Daniel Deslions has always been involved with religion. Born the son of a preacher, he was raised in a Christian household in the deep farmland in the South of the United States. Daniel was born pale and skinny; a profile that doesn’t do much good on the farm. Taunted and teased by the other, burlier boys of his age for his appearance, Daniel busied himself in schoolwork. He became engrossed in psychology and the sciences, finding that he was surprisingly inclined to the subject. He kept quiet, choosing to observe rather than speak up. When the bullies taunted him, he merely sat in silence, observing them. He listened to stories his father told about their families, and found that piecing together the puzzle was simple. It was interesting. Those that bullied him all grew up with values that he contradicted. Their objection with him was a product of fear. Of the unknown. He was the unknown. The revelations gave him satisfaction, and for the first time in his life, Daniel Deslions knew triumph.
However, when one knows triumph, failure only hurts that much more. Daniel had always had a caring mother. Between her and his father, Daniel had always been cared for. Yet, he felt no real gratitude toward them. He understood their motivation. They had birthed him, and thus, they were genetically and emotionally compelled to care for him. Their love for him was understandable. Daniel felt triumph. Not love, but triumph. Failure however, soon followed. One rainy night, a drunk wandered through town. He had had a few pints in the town over and had managed to get into his car. The swerving automobile thundered along the small country road, veering off the road and smashing headlong into the church. The building lit up like kindling and Daniel’s mother died as she rushed inside to save the Church’s Bible. Daniel’s father grieved with great sobs, but when the time came to talk to the police, he did not prosecute the man. Instead, he went to the court case and begged the judge to send the man to rehab instead of prison. Daniel felt failure. He did not understand.
Daniel graduated from high school with high marks, excelling in psychology and philosophy. Scholarships rained in from universities around the country, but Daniel instead went to seminary. His father was proud, but Daniel did not do it for him. There was a morbid curiosity that he could not shake. In all his education, in his search for understanding, there was something he could not understand. He understood how most humans worked. The bullies, his classmates, the folks around the farm. They all operated on specific thought patterns. Their actions were reflective of comprehensible psychological catalysts. Yet his own father… the preacher… Daniel did not understand him. His late mother, who ran in a mad fit to get save the bible from the fire… Daniel needed to understand. So he went to seminary. He was looking for this infamous God.
Seminary was intellectually engaging for Daniel. He studied hard and learned the inner workings of Christian thought. He studied scripture and theology restlessly, sometimes going days without sleeping. He wanted to understand. What evoked such behavior? What made his father and his mother act in such a bizarre manner? When he graduated seminary, he was given his stole and assigned a small church. He stayed with it for a bit, preaching and talking with many people about their beliefs. It was here that he learned a valuable skill; how to speak. For listening was only so effective; in order to truly understand people, you had to probe them. Prod them. Provoke them into revealing to you their innermost selves. And so, Daniel grew from merely understanding, to manipulating.
Church was growing boring. These people did not have the same fortitude he had glimpsed in his parents. Sure, they all said things, claimed things, but they all followed recognizable patterns. There was no ridiculous motion. No defiance of the natural order. There was no God here. Daniel needed more.
So he left. Without saying a word, he left his church one day and journeyed north. He hitchhiked, took buses, migrated up the country until he came upon the border of a single large city. Gotham.
Gotham offered Daniel a chance to study a larger scale of humanity. He had previously had experience only with small farm towns and tiny local churches. Here was a place of skyscrapers, billionaires, and crime. Crime was boring for Daniel. Crime was easily understood. Crime made perfect sense. To be honest, Daniel was surprised more people didn’t partake in the underworld shenanigans. So Daniel walked through the dark streets of Gotham until he found a small, dimly lit building. He entered the dark halls, wandering them for a bit, until he found a barely lit laboratory. A large man shuffled slightly, working among several computer screens before glancing up at Daniel.
“Hey, this is private property,” he scowled, covering up some notebooks before pointing at the door, “Get out.”
It is not known what Daniel said that night. Whatever he did, he ended up interning at the small laboratory. People didn’t ask many questions. Gotham city had more to worry about than a pale young man working at the laboratory. All he had on him besides the clothes on his back was a small silver cross. The janitors took to calling him “Reverend.”
Reverend began studying neurotheology at this laboratory. The laboratory provided him with equipment necessary to measure brainwaves. He compiled previous research, looking deep within hundreds of studies to find correlations between changes in brain chemistry and religious experiences. His research took him from studies on Buddhist monks to observations of Franciscans. He needed more though. He needed to understand beyond mere speculation.
That’s when it happened. The laboratory received a shipment. The scientists were all very excited and Reverend listened to the whispers from his dark corner of the lab. There were many whispers. Hints of ‘dreams’ and ‘future’ kept drifting about. Reverend was technically not qualified to see the equipment, but a quick word with the lead scientist got him a trial run with the technology. It was perfect.
Call it divine intervention, but Reverend had found his tool. He experimented with the dream sharing technology, using it on himself constantly until he understood the physics and workings of the mechanism. The time had come. He would feel triumph again.
It was simple at first. Reverend went to a small church on one of the many side streets of Gotham. Drugging communion wine is incredibly easy as it turns out. You simply stand in the front of the line and slip a strong drug into the goblet after you take a sip. Soon, the entire congregation lay unconscious on the floor. Reverend locked the doors and went among each one, entering their dreams and attempting to understand this mysterious fanaticism. Most of them weren’t interesting. Mere belief was not enough. Devotion to an ideal… that was rare… Reverend was looking for someone… someone who was more than his nature… someone like his odd parents.
Reverend attended several other communions before making another discovery. One could go into dreams within dreams. And if one stayed in the first level, one could affect the next level from the first. Reverend had opened a new doorway. It was like he was a child again; understanding naturally leads to manipulation.
He began to experiment with manipulating the religious tendencies of those at church. Upon waking up, he found he could actively affect people’s perception of God. People became excited. People would stamp their feet with praise. He could drive people to tears, to sobs. Hardened fathers would bend on their knees and beg for forgiveness. Wives would scream out their confessions to the empty air. Reverend would sit back in the rear of the church and smile. This was God. A mere aspect of the mind. Reverend felt triumph.
He left the laboratory. He knew what engaged him now. He would explore this. He would continue to probe the Lord until he spilled his deepest secrets. It was not hard to make connections in the underworld of Gotham. The dream-sharing technology had long since hit the streets. Corporations were looking into applications. Reverend joined a few teams, often staying in the first dream level to affect the atmosphere of the one beyond it. However, it wasn’t until he got a single phone call that he really began his career in dream invasion. While working a job in a large Gotham corporation, he received an important call from Rome….
Corporations weren’t the only ones to pick up the dream-sharing technology when the military had abandoned it. Quietly, the Vatican assembled a special unit specializing in the shared dreaming. Reverend became part of a task force that did this dream espionage for the Vatican. Shutting down opponents via powerful religious visions and bolstering the opinions of the crowds via massive dream interaction became Reverend’s day job. Reverend became well known in the inner Catholic circles for his ability to understand and manipulate the dream. He wasn’t an Architect, for the Architect simply designed the dream and left it. Reverend would influence the subconscious, affecting the primary level of the dream while the rest of the team would continue deeper.
However, this again grew boring. Reverend had exhausted his minor manipulations. He wanted to do something big. The biggest manipulation of all. To create in someone, the fortitude he had once seen. The total fanatical dedication.
And that is when the call came... A call from Gotham.
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Spoiler: RIP period
