Black Betty knows how to recognise, counteract and very occasionally make use of magic, but she decided against becoming a full sorceress - she stopped short of the Build Artefacts or Rituals Subskills of the Occultism Skill. Still, she is very knowledgeable about the occult, and is particularly good at identifying weak points in mystical opponents, structures and spells. She likely was the best such specialist StormWatch could hope to recruit.

As Dusk’s aide, she has been enhanced by a series of enchantments and other defences. While she refuses to explain anything about those, the three countermeasures that have been identified so far are:

• The weird tattoo just above and between her breasts is mystically active ; when she actuates it, people looking at it will likely become violently sick and start taking SPI damage until unconsciousness ensues. This enchantment was dubbed “the boobs of death” by Gorgeous, though it’s actually over Betty’s breastbone.
• She heals considerably faster than a normal person - she could function without discomfort within less than a week after having a piece of rebar impale her through the thigh. She also seems abnormally resilient toward pain, blood loss and stress.
• Successful attempts at possessing her are likely to end badly for the possessor - she’s trained to work her way back into dominance from her subconscious, and do it so thoroughly as to end up possessing her previous possessor in return.

History

Elizabeth “Black Betty” Rowan has been apprenticed to Jeremiah Dusk (once referred to as Jeremiah Cain) since she was sixteen. She decided to remain his aide rather than become a sorceress herself - though she has manifest mystic potential, she decided she wanted to still have a chance at a normal life, which the creepy, strange and gross disciplines needed to wield powerful magic would make impossible.

Even without being a witch, being the sidekick of the most powerful sorcerer in the North-Eastern US was a procession of strangeness and horrors. During those 10 to 15 years, Black Betty went through many sanity-blasting experiences, including excursions into demonic dimensions and mystic combat against Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. While she seems unaffected by those, she is bound by some sort of code not to talk about her experiences, and she almost certainly went through extremely unpleasant things.

Early on Elizabeth and Jeremiah were lovers, but it did not work out - she was 16 and he was more than 200, and their relationship was too far along a mentor/mentee track already. They gave up the sex and romance and concentrated on the master and apprentice relationship with which they were both more comfortable, though most people still assume that they are lovers.

Dusk seems known even to the general public, and a figure in the heroic community. His assistant is also known for her occult expertise - Rowan became a full professor of metaphysics at Hudson University.

Dusk falls

In late 2005 or early 2006, Jeremiah Dusk astrally projected for unrevealed heroic purposes - and did not come back to his body. The faithful Betty took care of the comatose conjuror, covered the truth since the knowledge that Jeremiah was comatose would trigger a number of mystical attacks and invasions. She waited with slowly mounting fear and sadness for the return of the thaumaturgist’s astral soul to his body.

In the meanwhile, Professor Rowan helped against mystic threats. For instance she warped in during the New York City Massacre to help StormWatch defeat one of their foes, the Ferryman, a recurrent foe of Jeremiah Dusk.

In 2007, Black Betty was contacted by Jackson King to join StormWatch PHD. She took the offer, in part since she was afraid that Dusk might never come back and that humanity would be forever bereft of his protection against otherdimensional and mystical threats. Working very well with the PHD team, Professor Rowan was very helpful in developing police and military countermeasures against mystical threats.

The StormWatch PHD experiment was successful overall, and the team survived very poor odds on several occasions.

During the Armageddon events that left the Earth in ruins, Betty got her family in Jeremiah Dusk’s manor and used programmed spells to shift the building to another dimension. She hasn’t been seen since.

Description

Black Betty almost always wears a large, beautiful smile and is generally super-perky. She dresses in a variety of goth-like outfits.

Personality

Despite her monicker and goth clothing, Black Betty is forever perky, cheerful and smiling. She takes everything in stride, and his almost immune to fear and stress. She’s the team little miss sunshine, which tends to annoy Gorgeous, and is always nice and supportive. Still, she occasionally hints at how tough she actually is, and how she has seen things that would demolish lesser minds.

Black Betty’s main weakness is her hidden anxiety about the comatose Jeremiah. Though she knows those things happen and it might be many years before Dusk makes it back to his body, she’s worried sick and this is grinding her down.

Professor Rowan does things like baking muffins for the team, because everybody likes muffins and muffins make people happy.