Daniel

Name: Daniel Cooper
Gender: Male
Age: 63
Occupation: Apothecary
Sexual Preference: Straight
Status: Widower
Hair: Grey
Eyes: Hazel
Skin: Weathered
Height & Weight: 5'11" and 200lbs
Traits: Empathetic, generous, open-minded, creative, idealistic, eager to please
Likes: Creating tonics and elixirs, a good bourbon
Dislikes: Rattlesnakes, cruelty, injustice, inequality, a lack of meaning or inspiration, criticism, going against his convictions, social interaction

Daniel was born in Virginia to Dr.Collin Cooper and his wife Gertrude, the third of six children. He remembered going to his father's office frequently, and being fascinated by the bottles of medicine that helped the people who went there. It was just so amazing to him that something so small could cure people of their ailments. Whenever he got spare cannisters or jars he would take them out to gather various plants and berries and pretend to make medicines.

Collin wanted his sons to follow in his footsteps and become doctors just like him, so he made sure his children got good educations growing up. When Daniel was seventeen, his father had him apply to medical school, and he was accepted. Daniel loved and excelled in the classes that dealt with medicines, however he just couldn't stomach the autopsies. Unlike his older brother, Daniel did not graduate medical school, which sorely disappointed his father.

Daniel felt quite inadequate compared to his brother, and his father made sure to ensure that. No longer wanting to live in his father's or his brother's shadow, Daniel decided to leave. He got on the first train westward, and made his way to Independence Missouri. It was a large city, though not nearly as large as the city he lived in in Virgina. While there he met an apothecary named Amos, who saw the interest that Daniel took in the art. Amos took Daniel under his tutelage, and Daniel excelled.

While in Missouri, learning the arts of the apothecary, Daniel met a lovely young lady named Dolores. The two fell in love, and soon enough got married. It wasn't long before Dolores got with child. Unfortunately, she and the child died in child birth. It was something that no medicine could have prevented. Daniel hadn't even been married a year before he was made a widower.

Having learned about snake oil salesmen heading out west to make fortunes on the folk out there who didn't know any better, Daniel decided to move further out west to help those poor folk instead. He simply couldn't stand the idea of people taking advantage of others. He joined a wagon train and made his way out west. He wasn't sure exactly where he was going, just that he was going.

He stopped in a town called Prosperity, noticing it had one doctor, but no apothecary. In fact, what made him decide to stop and stay there was the fact that there was a man named Clark Stanley there who was passing off an oil as a cure-all. Daniel helped the doctor call out the snake oil salesman as selling fraudulent or worthless products, and he was chased out of town. The doctor thanked him, and asked if he too was a doctor. Daniel replied he went to medical school but did not graduate as his heart wasn't in it, but rather in being an apothecary. The two talked for a while and the doctor invited Daniel to stay in Prosperity and set up shop, saying he could use an apothecary to help the folk there.

When he was thirty, he then met another young lady. He had said he would never fall in love again, but he fell in love with Charlotte. After a year of courting her, he finally asked her to marry him, and she agreed. The two tried and tried to have children, but after years of trying realized that Charlotte was unable to bear children. She was distraught about it, wanting nothing more than to give Daniel a son. But Daniel assured her that they didn't need children, that he loved her just the way she was, and that they could adopt children if they really wanted one.

One day while he was working on some tonics he looked up and happened to see out of the shop window people rushing his wife to the doctor's office next door. Daniel dropped everything he was doing and rushed to see what was going on. It just so happened that while she was washing clothes she was bit by a rattlesnake. She was already weak and barely conscious when he got to her side, and she died holding his hand.

Now Daniel spends his time completely focused on his job, determined to find a cure for rattlesnake bite.

Part 1

Part 2