A O'Malley
Aidan O'Malley
Seamus' older sibling, somewhat estranged from the family but closer to him
In Game
Plots:
Bluesheets:
Character Hint
You are Aidan O'Malley, parish priest at Violet City's Lady of Redemption, the leading Catholic Church in the area, but today is testing your faith severely. Last week, your younger brother Seamus revealed his homosexual tendencies to you; you were sympathetic but firm, as the Church has always taught you, that he had to find his way away from this sin. And today, you are told that he snapped and went on some sort of violent rampage. You don't want to believe it, but you are terribly afraid that you may have somehow led your brother towards such horror...
Character Sheet
You are Aidan O'Malley, parish priest at Violet City's Lady of Redemption, the leading Catholic Church in the area. You've been the parish priest for a few years, but your roots go back further. You grew up in this neighborhood, and your father and brother still live nearby. Until this morning, that is. More on that later.
Growing up, your father, Tagh O'Malley was a member of the thin blue line. The line that keeps civilized people safe from the uncivilized elements. Your father always had a strong sense of community and a desire to protect that community. Funny how much of that legacy is carried on in the work you do. There was a time, however, when your father's sense of kith and kin had a dark side. He grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when standing for the defense of your people sometimes meant undertaking violent offense against others. A close brush with this dark side is what led to Tagh coming to the States in the first place. This was never really a secret among the O'Malley family, and you always believed it a sign that even when there are good men led astray, each person has the power to choose their own destiny.
A few years after Tagh came to the states, he met and married your mother, Mary, and not long after you were born. Some years later, your brother Seamus was born. You still remember helping to change his diapers. Even though there were six years between you, you and Seamus grew up close. You taught him to shoot a basketball, and helped him with his homework. All in all, you led a fairly typical childhood, riding bicycles, playing video games, and reading comic books. Your father made the rank of detective, and this meant better hours and better pay than a patrol officer. Every Friday, father would bring his partner Maeve Caoilinn home for dinner, and she became almost another member of the family. She even convinced you to join the church youth choir on Sundays, where she was music director.
And then, over half a lifetime ago, the media and the politicians took it away. They'd decided that your father's past made him unfit to be a police officer, that he was a radical, and a violent extremist. So his Captain had no choice but to cut him loose. And having the media and the pandering politicians string him up made it very hard for him to get work for a long time after that. Your father did what it took for the family though. Manual labor, dock work, construction, whatever it took. Especially when your mother got sick. Out of nowhere, what seemed like a little flu spiraled out of control and hardly had the word 'pneumonia' been uttered when your sweet mother was taken out of this world. You were only fifteen and you couldn't understand how or why this could happen, especially when you all needed her so much. Father was too much of a wreck to be much help, and Seamus looked to you for answers you didn't have.
Maeve stepped up and provided a lot of support and guidance. She was a stable presence in an unstable world. She knew your father was a good person and didn't deserve these hardships, and that you and Seamus were as devastated as he was. She suggested that it was God's doing though, and that maybe you could seek comfort by talking to God and listening to what He had to say. Before long, you found yourself going to church a lot more often than the perfunctory Sunday service, and reading passages from your mother's bible as a way to understand and accept the events in your life. Each of the O'Malley boys, father and sons, grieved in their own ways, together and apart. Seamus became a quiet boy, and father buried himself in working long hours. And you all pulled through. You came to accept that you could not understand God's plan, but that everyone was a part of it. Your mother, father, brother, even you.
It was not long after this that you felt the Calling. As God and the Church has helped you, so too did you want to help others. So when you turned eighteen and finished high school, you entered the seminary.Nothing has ever felt more right to you. Unfortunately, Tagh was not accepting at first. At the time, he still blamed God for taking Mary from him and from you. He respected that you were a man now and that it was your choice to make, but he did not approve, and almost didn't show for your ordination (Maeve dragged him along). It took many years, but that love and respect brought him around, and now he often tells you how proud he is of you and your brother, who went to university and graduated with an engineering degree.
