soooo here is my proposed botc linear timeline lore!!
a very long time ago, long before any modern residents, the town of ravenswood bluff was cursed. every 20-30 years a “cycle” happens, when the town wakes up to find The Storyteller impaled on the clocktower—The Storyteller is a sort of deity that rules over The Cycles. no one remembers their face outside of the cycle, and any images taken or drawn of them are incomprehensible after the cycle. that night, a portion of the town wakes up and is given a Character, which allows them to hold a certain ability. this includes the evil team—who lives their entire lives not knowing they’re ‘evil’. roles are not chosen based off of the lives people lead, rather it is chosen when they’re born.
townsfolk and outsiders are decided mostly based off of relation to the town. outsiders tend to be people who have recently joined the town or live near it. townsfolk are people who have either lived in the town for quite some time or were born there. travelers are people who enter the town during The Cycle. minions and demons can fall into any one of these territories.
children and the elderly are typically excluded from the cycles, especially if they have been in a cycle before. if one lives through a cycle, they typically are not included in the next one, even if they are in the town. any executed or killed townsfolk are temporarily ghosts during the cycle.
a large guillotine lives in the middle of town square, facing the clocktower. if townsfolk win, the demon is slaughtered and the town returns to normal. if the demon wins, a number of things could happen. most often, they rampage, killing the remaining townsfolk and sometimes the other non-cycle citizens. after this, however, the demon is forced to leave the town anyway, unable to return to who they once were. sometimes the demon returns to the town as a normal citizen. non-players are unable to comprehend what happens within the game while it’s happening, so it’s possible for the demon to feign innocence.
ive toyed with the idea that the minions are able to be revived when the demon wins but idk :)