Can heal by touch by imagining the injury and reversing it in their mind.
- A minor to moderate injury or defect will tire them out, requiring at least 4-5 hours of sleep to recover.
- A major injury or defect can exhaust them to the point of unconsciousness, lasting up to eight hours.

Identify an antique (but not why) within the same room (10-15'), know the history of an object by touch, especially if marred by some violent event.
- a dinner plate made a month before and put in a shop window last week has almost no perceptible history
- a knife made a month ago and used to repeatedly stab someone has a perceptible history.
- a table made over a century before by children sanding each piece smooth until their fingers bled has a very perceptible history.

- Knowledge and trained in the medical arts of the 19th century

- Knowledge and trained in the medical use of plants.

Elfir Jacob Horne is the bastard child of Fannie Horne, a scarlet woman at the Rotwater's Desert Flower Saloon and Bordello, renowned for her adventurous pursuit of pleasure. He was three when he made friends with the neighboring shopkeeper's daughter, Daisy - although her family never approved of him. It irked him that many of the children grew faster than he did, even Daisy, but Doc Rose assured him and Fannie this was normal. Besides his size, the kids would pick on him for not knowing more than a few words of Elvish, so he made up his own version.

Following a fight in the gambling parlor, Dusty Pete the bartender snagged one of Jake's pointed ears and told him to grab a bucket of water and a scrub brush to clean up after a dead patron whose draw wasn't as fast as the other guy's. Under the table, he found a journal belonging to "Andre 'The Devil' Robertson," full of illustrations and strange tales of lost cities, maps, hidden knowledge, strange rites and odder creatures. There was also a tarot card of a grinning devil with a cane, wearing a black tailcoat, top hat and a monocle in between the pages. Since he was deceased, Jake kept the journal and would read it regularly with a weird fascination.

He was twelve when a visiting fortune teller offered to tell him his future in exchange for a silver, which he slipped over. The strangely-dressed woman took his hands, her eyes rolled back in her head, and in a weird sing-song voice told him he had very special gifts that would serve him well. He would become a doctor, she said, then frowned, warning him that he would not see success as one for many years, and would need to take up a different trade for a while, spending some time on the road. After scolding the fortune teller, Fannie made an arrangement with Doc Rose for him to take Jake on as his apprentice. And Jake did have the healing touch, although it left him exausted. However, patients were reluctant to see him even in mundane matters, preferring the experienced Doc Rose than this "young kid." The fortune teller was right.

Following a shoot out in the Desert Rose that killed his mother Fannie, Jake took off, leaving Rotwater behind. He eventually found a job in Rich Springs, in a second-hand furniture store, restoring old furniture and even pictures for resale. Edward Day quickly noticed Jake had a knack, able to tell the genuine apart from the fakes - even if he didn't know why. Edward sought to improve Jake's knowledge of furniture and antiques so he'd have something other than a feeling. Word of Jake's gift reached the leader of a burglary gang, who needed an appraiser. He agreed to help them after they threatened to go after Edward if he didn't. It took a while, but he discovered the actual head of the gang was the mayor of Rich Springs, Jordan Russell, or "the Reverend" as he was affectionately known. Some of the stolen items wound up in the store, where they were discovered. When Edward was threatened, Jake told them about the mayor's gang, and a riot soon followed.

Edward told Jake to grab his few things while he hitched Penny the mare to the store's delivery cart, and told him to get out of town quickly before the gang came looking for him. Since then, Jake's been making a living in the cart as a tinker, handyman, sometimes doctor, traveling from place to place, not without a few brushes with the law.