Selene

Origin

Birth of Selene

"After the oceans swallowed Atlantis and before the rise of the Sons of Aryas is when my journey began. My mother was a mere child when she gave birth to me... When she presented me to her tribe. But she would be dead before I uttered my first words. She was the first to sacrifice her life to insure my survival, but she would not be the last. The tribal elders recognized me for what I was and instructed my mother's people to offer their lives to me until there were none left to give. I am all that remains of those people. But sustenance was not all that they provided. They also gave me a name... The name of a goddess."

~ Selene explaining her origin to to her inner circle in X-Necrosha

History

Origin

For years Selene's origin went unrevealed, but she was known to have lived for several millennia, and to have been a foe of the ancient sorcerer Kulan Gath. In her attempt to ascend into godhood, Selene explained that she was born in Central Europe Seventeen-Thousand years ago.

In past ages she was renowned as a sorceress whose power was feared and respected by practitioners of black and white magic. She eventually came to live in the ancient Roman Republic. For unknown reasons, she accompanied the large number of Roman citizens who fled Rome in the First Century B.C. and sailed to the New World, where they founded Nova Roma ("New Rome") in a hidden section of the Amazon jungle in what is now Brazil. The founders of Nova Roma fled Rome because they foresaw that its republican government would be replaced by an imperial one. For reasons that remain unknown. Selene found herself unable to leave Nova Roma, and remained there for roughly two thousand years. In Nova Roma she led the dreaded Cult of Fire as its Black Priestess.

In recent years Selene married Marcus Domitius Gallio, a senator of Nova Roma who plotted to abolish its republican government. The intervention of the New Mutants both thwarted Senator Gallio's schemes and led to Selene's apparent destruction. However, Selene not only survived, but somehow found herself able to leave Nova Roma.

Ancient Rome

Selene in ancient Rome

Prior to the events in Necrosha, Selene attempted to become a goddess several millennia ago. During the Roman Empire, Selene promised Eli Bard her love and eternal life in exchange for every soul in Rome. Eliphas (Eli's original name), who at that moment was not an evil man, reluctantly agreed to help Selene, but he got captured and ruined Selene's plan. She cursed Eli, granting him immortality but living a life of eternal pain. At that moment, Eli swore he would gain her goddess forgiveness. He spent centuries searching for a way to recompense what he lost for Selene and during with the help of Purifiers and Bastion he eventually returned to Selene.

Hellfire Club

Selene is regenerated by using deadly force.

Selene directed her worshipers to undertake tasks that eventually allowed her to leave Nova Roma. Selene made her way to New York City, where she encountered Juggernaut at a bar. Selene planned to seduce and murder him, but was prevented from doing this when Wolverine manipulated a bar-room brawl between Juggernaut and Colossus. Selene then discovered the existence of Rachel Summers, who Selene sought to turn into her slave only to be defeated by the X-Men. Prior to the X-Men saving her, Selene had tracked Rachel down to the home of a young man named Nicholas Damiano who had let the homeless Rachel spend the night at his place. Selene savagely murdered the young man, resulting in Rachel swearing revenge against Selene.

Selene as Black Queen in Hellfire Club

With help from one of her worshipers, Friedrich Von Roehm, Selene made contact with the Hellfire Club and forced the group to take her on as the new Black Queen. Selene became critical in the X-Men's attempt to stop Kulan Gath, after he conquered New York City with a reality-altering spell though she ultimately attempted to double cross the X-Men in order to steal Gath's talisman of power.

Selene's time with the Hellfire Club was a turbulent time, due to her contempt for Sebastian Shaw and her quite open desire to rule the Hellfire Club as its sole leader. This led Shaw and Emma Frost to conspire to kill Selene by manipulating and training the young mutant Firestar to assassinate her, though this failed when Firestar realized what they were planning.

