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Fighting: |
Ty |
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Agility: |
Ty |
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Strength: |
Gd |
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Endurance: |
Ex |
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Reason: |
Gd |
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Intuition: |
Gd |
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Psyche: |
Mn |
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Health: |
42 |
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Karma: |
95 |
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Resources: |
Rm |
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Popularity: |
-30 |
Real Name: Amahl Farouk
Occupation: Saloon owner, power broker, mastermind
Legal Status: Egyptian citizen, deceased
Other Known Aliases: Karma, Jacob Reisz, David Haller
Identity: Secret
Place of Birth: Cairo, Egypt
Marital Status: Unrevealed
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Cairo, Egypt; Cairo, Illinois; Muir Isle
Past Group Affiliations: Former leader of the Gladiators
Known Powers:
Astral Projection: The Shadow King has CL3000 Astral Projection with a world-wide range, and is skilled in creating astral scenery to confuse those victims he meets on the astral plane. The Shadow King receives +1CS to Psyche when fighting on the Astral Plane.
Astral Detection: The Shadow King has CL1000 Astral Detection.
Psi-Screen: Shift-X Rank.
Telepathy: The Shadow King possesses Monstrous rank Telepathy. He has mastered the following power stunts:
- Monstrous rank Mental Bolts.
- Monstrous rank Mental Probe.
- Monstrous ability to leave his host body and possess another body. Unlike normal Possession, the Shadow King must gain a red power FEAT to succeed. If he fails, he may not try again for 1d10 days. If the attack succeeds, the effects are permanent and the subject may not spend Karma to influence his actions. The only way for a host to escape is if the Shadow King voluntarily decides to leave (it may do so if threatened with its host's death). As well as possessing live bodies, the Shadow King can possess a newly-dead corpse. A possessed corpse has the same statistics it had before death, but will gradually deteriorate, losing 1 Endurance point per day (1d10 Endurance if the Shadow King is forced to use his powers extensively). Before Endurance reaches 0, the Shadow King must find a new host.
- Monstrous ability to corrupt the psyches of other beings. This is resolved like the Possession power with the target receiving a Psyche FEAT to resist vs. the Intensity of the attack. Instead of totally dominating the victim, the Shadow King's power taps the latent evil that lies inside all but the purest souls. The Shadow King does not directly control the minds of those he has corrupted. They retain a degree of free will, their old skills, and evil versions of their previous personalities, but they revel in wickedness. There is no limit to the number of beings the Shadow King can corrupt in this fashion.
- Amazing ability to directly Mind Control a person he has corrupted.
- Amazing ability to release the raw animal within individuals, turning them into ferocious "hounds" under his control. An attempt to create a hound is resisted by the individual's Psyche vs. the Intensity of this Power Stunt. A hound has +1CS with Fighting and Agility, but -2CS with Psyche and Intuition, and Reason drops to 0.
- Detection of other telepaths within Monstrous range as long as they are using their ability. If the telepath opens up his mind by using a mind-amplifying device such as Cerebro, the detection range is increased by +2CS.
Nexus Creation: The Shadow King turned Lorna Dane (Polaris) into a psychic link between the real world and the astral plane. At that time, Polaris had been mutated into a catalyst for negative emotions. By coupling her power to his own, the Shadow King formed Lorna Dane into a psychic magnifier that increased all his powers by +1CS. This also gave him Monstrous rank Emotion Control with CL3000 range, the only limitation being that he could only use the power to spread hatred.
Limitation:
The Shadow King is powerful, but not without weaknesses. After the Farouk body was slain by Xavier in Cairo, the Shadow King could only maintain a material existence if he possessed other living or dead beings: first Karma, then Jacob Reisz (slain by Mystique), then David Hailer. Once the Shadow King transformed Lorna Dane into his Nexus, he gained raw power, but became dependent on her continued existence as a link between the astral plane and the real world. Disruption of the Nexus (getting a Stun result on Polaris with a psychic attack, or killing her) severed this link, thereby destroying him.
Aside from Professor X, Storm is the only mind the Shadow King had encountered which he could not corrupt. Add +5CS to Storm's Psyche when resisting his power.
Talents:
The Shadow King has considerable personal knowledge of international espionage and Egyptian Law. He is fluent in English and many Arabic languages, including Egyptian.
Contacts:
For many years the Shadow King acted as the ultimate power broker in the game of international espionage. His activities gave him contacts in the KGB, in Western intelligence agencies, and in the spy and criminal organizations of the Middle East and the third world. His possession of Jacob Reisz gave him access to top-secret U.S. government files.
