JD Swann

Devilshire Character Sheet
Qualities	; Swann Family (+5) +1 Acrobatics ; Contacts 1: Local Government ; Hard to Kill: 2 ; Nerves of Steel ; Situational Awareness ; Ex-Military (+4) +1 Strength ; +1 Dexterity ; +1 Kung Fu ; +1 Gun Fu ; First Responder (+3) +1 Constitution ; +1 Doctor ; Rank 1: Fire Department ; Attractiveness (+3) ; Contacts: Local Government (+2); Good Luck (+1) ; Natural Toughness (+2); Polyglot (+2); Rank 2: Fire Department (+2)
Drawbacks	; Swann Family (0) Adversary: Devlins (-2) ; Mental Problem: Delusion - Mistrust of Magic (-1) ; Obligation: Swann Family (-1) ; First Responder (0) Obligation: Local Emergency Services (-1) ; Addiction (-2) ; Emotional Problem: Fear of Commitment (-1) ; Honorable (-2) ; Impaired Sense: Vision (-1) ; Mental Problem: Delusions (-2) ;

JD Swann
	; Michael Shanks as JD Swann
First appearance	-
Last appearance	-
Statistics
Name	Jackson Daniel Swann
Status	Alive
Birthday	October 3, 1980
Age	29
Species	Human
Affiliation	Swann Family
Powers	Kicking supernatural butt!
Themesong	'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa9mNistHSs
Quote	'Shut UP, Jon!'
Portrayed by	Michael Shanks
App Status	Active

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Background

Childhood

Jackson Daniel Swann, or JD as everyone has always called him, was born October 3rd, 1980. Right from the first breath he took, he was the little ringleader, having his entire family wrapped around his little finger. It didn't help that he had a distinct ability to get hurt in ways that would make everyone fawn adoringly over him, even though he would bounce back twice as fast as anyone else with the same injury.

He showed signs early on of being brilliant: he could read by the time he was two, he was walking and running long before any of the other kids his age and he was entranced by weapons from the first glance he got of them when he was six and he crept downstairs after being woken up by his father's return from a night of hunting, injured and trying hard to keep quiet about it. He already knew, as all Swann children were taught, that things /did/ go bump in the night, but this was his first glimpse that they did more than just bump. They tore and broke and rendered and maimed. Thankfully his father's injury wasn't bad, though it was bloody, and that re-instilled JD with the demon-fighting tradition that the family had been built upon. When he was taught about the Devlin family's dirty little secret, he went from disliking them for constantly bullying his older brother to outright hatred of them.

Adolescence

Ever since he could talk, JD spent his days convincing Jon to take part in his next great plan. Unlike the others, THIS one would work! It didn't matter what kind of trouble he got into, dragging Jon with him, because Jon would always come up with a way to make everything better. This pattern started when they were very young and continues until today.

Though he showed early signs of being at least as smart as his older brother Jon, JD quickly proved that theory wrong by the time he was in grade school. He got middling grades when he ever bothered to pay attention in class and he struggled with math from the first time he met it. By high school he'd gotten his grades up to the upper part of his class, but it was with great help from his brother who had by then gone off to higher education at Devilshire University. Since he was old enough to participate, JD also found a great love for sports which was encouraged by his family. After all, they got you into good shape, improved your hand-eye coordination and instilled a sense of pride and teamwork. Like with academics, JD proved to be average-to-slightly-better-than-average at athletics, though it came with far more ease than educational matters. What started as a friendly rivalry on the city hockey team between he and Wentworth Moore turned into a strange sort of rivaled friendship. They ran in the same circles and had a lot of the same friends and they were on the same teams, and while they weren't overly close, they were buddies for the most part. JD hated Wentworth's athletic ability, but didn't hate the guy. What came somewhat easily to JD came effortlessly to Wentworth, and JD envied him, but in a very good-natured way. Hey, good for him! Of course, JD had no way of knowing his teammate's true nature which would have changed that relationship rather quickly. Instead, he saw him as just another Moore. Family's unfortunately drawn to crime, what a shame, yadda yadda yadda.