Rachel VS Selene

In the Aftermath of Days of Future Past, in Uncanny X-Men arc The Past of Future Days. Selene and the Hellfire Club's relationship with the X-Men came to a head with Rachel Summers making an unauthorized assassination attempt on Selene. Wolverine felt honor-bound to prevent Rachel from becoming a murderer, and so, saved Selene's life by severely injuring Summers. However, Selene was enraged, and used the incident to force the Lords Cardinal to agree to hunt and kill Rachel. A battle over this issue immediately commenced between the X-Men and Lords Cardinal, but it was unexpectedly halted when it drew the attention of Nimrod, the super-sentinel who had murdered Selene's assistant Rhoem,[9] and who was bent on killing the X-Men and the Lords Cardinal. The Lords Cardinal and the X-Men hastily agreed to a truce, fighting well-enough to cause Nimrod to flee.

Hellfire Club

After this battle, in the pages of New Mutants, much was made about Selene having secret plans involving Nova Roma and Magma. Due to her love for Empath, Magma left the New Mutants to join the Hellions, only to be called home by her father to enter into an arranged marriage with a resident there. However, Magma's escort back home to Nova Roma was Empath, who ultimately decided to stay in the city with her. The two became lovers and ultimately Magma was freed from her arranged marriage plans so that she could be with him. However, unknown to Magma, Selene was secretly manipulating events for reasons that have yet to be revealed due to New Mutants being revamped as " X-Force".

Nova Roma

New Warriors #31 revealed, via Empath, that Nova Roma was nothing more than an elaborate lie, concocted by Selene several decades prior. In a desperate bid to try and relive happier days in which she lived in ancient Rome, Selene arranged for hundreds of people to be kidnapped and taken to the jungles of the Amazon, to a city constructed per her designs. There she was somehow able to utterly brainwash her prisoners to believe themselves ancient Roman ancestors living in the Amazon. Magma was one of these kidnapped and brainwashed souls according to Empath. The city was disbanded and the residents returned to their regular lives across the globe. Years later, due to Chris Claremont wishing to undo writer Fabian Nieciza's dismantling of the concept of Nova Roma, Claremont ignored said story and wrote Magma as she had been originally written. He later had Magma make cryptic references to having been manipulated into believing Nova Roma was a lie by parties unknown that sought to hurt Magma by taking away her childhood home. This was haphazardly followed up by later writers, who implied that Empath used his powers to destroy the city by brainwashing the inhabitants into believing they were victims of Selene.

Gamesmaster and Upstarts

Gamesmaster and Upstarts

Selene ultimately was the deciding vote to vote Sebastian Shaw out of the Hellfire Club, when tension between Shaw and the newly recruited White King Magneto came to blows. Unknown to Magneto or Emma Frost however, Selene had decided that she no longer had any need for the Club and began plotting its destruction. Gathering an army of young mutants with help from the mutant omnipath the Gamesmaster, known as the Upstarts. Under her authority, the Upstarts engaged in a killing spree that led to many presumed deaths ( Magneto, Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, and the Reavers), mortal injuries ( Emma Frost), and outright deaths (the Hellions). Selene manipulated her young followers with the promise of a game, where each murder committed would land them points that would ultimately lead to them being granted a prize, described as "being the next best thing to immortality" by the Gamesmaster.However, with another writer change, Selene's involvement with the Upstarts was cut short as she herself was betrayed by Trevor Fitzroy. Selene was kept in a torture device that repeatedly ripped her flesh from her body (to attract the attention of the Gamesmaster, who took advantage of the situation to proclaim himself the new leader of the Upstarts). She would be freed by Amanda Sefton, though the torture left her weak and scarred.

