Welcome to Gaia! ::

Name: Dr. Beatrix Darnell

Nickname: 'Bea', as shortened by her best friend, Jack Dexter and has alas stuck for like the past ten years; 'M.B.', which stands for 'Mama Beatrix' or closest equivalent, due to her eldest daughter's total refusal to call her mother. Her eldest daughter's best friend also calls her 'D.D.' along the same lines, Doc Darnell.

Species: Human

Nationality: British, born in London

Occupation: Head of the mathematics faculty and teacher at the Liberty Center for Child Development. Researcher and academic who still -- if rarely at this point in time -- contributes to journals.

Likes: designer scarves, green tea, common sense, talent, thoroughness, gourmet food, other people's abilities to make gourmet food, Higher Education, Austen, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Keller, secret horrible train-wreck love of Harlequin novels



Dislikes: mess, stupidity, slacking, her own physical limitations (she is very defensive and furious about being blind), bad physical hygiene (unfortunately, she no longer has sight to see that your hair isn't combed, but she can SENSE IT through some kind of horrible mess sense), almonds

Hobbies: reading, spending quality time with her daughters in ways that does not involve her standing over them threatening them with physical violence and impeding their desire to own motorbikes, fussing over Jack, the crossword

History: Beatrix was born the eldest daughter to a wealthy family in London, complete with the proverbial silver spoon to her mouth, to a father who was a brilliant professor of anthropology (paleoanthropology in particular) whom everybody considered a genius, a leading light in his field. It became readily apparent when she herself was a child that she was a genius of the same stripe, a mathematical prodigy and general little snotty know-it-all, and her doting parents had the connections and funds to make sure their darling daughter had every tutor and resource she could ever wish for. She was pushed like a Trojan academically, but nonetheless started attending tertiary courses at the age of fourteen, and gained her doctorate in mathematics by the age of nineteen.

In Beatrix's particular plane, magic was a quiet minority skill cursed (or blessed, whichever way you saw it) on people in various forms, and many magic-users -- especially in England -- found themselves marginalised, forced into communities. Nonetheless, magic had its glamour and its attraction for everybody, and nobody moreso than Beatrix, who had had her first run-in with it at the age of fifteen and thusly started her obsession. Although she tried to force it out of herself for the next five years (she was a genius! Why shouldn't she be magical?) she had about as much magical talent as a plank. This drove her nearly around the bend, and in secret she started parleying for magical power in the most dangerous of ways -- demon-summoning, painstakingly drawing summoning-circles and doing basic alchemy to treat with Hell. Her first foray into this netted her her familiar, a tiny rock-daemon from another plane about the size of her fist, who loved blankets and eating tacky sweets that gum up your mouth. (His name: Thwomp. This unfortunately stuck.)

Although Bea continued daemon-summoning and her magic obsession, it came at a price -- falling afoul in her own arrogance once nearly killed her, simply leaving her with hideous burn scars on the inside of each wrist from a narrow encounter with a demon. It also netted the wrath of her father, as magic was not a respectable subject to deal in, and after her perfectly dignified math degree launched straight into 'spiritual theory' -- university speak for magic -- and magical history, especially of English magic.

This brought her into the circle of effect of the Dexters, an infamous magical family of London for the past three generations, notoriously powerful but also notoriously slack when it came to ritual, magical dignity and playing anything by the rules. Ensconced in the magical community, Bea wrote a lot of snotty articles about the Dexters and pretty much was their loudest and most obnoxious critique: an interesting position to be in, then, when she met Jack Dexter, the youngest scion of the Dexter family. She and Jack would somehow defy all expectation to become close friends and have a number of ridiculous Indiana Jones adventures together. (For one thing, no Dexter man could drive a car. Beatrix found herself becoming the third-generation Dexter driver, a totally unlikely pick.)

Unfortunately, although years with Jack helped Bea morph from ice queen with a stick up her a** to not so much ice queen with the stick not so up her a** due to her deep and abiding love for him, close proximity to him and his magic just made her obsession worse. When she was twenty-five she finally managed to summon a Duke of Hell, thinking she would finally get the gift of magic: a badly worded request ended up with Beatrix being able to see into all planes of magic everywhere, all at once, every single magical aspect in the entire universe and all existence. This drove her insane and she was placed in a mental asylum for the magically disturbed for the next couple of years, disappearing off the face of the earth; eventually, when the Dexters had found out what had happened, Jack's mother took pity on Beatrix and stopped the visions by sewing her eyes shut and sealing the magic. This left Beatrix functionally blind but back on the road to sanity, with Thwomp still there to assist her with seeing better than a normal human without sight could but never quite the same.

Still in recovery mode, Jack and Beatrix both eventually shifted to Gaia; Bea, for the want of anything to do and as a sort of rehab tactic, adopted two children from the Liberty Center for Child Development, demi-human Jacoba and terrible Rainbow Brite reincarnation Wisp. She is stumbling along with being a mother now; she's not the greatest at it, being totally emotionally constipated, but damn it she tries.