Okay, I've added color. I tried shading but as with most of my art skills it sucks hydrogen and then explodes into a fiery ball of suck.

His name is Derick Belay, he is a bear and runs a store for his parents selling potions and the like.

Well anyways heres the basic story behind him.

Born in the city in the backseat of a carriage on the way to his family's home. Impatience set the theme for Derick's life. Always wanting to know, always wanting it now. He would have been a trial for even the most active and patient parents. To bears who follow life at a more leisurely pace, all his parents could do was step back and try not to maim their energetic son. They did love him, with every bit of their hearts they loved him. But by the GODS he was EXAUSTING. He hit five and they thanked the gods. SCHOOL for sure would be able to handle him! At the very least he would be out of their fur for a few hours a day, schedule in some after school activities and hopefully by the time he got home he should be properly worn out! Unfortunately though, that dream just was not going to work out quite as they hoped.

Impatience and energy make for a quick fire temper and it wasn't long before Derick was being sent home for getting into fights. It took only a few months before he was kicked out of the after school program for being a troublemaker. They wracked their brains on what to do with him. The solution came quite by surprise.

With nothing else to do with him they took him with them everywhere after school. To the shop they owned where he would get into everything and ask the most inappropriate questions of the clients. To the market where it took all of their energy and reserve not to throttle him when he kept coming back with items begging them to buy it and when told no he'd go put it back and not a minute later be back with a new item. Their salvation came when they took him out into the wilderness to gather herbs and other ingredients for potions and herbal remedies to be sold in their shop. They found that if they showed him exactly what they wanted and set him free. Within the hour he would be back with what would have been a day's worth of gathering. What was even better was that he would tire himself out at such a pace and then sleep on the way home and for about an hour afterwards.

This couldn't have been better! Not only did he tire himself out he was doing it at a profit to the store. His parents immediately went to work showing him every kind of herb, moss, fungus and animal parts that were necessary to make just about every potion out there. Like every child he just soaked up the information and when he kept getting praised for what he brought back, it just reinforced the will to keep going. This was great, he got to go exploring and adventuring well before any of the other cubs and his parents loved and praised him for it.

While this was all well and good, soon they had a surplus of every kind of potion ingredient in the area and even of some that weren't supposed to be there! They didn't have any room for more and if they didn't do something about what they did have it would soon turn to rot. So his mother took him aside and started teaching him how to make potions, what each herb was used for and what to combine with what to get it to do what you wanted it to do. While this wasn't as fun as going and getting the herbs. Derick realized that he couldn't just keep going and getting herbs forever. They just didn't have room for it. So put his little mind to task, starting on small simple potions like lotions for dry skin and the like.

It wasn't until one day when he was seven that he really became interested in alchemy. He was working on making a batch of skin balm when he had the thought of trying a new mixture for the balm. He knew what herbs were used for putting moisture in dry cracked footpads and he knew the herbs needed to help fight infection and promote healing. What about combining the recipes to make a new lotion that would not only fight bacteria and promote healing but would soften up the spot and make it less tender? He went to his mother and asked about it, surprised at the intensity of her refusal, and when he asked why she told him that if he were to mix that potion the chemicals in it would react with each other heating up until they caught fire and then exploded! He was shocked, something like that could happen!?! But, they're just herbs, how could they do all that? His mother, seeing that he was not going to be satisfied until he had seen it with his own eyes told him that she would show him. But only on the condition that he NEVER EVER mix it on his own. She could just see him in his curiosity and abandon of youth mixing a large batch of it and blowing his own face off.

So she went to it, being very careful to make only the smallest amount of the salves and even then keeping them separate until the very end. She put them together and sure enough they started to smoke almost immediately. She took him back to a safe distance and they watched as it caught fire and blew up in a cloud of smoke. He was dumbstruck, those innocent herbs could really do that? That was so cool! He wanted to know more, but he knew his mother would never let him learn if he wasn't careful about how he went about this now. So he faked fright, which wasn't hard because he was a bit scared, and asked her to teach him all of these "bad" combinations so that he never made the "mistake" of putting something together that he wasn't supposed to.

She of course suspected but knowing her son, started to teach him of potions that are considered dangerous, only teaching the most minor of the concoctions at first. She of course could not make him unlearn this particularly potent mix. But she could control what else he learned and severely punish him to discourage stupidity.

Sure enough, he was caught several times as the years went by. Ferreting herbs to the side for his own explosive mixes that he could set off in the woods. Each time being punished harshly, but they had the intended effect. They slowed his headlong rush into dangerous grounds to a more sane pace. By the time he was 18 he was working full time behind the counter at his parent's shop and had earned a reputation for making potent quality salves, potions, and remedies.

But he's now 24 and his childhood is over and that curiosity and impatience make him yearn for adventure. Working in his parent's shop is all well and good and he could easily make a life out of it for himself, but there must be something that he can do other than this humdrum life. Wars and political upheavals have happened in his lifetime, but then what could a simple shopkeeper do that would matter?