Bobbi knows nothing of her father. Her mother, who was partly Vietnamese in origin, died of an overdose of heroin when Bobbi was seven. The only thing she has left of her mother is a gold crucifix with the name 'Michael' engraved on the back, which she believes to have belonged to her father. She is unsure whether 'Lee' is her real surname.
After her mothers death Bobbi was placed in care, but did not enjoy it. At the age of eleven she began a career of running away.
She is not native to New York but now considers it home. She wandered there as a thirteen-year old runaway, and has since left it several times as wanderlust struck. When it does she wanders/hitches around playing Michelle Shocked-type music at festivals and the like (she is very very good), making a living from busking and odd jobs. She is currently nineteen years old.
Because of this Bobbi has a police record for vagrancy and 'unlicensed performing' (several counts of each) and a juvenile record for absconding from three separate orphanages after being placed in care. She is also noted as an active equal and racial rights campaigner, particularly for her part in several demonstrations and rallies.
When in New York Bobbi runs with a streetgang, 'The Mockingbirds', a Hells Kitchen-based gang whose membership is predominantly of part-Vietnamese. She helps to support them by thievery, hitting drug dealers, protectioneers etc.
The leader of the Mockingbirds is Joey, aged about 20; between them he and Bobbi take responsibility for the rest. Joey is an accomplished thief and has a (fully deserved) reputation as a dangerous street fighter, using Tae Kwon Do mixed with some commando training. Others among the Mockingbirds are 'Star', Joey's girlfriend, 18 years old and fully Vietnamese; Jonathan (aged 18), Chico (aged 17) Judy (aged 15) and Maddy (aged 17, and who has an infant daughter, Louisa).
The Mockingbirds are actually much bigger than this, but the above are the people closest to Bobbi. The Mockingbirds do not deal in, or use, drugs, and are more strictly a community than a gang - they were formed in reaction to prejudice against the Vietnamese, and also as 'protectors' of the Vietnamese community in general. In administering this 'protection', methods are frequently used which break, or at best bend the law. The way the Mockingbirds see it, the law offers their people little protection and rarely comes into Hells Kitchen anyway.
On a recent wander out of New York, Bobbi acquired super-powers in the form of her alter ego Beltane. She fell into the hands of a group of occult freaks who hoped to tap into some of the forces unleashed during the time the angel Uriel hung between life and death. Bobbi was to have been consumed by the Beltane fire, but before she could be fully taken over, elsewhere the Guardians won the fight for Uriel's soul and the channel through which the eldritch power was escaping closed. Bobbi found she could control the power already within her, forming it into the figure of Beltane and draining her kidnappers into helpless immobility. She then ran off, discovering later that she could regain her human form by an effort of will. Some of the cultists, it was later found, died of hypothermia in the freak cold weather before recovering enough strength to move.
In her human form Bobbi is 5'7" tall, with short ruffled-looking glossy black hair, cut short with a small ponytail at the back. She is very attractive with slightly oriental-looking features and very clear deep green eyes. She has slightly sun-tanned skin and very white teeth revealed by her frequent smile. Her voice is a very clear but slight husky contralto with the trace of an accent which is almost unnoticeable and untraceable. Her ears are pierced, with three earrings in her left ear and an ankh pendant in the right. She also wears a gold crucifix with the name 'Michael' engraved on the back, which she never removes.
In dress she favours black, or faded denim, often tight faded jeans, a black sweat-shirt with the sleeves torn out, a small purple silk scarf around her neck, an old black leather jacket and well-worn sneakers or hiking boots. She rides a Harley-Davidson (with a helmet, but with no license, due to her lack of Id.), and usually has a battered rucksack/kit bag and/or an acoustic guitar in a case. Sometimes she wears a brimmed Panama-type hat.
She has a habit of collecting or attracting stray animals, so she is frequently found in the company of some half starved puppy or whatever...
In her Beltane form she is the same height as her normal self, but resembles a photographic negative of it. However, in this form she looks much less human. Her entire eyes turn silver, as does her hair, which also looks spikier in this form. The rest of her body is formed from pure darkforce - blackest black with dull silver 'dust' swirling within it giving the outlines of her figure and features.
Her powers consist of summoning and control of a 'darkforce', for a number of effects - flight, protection, filling an area with darkness, entrapping or killing a target, and draining the strength out of an entrapped target. She has discovered that if she doesn't 'feed', by draining a living thing, for 48 hours or so, she will change into Beltane and feed on the first available person available in a 'feeding frenzy'. If she is restrained she still retains some control, but will go comatose after another 24 hours without feeding, then automatically and unconsciously feed on anyone who touches her. If she then feeds enough to wake her but not enough to fill her need, she will remain in a 'feeding frenzy' until she has fed sufficiently...
Some time after Beltane joined and left the player characters group, Bobbi was recaptured by the same group of occult freaks who had been responsible for her powers - mind controlled in her sleep she woke up paralysed on their altar. The ritual was completed, some force rose up inside her, and she was gone...
Although still appearing to be Bobbi, she had changed from Beltane to the more powerful, but evil, Samhain, Servant of the demon Dhananjaya. Bobbi's friends quickly fell to Samhain, being transformed by her into Pisacas (Flesh Eaters), lesser forms of Samhain herself.
And despite the best efforts of the player characters, Samhain, with the aid of her group of musicians, Gods Own Medicine, managed to summon Dhananjaya to Earth just after Hallowe'en 1990. Only the efforts of Solar Angel (who distracted Dhananjaya), Michael Vandaleur, Bobbi's real father (the former supervillain Dark Aura, now a Knight Templar of the Catholic Church), and the player characters enabled Bobbi to be cleansed of the taint of Samhain, repulsing Dhananjaya and giving her light powers to replace her former darkness powers.
Like Beltane, Samhain could switch between a normal-seeming and a superhuman form, but in her superhuman form had bat-like wings and was clothed in black armour - plates on her body and fine scale-mail on the limbs. Her powers were similar to Beltane's, but at considerably higher levels.