[center][h1][b][color=00a99d]Shay Alden[/color][/b][/h1]

[h2]"I need to do right by my family, even if they don’t know who I am."[/h2][/center]

[b][color=00a99d]Nickname(s):[/color][/b] Paddy, Mick, Sharps
[b][color=00a99d]Gender:[/color][/b]  Male
[b][color=00a99d]Birthplace: [/color][/b]Cork, Ireland
[b][color=00a99d]Birthday:[/color][/b] January 14, 1898
[color=00a99d][b]Affiliations: [/b][/color]
[indent][indent][i]-Lance Corporal (Retired) South Irish Horse, C Squadron and 49th Infantry Brigade.[/i]

[i]-Cousin to the Wallis brothers[/i]

[i]-John Alden: [/i]Father, former member of the Jolly Roughers, current carpenter. Fled to Ireland shortly after murdering the Crown Prosecutor. Complicated relationship with Shay, who believes the man to be a coward for having fled his family.

[i]-Maggie Alden: [/i]Mother, seamstress. Fled to Ireland with her husband after he became a wanted man.  Cordial relationship with Shay, still keep in touch via correspondence.
-Lizzy Alden: Sister, student. Fled to Ireland with the rest of the family. Cordial relationship with Shay, still keep in touch via correspondence.

[i]-Reginald Samuel:[/i] Civilian employer, retired Captain of the London Regiment. Cordial working relationship with Shay, a mutual respect from military history and appreciation for hard work.[/indent][/indent]

[color=00a99d][b]Role:[/b][/color] Street-Rat. Acts as enforcer and marksman.
[color=00a99d][b]Occupation:[/b][/color] Brick Layer for Samuel & Sons Construction Company

[b][color=00a99d]Skills: [/color][/b]
[indent][indent]-Qualified marksman with a rifle
-War veteran, experienced in both cavalry and infantry style fighting
-Has been playing fiddle since he was 4 years old
-Knows how to operate a motor vehicle
-Athletic physique; in addition to his military conditioning, Shay is an accomplished runner[/indent][/indent]

[color=00a99d]Assets:[/color] 
[indent][indent]-.303 SMLE Mk. III rifle, Sniper Variant with 1915 pattern sights.
-.455 Webley Mk. V Revolver
-.303 Winchester model 1895
-A trench knife
-A pocket watch, initially belonging to his grandfather
-Lives pay cheque to paycheque 
-Small three-room apartment[/indent][/indent]

[color=00a99d][b]Personality: [/b][/color]
Quiet, methodical and something of a wallflower, Shay is a man who is adept at escaping notice or interest due to his lack of words for strangers or initiative in most conversations. Being widely discriminated against due to his nationality, Shay has learned to simply keep his mouth shut and speak when spoken to. Since actions speak louder than words, Shay has a reputation for being a quiet professional who gets things done, and is willing to do just about anything that’s needed of him. He feels the only way he’s ever going to be truly accepted by anyone other than Clint and Grant Wallis, as well as Eli Lindsay, whom procured an American imported Winchester Model 1895 lever action rifle for Shay.

For those Shay does call friend, his is fiercely loyal and is more than willing to kill and fight on their behalf, and he already has. He is often trusted to look after relatives, and other people of interest, and he extends the same devotion to these charges as they are often relations to the people he cares for. Shay is often credited as being dependable, and he cares deeply about doing a good job, going about his duties with the greatly diminished Jolly Roughers with the same pride and dedication as the South Irish Horse. 

Shay comes most alive when he plays his fiddle, feeling it is as much a source of who he is as his ability behind the action of a rifle. It is one of the few times he feels admired by strangers, and though he’s reluctant to admit it, the thing he craves most is not wealth or power, but acceptance and love. The Tawdy Countess is one of the few places he feels he can be himself, and he is often most outgoing there, enjoying games of darts and with drink, people are far more accepting of him. 

Shay is very likely dependent on drink and smoking, although that is not uncommon for many men of his age, especially those trying to leave the horrors of war behind them. However, many who do not know him, and many who do, would not see the signs of a troubled young man who struggles with his place in the world, his faith, and the haunting memories of two years of war, but rather a quiet, unassuming man who is all too quiet to disappear from notice, the very essence of a professional criminal.

[color=00a99d][b]Weaknesses/Flaws/Secrets:[/b][/color]
[indent][indent][b]-Trouble sleeping:[/b] Shay has been through the closest thing to hell on earth as there had ever been in history, and it was night that was when he spent much of his time on the front hunting Germans. When he tries to close his eyes, he more often than not is haunted by the faces of the men he’s killed, and in truth, many of them were boys. Because of this, he does not get the rest he really needs.

[b]-Shellshock:[/b] Loud noises, yelling, sudden bright lights, and other surprising things are quick to make Shay react as if he were still at war, looking for threats that aren’t there, although this has kept him safe from rival gang members on a few occasions. He is also paranoid at strange, sharp scents that had indicated a gas attack for two years.

[b]-Heavy smoker and drinker:[/b] Shay has vices, and he copes with his trauma through hard liquor and cigarette smoke. He tries not to do either unless invited to or he feels the need to calm down, but he isn’t the carefree and lighthearted man he once was.

