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Sep. 4th, 2023 05:35 pmHoodoo Lady
Keep your hands off my mojo
Rootwork
NAME: Eleonora-Marie Devereaux
NICKNAMES: Nora | Elle
AGE: Late thirties
BIRTH MONTH: May
MARITAL STATUS: Married. But it's complicated.
OCCUPATION: Proprieter, Buyer (ritual oddities), New Orleans Voodoo & Haunted Happenings tour guide
HOMETOWN: Treme, New Orleans
CURRENT RESIDENCE: French Quarter, New Orleans
PARENTS: Belle Marie Laveau & Charles Devereaux
FAMOUS ANCESTOR: Marie Laveau
TYPE: Rootworker | Conjure | Witch | Hoodoo | Mambo
ABILITES: Supernatural
SPECIES: Human/Mortal
associates
OOC INFO
CONTACT: DW message me
TIME ZONE: Eastern
PERSONALITY
Tellin' it how it is since the 80's.
Well now, I've got the meanest woman
The meanest woman you most ev'are seen
She sleep wit a ice pick in her hand
Man, an she fights all in her dream
I've Been Dealing with the Devil, John Lee Curtis [a.k.a. Sonny Boy Williamson]
abilities
Ancestors: She can draw additional magic/strength from her ancestors. This works best when she’s in New Orleans, closest to the burial ground of her ancestors in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Taking some of the soil from the cemetery works too. The ancestors speak to her. You can see her preparing tea for them and talking to them from between her doorway. It looks like she's talking to herself. The fact that they are a good source of information makes up for it.
Psychic ability: Psychokinetic. Witches and hoodoo workers in New Orleans had to develop more than their ability to conjure against opponents (vampires and werewolves) that are stronger, faster and/or immortal. Defensive measures vary but Nora displayed psychokinetic abilities (which she, unfortunately, brought to ‘show and tell’ when she was in fourth grade) that allow her to control physical objects, including the body. She has a 1:2 ratio, meaning that she can deal with two supernatural contenders at the same time. However she can't do the same thing to each one at the same time and usually has to go with one offensive and one defensive tactic.
Down sides: Sometimes it’s really hard to tell what’s real and what’s a vision especially since the visions are as realistic as any reality (whatever reality means to a conjurer). It’s a bit like having schizophrenia and the symptoms can mirror the mental disease even though the root cause is different. Although she’s getting better telling them all apart, sometimes, with the introduction of new elements (spirits, surroundings) to the visions, it becomes challenging. She's walked into heavy traffic because, while in her vision, she thought that she was crossing an empty street.
10 THINGS
01. Not good. Not evil. Life is both, so is she.
02. Fandom: Non. Closest comparison: The Originals
03. Original Character.
04. PB: Ruth Negga.
05. Nora loves hooodoo jazz.
06. Her husband is in prison.
07. Coffee better have chicory in it or there will be words.
08. Marie Laveau's conjure is still manifesting and shaping lives in New Orleans.
09. Speaks Haitian creole. Some Spanish.
10. Ask her about the (real) history of the Casket Girls over drinks (a lot of drinks).
ABOUT
Eleonora-Marie (Nora for short), born and raised in New Orleans, is a Hoodoo practitioner that runs her own occult shop that caters to tourists in the French Quarter. It's easy money. Peddling items like "Voodoo” dolls, magic powders occult books, bone-throwing readings and candle work, tourists leave a sizable fortune at her shop. Throw in a fake Haitian accent, completely erase the lines between Voodoo and Hoodoo and wear a white turban while a yellow snake lazily slithers around your neck and, jackpot! She's conned a lot of tourists out of their money.
It’s not her fault that people flock to her store because she's a direct descendant of New Orleans’s most famous Voodoo queen, her great-great-great grandmother Marie Laveau (who some say was a great con woman herself while others defend her works). Either way, Nora is the type of person that can make you spend money on a money drawing mojo. However, she is actually the real deal and those that really need the help of the 'Hoodoo Lady' find her at their doorstep. When she’s not minding the shop, she’s giving “Voodoo” and haunted NOLA tours. People tend to book her tours because her rate of return on supernatural occurrences are high.
She also travels far and wide to curate really hard to find magical items from places like the Congo and Haiti, sometimes finding them on the darknet and buying them for discerning clients or to take dark objects off the web so that they can't get into the wrong hands (not that her hands are totally clean) in the century long power struggle in New Orleans between the vampires, werewolves and witches.
Eleonora's husband is her heart and soul. One day at the store, they recieved a Nkisi shipped from the Congo that was housing a really evil spirit. The cat accidentally knocked the Nkisi from the table. It broke and released the spirit which then inhabited him. He went crazy and rampaged through Jackson Square on a killing spree. He, and the thing inside him, were caught & incarcerated. Nora hasn't been able to expell the entity or find someone who was strong enough to do it. She's even petitioned the Catholic Church to no avail. All she was able to do is to tattoo a sigil on his arm to leave the being trapped in her husband so that it can't jump ship into someone else. It also helps slow down the deteriation from the fight within him. But who knows how much longer he can fight it? And what it'll mean if he can't.
Mojo Workin'
Hoodoo: African American Hoodoo (also known as "conjure", "rootworking", "root doctoring", or "working the root") is a traditional African American folk spirituality that developed from a number of West African spiritual traditions and beliefs.
Vodou: Although Nora is a hoodoo worker, she also practices what is New Orleans' own unique evolutionary branch of Vodou, in keeping with her ancestor's beliefs and to tap into the ancestral magic within the city. There’s a lot of infighting between the traditions of Vodou and Hoodoo in NOLA, with a few outsiders contending that some NOLA root workers have basically mixed what they wanted from the systems (one, Vodoun or “Voodoo”, which is a religion and Hoodoo, which isn’t) for the tourist trade, spreading confusion about two very different practices. Nora says, “whatever works”.
