Penelope Silver

**Penelope Silver** is a recurring character in *Motherland: Fort Salem*. She is portrayed by Mellany Barros.

She is the only child of the vice president who accidentally discovers she is a witch. She is enthusiastic, passionate, yet overwhelmed while she navigates this shift from civilian to military life.

## Throughout the Series

### Season 2

Penelope is singing in praise of God at a church. Her singing seems to resound with the stained glass window behind her, causing the paint to melt. The church-goers stare in surprise and as she realizes what is happening, she turns and sees the window. She turns back to see the church-goers exiting and her father, the vice-president, staring at her.

The witches, seeing news footage of Penelope's melting the window, decide to recruit her, wary of the possibility of the Camarilla reaching her before they can. Vice President Silver expresses his concern that his daughter will become a target, but they promise him that they take care of their own. They tell him that it has been this way for centuries and that if they find the work in her, she must deliver herself bodily to Fort Salem.

Penelope is brought before a vat of water. There, she is told to gather the sound within her, let it fill her, and when she does, sing. She does so and the water first resonates, then arcs into the air in shapes. "This woman is of the blood," they declare. "Goddess protect her." She is told that her call to service could come at any moment and she will know the words to say when the time comes, that the words are in her blood.

Seeing that Penelope is having some trouble fitting in, Tally pays a visit to General Alder, telling her that she's been thinking about Penelope. She asks for her permission to tutor her, to get her up to speed and ready to start Basic. Alder praises her for her empathy and agrees to the request.

Tally later meets with Penelope, telling her that to truly understand the Army and their place in their world, you have to know their history. "And knowing is one of the four principles, right?" replies Penelope. Tally smiles, saying that they are going to have her ready for Basic in no time. She tells her they'll start with Sarah Alder and Penelope says that the fact that Alder is over three hundred years old is why her father doesn't trust her, that someone who lives that long couldn't really care about regular people. She apologizes, but Tally says that it's okay, that a lot of people feel that way and she didn't always trust her herself. They observe some photos of Alder, but Tally is disturbed to see one which shows a shimmery image of someone from one of her visions of Alder's past, someone that Penelope can't see in the photo: Nicte Batan. She realizes that a working is being used to hide all evidence of the woman's existence.

Following a series of conflicts with the Camarilla, a particularly aggressive and powerful witchplague is released on the base. Abigail, Raelle, and Tally eventually to track it to its source and are horrified to learn that Penelope is patient zero. They find Penelope enveloped in the witchplague and followed by civilian reporters, walking aimlessly as the plague has affected her mind. The unit makes the gut-wrenching decision to kill her in order to kill the witchplague and prevent it from spreading further. They are successful but the entire ordeal is caught on camera.

The footage from the incident reaches out into the rest of the United States, emboldening anti-witch sentiment and fueling a massive outcry from the "Not Our Daughters" movement. While the unit mourns Penelope's death and deals with the trauma of killing her to prevent further outbreak, Blanton blames the general and the unit for the death of his daughter. He finds the unit and demands that Abigail, Raelle, and Tally be sent to Washington D.C. to stand trial for the murder of Penelope. Later on a private flight, a disheveled and grieving Blanton is rewatching footage from the interview and subsequent terrorist attack. The Camarilla leader Dr. Hearst was shown in the footage to have posed as a cameraman and infected Penelope with the witchplague.

Dr. Hearst comes into the room of the plane to watch the footage of him. He callously makes playful remarks on his "performance" despite the clear pain his co-conspirator is processing before thanking the vice president for his "sacrifice." Blanton grimly returns the banter, confirming that he knowingly orchestrated the attack on Fort Salem and the death of his own daughter. Hearst toasts the broken man for the success of the attack and to the next steps of their plans to commit witch genocide and have Silver replace President Wade as the head of the US government.

### Season 3

Emboldened by his daughter's death, Blanton Silver announces a plan for funding for a genealogical research project to identify and "protect" the estimated 16,000 unregistered witches within the United States. Later, he reveals a bill which would curtail witch voting rights, though Kelly Wade declares that she won't sign it.

Meanwhile, back at Fort Salem, the necromancer Izadora and her team manage to revive Penelope inside a capsule. Penelope, however, seems very confused about what is going on. When Izadora greets her with "Welcome back," she at first thanks her, but then asks where she is. When Izadora tells her that she is at Fort Salem and is home, she lunges at her and then tries to choke her out, forcing the team to restrain her and push her back into the capsule, at which point she dematerializes in the same manner she materialized.

