her out of college and commit her to a mental institution in 2050-2051.

Upon release, things only got worse. Not wanting to return to her abusive family and utterly out of control of her powers, Mariah ended up on the streets. She was self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and even turned to prostitution to fund her growing addictions, moving from shelter to shelter or squatting in empty buildings.

In 2053 she discovered that she was pregnant and turned herself in to a church-sponsored shelter with a substance treatment program to ensure her child would be born healthy. In late '53, she gave birth to a baby girl during a massive blizzard, stuck in the Cathedral of St Paul in downtown St Paul. When the ambulance finally arrived, the EMT's asked the baby's name and Mariah looked up at the street sign and declared "Selby".

She managed to remain sober until early 2055, when she fell off the wagon again and returned to living on the streets. She was rarely sober during the rest of the decade, often having to be cared for by her daughter, who was still a small child. She was ostracized even among the city's homeless for being "spooky" and "bad luck" (again, side effects of her uncontrolled magical ability).

Famously, everything changed in a shelter early in 2061. At the time Ananias Harper was still a doctoral candidate doing work on his dissertation investigating the incidence of mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse among those with unrecognized magical talent. He was touring the city's homeless shelters to find unrecognized mages for his work. One look at Mariah and he was blown away by the amount of magical power radiating off of her. He worked to get Mariah (and Mariah's nine-year-old guardian Selby) to trust him enough first to study and then to help. He got them off of the streets and helped Mariah get sober while training her in the abilities that she, for the first time in her life, knew were real. This realization was the bedrock of her recovery from decades of mental trauma, fear and substance abuse.

Trust and help quickly turned to more and by 2062, she and Ananias were married and she had moved into his family's Battle Creek mansion with Selby. Mariah was the driving force behind the foundation of the Magical Futures Foundation, which she and Ananias built to find and help people like her. She became a rising star in the magical community, touring the country telling her story, often accompanied by Selby, and advocating for policies (both public legislation and corporate initiatives) to identify those with magical talent and get them the training they need to keep from hurting themselves and others. More and more, she brought Selby into the publicity campaign, especially after Selby was identified as a Physical Adept.

Eventually Mariah’s fame grew to the point that she was approached by Ananias' friends in the nascent New Century Party about running for public office. She ran a successful campaign for the Minnesota state legislature in the summer of 2068 and the family moved to a home in Edina. From that point on she has only gone from strength to strength. Most observers credit her as the main force establishing the New Century Party as a factor in Minnesota politics, topped off by a successful run for one of Minnesota's two Senate seats in 2072.

In the Senate, where she is only of three New Century Senators, she has become famous for the aggressive compromise, forming coalitions with unlikely allies to get what she wants and multiplying her influence by becoming head of the Magical Caucus in the Senate. Political odds-makers make it almost a dead cert that Baxter-Harper will seek her party's nomination for the upcoming 2076 UCAS Presidential election.

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