| abstract | - The Reverend is a style most often used as a prefix to the names of Christian clergy and ministers. There are sometimes differences in the way the style is used in different countries and church traditions. "The Reverend" is correctly called a "style" but is often and in some dictionaries called a title, form of address or title of respect.[1][2] The style is also sometimes used by leaders in non-Christian religions such as Judaism and Buddhism. The term is an Anglicisation of the Latin reverendus, the style originally used in Latin documents by the Roman Catholic Church. It is the future passive participle of the verb revereri ("to respect") which may be taken as a gerundive or a passive periphrastic, therefore meaning "[one who is] to be respected/must be respected". "The Reverend" is therefore equivalent to "The Hono(u)rable" or "The Venerable". It is paired with a modifier or noun for some offices in some religious traditions: e.g., Roman Catholic bishops are usually styled "The Most Reverend" (reverendissimus); Anglican bishops are styled "The Right Reverend"; some Reformed churches have used "The Reverend Mister" as a style for their clergy.
- (the following information is taken from the game's manual and serves to give us a basic understanding of The Reverend and the world he inhabits) The future is a troubled place of seething masses and conflicting ideas. Sprawling metropolitan landscapes cover the earth. These industrial gothic centers rumble with internal chaos and external strife. Religion and Science have become the world's dominant cultural forces, each offering their own version of salvation. These two opposite pillars of life battle for disciples as humanity verges on the breaking point. Science seeks the answers to life in technology while Religion condemns it as the sure path to Armageddon. For a while, Science seems close to proving technology is the answer to the complexities of modern life. Through the research of brilliant scientists, cloning, cold-fusion, and nano-technologies are no longer the stuff of science fiction. The miracles that Science has promised are inevitable. Violently opposed to such progress is a mysterious figure known only as the Reverend. The Reverend is a false prophet who evangelizes his version of the gospel to a world teeming with lost souls. Desperate men and women latch onto his teaching by the billions. The Reverend preaches that the approaching scientific breakthroughs are an offense against the one true God and declares science to be blasphemy. He seeks to suppress all scientific progress as tools of Satan. With the President of the United States a close personal friend, he succeeds in having all scientific research banned. The anti-techno dogma of the Reverend has prevailed. After eliminating all opposition, the Reverend proceeds with his true intentions. He turns to the same technology that he has publicly condemned to perpetrate evil. It is, ironically, the tools of the forbidden science which will enable the Reverend to conjure up his own version of the Apocalypse. He can no longer wait for judgement day to arrive, it must take place immediately. This depraved cleric is planning the deaths of billions in a grand genocidal event that will leave the earth in smoldering ruins. The Reverend tells his followers that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will walk among them. Death, Plague, War, and the Beast are the heralds of the coming Judgment Day. The world is mesmerized by the Reverend and his fabled Horsemen. Will Judgment Day truly arrive as he has prophesied? Only one man has an inkling of what the Reverend has in store for the world. He's a lone tech-renegade on the run named Trey Kincaid. Trey is a brilliant scientist whose rebellious ideas and breakthrough work in nano-technology have finally brought that fringe science beyond the prototype stage. At last, mankind is capable of creating complex machinery on the molecular level. Trey knew his experiments would one day provide the world with an answer to its prayers. But Trey's dreams are shattered when science is banned. The Reverend's thug "disciples" break into Trey's lab, steal his research, and massacre his coworkers. Trey is captured but not before he learns the truth. While the Reverend was also decrying science as the work of the devil, he was also secretly following Trey's research. With the information his thugs have stolen from Trey's lab, the Reverend plans to use his newly developed nano-tech resources to bring to life his own revelatory version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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