William O’Reilly

Name	William O'Reilly
Race	Human
Type	Normal
Faction	Free Willed
Premiere	The Anax: Call of the Cursed One
Relative(s)	Margaret O'Reilly Walter Riley

William O’Reilly was born in Skibbereen, Ireland. A Protestant, he grew up as the heir of a substantial fortune. He was the son of an Irish landlord, and learned how to manage a large European house, and how to tend to the business of the tenants that worked his land. At the time, etiquette and social class held great import, and William usually adhered to such protocol well, until he met Margaret. She was the daughter of a poor Catholic farmer on his lands, but the moment that he laid eyes upon her- he knew that she would be the love of his life. He attempted to woo the woman for several weeks, and then, he proposed. She accepted, and the two worried what the world would think. However, the marriage between a rich Protestant and the poor Catholic, only strengthened his relationship with his tenants, and peace generally reigned in the area, whereas most of Ireland faced turmoil. She introduced him to her family friend, one of his farming tenants, Brone Lorcan, and the two got on well together.

However, thanks to the efforts of the witches Eleanora Blackwood and Anathema Sadsallow, the Great Famine burned across Ireland. With the crops withering, starvation swept the land. This lack of food not only starved the populace, but the farming tenants could not afford to pay rent on their land. William was no fool, and he realized the end of an era had come, so he cut his losses, and moved to America with a decent amount of funds. They bought a large house along with some land just outside of a town in upstate New York named Wakefield. At Margaret’s insistence, he brought many of their original servants from their estate in Ireland with them and settled into a new life.

Eventually he and Margaret happened upon their old friend, Brone Lorcan in New York City, and while on a visit to the Ravenhurst Manor, they attempted to talk Anaximanes Ravenhurst into hiring him as a butler. Though Brone had no background in such matters, the eccentric Mr. Ravenhurst did hire him, and Brone would forever be grateful to the pair. This act of kindness would lead to William and Margaret’s reincarnations, Walter and Clover Riley, being spared by Brone after he became a nosferatu. William lived out the rest of his life in Wakefield and outlived Margaret by several years. After the events of a particular Halloween night, he watched the once happy city devolve into nothing more than a ghost town. He and a handful of others were too poor or too old to move away. In his case, William remained too stubborn, and though his adult children, three sons and a daughter, all of which had moved westward, offered home and hearth to their aging father, William refused to go. He was one of the very last residents to die in the town, and he was laid to rest in the churchyard next to his wife, Margaret. It was William O’Reilly’s direct lineage that led to Walter Riley.