Rune Marx

Rune doesn’t exist. Well her fingerprints and DNA sit in countless offices around the world, lost in databases of anonymous persons of interest, but as far as the girl they came from, no records were ever made. 

She was born in an old cabin on a lake in Minnesota, far from hospitals and officials of all kinds. Her mom didn’t survive the birth. In fact, her mom was dead when Rune was cut from her uterus. It’s a long story, and kind of a sad one. Although Rune has mixed feelings about it all when she thinks about the circumstances that started her life. Sometimes, usually when things have been slow for a while and she is sitting around waiting for the next job to land in her lap, she lays in bed and sips wine from a plastic cup, preferably with a curly straw (and she’s of course a connoisseur when it comes to the boxed brands), and thinks about what life would have been like if her mom…..hadn’t been possessed by a south-american demon.

That’s pretty much what happened. At eight months pregnant, for whatever reason, a wefuke spirit descended upon her mom, who then proceeded to call her brother, Rune’s Uncle Seth, in Minnesota and demand to see him. That it was a matter of life and death, and given that Uncle Seth was an Atharim hunter, he actually took the matter seriously.

Rune’s mother didn’t survive giving birth, and Seth took the baby to raise himself. By the time Rune was old enough to go to kindergarten, but of course never actually attended a school, she knew monsters were real and Santa was a joke.

Furia

By the time Rune was a teenager, they were quite aware that she had psychic-like abilities. She can readily see spirit monsters like wefuke or Djinn even when other Atharim struggle to see them. More, she can sense wrongness. Like if a soul, an actual human soul, expresses a profound and deep emotion, like of rage before a murder or horror during a rape or thrill during a feeding (though it’s questionable if rougarou have souls, its like the emotion’s strength imprints on the spirit world. Rune can follow their footprints like tracks in the snow. In ages past, women with these abilities were known as Furia, and worked for the God of the Dead, Hades.

Personality

Her full name is Runehilda. Rune has moods. Sometimes they’re dark and depressed, but she never descends into anything unmanageable, definitely nothing a good hunt can’t cure. Usually she’s quite chipper. Even though she’s pretty much on the edge of her seat all the time, waiting for the world of monsters to just knock on her hotel room door. Uncle Seth gave her his blessing to go to Moscow and make her rank in the Atharim official. So now, at twenty years old, she’s on her own, fearless and stoked about Moscow.

Style

Rune is a fit, physical girl. She’s been carrying duffel bags bigger than she was since forever. For almost as long, she’s been carrying rucksacks stuffed with supplies: the grunt in her very own little one-person army. Her hair color changes on a semi-regular basis: about the time she gets tired of the current color combination (or the dye fades). For many years, she styled her hair with flamboyant rainbows of colors and styles, even rocking the side-shave. She likes pretty things, jewelry and the like, but doesn’t go crazy wearing anything that isn’t tactical. The less to grab at, the better, she says. So she made up for it with makeup: heavy lashes, dark eyes, bright colors and red lips. As she tends to be pale from not getting enough direct sun (her lifestyle is pretty night-centric), her style is all the harsher.

She has tattoos and asked Thalia to help design a new tattoo of a dragon amid flowers when they met on Old Arbat Street.

My uncle says I’m about as deep as a puddle, but this tattoo has lots of meaning. My mom died before I was born. And I dont mean like in childbirth, but like I was still in her a few minutes after she was dead. Long story. But her name was Violet. She’s the flowers. And she’s with me eternally. Thats the snake. The tree is the tree of life, right. Cycles of life and death. Eternity.

Dueling Dragons

Uncle Seth

Shortly after Rune arrived in Moscow, Uncle Seth joined her from America. The Regus of the Atharim had summoned as many hunters as possible to the city to aid in the growing threat of channelers. In one plot, Rune was assigned the task to kill the godling, Jaxen Marveet. She bribed the valet that delivered his car to the Manifesto front door so that when he climbed in, she was there waiting. At a nearby park, she was able to get him out of the car and was about to shoot him when they were attacked by a naga woman. The naga rescued Jaxen and Rune was stabbed. Uncle Seth found her and took her to the hospital. Afterward, she has declared she would never hunt another god again. In the months that followed, Seth disappeared on a hunt and Rune has done nothing but search for him.

Afterward, her vibrant personality has changed significantly. She stopped wearing makeup and pretty things, stopped dying her hair, and wears only black. It was all that emo.

Relationships

Rune has never had a physical relationship of any kind. She has never even had a first kiss. She makes friends easily, though, but has a bad habit of forgetting to hang out with them.

• Thalia
• Aria
• Hood
• Amelia Pond
• Tenzin
• Jacinda
• Mikhail