Lachlan O'Leary

**Lachlan O'Leary**, more commonly referred to simply as "Mr. O'Leary", is Edwin's caretaker and one of the main side characters of *Memory.* A former Church Grim, Mr. O'Leary now spends his time looking after Edwin and tending to his garden.

## Lachlan O'Leary

A portrait of Mr. O'Leary in his human form

### Aliases

Mr. O'Leary, The Black Dog of Faulkensund, The Black Hound

## Biographical information

### Marital status

Officially unmarried, but rumored to be married to his house.

## Physical description

### Height

5 ft 9 inches (in human form)8 or 9 ft (in Grim form)

### Eye color

Gray(in human form), red-orange(in Grim form)

## Description:

Mr. O'Leary has two main forms: his true form as a Church Grim, and a disguise that he uses to interact with other people, in which he appears as a human.

In his human form, Mr. O'Leary stands about 5 feet 9 inches tall, with fair, slightly tanned skin, wavy reddish brown hair streaked with gray along the edges that is usually kept tied back in a loose, short ponytail, and gray eyes. He is well built and mildly paunchy, though not overweight, and typically wears varying shades of light brown or gray. Mr. O'Leary wears rimmed half-glasses that are ever so slightly askew on his nose.

In his true form as a Church Grim, Mr. O'Leary stands at around 8 or 9 feet tall, (though he can alter his size) and takes the form of an all black, shaggy wolfdog with red-orange eyes that seem to glow slightly, as though lit from within.

## Personality:

Mr. O'Leary is kind, caring, and immensely protective of those he cares about, the latter stemming from his nature as a Church Grim, being driven to protect those that he watches over.

## Biography:

#### Pre-series

Mr. O'Leary was created in the conventional way of Church Grims - burying a black dog - with two key differences: one, both the dog and the first of the deceased were buried in the same grave, and two, there was no churchyard at the time of Mr. O'Leary's creation, only a tiny two-room building that served as a church and a mud slough situated precariously beside it. Why this was done is unknown. Mr. O'Leary served as the church's Grim for about 200 years, becoming fascinated with people and the way they lived, and wished to become one.

One midnight, during a storm, his wish was granted. He found himself lying on his back in the mud slough, with only two legs, no tail to speak of, and no fur. In short, he was very confused, very naked, and very cold. He rolled over, crawled his way out of the mud slough on his hands and knees, before remembering that people didn't walk on all fours, they walked on two legs. Uncertain of how best to go about accomplishing the act of "standing", the Church Grim crawled over to the small church building and clawed his way up to a standing position by dragging one shoulder up the rough stones, and, as a consequence, scraping the skin off. He stumbled around for a few hours, alternately stumbling, falling, and picking himself up again, before the cold got to be too much and he decided that he wanted to go... what was the word that people used - *in*?

But while the Church Grim was aware that people typically knocked before entering a building, he was quite unsure of how to do that, and so he decided to do the only thing he could think of, and ran full tilt at the door, tripped, fell, picked himself up, and slammed himself into the solid wood in front of him, inadvertently waking the priest inside, who, when he opened the door, found a mud-covered, lightly bleeding, soaking wet, naked man sitting on his doorstep in an almost dog-like manner.

The priest invited him in, bathed him, and fed him, though it was quite difficult for the Church Grim-turned-human to get used to the idea of clothes, seeing as it/he had never had use for such things before.

#### Memory

Mr. O'Leary, while walking back home from his graveyard shift street patrol in his Grim form, heard some rather strange noises coming from the alley a few blocks away from his house. Thinking it was a dog or another animal of some sort, Mr. O'Leary decided to investigate the source of the sounds, only to discover a person, horribly injured and near death, lying on a pile of trash. Sensing that the stranger might be more amenable to cooperating with a person than an enormous black canine, Mr. O'Leary shifted forms, cradling the stranger in his arms, and carried him home. There, he cleaned the man's wounds, stitched up the deeper cuts, slathered a soothing salve on the man's burns, wrapped the man's injuries in bandages, and settled him in his guest bedroom to rest.

For the few months of the stranger's recovery, Mr. O'Leary cared for him as though he was an infant, because for all intents and purposes, the stranger was too weak to do anything for himself, even the most basic things. Over those months, Mr. O'Leary grew to care about the man he had found, seeing him as the child he'd never had, and resolved to protect him as much as he could. He named the stranger "Edwin", after learning that he had no idea who he was or where he had come from before Mr. O'Leary had found him.

## Trivia:

* Mr. O'Leary has been around since the late Dark Ages/Medieval Era, and as such, at the time of *Memory,* is around 3,000 years old.
* He speaks in very heavy Glaswegian Scots
* Mr. O'Leary's character and appearance was inspired at least partially by Mrs. O'Leary the Hellhound from the *Percy Jackson* series by Rick Riordan.