Setting:Town Conflict
From DevilshireWiki
Of course, to some it raises the question: why do the Swanns so violently oppose the Devlins? The answer goes back to the early days of the colony. Three years after the crew of the Black Swann settled in Devilshire, Captain Hans Swann was joined by his wife and six children. His second child, Margaret, quickly became enamored with Paul Devlin, James Devlin's youngest son, who seemed to return the interest. After numerous walks on bitterly cold Sunday afternoons, James and Paul Devlin approached Hans to ask about Margaret's hand in marriage.
While the Catholic Swann family felt uncomfortable giving over their daughter to a Protestant, Hans let his greed get the better of him. After all, he reasoned, the Pope was quite a long way away and this was a harsh land. The better positioned the family was the more likely they were to survive. The Devlins were offering a rather generous dowery considering they knew the Swanns could not pay one, and the combination of land and money would make the Swanns the second most powerful family in the colony. So it was, seven months after they met, Paul and Margaret were married. The story of what happened next has been mostly lost to time and is rarely spoken of or passed down in either the Devlin or the Swann family.
By all accounts Paul and Margaret were delightfully happy together and within a month of the wedding were expecting their first child. Paul, who had always been something of a quiet, intense young man, blossomed under the smiling, loving countenance of his wife. Margaret had been Hans' favorite daughter for many a reason, not the least of which was her kind and gracious nature. It was light heartedly said that Maggie-May, as she was called, could charm the sun out from behind the winter clouds just by smiling and her husband became an outgoing, jovial member of the community, welcomed into Hans' home with open arms.
As the birth of the child approached, it became clear to everyone in the community that Paul was at odds with his father. While no one knew the details he yet again became quiet--some said he seemed 'angry'--and even Margaret was no longer seen working in their garden or out and about the small settlement. Hans' concern was met with polite but cool rebuffs and the only information Margaret's mother Sarah could ever wheedle out of her was that they were being pressured to leave. She would never say by who, but she did note that she wanted to remain with her family and that Paul understood and supported her wishes. It was surpising then when one morning Paul and Margaret's house stood empty and but a month away from the birth, they both vanished with nothing but a few of their possessions and some clothes.
Hans was beside himself and confronted James about the disappearance of his daughter. James claimed to know nothing about it and the fist fight that followed would be the first of many clashes between the Swanns and the Devlins. Most townsfolk assumed Hans had been simply mad with grief and needed someone to blame and they were not too far off. Hans grew distant from his other children, which only made them hate the Devlins all the more, wandering the woods and calling for Margaret in the night. Even his wife bore her own grief in a quiet way.
All of that changed one winters' night three months later when there was a knock at the door in the early hours of the morning. Sarah, who had become more paranoid and protective of her remaining children quickly got the musket from beside the door as Hans answered it. Standing there, looking half-dead with cold and exhaustion was Paul Devlin, carrying only a small parcel of cloth at his side. He begged them for forgiveness and asked to come inside to explain the horrors of the past few months, but Hans would have none of it, demanding to know where his daughter was--why was Margaret not with him? Tears frozen to his face, Paul was only able to utter two words: 'She died' before a shot rang out in the night. Dizzy from a sudden, searing pain in his ear, Hans almost missed the cry the bundle made as it dropped down into a snowbank. He scrambled to Paul's side as the young man choked on his own blood, half his throat gone from the musket blast. Hans' own ear had been torn off in the spray and as the Devlin died on their doorstep his wife saw the sleepy children who had been startled by the noise back to bed. Only when Paul's shuddering had stopped did Hans see to the bundle and found to his shock a baby boy with Margaret's blue eyes and his father's dark hair shivering with cold.
The next few hours were a blur as the child was collected and cared for and with the help of Hans' eldest son Simon, Paul's body was disposed of in the woods away from the farm. The baby was named Daniel and given to Simon and his wife to pass off as their own. Sworn to secrecy about his heritage, he was raised as one of their own, the eldest of seven thriving children and the only boy of that generation to survive to bear the Swann name. Sarah never spoke of that night, not even to her husband, and quietly passed away not six months later. While Hans was sure his wife took their secret with her to the grave, James Devlin never seemed content with Hans' explanation of losing his ear in a hunting accident and his demeanor towards the Swanns turned ever colder, blaming them in turn for the disappearance of Paul and Margaret. His children and grandchildren took a cue from their patriarch and thus the schoolyard panks and teasing began, a ritual that would carry on to the modern day.
It wasn't until the early 1700s that the Devlin-Swann conflict turned from small town family rivalry to something much larger. With Sherman Devlin's donation to found Devilshire College, local families of a poorer bent were called in to help build it. The Swanns were one such family and the entire construction seemed cursed from the get go. There were rumors that the land was cursed by the Native Americans that had lived there and were not keen on seeing the white settlement flourish or cursed by things far darker than that. That Satan had taken a special interest in this town named after him and delighted in causing accidents that took the lives of many a worker on the site. The Swanns were at the forefront of this conflict with the supernatural after losing two sons to the plague of bad luck that seemed to doom the town--a third escaped to tell the tale of vampires and demons that walked the forest. After a generation of battling the forces of darkness and losing many to the fight, the Swanns vowed to train their children to be ready for such things and to protect those who did not realize what was out there. It was then noticed that while every family in town suffered some hardship, the Devlins never seemed to.
Although the association was weak at best in the beginning, many Swanns became convinced that the Devlins were somehow in league with darker powers. This was confirmed for them in the year 1765 when a Swann patrol mistakenly stumbled onto a Seeker initiation--it was then the Devlins learned of the Swanns' new penchant for demon hunting and a new feud was born. Many of each family were wounded that night but there were miraculously no casualties. When the Swanns tried to convince the rest of the town that the Devlins were Satanists, they were shouted down and threatened to produce evidence or leave well enough alone.
Of course, no such evidence could ever be produced, not now that the Devlins knew they needed to be extra careful. The Swanns begrudgingly let their accusations slide out of the public forum but secretly promised to protect the ignorant townsfolk against the threat they were welcoming into their midst.
The current Swanns and Devlins know only the tale that starts in the 1700s. Neither family is aware that they are, at this point, distant cousins.
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