Pádraic Meagher's page

4 points Gnosis = 8
3 points Abilities = 6
1 point Willpower = 1
1 points Rites = 1
Bastard Merit = 2
Spirit Magnet Merit = 1
Total spent: 19

Flaws:
Enemy (his first adoptive father's patron) -4 points

Net: 15 freebies

Pádraic Meagher’s mother, Kathleen Maguire, was a descendant of the Potato Famine diaspora. She was the only daughter of a moderately prosperous family and grew up on handed-down stories from Ireland. She celebrated graduating high school by taking a vacation there with a few girlfriends and met Pádraic’s father. They had an alcohol-fueled one night stand never meant to be anything more. Kathleen was home in Boston, without any contact information, by the time she discovered she was pregnant.

An abortion was out of the question, but neither her nor her ailing parents could afford to support a child on their own. Kathleen rushed into marriage with a nice guy she knew from church who had just gotten a job at a law firm. The Father wasn’t all that pleased to marry a woman and then baptize her son all of seven months later, but these things did happen and Kathleen took the matter seriously enough. Her new husband, Kevin Brady, seemed devoted enough to her and the child.

Pádraic was odd from birth. His eyes never seemed to focus or followed nothing at all around his nursery. For a while, they feared he was born blind. Well after other babies learned to recognize their parents’ voices and faces, Pádraic seemed indifferent or interested in other things. Sometimes he began to cry and then stopped without their doing anything. He said his first words to an empty room and didn’t speak to his parents for months after. Even when he answered them or did as they asked, his mind always seemed to be elsewhere.

Pádraic had other things on his mind. For as long as he could remember, he had invisible friends. He couldn't quite see them, but he knew they were there. They spoke to him, played with him, did funny dances. He couldn’t see, but he knew and answered back. Many things upset them, so Pádraic made sure not to do those things. When his parents did them, Pádraic became upset on his friends’ behalf. They thought he would grow out of it. A few play dates and he would have real friends, settle down, and be normal.

Pádraic never got better. He showed almost no interest in other children. He daydreamed through school. When people tried to distract him from his friends, he became angry. The other boys picking on him made him angry too. His teachers recommended special education. That gave way to a special school. Intensive therapy. Then psychotropic drugs.

The harder the outside world pressed against Pádraic and his friends, the harder he pushed back. He attacked boys that picked on him. He bit his therapist hard enough to draw blood. He threw things. And when Pádraic wasn’t acting out, he became even more lost in his own world. Sometimes he didn’t speak for weeks, except to an empty room. He turned in bizarre, sometimes disturbing pictures of his invisible friends. He told rambling, strange stories about them. He stared into mirrors for hours. Even when speaking directly to others, Pádraic’s mind followed unusual tracks that seemed to have little to do with logic.

Kathleen and Kevin’s marriage, entered into hastily, did not bear the strain well. Kevin found excuses to spend more time at work. He openly resented the money he paid to take care of Kathleen’s deranged, disabled son. He thought Pádraic would probably turn into a serial killer, which Pádraic overheard. He drifted into the room and explained in a dreamy, innocent voice how his friends wanted him to do mean things to people who hurt him.

When Pádraic was eight, Kevin took a job offer at a New York law firm. He didn’t tell anybody, instead vanishing and mailing back divorce papers. Kathleen, who was genuinely fond of Kevin still, took it hard. She was already drinking more than she should and this pushed her into harder things.. One day Pádraic woke up and found her dead. He walked over to his neighbors and told them. He was upset, but his friends promised that something good would happen soon and Pádraic knew to always trust them.

Pádraic spent two weeks in a group home and two more in a home specifically for troubled, dangerous children on a powerful collection of drugs that put him into an almost constant stupor. For once he didn’t mind the medicine, dreaming happily of a land where the moon filled the sky and he could see all his friends.

Then his family, the Meaghers, came. They hustled him off still delirious and explained as best they could to a highly-drugged eight year old that they were kin of his father -his real father- and would take care of him from now on. They understood that he was a special boy and wanted to take him to a special place where he could be safe and grow up. They talked funny, but Pádraic liked that. He explained about his invisible friends, something he had done many times, and they gave him worried looks but didn’t immediately say he was lying or imagining things.