Externals and X-Force

Selene VS Externals

Selene and Sunspot

Needing to replenish her power, Selene first attacked and killed the other surviving Externals. Though she was opposed by X-Force, she managed to complete the slaughter and knock out the mutants, until Cable arrived. Selene's attempt to absorb Cable's life backfired when she touched his techno-organic arm and she was forced to flee to maintain her power. Shortly afterwords, she tried to access the power of a mystical convergence using a Runestaff made from the roots of Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree. She came to the Exploding Colossal Man festival in New Mexico, but was again opposed by X-Force, who managed to wrest the Runestaff away from her and destroy the Colossal Man mannequin it activated. Selene missed her opportunity for ultimate power and vowed vengeance on X-Force.She next appeared back in Brazil, where she had tracked Sunspot, along with Deviants posing as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. She lured Sunspot to her defense, and offered him a position of power in the Hellfire Club, which he refused, regardless of the illusions she tempted him with. However, Sunspot went along with Selene to stop the Deviants in the Damocles Foundation from activating a Celestial Gatherer. Selene herself was attacked by the Sword strike team, but she managed to cast a spell that devolved them back to lizards. Along with the rest of X-Force, Selene was able to usurp control of the machinery that activated the Gatherer, but Moonstar and Arcadia destroyed the Celestial artifact before Selene could access its power.Selene then returned to her post as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, after striking a deal with the demon Blackheart and seemingly throwing out the rest of the Inner Circle. She offered Sunspot the position of Black Rook, which he initially refused but then accepted when Selene and Blackheart revealed that his doing so would allow them to resurrect the spirit of Juliana Sandoval, the girl who died saving Sunspot's life when he first joined the New Mutants. Sunspot had no choice to accept and become Selene's protégé.

Return to the Hellfire Club

The New Hellfire Club

However, with Sebastian Shaw's return to the Hellfire Club, Selene was somehow trapped inside the catacombs under the Club. However, she gained limited mobility from an alliance with Donald Pierce. When the X-Men, including Rachel Summers arrived, during a membership change in the Hellfire Club, Selene plotted to use Rachel to completely free herself. She followed Rachel to Hong Kong via a transport portal and saved her from being corrupted by a telepathic agent of Courtney Ross, who was trying to become the next White Queen. This move was only a prelude to Selene taking over Rachel's mind, but Marvel Girl was too strong for Selene and expelled her, keeping Selene trapped for a time beneath the Hellfire Club headquarters

M-Day

In the events of M-Day, Selene retained her powers. In Mutant Town, she befriended Wither, while she is taking a disguise as an old woman and told him that Wallflower is dead. When Wither left, Selene was attacked by the police, but she manage to kill two of them, whereas Wither killed the other policeman that was trying to escape. She later revealed to him that she is an immortal mutant and wishes to be with him.

Necrosha

Selene and her Inner Circle

Recently a man named Eli Bard, a rogue member of the Purifiers, came before Selene with an offering. Whilst with the Purifiers, he had originally intended to sacrifice them to Selene, but changed his mind upon seeing Bastion re-program an offspring of Magus. He came before Selene at her home in New Orleans with the re-animated Apache tribe (infected with the Technarch transmode virus). Selene exclaimed she had no need of them but Eli corrected her and stated that they were not his offering. He then presented the infected Caliban whose powers can track any mutant upon the planet. Eli explained that he would use Caliban's powers to re-animate dead mutants across the world and then finally offered her their souls. She has Eli re-animate many mutants to invade Utopia (Base of the X-men) with Blink leading. One of the mutants Eli resurrects is Destiny and Selene asks her what is her future.

In her castle on Genosha

Selene then resurrects the Hellions and Shinobi Shaw to taunt Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw respectively, as she feels that they betrayed her in her quest to become a god. She and her Inner Circle slaughter the entire New York branch of the Hellfire Club. After these events, she travels to Genosha and commands Eli Bard to resurrect the millions of mutants that died there due to Cassandra Nova's attack years before. She then dubs the island 'Necrosha'. With the mutants resurrected, they begin to rebuild the city. Selene needs her ceremonial dagger carved from the bones of her mother to complete the blood ritual she and Bard had planned in Rome, however in a twist the dagger was stolen by Warpath. Selene sends her Inner Circle to Utopia to retrieve it.

