James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was one of the most legendary figures of the Old West. A renowned marksman and Civil War spy, Hickok was known for his skills with a pair of twin Colt revolvers, killing somewhere between eight and 100 men, depending on whose stories you believe.

As a deputy U.S. marshal, he was a veteran of many Indian battles and served as a scout to officers like George Armstrong Custer. He had been a marshal in Hays City, and then Abilene, Kansas, gaining a reputation as a man who could pacify an untamed community.

After touring the country in a Wild West show with the likes of Buffalo Bill Cody, Hickok drifted from place to place, drinking heavily and gambling even more. He traveled to Deadwood to stake a claim and earn some money for himself and his new wife, but the lure of the tables kept him from much prospecting.

He was murdered in Nutall's No. 10, shot from behind by Jack McCall. McCall was captured, but town leaders feared attention from the U.S. government, and he was found innocent.

Before he died, Hickok asked his new friend Seth Bullock to aid Alma Garret with her claim.


Dead. Wood's first match saw Wild Bill steal the spotlight from a 3-0 loss. 2 casualties earned him the MVP honor, and saw his wooden arms grow stronger from the blood.

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 native of Ontario and the son of a stern British sergeant-major, Seth Bullock left home for good at the age of sixteen and ended up in Montana during the silver strikes of the 1860s. A natural leader, he held a number of elected positions in his early twenties and was eventually appointed Sheriff of Montana Territory.

Having heard of the big strikes in the Black Hills, Bullock has made his way to Deadwood not to prospect, but to open up a hardware franchise with his business partner and friend Sol Star. But while his intent was to become a merchant, Bullock's staunch ideas of right and wrong soon pull him back toward law enforcement. He has barely arrived in Deadwood when he teams with Wild Bill Hickok to investigate the massacre of the Metz family; not long after, he rides out after the murderer of Hickok himself.

Bullock's sense of honor also leads him to keep an eye on the interests of Alma Garret, who had sought Wild Bill's help in defending her suddenly promising gold claim. Fulfilling his promise to help her, Bullock becomes romantically involved with Alma, despite the impending arrival of his wife and children, who, Alma learns, had been the family of Bullock's now-dead brother.

Too appalled to stand by and watch the brand of justice enforced by Con Stapleton, the default Sheriff of Deadwood, Bullock has given in to his own nature (and to Swearengen's urging) and has accepted the job.

Con Stapleton is a man with little to recommend him, and his career apogee would appear to be his crony appointment to sheriff-a job that he begged from Swearengen when no one else volunteered for it.

But even this success proved short-lived when Stapleton cynically shoots an innocent Chinese man following a trumped up altercation on the street. Disgusted by the deed and by Stapleton's ersatz authority, Bullock stripped him of his badge on the spot.

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.

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.

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.

Eustace Bailey Farnum runs the Grand Central hotel, one of the main hubs of Deadwood. Just about every visitor to Deadwood ends up in Farnum's establishment at one time or another.

Appointed by the town's fathers as the default mayor - no one else wanted the job-Farnum has grandiose ideas about his prospects. The hotelier also has connections to Swearengen and is often involved in Al's swindles and schemes, but he has a difficult time getting Swearengen to take him 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.

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.

Tom Nuttall is the owner and bartender of Deadwood's infamous No. 10 Saloon, an alternative to those wishing to avoid the Gem. The saloon quickly becomes the favorite drinking and gambling establishment of Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter. Nuttall realizes that Hickok may prove to be a boon to his business, so he has no problems advancing Wild Bill some cash in order to keep him happy at the tables.

Ellsworth has spent most of his days prospecting for gold in one part of the country or another, and has managed to scrounge enough, apparently, to cover for his appetite for whores and booze. Despite his somewhat disheveled appearance, Ellsworth is no fool, and he knows exactly how dangerous Swearengen can be; he knows to keep quiet about witnessing Brom Garret's murder. Still, at Bullock's urging, he accepts responsibility for overseeing Alma Garret's claim and proves himself to be extremely knowledgeable about mining. He is also fiercely loyal to Alma and Sofia.