After ordination you were blessed to be assigned to your family parish here in Violet City. Often new priests are sent far and wide to fill the needs of the church. But there was an opening for a new vicar after the Monsignor retired and the previous vicar became the new parish priest. You know the Bishop pulled some strings to arrange the appointment, but that he wasn't doing this solely for your benefit. He knows the value of a priest who is connected and familiar with his parish, and bringing you back home means not waiting months or years for a new priest to settle in to the parish. Very quickly you resumed your former closeness with your father and brother, and some of your old friends. You might live in your own place now, but you've even picked up the old tradition of having Maeve Caoilinn over for dinner on Fridays. Perhaps because Maeve never married and you never can, this is your own version of the family dinner.
Your community connections mean that very quickly you were leading fundraisers, and assisting local charities. You organize the local hot meals program, taking much appreciated casseroles and crock pot dishes to the elderly and the convalescing. You maintain the parish blog and newsletter, and along with the lay staff, handle most of the emails as well.
Of course, you shared the duties of hearing confessions with the senior priest. At first some of those who knew you when you were younger were a bit reluctant to sit in the confessional with you on the other side of the screen, but very quickly they learned both of your natural gift for listening, but also your strict adherence to the sanctity of the confessional. It is the grace of God, but people seem to find comfort in confessing to you. Some of the parishioners have even named you their confessor, meaning they have chosen you above all others to hear their sins and help them purge their sins.
One of them is Fred Ronit. A one time inventor and cofounder of Decameron Enterprises, he has stepped down from the board of Decameron, and is now a politician. He has worked her way up and is currently making a run at the Senate, seeing an opportunity to take the seat from the generally ineffective Reagan Newbold. Fred is a stout supporter of the church, and has been a generous donor to the church, even helping to pay for the repairs to the roof after a large hailstorm last year. He is a staunch traditionalist, and feels that the government tries too hard to provide the support and charity that the Church is best equipped to handle, while simultaneously taxing people so high as to keep them from being able to donate to Church and charity. Clearly this is an attack of the secular on the religious, a slow siege. Actually, overall, you and Fred agree about the moral decline of society and the problems of urban youth. Fred has both the practical business experience and the passion to make a good Senator. The one place where the two of you disagree is on the topic of guns. You've seen first hand the problem of too many guns on the streets. Your father, as both a youth during the Troubles and an officer of the law experienced first hand the devastation that can be caused by well armed gangs in practically open warfare. And in a this modern day, hunting is not a necessity, and guns are not a part of daily survival. They are almost exclusively a tool for violating the 6th commandment (usually referred to succinctly as "Thou shalt not kill").
Under the seal of confessional, Fred Ronit has recently confessed that he suspects that his friend Jamie Rickie has been embezzling money from Decameron Enterprises for many years now -- and that his original run for the State House six years ago was largely financed by Rickie. You have given him clear instruction that he needs to both atone in his heart, and seek ways to clear up this crime, if it has happened.
One of the other people you hear confession for is your brother, Seamus. You politely and repeatedly asked for him to choose another, as hearing his confessions without judgement is hardest because you grew up with him. But he insisted. He was not comfortable confessing to anyone else, and felt that the bond between you made you a better choice, not a poorer one. Seamus has been working at Decameron Enterprises for a while now, and some months ago, he came to you to confess his own thoughts and feelings about his latest assigned project at work. Because of NDAs and government contracts, he insisted this take place under seal of confessional. He had been assigned to something codenamed Project Sureshot. The horror that is Project Sureshot is a bullet engineered to never miss its target. One shot, one kill, thanks to a bullet that can change its trajectory in flight to always zero in on the target. Seamus feels much the same about guns as you do, and having to be one of the people building this horror was a great burden on him. Often he felt as though he would be committing the sin of murder by building this weapon, even if it were by proxy. Recently he confessed that he was planning to do something about it, but hadn't yet decided what.
