A number of the Club’s most im portant members, led by the wealthy trading company owner and former Member of Parliament Sir Patrick Clemens, and his mistress, the re nowned actress Diane Knight, emi grated to the colony of New York in the 1770s, where they founded the new American Hellfire Club. Cle mens and Knight served as its first leaders under their Club titles of Black King and Black Queen. The Club’s headquarters was an aban doned church that stood on the site of the present day Hellfire Club mansion, located at what is now Fifth Av enue on Manhattan’s East Side, only a few blocks away from the Aveng er’s Mansion.

Today’s Hellfire Club counts among its members the wealthy, the powerful, and the celebrated from virtually all over the world. Member ship is by invitation only, but such in vitations are rarely turned down, for membership in the Hellfire Club is universally regarded as the ultimate status symbol.

As far as the general public and, indeed, most of the Club’s members are concerned, the Hellfire Club is a thoroughly respectable upper class social organization principally de voted to giving spectacular parties. It is also generally known that these parties serve as a means for mem bers of the social, economic, and po litical elite to meet unofficially to discuss matters of mutual interest, and to strike political or business deals.

The Club’s highest ranking mem bers belong to its Inner Circle, who dress in late Eighteenth Century cos tumes for Circle meetings and other formal occasions involving the Club. Inner Circle members hold positions named after chess pieces: the lead ers are King and Queens, followed by Bishops, Knights, Rooks, and Pawns. It is possible for there to be two Kings (a Black King and a White King) or two Queens in office simultaneously. However, such situations almost invariably lead to power struggles, and so there is usually only one King and one Queen at a time. If a member of one faction of the Inner Circle displaces a member of another faction as King or Queen,. he or she usually names his rank af ter the opposite color to his prede cessor’s. Hence, when Sebastian Shaw deposed the most recent former leader, a White King, he be came a Black King.

Unknown to most of the Club members, the Inner Circle members are engaged in a conspiracy to domi nate the world through the accumu lation of economic power and political influence. The Inner Circle commands great financial re sources, highly advanced technology, and a large body of mercenaries, all of which they use in their subversive activities.

The previous leader of the Inner Circle, then known as the Council of the Chosen, was a White King who threw the Council’s financial and technological support behind Dr. Stephen Lang’s attempts to capture superhuman mutants with Sentinel robots. Lang’s endeavor ended in disaster, and Black Bishop Sebastian Shaw and White Queen Emma Frost seized the opportunity to turn the White King out of office. Shaw be came the new Black King, leader of the Council, which he renamed the Inner Circle, and master of the entire Hellfire Club. As leader Shaw worked closely with his ally Frost, the White Queen.

Shaw and Frost are both not only heads of major corporations but are also superhuman mutants. They have given other superhuman mu tants positions of power within the In ner Circle. Moreover, Frost is also headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, a private school in New England for which she recruits ado lescent superhuman mutants as well as the sons and daughters of the elite so that she might bring them un der the Inner Circle’s influence. It is at the Academy that Frost trains a team of adolescent superhuman mu tants known as the Hellions.

Some years ago, the mutant Ja son Wyngarde, otherwise known as Mastermind, sought admission into the Inner Circle. To prove his value, Wyngarde mesmerized the first member of the X-Men to be known as Phoenix into willingly becoming the Club’s Black Queen. In reality this Phoenix was an immensely powerful energy being who had taken on a hu man guise and persona patterned af ter Grey’s. Wyngarde’s tampering with Phoenix’s mind backfired by triggering her transformation into the evil Dark Phoenix, who temporarily rendered him catatonic. The Inner Circle therefore withdrew its invita tion to him to become a member.

Later Shaw survived an attempted challenge to his leadership of the Circle by its renegade White Bishop, Donald Pierce. Pierce kidnapped Shaw’s aide, Tessa. Professor Charles Xavier and the New Mutants defeated Pierce. Tessa returned to the Inner Circle, which took Pierce prisoner.

Still more recently Friedrich von Rohem, a member of the Inner Circle, sponsored the superhuman mu tant and sorceress known as Selene for membership in the Circle. Selene has since become the Circle’s Black Queen. Hence there are now two women holding the rank of Queen within the Inner Circle.

In recent years the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle has clashed several times with the mutant X-Men, and the enmity between the two groups persisted until the seeming death of the latter.

Shortly before the “death” of the X-Men, Magneto was approached by the Hellfire Club to join as the White King. Seeing this position as a means to better the position of mu tants in society, Magneto accepted. He recently deposed the Black King and now rules as the Grey King. Shaw has withdrawn all technologi cal and financial support from this group, but with the other financial holdings of the Club this does not represent a major threat.

The identities of most of the members of the Inner Circle have yet to be revealed.