Cal Franklin was born the only child of the village doctor in Portree, Scotland.  His home doubled as the town hospital, and from a young age watching his father work, Cal knew he would continue the family legacy of being a healer.  Cal's father passed away suddenly while he was finishing medical school in America, leaving the family clinic, and his mother in his care.  The weight of having to fill his father's shoes wore on Cal for a time; he struggled to keep the clinic afloat as more and more people began to travel to receive medical care in a proper hospital.

After his mother passed away, Cal decided to shutter the family business and travel with doctors without borders for a spell.  During his time there, he fell in love and married a french woman named Charlotte.  Together, they spent time working all over South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.  It was on one of their work trips to Ecuador that, after nearly five years of marriage, Charlotte was taken from him by a cartel.  He spent the next year spiraling into a deep depression as he tore the country apart searching for her.  His empathetic, compassionate nature slowly rotted into apathy and hatred.

It was a Thursday morning when he received the word; her remains had been found.  He transported her back to Portree to bury her next to his ma and pa.  An old friend of his father's found him early one morning, face first on the asphalt in a drunken stupor.  Although he begged and pleaded to be left alone to die, the crusty old fisherman drug him to a dock and tossed him headfirst into the frigid harbour.  As he clawed his way up onto the creaky dock the man asked him if this is how his da raised him to live.  At his core, Cal was a decent, honorable man who cared deeply for others and needed to help those he could in order to feel his life was worth living.  He had always known that, but it took a wrinkly old man who smelt of dried salt with calloused hands and a quick dip in the harbour to remind him.

He visited his parents and his dear Charlotte one last time, vowing to return when he had made peace with himself, and took off in search for somewhere where he could earn his peace; somewhere so dark, broken, and jaded that any light at all would cut through like a lighthouse beacon slicing through the late night fog.  "When the world is dark, you be a beacon.  You hear me, boy?"