History
Samantha Johanson
Aliases: Samantha Borden, Sara Barker
Born: 1983
Appearance 4 - Style
As a child in rural America, Samantha Johanson’s family growing up is best described as Trailer Park White Trash. Hannah Johanson became pregnant with Samantha and her twin brother Ethan when she was fifteen. Dropping out of school, she started collecting welfare while working odd and end jobs to supplement her income and support her partying lifestyle.
For the first few years of their lives, Sam and Ethan were pretty much left to their own devices. Their mom had a string of boyfriends, would often leave them unattended, and despite repeated visits from child welfare their first few years of life was one of bare sustenance and emotional neglect.
When they began school, the twin’s lives took dramatically different paths. An intelligent girl with an eidetic memory, Sam discovered she could get the attention and praise absent at home from teachers and educators if she did well in school. She easily aced all of her courses, and was soon spending more time at school than at home. She had few friends, devoting all of her free time to her studies not because she desired knowledge but because she was desperate for positive attention.
Samantha’s future was bright, and her teachers felt that she was capable of anything she set her mind to, but her need for positive attention and love nearly destroyed everything when, at age fifteen, she became pregnant. Sexually active at a young age, Sam had begun seeking love from her male classmates when she was 12. Now, this need for any kind of affection was threatening to destroy the future she had been told was hers.
Whether a blessing or a curse, Sam miscarried. Although she remained sexually active, for the first time she began researching sex and sexuality, learning about birth control, STDs, pregnancy, and discovering just how lucky she had been. She also discovered a whole new level of human relations when she accidentally discovered several books that took a more philosophical and intellectual approach to the subject. She became fascinated with the power and meaning of sex, and how important it was for relationships.
Eventually, Sam started college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Her grades made acceptance a foregone conclusion. Sam chose a through a combination of scholarships and part time jobs she was able to squeak by and afford her way. During her first year at school she discovered abnormal psychology and changed her major.
MANOR HILL
While at Brown Samantha’s confidence and sexuality began to truly develop as she experimented and discovered how easy it was for a pretty face to tempt men into doing the craziest things. She took great care of her appearance, and was a regular at the bars and parties, always going home with a different guy.
There were serious relationships, but whether because of poor judgment or a self-destructive streak they always ended in betrayal, reinforcing insecurities from her childhood.
Her 2nd year at Brown Sam happened upon a diamond in the rough: Manor Hill. She had found the advertisement for the room in an old newspaper on a table at a restaurant, and after one inspection immediately signed a lease.
Sam was truly happy at Manor Hill, and she met people who would become some of the best friends she would ever have. Perhaps if she had stopped to consider the circumstances of her discovery, how the newspaper had been almost left for her, turned to the classifieds with the Manor Hill add circled she might have been more suspicious.
Manor Hill was secretly a prison for a demon trapped in a pocket world for over a century, and when an unknown power attempted to free that demon, Sam and her friends were pulled into the creature’s prison. Though she managed to escape alive and with her mind intact, the experience opened her eyes to a part of the world she had been blissfully ignorant of. And because she could now see the monsters in the shadows, those monsters could now see her.
Sam tried to continue with her life as best she could, continuing her work towards a doctorate in psychology, landing an internship with the FBI, and reuniting with her brother after he returned home and to civilian life after two tours in Afghanistan. But her experiences with the demon had changed her, opening her mind and stirring her soul, beginning her down a path that would inevitably lead to her Awakening.
AWAKENING & RECRUITMENT
Over a year after her imprisonment with the demon, Sam Awakened in a traumatic and public fashion after learning that a man she had begun dating had secretly taped their time together and was posting it on the internet. Her professional judgment and personal character coming under attack, she snapped and descended into a world that looked like Victorian London, with demons and werewolves, vampires and the monstrous Spring Heeled Jack.
None of it was real, but she traveled across the university accosting friends and strangers before finding her ex-boyfriend and nearly beating him to death with an aluminum baseball bat she claimed was Excalibur. She was caught at her advisor’s office, collapsing after she had signed up for a meeting that afternoon.
It was between the moment Sam was handcuffed and her arrival at a mental institution for psychiatric evaluation that the New World Order stepped in. Since her experiences with the Manor Hill demon, the NWO had been keeping tabs on Sam. Her psychology background, occult experiences, and interest in the burgeoning science of criminal profiling made her a promising recruit, one that was snatched away before the Syndicate or the Order of Hermes could get to her.
Sam’s release was secured by Eric Prendergast, aka Control, and she was brought to the man who would become her teacher and mentor, Janis.
Samantha Johanson has adapted well to life with the Technocracy. Her ongoing desire for approval has led her to push herself when presented with every challenge. Under the tutelage of Janis, she has developed her magical abilities, tradecraft skills, and honed her powers of observation and manipulation.
Sam is still close to her friends from college, and obsesses over their safety. She tries to remain close to her twin brother, but after his return from Afghanistan it was clear he was struggling with demons he couldn’t share. PTSD. Drug Abuse. Night terrors. Sam has worked to get him help and treatment, but Ethan always gives up.
While stationed in New York, Sam was part of an amalgam called the Hounds of Anubis and was tasked with investigating reality deviants and threats to humanity. She excelled at her job, but while investigating the disappearance of several women from the Bronx she stumbled upon a human trafficking operation funneling human sacrifices around the world. The women were taken by a Russian outfit, and while Sam and her team successfully broke the ring apart, the leaders escaped. Sam earned a commendation and a price on her head.