High School

Sometime during his freshman year, JD discovered girls. Yeah, he was a bit late on this one, and it kinda coincided with the girls discovering /him/. He hit a growth spurt during puberty and went from being a slightly tall kid to a towering kid. He finally stopped growing an inch past six feet and started to fill out quickly. He wasn't extremely well-defined as much as he was /solid/. Even when he was lanky he had a solidity to him, mostly due to all his sports. In some ways, JD was a study of contrasts even then. He wore glasses during the day and contact lenses during games and practices. He played guitar and wrote poetry. He was known as a hard hitter on the football field and was always up for a rough fight on the hockey rink. He was shy around girls, but gregarious around groups of people. He was the one who would bring beer to a party, then talk the cops (whom he was usually related to) out of anyone getting into trouble for being underage and drinking. He was trustworthy and opinionated, elected to the student council and also voted Most Likely To Win A Darwin Award during his senior year. He could speak Spanish well, but almost failed the class because he had a harder time learning to read and write the language. He loved taking risks and adrenaline rushes, but was also a Boy Scout and camp counselor every summer. He was friends with jocks, nerds and stoners, but didn't really fully fit into any of these categories.

The Coast Guard

When he graduated high school, he had made up his mind that he was going to follow in his big brother's footsteps and go to college! Only his grades weren't good enough for scholarships, leaving him with only one clear option to pay for college without taking time off before starting. He could join the military! Since he always loved boats and water, he joined the Coast Guard and was accepted into the United States Coast Guard Academy.

Basic training wasn't too much different than his childhood. It may have been for a different reason, but it was still structured and disciplined. JD loved it and finally found an area of his life where he could just be himself and not keep trying to be better and better and better to live up to others. The Coast Guard wanted him to be the best, but they allowed him to mold himself into something instead of forcing him into a preset mold. This suited JD great and once he was done with basic training, he was in the best shape of his life. He even managed to muddle his way through the Academy and graduate with a BS in Environmental Science with emphasis on biology. As much as he hated math and was horrible at it, there was just something about biology that interested him. He didn't wanna be a doctor and he didn't wanna be a researcher, which pretty much made his degree useless to him, but he was proud of himself. He even managed to show Jon, whose shadow he always lived in especially when it came to academics, that he could do it all on his own. His graduation was one of the proudest moments of his life.

After graduation came five years of mandatory service in the Coast Guard, which suited JD just fine. He loved every moment of the first two and a half years of his service, but he still missed his family, especially his brother. When he got two weeks of leave for the first time, he beelined to where Jon was working. He wasn't there for two days before Hurricane Katrina hit. Since he was on leave and not posted there, JD wasn't allowed to take part in the emergency efforts in an official capacity, but he felt an obligation to help. After all, he's a Swann! It's their obligation to help people. It didn't take too long to convince Jon that they had a duty to help and JD wasn't going to let the matter drop until Jon agreed to drop everything and head to Louisiana.

The unmentionable jetski incident

What happened there may never be mentioned aloud aside from cryptic references to jetskis, but they still managed to save five people! JD got a dressing down for his involvement, but it did manage to bring him to the attention of some of his superiors who had already been keeping an eye on him. They wanted him for a special project. For years the various branches of the military had known about the supernatural, and while in Louisiana helping save people, they ran into a bit of a snag...

The hurricane wasn't the only problem they had to face: there was a water demon, the basis for the kraken mythos, that had been hauled up from the deep depths of the ocean. Jon and JD unknowingly and unprepared raced in on jetskis and two hours later, limped out with five survivors. Jon was only mildly injured, but JD had gotten more injured. He knew he had at least two broken ribs and possibly some internal bleeding, but he also had one of the demon's teeth stuck in his side. As they were heading back with the survivors they had rescued, they were picked up by the Coast Guard. A classified report was filed with the details about the kraken and JD was dragged in to be interrogated why he left it out of HIS report. He finally admitted that he was afraid he wouldn't be taken seriously if he said his injuries were caused by a demon from the depths of the ocean. It was after this that he was recruited into a small group that handled the supernatural. There they found out that not only did JD have a basic understanding of the supernatural, he was already on his way to being a well-trained demon hunter. JD never disclosed the full scope of his family's involvement in the fight against 'evil,' but the Coast Guard started a file on his family anyway.

