Wanda Maximoff

Wanda Maximoff, daughter of Magneto and twin sister to former Brotherhood of Mutants member Quicksilver, currently a member of Pete Wisdom's Snow Valley team. She might have a chequered history and a quick temper, but she's determined to do what's right. Even if her reformed brother might not agree with her methods.

Details

Character Journal: x_scarletwitch

Real Name: Wanda Maximoff

Codename: Scarlet Witch

Aliases:

First Appearance: September 26, 2004

Date of Birth: February 2, 1975

Place of Birth: Bulgaria

Citizenship: Bulgarian, English

Relatives: Erik Lensherr (father); Magda (mother - deceased); Pietro Maximoff (twin brother).

Education: Masters in Social Anthropology with a minor in Archaeology. Currently doing her PhD. via correspondence with Cambridge University.

Relationship Status: Long-distance relationship with Dr. Stephen Strange

Occupation: Researcher for Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs

Team Affiliation: X-Force

Biography

Daughter of Magneto and a Gypsy Upbringing

Erik Magnus Lehnsherr first met Magda Maximoff in Bulgaria while he was in the process of hunting down a Nazi fleeing the tribunals. While Magda was 20 years his junior, it was hard for her not to fall for the charisma and steely intelligence, as it was hard for him to ignore her beauty and spirit. They were wed within months and she soon left her caravan for the first time. When Magnus first reveled his powers to his wife, it was during an attack from the former Nazi that Magnus had been tracking down. In the ensuing firefight, Magnus believe Magda, who was pregnant at the time, shot and killed. In his rage, Magnus lashed out with his magnetic powers and had killed their attackers in a rather gruesome way. Magda, who later described the power as if he had reached out the sky and used the lightning on the metal (it had been storming rather heavily that evening), fled the scene, fearful for the safety of her unborn children. She eventually met up with her caravan nearly a year later in Poland and it was then decided to head to England, in case Magnus decided to follow.

Having grown up with her mother's Gypsy caravan and knowing who her father was, and is, she struggles to find her own place in things. Magda Maximoff was the daughter of surviving Holocaust survivors and she and her parents strove to instill many lessons in Wanda and Pietro. She also had no qualms in telling her children exactly what Magnus did and why their father was not allowed to contact them. Wanda grew up rather torn between the desire to protect her mother and the desire to meet and get to know her father.

Wanda's, and her twin brother Pietro's, powers emerged when they were 12 and a angry mob accused the caravan of stealing from them (which was, actually, rather true. Wanda was normally used as a "mark" to draw people to her and someone else would do a bit of pickpocketing). Amid thrown rocks, someone drew a gun and shot one of the men in the camp. Furious, scared, and confused Wanda instinctively lashed out. She managed to knock down a large tree in her panic and the mob scattered. Unfortunately, she was too much in shock to remove herself from the path and only Pietro's intervention with his own just-emerged superspeed saved her.

Growing up, she and Pietro were inseparable. Magnus had gotten into contact with his separated wife, attempting a reconciliation. Things progressed, but when she demanded that he move to where they were so she could watch him in case he was still a danger, he had to pick between his wife, who had left him, and his children, who didn't know him, and the dream he and Charles Xavier were building. He choose the dream but every once in a while sent letters to Wanda and Pietro. Wanda paid little attention to them but never knew how much Pietro clung to those letters. Later in adolescence, Pietro left to find and later join his father.

Wanda never really got over Pietro's leaving and has some rather large trust issues and she has never forgiven for leaving, especially once Magda passed away as the result of an aneurysm caused by the Great Headache in May 2003. Since then, Magnus himself contacted her once asking Wanda to join his Brotherhood of Mutants alongside her brother, in his attempts to further mutantkind. She refused and asked only one thing out of her father…that if he were to ever come for her, that only he or Pietro would come. Magnus agreed and Wanda did not speak to him again. She did trade letters with her brother once a month, though she did not understand why he left.

