Tagh O'Malley
Tagh O'Malley
Seamus' father, who is determined to make sure that his son doesn't get slandered
In Game
Bluesheets:
Character Hint
You are Tagh O'Malley, and you have lived a full life -- escaping the evils of the IRA in your youth; serving your adopted country and city as a policeman; having your career ruined by the over-eager media; raising two sons by yourself since your sainted wife died so many years ago. There have been ups and downs, but overall it has been good.
Until today. Today they are saying that your son Seamus went on some kind of rampage, killing people with a gun and then getting killed himself. They are making him out to be some sort of maniac, but you know your son, and that isn't him -- he may have been foolish at times, but he was always the good one. You will be damned before you let them slander his good name...
For costuming: you have been strictly blue-collar for a number of years -- you keep yourself neat, but you've mostly worked with your hands. Work shirt and jeans would be appropriate.
Character Sheet
You are Tagh O'Malley, and you have lived a full life. Until today, you would have even said that it had been a good one, on balance.
You were born 50 years ago, back in Ireland. This is where you are supposed to rhapsodize about the "green hills" and all that shite, but you know better: you grew up in Dublin during the Troubles, and the only green around was the greenbacks being smuggled in to pay for one side or t'other to make those troubles.
Not that you saw much wrong about it when you were a kid: like most of your mates, you idolized the hard men of the IRA, standing up to the Unionists and fighting for your people. The lines were bright and clear -- you were the good 'uns, they were the bad, and if getting that message across took blowing a few of 'em up, so be it. So you helped as you could, running errands, passing messages, and generally showing yourself to be a good lad and a part of the movement.
But then, one day when you were 18, you came too close. The men said that it was time for you to take a more active role, and you were right there when the exchequer got bombed. It was even kind of a high for the first few minutes, striking a blow for justice. And then they started to pull out bodies, and from your spot in the crowd you could see the wife of one of the victims, and a part of you knew -- just knew -- that this was where you decided who you were going to be. Either you shrugged it off with "The only good English is a dead English", or -- in fact, you ran home and were sick for hours.
The cops detained you the next day, having seen you in the crowd, but they couldn't prove anything and let you go. But it was too late for you at home: you'd crossed the "with us or agin' us" line, and the boys were going to drag you into more of those days whether you wanted it or not. There was nothing for it -- you kissed your parents, and skeddaddled for the States.
The family knew some folks in Violet City, which had a fair Irish population and a well-regarded church, so you headed there. And oddly, once you'd settled yourself in, after a few years of odd jobs, you found yourself joining the force. It hurt your head for a bit -- the police had always been the enemy, back at home -- but you realized that what you really wanted to do was protect your community, and this was a good way to do so.
Those were fine years -- working your way up from beat cop to detective; meeting Mary in church, wooing and winning her; having your two fine sons, Aidan and Seamus. You made good friends, especially Maeve, your partner on the force. Oh, the world wasn't all sun and roses, but there wasn't much to complain about until that damned reporter came into your life.
Vasily Leonard was just a wet-behind-the-ears young punk of a reporter 15 years ago, looking for a "scoop" -- which in news terms meant finding a life to destroy in order to feed the yellow journalism machine. And the life he found was yours. To this day, you don't know how he found out about your involvement with the IRA as a kid, but he sold it to his bosses at Fox as a scandal. "Violet City cop's violent past" and all that bull -- they misrepresented it all, making your early foolishness out to be the work of a hardened criminal who barely escaped gaol.
The Captain was sympathetic, and made clear that he believed you that you'd never done much, and had done everything you could to make up for what mistakes you might have made, but it was out of his hands: the politicians had deemed you a liability, and they wanted you fired to save their own asses. And so he asked you to step aside, for the good of the department. He'd always been good to you, and had never asked anything else. You couldn't look him in the eye and demand otherwise.
Things got harder after that, going back to odd jobs and manual labor, working the docks along the river one year, construction or carpentry the next. You made do, but money was always a little tight.
When Roger Cameron called you, not too long after losing your job on the force, you hoped it would be some proper, honest work. Nothing of the sort, though: he kept talking in code, about having "a problem with his warehouse" and such shite, but it was pretty clear what he wanted -- he saw a desperate man, down on his luck, with experience of blowing things up, and he wanted you to burn down his warehouse. You had to apologize to Mary for the words you yelled into the telephone at him.
You weren't surprised when Decameron Enterprises' warehouse down at the docks burned down a few weeks later. "A terrible accident", everyone said, but you knew it was all bull: you'd been in the force long enough to know an arson job when you saw one. You thought about going to the Captain with it, but knew it wouldn't do any good: you had enough information to make trouble, but not enough to put Cameron behind bars, and in the meantime it would just be trouble for your family. So you decided to think of your family instead. After hours, you did your own quiet investigation of the scene, and came out pretty sure that you could make a good argument that it was arson. So you called Cameron back and made clear that you knew exactly what was up, and if he wanted to avoid a scandal, he was going to help you out with your money problems. You didn't demand too much -- last thing the family needed was for him to decide that it would be cheaper to just bump you off -- so you asked a quiet five grand a month. He argued, but you had him over a barrel, and to a rich shite like that, it wasn't that much money.
You sometimes wonder if you cursed yourself with that blackmail, though. A year or so after that, Mary got sick -- just the flu, they said, but she'd never been the strongest body in the world. It turned to pneumonia and carried her off, leaving you nothing more than grief and anger. But Aidan was only fifteen, and wee Seamus only nine, so you couldn't fall apart: they needed their father to be strong, so you pulled yourself together, pushed the pain down, and kept working.
