Tzuritsa Trzeciak

Name:Tzuritsa Trzeciak

Nickname/Title: Zuri/Wise Woman

Age: 33

Birthplace: Chochołów, Poland

Language: Polish, English and French...Polish is her native tongue and she speaks it to herself and her cat Mało (with translation provided). She learned to speak fluent English and French from a stage manager in Paris.

Sexuality:Straight

Play-By: Janet Montgomery

Occupation: Wise Woman, Healer, Seer

Physical Description: With impossibly long dark hair and nearly black eyes, some supposed Zuri is from gypsy descent. That might be true, she never knew her father and was too young to ask before her mother died. Tall for the era at 5'9'' and a little thinner than she'd like to be...traveling across the continent sometimes meant dinners were scarce.

Distinguishing Features: Her extremely long hair

Personality Description: Tzuritsa makes friends easily, a skill she's honed in her travels across Europe. She has a disdain for clergy and overly religious types. Her penchant for a little too much wine on occasion has gotten her into trouble more than once...

Characters History:

In Poland, there were the wise women. A mix of Romani, straying Catholics and followers of Old Ways, these women were the healers, the seers, the mediums and the historians of their small towns. Tzuritsa Trzeciak was from Chochołów, Poland. She was raised by her mother and grandmother. As a girl, she would explore the dense evergreen forest that surrounded the little stone farmhouse where she lived. She remembered the townsfolk who would visit her mama and babcia , how they would pray with the people who visited them and sometimes sent them home with a bottle of tea. She remembers how babcia would sing to people who were sick and mama would read cards for the people who were worried. She also remembers the day they died. The sun had barely risen when their door was smashed into splinters. Ten soldiers rushed in, followed by a priest brandishing a smoking, swinging thurible.

“We can not allow this in our town anymore,” intoned the priest, swinging the little brass ball over herbs drying on the table. “This is not God’s work.”

Her mama screamed at her to run and she did…she ran into the forest until she couldn’t smell the terrible incense. At 10, she was still small enough to squeeze into an old rabbit nest nestled between two pines. She waited. The sun set. The sun rose. And now a different smoke rose from the town, thick, black and oily. Tzuritsa screamed and ran toward the smoke as fast as she could….

The next thing she remembered is waking up back in the rabbit’s nest with a little gray cat curled up beside her. As she looked up, she swore she saw a creature stalking away in the distance…something that was tall, with antlers like a reindeer moving slowly away from her into the darkness of the woods. That cat, Mało (ma-wih), has been with her ever since. 23 years later, Tzuritsa found herself in London after working her way across Europe as a fortune teller and healer. Her proclivity for spontaneous decisions has led her down some interesting paths as she crept westward. She was briefly engaged to a Bavarian duke (it ended when she realized that the relationship was a dead end for her so she fled), she nearly died from scarlet fever (twice), she had a two-year stage career in St. Denis, just north of Paris (she loved the stage and wouldn’t mind returning once she’s established in London), and she was arrested after being caught swimming in an Amsterdam canal (copious amounts of wine and Polish vodka involved). She’s lived a lot of life to get to the position she’s in and she’s ready to focus. However,now that she has arrived in London, the center of the world, she’s eager to work her way up the social ladder so she can be in a position to exact revenge. She hoped that the noble classes will start hearing of her talents and engage her for a seance.

Goals: Revenge, power, influence

Likes: Being on stage, parties, wine and good Polish vodka, animals

Dislikes: White dogs, ladders, the number 3