Lutessa Luthor

## Background

### 1988 - 1998: Lutessa Mercer

Lutessa was born as a result of her father Lionel's affair with the family maid Pamela Jenkins. After finding out about the pregnancy, he made Pamela give him the baby that he then put her up for adoption at the Midvale Orphanage. He told her that was the only way she could keep her job. Lionel gave her the name Lutessa but per the city's law, no last names are given to the children until they are adopted or until they reach the age for school. Then they are given random names from a hat so Lutessa picked Mercer. From an early age, the adoption center noticed she was nonverbal & socially awkward. She lived in the foster care system all her life until Lex showed up when she was ten claiming to be her brother & wanting to take custody of her.

Lex found out about her existence after Lionel had fired Pamela as a maid for a younger one. Full of revenge but knowing she couldn't take care of her anymore, she told Lex hoping he would get her. After she gave him all the information she had, Lex went out to find her only to find out she had been in Metropolis the whole time. Once he found her & did all the proper paperwork, Tess was released into Lex's custody. He had her take on her rightful last name of Luthor.

Lionel Luthor greatly disapproved of this as he had kept her a secret for years to keep their family name pure. Lionel felt she was an embarrassment & wanted to send away to a foreign care center. But because Lex was her legal guardian, he had no say as Lionel technically gave those rights up when he put her in the orphanage. As the media caught wind of his past affair & child abandonment, Lionel suffered from a fatal heart attack due to the high amount stress.

### 1998 - 2010: Tess Luthor

In her youth, Tess viewed Lex as her best friend. But his new job as CEO & role as a single father made him too busy to spend as much time as he would have liked with her or her daughter during the time. As a compromise, she & his daughter Lena spent a lot of time with Mercy Graves, Lex's head of security. Mercy took Tess under her wing, providing her support & advice in areas such as fashion, etiquette & even marksmanship. She also quickly recognized Tess' brilliance in science, leading to Tess spending her time creating various inventions to impress her brother.

Her genius skills allowed her to quickly speed through high school & grauduate at the age of sixteen. She earned scholarships & invitations from many schools. She was pretty set on attending Ivy University until she visited National City University, where she met the fun-spirited & equally smart Kara Kent. The girls exchanged numbers immediately. When Kara texted Tess that she recieved her admittance to NCU & was getting ready to enroll, Tess switched schools so they could room together. Though Tess could've easily gotten her master's in less than four years, she specifically took enough classes to slow her pace so they she could remain with Kara.

During her sophomore year, Tess met & befriended another student named Jeff Colby. Jeff was a technological genius, who enjoyed bouncing his new ideas off of Tess. The two began a start-up in a garage, working to find a cure for cancer & other diseases using nanotechnology. After a year of working together, they fell in love & started a romantic relationship. When Lena graduated, she moved to Metropolis so that she could begin working for LuthorCorp. Her relationship with Jeff subsequently came to an end despite him trying to get Tess to stay with him in National City.

### 2010 - Present: Tess Luthor

Tess quickly made a name for herself at LuthorCorp & became involved in multiple departments due to her skills. While working with the finance department one day, she found Samantha Arias alone, working overtime at 3 in the morning. Impressed by her diligence & impeccable concentration to her job, Tess personally stuck her neck for her, leading to Sam rising considerably higher up the company hierarchy with the two working side by side.

As for her personal life, Tess briefly reunited with Jeff Colby while overseeing acquisition of a business in National City. The short visit resulted in a pregnancy, with Jeff trying to convinced Tess to move to National City again. But she refused so they settled on their daughter Lauren going back & forth with the help of her uncle's personal plane. Unfortunately, Jeff would only know his daughter for a year as he was killed by his business associate who had grown greedy & wanted Jeff's shares.

Tess went on to raise her daughter on her own, using her & Lex's assistants to help out as Lex had done with her. By the time Lex became the United Nations Secretary General in 2017, Lena had been serving as the company's Chief Operating Officer. With his departure as CEO & President, Tess took over his role. The job comes with its perks but also its woes as Tess now has to run a multi-million business while also watching after young & energetic daughter.

## Romantic Relationships

* Jeff Colby: Boyfriend (2008 - 2010); Fling (2013)

