Nehemiah Scudder

Nehemiah Scudder was the self titled "First Prophet". He was also President of the United States. He was a polarizing figure before he was elected, and even moreso during his presidency. His election was the culmination of the American Christian fundamentalist movement, mixing biblical law with federal law until the North American continent saw the rise of the first true theocracy since the days of the Puritan settlers.

## Biography

Scudder was born in Hope, Arkansas to a religious family. After graduating magna cum laude from Jeremiah Brown University, he entered the seminary and became an ordained minister. He entered televangelism under James Robison before serving as a minister to two Arkansas churches from. Like many Southern Baptists, he believed in biblical inerrancy, and that it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. Needless to say, he did not believe in the separation of church and state. During this time his supporters, or flock, to use the Christian term, grew thanks to his remarkable gift for preaching. His words mainly reached Americans in the South. But after collecting donations from the widow of a recently deceased millionaire, he was able to advertize his message. Thanks to underground interplanetary runners under protection of the Syndicate of the Men in Black, he brought a sense of hope to human colonists living in captivity on Venus under the Mekon. While preaching, many people thought he exuded an almost angelic aura. Noted televangelist William Stryker once described his voice as in harmony with the sound of his wings.

After building his base while he was a minister, he entered politics, becoming Governor of Arkansas. He gained national attention when he announced his first run for the 2012 presidency. He was a minor candidate at first, but after several choice appearances on shows like The Colbert Report, he became a dark horse, coming close to the nomination before getting edged out by the far more secular maverick, Arnold Vinick. However he would lose to James Sawyer.

By this time Scudder had become a well known national figure, regularly spreading his religious message as well as his op-ed pieces on conservative news outlets. With an economic recession taking hold of the country. Scudder had found his aim of attack for the next presidential elections. Another blessing came in 2011 Awakening of Magic. This event was the culmination of nearly a century of work done by the Ordo Templi Orientis, a Satanic group founded by Oliver Haddo in 1910, to bring a terrible new aeon; to the world. This work not only brought magical practices to a public that had not heard of it since the 1689 International Institute of Secrecy was signed, it also awakened long dormant genes. These genes included the mutant gene, which had seen a small resurgence among several individuals in 2006. At this time humanity saw the resurgence of several sub-species of human such as homo elvis (greater elves), homo dwarvis (dwarves), homo trollis (trolls), and homo elvis morgothi (orcs). The religious right saw The Awakening as a purely satanic plot. Scudder took advantage of the fear and eventually saw himself elected president in 2033.

Going into office Scudder took it upon himself to remake the nation to be more in line with God's laws. His followers had made him out to be a messiah, and the label went to his head. Like many Christian Americans, the Awakening made him paranoid. Before the election even Scudder had some liberal leanings. But the Awakening caused him to see demons everywhere. While in office he had metahumans purged and declared them non-persons;. In his paranoia, he declared himself the First Prophet believing that only he could guide the nation back in step with God's word.

Under the rule of the First Prophet, abortion was outlawed, except in cases resulting in a metahuman child. Making the superiority of the human species his priority, Scudder placed extreme value on fertile white women. He had little love reserved for African-Americans or other non-whites; his security detail was made up of groups descended from organizations like the KKK. The black population, or ;Children of Ham; as Scudder liked to call them, suffered under his rule. Many fled to Blackland, formerly the city of East St. Louis which had seceded after being defrauded in the elections. But one group that was able to benefit from the Awakening was the Native Americans. In the Great Ghost Dance War thousands of Native American tribes were able to reclaim large chunks of the Midwest and the Rockies. The instability caused by the uprising led to the balkanization of America, and the United States ceased to exist.

Scudder held onto territory in New England with the exception of the sprawl around New York, now under the umbrella of Mega-City One. His southern homelands were lost to the war, left buried under layers of ash and its citizens wandering aimlessly, thinking the entire US had been consumed by fire. He set up a capitol outside of Boston, using what was once Harvard University as a base. He named his territory Gilead after a hill in the Book of Genesis. An old spiritual was used as the national anthem: There is balm in Gilead/ To make the wounded whole/ There's power enough in heaven/ To cure a sin-sick soul. The nation of Gilead was put under a caste system with color-coded uniforms and very specific roles for men and women. Women in particular were seen in terms of their reproductive roles. Many Gileadean women either gave birth to metahumans or were simply infertile. Many of the barren women were married to high-ranking officials. The officials could not take fertile mates, as divorce was illegal. Neither could they take mistresses, as extramarital sex was just as illegal. Scudder, still aiming to rebuild non-magical humanity, created the infamous Handmaid solution. The inspiration came once again from the Book of Genesis. In the Book, Sarah, wife of Abraham, was infertile. So she used her handmaid Hagar to conceive a child. The Gileadean family structure followed suit. Commanders of the Faithful, ruling class men, were the head of the household. They held sway over their Wives, a Handmaiden who would have sex with the Commander in order to conceive, Guardians of the Faithful, who were low-ranking men serving as soldiers, and Marthas who were women servants. All understood that the women were subservient to the men, to the point where the women were only known by their husband's names. Scudder's own Wife was called Ofnehemiah.

Scudder himself enjoyed a large harem of women, whom he called Virgins. Over time the Harvard establishment became the Gileadean capitol of New Jerusalem. He lived in relative solitude with his harem, dying of syphilis. Despite his heavy-handed attempts to subdue the metahuman population, the rest of the world began to accept them. The regime of the Prophets would last until a revolt in 2100. And as for the plight of the Handmaids, the world would not know of the pain of their existence until a series of tapes were found in an abandoned Harvard home.