Mae Merriweather

"Call me Mae. But if you ever call me Mae West, I'll cut your balls off with a butter knife."

—Mae ~~West~~ Merriweather's distaste for using her ex-husband's last name

Mabel 'Mae' Merriweather is a renowned historian, the mother of Jack and Lauren West, as well as the ex-wife of Jack West Sr.

History[]

Early History[]

Mabel 'Mae' Merriweather was born in Australia, and grew up to become a successful historian, archaeologist and teacher. She spent many years at the start of her career researching the secret society known as the Four Legendary Kingdoms, including their members past and present, and the role they played in ruling over society. While she was never able to find definitive proof of their existence, she did make many notes of her assumptions, including Isaac Newton's research for them and how the DeSaxe family and the European Royals were likely part of the Four Kingdoms.

While Mae's work was dismissed as mere conspiracy theories by her colleagues, it drew the attention of both Jonathon "Wolf" West, a soldier from the U.S. Army who was on tour in Australia, and the Order of the Serene Maidens. Despite Sister Lynda Fadel's efforts to recruit her into the Order, Mae fell hopelessly in love with Wolf, who encouraged her work on the Four Kingdoms, and after some time the pair got married.

Together, Mae and Wolf had a daughter, Lauren and a son named after his father. However, Wolf soon began to treat his wife horribly; often talking down to her, being physically abusive, and cheating on Mae with an American woman on at least one occasion.

At one point when Jack was 13, Mae and Wolf picked their son up from school following a fight. During the drive home, as Jack explained that he had been defending his friend Sumil Gupta from bullies, Mae ignored her husband's derisive comments and was impressed with his reason for fighting, telling Jack she was proud of him.

Eventually, Mae had had enough of Wolf and divorced him, humiliating his patriotism by doing so through an Australian court. Knowing that Wolf would not take this well and likely try to enact a form of revenge, Mae quit her job as a teacher and went into hiding from her ex-husband; the infuriated Wolf spent some time trying to track her down, however he was never able to locate her.

Mae spent the next several years living in quiet isolation, and was rarely able to see her children, even after reconciling with Lauren before her untimely death. Jack did inform her of his long-term mission in guarding the daughter of the Oracle of Siwa, and presumably did not see much of him during this period either. Several months after Jack's mission was completed, he brought Lily to visit her adoptive grandmother.

When Wolf and Jack were forced to work together in the Third Vertex at Hokkaido, Wolf mentioned that he had always loved his offspring more than their mothers, including Mae.

When Wolf perished at the end of the Machine-restoration mission, Mae emerged from hiding and restarted her career as a teacher by moving to Broome; though she was considered over-qualified, she was accepted as a history teacher at Broome High School. She soon met the members of the Coalition of Minnows team Jack and Lily had been a part of when she attended the marriage ceremony between Jack and Zoe. Over the next eight years, Mae rarely visited her family, not even on occasions such as birthdays. The few times where she met Stretch and Pooh Bear, however, Mae would always comment on Stretch's thinness and ask if Pooh Bear had found a girlfriend.

The Four Legendary Kingdoms[]

Shortly after Mae finished dressing down Arthur for failing to study for his exams, she was approached by Pooh Bear and Stretch. After making her usual inquiries about the pair, they informed Mae that Jack, Lily and the rest of their friends had been taken, but that Jack had left them a symbol and her initials and so had sought her out for help. After being shown GoPro footage Horus had taken which showed Iolanthe Compton-Jones having Jack and the others kidnapped, Mae asked if the facility they were taken from included an astronomic telescope. When they confirmed it, Mae explained to the pair her life-long research into the Four Kingdoms and how the symbol had been made by Newton as part of his theory regarding the Hydra galaxy.

During their research into the Hydra galaxy symbol, Mae briefly educated them about the birdman races of Easter Island and how they may have been influenced by a set of ancient great games. When Pooh Bear noted that one of Newton's works had been purchased by Anthony DeSaxe, Mae revealed her suspicion that the DeSaxe's being members of one of the Four Kingdoms. Once Pooh Bear uncovered tapped phone transcripts regarding DeSaxe, the group discovered that DeSaxe had recently spoken to Iolanthe regarding a substitute in the great games, and Mae concluded that Jack and the others had somehow been roped into a modern set of great games. Needing to find out where the games were taking place, Mae suggested they visit the blood antiquities dealer Sunil Malik, whom had had a recent dealing with DeSaxe.

