Professor Cornelius Everwell

Name: Cornelius Swindler (but for obvious reasons he goes by the assumed name of Professor Cornelius Everwell, it takes an extreme amount of finagling to get him to admit that his real surname is Swindler).

Height: 5’9”

Age: 32 but claims to be 47 to exaggerate the claims of his exuberant sales pitches.

Hair: straight blond scruffy

Eyes: hazel

Features: handlebar mustache, eyebrows and chin scruff are darker than his hair, has a 5 o’clock shadow appear by noon and often looks a bit scruffy for it, meticulous about his beloved handlebar mustache and tends it with wax and brushing as he thinks it gives him ‘panache’.

Personality: smart and clever, a quick-thinking and fast-talking salesman and charlatan, verbose he always has a convincing story and a smooth if often convoluted sales pitch involving the use of exotic tall-tale style and oft fabricated but very imaginative details about the sources of ingredients of his cure-all concoctions. A silver-tongued devil who could charm the rocks right out of the trees, relatively harmless, feels little if any regret if the concoctions, miracle potions, wonder pills, cure-all elixirs or medicinal salves fail to produce the advertised health benefits, he lives by the credo of ‘buyer beware’, exercises just the bare minimum of ethical behavior by using only nonpoisonous ingredients if only to avoid being run out of town on a rail. If shit hits the fan he will focus first on his own self-preservation and there is little guarantee that he may have regrets afterward.

Kinks: gets off on using pick-up lines that involve unnecessarily 'high falutin' words and his style of talking dirty employs the worst purple prose and extravagant promises that may very well be nothing more than bold-faced lies as the whispered sweet nothings that serve him as during seduction and sex and pillow talk.

Likes: weaving grandiose tales using excessive verbosity even without pitching a sale, thinking himself a grand storyteller, telling tall tales gathered from his travels but most are made of sheer audacious imagination, days when he avoids being running out of town as the charlatan that he is, getting away with a fast one, forming unlikely friendships.

Hates: being run out of towns, being called on his bullshit, wearing out his welcome, being the one to fall for a con, the taste of his own medicine.

Clothing: He considers himself a sharp dressed man in a slightly well-worn black top hat with a red band around the base along with a slightly outdated outfit that he tries to keep well-tended but tends toward shabby despite his best efforts.

Backstory: Born in 1851, ended up one of the homeless orphans in 1850s New York City. Learned to read and write by Children’s Aid, rode one of the orphan trains where he was taken in by a farming family near Des Moines. As a teen he was tired of both farm life and getting the switch for his lying and wild ways. Setting off on his own he ran into several shady characters and had adventures and misadventures, learned the ways of con artistry from those mentor scoundrels and intermittent partners in questionable endeavors since then. Has been making the rounds selling ‘Professor Cornelius Everwell’s Cure-Alls’ in his traveling medicine show six years now. In Copper Ridge more than half that. He considers the town his respite and home, adheres to the old adage that you don't shit where you sleep so always abstains from his sales pitch when within the town limits of Copper Ridge. Uses his small shack in town as a residence and to brew and bottle his wares. He boards his horse in the town livery and leaves his wagon parked behind his shack.

Notes: When in town he's slightly more honest and will refrain from inappropriately timed sales pitches and respects businesses, refrains from selling snake oil in the saloon, general store, livery, church, etc., His concoctions sell for between 50 cents and a dollar. While playing cards at the saloon he makes a habit of losing meager amounts at the card tables just to be amiable. Makes a modest living and keeps a cheap residence near the center of town, it’s a bit of a shack if he’s to be honest but he calls it his chateau because fancier words roll with greater relish from his tongue. In Copper Ridge he only sets up his medicine show once a week every Saturday afternoon just outside the area where the train and stage coaches stop. Copper Ridge is a town teetering between hope and ruin, a perfect setting for tales of love, ambition, and survival.

relationships: The marshal will make him give a refund when there are complaints about his swindling. But unless someone is actually harmed, the marshal has bigger problems to deal with than his little scams. Cornelius gets a kick out of the battle of verbal wits he often engages in with Copper Ridge’s preacher who always breaks out sermons about wolves in sheep’s clothing whenever he rolls back into town. Knowing that he might someday require actual and honest medical services, always tries to avoid ever butting heads with the town doctor.