A good thing had come, just like his friends promised. By the end of the week, Pádraic was in Cork. Everything was new and exciting, complete with new invisible friends. For about a year, Pádraic settled down into something resembling normal life. He struggled in school, but he had never been very good at it. He had no real friends, but that was normal too.

Now and then an uncle or cousin would come over. It was usually late at night, but sometimes Pádraic’s friends woke him and he heard them talking with his parents. They usually vanished by morning, but occasionally they would stay for a few days. They were always interested in Pádraic. A few even asked many questions about his invisible friends, which he was happy to answer.

The Meagher home soon had a new source of tension, though. Pádraic could run around their small garden for hours. He would do the same if they took him to a park or anywhere else with open space. The boy had more and more trouble with being confined and sitting still. He grew into far more energy than he knew what to do with. Attempts to interest him in sport failed against his inability to relate to normal children. Soon his grades began to sink still further. The school put him into the remedial class, but it didn’t help at all. They reluctantly suggested medication, which his parents rejected.

One day Pádraic was out shopping with his mother. His friends told him that he should go down an alley, so Pádraic slipped away and did. They led him through the streets of Cork and into a building off a busy street. No one noticed him as he padded through the halls, past many girls dressed in strange clothing. Pádraic heard wonderful music and heard someone speaking. He drifted over and saw a room full of mirrors. They covered both walls! Pádraic caught his reflection in them and saw his friends! He didn’t know where they were, he could really see them! Some of them moved like the boys and girls in the room did, who Pádraic barely noticed. He ran up to the mirrors in delight. Something made him do no more than wave at his friends in the mirror.

Many questions followed and it took long-suffering adults two solid hours to get Mam’s phone number out of Pádraic. He was much more interested in asking about everything that went on in the building, the clothes people wore, the way they moved. Anyway, he could never remember numbers.

Mam was very upset with Pádraic, which upset him for the first time. It took a lot of work, but he made himself focus on her long enough to explain what happened. That and a chat with the staff at the Cork City Ballet put the pieces together. It was the first activity that Pádraic showed any interest at all in, so they gave it a try.

Pádraic loved everything about ballet, especially the weird parts. When he put on his clothes and went into the classroom, it was like stepping into another world. His friends were there in the mirror, so he always felt safe. They danced with and around him. If he did something wrong, they would point it out. Sometimes he could almost feel them touching an arm or leg to help him get it just right. Dance quickly became the center of his life and he slowly even made friends with normal boys. His grades improved into the average range in most subjects except maths and science. He got back into the normal class.

For a few years everything went well enough. Pádraic settled into a mostly ordinary life. He still had his invisible friends, but his dance friends helped him learn to function around normal people. Their shared passion and close relationship eventually brought the hostile notice of other boys. Pádraic didn’t care what they said about him, but the first few at his school who tried to beat him up found out the hard way that Pádraic would be sure to end any fight they started and could be positively frightening when he did. Soon after they learned not to slag on or attack his friends in his presence too. They also learned to go through the day without their belt buckles, which Pádraic always took from defeated foes. His invisible friends told him to. The teachers made him give them back, most of the time.

Pádraic progressed rapidly in Dance. His teachers there said he had a real gift. He might be able to study in Dublin, or even further away. His parents took him on trips to the conservatories in London and Paris and he liked what he saw there. But they insisted that Pádraic must finish his normal schooling before pursuing dance outside of Cork.

About the time he was twelve, the Meaghers began explaining more things to Pádraic. They were part of a very special family with a long, important history. It wasn’t something he could talk about with outsiders, but he needed to know these things. They had a tradition of helping other special people and he would grow up to be part of that. They also explained that his father -not Anlon Meagher, but his birth father- was one of the special people they had to help. Pádraic had never thought about anyone but Kevin and then Anlon as his father before, which made the whole conversation strange to him. They told him this mysterious man’s name, Tadgh Ó Dónaill, and explained that if Pádraic wanted to he could begin using the Ó Dónaill name. Pádraic had no desire to do so. Anlon was his father, even if the idea of a secret father who did great things appealed strongly.

Attempts to interest Pádraic in girls, which started as soon as he got his first pimple, went poorly. He didn’t dislike girls; some of his friends were girls, after all. More often than not, he got on better with the girls at school than most boys. But he knew from the start that his parents thought he would have some kind of other interest in them.

