Morton Simeon aka Moises Shivers aka "Moonshine"

Morton Simeon's mother Mansur was a free black creole  midwife healer and voodoo priestess (Loa Erzulie)  that made a living with medical and spiritual assistance to the girls that worked in the bordellos and honky tonks in the swamps around Batton Rouge. From a young age Morton is present in his mother's daily activities and she warns him to stay away from the mort-vivant bloodsuckers.

Mansur's sister Millan is not a free woman, she and her husband are both slaves to a wealthy St Louis family that owns a drugstore/pharmacy and general store/garage.They worked  as cleaners and caretakers at the adjacent locations. One night there is an attempted robbery and Millan's husband fights them until the police comes.  Recognizant and grateful for his valour their owner says their children would be free. Millan, however is unable to conceive.

A couple of years later when Morton is around 7-8, Morton finds his mother dead in her bed in the morning, her blood drained from her body, clenching a broken mirror in her left and a bloodied wooden stake in her other. For a couple of nights Morton is visited by Erzulie in his dreams warning about some dreadful "Malkavian". Then he s taken to live with his aunt and her husband in Saint Louis who formalise and rechristen him Moises Shivers. The nightmares end as soon as he is living in Saint Louis.

Moises just like his adoptive parents starts working as a cleaner and caretaker. Moises aunt and adoptive mother is a very devout church goer and wants to stamp out Moises voudoun heritage and takes him to her priest.  The Priest recognises Moises intellect to quickly learn scripture by heart.  He starts to teach Moises to read and write and Moises becomes an avid reader meanwhile doing menial labour in the drugstore and garage.  Soon he starts to read the stores manuals for both concoctions and car repairs and checking out more and more books from the library.  The priest thinking Moises would follow in his foot steps teaches him Latin Greek and even some Hebrew  using biblical apocrypha.  The priest however dies before his age and Moises plans to follow in his footsteps are buried with him especially when he discovers the opposite sex.

By around his 17th birthday Moises was already completely bald. Frustrated with what little pay he makes cleaning he got the idea of making some money on the side.  Using the knowledge of chemistry and discarded material from the drugstore and garage  he soon set up a smooth running distillery supplying local bars  with high quality merchandise and hairdressers  with cheap perfumes that rival the sophistication of the famous french brands.  He starts hearing again that nightlife is controlled by crime syndicates with bloodsuckers at the head but he tries to forget and ignore his sordid history.  With  success comes money  and a certain style.  He name Moises has too much of an Uncle Tom feel to him. A drunken reveller cals him "Moonshine" referencing both his occupation as his bald head and the name stuck.  Despite his newfound debonair attitude he is no match of the criminal elements that take over his business. He flees to Kansas and sets up his own drugstore while tries to remember both what his mother and the Priest taught him about warding off evil spirits.

concept Student of the occult/tinkerer (alchemist).  A bit of steampunkish Weird West interpretation of the Lorebuff/Macqyver hopefully making gatling guns against ghouls out of a car engine, a repeating crossbow with wooden stakes doused in holy water against vampires, bullets mades out of original coffin nails against wights , knows the formula to make dynamite etc etc but is not really that keen to use his contraptions himself when the going gets tough.