he’s gone by john d. and j.d. in the past. neither of these even vaguely resemble his first given name. deacon, his latest alias, means servant, waiting-man, or messenger. this is intentional.

he’s human. and while he wasn’t the founder of the railroad, he’s certainly been with them longer than most. long enough to have his team die, long enough to reintroduce himself to a new one. he is, potentially, the oldest surviving member of the railroad.

he’s a dead shot. one of his highest stats is perception — with the other being agility. it wasn’t something he honed, or trained — it’s just always come naturally to him. it was his party trick, running with the university point deathclaws, and it’s served him well as an agent in the railroad. this is also why he makes so many sniper comments, expressing his dislike of open spaces.

desdemona makes a comment in p.a.m’s terminal — ‘ deacon was barely here all year. chasing ghosts. ’ he’d been looking into the past, eventually finding the sole survivor, frozen in vault 111. if you travel up a hill, you can find a chair and drinking water under a tarp, along with a railsign. someone had settled there and waited. someone was waiting for the sole survivor to live, and that someone was deacon. when he makes that little comment about finding the sole survivor himself, if they hadn’t found the railroad first, he wasn’t lying. he needed to sink his claws into them before the institute did. he needed to find the sole survivor.

that said — deacon doesn’t have any truly personal / ulterior motives. he hates the institute. he wants them exterminated. he doesn’t want fame, or wealth, or power. he just wants to see everything through to the end.

and he’s lucky. he is tragically lucky. he’s survived massacre after massacre. he’s witnessed people give their lives for the railroad, and he’s had to live with it. he was lucky enough to be given a second chance that he did not believe he deserved. he has no ulterior motives — he just wants to see everything through to the end. he has to make it mean something.

besides being a liar and a fraud, he feels like a joke. he feels like a big fucking joke. for him, everything ends with a drum roll and curtains. he knows that at the end of the line, he’s going to have the last laugh.

he doesn’t have anyone. if the sole survivor is friendly to him — they’re the first friend he’s had in years. he’s being honest when he pulls the sole survivor aside to tell them that.

he really just gets a kick out of lying. and even if he did tell the truth, no one would believe him. that makes him disposable. that means he gets to die with the truth.

his so-called recall code, you can’t trust everyone, is double-edged. it tells the sole survivor that by reading it, he can’t trust them. and if they accept his warning — they can’t trust him.