[V5] Diluvio Londinium qum Sanguis | Meet the Character

 

art by kavalyera

Riley Halaghan is the toast of West London, landing butter-side-down in the East. Equally at home in the pleasure gardens of Southwark, the warrens of St. Giles', or the bar-rooms and ballrooms of Mayfair. Silverware and pocket-books and jewels disappear from the one, reappear in the other, are returned anonymously to the third.

Tall, rakishly handsome, delightfully Irish, walks with a limp - that cane is not for show. End-of-season debutantes and pretty serving girls, wives and daughters of fathers at the war or the factory: nobody is safe, and no seething menfolk have ever understood what the fair sex see in this dandiprat. Clearly an educated man, claiming to have been sent down from Trinity and come to London for a second chance; living by wits, and credit, and with calling cards from fine hotels.

Riley Halaghan is a lie. Riley Halaghan, the real one, committed suicide in the summer of 1876, overwhelmed by success and study and expectations, his constitution not up to leaving Queen's County for the city, the college and the guilds. The body was found by the family's maid, one Molly O'Muirteagh, who happened to be about the same height... and pulled off the fastest quick-change of the year, cutting her hair and stealing a suit and wrecking her leg vaulting out of the window.

Molly lived the life of Riley for the winter term, bedding half the tarts in Dublin before rumours started to spread, suspicions started to brew, and it became necessary to leave before a final examination revealed the truth. Making those arrangements in haste drew the eye of a Ravnos Kindred, who thought all this was quite the lark. Molly-or-Riley never even knew their sire's name - indeed, they learned that names were power, and anyone who knew theirs would be forever protected from their charms and forever hold power over them.

That was twelve years ago. Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham... and someday London, into which all the idlers and rascals in the Empire are drawn, as though circling a drain. Existence in the demimonde is bound to draw the Kindred eye, particularly with a woman like Anne Bowesley (most certainly one of those) guiding its gaze, and Riley was offered an opportunity to earn a kind of bastard status, a leave to remain indefinitely. Just do a little job for the Camarilla - provide the benefit of their connections, their hustle, and their criminal flair to this investigation of some goings-on in Whitechapel, in the spring of 1888...