Mae approached Malik's mansion with Pooh Bear to inquire about DeSaxe's recent purchase from him, enticing the dealer by offering him money. Malik revealed that Anthony's son Dion had purchased a tablet of the ninth poem of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and as she read the additional lines Mae realised they were instructions to locate the Underworld. Seeing the excitement in Mabel's eyes and despite her attempts to deny it, Malik demanded that she tell him what the situation was all about, threatening to call Anthony. Luckily Pooh Bear used a wad of C4 to throw Sunny and his goons off-balance, and the pair began fleeing through the streets, aided by Stretch's sniping until they reached safety. As they went over the information they had gathered, Mae concluded that with the Underworld's suspected location being on land owned by DeSaxe that he was the modern-day Hades, and so the group prepared to make their way there.

After arriving in northwest India, Mae and the others began searching along the coastline for signs of an entrance to the Underworld, eventually coming across Alby Calvin, Sky Monster and others being harassed by a chopper. After her allies brought it down, Mae and the others reunited with their friends and their new allies, who explained that Jack had been forced to participate in the Great Games of the Hydra and that he and Lily were still in the Underworld. After Alby came up with a plan to get an army of minotaurs to aid them in getting their friends back, Mae joined his group as they went back to the Underworld and got the minotaurs on their side, joining them as they began assaulting the mountain just as the ceremony to divert the Hydra galaxy was underway.

After Jack, Lily and their allies were recovered, Mae rejoined the group as Hades secured them a helicopter from the minotaurs, and proceeded to depart the Underworld. As they boarded the Sky Warrior to go home to Jack's farm, Mae noted how the situation Jack had gotten himself into had brought them back together, and her son noted that with her expertise on the Four Kingdoms they would likely be seeing more of each other in the coming months. When she saw Mae disembark from the Sky Warrior, Zoe was surprised by the appearance of her rarely-seen mother-in-law.

The Three Secret Cities[]

Over the next few days at the farm, Mae took the time to ask Hades some questions about the role the Four Kingdoms had played in manipulating the course of history. When Hades informed Jack and the others that he was being forcibly abdicated from the Four Kingdoms, and with the Trial of the Cities and the Trial of the Mountains approaching, they would need to collect the Helmet of Hades of the three Immortal Weapons, items which needed to be empowered at the Three Secret Cities of Thule, Atlas and Ra, from his New York penthouse. Mae then joined the team in boarding the Sky Warrior and heading to New York.

Upon landing in New York, Mae, Jack and Lily accompanied Hades to his penthouse at Saxony Tower, and were shown the Helmet and a tablet belonging to the Altar of the Cosmos, for which Lily translated the incomplete instructions for the Trial of the Cities. Unfortunately, the arrival of a team led by Orlando Compton-Jones, Ricardo Mendoza and Sunny forced the group to take cover in a panic room, and Mae and the others could do nothing but listen to Orlando's people discussing their next plan of action before they departed. As they prepared to leave themselves, the group were confronted by the Slave King of the Royal Prison of Erebus, Hades's brother Yago, and his men.

The confrontation was soon interrupted by the arrival of a pair of V-22 Ospreys under the control of a group called the Knights of the Golden Eight, who announced their intention to intention to kill Jack and capture Lily and Alby. After Yago acceded to their offer to let him leave with Hades, Mae, Jack and Lily scrambled to escape Saxony Tower as the Knights opened fire. Aided by Zoe, they soon managed to escape to Tribeca One and used to falling tower to get into the Hudson River to aid their escape.

Without Hades as their primary source of information, the team's best move was to view a charcoal rubbing of the full Altar tablet kept by the Fraternal Order of St. Paul at the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Though her son asked if Mae also had any information on the Knights, Mae told him what little she knew of them before joining in researching the Immortal Weapons, Secret Cities and the Altar. As they shared some of their conclusions regarding the Cities' matching Weapon and their relative locations, Mae and the others were caught off-guard as all TV channels around the world were hacked by the Knights of the Golden Eight. Jaeger Eins showed the world a photo of Jack and warned him that they could not escape from them before cutting the transmission. Needing someone with inside royal knowledge, Jack contacted Iolanthe, who agreed to meet them at the Hall of Royal Records. With the tablet rubbing still a priority, Jack decided to send Mae and Zoe to meet with the royal.

After arriving in the U.K., Mae and Zoe invited Julius and Lachlan Adamson to join them, but only Julius elected to accompany them to St. Michael's Mount, where the Hall of Royal Records resided. As they approached the Mount, Mae and the others noticed Orlando and his entourage departing, and so ventured into the dungeon their enemies had emerged from. After finding and releasing the severely tortured Iolanthe, Mae, Zoe and Julius gathered the Royal's notes and returned to London to meet up with Jack's group at a safe-house.

As they discussed the locations of the Three Cities, Iolanthe revealed that Francis Drake had visited all the Cities on behalf of Elizabeth I and noted their coordinates on the inside of his yet-unfound coffin. As Jack requested his mother to find the coffin, a commotion on the Thames led them to discover how far the Knights were willing to go to draw Jack and Lily out, displaying feeds of Lachlan and his family being blown up, followed moments later by Sky Monster's parents. As Jack and Lily elected to go confront the Knights, Mae waited in the safe-house with Iolanthe.

