Andy Rourke is a first-generation British import, as he calls himself. A fan of rally racing and living the high life, he lived off of the wealth and affluence of his Stock Broker father, a man he hardly knew for most of his life. Andy's father, Karl Rourke, left his family behind in London when Andy was but four years old, divorcing Andy's mother and taking off to the States. Raised in the lower class of London, Andy grew up on the streets and in the half-wary eye of his struggling mother's attention until she passed away in 1988 from breast-cancer when Andy was but 13 years old. Forced to return to London to take up the son he never wanted, Andy fell into the care of his distant father Karl and was transplanted to the united states.
Raised on his father's money and in an upscale residence in Manhattan, Andy was ripped from his street life and forced to "shape up" as his father insisted. Andy eventually fell in to the ease of life his father's money could buy, fell in to bad habits and even worse crowds, quietly sidling in to the city's drug scene as he got into his late teenage years. By the time Andy was old enough to move out on his own, he was living the high-life off of his father's wealth in a Manhattan condo, leeching off of a guilt-ridden father for all the years of abandonment, and enjoying every moment of it.
Until it all went straight to hell.
Busy snorting cocaine off of the back of a stripper in a VIP room at Rapture, Andy was so high the day the bomb hit that he could hardly comprehend the gravity of what just happened. Chaos, death, loss and the destruction of everything he loved and held dear brought crushing ruin to his life. In the months that followed, Andy was faced with more human tragedy on the streets of the city than he could bear to take. Seeing children's corpses pulled from the rubble of buildings, finding out about his father's death, learning that most of the fortune he was squandering was hardly left from bad trades his father had made and Andy snorting his own private funds up his nose.
The bomb was a wake up call, "Shape up or shut up" his father once said. Andy realized ihs shape was largely that of an asshole, and when hundreds of thousands of people you passed by on ethe street every day die in a flash of light and heat, sometimes that can be a wakeup call. Keeping his nose clean and struggling to do anything to help those around him, Andy pulled a one-hundred and eighty degree turn with his life. What little money and property he had remaining in his father's name was put to good use, donated off to charities designed to help those who lost everything in the bomb.
The evolved, registration, the Linderman Act, the destruction of a school in a rocket attack, the rise of Phoenix and the fall of PARIAH. In most people's eyes that would seem to be something outside of the boundaries of reality. For Andy, it's the secret of his new life.
Having hooked up with the Ferrymen through volunteer work in St.John's cathedral, Andy became fast friends with Stephen and Trent, two workers there and joined with the Ferrymen after offering a building that his father had purchased from the city for renovations as a shelter for those seeking escape from the Linderman Act and safety for their families in the crisis that have shaken the city in the years since.
Andy Rourke has lived a charmed life, having gone from a cocaine-snorting child of a disaffected father with abandonment issues, to the operator of a Ferrymen safehouse called the Brick House (located in Long Island City). Some old habits may die harder than others, however, but Andy still does his best to try and help those who need it. Because it's easier than helping himself.