The white padded cell

JD always healed quickly and bounced back fast, and this injury wasn't much different. It healed a little slower, but he was soon back into shape and cleared for active duty within six weeks. He went into training and withdrew more and more into himself. He was determined to make his family and his country proud, even if they never knew the extent of what he did for them. At first he thought it was the stress, the pressure put on him to perform well and catch up from where he'd been left behind to heal from his injuries in Louisiana, but little by little, things got worse. It started with mishearing what people were saying, then subtle shifts in what he felt was reality. He started becoming more and more disorganized, then the hallucinations began. Within two weeks, he couldn't hide it any longer. He showed signs of being schizophrenic and after a few incidents, he was removed from duty and put into mental health observation.

They started thinking that he had found the pressure and stress too much to bear, but blood work showed a foreign enzyme in his system that was attacking his neural pathways. The water demon's venom had taken root in his brain, causing it to shut down production of hormones and chemicals, little by little. They weren't able to reverse the damage, even though they were able to counteract the enzyme. It's estimated that it'll take at least fifteen years for his body to heal the damage done to it, even with his amazing ability to bounce back from injury. Until then, he remains on anti-psychotic drugs to keep his brain chemicals in balance. He lives with the constant underlying fear that the medication will stop working or that he'll crack under the pressure.

Alaska: The Winter Wonderland

Once he was found sane once again and released back to his training, he was too far behind his classmates to even attempt catching up. This worked in his favor, though, since he was able to have more personalized training. When he was released into the field for his new appointment, his lengthy history of fighting demons came into play and he showed a surprisingly good ability to lead. Of course, it helped that he had a team of smart, educated people that helped him along. By the time his five years in the Guard was up, he held the rank of lieutenant and was pressured to remain in the service longer. He chose to resign and along with a buddy, decided to backpack across Alaska for a few weeks. They ended up both falling so in love with the state that they stayed, getting jobs as fishermen. On the boat, he picked up French from some of the fishermen from northern Canada.

For weeks at a time they'd take off, coming back to port long enough to almost lose their sea legs and to spend all their money. It was in port that he met Sherry who worked as a bartender at one of the local bars. JD spent the off-season as a volunteer firefighter, which just about everyone in town took a turn as, and courting Sherry. A few months later, they decided to elope, which seemed recklessly fast for even JD, but Sherry was always more spontaneous than he was. He felt guilty that he didn't have a big Catholic wedding with his entire family present and Jon as his best man, but the way that he and Sherry's relationship went, it just seemed to work better to up and get married.

After the wedding, every time he'd go out on the boat, he'd be impatient to get home to her. For the first time in his life, JD had fallen in love. Though he'd had a few girlfriends and quite a few encounters with women before, this was different. Sherry was his everything.

Welcome to the Jungle

Unfortunately, Sherry didn't feel the same way, and after two years of marriage, he found out she'd been cheating on him pretty much since the day they'd met. Heartbroken, he filed for divorce and then left on the boat again. When he got back, he realized he couldn't live the same way anymore, so he packed up his dog, his rifle and his guitar into his beat up pickup and took off with what little money he had. Didn't take long for him to realize that there was only one place for him to go: Indonesia. Where Jon was. He packed up a bag, gave his dog away, sold his truck, pawned his rifle and headed out to the jungle to find Jon.

They'd kept in touch over the years, so it wasn't too hard to find him once he got there. After living in Alaska, it was more of a culture shock than anything. Much to Jon's dismay, JD picked up the native language of Batak Karo far faster than Jon did, though he still had problems with the written language. As easily as JD could figure out a language to speak, he couldn't be bothered with learning the written part. However, JD and Jon settled into an easy life together, with JD taking part in the security team that would protect Jon and the animals he was studying. Traipsing around the jungle with an AR15 is actually more work than it sounds, but JD was used to hard work from the Coast Guard. While JD felt content with his place in life, taking his medication and not dealing constantly with stress, he felt a looming guilt. He lost his career, his health and his wife and had nothing to show for it and he wasn't even thirty yet. He wasn't even sure he was really doing any good in the world aside from helping protect his brother and the others. He didn't feel he was walking a path he was supposed to.

Then the call came.

Carry on my wayward son(s)

Back home in Devilshire, the rumblings of evil had started up again. There was talk of some carnival of evil and a darkness looming over the city. Swanns were being called to the city to help prepare for the fight, and among them were Jon and JD.

