Nia Nal, who has a degree in international relations fromGeorgetown University, was a political speechwriter in Washington, D.C. She worked for Cat Grant, the White House Press Secretary, under President Olivia Marsdin's administration. Nia is sent to National City to be taken under the wing of Catco Worldwide Media employee Kara Danvers to learn how to report. As there is increasing anti-alien hatred in the United States, Nia, who shows herself to be a trans woman, urges the CEO of Catco, James Olsen, to write an editorial against anti-alien hatred. Kara and Nia give an interview to Amadei, a healer alien, to counter the anti-alien rhetoric. Later, Kara and James find out that Nia has narcolepsy. Nia wakes up suddenly from a dream about the alien-hating Ben Lockwood. When Kara visits her, Nia shows she is an alien from the planet Naltor, and chooses women of this race develop the power of precognition. Brainy, another alien, helps Nia with her dreams which lead them to Lockwood, who is ultimately arrested after being confronted.
Nia has ill confidence about her family when developing the unwanted "Dreamer" powers which occurs to one female in every generation in her family. Nia's sister Maeve, who was taught how to interpret dreams while being expected to gain powers, discovers Nia has the powers and renounces her. Kara shows her identity as the superheroine Supergirl to Nia to reassure her. While Nia's mother Isabel lies dead of a spider bite, Nia uses her superpowers to communicate with her mother about them. She assures her she will be able to continue the Dreamer line. Nia becomes a trainee under Brainy. Once she took the alter ego "Dreamer", she begins to defeat a supervillain team called "The Elite" with the help of Kara, J'onn J'onzz and Brainy. When Supergirl becomes accused of multiple crimes and declared a public enemy, Nia is one of the few who don;'t get fooled by it, With Kara no longer operating as Supergirl, Nia takes her place as Dreamer, the National City's superheroine. J'onn and Nia later are taken to Shelley Island. There enslaved aliens are setting up a Claymore satellite on Lex Luthor's orders to put Argo City in ruins. J'onn and Nia escape, overloading the satellite. After the defeat of Luthor, Supergirl's name cleared and the anti-alien hatred ended. Other than that, Nia and Brainy enter a relationship.
Powers
Human-Naltorian hybrid physiology: Nia is a human-naltorian hybrid, as her alien powers are accessible to one woman of each generation from her home planet, Naltor, and were (apparently) common enough that Nia understood what was happening when her powers unexpectedly started to manifest.
Superhuman strength: Nia has displayed a degree of above-human strength when she swung a Dominator around with her oneiric energy chain.
Superhuman durability: Nia is proven to have a level of superhuman durability, able to block multiple punches from Menagerie while barely fazed. She also was able to withstand an amount of energy that would kill a human relatively unharmed.
Oneiromancy: Nia has the ability to see the future through her dreams. These visions are sometimes symbolic, metaphorical, or even feature rather blurry imagery and thus bear hidden or unclear meanings and implications, leaving it up to the dreamer to interpret them. Nia is unable to control or know exactly what's happening in her dreams and where it is happening, nor can she properly interpret such or anticipate when it shall happen until it actually does. Furthermore, the nebulous outcomes that a Naltorian Dreamer foresees are implied to be far from absolute, since Maeve Nal implied that a dreamt eventuality can be prevented with the right method of intervention.
Precognition: Nia's power allows her to see events yet to come and to prepare for them. Since this is a side-effect of her primary precognitive power to subconsciously perceive eventualities while sleeping, Nia herself does not have to fall asleep first to access this aspect of her precognitive abilities; any impending danger will autonomously alert Nia - expressed in a vision seemingly indicated by a noticeably abrupt jerking motion of her body, with eyes instinctively closing as she briefly experiences a soon-to-happen (and otherwise disastrous) event through her mind's eye - thereby potentially allowing her to intervene in time and prevent the immediate outcome she just glimpsed. However, being the acolyte Dreamer that she presently is, Nia seemingly has no control where or when this precognitive power will act up - much less without her voluntary consent - to warn her of a threat, as it has only done quite sporadically so far. Nonetheless, the powers demand Nia's immediate attention while giving her only a fixed measure of time to possibly come up with and enact an intervention in response. With it, Nia was able to anticipate a gunshot fired by a Child of Liberty headed towards her direction by having a vision of the shot coming and even managed to move her handcuffs right in front of the bullet's predicted trajectory, blocking the projectile with her chains and simultaneously freeing herself. Later, through this aspect of oneiromancy, Nia rescued Maeve from getting struck down by a raging Child of Liberty swinging down an axe during their mother Isabel Nal's memorial, having foreseen the weapon to be striking down at the podium her sister stood on.