Goddess of Death

She is next seen with Warpath and an Unknown Female (Presumably Negasonic Teenage Warhead) discussing the fate of her pupils. As soon as that conversation ends, her Inner Circle returns with both the knife and Warpath in custody. Eli Bard proceeds to apologize to Selene for his betrayal those many years ago and proclaims his eternal love. Selene at first greets him endearingly, claiming that Eli was always her true love. She then stabs him in the stomach (to the delight of Wither), claiming that he was also her greatest disappointment.

The Death of Selene

Once she has the dagger she gathers all her collected souls to attack X Force who are coming to stop her once and for all. Whilst she has X Force occupied with the attacking dead she gathers her inner circle together to carry out the ritual which will finally make her the dark goddess she has always wanted to be. The ritual is a success and the collected souls seem to disintegrate and be attracted to a glowing blue/white light in the center of Necrosha, presumably Selene herself. At the end of the issue it is confirmed by the escaped Warpath that she has finally became a god - probably because of the vast amount of souls which she has "reaped" - but it appears she is not invincible and Warpath knows a way to kill her. Being a goddess wouldn't last for Selene, for the X-Force member Warpath has killed her with his dagger, stripping her from her godhood and exploding into rays of light.

Powers

Selene's shadow form (seen in three story arc's)

Selene is both a mutant and a powerful sorceress. She possesses a wide range of superhuman abilities, but it has never been clearly defined which of these are her actual mutant abilities and which are skills derived from magic or other sources.

Selene's main mutant power is to psionically drain people of their life force. Selene is a "psychic vampire" with the ability to sustain herself by psionically draining the life force of other human beings into herself. If she drains a person's entire life force, the victim dies and crumbles to dust in seconds. If Selene only drains the victim's life force partially, she achieves a measure of psychic control over her victim's mind, thereby subverting them to her will. Through unknown means Selene can also cause a human being to become a psychic vampire like herself, but be subordinate to Selene's own will. Selene's youthful appearance and vitality depends upon her absorbing the life forces of one or more people on a regular basis. This restores Selene to a youthful and healthy appearance when she has been injured, or when she over-exerts her other powers, and sustain her centuries-long life. A side-effect of this process is that Selene remembers the life of anyone she absorbs. She does this by physically touching someone but the draining is psionically.

Selene using her powers to bend space to free Blink

By using the absorbed life energies that sustain her, Selene can enhance her physical strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, and durability to superhuman levels. The amount of energy she has retained from her victims does seem to correlate somewhat with her physical strength and resistance to injury. Selene can momentarily move at superhuman speeds, though this requires a heavy expenditure of energy and can cause her to age rapidly and require more life energy immediately. It is not known how often Selene must drain a human's life force in order to survive.

She appears to be immune to most forms of conventional injury; she has survived both a knife wound and a crossbow bolt to her heart with no apparent pain or lasting effect. While not indestructible, She once survived and recovered completely from molecular dispersion, though it took considerable time to reconstitute herself.

Telekinesis

Selene's most direct weapon is the telekinetic power to animate and/or levitate inorganic matter on a molecular level, by projecting part of her absorbed life force into it. She can affect nearly anything within her line of sight, and can warp and alter the molecules of inanimate matter to her whim, causing objects to wrap around and constrict others, creating lifelike humanoid structures to combat her opponents, or simply reducing objects to dust. She can use this power in more standard ways, such as creating powerful psi-shields around herself, and can levitate herself and others but cannot truly fly. Selene can also control and manipulate fire in a variety of ways, such as though she cannot create the fire herself in large quantities; whether this is a facet of her psychokinesis or a separate power is unclear.

