Thor Hutchison
Reverend Thor Hutchison was, during his life, the most dynamic figure in the Revisionist Church. He first rose to prominence in the TN 1870s as a young priest as he led a movement for social reform in the Norlight industrial town of Petropolis. Prone to fiery speeches and speaking his mind, Hutchison exposed the horrid conditions suffered by local oil workers and ushered in new standards. The Northern Revisionist Church had, for the last century, been lost in esoteric theology, but Hutchison made faith relevant to the common person. Gathering others who thought the same, he founded the Prophet’s Shield in 1880. The Shield would serve to spearhead a fundamentalist renewal of the church and the North as a whole. In Hutchison’s vision, Revisionism would help restore the moral center of the hemisphere.
With the help of the Shield, Hutchison rose to become the Senior Reverend of the Irrian Region and was eventually elevated to the post of Second Follower, leader of Northern Revisionism. It was as Second Follower that he, according to many, helped win the War of the Alliance. Broadcast from Sorrento in the NLC, Hutchison’s weekly radio messages brought hope to occupied territories and courage to those still under fire. His effect was so great on morale that an orbital bombing strike was aimed at Sorrento in 1914 expressly to shut him down — although it cost Hutchison his right eye, it did not stop him.
In the postwar years, Hutchison’s fundamentalist agenda reached impressive heights. The Church slowly moved into the political arena, lead by a growing and ever more secretive Prophet’s Shield. With Hutchison’s death, his agenda of a religious (or at least religiously guided) state is in the hands of the Shield’s leadership. His succession is as yet undecided, but his status as a virtual saint of the church is assured.
His assassination on TN 1935 would be one of the leading causes of the Interpolar War.