The Brimstone Bee

The Brimstone Bee is Brimstone’s best-selling, most famous newspaper. Of course, it’s also the town’s sole paper, but a little detail like that won’t stop its owner, editor, and chief writer, Hayward “HH” Heston from proudly proclaiming such whenever some poor sod gives him the excuse to do so.

Thanks to the recently completed rail spur access to nationally circulated papers in Brimstone isn’t much of a challenge (though they sometimes might be a day or two behind), but for the cowpoke looking for local news “The Bee” is pretty much the only option they've got. Hayward knows this, and primarily focuses on pieces concerning the town and the surrounding area, though big state and national news still tends to get the byline most days.

While Heston tries to avoid the worst vices of sensationalized yellow journalism, he is aware that gunfights, brawls, and scandals sell papers, and if something of that nature is going on in Brimstone (as it often is) he or his one on-staff reporter, Dietrich Lintz is usually quick on the scene to collect statements. “When the guns start firing Heston comes buzzing.” The Bee is also always eager to interview intriguing figures that have recently arrived in town, whether they be there on a temporary or permanent basis. Still HH, Dietrich, and the German’s young ward, Sofía, can’t be everywhere, so the editor has been known to buy stories or subcontract reporters on occasion.

However, Hayward is an ardent skeptic when it comes to the “weird,” and almost always refuses any story involving supernatural elements, or at the very least is always dismissive when reporting statements giving “unnatural” explanations for events while offering plausible alternatives from either other witnesses or of his own opinion alongside them, so anybody offering those kinds of stories is much more liable to be shown the door than get paid!

“I’ll not have the Brimstone Bee turn into another rag like the Epitaph, thank you very much!”

Hayward Heston, nicknamed “HH”, is a thirty-four year old man who stands at 5’7” with a slight build. He usually wears a dusty, slightly worn suit when out in town and strips off the outer layers when his pale, ink-stained hands are hard at work inside the Bee’s office. The newsman has brown curly hair that’s fairly long for a man, which he usually keeps combed back, and sports both a bushy goatee and spectacles on his face.

Brimstone didn’t have a newspaper until Hayward came to town after the initial copper strike, and the rush of settlers in ‘83 has given him a lot more to report about, and a lot more people buying the paper and taking out ad space! Hayward has used that extra wealth to invest in a few minor businesses in town that also help with his personal finances. Enough that he can hobnob with the wealthier folks of Brimstone without trouble anyhow, frequently enjoying lunch with the Blakelys, though nine times out of ten he’s the “poorest” person at the table.

He’s a talkative man who can’t seem to abide the sound of silence and is quite proud of his personal accomplishments, the papers’ and the town of Brimstone’s as a whole. Most don’t complain too much because if it’s in a saloon he tends to at least buy the drinks as he does so. Hayward’s an ardent skeptic who only believes only verified facts and what he can see, and if it’s supernatural often not even that! It helps keep the Bee reliable, but at the same time a lot of actually true stories slip by the wayside as a result. HH is however, while a touch wary, a bit of a proponent of new science, believing it to be the way of the future, and is musing about using a good chunk of his savings to maybe “buying one of those Mormon steam wagons,” in the near future now that the rather comfortable home he commissioned was completed.

Heston is a moderate progressive in terms of his politics, but he’s also of the opinion that taking too much of a partisan stance discourages sales and encourages the creation of a rival newspaper, so he does his best to keep mostly neutral tone to his articles, only occasionally letting his personal opinions shine through, a stance that some folks say is cowardly or greedy, while others dub it practical and an attempt to report without bias. This is in contrast to one of the Bee’s two employees, Dietrich Lintz, who wears his heart on his sleeve. The newsman will also run any ads for political office in his paper once elections start, and has said he isn’t in the business of offering discounts or price hikes just because of his own feelings on the candidate.

HH married a woman named Caroline Heston, nee Sawyer, last year, after a whirlwind courtship, and they’re expecting their first child in the next few months.

Dietrich Lintz was born in Saxony in 1843 but his family fled six years after he was born in order to avoid possible retribution for his father’s role in the Revolution of 1848, settling in the cosmopolitan port of Galveston Texas. Galveston’s German community was known to generally oppose slavery alongside its Jewish and Mexican ones, and during the Civil War a younger Lintz, who had been drawn to journalism, found himself jailed more than once for penning “traitorous pro-Union propaganda.” If asked he’ll proudly admit that it was indeed pro-Union, grinning as he does so. “Like father like son,” he muses.

After the war ended he continued his career as a reporter, acting as an ally, and advocate for the new freedmen of Galveston for almost a decade, writing in favor of Wright Cuney’s unionization and educational efforts. Eventually though, Lintz decided to follow the example of many great journalists before him to roam the frontier as an independent writer. Unfortunately, most of his articles failed to find a well-selling audience, leaving Deitrich to live a hand-to-mouth existence for a while. As it happened, the down on his luck muckraker found himself in Brimstone on his way to Denver the same day HH was lamenting not being able to cover the entire town anymore. Seeing a possible steady paycheck until he could rebuild his funds, Dietrich penned a report on a recent gunfight in one night that Heston adored. Quickly the German-American went from a freelancer to the Brimstone Bee’s second full time reporter, and soon after found himself deciding to stay, the money flowing in from the mines and enriching the local economy certainly helping.