Jon wasn't sure at first. After all, he had a life. He had a purpose. But JD? Well JD felt the pull. The lure. The /need/ to go home. This was what he was meant for and this was his destiny. He'd be damned if he was gonna ignore it. And so he finally talked Jon into it and they headed home...

Now they're back in Devilshire, sharing a cheap apartment that doesn't have any towels. Because JD keeps forgetting to buy them.

(They totally have Rock Band, though.)

Personality

JD Swann has been known to be an almost nerd-like jock with hard-hitting fists and also a charming, but bumbling, guy. Of course, that was before he graduated high school and took off to join the military.

Now? Well now JD is a lot stronger, a lot more confident and still not very smart.

He's known to go off half-cocked with crazy and elaborate schemes that he thinks are foolproof but actually have more holes than swiss cheese.

Powers and Abilities

People

Family

Jon - Favorite person EVER, older brother, savior and pretty much the yin to JD's yang. Separately they can hardly function as normal people, but together they manage to balance each other out in ways that make them pretty damn awesome. JD would do anything for Jon. Even go from Alaska to THE FREAKIN' JUNGLE where they have huge mosquitoes just to hang out with him. JD loves Jon more than anyone and anything in this world. Except maybe Bear, his guitar. And even that's a really close call...

Bob - Bob Swann is some sort of like second cousin and is a black sheep of the family, but JD doesn't really seem to get why. Not every Swann is going to lead the Swann kind of life. He's a fine guy, upstanding citizen and hard worker. So he wants to sell cars instead of being a cop, life goes on. The reason the family has lasted and thrived for so long is because the ones who fight the good fight are the ones who should be doing it, not the ones who get roped into it.

Uncle Cyrus - Uncle Cyrus isn't a direct uncle, but he sure as heck is in charge of this family! Even JD and Jon's dad doesn't dispute that one. Uncle Cyrus took a big part in JD's upbringing as a demon hunter and JD has an awe and respect for him that borders on fanatic at times. Not that he doesn't think Uncle Cyrus can do wrong, he just thinks he's pretty awesome.

Friends (...ish)

Wentworth - Back in the day, Wentworth and JD kinda ran in the same crowd, having been close to the same age with some of the same friends. Then they went their separate ways and have recently just crossed paths again. Same old Wentworth, though. Sarcastic and gruff, but JD never takes it personally when they snark at each other. After all, that's the basis of their (and I use this term loosely!) friendship... right?

Marley - So she's Wentworth's wife and mother of his child, that doesn't make her off limits, right? Seriously, though, JD thinks she's cute, she has a sharp tongue and she can hold her own in a fight. He tries to flirt with her, but he's pretty sure he'd never actually do anything with her because she's married. She seems like someone that'd it be good to have on your side, though, so he'll try to get on her good side. If she has one.

Others

Rick - This guy is not retarded! Is he? Jon seems to think so, but JD just thinks he's kinda weird and kinda... lost. They'll probably end up BFFs like woah, though. JD seems to be buddies with the nutty ones.

Recent Events

February 2010: Headed back to Alaska for a few days, had to deal with the ex-wife. Tried hard to hang out with Marley Moore. She wanted none of it. :(

January 2010: The brothers came home! YAY! Much rejoicing was had by all. Except demons. They didn't like this news.

Gallery

After a trip back to Alaska in Feb. 2010.	Getting used to the jungle upon arrival.	Too lazy to shave! Back in Devilshire, Jan. 2010.	But I'm so cute when I'm confused!
So uh, Jon, howsabout we head back to Devilshire?	Jon meltdown in five...four...three...	JON IT'S A SPIDER MAKE IT GO AWAY!	Okay, spooky smoke in a room? NEVER good.

Other Stuff

JD's IC Journal

The Swann Family
Patriarch	Cyrus Swann Jr.
Second Generation	Bob • Cyrus Jr. • David • Phillip
Third Generation	Elijah • Charity • Charlie • Claire • Holden • Hope • JD • Jon • Katie • Lucy • Shoshana • Trip • Zack
The Demon Hunter Files	Major Family Relations • Swann-Devlin Conflict • The Penalty Box