En Sabah Nur
Also known as 'Apocalypse', En Sabah Nur is one of the oldest still-living mutants in history. For most of five millennia, Nur has been a serious threat to the safety and stability of humanity. His mission has always been to usher in a glorious age of power for mutants like himself. He has fought extensively with villains like Vandal Savage, communities like the Atillans, and fellow mutants such as the X-Men.
Nur's mutant abilities allowed him tremendous control over his body. He learned to rapidly increase his size and mass, bolster his strength and endurance, and recover from deadly wounds. He later developed the ability to hurl blasts of bioplasma and use them as crude but potent flight propellants. Later still, once he bonded with the T-0 virus and Celestial technology, his powers became almost limitless. Nur's body became tremendously resistant to injury and he could heal and repair virtually any wound in seconds. He developed technopathy and through it can control the T-0 virus and most computer systems. He can also instantly transform his body into a wide array of sophisticated and crude devices and weapons ranging from scanners and blood cleaners to laser cannons and melee implements. The nanotech in Nur's circulatory system can regenerate him from even near-total annihilation.
History
En Sabah Nur was born in 3000 BCE, near the Egyptian Valley of Kings to the tribe of Akkaba. The birthing process triggered his latent metagene and the young baby manifested with a visibly malformed appearance. He was abandoned in the desert and rescued by a human named Baal, leader of the Crimson Sands.
Nur learned from Baal that the pharaoh Rama-Tut was a human from the far future, Nathaniel Richards. His magical 'sphinx' was a time-vessel from some 40 millennia in the future. Nur attacked Rama-Tut, forcing him to retreat into the timestream, and took control of the time-ship. The vessel was damaged in the battle and the time-displacement drive was destroyed, rendering it into merely a lavishly advanced conveyance for Nur. It contained a crucial machine-- the sarcophagus chamber, a device that could restore Nur from death itself if necessary.
Using their own technology, Celestials reached across time and space to speak to Nur from the far future. A bargain was struck, imbuing Nur with awesomely advanced Celestial technology in exchange for an eventual promise of servitude. Armed and armored with Celestial technology, Nur became something much more than 'merely' a mutant.
With his new power, Nur seized the throne and declared himself Pharaoh, a role he occupied for several centuries. He was ousted some five-hundred years later by the arrival of Nabu, one of the First Gods. Nabu empowered an avatar with the power of Fate, and backed by Nabu's strength, this first incarnation of Doctor Fate expelled Nur from his rule.
Nur fled Egypt and wandered the world for a thousand years. He visited many other cultures and encountered many long-lived immortals. To his humbling chagrin, Nur found that his immense powers were no substitute for the legendary skill of the Kherans or the might of the Atillans, who were among the few fully capable of doing him real harm. He realized that force of arms was not the only means of conquest and started plotting a goal for total domination of the world that would take millennia to unfold. After all, what is time to an immortal? He frequently found his goals subverted by the dogged pursuit of another seeming immortal-- a young Nathaniel Summers who tracked him across time and space, always appearing at the 11th hour to stop Nur's plans.
The seeds of his goal were established as religious cults all over the world. He would disguise himself as a local god, creating cultists who worshipped him as a deity. He mated frequently, producing blood descendants with a portion of his power. The Clan Akkaba and their servants, the Riders of the Dark, clashed often with the forces serving Vandal Savage and the Harbingers, creating a long-lasting and bitter enmity between the two immortals. Neither of the men could kill the other, so they resorted to a millennia-long game of trying to out-maneuver each other.
In 1292 BCE, Nur returned to Egypt and attempted to overthrow Ramesses II. He was defeated by Prince Khufu and Princess Chay-Ara, armed with Nth-Metal weapons. Nur attempted to lead his armies through Khandaq but was repelled at the hands of Teth-Adam, an insult he has not forgotten to this day.
For another 2000 years Nur wandered the Earth. He met the New God Thor while he was posturing as that very individual; Nur won the first round of combat, but Thor used his own blood to empower his axe to break through the Celestial armor given to Nur. Once again, the First Mutant was forced to withdraw from the field and nurse his wounds in his time-ship.
It was in 1080 AD that Nur found something he'd sought for centuries: a Celestial science vessel, hidden high in the mountains of Mongolia and 'protected' by another immortal. Nur defeated Garbha-Hsien with ease and entered the vessel, which reacted to his Celestial armament. Inside, he began expanding the scope of his understanding of Celestial technology. During this time, another incarnation of Nathaniel Summers persisted in attacking his Clan Akkaba, killing off thousands of Nur's offspring. In a climactic battle, Nur ripped off Summers' arm. Summers shot Nur in the head with a high-powered energy weapon. Believing Nur dead, Summers bid Nur's majordomo Ozymandias to remember 'there is always someone stronger', and made plans to depart with his millennia-old quest completed.
Ever loyal, Ozymandias pulled Nur's corpse into the Celestial vessel and tucked it-- and the arm-- into the regenerative sarcophagus from the time-ship. Nur was exposed to the T-O Virus in Summers' blood. The Celestial bioweapon combined with Nur's powers to turn him into something even more awesome than before, a living machine imbued with Celestial technology. Summers panicked and flung Nur and the vessel deep into space, which set Nur adrift in the stars for centuries. It also gave him ample time to study and master the Celestial tech, including corrupting 'Ship' into doing his bidding without question.
Nur returned to earth several centuries later and discovered his old foe Vandal Savage was sitting at the right-hand of the Emperors of Byzantium. En Sabah Nur's newly incarnated Horsemen rode across eastern Europe and Asia for nearly a century, conquering and slaughtering throughout Europe and the Middle East. In 1453 Nur's legions supported Mehmed II in his conquest of Constantinople and the Horseman of War slew Constantine XI on the field of battle. The armies rolled through Europe and Nur defeated the warlord Vlad Drakul with his bare hands, leading to the defeated monarch becoming the vampire Dracula. Nur's conquest of Europe was eventually checkmated by the Italian states and eventually the First Mutant went into stasis again, leaving behind the Ottoman Empire as a tribute to his conquest.
Nur remained in stasis until 1898. Attrition from the Kherans and even his old foe Vandal Savage had eliminated most of Clan Akkaba. His persona retinue of warriors had been disbanded by Summers and turned into honorless mercenaries. He sequestered himself in England, buried underneath London, and resumed his ancient campaign of cleansing the world of humanity to rebuild it in his own image. There he met a young Nathaniel Essex, and recruited him to become his ally as the nefarious Mr. Sinister. Nur was forced to join forces with The League to destroy the remnants of Clan Akkaba, who Dracula was converting into a sizeable vampire army.
In 1899 he was awoken again, this time in response to alien life approaching Earth. The 'Molluscs' were fleeing Mars after having been routed by the Martians. Nur found himself opposed by The League, Summers, and several other time-displaced heroes. Intent on releasing a new version of the T-O virus on the world, Nur was checkmated once again by Summers and a pool of his allies, and betrayed by Sinister himself. The League deployed a complex bioweapon to annihilate the Molluscs and wiped out the invasion force. Without the Molluscs to carry the T-0 virus forward, Nur's plans collapsed.
Nur was forced to retreat into his vessel and nurse his wounds in the silent stasis of eternity once again.
