Weather Mistress

Courtney Cline

Courtney Cline’s farm family suffered multiple tragedies due to calamitous weather, culminating in a tornado killing her parents, and she left childhood determined to control the elements like they had controlled her. Abandoning her younger sister Tanith to foster care, she studied meteorology and experimented endlessly for naught. Despite her brilliance, Courtney's research yielded few results until she discovered technology in one of Dr. Stratos's abandoned laboratories. Angry and resentful over how often she had been “cheated,” Cline used the technology she discovered to build the Weather Vane and set about taking the wealth she felt owed as part of the notorious Thieves' Guild.
Like the other Guild members, Cline's existence settled into a futile pattern: a big caper followed by defeat, imprisonment, half-hearted reformation, then a backslide into crime. Intent on changing her status, she rebuilt the Weather Vane tech into more potent Storm Bracers. But her re-debut over the skies of Freedom City was ruined when Dr. Stratos arrived, intent on stealing back Cline's borrowed power. This time the court showed leniency in light of her help in stopping a real supervillain, and Cline—feeling like one of the accidents in her life had actually yielded positive results—softened. When the Thieves’ Guild staged their next breakout from Blackstone, Weather Mistress remained in her cell. She decided to serve out her sentence and start fresh, disillusioned with the criminal lifestyle and hoping for a different future.
To compensate for Cline’s absence, the Guild recruited her neglected sister, Tanith. Envious of her big sister’s glamorous villain career and equally brilliant, Tanith constructed her own Lightning Rod from Cortney’s designs, becoming the Tempestress! This roused Cline’s anger—the Guild had no business luring her sister into a dead-end criminal existence! This time she would win people over by doing good—and do well for herself. Months of model prisoner behavior and alerting Freedom City about a massive incoming thunderstorm won her a place on Project Freedom. Though she joined for selfish reasons, Weather Mistress is earnest in her desire to reform. And while she remains ambivalent about heroism, winning and getting cheered on is way better than losing and sitting behind bars.

Physical Description

Apparel & Accessories

Weather Mistress wears a pair of Storm Bracers imbued with Dr. Stratos’s energy, letting her command the weather to create lightning, powerful winds, fog, and rain.

Specialized Equipment

In addition, Cortney Cline is a gifted leader, strategist, and scientist.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Before reaching age 18, Courtney Cline saw her agricultural kinfolk financially ruined by a severe drought, the family homestead destroyed by a flood, and her parents killed by a tornado. Later, while walking through a blizzard to the menial job that supported her through college, Cortney vowed fate’s cruel hand—the weather— would no longer control her destiny. Instead, she would be its mistress! From then on, Cline dedicated herself to studying meteorology and any manner of technology that might allow her to bend the elements to her will.
Several years, many research grants, and numerous failures later, Cline finally hit upon the discovery she sought. What she did not realize is that her success was made possible by devices abandoned by Dr. Stratos. These gadgets were nonfunctional, but (like Captain Thunder) became imbued with trace energies from Stratos’ own weather-control powers. Cline incorporated pieces of these gadgets into her masterwork, a device she dubbed “the Weather Vane.” With it, she reshapes local climates with little more than a thought.
Despite her achievement, Cortney remained as aloof, bitter and sarcastic as ever. She still didn’t feel the scales of fate were balanced and set out to steal the riches life “owed her all along.” Since then, Cortney Cline has perverted the forces of nature to sate her greed as the costumed criminal the Weather Mistress.

Education

She possesses PhD-level knowledge in meteorology.