An unapologetic activist in staunch favor of racial and social equality, while Lintz won’t outright lie or ignore the facts, he shows little hesitation in voicing his own opinions and judgements in his articles, unlike his editor, and his stances really shine in his personal editorials and opinion pieces. He actually encourages dissenting opinions to write in response to his own, but doing so invites the man to launch back in turn. There are a handful of people who read the paper just for his ongoing feud with another resident by the name of Joshua Blackburn over the issue of Free Silver.

Dieterich is a slightly short, middle-aged man in a tweed suit and bowler whose rotund figure betrays his love of good food in large quantities, the occasional stay flake from a meal in his large, blonde mustache doing so on the off chance it doesn’t. In contrast to the fire that sometimes flies from his pen, Lintz is polite and slightly quiet when spoken to, and is fairly quick to make friends with those he deems good people. Although, given how cutthroat Brimstone can be, that number is lower than one might expect. The man is a bachelor who’s never expressed any desire to find a wife, though recently he became the guardian of a girl named Sofía Alcabú y Saelices after both her parents perished in a mining accident.

Dietrich’s a strong believer in the The Fourth Estate, saying a free press is what helps a country stay free. He’s railed against anybody he perceives to be abusing the public trust or the legal system in fiery op eds, refusing to “abide corruption.” While he shys away from violence, not even carrying a gun, the man has shown remarkable bravery and backbone when it comes to his writing and refusing to back down on potentially sensitive matters concerning the wealthy and powerful. Twice already people “representing certain important individuals” in Brimstone have paid him a visit, and twice he’s stared them down and politely asked them to leave, Heston (somewhat reluctantly) backing him up as he did so... Before Lintz promptly collapsed afterward once they were out of view,

So far nothing else has come of this tendency of his, but some cynical folk think it’s only a matter of time before the muckraker pisses somebody with money off enough for an attempt to be made on the Bee’s printing press… Or his life. If circumstances do come to that the paper might need some hired muscle of its own lest HH finally cave or the Brimstone Bee even potentially stop buzzing for good.

Sofía Alcabú y Saelices is a thirteen year old girl of obvious Spanish descent with short-cut black hair and intelligent looking brown eyes that don’t stay in one place for very long. The dress she most frequently wears is fairly nice, but it has numerous dried ink smears on it that just don’t seem to fully come out no matter how many times it's washed. It’s actually a gift from her current guardian, Dietrich Lintz, who took her in after her parents, Fabián Alcabú-Esparza and Inmaculada Saelices de Alcabú both died in the sudden, unexpected collapse of the tunnel they were mining ghost rock in together three months ago.

Sofía had expressed an interest in the ins and outs of how the actual process of making the Brimstone Bee worked pretty much since she first came to town with her mother and father, and frequently milled about outside its offices, peeking in through the windows and observing Heston and Lintz at work. They took notice after a little, and with a little prodding HH decided to let her do odd jobs around the newspaper office, the girl becoming a fixture eventually. After her parents passed one of the two men was the obvious choice to look after her, and Dietrich volunteered more or less the moment he heard about the tragedy.

Lintz’s ward is a curious girl with a tendency to spot unusual goings ons in town and just so happen to “conveniently” end up near them. Both of the newsmen at the Bee muse that she’s got a natural talent that will help her if she ends up becoming a muckraker. Sofia’s flattered by the joke, though she’s not quite sure whether she actually wants to follow in that career or not. She definitely enjoys what interviewing and snooping she has gotten to do, but the actual mechanics of the printing press and what little tinkering with it she’s been allowed to do also fascinates her. If nothing else she’s got a couple more years to potentially decide.

Sofia used to be cheerful and full of energy, but after her parents' untimely demise she’s become more withdrawn. Time and support from Dietrich have helped stave off the worst of the despair, and she’s still curious as a cat though. Some of the kinder folk around town also try to do their best to help the thirteen year-old out and potentially brighten her mood too, though a good number of Brimstone citizens consider the orphan a pest.

Every once in a while Sofia remembers how her mother mentioned hearing an odd knocking the day before the cave-in, and she wonders if that could have possibly had anything to do with it. The girl doesn’t vocalize it though, since she (probably rightfully) thinks that sort of stuff falls under the kind of “superstitious nonsense” that Heston does his best to discourage her from thinking about. Similarly, if she directly witnesses anything supernatural, which is very much possible given her tendency to snoop, odds are she’ll keep it to herself, though an persuasive cowpoke doing their own investigation could potentially be able to suss it out of her and maybe even make a useful contact.