SHI'AR IMPERIAL GUARD

 

SHI’AR IMPERIAL GUARD

Roster: (clockwise) Gladiator II (Kallark), Titan, Midget, Quasar (Neutron), Warstar (B’nee and C’cil), Hussar, Earthquake, Magic, Astra I, Electron I, Smasher IV, Oracle I (Lady Sybil), Fang II, Hobgoblin I, Mentor, Impulse, Tempest I, Manta, Nightside, and Starbolt.

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #107, October 1977; The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #137, September 1980 (Manta, Warstar, Hussar, and Earthquake only)

History and Powers: The Imperial Guard is a legion of super-powered champions from throughout the Shi’ar Galaxy who act as enforcers of Shi’ar imperial law. An elite corps of the Guard protects the Majestor or Majestrix and carries out his or her personal directives.

Gladiator is one of the last surviving Strontians, a race of powerful purple-skinned humanoids from the Shi’ar Galaxy. His people possess psionically-reinforced powers of considerable magnitude, and Kallark has undergone the further enhancement of the Gladiator Process. He has Class 100 strength, has a tireless supply of endurance and is virtually invulnerable to just about anything. Kallark can live at hyper-velocity, allowing him to perceive his environment as if it were moving at a snail's pace, boosting his relative reaction time significantly, and run or fly at speeds faster than the eye can follow. Able to survive in the vacuum of space, he can exceed the speed of light under his own power to warp through space and travel between galaxies. His hearing and vision are also beyond superhumanly acute, giving him telescopic, microscopic, infrared, and ultraviolet sight and the ability to hear extremely soft noises or sounds outside the human range of detection. Gladiator can also fire thermoscopic beams of energy from his eyes, and product high-velocity gusts of wind from his lungs to affect objects/people or extinguish flames. He is currently centuries old, and may be functionally immortal. He is able to support weights with his strength that should normally crumble under their own mass when lifted, implying some kind of psionic force maintaining the object's structure, in addition to his natural strength. Gladiator's faith-based powers falter when his self-assurance does, making him temporarily vulnerable to more conventional forms of injury.

Titan is able to increase his size and mass proportionately. The larger he grows, the greater his physical strength and durability become.

Midget (Scintilla) can individually alter her density and stature. By concentrating, she can selectively reduce the mass and volume of her body, enabling her to shrink down to a miniscule size with either an equally diminished mass, or maintain her mass compressed into that frame for increased density, giving her proportionately enhanced strength and durability; carries a projector capable of transmitting her power to alter the size of others.

Neutron, alias Quasar, is a Stygian warrior whose power comes from the black hole singularity that permeates his being, causing him to assume the mass of a dwarf star. With his body mass compressed into a hyper-dense state, this gives him incredible strength and resistance to all manner of physical injury. Besides his natural strength, Neutron can increase his power even further by absorbing outside sources of cosmic energy as fuel for his singularity. He can draw upon natural sources of electromagnetic radiation and energy in the environment, or drain the structural integrity of solid energy constructs like Quasar's quantum forms. The immense gravimetric pressure produced by his singularity also gives Neutron some power over gravity. He can project gravimetric force blasts from his hands and create localized gravity fields to guide the movement of objects through the void of space.

Warstar units are a symbiotic cybernoid employed by the hundreds in the Guard. The most familiar bio-mechanical pair is known as B'nee and C'cil. B'nee, the larger of the two, stands over eight feet tall and has considerable superhuman strength while being virtually impervious to injury. His convertible arms can open up into containment field generators or rapid plasma cannons. C'cil is normal sized and thin by human standards, riding on B'nee's back in a specialized slot. He is also quite strong, though, and can produce high-voltage electrical current on contact. C'cil is the guiding intellect behind the pair, directing B'nee both verbally and through their psychic link. Both robots have highly effective self-repair circuitry which can rebuild significantly lost or damaged portions of their masses.

Hussar is roughly human in appearance, with hooves instead of feet. She carries a whip capable of releasing a powerful neurological stun charge on contact, causing intense pain and temporarily paralyzing her foes’ motor functions.

Earthquake is a quasi-reptilian biped capable of producing vibrational waves from his hands. He can use these waves as shock blasts to trigger a concussive impact when they strike a target, or hold a sustained surge to vibrate the target until it shatters, crumbles, or even disintegrates into powder at high intensities. Directing his waves into the ground enables Quake to create seismic tremors, open up fissures in the earth, and cause masses of rock and stone to rise up and then topple onto an opponent like a tidal wave.

