Background:
Mackenzie was born the youngest child of the O'Shea clan's Pittsburgh branch. He never had an opportunity to meet any of the extended family, from what he heard as a child growing up, they were all cut largely of the same cloth: tempermental, intelligent, ambitious, and as tough as nails.
He was isolated in his early years, home schooled and not allowed playmates outside of the clan which included everyone from his grandfather, a tough and serous old man that all the children secretly feared but tried to behave bravely in the presence of, to his cousin Sydney whom was the next youngest at four years older and his primary playmate. His gifts began to develop at a young age. He began to see the dead without the aid of ritual and he caught on to magic almost instinctively. His parents were immensely proud, but behind the pride in their eyes, he could always see the twin lights of greed and envy. He began to be indoctrinated into the darker aspects of magic at age 10. Exposure to corpses and blood became common to him and Mackenzie knew better to allow any squeamishness or fear show during these lesser rituals. He vomited in private the first time he watched an animal being sacrificed to fuel a spell however.
His life went through a major change in his thirteenth year. Things had gone quiet in the family, far too quiet comparatively, and so Mackenzie knew that a major rite was in the preparation stages, probably to occur on the new moon. Everyone in the family was tense and shorter with each other than normal, and tempers flared on a few occasions, but not fatally as every hand would be needed, even Mackenzie's own. He heard howling at night on the night before the rite, howls that sounded pained and angry to him, but when he asked he was told simply that he would see soon enough.
Unbeknownst to him, his family had had a longstanding feud with the local werewolf pack, a sizable pack that controlled the Greater Pittsburgh Metro area and most of the surrounding National forests as well, and in particular with the pack's Alpha. Finally, the insults had gone on long enough. The clan of necromancers had manged to contact and make a deal with a spirit known as Waapa Maneto, who was a long dead chieftain from the White Indians that had built mounds throughout the mid-west, a tribe that was historically pale of skin and 'skilled in the arts'. This spirit claimed to want revenge for the genocide of its people, and as the werewolf Alpha was of Shawnee blood, they decided upon a strike against the Alpha himself. The spirit, being an adept itself in its breathing days, instructed the family in the rite that would transfer the spirit to a recently vacated corpse 'long enough to eliminate the Alpha'. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, and the clan as a whole took Waapa Maneto up on the offer. However, one member of the family was uneasy with how much control the spirit had in both preparations and latitude of methods. Also the idea of all the neighboring werewolves clamoring over the vacated territory didn't seem very safe for the Clan, whom would still be living in the area. This person suspected hat reason had fled in the presence of hatred and vengeance, and secretly blew the whistle on the family.
The aftermath was horrendous. Mackenzie, a 13 year old boy at the time and never truly exposed to how dark magic could get until that night, witnessed the slaughtering of an Omega werewolf during ritual, the entrance of the Darkest and scariest spirit that he had ever laid eyes upon, and the subsequent raid and its bloody butchering. His entire family save himself, who was cowering and crying in the corner, were destroyed wholesale. He personally watched the killing of his best friend and cousin not three feet away.
He was deemed too young to have known was what going on by the raiders and thus spared. Mackenzie was watched over until he could be sent to the nearest Catholic Orphanage with an opening which was in Boston. No family remained to claim him.
Although his powers did not leave, the trauma he faced in the wake of that night left him unwilling to face those powers. He knew what darkness and death could follow in their wake and refused to have anything to do with them. He shut his mind and ignored the ghosts before him. He kept his mind and body busy with the teachings of Mother church, carpentry and other manual work, as well as Boxing to channel the frustration that welled up within him from time to time.
After five years he graduated from the Catholic School and left the Orphanage in pursuit of his own life. He wanted to help others just as others had come to help him when things got bad, so he chose to major in Social Sciences. He also didn't have much in the way of funds, so he chose the college that was furthest from his past and offered him a partial scholarship for Boxing. The rest of his education was funded through Grants and his part-time work for the church as a caretaker and handyman.
A bit more than a year into his college education, approximately eight months ago, the past that he had been denying for so long finally caught up with him. He was dating a girl by the name of Sheila, a girl with whom he had a few classes, but who came from the local area. They were out for a late picnic and watching the sunset when a chill wind blew over the hillside. A feeling of foreboding filled Mackenzie as his girlfriend began to seize. A dark spirit flowed from below the ground and began to squeeze itself into her body. A cold voice spoke from her mouth claiming that it was Mackenzie's mother, that it had been watching and waiting, and it offered power. Memories flooded to the surface along with long forgotten emotions and remnants of long repressed power. A brief temptation flashed across his mind, calling to his blood and the ambitions that lie in those of the Clan O'Shea. But then, with a cry of anguish, pure spirit launched itself at his girlfriend's shaking form and dislodging his mother's screaming shade. Barely remembered words in long dead languages flooded across his tongue as he picked up a knife from the ground sliced his hand an made a quick circle around his girlfriend. The angry shade of his mother beat upon the circle, but couldn't at her as he gathered himself and attacked again, hurting the spirit badly and driving it away.
Mackenzie's girlfriend left him after that evening. He determined that to repress his own powers any longer was irresponsible when he obviously had the gifts he had for a reason. He could choose to use them in defense of others, to use them for good and not evil. Unexpectedly, on the next day his family's Grimoire arrived in the mail. He doesn't know to this day where it came from, who sent it, or how it survived the Inquisition raid. His mentor, a Father of the local church, has continued to encourage him and guide him on the path that God would wish as he has explored his powers over the past eight months.