[b]-Ease of killing: [/b]While some would consider this a strength, Shay has a part of himself that loathes the fact it has become so easy for him to take a man’s life. Dozens of graves are from his steady hands and sharp eyes, and he does not hesitate to pull the trigger when the time comes. It has made him a lethal and professional asset of the Jolly Roughers, but Shay cannot help but feel that each time he kills a man, he’s tearing out a piece of his soul.

[b]-Troubled Protestant:[/b] While Shay was never a devoted religious man, he did enjoy going to church as a boy and felt God’s love. After experiencing the horrors of the war, Shay’s faith and convictions are shaky at best, if not outright shattered. He finds it hard to reconcile that a loving God would allow men to commit such barbarism against one another, and he feels that now he’s become a killer, first as a soldier and now as a gangster, that his soul is damned. A big part of him wants to simply renounce his faith to ease his conscience, the other part of him wants to try to make amends to his God and try to repent for what he has done.

[b]-Lonely: [/b] If Shay felt like an outsider in Ireland, he feels outright loathed and oftentimes hated in London. Boasting very few friends and acquaintances, Shay even deals with hardship within his own gang. It is likely a symptom of his resentment of his inability to be accepted anywhere that makes it all too easy to take a life; if people hate him, he’ll hate them right back. He misses his mother and sister and wishes they’d join him in London, but he feels that perhaps they do not like where his life has led him.[/indent][/indent]

[b][color=00a99d]Appearance:[/color][/b]
[IMG]https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1439679411i/15871452.jpg[/IMG]

A handsome man standing at 5’10” and carrying a well-toned body of a soldier, Shay has medium-length black hair, cut short at the sides and brushed back with product atop his head, which coupled with his short shorn beard, gives him a rugged and practical appearance. His fingers are often stained from cigarette and revolver smoke, and he carried piercing blue eyes that are both sallow and haunted. His ears are small and tight; his lobes flush with his neck and cartledge with no hanging flesh to speak of.  His nose is straight and narrow, and his eyebrows symmetrical with the rest of his face, save for a small bald patch that bisects his right eyebrow.

Shay’s manner of dress is practical, preferring muted colours like browns and greys with simple button down shirts and a well-worn black peacoat he’d been wearing since before he enlisted in the army. He still wears his army issue boots, although they are largely concealed by his pant legs, and suspenders hug his frame. In the colder months, he wears a grey scarf, tied loosely around his neck, and that conceals his features. 


[color=00a99d][b]History:[/b][/color]
Born in Cork, Ireland, Shay Alden grew up unaware of his family’s roots and history past his parents’ obviously English accents. By all accounts, Shay was a passible student and a well behaved child, although he often endured bullying on account of his English heritage. Taunted for being Protestant in a predominantly Catholic country where anti-English sentiment was growing at a fevered pitch, Shay had few real friends growing up, and he grew to be a fighter out of necessity; and his father’s teachings.

While John Alden never spoke of his family ties or why the family moved from London to Cork, it became clear to Shay at a young age that there was more to his father than being a simple carpenter. His father was powerful, quick to anger, and any attempt to pry information about London often ended up with Shay enduring a severe backhand. While John was a fierce and bitter individual, he was always quick to apologize and tried to at least make amends to his son. While they had a strained relationship, it wasn’t without love, and John Alden did try to do right by Shay and his wife, Maggie, who bore Shay a sister two weeks after his birthday on January 28, 1901. 

Maggie Alden was everything John was not; affectionate, kind, and concerned about her children’s lives to a fault. It was hard for her to adapt to Ireland, and it broke her heart each time she saw Stay stumble home with a black eye or split lip. While the family was fairly poor and making ends meet, she still managed to find money for decent meals and new clothing, as well as a handful of gifts for birthdays and Christmas time. Shay felt safe coming home because of his mother, and even into her elder years, he tried to keep her in his life, even if just by correspondence.

Shay’s best friend and confidant growing up was his sister, Lizzy, who he fiercely protected from bullying herself as she endured much of the same prejudice he had. A smart girl, and one that was clearly going to grow up to be a beautiful woman, Lizzy nevertheless maintained a cheerful optimism and warm disposition. Her and Shay would race through the streets near the canal that bisected the city, as well as spend a considerable amount of time by the waterfront, Lizzy often reading or writing stories in her well-worn journals, and Shay practicing his fiddle, one of the few highlights of his upbringing that his father had passed onto him that also endeared him to the locals somewhat. What he felt like a foreigner in his own country a lot of the time, it was music that made him Irish.

It was music that endeared people to invite him to play in pubs, even though he was far too young to drink, and it was in one of these clubs that his fiddle had endeared him to Old Man Conklin, who offered Shay a job working at the docks when he hit his teens. The spring following his 13th birthday, Shay started work unloading and loading ships, the tiring and heavy work making him physically powerful and paying enough that he had aspirations of a better life, perhaps even travelling and earning a living through music and entertainment. It was from that decision that Shay began to put money aside to go to the theater, which he managed to go twice a month, and he became enraptured with plays and acting. 

