James Shockley

James Alan Shockley was born on 27 November, 1879, in Cork, Ireland. His grandparents had emigrated to America during the Irish Potato Famine, and his parents followed in 1892. The Shockley family took up residence in a predominantly Irish neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where his father, Liam Shockley, worked as a pharmacist. James learned basic alchemy in his father’s shop. Around this time, when Shockley’s grandfather passed, he inherited a chest of leprechaun gold, which he buried at his grandfather’s grave site in Long Island.

In the late 1890s, Shockley’s father and his pharmacy became victim of a racketeering scam run by the Irish Mafia in New York. The Shockley family ended up “owing” the Mafia a large sum of money ($50,000), which they could not pay. As a result, Shockley’s father was recruited to the Mafia. He was old and fragile, however, so Shockley went in his place.

Following a botched bank heist, Shockley was executed by the Mafia and presumed dead after having been bound and thrown into the Hudson River. However, with a Slight of Hand check of 22, he succeeded in using a small concealed dagger to cut his binds and swim to safety. With the Mafia presuming him dead, he could not contact his family for their safety. Shockley retrieved his leprechaun gold from Long Island and used it to buy a stagecoach, horse, and alchemy shop, and traveled the United States from then on as a traveling alchemist to raise enough money to pay off the Irish Mafia and rescue his family from indentured servitude.

In July of 1901, Shockley was traveling from Austin to New Orleans when he was set upon by bandits. The bandits robbed him of his cart, most of his money, and almost all of his possessions, save for his food and the clothes on his back, and left him for dead. He probably would’ve died walking to New Orleans if he hadn’t encountered the First Playthrough Party.