The Hand of Fate

When Gilbert St. Martin abandoned the geas laid upon his family in 1975, he decided to immigrate to America to start a new life. He settled in Boston where his noble title and wealth earned him a place among high society. He met and married an heiress named Caroline Cabot. Unbeknownst to him, she was the estranged grand-daughter of Robert Hollingsworth, the man he had just left his family's battle suit with. Together they had a daughter they named Gretchen. Gilbert believed he had rid himself of his family's curse as he watched his daughter grow up and become an intelligent young woman. She attended Cambridge University in England where she met her future husband, Nigel Hammersmith. Following their wedding Nigel took his place in the family business based in Cumbria and bought the old Hollingsworth estate there. At this point Gretchen still had no idea of her lineage or what that might mean to her.

With her husband busy, Gretchen took on the renovation of the manor house and explored the grounds thoroughly. She discovered the hidden labs of the Hollingsworth's and found some of the equipment left behind. Her intuition warned her that she should keep this discovery a secret and when not otherwise occupied, she would go down to the labs and experiment with the strange technology she found and discovered she had a natural aptitude for it. One day, her husband came home with a package and immediately locked himself in his study, refusing to come out to eat or talk to his wife. By the next day Gretchen was about to have the door forced open when she heard a blood curdling scream come from the room and the sounds of death and destruction. Suddenly a beast of tentacles and blood red eyes burst thorough the door. It attacked the workmen she had standing nearby, wrapping them in tentacles and draining the life from them. It reached for Gretchen, tearing at her face and arms. Days before she had found a curious bracelet that appeared to be powered but she could not figure out what it did. She had placed it on her arm and forgotten about it, during the attack the bracelet activated and erupted in a large electric shock that knocked Gretchen unconscious.

She awoke days later to find her father standing at her bedside. He told her that Nigel was dead and that although she had survived, the attack had severely damaged her face, leaving it disfigured and he sobbingly confessed that it was all his fault. Gretchen lay in bed unable to believe what her father was telling her. Gilbert St. Martin related to her the story of their ancestor Etienne St. Martin who had inadvertently created a device, a puzzle box, that when solved allowed the King of Edom known as Vulshoth to manifest the creature she had seen into our world. Etienne had been so horrified by what he had done that he immediately sought to destroy the device but it had been lost, only to resurface again and again in the hands of those who sought the favor of elder gods. Etienne had pledged his life and his families lives to it's destruction and had begun creating the weapons and armor that his descendents would wear through the intervening years of their quest. In the 20th century, information on the device had all but vanished. By the time Gilbert had been called on to take up the cause, he believed the device was no longer a threat and had abandoned his calling. And that abandonment had led to this, his only daughter nearly killed. And now that he realized where she had taken up residence, the very spot he had relinquished his only defense, he knew that fate was sending him a cruel message. Upon hearing this, a cold fire began to burn within Gretchen. She had been touched by true evil and now knew it existed. She wanted to stamp it out, to crush it.

The Cold Fire

While she recovered, Gilbert attempted to find out what had happened to Robert Hollingsworth and the St. Martin battle suit, but officially Robert had passed away 5 years before, at an astonishing age of 108. He then attempted to track down next-of-kin and was shocked when he discovered that Robert's ex-wife had remarried after moving to America and that he had married her grand-daughter Caroline. Again he saw the hand of fate at work, realizing now that his daughter was the inheritor of both legacies. But this led him no closer to discovering the fate of his battle suit. After Gretchen left the hospital she fiercely engaged in physical therapy and also showed her father the old labs below the estate. Gilbert recognized the Elder Worm technology that the Hollingsworths had been able to take advantage of and together they were able to cobble together some weapons and reactivate some ancient Worm armored suits to fight the Vulshoth spawn if needed. Next they began to track down the device that again had mysteriously disappeared after the attack. The spawn of Vulshoth had expired shortly after the electrical shock it had received and disintegrated. Gretchen was able to build a device she believed would track the power emitted by the device and it led them north into Scotland. There, unfortunately, they did not find the device but a group of Vulshoth's worshipers who had built a temple, allowing Vulshoth to manifest a much larger and more powerful spawn that began killing everyone around it. Gilbert and Gretchen fought the beast but it was too strong for the weapons they had built. Gilbert allowed himself to be grabbed by the thing while he overloaded the power source of his battle suit. The electrical pulse killed him, the spawn, and shorted out all of Gretchen's own armor and weapons.