## Powers & Abilities

* **Genius Level Intellect:** Tess is highly intelligent, a common trait of the Luthor family. As an adult, her intelligence enabled her to impressively master several disciplines, academic & otherwise, to her own credit. She became the CFO of LuthorCorp at a young age then was given the role of President & CEO when her brother became the United Nation Secretary General. She was able to determine the unusual connections existing between Sam Arias, with the terrifying alien vigilante, Reign, whom Samantha erratically becomes against her will. This paved the way for Tess mastering how to artificially reproduce certain substances of extraterrestrial nature.
	+ ***Biology*:** Upon witnessing Sam momentarily manifest the Reign personality in front of her, Tess made the connect between her blackouts & the times that the Worldkiller Reign appeared to commit her vigilante activities. Tess then took her into a secluded lab equipped with everything (i.e. containment systems & observation utilities, emergency medicals, etc.) needed to further diagnose Sam's condition in hopes of finding a cure, or at least a means of suppression, for the side of her that is Reign. And after obtaining some Black Kryptonite, Tess succeeded in ridding Samantha & Reign from each other.
	+ ***Business Management*:** She oversees LuthorCorp's daily activities & sees to its success as a multibillion-dollar corporation, ensuring that it would stay operational up to at least four centuries later on. Tess has demonstrated commendable skill in statecraft, business negotiations & managing of L-Corp's corporate-level business interests. She has proven herself quite adaptable in overseeing the company's disparate business procedures & intricate protocols in expenditures, revenues, inventory, human resources, utilities & so on.
	+ ***Chemistry*:** Tess has a great aptitude in the field of chemistry.
	+ ***Computer Operation*:** Tess exhibits impressive skills in the field of computer programming, on par with Winn Schott & Felicity Smoak.
	+ ***Deception/Manipulation*:** Despite ultimately having a moral compass, Tess can be very deceptive to the point where individuals would prevalently assume that she knows or intends less than what she actually does.
	+ ***Engineering*:** Tess received her master's degree in engineering. She one created a device that earned her praise from Winn for her ingenuity.
	+ ***Investigation*:** Tess is known to be more perceptive & astute than most. She has proven time & again that she is able to pick up & thoroughly comprehend within mere seconds of observation what most others cannot - and with enough depth in that regard combined with her attained deductive & problem-solving prowess to hopefully come up with potent solutions in the midst of and response to obstructions & difficulties. Her scope in this covers a wide range, going from merely deducing the inner workings of a then-foreign technological mechanism, such as security devices & even whole vehicles, to substantially figuring out argumentative trends & incriminating topics of discussion to determine both links & weak-points of validity that can be found therein & thereby turn an entire debate in her favor.
	+ ***Leadership*:** Her knack for choosing the right people, including herself, for the right job & even motivating them to be at their best, was highlighted on her dealings & interactions with Samantha from the instant they first encountered.
	+ ***Medicine*:** Though she was doesn't have an M.D. or doctorate, Tess has demonstrated satisfactory resourcefulness & sufficient knowledge in the medical field when she inducted Sam into clandestine monitoring & exclusive research in her quest to determine her suspicions of Sam's true nature & to cure her from thereof.
	+ ***Nanotechnology*:** By the time of her late teens, Tess was already well-versed in nanotechnology & nano-robotics.
	+ ***Pilot*:** Despite considering herself as not strictly a fan of aerial transportation & typically preferring to have someone hired to pilot for her when traveling in this manner, Tess seems familiar with the ins & outs of such a mode in transport.
	+ ***Tactical Analysis*:** Able to cope with most situations, more so if she had time to prepare, Tess has been known to devise redeeming contingencies & measures for inconsistencies awaiting in the future.
* **Hand to Hand Combat:** Though mostly "unpolished", Tess has some aptitude in hand to hand combat thanks to some training with Mercy.
* **Marksmanship:** Tess is quite proficient in the use of firearms, human-made or otherwise.
* **Wealth:** As a member of the Luthor family, Tess is among the richest people of the world.

### Ratings

* **Intelligence:** 7 - Master / Elite
* **Strength:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Speed:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Occult:** 1 - Nonexistent
* **Weapons:** 4 - Trained / Learned
* **Range:** 3 - Average / Basic
* **Strategy:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Combat:** 4 - Trained / Learned
* **TOTAL:** 89 - Threat Level 2 / Low Threat

## Trivia

* She was prone to temper tantrums until she was in high school.
* Tess learned everything about managing a business from Lex.
* She didn't get along with Lex's first wife Erica del Portenza but she no longer says anything because she believes it's wrong to speak ill of the dead.
* Despite having a pilot's license, she hates flying.
* She prefers her coffee black & is fond of scotch. She also hates salmon & tequila.
* Tess is pro-technology. She believing that anything that uses papers is "a waste of trees & of our time."
* Her favorite movie is *Titanic.*
* Tess is of Irish descent on her mother's side.
* Since Lex got custody of Tess, they have been thick as thieves. He cares a lot for her as he feels guilty that the beginning of her life was spent without a family.
* When home, Tess likes to put on her National City University sweatshirt to cuddle & watch a movie with her daughter.
* She does not believes in coincidenes.

## Notes

* Lutessa Luthor (alias: Tess Mercer) is the name of Lex's half sister on *Smallville.*
* The address is a nod to the Hatley Castle, which is used as the exterior for the Luthor Estate on *Smallville.*
* There was also speculation that she was bisexual or lesbian on the show.
* Her relationship with Samantha & Kara is a nod to the *Arrowverse.*
* Jeff Colby is a composite with Jack Spheer. Jeff Colby is Lena Thorul's husband & the father of her son. Jack Spheer is Lena's boyfriend from the *Arrowverse*.