Thanks to Magda's own lack of formal education, she did all she could to make sure her children could get as much education on the road as possible. From home schooling, Wanda then went onto correspondence courses and eventually managed to finish her Master in Social Anthropology with a minor in Archaeology. Wanda added to her caravan's travels by going out on her own to study other traveling groups, and as a result has seen a good bit of the world.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5' 10"

Weight: 172 lbs

Eyes: bark brown/almost black.

Hair: dark brown, tends to be rather uncontrollable when long, currently cut to just above shoulder length.

Other Features: Tanned and tends to be stronger than she looks; muscular and statuesque.

Powers

Wanda "hexes" things. She makes what could happen, happen. She's studied quite a bit into chaotic theory and basically thinks of her powers as getting "A" and "D" to create "Z". However, it's a lot more complicated than that. There's another aspect to our world, the chaos side. When Wanda utilizes her powers, she essentially rips open the barrier between and tosses out the end result, not caring how it happens, just that it does. Sometimes she can't even quite predict the end result.

But if she concentrates, she can force it; force "A" to connect to "D" and result in exactly "Z". But there are some high costs. When she doesn't force it, it's like she mentally reaches a hand in, rummages about and tosses out a result. When she forces it, she has to hold open the barrier longer and mentally look for what she wants. She describes it as "Looking into the abyss, and yes, it's looking back, but the worst thing is... I think it's hungry". She's looking into things that most people aren't supposed to see and she wipes it from her mind. She also starts to bleed from her nose, ears, and eyes if she does this for too long.

When she uses her powers, her mind becomes almost a chaotic whirlwind, making it hard to read or grasp (but only when she's actively using her powers, in order to keep up with all the information she's processing).

When she actives her powers, red "hex" rings appear around her hands, glowing brightly depending on how hard she's trying. She doesn't necessarily have to use her hands to make her power work, it's a fallback for her. Also, if she lets an unfocused "burst" go, she can reform it and create a "hex blast", a beam of energy that erodes or decays whatever it hits, unless it's human and then it's like being hit with a low, low level Cyclops blast. This takes a lot out of her, though, and requires time.

If she doesn't mediate or relax before bed, she tends to lose some slight control of her powers (this happens if she gets incredibly mad or upset) and that causes slight "poltergeist" activity to occur around her (glasses breaking, books falling down, that kind of thing). This hasn't happened in a long while, it's one of the reasons she tries to be pretty laid back.

Equipment

None.

Trivia

Because of the amount she traveled, with and without her family, Wanda speaks a good number of languages. Not all of them well, in fact most she only has a smattering of the necessary phrases down. She speaks Rom (Gypsy language, but mostly used for trading and cursing) fluently, along with German, though not nearly as well as she would like. She speaks French, and Hungarian and handles the Czech languages pretty well and she can bluff her way through most Germanic languages. Her English is rather good, though she gets confused by it sometimes.

Plots

2004

Repodemon

Remy's Eleven

Gypsy Road Trip

2005

Head Like A Hole

Mutants and Molotovs

Reavers (plot)

The Enemy Within

Thermopylae

Ties That Break, Ties That Bind

X-Men Mission: Air Xavier

X-Men Mission: Bank Heist

X-Men Mission: Mutant Michelangelo

X-Men Mission: Stalemate

X-Men Mission: Nimrod

X-Men Mission: Ricochet

2006

Dogs of War

The Curse Stops Here

Operation: Opening Salvo

Operation: Don't Leave Me With The Germans

Operation: Body Snatchers

Operation: Flesh Mechanic

Operation: Xorn

Romancing The Holy Whatsis

Trinity

Meta

Player: Indiana J

E-mail:

AIM: KatzMT

Player Icon Base: Carrie-Anne Moss

Meta Trivia

Wanda was introduced to the game long before Pietro Maximoff was ever applied for.