The added grief of her father's death only fueled her cold fire and she retreated to Hollingsworth manor yet again. They had already salvaged everything really useful there but she vowed to go on with what she had. Inheriting both her father's and husband's fortunes made her a very wealthy woman and a bit of a mysterious celebrity as she would not appear in public without wearing something to cover the scars of her face. She relinquished control of her husband's interest in the family company and dedicated herself to finding the St. Martin device. She became an expert on the occult and those who trafficked in the artifacts of dark magic spread across the globe. As she sought the device, she began to come into contact with other artifacts and in every case she destroyed them. Always the puzzle box eluded her. One of the most powerful and prolific of the artifact traders was the Mo Qing Bang (Dark Green Gang). They despised her so much that they sent one of their top assassins, Lue Shi Zi (Green Lion) to kill her but this was years into her career as a hunter and she was able to defeat him. He has since returned to plague her on several occasions, now a lethal cyborg.

The Chain

Recently Gretchen journeyed to America to follow up a report that the St. Martin device had made an appearance there and ran into the Demon Hunter known as Simon Sixkiller. They quickly recognized the same inner fire within each other and worked together to stop another Vulshoth cult from building their own temple. Gretchen was at first very shy with Simon but then realized that like her, he was scarred, but on the inside rather than the outside. He is the only one she has revealed her face to since it's disfigurement. However, Gretchen was still a little wary of Simon since he insisted on using magical artifacts in his hunting, something she would never trust. They parted ways as friends but called on each other several times for help when they needed it.

Eventually, on a joint mission in Vibora Bay, Gretchen was introduced to an ally of Simon's, the archer known as Quartermoon. Quartermoon immediately recognized the designs of some of Gretchens equipment as belonging to his compatriot, the super-scientist known as Heron. Quartermoon arranged for them to meet and shortly after their introduction, they were both astonished to discover their connections to each other. Heron of course was actually Robert Hollingsworth, her long lost Great-grand father who had survived well beyond his natural lifespan. Robert was overwhelmed by the idea. He had nearly forgotten about his previous family, so unpleasant had they been to him, that it had never occurred to him that he might have grand children, let alone great-grand children. He saw none of the malice or dull-wittedness of his children in Gretchen and immediately developed an attachment to her. Gretchen in turn felt an affinity for the old man who had unwittingly made it possible for her to fulfill her desire for revenge. She also remembered that this was the man whom her father had left his original battle suit with and asked after it. Robert told her what had become of it and how it had more or less become the property of his servant android, R.O.man. He also explained to her that it was built for a man and would not suit her at all, but he offered to build her an entirely new suit and weapons if she liked. In the mean time he supplied her with some support drones and suggested that Roman join her in her quest as he had become somewhat unnecessary to Robert. He also asked if she would like to join him as a member of Strike Team Zulu but she declined. She did not want to become distracted from her purpose.

Together she and Roman continued to hunt artifacts. Now that she had access to Robert and all of his technology and records she researched the organization that had brought her two families together, the Sacred Order of the Chain. She remembered once that Simon Sixkiller had told her he had encountered another hunter a few years ago who had died in his arms and passed on his legacy to him. She recognized the name of that hunter, Count Von Grüne. An idea began to take hold of her. She realized that the legacy of the order was still being carried forward by individual inheritors of those legacies and that it might be time for them to come together again. She confronted Simon with this information and the proposition that the 3 of them, Simon, Gretchen and Roman, reform the Sacred Order of the Chain. Simon, feeling the weight of years and still suffering his internal torment, agreed to the proposition. Although he was still associated with Lord Xanadu, Simon felt that the forces Xanadu dealt with were far beyond him. The new order, which they commonly referred to simply as The Chain, set up operations in Vibora Bay Florida though they also still used the Hollingsworth estate in Europe as well.