Reverend Glasseye is a preacher from Appalachia who lives in the town church. He is open, unhurried, and often drunk. Most of his days are spent among the townspeople, known to show up with either a hammer or an anecdote, depending on what he's decided you need. In his free time, he reads avidly, everything from Greek philosophy to dime novels. He gives the impression of a man with very little weighing on him, which his drinking quietly contradicts. He is the easiest man in town to talk to, and perhaps the hardest to really know...

Reverend Glasseye, formally Adam Hill, was born in the summer of 1828 in Appalachia to a strict, wealthy family of English landowners. Three younger siblings died in childhood, leaving him an only child.

He was bright, talkative, but often disinterested, rigurously educated at home. Fragility of any kind was met with a belt. The few friendships he formed were promptly ended, leaving him sheltered.

At seventeen, during a trip, he met and fell for a carefree and selfless Mexican girl. After finding out she was pregnant, he ran off with her to Texas before his parents disowned him. They soon married, and Glasseye learned Spanish and became a schoolteacher. He taught reading, writing, and arithmetic to children and loved the work. By age twenty-four, his third daughter was born. Glasseye was a patient and attentive father, and was sure to have a quiet, predictable life.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, he grew increasingly frustrated with political tensions and personal struggles, and soon left Texas to enlist in the Union Army. Shrapnel tore out his eye, and a subsequent gunshot wound to the leg became infected, leaving him with a permanent limp shortly before the war ended.

He returned home mangled. He became withdrawn and struggled with alcohol and morphine. His marriage deteriorated, and his behavior grew abusive and violent. Eventually, his wife fled with their daughters. Shaking and wild-eyed, Glasseye tore through the rooms, took what mattered, and burned their house down.

He spent many years homeless. Churches became one of the few places he found calm. He began attending regularly, though more out of needing shelter than actual faith. A priest noticed him and, partly out of pity and partly to move a drunk off the property, suggested an unwanted church posting in Montana. With little left to lose, Glasseye accepted.

He arrived in a rough but growing town and soon began delivering sermons. The town called him "Reverend Glasseye," after his prosthetic eye. He soon became well respected, despite his often disheveled and drunken state. Rumors circulated that he was never formally ordained, but no one pursued it closely.

Glasseye doesn't think of himself as a victim of war so much as a man who came home and made unforgivable decisions. He believes his family was right to leave, and that he never deserve them. He still loves his daughters and wife, and hasn't loved anyone the way he loved them since, and is old enough now to know he won't. What he did to the house he has never told anyone, and does not intend to.

He generally thinks well of people. For him, all are simple men and women carrying ordinary burdens and fears. He is genuinely glad to listen and help in any way he can. Even the the mean, the closed off, the deliberately unkind, he tends to extend the same assumption. However, he wouldn't refer to it as Christian forgiveness, so much as basic empathy.

With those he is closest to he doesn't reveal much more of himself than he does with strangers. When something more honest does surface, he feels embarrassed more than anything else. His humor is crude and often innapropriate, catching people off guard, though he himself finds it hilarious.

Glasseye has buried his anger thoroughly, and hopes for it to stay buried. But it is there, and he knows it is there. He has never forgiven himself for it. He isn't sure if forgiveness is what he's looking for, but whatever it is, he hasn't found it, and the drinking is in part a way of not having to notice that.

Glasseye can open people with ease, yet struggles to speak on anything personal. He's never tried to convert anyone, and his sermons tend to avoid Jesus in any immediate sense, which the congregation has either not noticed or chosen not to raise. In truth, he's agnostic.

What troubles him is the forgiveness he cannot locate, not from God, but from himself, and from the people he hurt. Glasseye has seen enough that wanting anything feels ignorant. Yet, despite knowing that closure is essentially impossible, he has never stopped longing for it.