History

Sean was born to poor, uneducated parents in Cork and was destined to live and die just the same as them. There wasn't much in the way of hope for someone like Sean. He was too concerned with the fact he was starving all the time, his stomach practically touching his spine. As a young boy his father was arrested and sentenced to death for his participation in the failed Fenian rising of 1867. No executions ever took place but his father died in prison and the Donoghue family was left in dire need.

A letter from John O'Mahony, one of the founders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood came from America where he was campaigning for Irish freedom. O'Mahony was educated and had lost his status and wealth in the name of a cause and the letter he wrote praising Sean's father's sacrifice and fiery words about the glory of Ireland sent Sean down a path that would take him out of poverty and obscurity and into the violent fight for independence.

Sean received an informal but invaluable education and became known for being passionate and well-spoken. What made the IRB invest in him though, was his taste for violence. Speeches were great but what would shake the imperialists in London would be fire and death, not monologues. Bombings and burnings became more frequent and Sean developed a reputation of trust with the organization.

Sean, groomed as a young hurting child to see London the great evil and the cause for all his pain, was singularly focused on their destruction. For him, it wasn't actually about Ireland. The IRB was just a tool to get him weapons, bombs and other angry young men to assault English interests in Ireland.

Sean left his home as a young man and never looked back on his family again. He never fell in love. He never made a true friend. He never held a cherished memory of Ireland. Except for his father. He held no ties to anyone or anything except for the memory of his father which was the fuel for all of his rage.

He didn't even falter when a bombing attempt went sideways and he took the brunt of a fiery explosion to his midsection. He was never properly hospitalized and the burns scarred awfully over his chest, back and left shoulder which can still cause him pain. He could backed away then but instead, the near death experience just made him bolder; made him want to speed up the timeline.

That's when his strategy changed and his eyes went to London itself. In 1884 Sean and his radicals cannibalized an Irish street gang operating in London and used its infrastructure to set up operations for a direct connection with the IRB. The street gang itself was the front for Sean's true motives. Oddly enough, terrorizing London in the name of money and sex doesn't get you all that much negative attention from the powers that be.