Father Ben Tobin

Player Model: Leigh Johnson
Age: 28
Class: Dead Aim
Occupation: Preacher/Mercenary

Background: Ben Tobin was born in Northern England. He was raised by a former Constable turned drunk who beat him regularly. Ben grew up an angry man, often resolving most conflicts with violence outright. Being jailed for the first time at the age of 14. At 17 he joined a questionable expedition to a new land, attempting to leave the tyranny of England behind. He took a bible with him as his only possession aside from his musket and flintlock.

He read every page of the bible from front to back on the voyage, memorizing many lines and prayers. He knew not what a preacher was but when the ship crashed in the new world he abandoned the survivors and lived off the land in New Austin for a few years. His hair grew a faint grey and white even at his young age and he saw it as a blessing from God. He made no attempt to contact the survivors as they established towns and farms, instead staying in solitude for those first years. Until one morning he was set upon by a traveling Apache man who found his camp and he was gravely wounded with a blow to the head from a tomahawk. He was forced to beat the man to death with his musket as he had used up his powder and rifle balls hunting.

Not wanting to ask for help from his fellow Englishmen, he set out on horseback for Mexico. As he rode for the border he saw in the east a great explosion, splintered wood and chunks of some establishment in the sky. He knew not what it was but he pressed on, meeting an English loyalist along the way who he never saw again after that day.

He crossed the border into Mexico and rode for days, until his horse was nearly dead before he found clean water. He stood with his back to the sun as his horse drank and he could see a village in the distance on a high ridge. When the horse was watered he rode on up to the town and he could hear the heinous cries and pleas for help as he rode in. He knew what they were. And he thought of intervening. But he heard the shots in the building and he turned his horse and rode out of the town, camping in a low valley that night he thought on the act he had stumbled upon.

He found an Apache medicine man living alone in the mountains who healed him and he payed for the help with his flintlock pistol, trading it to the man for his kindness. He rode back for the border and crossed back into Texas. He met a second native man after the crossing, this one of Lakota descent. He identified himself as a chieftain and confirmed Ben's suspicion on the act he thought he witnessed. He led Ben up to Tall Trees after many hard days of riding during which the chief barely spoke two words. There he met another Lakota man who was planning an attack. He read aloud a passage from his bible as a party of riders came upon the snow-coated camp. The Lakota man struck first, bringing down the horses with a pistol as the men were shot where they lay in the snow and it was there that they died.

Ben knew not what the men had done but it was not his place to ask. After some time later the Lakota man who had planned the attack told him they were the ones who perpetrated the act he had heard in the Mexican Village. Hearing the details, he departed from the natives and set forth to Mexico once more. He found the body of the woman where it still lay in the cell and he rode back across the border, finding a secluded spot where her kin could come see the grave he buried her, with a Lakota woman from the camp in Tall Trees who was saddened by the act in his presence as well as the owner of the land he said the words he had prepared and laid the woman to rest.