Professor Hooker
Professor Benjamin Titus Julian Hooker
"There are wonders and terrors out there that demand they be discovered... perhaps I shall do just that."
"Professor" - Most of his students simply called him that, became a sort of title come nickname.
Physical Appearance
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 158 lbs.
Hair: Dark brown, medium length, swept back but perpetually unruly.
Eyes: Grey-hazel, shifting between steely grey and green depending on the light.
Hooker is a lean, wiry man of 43, with sharp cheekbones, intelligent eyes, and the permanent five-o’clock shadow of someone who forgets shaving is a thing humans do. His medium-length hair is brushed back in a way that suggests refinement but inevitably breaks free into wild, electrically-charged strands by midday.
He wears wire-rimmed spectacles and carries a pair of ghost-rock tinted goggles around his neck. His signature garment is a custom-tailored coat that straddles the line between gentleman’s frock coat and laboratory attire — crisp from a distance, but upon closer inspection riddled with scorched hems, reinforced stitching, and pockets full of mysterious components.
Personality & Traits
General Overview
Professor Benjamin Titus Julian Hooker is what happens when a brilliant academic stops worrying about tenure and starts worrying about the tensile strength of ghost-rock powered limbs. Formerly a respected instructor of Mechanical Engineering and Natural Philosophy at a prestigious Eastern university, he is now an eccentric, wandering inventor with a penchant for explosions, philosophical tangents, and poorly-timed curiosity.
He is well-spoken, well-mannered, and frequently covered in soot.
Rumor holds that he once delivered a guest lecture in Cheyenne still smoking from the shoulders, politely refusing to acknowledge the fire that had clearly just occurred.
Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths:
- Possesses exceptional intelligence and technical mastery. Able to design, repair, and improve complex ghost-rock–powered machinery that most people can’t even understand.
- Naturally inclined toward tools, devices, and problem-solving. Quick at diagnosing mechanical failures under pressure.
- Has an unusually sharp eye for details, especially scientific or mechanical in nature. Notices inconsistencies and patterns others miss.
- In terrifying situations, Hooker doesn’t run — sometimes because he forgets fear exists, other times because he wants to see how something works up close.
- A former professor with a naturally eloquent way of speaking. Can read complex texts, decipher arcane symbols, and debate theology with equal ease.
- What some call a flaw frequently becomes a strength: Hooker investigates, discovers, and uncovers what others miss or fear.
Weaknesses:
- If something is mysterious, forbidden, glowing, smoking, whispering, or leaking, Hooker is going to get near it. He cannot help himself.
- He overshares and over-explains, often revealing sensitive information, theories, or opinions at the worst possible time.
- Hooker’s mind has seen things it shouldn’t. He has flashes of odd behavior, erratic logic, and moments of eerie clarity bordering on mania.
- Can't get enough of the smell of burning ghost rock. It clarifies his mind, steadies his nerves… and pulls him closer to danger and addiction.
- He frequently forgets simple things — meals, dates, social cues — while simultaneously remembering the tensile strength of obscure alloys.
- His academic manner can make him seem aloof, strange, or oblivious to how others perceive him.
Ambitions
Hooker insists he is on a mission to “advance the frontiers of human understanding,” but anyone who knows him understands the truth:
He’s chasing the Weird — chasing it the way astronomers chase comets, or fools chase whiskey.
If it is unnatural, unstable, or unwise, he wants to understand it, document it, and possibly strap mechanicals to it.
He also dreams of publishing a comprehensive treatise on ghost-rock energetics… if he ever survives long enough to finish more than a chapter.
Hobbies & Interests
Professor Hooker is forever a tinkerer at heart, even when such tinkering is simply a means to idle away some time. He also enjoys sketching, using it as a means to observe nature and use what already exists as a template for his creations. He is also a true academic at heart, enjoying a rousing debate on subjects as wild and varied as can be. Hooker is also an avid collector and consumer of teas from every corner of the globe, never passing up a chance to try the 'local brew' even in the most obscure backwaters of the West.
Personal History
Born in 1834 to a modest but respectable Massachusetts family, Benjamin Hooker displayed mechanical aptitude early, disassembling clocks, stoves, and a neighbor’s hay-baler by age nine. He entered university at fifteen, earned accolades, and later a full professorship.
His downfall came in 1871, when an “experimental resonant thermal apparatus” malfunctioned during a demonstration, tearing a hole in the lecture hall wall and allegedly attracting something from the other side of the veil. The university quietly asked for his resignation.
Rather than despair, Hooker took it as an opportunity.
Since then, he has roamed the territories conducting field research, building improbable devices, and occasionally contributing his expertise to towns in distress — though the towns rarely remain intact for long.
His greatest accomplishment is the completion of his ghost-rock powered personal conveyance contraption (name pending) that fused two train cars into a mobile laboratory/home. Most locals describe it as “an abomination.” Hooker describes it as “proof of concept.”
Worst Nightmare
The Professor fears that the ghost rocks are changing him... yes, they seem to make him smarter but he knows deep down that they are changing him inside... and probably not for the better. He fears that someday, he will create something so brilliant in its design and so malign in intent that he will give in to the madness always just beneath the surface and either die by his own creation or wipe out entire towns at the behest of something sinister...
Connections
Family
Spouse: None
Children: None
Mother: Eleanor Whitcombe Hooker (deceased, 1871)
Father: Jonathan Hooker (deceased, 1868)
Siblings: Two younger brothers, Nathaniel and Samual, and a younger sister Clara Hooker-Allerton, all of whom are estranged from their older brother either by choice or by circumstance.
Allies & Contacts
While Professor Hooker maintained an amiable relationship with his colleagues during his years at academia, he does not consider any of them to be close friends or people he feels particularly able to reach out to in times of need. His tendency to pick up and move to different locations on what seems like pure whim has limited his ability to form deep connections with others.
Enemies
His penchant for moving around has, in some ways, benefited Professor Hooker in that he has never become particularly hated by anyone in any place that he wanders into and subsequently out of. He's always paid his debts, never gone back on his word, and is generally tolerated by folks he interacts with. His involvement in law enforcement activities in the past was kept confidential enough that most bandits and outlaws who have fallen prey to some of his more insidious gadgets were none the wiser as to who created them, since he has only ever affixed his name onto one device he's created, and that one's strapped to his hip.
Deadlands Character Statistics
Traits
Derived Statistics
Wounds & Fate Chips
Edges
Arcane Background: Mad Scientist (3)
Mechanically Inclined (1)
Keen (3)
Thick-Skinned (3)
Level-Headed (5)
Luck o’ the Irish (5)
Dinero (5)
Nerves o’ Steel (1)
Academia: Occult 1 (1)
Veteran of the West
Hindrances
Curious (–3)
Big Mouth (–3)
Loco (–1)
Aptitudes
Hexes / Miracles / Powers
Type: [Huckster / Blessed / Shaman / None]None
For detailed descriptions and full rules for each ability, consult your character's hex book, prayer book, or medicine bag.
Mad Science Devices
Note: Delete this section if character is not a Mad Scientist
Equipment & Possessions
Weapons
Personal Items
[List significant personal possessions, equipment, or items of importance]
[Optional: Highlight one particularly important or meaningful item - a treasured possession, a family heirloom, a lucky charm, etc.]
Additional Notes
[Any other relevant information - special circumstances, secrets, ongoing story arcs, character development goals, etc.]
Last Updated: 19 November 2025
Player: Mark