The proprietor of The Gem Saloon was six months ahead of everyone else in Deadwood, and he runs the town like a corrupt riverboat captain. He knows every move that every person in town makes, anticipates problems and eliminates them. His girls aren't exactly the class of the town, but he controls the most successful bar and whorehouse in all of Deadwood—bringing in $5,000 a day in 1876—and anybody that threatens his sources of income may well end up fed to Mr. Wu's pigs.

Tim Driscoll, who helped facilitate Al's swindle of the city dude Brom Garret, met such a fate, as did Persimmon Phil, who deeds as a road agent brought too much attention to Al's enterprise. Garret himself was killed at Al's behest, though Swearengen eventually abandoned his efforts to retake the Garret claim. And when Mr. Wu came to Al to avenge a murdered opium courier, the saloon boss took care of things by personally drowning the guilty junky.

But Al's hands-on approach has earned him some enemies, and his main commercial rival, Cy Tolliver—proprietor of the more upscale Bella Union—is exploiting the Wu situation to fuel a full-on race war in Deadwood. Al suspects Tolliver of trying to expand his turf.

With outsiders expressing an interest in the wealthy outpost and government soldiers threatening to bring civilization to town, Al is under siege from several directions. And when the territory's magistrate threatens him with an outstanding murder warrant from Chicago, Al decides that the official is not to leave Deadwood alive.

For all his Mephistophelean qualities, Swearengen does have a soft spot for certain people, including the whore Trixie, Jewel, his handicapped house servant, and the brain-addled Reverend Jim, whom Al was forced to euthanize.

A witness to unspeakable atrocities on the battlefields of the Civil War, Dr. Amos Cochran is one of the few honorable men in Deadwood. He takes his duties seriously, even gruffly, and does what he can to preserve human life. It is Cochran who attends to the declining Reverend Smith and who attempts the construction of a boot to improve Jewel' s mobility.

He is paid by Swearengen to take care of the whores at The Gem, but Cochran isn't in Swearengen's pocket, and he crosses Al to protect the Metz child.

Born Martha Jane Cannary, Calamity Jane is nearly as famous as Hickok was and is known to be as tough as any man in the West. Raised in the mining camps of Wyoming, she is a legendary horsewoman and crack shot, and is rumored to have been an Army scout for Custer.

A notorious boozer and brawler - and one of the most foul-mouthed frontierspeople of either sex - Jane was loyal and absolutely dedicated to Wild Bill, and his murder sends her into a terrible bender. "The direction of this camp makes me f*cking sick," she says, leaving Deadwood. "And it bores the shit out of me."

Still, with acquaintances like Charlie Utter and the little girl Sofie Metz, Jane has as much connection to Deadwood as to any other place, and often drifts in and out of town. Her apparent immunity to small pox makes her extremely valuable as a nurse during the small pox outbreak.

Thirty and beautiful, Alma Garret married after the panic of 1873 to salvage her father's strained finances. Preferring a fool's errand to the circumstances of New York society, she came west with her husband, Brom, to prospect, a woolly situation she softened with liberal use of laudanum.

When her husband died under mysterious circumstances, she could have easily returned to New York, especially once she learned that the gold claim Al Swearengen wanted back so dearly was, in fact, a huge strike, perhaps the largest in town.

Instead, like so many Deadwood denizens, Alma has stayed in town to reinvent herself. Determined to stay, she gave up the laudanum, and with the support of Seth Bullock and the prospector Ellsworth, she has begun working her claim. She has also become the adoptive parent of little Sofia Metz, whose family was killed by road agents.

Bullock's protection has been much needed, not only against Swearengen and his minions, but against Alma's own father, the ne'er do well upper-class con man Otis Russell, who has gotten word of her windfall.

Bullock and Alma have grown increasingly close, and even with the arrival of Bullock's family in town, the two have become lovers.

When the Bella Union arrived in Deadwood, it came with its own supply of high-caliber whores. These ladies have a savvy madame in Joanie Stubbs, a woman who knows her craft inside and out. Her business acumen isn't limited to just prostitution either, as she's able to assist Cy Tolliver with a variety of tasks around the Bella Union and serves as one of his confidantes.

But Joanie has become uncomfortable working for-and being the love object of-the mercurial and often-ruthless Cy Tolliver. When he forces her to execute a child thief, Joanie almost turns the gun on herself. "Kill me too, Cy, or let me go," she says. "If you don't kill me or let me go, I'm going to kill you." With Tolliver's grudging support and with some illicit financial help from the card dealer Eddie Sawyer, Joanie sets off to open her own whorehouse.

Bill Hickok's longtime friend and traveling companion, Charlie has spent much of his recent life smoothing things over in his friend's wake. Now that Hickok is dead, Charlie has elected to remain in Deadwood. With commerce exploding in town, he has launched a freight business, which was immediately successful.

Suddenly one of the town leaders, Utter is uncomfortable with civic matters and town living, but he accepts a job as fire commissioner. As residents soon learn, he takes his role quite seriously.

There's no shortage of news in Deadwood, and chronicling the shootings, the claim-jumpings and the occasional good deed is the responsibility of AW Merrick. The editor (and reporter) for the Pioneer, Merrick has a knack for showing up when something big is about to happen. Because he's always taking notes, many of the residents of Deadwood look upon Merrick with distrust.

One of Swearengen's crew, the young and ambitious Johnny Burns is looking to stay in his boss' favor, always gunning for a promotion. Obviously in awe of Swearengen, the curly haired Burns is constantly learning the tricks of the trade from him. With the Gem Saloon as his classroom, young Johnny has much to learn.

Reverend Smith is a minister who, among other tasks, leads the funerals of many of the individuals who die in the course of the first season. All the while, he suffers from a brain lesion that gradually causes a mental and physical collapse. He is eventually euthanized by Al Swearengen in an act of mercy; Al claims that some men found the reverend in the woods, murdered by heathens.

If Al Swearengen is Deadwood's unofficial mayor, Mister Wu holds the post on the Chinese part of town. Wu has his fingers in every semi-legal pie, including the lucrative opium trade, and though his English is limited to the handful of expletives Al has taught him, the two seem to communicate well enough for business. Among the services Wu offers is the timely and unquestioned disposal of bodies, courtesy of his ravenous pigs. Who will end up paying a visit to Wu's swine is an open question, however, especially as Deadwood's Chinese population becomes a pawn in the power struggle over the town's vice trade.