Seamus also approached you a few days ago outside your office to say that he had started dating. Your initial enthusiasm fled quickly when you found out that he was dating another man. The church's position on this is very clear, and you said so to Seamus. As much as you'd like to be able to separate the sinner from the sin, especially when the sinner is your own blood, this was too much for you. Strong words passed from you to Seamus and he left church that day visibly wounded.
You can't help but wonder if what happened today was a result of that.
Who You Know
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Tagh O'Malley: Your Father. You know about his troubled activist past, and how it has led to many of the struggles in his life. You respect him for his hard work and perseverance. Your Calling has caused some friction, but the O'Malleys are stronger than a little friction, and now his pride outweighs his dissapointment in having to pin hopes of grandchildren on your younger sibling.
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Seamus O'Malley: Your younger brother. He always spoke his thoughts and feelings to you, but in the past few months this became more than just a close brotherhood bond when he asked you to be his confessor. ** He'd confided in you all of his inner turmoil around Project Sureshot, but you never expected it to lead to this. He also recently confessed to believing himself to be gay and having feelings for another man. This was Although you tried very hard to separate the sin from the sinner, you can't help but wonder if he couldn't help but sense your disapproval. The two of you know each other so well. Perhaps today's actions were partly because of his conflictions.
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Fred Ronit: Fred is a parishioner of yours and a pillar of your community. You are also him confessor. Politics must be left out of the pulpit, but you and he agree on many political issues; the importance of family, the over-reliance on government, the overreach of the same into home life. One place where you radically disagree is on him second amendment fundamentalism. Faith may have little to say about the ownership of weapons, but there are some very clear messages about the outcomes of weapons. In this day and age gun violence is as much a social injustice as poverty or illness. You know Fred Ronit would be an excellent Senator, but he has already made many campaign promises to loosen gun regulations and you worry about the impact to Violet City.
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Jeri Ferdinand: Once a close childhood companion, you and she drifted apart in high school as you each matured and set on the path you are on today. The last time you actually spoke was just before you went to seminary.
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Maeve Caoilinn: Other than your father and brother, the person you are closest to. Probably the person who most helped you hear your Calling. Over the years the two of you have become quite close, partly because neither of you married (In your case, because of vocation, in hers by choice) and so your shared companionship deepened. You take dinner together once a week.
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Shrivatsa Kiran: A fine young man from India who works with Seamus. He was raised in some Christian sect you aren't familiar with, but you've encouraged him to join your flock, at least for Mass.
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Millie Cameron: A regular attendee at the Church, she was apparently raised Protestant down south but gravitated towards the Church after moving to Violet City.
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Ainsley Cameron: Millie's daughter, a lovely young woman in her late teens -- bright, inquisitive and honest. Really, she could be a model for many of the other children.
GM Notes
Aidan rebelled against his father's violent past by going into seminary. Now in his late 30s, he is a youngish priest in one of the city's suburbs.
Aidan has been acting as Seamus' confessor over the past couple of months; while he didn't know what Seamus was going to do, he does know the full details of Sureshot, and why Seamus was so upset. However, he knows it all under the seal of confession, so he is very limited in what he can say.
He is also confessor to a few other characters, including
F Ronit, the Tea Party candidate to whom he is quite close. They agree about many issues, and Aidan knows that sie is a good person and would be a good Senator, but does not agree with hir second amendment fundamentalism. Indeed, Aidan is a self-professed conservative who is having a major political crisis here.
He also knows the Mayor,
J Ferdinand, from his youth -- they went to school together, and had been close at one time, but fell out over religion and politics, and haven't actually spoken in years.
M Caoilinn has known him since he was a child, and served as his de facto godparent, encouraging his Catholicism and teaching him a lot more about the Church than his father ever did. She was much happier for him when he went into Seminary than Tadg was; indeed, she was the one who dragged Tadg along to be there when he was ordained. Over the years, they have become ever-closer friends. She has become one of his parishioners, but more importantly, they have simply been there for each other. Since neither has ever married, they've wound up as the nearest each other have to an SO, and they lean on each other frequently.
To Do
