Hayward Heston

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.