Name: Mariah Clancy-Devine

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Age: 34

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Faceclaim: Cillian Murphy

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Pronouns: He / him

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About:

 

Mariah Devine never knew of a world before the fog. Growing up the eldest of four bastard children on the fortunate inner skirtings of the Belfast dome, he had as normal a childhood as he would ever know. His father a wealthy American politician, residing sky-high in New Babylon who’d seen his poor mother as little more than a visiting attraction and a night well-spent. His mother was a seamstress by day, with her additional dubious ‘night-shifts’ being the only thing keeping her children’s bellies from going empty. To alleviate some of the burden from her weary shoulders Mariah began working at the age of twelve.

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He’d take on whatever place would have him. He was a paperboy, labourer, cobbler’s apprentice... His longest-held job was at an animal shelter, where each and every canine had left their own special mark in his heart – and few, more fervidly, with their teeth across his forearms. The initial goal was to put his keen mind to good use and become a defence attorney, though... He hadn’t expected anything to quite resonate with him as much as the place he landed at the age of eighteen at a courier’s airstrip dealing with import and export of goods from beyond the dome.

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Though his job involved little more than hauling stock from aircraft and loading more onto them, he couldn’t shake the curiosity, the naïve yearning for something more. The call of the abyss that came with watching each and every plane be swallowed into the fog, and re-emerge days later laden with gifts betrothed by people he hadn’t even met from places he hadn’t even seen. He aspired for more; and if anything could be said about the young Mariah, his ambition was unassailable.

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One thing led to another and his labouring career blossomed into an aviation apprenticeship. By the age of twenty-two he was a fully-fledged cargo pilot, shipping produce to every corner of the earth and bringing back souvenirs of a world unseen to his enthralled mother. All was well until a new menace came to light in the most appalling way. Three hefty cargo planes bound for America shot down by pirates of the skies, felling aircraft and pilfering the carcasses like vultures. In the collective aircrew there had been eleven – both co-workers and companions – all declared ‘missing in action’.

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His mother a prostitute, one brother a pickpocket and the other a Fenian shot dead in the gutter at the age of twenty, too blitzed to see better sense than brandishing a bottle at the head of a British paramilitary. With what shred of his father’s devilment he’d inherited the worst he had done was beat a man over the head with a cinderblock to rescue an adolescent wolfhound from his tyranny. He’d kept him, and he’d called him Jasper. ‘Do something good with yourself, Mariah’, his sister had pleaded.

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He cashed in a favour with his errant father, with the promise to dust off the tarnished and bastardised Clancy name – to turn it into something he could once more be proud of. It was, truthfully, a spiel riddled with enough bullshit to fertilise a field – but if it saw Mariah’s agenda fulfilled, the apathetic old prick could gleam from it what he wanted. All he had to do was pull a few strings and make a little investment.

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By some strange miracle Mariah pulled together the funds to kiss his family goodbye and take off to the land of the free with only ol’ Jasper for company. It was there he was recommended and enlisted in the Lions by the age of twenty-five, and it was there he knocked in his pan for the next decade to help make the skies safer for everyone. A consummate airman, rising through the ranks throughout the years as he honed himself to a razor’s edge as an avian ‘jack-of-all-trades’ – bombardier, gunman, pilot, and whatever damn else could be asked of him.

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His driving power, that incessant ambition – the double-edged sword with which he was to cut himself a Mariah-sized hole into the planning rooms. He’d always been more a thinker than a fighter, although in this line of work the latter was always necessary to support what solutions were put forward by the former – and Mariah is anything but keen to practice what he preaches in a clutch. With barely a dent put in the looming threat posed by raiders over the years, there was work to be done and the Lions would have some shaping up to do. They would have to become the undisputed sword and shield of the skies, for everyone’s sakes.

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Ever since he was young, Mariah has had a strong and convoluted sense of justice. That said, he always has his eye dead-set on one thing; the greater good. When it comes to decision-making his heart and his head are so evenly matched that it may as well be left down to the flip of a coin to decide which will prevail. He’s direct and honest to a fault, and is not afraid to state his mind, putting forward the most logical solutions to people whether they wish to be heard or not. On the work front he is pragmatic, savvy and shrewd – if there is a loose end, it will not be left untied long. Otherwise, fellow Lions may know him as a loyal, mellow and charismatic Irishman with a wry sense of humour, sharp with the tongue and always keen to have the last say. If he is anywhere but the air, he is restless – so conscientious towards the fulfilment of his ideals it is nigh impossible to keep him from throwing himself into the thick of it, as he believes any able-bodied person should.