Earthmother
Maeve O'Leary (a.k.a. Earthmother)
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
A petite yet stocky woman, Maeve stood at 5’2 and had broad shoulders with muscular arms and legs from regular physical training.
Facial Features
Maeve had a heart-shaped face with spring green eyes, freckles dotting her rosy cheeks and shoulder length curly hair that shone like polished copper.
Identifying Characteristics
Maeve had a deep yet musical laugh that could both startle and delight those around her.
Apparel & Accessories
In everyday life Maeve would wear simple denim jeans with a jade green blouse and white trainers. Her attire as the Earthmother was a form fitting padded leather suit in forest green with earthy brown and orange trimming.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Maeve O’leary, known by her hero moniker of the Earthmother, was a 44-yearold single mother of one who was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. Originally from a normal-yet-impoverished working-class family, she grew up with a violently alcoholic father who regularly beat her mother, being spared his violent rages only by her mother’s standing between him and her until he tired himself out.
It was for this reason that her family was considered normal, only in the sense that neither her father nor her mother possessed any remarkable abilities or powers. So it came as a shock to both herself and her family when her own powers manifested during a particularly violent and sadistic attack by her father, having grabbed a meat cleaver from the kitchen after beating his wife into unconsciousness.
Maeve had been watching the exchange from inside one of the kitchen cupboards, having hidden there moments earlier at her mother’s behest, and it was the unmitigated violence of the scene that elicited a scream of terror from the young girl, a scream that caused the earth to ripple violently out from her position and throw her father from his already unsteady feet and land face first on the cleaver he had been carrying.
His body was taken away by police and, after many questions and a long, anxiety-ridden time in a police station, Maeve and her mother were allowed to return home. Thankfully for the young girl, her mother's brother had returned to Dublin after hearing of what had happened and took them in, showing her that there were still good people in the world.
She would spend her teen years struggling with the everyday hardships of all teenage girls, but also trying to learn how to control her powers. Having grown up in a very abusive household for most of her early life, her emotional control was fragile at best, and with her powers very sensitive to her emotional state, it became an all-too-common occurrence for her to damage or even destroy the environment around her.
At one point, her control became so unstable that she nearly exposed her powers to the public. Whereas before, her outbursts were limited to minor destruction and could be explained away as strange tectonic activity, the frequency eventually attracted a team of seismologists to Dublin for a time to see if they could identify the cause.
Recognizing that his niece was struggling and having heard stories of children like her being taken away and never being seen again, Maeve’s uncle sought out a retired hero to teach her how to control herself. This hero it would turn out, would be none other than The Crimson Raider herself, and though she had been initially hesitant to get involved, agreed to mentor the young geomancer on the condition that her presence be kept secret, having wanted nothing more than to quietly retire after her time in The Blazing Aces.
Over the next several years, Miss Brennan would help Maeve learn control and would quickly become like a grandmother to the troubled girl, helping her come to terms with the trauma of her past and learn to live in the present. By the time Maeve had reached her 18th birthday, Mary Brennan had decided that her work was done and would leave to find the peace she had originally been seeking, though she would always leave a way for her adopted granddaughter to reach out to her if ever needed.
Leaving Ireland for a time to study at Oxford University and earning herself a doctorate in geography, majoring in tectonic shifts with a minor in volcanology and archaeology, she would eventually go on to begin her career as a seismologist. She would travel to work at Mt Etna, where Maeve would experience her first hero moment. During a sudden and violent seismic shift that caused many tons of soil and stone to avalanche into a nearby town, Maeve would use her geomancy powers to rescue trapped civilians and redirect smaller but no less deadly avalanches harmlessly away from populated areas.
Having gotten a taste of the hero lifestyle and eager to put her once unwanted ability to positive use, Maeve would go on to help people in several other disaster relief efforts. She wouldn't branch out into crime fighting until much later, when saving herself and several others from a gang of looters during an earthquake rescue mission that had seen a town evacuated.
Though the fight against the criminal gang was terrifying and left her near dead from injuries sustained during the confrontation, she also came to a startling realisation, that she could do more than just help with natural disasters and from then on, after spending several months in intensive care, she would become more perceptive of the darker elements of society through her travels and would intervene against any criminal activity she became aware of.
Over time, she would earn the moniker she would become renowned for, from the many people she saved, seeing her stand high on a tidal wave of stone and earth, shielding them against the wicked people who preyed upon them, like a mother protecting her children.
It was during this time that she would return to Ireland to begin her career as a superhero in full and would bring a great deal of peace to the people of Dublin and the surrounding counties. She would also go on to meet a doctor by the name of Carrick O’Malley, working as a researcher in the Ireland branch of a large British company by the name of Schurk Industries.
This relationship would bless Maeve with a daughter, whom she named Isabelle, but also expose her to a danger and a level of corruption she had never before experienced. This danger was only realised after she discovered Carrick had been taking their now 12-year-old daughter to his place of work and running several tests on her, before then conducting a series of experiments that would trigger the
emergence of Isabelle’s own supernatural abilities, though they were weak and unrefined at the time.
After discovering this, she stormed the facility and rescued her daughter but not before destroying large sections of the facility and killing Carrick in the process, an action that shook her deeply but had been necessary. The enraged man held a scalpel to his own daughter’s throat in an effort to force
Maeve to surrender. Seeing no other way, she forced a spike of stone to erupt from the ground just behind the man and pierce the base of his spine and up into his skull.
She took her still unconscious Isabelle to their Dublin home before returning to the streets to confront the forces sent to deal with her by Schurk Industries, surprised to find just one man.
Her battle against this man would range across the city of Dublin and would waver from her favour to his many times before she was eventually forced to retreat back to her home, resigned to flee with her and her daughter’s lives. She only succeeded in leading her opponent to her home and child, however, and the final struggle would be cataclysmic in scope. Destroying much of the building they fought in, the man seemed relentless in his assault, giving little regard to the child held within. Inevitably, Maeve would fall and, in her final thoughts, would pray that her dear Isabelle, somehow gets away.
Current Status
Deceased
Species
Conditions
Date of Death
13th of June, 2016
Year of Death
2016 AD
Circumstances of Death
Murdered by Agent Iron after a protracted battle.
Place of Death
Dublin, Ireland
Children
Pronouns
She/Her
Sex
Female
Gender
Woman
Presentation
Feminine
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