He was close to graduating secondary school when the great war broke out, and at 16 years old, he watched the mood of Cork change considerably. Many of the men went off to enlist, and much of the industry seemed to stop. The docks grew quiet, the plays stopped, and for Shay,  it felt like the earth was standing still. It seemed that everyone had something to give to this war, to serve King George V and the British Empire against the Kaiser’s marauding armies.  The idea of adventure gripped Shay, but he was turned away from the recruitment office for being too young. Shay also noticed his father seemed to shy away from the public eye, and the war; it was at this time that Shay begun to think of his father as a coward and a pathetic man who turned his back on his country, as well as the family Shay never knew.

One day in the month of October 1915, Shay discovered a letter in the postage addressed to his father from a rather unfamiliar name; Clinton Wallis. Resentful enough at his father, Shay opened the letter and was shocked at what he discovered; this Clinton Wallis was his cousin, and he was telling “Uncle Johnny” that his mother had passed away from tuberculosis and he needed to come home to help run the family, a gang called the “Jolly Roughers”, now that his father Adam had grown ill as well.

Confronting his father about this and demanding answers about his family, Shay and John fought, a skirmish that had broken several pieces of furniture and picture frames, prompting Shay to flee his home and return to the recruiters. Now the war had gone on for over a year, the recruiter did not ask too many questions when Shay assured him he was 18 years of age. When Shay returned home next, he was holding his enlistment papers for the South Irish Horse and he would be leaving in the morning to the barracks. His mother, devastated, begged him not to go, although Lizzy was more understanding and gave Shay one of her finished stories to keep him comforted in the months to come. He did not speak to his father, nor make eye contact. To Shay, John Alden was less than a man.

After only 4 weeks of grueling training later, Shay was shipped off to Flanders, France, and the horrors of the Great War. It was during the Battle of the Somme where Shay would experience the greatest, and most horrific, trial of his life, having endured the desperation of trench warfare, the terrifying constant shelling and wave attacks of screaming German soldiers, and most devastatingly, the introduction of chemical gas attacks that caused many of his comrades to succumb to death in gruesome and utterly incomprehensible deaths. It was impossible not to be afraid of the very air they breathed. Writing home to his mother and sister, Shay assured them he was fine, and left out details of what life in the trenches was like, and what it was costing. He did not want them worrying about him, and the troops were forbidden to write about the realities of war, as the potential demoralization of the people at home could sabotage the war effort. 

One of Shay’s natural gifts, as it turned out, was precision with a rifle. Earning top marks in his class during boot camp in marksmanship, Shay proved himself during the battle, having demonstrated an air of cool under fire and what seemed like a supernatural ability to always hit his target. Ten rounds at a time through his SMLE, ten Germans dropped. When asked about this by the officer who had observed him, Shay didn’t think anything of it; dozens of meters practically filled the sights, it was impossible to miss, he said. It didn’t take long after his unit was recalled to the reserve trenches for downtime that Shay was called off and sent to train as a sniper to hone his marksmanship skills; and his ability to avoid the keen eyes of other snipers. Receiving only a couple weeks of extra training, Shay enjoyed another week of rest before being sent back to the front, only this time, his war was comfortably behind the trenches and no longer joining in the wasteful charges that defined the war. 

By the time the war had ended, Shay was credited with a handful of citations, and was credited for the deaths of a dozen machine-gunners, 2 enemy snipers, and 42 confirmed kills of Central Power soldiers of other ranks. The war had taken a grievous toll on Shay, and he had become somewhat dependant on drink to cope with the horrors he had endured; he refused to smoke until well after the war because of the well-ingrained fear that cigarette embers would draw enemy sniper fire his way. He’d seen it happen far too many times; in fact, many of the men he’d killed had simply been smoking. It was only after the war had ended that he’d accepted his first cigarette, something he found greatly calmed his nerves and steadied his hands. 

Shay returned home early 1919, and he had purchased his weapons from the war, feeling a kinship with them for having protected him from 2 years of intense warfare. It was now that he’d realized how unstable the situation at home had become; anti-English sentiment reached a turning point in 1916 when rebels rose up against the British rule, and the public backlash against the execution of the rebel leaders by British authorities was ferocious. Ireland was now murmuring of independence, and it seemed Britain’s hold over the country was slipping, its resolve weakened after such a costly war. Reuniting with his mother and sister, Shay still resented his father, who had managed to avoid conscription up until the last year of the war when the war office managed to catch up with him. Shay decided that he needed to find his family in London, the one his father had abandoned, because he sure as hell didn’t feel like Ireland wanted him. After trying to convince his mother and sister to come to London with him and failing, Shay booked passage to England, which did not cost him a penny thanks to the ferry’s support of returning veterans, and with the letter that had burst the bubble on his heritage in hand, Shay found his way to London to track down the Jolly Roughers. 

Within a week of hard searching, Shay had found himself at the Tawdy Countess seated across from Clinton Wallis, who was reading the words he had written years before. Through the haze of cigarette smoke, the middle son of Adam Wallis regarded the Irishman with his father’s eyes with appreciation.

“I asked for your father and got my cousin instead. Welcome to the family, Shay.”