Selene possesses formidable telepathic powers that allow her to blend her own psychic signature into the background thoughts around her, making her difficult for other psionics to locate or track. She can alter the minds of others causing a sort of "paralysis" of mind. Moreover has the ability to launch bolts of psychic energy and mental commands. Selene is not as powerful as other high-order telepaths such as Professor X or Jean Grey, and is vulnerable to psionic attack should she be located. She often uses her telepathy to induce a hypnotic trance in others, and then slips away at superhuman speed, leaving them with the impression that she simply vanished. She can mentally control thanks to a kind of hypnosis or trance. She can survive in the astral plane thanks to her astral form.

Selene possesses considerable magical abilities and extensive knowledge of sorcery, enabling her to cast and counteract spells. While the full extent of Selene's magical skill is not known, her greatly extended lifespan has given her sufficient knowledge and experience to be considered a threat to Kulan Gath. Summon of demons and other entities.

In more recent appearances, Selene has been depicted as a being of insubstantial living darkness with the ability to appear and disappear at will and, similar to Blackheart, imprison people in the dark energy she appears to be composed of. Selene has been shown to manipulate darkness and turn into darkness, such as a dark cloud, or showing half her body still intangible and the rest dark tendrils.

Characteristics

• Height: 5'10''
• Weight: 130lbs
• Hair: Black
• Eyes: unrevealed

Alternate Realities

In another reality New York was changed into medieval times by Ghost Rider. She was released from a black marble to kill a shop keeper who heard of Spider-Man, who hadn't been changed by the spell. This was a problem, as people will start to see the truth. In this reality Selene is well known throughout scaring the shop keeper just by him looking at her. They also call her the Black Queen. Selene is happy to hear that their are new people who might be working for Kulan Gath. When the Exiles were being attacked by Ghost's rider guards Selene used her powers and made them go through the floor. Selene then gets the talisman back that Ghost Rider used on New York and turns it back to normal. Stating she didn't like those times and liked the new ones better.

New Mutants: Forever

New Mutants Forever:

In Chris Claremont's re-imagining of the New Mutants, Selene is more of an antihero, the result of her time aiding in the teaching of the New Mutants. She teams up with the New Mutants to save her granddaughter Amara from the Red Skull. Unfortunately, it turns out that Amara has been brainwashed, meaning freeing her from the Skull's clutches will be more difficult than she anticipated. During a fight against Amara and an altered Cypher, Selene is injected with a drug that spearheads her transformation into one of the Skull's minions. Before the transformation is complete, a man in Nova Roma, who is still loyal to Selene, offers his life to her. She accepts, promising to rid Nova Roma of the Skull's tyranny and honor his memory. As their lips meet, the man is reduced to a withered husk-his life force transferred to Selene. She reverts to her normal imposing extravagance, vitality surging through her body. With the infection eradicated, Selene returns her attention to her duty to Nova Roma and her granddaughter.

Other Media

Wolverine and the X-Men

Wolverine and the X-Men

Selene was a member of the Hellfire Club (called the "Inner Circle" in the show), which aims to release the Phoenix from Jean Grey. She and the Stepford Cuckoos fulfill the role Mastermind played in the original Dark Phoenix Saga. She often argues with Emma Frost and doubts her loyalty to the club. She confessed to Scott that Emma and her Cuckoos were responsible for the mysterious explosion in the Institute that brought Jean away from Scott. She also stated that Emma have betrayed the Hellfire Club for loving Scott. She is voiced by April Stewart.

Computer Games

Selene also make a few appearances in a few Marvel-based computer and video games. Her first appearance is in the 1992 game Spider-Man/X-Men Arcades Revenge, where she is mechanically duplicated in gigantic form and is the final boss of Gambit's level. A clip can be found here. The Black Queen's second game appearance was in Marvel's 1994 effort Wolverine: Adamantium Rage, where in this game she must battle Wolverine; she is seen using her traditional powers of inorganic telekinesis and pyrokinesis. A a clip can be found here. Her most updated appearance was In 2005's X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse where Selene (voiced by Jeannie Elias) appears as a NPC character that has been taken captive by Apocalypse, and is to be rescued by the X-Men. A clip is here.