Dream-walking: Apart from dreaming the future, it was hinted that one in possession of the oneiromantic trait can also use it to "dream-walk" into the same dream with other people, allowing the Dreamer to mentally drift into the subconsciousness of another who also sleeps. This power is seemingly not limited to another Naltorian Dreamer. Dream-walking appears to be how the previous Dreamer traditionally and esoterically confirms the identity of her successor; in her final moments, Isabel inadvertently pulled Nia into the former's subconscious dream, which made the Nal matriarch realize that she was to be succeeded as a Dreamer by Nia and not Maeve.
Astral projection: After requesting deeper knowledge on her home planet from Kelex, Nia became capable of projecting her consciousness into an incorporeal state and thereby move about beyond the confines of her physical body - allowing Nia to exit her tangible body and travel around in an astral body. This is an advanced technique for an oneiromancer and months ahead of basic training, according to Querl Dox. This ability possibly constitutes the basis for Naltorian "dream-walking", with the Dreamer in question projecting her ethereal consciousness into the running subconscious of another person in order to be in the same dream with them. Nia, while under meditative concentration, was initially only able to project her astral form's hands from her actual bodily ones. Later, Nia successfully demonstrates being able to fully astral project her intangible consciousness - bearing the likeness of her actual self as Dreamer, suit and all - beyond the confines of her body, which enabled her to not only spy with impunity upon her targets but also to "synchronize" with a telepath like J'onn J'onnz - thereby voluntarily bring others along into the astral plane with her.
Oneiric energy manipulation: It was seen that Nia's mental energies that allow dreaming of the future could also be projected into and actually be able to affect the physical world.
Oneiric energy blasts: If her dreaming abilities are tapped into and untamed, these vibrant and incandescent blue energies are powerful enough to be fired with such concussive force that can considerably damage even the crystalline structures of the Fortress of Solitude. With Querl conceiving the notion of honing these said energies into weaponized practicality, he designed a special set of gloves for Nia to be incorporated into her Dreamer suit, ensuring the hybrid could harness and "calibrate" the raw dream energy and non-lethally blast enemies from a distance, or "charge" them as glowing energized orbs upon the palms of her gloved hands (seemingly channeled and originating from the undersides of her suit's wrists) to intimidate someone at point-blank range. After the Crisis, Nia is able to use her energy blast without her gauntlets.
Oneiric energy projections: Nia can now make projections out of her dream blasts with any hand-based attacks, such as chains and shockwaves. Nia powers even include a shield she is able to make a big one or a small one to protect herself or others.
Weaknesses
Open interpretation: Being a relative novice in the ways of dream interpretation, Nia could misinterpret or misconceive what her prophetic dreams allow her to foresee. For example, Nia failed to interpret the omen she received about her mother, Isabel Nal, dying of a spider bite; she mistook the ink that Maeve Nal used for her artwork to be lethal poison, as that was the cause of Isabel's death in Nia's perceived dream. In actuality, the black fluid in Nia's dream was merely a representation of death and Isabel's demise in the real world, while destined to be by poison, was to come from a spider's venom. This was implicated in Nia's dreams by the cobwebs she saw when her mother died.
Intermittent precognition: Nia's precognitive powers - be it dreamt or even glimpsed while awake - have a fixed duration that denotes how far she can see into the future. So far, the powers allow Nia to only foresee from mere seconds up to within a minute's worth of a certain event; any occurrence to happen after that is entirely beyond her ability to anticipate. This may leave Nia extremely vulnerable to subsequent assaults or when repetitively under such executed upon her by the opposition. For example, despite being fully garbed in her Dreamer suit and having apparently foreseen a confrontation with Menagerie, Nia was nearly bitten from behind by one of the hostile alien's serpentine creatures but rescued by Supergirl just in time. Nia even explicitly admitted that she dreamt nearly all the details except for Supergirl grabbing the creature and saving her in the process.
Power-dampening cuffs: Just like with any other alien, Nia's powers can be dampened by technology specifically designed to weaken her powers.
Original multiverse
Dreamer suit: Nia wears a blue protective suit as as her superheroine alter-ego, Dreamer, to hide her identity from her enemies when she goes out fighting crime. The suit previously belonged to her mother, Isabel Nal's, which Nia received from her father, Paul Nal.[13]
New multiverse
Dreamer suit: Nia wears a blue protective suit as as her superheroine alter-ego, Dreamer, to hide her identity from her enemies when she goes out fighting crime.[29]
Former equipment
Legion ring: Brainy gave Nia his ring, which she wore in the last battle against Lex Luthor, but she returned it later.
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