Meredith O'Callaghan

**Meredith O'Callaghan**, better known as **"Molly",** was an actress, secretary, and con artist who was the brains in the many schemes of "The Professor." Molly was also a crack shot, and took point in the assassination of Carmine Figaro, which led quickly to the Second Genoan Revolution.

## Personality

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## History

### Early Life

Meredith was born in Aeldman-occupied Ireland, one of many children to Sean and Mairead O'Callaghan. Her father, Sean, was a member of the Dail (the Parliament of the defunct Irish Free State, allowed to continue in a much reduced capacity under the puppet Irish Republican Government). Her mother was the latest of a long line of *filid* (Irish loremasters), who worked secretly to preserve the old Irish heritage under Aeldman rule.

Her parents encouraged their children to live as good lives as they could under the occupation, allowing her and her siblings free rein to find themselves in the town which she grew up. She took to acting from a very young age, dreaming that she one day might take to the classical stages in Dublin and perform before massive crowds. Her greatest talents, however, lay elsewhere, in her brain and in her hands.

Like many of the boys in the border provinces, the O'Callaghan brothers often went to shoot with the Irish Borderers, who were one of the many groups in Ireland exempted from the general firearms ban (after the Dragoons grew tired of losing entire companies to the strange creatures who wander the Connaught swamps). To the dismay of the upstanding women of the town, Meredith would often accompany them on their excursions, proving to be the best shot of her family, much to the surprise of her brothers (her father, however, would merely smile and glance knowingly towards his wife).

Sean recognized that his children, especially his girls, would need to leave Ireland in order to have a future for themselves (save for young Clara, whom Mairead had claimed for the next *fili*). As such, he sent Meredith to the International Academy of Dublin for her secondary and post-secondary schooling. There she learned to speak the languages of the cosmos, draw and write elegantly, and, to her delight, was offered many opportunities to continue to practice her acting, costume making, singing, dancing, and oratory.

### Return Home and Kildare Uprising

By the time she returned from her long absence, her father had given up on the Dail (as most patriots do) and become mayor of Cork. Trouble was brewing in the hinterlands and she came back to a town buzzing with military activities. Obliged to make the rounds in high society, she attracted the attention of a certain Sanchel Hammon, colonel of the dragoon regiment which was stationed in Cork. The obligatory social events which her father put on for the Aeldman socialites and personalities in the town put her in close contact with him. Several times he made advances upon her, though Meredith did her best to spurn him and managed to avoid him as much as she could.

This soon became impossible, as martial law was declared in the country after an armed uprising around Dublin. With this unfortunate turn of events, the elven men of the Dragoons suddenly could not be refused, and Colonel Hammon became the virtual dictator of Cork. Hammon gathered a virtual harem for himself from the girls of the town, including many of the O'Callaghan sisters, and the crown jewel in this collection was to be Meredith O'Callaghan herself. She became, over the helpless protests of her father, a slave in everything but name; for his part, Sean O'Callaghan was taken as a hostage against the good behavior of the town, and was forced to suffer through the regular rape of his own daughters. Mercifully, his wife had the good sense to take her sons and the borderers deep into the swamps well beforehand, where they joined the creatures in becoming a hazard to the foolish Dragoon patrols who were ordered after them.

For about a year this torture continued, until she met a man who had introduced himself by the name of Professor Ernest Smythe. She quickly came to understand that this "Professor" was actually an arms dealer outfitting the Dragoon regiment with the latest in specialty weapons. As much as she resented him for that, she found herself rather charmed by his strange habits, and, more importantly, by the fact that he seemed to be the only member of the occupation forces who treated her even remotely as a human being, much less with gentlemanly respect. She slowly but surely became enamored with him, and when he finally appeared in her quarters (the one luxury afforded to the head of Hammon's harem), she did not refuse him, in spite of the trauma of the past year.

It was then, as they lay together, that the Professor, perhaps in a moment of exhilaration or overconfidence, laid his plans bare to her. He was no ordinary arms dealer, but a con man of the highest caliber — he was going not only to sell to both sides, but to balance the scales in favor of the Irishmen, collect on the loot, and skip town. He proposed that she might join him in this adventure.

Recognizing what might be her only opportunity for freedom, she devoted herself to this plan. She gave him a hastily scrawled introduction that would let her brothers know that he could be trusted. She spied on her oppressors, quietly sabotaged, and got as much information out of her "master" as she could.

Finally, the moment came, and the once quiet town of Cork erupted into chaos, as not only did the borderers emerge from the swamps, but a flying column of the Free State Army marched through town, guns blazing. Believing that he had good intelligence (fed to him, of course, by the Professor) that an attack would not occur for another week, Hammon made no preparations, and the Dragoons were caught completely unawares. Scattered and surprised, the Dragoons were horrified to find that their weapons had begun to malfunction. Their artillery had been spiked during the night, and both their small arms and heavy equipment jammed or exploded after short bursts of firing. Amidst the confusion, the Professor and Meredith made their move and, freeing the girls of the harem and rousing the Irish servants, took control of Hammond's mansion. Meredith found Hammon himself curled up in bed with one of her sisters, and took quite a bit of glee in strangling him to death. She then joined the Professor in looting the many priceless artifacts which Hammon had captured on his campaigns.

As the last pockets of Dragoons were massacred and the Elven gentry were lynched, Meredith and the Professor finished their plot by putting their skills to good use and disguising themselves as traveling peddlers, complete with an appropriately signed and back dated license from none other than the mayor of Cork himself (who prudently took the rest of his family and anyone from town who would go with him to join his wife's swamp community).

As Cork burned in the distance behind them, Meredith saw that there was no way off of this world without this mysterious man who had not even given her his real name. Still, she parted with her family with some remorse, and bade her siblings goodbye for what would probably be the last time in her life. But destiny awaited her, she thought, with this man she could not help but love; for all his mystery, she believed that she had seen into his inner self in the many moments of tenderness they had shared while planning the overthrow of her master. Were he a cruel man, after all, he would not have bothered to take her with him.

### The Fiah Gamble

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He was initially very apologetic about his voracious womanizing, but was surprised to find that Molly had no complaints about it. She had seen him sleeping with her own sisters before, after all, and decided that if she could get over that, she could get over anything else.

### On Genoa

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*Main article: The Mafia Campaign*
### Later Life

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## Notes

1. ↑ It never became apparent to the Dragoons that most of these monsters were a lot more intelligent than they gave them credit for. Though they had been reduced to mythology in the industrialized towns of the Pale, the Giants and Fae creatures were quite real along the borders of the "wild lands" and had been communicating and collaborating with Irish exiles for thousands of years.
2. ↑ By the time Hammond was finally killed, the Professor had slept with everyone in the harem at least once.
3. ↑ The Irish are notorious for shooting themselves to spite their enemies. By the time reinforcements arrived, not an acre of arable land, nor a building in the town was left standing in the vicinity of Cork. Worse, the FSA men had left numerous traps in the government buildings alongside dying Aeldmen, in order to flip one last deadly finger to any would-be rescuers.