Zoe soon returned and demanded that Iolanthe tell her where Erebus was located so that she could free Jack, who had been captured by Yago. Though Iolanthe reiterated that she didn't know, she agreed to help Mae and Zoe research possible locations, and while Mae soon began to think it was hopeless, the trio eventually narrowed Erebus's location down to a section on the Algerian coast.

While Zoe mounted a rescue mission with Stretch and Pooh Bear, Mae and Iolanthe went to rendezvous with Jack's oceanographer friend David "Nobody" Black and set out on the Betty White to locate Drake's coffin in Venezuela's Orinoco Delta, having deciphered the sailor's message to Elizabeth I. After scouring the ocean floor with radar, they detected the coffin and dove down in the Spider submersible to retrieve the coordinates. While underwater, Mae, Iolanthe and Nobody discovered the Brazilian Navy were sinking the Betty, forcing them to hastily open the coffin to take the parchment with the Cities' locations from Drake's corpse, though Mae protested standing on Drake's body as they used the air-filled coffin to reach the sunken floatplane for their escape.

Sending the coordinates to Jack so that the rest of the team could locate the other Cities, Mae, Iolanthe and Nobody began journeying to the coordinates of Ra to ensure the Immortal Weapons were empowered in case Orlando's people failed following his blunder in activating all the Cities' defences. Soon the trio came upon the ranger station that covered for the watchtower and entrance into the ancient City, and while Orlando's people had tracked mud through the booby-trapped path into Ra for their group to follow, Mae was able to uncover the safe passage through all the Cities' Great Avenues from the image of the Altar tablet.

Mae's group quickly made their way into Ra, where they spotted Iolanthe's former assistant Chloe Carnarvon and her troops trapped between hundreds of Bronze Guardians and a few silver ones on a cupola preceding the City's vault. After being informed by Jack that the Weapons were the key to getting past the Silver Guardians, the less-athletic Mae remained at the City's entrance while Iolanthe and Nobody navigated their way past the bronzemen using vines to climb over the buildings.

Sometime after the Weapons had been empowered and Mae reunited with Iolanthe and Nobody, they heard Aloysius Knight report that he and Jack had been too late to save Lily, who had been sacrificed on the Altar of the Cosmos by the Trismagi Hardin "Sphinx" Lancaster to complete the trial. With nothing else to be done, Mae and the rest of the team agreed to rendezvous back at Hades' safe-house in Rome.

The Two Lost Mountains[]

In the next few weeks after the Trial of the Cities and Pooh Bear's discovery that it was Alexander's body in the sacrificial pool at the Altar of the Cosmos and not Lily's, Mae and the rest of the team based themselves at Hades's estate in Alsace-Lorraine as they began using facial recognition software to comb the world's security cameras in the hope of finding Lily, while also preparing for the Trial of the Mountains.

Mae was among those who remained at the estate with while Jack and the others went to Moscow to rescue Lily, and while they awaited their return, heard about the people in the Russian capital being send into a collective sleep, which was soon followed by a similar incident in Rome, both caused by the Siren bells under Sphinx's control. Upon the team's return, Mae was surprised to see Lynda among them, but greeted her old friend warmly.

Mae joined the team in their discussion of what must needed to happen during the Trial of the Mountains, during which she referred back to the Zeus papyrus and pressed Hades on her previous questioning of the moon landings, learning that the Apollo 15 mission was to document an pedestal on the moon that needed to be in alignment with the iron mountains to allow a Fall. As the team decided to try to locate one of the mountains to have someone perform the Fall to gain entrance into the Supreme Labyrinth, it was decided that Mae, Zoe, Lynda and Agnes would head to Rome to break into the Vatican Secret Archives to uncover a journal that supposedly contained information on the mountains' locations, or see if they find find any intel on the location of the Orphean bell.

While preparing to leave and saying farewell to Hades, the former King asked how Mae had managed to raise Jack so well, to which Mae demonstrated by calling over to Jack (with his childhood nickname Cubby) and telling him that she loved him and was proud of him. When Hades mused that Jack was likely going to die going against Sphinx's forces, Mae reassured him that Jack should not be counted out as long as he has his friends beside him.

Once they arrived in Rome, Mae and Lynda headed into the Archives, finding the Javier/Xavier journal in Vault IX and discovering that the second mountain was beneath one of Mont Blanc's peaks and the third beneath Potala Palace, as well as finding a lead on the fourth mountain. They then overheard other intruders searching the Vatican's vaults, and as they looked to see who it was, Mae and Lynda saw the long-missing uraneus of the Great Sphinx of Giza being examined by the monks of the Order of the Omega, who soon noticed the women. As Brother Enoch fumed at their presence, an explosion caused by St. Peter's Basilica being hit by a missile distracted all of them, and moments later they were all taken at gunpoint by a soldier working for General Garthon Rastor.