Pádraic had different tastes. He and some of his dance friends all felt the sparks between them and worked their way through the complicated field of jealousies and lust in a mostly healthy way. They weren’t getting any girls pregnant, so why not have some fun? Rumors got around quick, not that most of it was news for a group of boys deeply into ballet. A few times a priest at school tried to have a talk to Pádraic or one of the other boys about things, but they never got very far. A few hostile boys gave them another go and found out picking a fight with the dancers was still a bad idea. Didn’t they know that the boys trained themselves to lift up girls their own age above their heads and make it look easy?

The night of the big recital at the end of the season in his sixteenth year was Pádraic’s moment to shine. The older boys had all moved on, so he had no competition for principal dancer. It was a magical night that Pádraic and one of his dance friends intended to top off with a particularly intense makeout session. Giggling and holding hands, they slipped out the backstage door and into a crowd of drunken boys. Some were from school, others they didn’t know at all. They came at the dancers with clubs and bricks. One or two might have had knives. Pádraic’s memory gets a bit fuzzy then, until they were all torn to pieces and he sat panting in a pool of their blood.

Some of Pádraic’s uncles found him there about fifteen minutes later. They tucked him into a van, got him cleaned up, and several strong drinks in him before explaining everything. Pádraic had never suspected, but it all made perfect sense once they laid things out. He hated the thought of giving up dance more than almost anything, but what the Garou told him obviously took precedence. He thanked God, then amended and thanked Gaia, that he hadn’t caused his friend more than a horrific fright that he would soon forget.

A year of rapid training followed. Pádraic had much to learn, but for once he was an all-around able student. Gaia’s truths came to him almost like a thing he always knew. His mind naturally turned in the ways of spirits. It took more work to turn his wild, take-no-prisoners style of defending himself and friends into something that might save him against a trained foe but Pádraic enjoyed it all the same. Fighting had a lot in common with dancing when it came to coordination and strength.

Pádraic worked hard, paid attention, and prepared for his Rite of Passage more seriously than he ever had a recital. The traditions of his ancestors, remote before, now practically sang in his veins. One was that he had to give something to the spirits by throwing it into the pool at the heart of the caern to symbolize his commitment to his new tribe. Most cubs spent a year on a carving, a painting, or something like that to give. Pádraic knew from the first that he had to dance. He slaved away at a special routine that incorporated all the shapes Gaia gave to him into a thing of beauty all his own and practice for months, ignoring as always the odd looks and snickers. When the time came, he performed it under the light of the waxing moon. It culminated with his toe just touching the edge of the water and the instant it did, all memory of the dance left Pádraic forever. It hurt more than anything he’d ever done, but he knew it was right.

Pádraic is a lean, well-built seventeen year-old with blond hair just starting to look shaggy and pale blue eyes that usually seem focused on something just slightly elsewhere. He moves with natural poise and grace, thoroughly comfortable in his skin. Pádraic behaves with an alertness that belies his detached gaze, usually friendly and attentive to others. He speaks quickly and with a heavy Corkman accent, tough he’s happy to slow down and rein it in if he’s not understood. He dresses in close-fitted clothes that flatter his frame, usually dark pants and a brightly colored shirt.

Background and Concept Elements
1. Pádraic is one of Tadgh Ó Dónaill’s numerous progeny, an American-turned-Irish immigrant, happily adopted and content to pursue a career in ballet until his First Change intervened.

2. Pádraic used to be extremely introverted, but since he took up dance and got normal friends and even more since his Change he’s become better at understanding people. It’s not quite intuitive, but he tries to be attentive to the emotional needs of people around him and believes strongly that it helps ground him as a person.

3. Pádraic has complicated feelings about his biological father. Anlon Meagher is obviously his real father, so far as Pádraic is concerned, but he also feels a profound connection to Tadgh despite their having never met.

4. Pádraic remains on excellent terms with his adoptive family. Living away from them at the caern was the worst hardship of his tutelage, though giving up ballet and his dance friends were close seconds. He still has regrets that it’s necessary and does what he can to integrate dance into his Garou life.

5. Pádraic has always had a strong, intuitive connection to the spirit world. Spirits were his first friends and even when not looking as he now can he still feels their presence deeply.

