Fox Universe

Immortals (1): The Dark One and Typhon

IMMORTALS

Magic, powers and immortal beings first came to Earth some 6000 years ago, in the person of three refugees from the vast extra-dimensional inter-connected realities know as the REALM BEYOND. Although many more creatures were to follow over the millennia, the majority of enhanced beings were to spring from the bloodlines of these refugees.

The first came from a boy and his dying grandfather. Although the earth's atmosphere allowed the old man to live a further 80 years, it was the boy, a simple peasant with (in his own dimension) the commonplace gift of creating fire, that found in this new place he was powerful and immortal, and he begat a line that continued to the present day.

Utnapishtim lived many thousands of years and his name was recorded in Babylonian and other ancient legends. He was secretly the ancestor of King Gilgamesh and later the bloodline of the biblical Samson, which continued down to the 20th century Samson. Utnapishtim also channelled his flame into a vast source of power and used it to found the CITY OF FLAMES in Tibet - their legacy was to protect against invaders from the Realm Beyond.

The third refugee was a former court dandy, who in his previous life had been a minor aristocrat and sycophant, with a life consisting of courtly dance, gossip and foppish fashions. He too found that his powers grew, and over centuries he began to change, to seek out more power and he grew to love the dark worship that his might inspired.

Eventually the dandy was no more - only "The Dark One" remained. 

Other beings had entered our dimension, and became known as gods and demons. The Dark One sought alliances with some and bent others to his will, draining their life force and stealing their powers. Eventually he decided to produce an heir worthy of ruling by his side.

Starting with mortal women and then having his minions seize women with mystic powers and from bloodlines with power potential, he even impregnated godesses and demon succubi, all in the name of finding his true heir.

Over millennia thousands of children were reared close to him, or independantly - the latter would be taken at around ages eight to fourteen and tested. Dozens joined the ranks of his minions, as loyal acolytes but none satisfied the Dark One. He began to employ ever more extreme methods, declaring that "the strong would survive". Thousands of his offspring were tortured and died in the pursuit of the one true heir.

One such child was the grandson of Typhon, a monsterous serpent of Greek legend, who had been cast into Tartarus by Zeus, head of the Olympian pantheon of Gods. But before his exile, the legendary monster had fathered the three Harpies. One of his daughters was Ocypete, and she had been one of many females bound in servitude to The Dark One.

After Ocypete bore him a child, she was released along with thousands of others - ten years later the minions of Darkness came to fetch the boy. Ocypete fought them tooth, claw, sword and wings, in an epic battle in which she slew hundreds before being overcome and killed. The blonde boy she had protected so fiercely was taken to "The Pits" a huge training facility where potential heirs were processed.

After four years the boy was deemed useless and categorized in a group who showed no signs of power or special traits. He was put on a conveyer line to fuel the "blood of darkness" - a literal river of blood going through caverns before being collected and preseved mystically warm, where it would be taken to "feed" the chosen sons of The Dark One, who would act as his enforcers. Girl children were slaughtered as babies in the same way.

And so the boy's throat was cut and he collapsed, held over the troughs as he was bled. Later his body was thrown into the mountain of rotting bodies beneath the pits ... and then something miraculous happened. The boy ressurected and dragged himself clear of the mound.

Remembering instructions given to him by his mother, he returned home and lit a flame, and uttered an incantation taught to him at birth. And then the winged form of a beautiful woman appeared before him.

She revealed herself to be Aello, sister to Ocypete, who had been trapped within Tartarus, bound by a spell that stated only one harpy could walk the earth at any given time. With Ocypete's death, Aello could respond to a summons. She told the boy of his heritage and then attempted to train him. But despite his ressurection, the boy proved to have no affinity for the mystic arts - Almost a year later Aello left, to seek vengeance against the Dark One, but she gifted him a ring that dispelled charms and would protect him.

The boy then began to wander the earth, learning after a few decades that he didn't grow any older than a man in his mid twenties. In the first century BC he spent an extended period of time living as a Roman, calling himself Typheus Ocypetus for his grandfather and mother. During this time he befriended the superhumanly powered Roman soldier, Caius Martius, who would later be frozen in time to awaken in 1940 and become the science hero known as The Dart.

Unbeknown to the immortal Typheus, because his father had (literally and mystically) forebade any son of his to procreate, he was the sole offspring of The Dark One to begat his own children. Moving from place to place, and often outliving spouses and even children and grandchildren, Typheus was also sort of aware that instances of his impregnating a woman were few and far between. Many of his wives and lovers remained unable to bear children - it would be millennia before he discovered the reason. Only special bloodlines that descended from Utnapishtim and therefore possessed the power potential to combine with his genetics, would bear fruit.

Typheus also had seen no evidence that his offspring inherited immortality, although a few were extremely long lived for mortals, but not usually more than 200 years. However a few of his children, often ones he was not aware of, had more power potential - potential that was brought out by being killed under traumatic circumstances, and ressurrecting as immortals. Even in old age, this was possible.

By the Age of Camelot, their proginator had found himself in Briton, having come over with the Roman legions. He adopted the identity of Sir Peter of Typhon for a few decades, and later became known simply as Typhon, a nom de guerre that would last him into the 20th century and beyond. At this point he appeared roughly 28 years old.

Over the centuries, the Dark One continued his quest for a perfect heir, and although often distracted by conflicts with agents of the City of Flames and their allies around the globe, had managed to seize a dimensional pocket space belonging to a pantheon of ancient gods that he had wiped out. He little concerned himself with the goings on of mortals, preferring to master his own growing dark powers and commune with the dimensions Beyond.

He did however entrust a few dozen of his servitor-sons to maintain an earthly presence, and one group began to investigate the bloodlines of other immortals - a rumor persisted that a sibling had escaped their father's thrall and had spread his seed through new generations. By the 11th century, an active policy of hunting and extinguishing these diluted bloodlines was in place.

Over the next few centuries some of Typhon's children and grandchildren found each other and formed a loose alliance. And that was it until ... later events.