Harker, Mina

Born Wilhelmina Murray, Mina was the estranged daughter of the famed yet largely absent explorer Sir Malcolm. She grew up reading stories of Allan Quatermain and other similar adventurers. As she entered adulthood, she became a young schoolmistress, teaching etiquette, decorum, and music. Her best friend was Lucy Westenra, a daughter of wealth and privilege. By 1889, she was engaged to a young legal student named Jonathan Harker.

When her fiancé Jonathan fell ill with a violent brain fever on a business trip to Transylvania, Mina travelled to join him there. She cared for him during his recovery from his traumatic encounter and the two finally married, beginning their journey home to London as husband and wife. Upon their return, however, they learned that Lucy had died from a mysterious illness stemming from severe blood loss as the result of repeated visits from some unknown blood-drinking animal.

These and other difficult experiences changed Mina. Rather than breaking her, they made her stronger. She possesses a powerfully independent yet kind and thoughtful personality, and is a capable leader. She inspires great respect and care in those around her. She is seldom seen without a red scarf, which she uses to hide scars on her throat.

Hawkins passed away while the couple were in Transylvania, leaving Jonathan the whole of their business, as well as a substantial sum of money. Today, Mina is a noted educator and suffragist, her activities funded by Jonathan, who is a wealthy businessman, while In 1890, the couple had a son, giving him bundle of names that link together a handful of close associates. In practice, however, they call the child Quincey, after their a departed friend Quincey Morris, an American who died a year before on the same day.

### ***Forbidden Lore***

Upon their return to England, Mina learned that the creature who had killed Lucy was actually Count Dracula, who had tormented Jonathan in Transylvania. She and her husband joined the coalition around Abraham Van Helsing, who now turned their attentions to destroying the Count. After Dracula learned of this plot against him, he took revenge by visiting Mina in Whitby and biting her at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, having once been hers from a mutual transfusion, destining her to become a vampire at her death.

Van Helsing, Jonathan, and the rest of their group sought to aid Mina is escaping this fate by hunting Dracula. Slowly succumbing to the vampiric blood that flowed through her veins, Mina's soul alternated between consciousness and a trance-like state in which she was telepathically connected to Dracula. However, Mina turned this to her advantage, using this telepathic connection to track the vampires movements. At Mina's suggestion, Van Helsing hypnotized her to access this information. Dracula fled back to his castle in Transylvania, followed by Mina and her allies, who attacked and defeated the vampire just before sundown.

The tale of the group's war against the most powerful of vampires is known to many as a fictional story, thanks to the pen of Bram Stoker. However, most who oppose the Red Death, including all the major qabals, know that the account published by Stoker is a heavily redacted compilation of real correspondence written or collected by Mina, Jonathan, and their comrades in the fight against Dracula. Mina herself compiled, typed, and organized every document.

What few know is that Mina and Jonathan Harker have been recruited to van Helsing’s qabal, Die Wächtern. Few qabalists anywhere can be said to have had more direct confrontations with the Red Death’s lieutenants, nor to have won more astonishing victories. In fact, Mina has recently been made the overall leader of the qabal’s London cell, while Jonathan works primarily as an archivist, compiling materials for the use of Die Wächtern qabalists and their most trusted allies. She has helped modernize the qabal, sharing information with other cells at astonishing speed using new technologies such as the telegraph.

After becoming the cell leader, Mina also became the bearer of a holy relic. Passed down from the founders of Die Wächtern, it is said to be the *bowl of Bartimaeus*, the beggar healed of blindness by Jesus in gospel accounts. This plain wooden bowl allows Mina to cast the *true seeing* spell once, regaining the ability to do so each Sunday at dawn, but once the spell ends, she is blinded until the next time she finishes a short or long rest.

While Mina is focused on the larger battle against evil, Jonathan obsessively seeks new information regarding Dracula's fate in particular. Though Quincey and Jonathan dealt the vampire severe blows and thought him dead once more and finally, folklore declares that their measures were insufficient to permanently separate the Count from his wretched unlife. Mina doesn't speak of it, but she knows that even as she lives free of Dracula's taint, her eventual death may still transform her into a vampire.