Goals
1. Pádraic knows he’s unlikely to find his birth mother’s or father’s spirits in the Otherworld -he strongly suspects Tadgh is dead- but he hopes to find some assurance there that he is doing right by them. The Meaghers are his real parents and Tadgh is largely a cipher, but he’s strongly taken on board the importance of his lineage and not dishonoring it.

2. I would like for Pádraic to help figure out what’s up with Tadgh’s disappearance and the strange fate that befell the sept of Oriel, because I dig setting mysteries.

Secrets
1. In his dreams, Pádraic sometimes sees himself attacking women. He doesn’t know if this is because he can’t bring himself to try fathering children to continue his line and the Garou nation, if it’s a deep aversion to his birth father’s habits, or if something uncontrollable and dangerous is inside him and he only cares for men for an extremely good reason. The dreams are always profoundly disturbing.

2. Pádraic tells everyone he found his birth mother dead. This is only technically true, though the nuance was lost on a boy of eight. He also says he remembers little of that day, but he’s always known that as a lie. He got out of bed the night of her OD to go to the bathroom. His invisible friends told him that he needed to go downstairs after. He found his mother sprawled on the floor amid her drugs, moaning in agony. His friends told him that she was dying and hurting so much because she couldn't do it herself. Pádraic had to help her. They explained how to put the needle in her hand and guide it to the right vein, then help her push the drugs inside her body. She fell silent moments later and after about ten minutes, his friends told him she had gone. For a brief moment, he felt her among them, thanking him for stopping the pain. Then she was gone again and he walked over to tell the neighbors. Pádraic still believes he did the right thing, but does his best to never think about it now.

3. Pádraic’s first adoptive father, Kevin Brady, has been corrupted by something evil since (or perhaps while) leaving his birth mother. He’s still alive and has somehow learned what became of his wayward son.

At least three people tied to Pádraic
1. Padraic’s parents are Anlon and Meeda Meagher, Fianna Kinfolk. Anlon is an Advanced Paramedic with the National Ambulance Service and occasional bad musician. Meeda, who is generally in charge at home, is an accountant working for the Diocese of Cork and Ross. Anlon is infertile, which the couple discovered only after a lengthy try at having children that left them emotionally drained and just desperate enough to fly to America at short notice and collect a strange child with a troubled history. They were mostly doting and supportive parents and are very proud that Pádraic has become a Garou and a Fianna.

2. Liam Teague is the boy who was with Pádraic when he had his First Change. He now believes that he and Pádraic had a bit too much post-performance alcohol before they went out into the alley and stumbled into some kind of drugs deal gone wrong. Pádraic explained his year of absence since then as a bout of serious post-traumatic stress that made it almost impossible for him to go out of the house or have anything to do with anything that reminded him of the incident. Both have a strong urge to resume their relationship and perhaps take things further, but the events of that night remain an obstacle in many ways.

3. Pádraic is aware of his uncle Lachtna. The thought of the Garou disgusts him for reasons he can’t quite articulate. Pádraic dislikes metis in general, but has never felt an overwhelming urge to loathe them. Though their deformities mark them as ugly and impure, a decent person shouldn’t blame them for their parents’ crime. The moment he heard Lachtna’s name, before he knew his uncle was metis, he knew it as the word for something unspeakably vile.

Three memories, mannerisms, or quirks

1. Pádraic’s spent the happier half of his life perfecting the art of dance have made a profound impression on his how he presents himself. His movements are habitually graceful and precise, even when completely spontaneous. He prefers to dress in clothing that slightly recalls his dancing clothes: tapered skinny jeans, fitted shirts, and other things that cover him decently while still permitting full freedom of movement. He strongly dislikes anything else.

2. Because of his violent dreams, Pádraic now drinks rarely and sparingly. As a youth before his First Change he often indulged with his friends, sometimes to excess.

3. Pádraic finds it difficult to look most non-Garou in the eye and so often looks just slightly to one side or slightly unfocuses his gaze. The urge fades to nothing for true intimates -he quite enjoys staring into Liam’s eyes- and he can suppress it if he has to. Pádraic rarely finds cause to do so. He’s used to people seeing him as a bit spacey and isn’t above playing the airhead for convenience.