Gavin O'Riley
From DevilshireWiki
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 Sterling Knight as Gavin O'Riley | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Gavin O'Riley is a sophomore at Devilshire High School. According to his father's will, his guardian is Yvonne Monroe, a definite and most unusual request.
Background
On December 21, 1993 something pretty major for me happened. That was the day that I was born. I was told it was a pretty long labor. Maybe that’s why my mom never had any other kids. She was twenty something when I was born, so she was still kind of young. My dad was in his late twenties I think. I forget their birthdays. Why a pair of New Englanders were in Arkansas I have no idea. I do know they moved around a lot, because I ended up moving around a lot. My parents worked in the world of the supernatural. On the surface they were antique dealers I think. I know that they ran a couple of antique shops during the course of my life. Whenever they were ready to move on, they sold the shop to someone else before moving.
I guess this is as good a time as any to explain more about who I am and who my parents are. The first answer is kind of simple. I was christened Gavin Michael O’Riley. My parents were Maria Angelique O’Riley and Finn Michael O’Riley. A stranger set of people you probably won’t meet. Quite often they would get wrapped up in their own little things. The benefit is that I’ve been out of the US a number of times. I’ve been to a bunch of places in South America, Africa, and just about everywhere in Europe. Wherever my parents could talk their way into exploring some sort of archaeological dig. Both of them had dual degrees in both archaeology and in mythology, which is probably why they were so good at their actual jobs.
Sometimes during their digs they would come across relics that they didn’t think would be very good to have just laying around. One of these types of items was the Ring of Alir’Tra. Supposedly it was some sort of ‘Vampire Detector’ of a sort. If you got near a vampire while wearing it, they started feeling sick. They didn’t think it would do them much use so they made a ‘present’ of it and sent it to the Watchers’ Council. Of course they did get paid for it, because after all, that was the deal.
As I said, my parents moved around a whole lot. I’ve never been in a place for more than a few months, which meant attending a regular school was rather impossible and my parents refused to send me to a boarding school as they feared such a place would do nothing other than turn me into a mindless little automaton that wasn’t able to think for themselves and only looked at things on the surface. Yeah. As I said, my parents were really /really/ weird. One of the things that always sucked was the packing. My parents would often just sell off a bunch of stuff before they moved and if it couldn’t fit within a certain amount of space then it got left behind.
There were a few times that I had to buy almost an entirely new wardrobe because only a couple shirts and stuff were able to be packed. The one rule was that all of their library had to come. If nothing else was able to be packed, /that/ had to be packed. They didn’t just pack it either. They made sure it was packed safely so that it could not be damaged. Scary really the way they obsessed over it. They would probably /freak/ if they found out what happened to some of it. Yeah. That wasn’t good but we’ll get to that. Gotta take things slow and steady and tell the tale like it should be told. In order.
Now a bunch of rather colourful people have been known to come into my life. There was a time when I was living in New Orleans. My parents were friends with a Watcher there named Fung. Not sure how they knew him, but they knew him all the same. I even got to meet one of the Slayers in New Orleans. Nice lady named Yvonne. There were a few times when she wasn’t busy that she taught me about dancing and stuff. It was a lot of fun. One of the few times that there was nothing occulty about what I was being taught.
When I say few? I do mean few. My ‘physical education’ consisted of learning to fire a bow and arrow. Lovely weapon that has a lot of grace to it. Oh I learned a little bit about swords and such, but for the most part it was about the bow and arrow. I’m a good marksman really. However, the reason my parents taught me to use it was so that if I found myself being attacked by demons or something, I could still fight back.
So you might say I had a really strange childhood. I fell in love with the Welsh language while we were staying in Wales for a bit. We were there for some sort of meeting between my dad and a couple of other people he knew in the Information Industry. One of them was a very unpleasant fellow by the name of Jacques deMartel. He was a rather scary looking man. Not so much from his physical build but his eyes were those of someone who’d cut your throat as soon as look at you. I bet he did kill people for some of his information. The other man was a kindly old man name Thomas Smith. He was a wealthy man who had been somewhat retired for about a decade now and was meeting with my father and M. DeMartel to determine who he would bequeath some of his texts to, as he felt both were deserving.
While they spent hours working out the details of that transaction, I got to spend time with locals. Not everyone there spoke Welsh, but there was a fair amount being spoken. Now, before we left Britain, we got to do some touristy stuff like go to Stonehenge and stuff like that. It was probably the most fun I ever had on any of the trips, even if it wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating, but that was ok by me.
As a note, M. DeMartel turned out to be a demon. He slipped up in one of the dealings with the Watcher’s Council. He deliberately sent them misleading information that would have resulted in death, if it wasn’t for the fact that they weren’t stupid. The Council made sure to verify some of the information before they sent anyone, and when they arrived to question him, he went crazy. So of course some Slayer or the other killed him. Oh well. So sad, too bad. I won’t shed a tear. I believe the Council appropriated his collection of Occult books. I heard he had some rare ones in there too.
So now you know a little bit about what happened prior to the events of the last few months. I’m not entirely sure what happened exactly but I do have some of the details now leading up to the events. For years, my father had been providing information to a young man by the name of Eric Marcelle. Most of the information was in the form of supplying him with contacts that could help him learn about different types of magic. However, there were things that my father had long ago decided that he wouldn’t help people with, and Eric wanted that information. My father apparently had seen demons summoned before and had vowed he wouldn’t help with that sort of thing. He’d provide information to demons, but he wouldn’t help them with summoning other demons or the like. He counted it too messy and pulling things from across dimensions just a generally bad idea.