After the Omega monks were executed by Rastor, he asked who the women were, but before Mae answered, Rastor recognised her as Jack's mother. When Mae voiced her assumption that Rastor wished to rule the world using the ultimate throne, the General corrected her and stated that he did not wish for anyone to succeed in the trial and wanted to allow the Omega Event to destroy everything. As Rastor decided to keep Mae alive since she would have value as a hostage, Zoe and Rufus in the Black Raven arrived to rescue the Mae and Lynda. However, as they were boarding the Sukoi, Rastor took advantage of their distraction upon the arrival of his V-88 and fired at the group. Though Agnes took the brunt of the bullets, Mae was hit in the thigh twice and fell from the plane. Knowing that they could not save her in time, Mae implored for Zoe to flee, and once they had taken off, Mae was helpless as Rastor executed Agnes and took her hostage.

When the team began reporting in, Zoe told Jack about his mother's kidnapping, and Lynda tried to assure him that Rastor would keep Mae alive, if only to use her as leverage against Jack.

Mae was later brought along by Rastor's forces to the fourth mountain beneath Jerusalem's Temple Mount, and once Rastor had successfully performed the Fall, he had his men secure the Falling Temple in place with heavy steel beams while the winching chains were destroyed, and then had Mae crucified to the bottom of the Temple.

When Jack arrived at the fourth mountain, he was suspicious of the absence of Rastor and his men, but was soon informed by Rastor - via radio - that he was too late to save his mother, and Jack soon saw Mae's predicament. Knowing that Jack couldn't save her in time, Mae implored her son leave her, and when he protested Mae told him to keep fighting to save the world but not her. The bemused Rastor then remotely set off explosives to destroy the beams holding up the Falling Temple, sending it - and Mae - plummeting into the shaft. As she fell, Mae closed her eyes as she accepted her fate, perishing immediately once the Falling Temple crashed into the stone base at the bottom of the shaft. Distraught, Jack left the fourth mountain in a daze while Rastor's laugh taunted him over the radio.

After Jack was reunited with Lily and they began heading to the fifth mountain, they and Zoe read Mae's Message from the Other Side, finding that she had written that she had been proud of how her her had gone, that Jack had been the best thing she had accomplished, and gave some imparting words of wisdom for Zoe and Lily. As they Wests mourned Mae's loss, Jack noted that they would miss her, and, inspired by her words, asked Lily and Zoe to join him in performing the Fall and facing the Supreme Labyrinth together.

The One Impossible Labyrinth[]

As Jack fought Rastor on the pinnacle leading to the Supreme Labyrinth's Throne of Death, he avenged Mae's murder by jamming a crimson orb into the mad General's mouth and making it explode.

Personality[]

In spite of her short stature, Mae is far from being timid. Along with being highly intelligent, Mae is a proud, formidable and strong woman, one who is determined to see her work through. Passionate about history, Mae has dedicated her life's work to uncovering hidden truths and lost knowledge, and took any opportunity to questions Hades on the Four Kingdoms' influence. As a mother, Mae was kind and compassionate to her children while striving to raise them the right way. Mae is not one to suffer fools, and even during her time as a teacher she refused to accept any nonsense from her students.

Mae can at times be rather aloof, as she didn't see much need to see her family outside of what she considers to be special occasions, and guards her isolation fiercely, though this may stem from the years she spent hiding from Wolf. In spite of this, she truly does love her family. Practical and well-meaning, Mae is willing to do whatever it takes to uncover certain truths or take certain actions for the greater good, such as when she told Jack to abandon her rather than save her from Rastor's trap.

Skills[]

Expert Historian: Mae is a well-regarded historian, with a wide range of knowledge regarding ancient history. Such were her skills and knowledge that Mae was known to even blood antiquities dealers like Sunny Malik. While her research into the Four Legendary Kingdoms were dismissed as conspiracy theories, Mae's continued research allowed her to make certain discoveries that often brought her close to the shadow royal world, making her the world's foremost civilian authority on the Four Kingdoms.
Expert Archaeologist: In addition to her skills as a historian, Mae is also a capable archaeologist, being able to evaluate artefacts such as the tablet of the ninth epic of Gilgamesh and confirm that it was genuine.
Multilingualism: As a necessity for her research into ancient history, Mae is able to read and translate several ancient languages.

Equipment[]

Other Equipment[]

To Be Added: ...

Trivia[]

Mae is the fifth major recurring protagonist in the Jack West Jr Series to be killed off, following behind Wizard, Lachlan Adamson, Julius Adamson and Hades.