PSYCHE THE OCCULT DETECTIVE

Real Name: Rose
Other Aliases: Julia Rose Hunter, Julie Rich, Erin Grey
Identity: Publicly Known
Occupation: Detective/Adventurer/Consultant
Group Affiliation: League of Champions, WitchGirls Inc
Bases of Operations: London England, San Francisco CA
Place of Birth: Northumberland, England
Marital Status: Married
Known Relatives: Donald Hunter (husband), Daniel Rich (stepfather), Daniel Rich II (son), Ash (adopted daughter), Iris (daughter), Petal (cousin), Megan Todd (cousin)

Height: 5'4"
Weight: 115 lbs
Eyes: Green
Hair: Strawberry Blonde
First appearance: Champions v1 #1 (June 1986)

Background:

Rose is the current mortal incarnation of Psyche, the White Sorceress, the Witch Queen of Faerie. As such, she has an obligation to use her empathic abilities, as well as her normally limited ability to wield the powers of magic, to seek out and deal with the forces of evil. Now that she's reached physical maturity, Rose's natural powers to project her thoughts, create realistic illusions, and protect herself with a psionic field are at their peak. She's also fully capable of reading the emotions of others, to some degree affection their behavior, and even temporarily shutting down their minds. Her other peculiar talent is the ability to traverse dimensional boundaries at will. This can have the effect of teleportation, but in fact Rose cannot move instantly from one spot to another. Even if the time she takes to do it is greatly compressed, she does have to travel the intervening distance.

Although she does work with the League of Champions, Rose has never considered herself a "superhero." Rather, she's a detective who specializes in mysteries of the occult. She began doing that at a very young age, principally as a means by which to test and develop her powers, and has worked on many different cases with her mentor and protector, John Carstairs. More recently, she incorporated a partnership with her longtime friend, Andrea Avery-Crusoe, and became one of the WitchGirls Inc.

Rose is quite passionately married to industrialist Donald Hunter, but these days spends relatively little time with him. He not only has little interest in the various matters of the occult that are of concern to his wife, he also has business and political problems to deal with. And to Rose's mind, his lack of interest in her affairs actually makes him the perfect husband.

Rose does have fragmentary memories of Psyche's previous mortal incarnations. The strongest are her memories of her grandmother, who (so the story goes) died in an airplane crash at the precise moment Rose was born. Of late, under certain circumstances, those memories have been gaining in clarity. Rose finds this a bit worrisome, but especially threatening. She is, after all, who she is. And she is certainly not her grandmother.

In any event, Rose thoroughly enjoys doing detective work, and will do so whenever the opportunity presents itself, either on her own, with John Carstairs, or even as Psyche the WitchGirl of WitchGirls Inc.

Personality/Motivation:

Rose is normally a very serious person. But there are times when she can become quite playful, particularly when she thinks someone else (i.e. her husband) is become a bit too serious.

She loves solving mysteries, especially if they're mysteries having to do with the occult. She likes getting to the truth of things, and will go out of way to find and expose occult fraudsters.

She tries as much as possible to avoid anything having to do with the Fae realms. She will deal with that sort of thing if and when she has to, but doesn't like the fact that when she is in one of the Fae Realms, the part of her that is Queen Psyche gets a bit stronger.

Powers/Tactics:

In addition to her psychic powers and her limited mystical abilities, Rose is a trained combatant. When she first joined the League of Champions, the Huntsman made quite certain that she'd be able to handle herself in situations that required physical combat.