Izadora later explains to Petra Bellweather that the strain of witchplague that Penelope was infected with was designed differently. It was intended to keep her alive so that she would infect others on Fort Salem, but did *too good* a job, causing her spirit to become disattached from her and float in the currents of the atmosphere when she was killed, hence her ability to revive her. However, following revival, Penelope isn't quite entirely human and continues to experience unexpected flashes of anger and rage.

When Penelope confronts her father, Blanton Silver, for what he did to her, he pathetically tries to blame the rest of the Camarilla, claiming they forced him to do what he did, to which she hugs him and kills him by absorbing him into the witchplague.

## Relationships

### Blanton Silver

She had a close and loving relationship with Blanton, possibly in part to him being her only remaining parent following the loss of her mother. He attends church service and watches her sing and is very concerned for her when her powers as a witch first manifest. He expresses concern for her safety and that she may become a target. He calls her by the nickname "Penny."

He initially is shown to have some prejudice against witches and it took him a while to act like he has come to terms with his wife and daughter's witchhood. The depths of his hatred is ultimately revealed as he worked with The Camarilla to orchestrate the witchplague attack on Fort Salem. Amidst the success of the attack, Blanton becomes emotionally wrecked as he comes to terms with the fact that he killed his own daughter to further his genocidal hatred and political ambitions.

**Tally Craven**

When Penelope was first brought to Fort Salem She had issues adjusting. Tally Craven decided to take her under her wing and guide her through as a Witch Mentor. When Penelope was infected with witchplague, Tally showed genuine grief and cried as Penelope called out to her "Tally please!" and "Tally,how come nobody wants to talk to me?" before her death. Tally has an sisterly bond with the young woman. Tally shows compassion to Penelope.

## Physical Appearance

Penelope is a beautiful young woman with curly dark brown hair reaching a bit past her shoulders. Her hairstyle of choice was often half-up-half down or in a braid. She has a oval face with high cheekbones and full lips. Before Conscription she was often seen wear formal clothing, being the vice president's daughter. Or wearing a purple robe when she sang praise to God.

## Powers and Abilities

* **Witch Physiology:** As a witch, Penelope possesses enhanced vocal chords that are capable of creating change in the physical world by singing different seed sounds and songs, as well as enhanced ears -- as stated in *Up is Down:* eardrums with "five mallea", compared to a regular human's one, that are capable of sensing subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies far beyond the capabilities of normal humans.
	+ **Liquification:** During her performance for church in *Of the Blood*, Penelope was able to melt the stain-glass window in the church, completely liquifying it.
	+ **Heat Generation**: In *A Tiffany*, Penelope is being trained by Tally to find the right seeds required to carry out Work. With a little coaxing, she is able to heat the tuning fork on the table until it's red-hot.
	+ **Ultrasonic Sound Wave Creation:** In *A Tiffany*, after finding the same seed that melted the stain-glass window, Penelope was able to crack a nearby glass mirror.
	+ **Water Current Manipulation:** During her testing, in *Of the Blood*, and demonstration, in *Not Our Daughters*, Penelope is capable of using her voice to cause fountain-like currents to erupt from the large bowl of water at the center of the room, each one climbing and reaching into the air.

### Post-Witchplague Powers

* **Witchplague Symbiosis**: In *Revolution, Part 1*, Penelope is infected with a mutated strain of Witchplague that was meant to keep her alive as a sort of "carrier" so as to infect as much of the population of Fort Salem as possible. She was raised into the atmosphere and destroyed by Abigail and Raelle, scattering her throughout the atmosphere above Fort Salem in the form of a low-pressure system, which was pointed out in *Homo Cantus*. However, as noted by Izadora in *Happy Yule!*, it worked too well, as "it allowed her to remain alive, in a sense, in the atmosphere riding the humidity fully sentient." She later reconstitutes Penelope from the plague-rain that she retrieves, however noting that she is not entirely human yet. Once revived, she seems different, acting confused and eventually showing aggression, attacking Izadora by choking her. She is later shown to Petra, where she seems to be less volatile, despite displaying destructive tendencies. In *Book Club*, Penelope is seen casually having dinner with Izadora, suggesting that she is regaining her humanity, however when she sees Abigail, she looses her mind, exclaiming, "You tried to kill me!"
	+ **Corruption**: In *Happy Yule!*, Penelope was given a glass of milk, upon her request, to which she dips her finger into, automatically turning it pitch black, corrupting it.
	+ **Combustion**: In *Book Club*, she lets out this siren-like shriek that causes the lit candle beside her to explode, leaving nothing of the candle except the wax base.

## Quotes

"Tally, how come nobody wants to talk to me?" *To Tally in Revolution*

"My call to service? I don't know the words"

*To Sarah Alder in Of the Blood*

"Was it worth it?"

*To* Blaton Silver in Revolution