Well anyway, Eric apparently had begun insisting and my father tried to get away from it by moving us from California to Ohio. We setup residence in the great city of Cleveland. Yeah. That’s right. Cleveland. How they chose Cleveland I’ll never know. Then again they were all for picking strange locations. Although at least it wasn’t Cincinnati or Columbus. That would have been worse. Least they bought a place that was on the Lake so I could see water. I like water. Prefer the ocean, but a lake works.
Ok. So apparently Eric wasn’t about to give up. While he couldn’t get the information that he was looking for, he did managed to acquire information for summoning a type of demon. So he summoned Tarkis. Now Tarkis wasn’t normally an aggressive demon. In fact as a rule, he and his people abhorred violence. Making them rather odd in the Demon community. In fact, with the exception of the ability to breath fire, red eyes, and above average body temperatures, they could pass for humans. Of course inside was totally indifferent but they had a very humanlike appearance.
The reason this information is important is that Eric had use a spell that forced the Demon to execute his orders. Now, he’d planned to summon something that was mean and vicious and cruel. Instead he got Tarkis. Who unfortunately for Eric, did not much care for being summoned. So he wasn’t inclined to do anything that could truly help him out. However, he did have to obey and the order that he was given, was to kill my parents. This he did although he apologized to both of them and promised to write a nice little obituary for each of them, which he did. Marvelously written too! He has a very amazing grasp of the English language!
Anyway, he let me live since Eric didn’t tell him to kill me. After he went back and reported to Eric that his task was accomplished, Tarkis sent a nice little strongly worded message to the Watcher’s Council about Eric. Explaining to them that he was going to start an apocalypse yada yada yada, and urged them to deal with him. They might have, or Eric may have summoned a demon he couldn’t control. Not sure which. I like to think the demon got him and he’s enjoying some quality time with demons in some untold hell dimension where he’s living a truly horrendous life. Oh well.
I had to put out a few little fires left behind, and by the time I had, Tarkis was back. He served me a little bit of tea and made these really nice pastries. Don’t know what they were called but they had cream and cherries and stuff in them. Very good. I should have gotten the recipe. Oh yeah. I love to cook. One of those things I taught myself while we were traveling. I’ve picked up recipes from a lot of places from Japan to South America to Europe. It’s been one of those things I do.
But anyway, back to Tarkis’ return visit. He apologized again and explained about Eric and said that he wished he hadn’t had to do it. Mentioned that he had a boy my age. He was just a really nice fellow. Felt rather bad for him, since he hated hurting people so much. We had a nice long chat before my grandparents showed up. My paternal grandparents that is. While they’d been retired for a bit, they weren’t completely out of the information industry and they’d found out about my parents death pretty quickly all things considered. Although it was through the police I believe. My parents’ deaths were deemed accidental, faulty wiring in the home shorted and the room they were in caught fire. Luckily only a few of their books were damaged. Although some were quite rare. My parents would so turn over in their graves.
My parents funeral wasn’t a drab affair. I thought it best they go out in a good old fashion wake. Course there was a lot of chatter in the lower floor that involved the Occult, because I was holding two of them at once. One for the normal people in the living room and then in the basement all their demon friends were there. It came off well. They were cremated and inurned on the family plot back in Maine.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen to me until a couple days after the inurnment. That’s when I met with my parents lawyer in Cleveland. Fung was there too. There was some discussion about my living with my grandparents who were in the process of moving to Massachuset somewhere. A recommendation was made discretely to send me to live with Yvonne. I had forgotten about Yvonne and Fung and a few other friends from down there, but my parents had thought that considering the nature of my life up to that point they would be the best type of person to finish my education.
The legal documents were drawn up as such that I would spend a few months living with Yvonne while a more permanent residency could be maintained. As it turned out my grandparents were moving to the same place as Yvonne was, so that would be quite fortuitous. Yeah. Fortuitous. I think someone was playing a game with the chess pieces there. The whole plan B scenario I think was the deal. This way if there was a problem with Yvonne’s custody, my grandparents were there. They had control over my inheritance anyway. The will also stated they could enroll me in whatever school they felt like.
There were some other odd things in the Will, and a lot of it was the sort of weirdness that I’d come to expect out of my parents at this point. Most of the antiques were sold off to pay for the funeral and what not. Oh yeah. They’d been doing the antique dealers thing again. I think they were trying to sell off useless junk that we didn’t need any more. We’d begun traveling a bit heavy the last couple times.
Anyway, Yvonne’s supposed to be expecting me. Fung said he’d write her and let her know. Then I have to have at least one session where the lady from children services comes in and takes a look at things. Oh Yay. I wonder if I need to hide my bow and arrow from them. Hopefully it won’t be some psycho conservative nutcase or I can just /see/ how well we’ll get along. Anyway, time to get done here. Got to finish packing for the move.
Powers and Abilities
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Gavin doesn't possess any superhuman intellect or anything like that but he does have a very good memory and a very big brain, and a love of researching things.
Family and Friends
Maria Angelique O'Riley - Mother (deceased)
Finn Michael O'Riley - Father (Deceased)
Yvonne Monroe - Legal Guardian
Seamus Ciaran O'Riley - Grandfather
Fiona Aisling O'Riley - Grandmother
Micah Bradford - Friend