You figure it was the pain of losing his mother that drove Aidan into seminary. (And the promptings of Maeve, who had become a sort of de facto godparent.) You argued against it with him when he made the decision, and almost didn't come to his ordination. When he asked why, you couldn't give a good answer, but over the years you slowly figured out that you were simply so angry at God for taking the one great comfort of your life. You came to terms with Aidan eventually: he makes a good priest, and you are quietly proud of him. But the thought that he won't be giving you grandchildren makes it all a bit sharper.
Your hopes for family wound up pinned on young Seamus, but you've always been nervous about that. The boy's always been -- well, "sensitive" is the term folks use. Or "artistic": he always said that he wanted to become an artist. Maybe if you'd encouraged that, instead of pushing him into maths and engineering, this wouldn't have happened.
Seamus graduated from university with a middling grade -- nothing remarkable, but not bad. You figured he'd find a job at some engineering company, which was fine. And then he told you that he'd set his sights on Decameron Enterprises.
That tore you. Roger Cameron was a shite and no mistake. But this was what Seamus wanted, and well, you had leverage. So you called Cameron up, and told him that if he hired Seamus (and kept him on), you'd be quit. He agreed readily enough -- Seamus' starting salary was about the same as the blackmail anyway, and he'd get some work out of it. It meant that your money would get tighter, but with both boys graduated from college, your needs weren't so much any more. It seemed a fitting resolution.
At least, until last night. Seamus called you in a right state, saying that he'd realized that Decameron was involved in something "wrong": he wouldn't say what, but he was clear that he couldn't condone it. He'd somehow heard about Cameron hiring him as a favor to you, and demanded to know what that was about. So you confessed the arson thing to him, and the way you'd been holding it over Cameron's head. You warned him to be careful about Cameron -- that he seemed to be a bad 'un, and shouldn't be crossed lightly. You thought you'd warned him away.
Until about an hour ago, when you saw the news on the television. They're claiming that Seamus went on some kind of rampage, killing Cameron and a couple of other people, including a teenage girl. It's bullshit and impossible. Even if Seamus was capable of hurting an innocent like that, he was always a crap shot. You tried to teach him some basic firearm skills several times while he was growing up, and he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. The idea that he went around like some kind of sniper, precisely killing people -- it's a lie. It has to be a lie. And you will be damned once and for all before you allow that lie to stand...
Who You Know
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Roger Cameron: Seamus didn't kill him -- or if he did, it was for damned good reason. It may blight your soul to say it, but good riddance.
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Maeve Caoilinn: Your partner, back when you were a detective with the VCPD. She is a damned good person, one of the best you know, and acted as the boys' godparent after Ed Milton (their official one) moved away. After Mary passed away, she wound up your closest friend for many years, and you get the impression that she has wound up even closer to Aidan. Probably the one person you trust unreservedly.
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Vasily Leonard: The bastard Fox reporter who drummed you out of the force.
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Aidan O'Malley: Your eldest son, who decided to become a man of the cloth after his sainted mother's death. It's not the life you'd expected for him, and you quietly mourn the end of your line, but you love him and are proud of him.
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Fred Ronit: One of those Republicans running for Senate. You're of mixed minds about him. He says a lot of sensible stuff: he's strongly behind law enforcement, and seems to honestly respect the family in a way you're not used to from politicians. But he's a little intense sometimes, and you're too careful these days to blindly follow someone who might be a nutter.
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Jonathan Sheena: One of Seamus' newer friends from work -- he introduced you a few weeks ago, and they seemed to be hitting it off well. You were glad to see Seamus finding some decent sorts to hang out with.
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Paula Vasilios: Another friend of Seamus', who you've met a couple of times over the past year.
GM Notes
During his youth in Ireland, Tagh was involved in the IRA, and tangentially involved in a couple of bombings in the 70s. When he was only 18,
Tagh O'Malley was actively involved in an IRA bombing of a local-government building, the first time he'd ever actually been involved in planting a weapon. Until that point, he'd been a true believer of the cause, but seeing the bodies shook him to his core. Nobody outside his cell ever knew that he was involved -- even his parents thought he was out of town that day -- but he couldn't cope with it any more. He emigrated to the US shortly after, to Violet City, a very multi-cultural town with a fair-sized Irish neighborhood.
He wound up becoming a cop once he was naturalized: he never saw any contradiction in that. As far as he was concerned, he was always focused on protecting the people -- from the Protestant English back at home, and from lowlifes and criminals here. He was partnered for several years with
M Caoilinn, the detective on the scene today, and they have been close friends for decades.
His life was pretty much ruined about 20 years ago, though, when
V Leonard, then a junior reporter trying to find a juicy scoop, discovered his IRA past. Sie turned it into an on-air crusade, making a huge deal about how the police had a "terrorist" on the force. No charges were ever filed (Tagh had never killed anyone himself, and his involvement with the bombings was peripheral since he'd been young), but the whole thing was enough of an embarassment that the Chief eventually asked for his badge. Since then, he has been deeply embittered towards the media, and firmly believes that their whole game is ruining lives for the sake of ratings.
To Do
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From Conor:
I really enjoyed it, and the only thing I'd see improved is that Aidan and I didn't manage to spend enough time together, which we clearly should. I'm not entirely sure how to fix this - maybe if the two are slightly estranged and have some catching-up to do?
