Captain John Bourbon

Captain John Bourbon is the leader of the group of survivors at Devil's Crossing. Some time after the Grim Dawn, Bourbon led his group to this prison, where they drove out the prisoners who had encamped there, and settled in.

Background
Little is known about Bourbon's history prior to the Grim Dawn.

Escaping Burrwitch
When the army of the walking dead stormed Burrwitch from within, John Bourbon was the one who rounded up the survivors to lead them to a safer place. He found Constance in the cellar of her neighbor she "visited" that night, broke into the house where Alex and Jane lived to rescue them, and gathered the Mud Row residents who still lived, including Faldis, from the boarding house in that district.

Bourbon then led the group of survivors towards the old prison of Devil's Crossing. The journey through the swamps of Wightmire proved dangerous, and not all of Bourbon's people made it through. The old prison itself was taken over by its former inmates, though the refugees from Burrwitch drove the prisoners out after a gun fight and settled in. Notably, Direni was one of the prisoners fought by Bourbon.

Hardships of Devil's Crossing
After claiming the prison, Bourbon assumed the role of Captain to reflect his position of leadership over the new inhabitants of this location. The prison was built like a fortress and very defensible. However, some time later, the water pump near the prison broke, and it was the settlement's sole source of drinkable water. The walking dead began their increasingly intensive siege of the settlement. The situation for Devil's Crossing grew really dire.

The solution to the survivors' problems quite literally walked up to their doorstep. A human being possessed by an Aetherial stepped through the riftgate just outside the prison. The entity was subdued by Sahdina's trap, after which it was interrogated, and was intended to be subjected to the standard treatment for victims of Aetherial possession. Possessed people, called "Taken", were hanged, and the bodies were incinerated. In the case of this particular person, the Aetherial spirit fled their body before they died in the noose. After seeing this, Bourbon ordered Hangman Jarvis to cut the Taken down – this was a human now.

Bourbon was honest with the formerly possessed human. For him, the Taken was someone expendable, someone who would, with little consideration, be sent to battle with the enemy. The walking corpses flooding Lower Crossing were known to come from Burial Hill just outside town, and Bourbon sent the Taken there to eliminate the entity reanimating the dead.

Surprisingly or not, Bourbon's newest soldier returned victorious from their journey, having eliminated Kyzogg the Reanimator, the creature that was raising the corpses. The attacks on the prison have slowed, giving Bourbon enough time to plan the next move. Meanwhile, he tasked the Taken with assisting other survivors living in the prison, specifically Kasparov and Barnabas. Kasparov desired materials for his Aether-related experimentation, while Barnabas' assignment, repairing the water pump, had far more direct importance for the people of Devil's Crossing. The Taken successfully handled both assignments, enabling Kasparov's experiment to progress to its explosive resolution and ensuring Devil's Crossing had a functional source of drinking water.

Retaking Burrwitch
Once the prison's internal problems have been resolved, the news brought by one of Bourbon's scouts allowed him to determine the next move on enemy territory. The high concentration of the Dead in Burrwitch Village led Bourbon to hypothesize that the Aetherial behind the attacks is located there. Bourbon decided to leverage the Taken's unique ability to secure riftgates and instructed them to travel to Burrwitch, capture the riftgate and return.