Marianne 'Tawaret' Wychfield

Tawaret walked off towards the warded storage area where the book she had examined two days earlier had been deposited. Opening the door, she found it sitting on a marble lectern inlaid with runes and inside a metallic circle set into the floor. Almost immediately she felt a throbbing discomfort in her temples which grew stronger as she stepped across the circle and opened the book.

Inside the wards the psychometric jolt was less severe than it had been when she touched it in the more lightly warded main office. However she was well aware that the book was still highly anima radiant.

She read slowly and carefully, pausing frequently to speak notes into her phone. She also took a picture of each page of the book before moving to the next one and starting to decipher more of the ancient text and hideous arcane drawings. After two hours, it was clear to her that as most of the pages were no longer directly attached to the book's spine, some of the pages were missing as there were clear gaps in the narrative.

Finally, after four hours, Tawaret's slowly building headache forced her to stop and leave the room. Returning to her desk, her eyes narrowed in pain as she fumbled for the large bottle of pills she kept in one of the draws.

As she looked down, a splatter of red appeared on her well worn desk and she reached up and touched her nose. She was bleeding.

With a weary sigh, she took a bottle of water and gulped down several of the pills.

"Hey Neferu,' Damien called from across the room using one of her pseudonyms, and he made a drinking gesture as he pulled on his jacket.

"Not tonight, Damien," she said, "I've got some research to do."

"Anything I can help you with?" he asked.

"Not unless you can read Pnothic," she said with rueful smile.

"So that would be a 'no' then," he replied with a grin. He waved as he turned and walked out of the office.

She liked Damien and she trusted her instincts when it came to people, but this was going to have to be very much a 'family affair'. She looked at her phone but decided she needed to know a lot more before she called her mother. Too much was potentially at stake and she had to be sure first.

More people had started to leave Knightsbridge Consulting for the day and Tawaret sighed deeply as knew she was going to be there for quite some time yet. It was going to be a long and uncomfortable night.

She looked at the photograph that she always kept on her desk.



"Papa," she said softly as she touched one finger against the image of the smiling dark skinned man who stood between her and her mother.

If the information that she desperately hoped was in the monstrous book was indeed there, nothing in this world or any other was going to stop her from finding it.

(Extract from Shadows in a Sunless World '')

=• Old Family Templars •=

Marianne is Old Family Templar. Really Old Family.

Her full name is Marianne Sofia Walenburh Wychfield-Busiri but that does not fit on a Templar ID card and she generally just uses 'Marianne Wychfield'.

On her mother's side, the Wychfield family trace the blood line back to Anglo-Saxon times in England in the 700's, descending from and there is a Wychfield Templar mentioned in documents in 1130 AD

Dame Fiona Louisa Wychfield, codenamed "Gullveig", is Tawaret's mother, as well as being a Templar. She comes from a long line of Vala (female Anglo-Saxon tradition witches) descended from Iseult Wyccegefilde, and so she is a 'born awakened' anima active. Wychfield women served the medieval Templars with their sorcery for generations (implying that when the original Templars were destroyed on trumped up charges of heresy in 1307, there might actually have been some truth to it).

Dame Julia Beatrix Tyburn was a bridesmaid at Fiona Wychfield's wedding to Daoud Busiri and was present at Tawaret's christening. When busy schedules permit, Fiona, Marianne and Julia meet for tea and Welsh Rarebit at Fortnum and Masons in London every Wednesday.

Her father, Daoud Busiri, a Coptic Egyptian Templar Hieromagus, comes from an even older Templar line and he was one of the senior Templars in the eastern Mediterranean region before 'something' happened to him. The details of what transpired are not common knowledge.

Daoud Busiri is (was?) descended from a long line of Templars and his ancestor Yousef Busiri was mentioned in Knights Templar documents, called 'Joseph the Magus' (i.e a sorcerer), and listed as one of the first Knights Templar to be recruited 'Outremer' in 1129.

This makes Tawaret more or less pure blood Templar aristocracy as she is 'Old Templar' on both sides of the family.

=• Early Life •= Like both her mother and father, she was born anima active to a family immersed in the Secret World and thus her 'awakening' was much less of a shock than is the case for most people.

Her parents were both active Templars and accomplished in the esoteric sciences, making for an unusual childhood. She was particularly close to her father, Daoud Busiri, who she adored.

Daoud was more of a traditional Templar than her mother, Fiona, who was something of a 'society wild child' in her younger days. Daoud on the other hand was regarded in Templar circles as uncompromising and sometimes ruthless and severe. Yet in his private live he was a gentle dotting father and although many felt his 'Templar high society marriage to Fiona Wychfield was utterly out of character, in truth he was always quite different to his public persona.

=• Education and Expedition •= Marianne read Cryptozoology at Oxford University's Ætheling College, under Professors Janice Rabinowitz and Malcolm Hayford. She also studied Kirlian imaging and supplemented her income by modelling for risqué nude (but not pornographic) art photography under the name 'Pauline Packenham'.

Ætheling College is without doubt the least known college of Oxford University, which is remarkable seeing as it is was in fact founded almost three hundred years before both Balliol and Merton Colleges (which are usually described as being the oldest as they were founded around 1263-4). Ætheling has been described as the English Miskatonic, specialising in parapsychology, cryptozoology and assorted similar esoteric subjects. Almost everyone at Ætheling, faculty and students, are people who are part of The Secret World or who are at least aware of it.

Whilst at Oxford, she made several friends with whom she has remained in contact, giving her usefully 'back channel' contacts within the Illuminati and Dragon factions as well as the Council of Venice.

Although she had always assumed she would 'work with' the Templars, she had intended to spend several years on independent projects taking 'unconventional photography' using Kirlian imaging to record the occult wonders of the world, skirting the edge of subjects heavily regulated by the Council of Venice. Indeed she was prevented from publishing a series of photo essays chronicling the strange life of harmless homeless man in Oxford who just so happened to be daemonically possessed by a largely benign entity.

=• Wonder turns to horror •= However a few years after she graduated from Oxford, something terrible happened to her father, Daoud. This left her stunned and in emotional turmoil, pushed her into the arms of active service with the more militant arms of the Templars.

As Daoud Busiri was a very high ranked Templar Hieromagus, details of what happened to him were kept highly classified on a 'need to know' basis. All that is known publicly is that he was abruptly moved to 'inactive' status.

=• Driven and conflicted •= The shock of what happened to her beloved father had profound effects on Marianne. Although she is as focused and determined as ever, she has started to show a streak ruthlessness and outright brutality towards anyone she views as willing allies of 'The Darkness'.

Such behaviour would once have been unthinkable as she is essentially quite a considerate and tolerant person under most circumstances. Some people close to her see this as Marianne 'channelling' her father, who had a fearsome reputation as a 'pitiless smiter of evil' and certain members of the Templar hierarchy are delighted to see Marianne 'taking up her father's sword'. Not everyone close to her sees this as a positive development.

Also she is now prone to vivid and often nightmarish dreams, sometimes even causing her to induce thaumic entropy shifts in her bedroom. Several times, her dreams have proved to be precognitive but most do not appear to be so.

Increased levels of psychological stress has led her into behaviour to simply to burn off what is often unbearable tension, such as occasionally drinking far too much and sometimes getting into brief and often very inappropriate relationships. In this respect she is starting to resemble the behaviour her mother was prone to in her twenties.