Role-Playing Notes:
A "nightmare whose fondest desire is to be a man," the Shadow King enjoyed freeing the evil within human souls in order to gain mastery over their bodies. The nobler the spirit being degraded, the more the Shadow King reveled in the process of corruption. His goal was to destroy his old enemies, Charles Xavier and Storm, then to drown the world in a psychic ocean of hatred and evil.
History:
Little is known of the early life of the man who would become the Shadow King, and what has been revealed is closely tied to the history of Professor Xavier and the X-Men. Just after the Second World War, Charles Xavier was visiting city of Cairo, Egypt. There he had his pocket picked by a young girl. As he opened up his mental shields to probe her mind, he was suddenly smashed down by a psychic attack. Leaving the child (who would grow up to be Storm) Xavier traced the assault to a nearby saloon run by a fat Egyptian, Amahl Farouk, ruler of the city's Thieves' Quarter. Farouk, a master telepath, was steeped in such foul evil that Xavier compared his mind to wading in a sea of maggots.
They began a psychic duel which ended when Xavier destroyed Farouk's brain with a mind-bolt. That should have been the end of the Shadow King, but it wasn't. His malignant presence lingered on the astral plane as a being of pure psychic energy, hungering for revenge, and a body. He finally found both when he possessed Karma of the New Mutants, whose own psychic powers were similar to his own.
To sate his thirst for evil, he became the mastermind behind a gladiatorial arena that came close to corrupting Dazzler, Sunspot, and Magma. When this plan was foiled, he returned to Cairo, still possessing Karma, and reopened his saloon, humiliating its patrons for his sadistic amusement. He lured the other New Mutants to Cairo to be his slaves, but Storm and Magik frustrated his plans. The Shadow King left Karma and retreated to the Astral Plane. There he waited, regaining his strength, and nursing hatred of a new enemy: Storm.
His chance to strike back at the X-Men came when Xavier's son Legion used Cerebro from Muir Isle which accidentally opened his mind to invasion. The Shadow King detected this telepathic probe, and found Muir Isle ripe for corruption, thanks to Polaris, one of the island's residents. As a side-effect of her adventures in the Savage Land, Polaris was subconsciously radiating a mental influence that intensified negative emotions among those around her. In short order, he was able to corrupt the minds of Dr. Moira MacTaggert and the other inhabitants of Muir Isle.
With an island of super-beings under his domination, the Shadow King began his plan. He took possession of the corpse of Senior FBI investigator Jacob Reisz. Using Reisz's government contacts, he was able to score a major coup: the domination of Dr. Valerie Cooper, the federal official responsible for mutant affairs.
With Cooper's files and Reisz's superlative investigative skills at his command, he was able to discover that Storm had been reverted to infancy, and was now working in Cairo, Illinois as a child thief. He began the hunt for Storm, his second oldest enemy. But thanks to her own indomitable will, and the timely intervention of Gambit, Storm was able to escape the Shadow King's hounds, regain her memories, and link up with the X-Men. They had already been aware that some force of evil had been at work, now they could put a name to it. They began preparations to assault Muir Isle, which seemed to be the source of the evil.
The Shadow King had begun his ultimate plan. He formed Lorna Dane into a magnifying "nexus" for his power. Using her, he began spreading his malign influence throughout the world, causing mindless outbreaks of hate and prejudice.
Led by Storm and Forge, the X-Men mounted an assault on Muir Isle. Forge invented a method to block out the Shadow King's telepathic influence. But even with this device, the X-Men faced defeat.
By this time, Professor Xavier had returned to Earth. Determined to end the threat posed by his oldest foe, he assembled a second strike force of government agents (including Dr. Valerie Cooper and Jacob Reisz), SHIELD espers, and his old students, X-Factor. Their goal was to face the X-Men on Muir Isle and destroy the Shadow King.
The Shadow King believed Xavier was walking into his trap. At the height of the attack, he and Cooper attacked Xavier, only to be betrayed. Valerie Cooper was really the shape-changer Mystique, who had been masquerading as his slave.
Mystique shot Reisz, destroying his body. But the Shadow King had not yet been defeated, for his nexus remained untouched. He quickly possessed Legion and used a powerful telekinetic-pyrokinetic discharge to destroy most of Muir Island, and then engaged Xavier in a psychic duel.
Thanks to the mental powers of Marvel Girl, the X-Men and X-Factor survived Legion's assault. Xavier held off the Shadow King at the cost of his own legs. The two teams used Psylocke's psychic knife to sever Polaris's link with the astral plane. This final act caused a psychic shock that resulted in Legion's death and the apparent destruction of the Shadow King, although whether a being of such power can be truly destroyed is open to question.