Magic (Magique) is a sorceress possessing various mystical abilities, only a few of which have been seen. She is skilled at creating lifelike, animated three-dimensional images of real people and guiding them through mock combat against opponents. However, her power appears to be visual in nature only, preventing her from making these illusions speak or "feel" substantial. She has created a "witch-mark", a magical brand which attaches itself to a target and cannot be removed, broadcasting the target's location to her through vast distances of space. Once marked, a target cannot escape her notice. A cooperative spell allows her to enchant weapons so that their blaster fire is guided unerring towards whomever possesses the "witch-mark".

Astra can become intangible at will, generating a phasing effect that alters the spacing between her molecules upon contact, making herself untouchable to any form of physical attack and capable of passing through walls and other solid barriers. She can manipulate the state of phase her body exists in in order to disrupt the metabolic activity of living beings as she passes through them, creating intense pain and often forcing her opponents to pass out.

Electron commands electromagnetism, and can use this power for both electrical and magnetic capabilities. He can fire high-voltage shock bolts from his hands and produce magnetic attraction and repulsion, causing ferrous material to move through the air as he wishes, tears themselves to shreds, etc.

Smasher is apparently capable of "downloading" different superhuman powers for use from his exospecs, meaning he has many powers but must consciously activate them before they can be used. So, presumably, these powers would only last for a certain period of time after he calls for them, and then would become dormant again. He has demonstrated flight, superhuman strength, near invulnerability to all forms of physical assault, temperature extremes, or radiation, hand-projected plasma bolts, and a visual power called "penta-vision", giving him telescopic and x-ray sight or laser-like eye beams.

Oracle is a basic telepath. She can scan the thoughts of other sentient beings, communicate telepathically with other people, probe memories, fire psi-stun bolts to cause pain, paralysis or unconsciousness, manipulate perceptions to alter sensory reception, scramble memories and cause confusion, or forcibly assume control of others' minds.

Fang is the title used by the current member of the Imperial Guard hailing from a specific line of genetically-engineered warriors. Each Fang is grown in a gene-vat to full adulthood, replacing one when the prior inheritor falls in battle. There have been several seen working for the Guard so far, and each possessed heightened levels of strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes, hyper-keen senses, and razor sharp fangs and talons, and a phantom gland that exists invisibly and remotely from his body while slightly out of phase with this universe. This serves as his only vital organ and thus he can regenerate from lethal amounts of damage so long as the gland remains intact, and even after the total destruction of his body, a cloned double can be created that accesses his soul and memories from the surviving gland.

Hobgoblin and the Shapeshifters who followed him are representative of a race of shifters whose bodies are composed of a form of unstable molecules.. They are capable of assuming any number of different physical forms, altering their features and clothing, changing into other races, assuming the form of animals or inanimate objects, etc.

Mentor has a hyper-developed intellect which he applies to various pursuits. His computer-like mind is capable of gathering and processing vast amounts of data at once, extrapolating sophisticated and lengthy conclusions at record pace. He is cybernetically tapped into the Intelfeed of the Shi'ar Empire and its fleet, giving him up-to-the-moment information to utilize in his calculations. Mentor's observational and analytical abilities can detect patterns and run probabilities in order to determine highly accurate percentages for how likely a given event or action will be. He can also probe obstacles or opponents, determining the weakest spot in their construction so that applying even a minute amount of force will topple or damage his target.

Impulse is a non-humanoid lifeform, roughly the size and shape of a human heart and capable of releasing significant levels of bio-kinetic energy. He is cloaked in a human shaped containment suit that balloons out from his energies to give him the appearance of possessing mass and human proportions. It also serves to channel his energy, focusing blasts of bio-kinetic force from the visor built into the suit.

Tempest is energy collector able to absorb outside sources of energy and convert it to his own use, generating electrical fire from his body’s super-charged cells, normally in the form of high-voltage blasts radiated from his hands or body. He can also use his energies to produce a blinding flash of light, propel himself through the air in order to fly, and shape shields of energy to protect himself from harm. His powers enable him to absorb outside sources of energy as a means of regenerating his own power supply.

Manta perceives her environment through infrared vision, detecting heat energy signatures and patterns in order to locate warm bio-mass (re: people) even in total darkness and track residual heat trails a short time after a warm object or person leaves the immediate area. The wing like folds under her arms enable her to fly and are used to focus discharges of brilliantly bright blue-white light to dazzle her foes, or a spotlight beam of thermal and concussive energy, to burn and blind opponents.

Nightside is part of a race of people naturally capable of summoning and manipulating the extra-dimensional Darkforce energy to certain degrees. Nightside tends to use the Darkforce as an intangible blackness, blotting out all forms of visible light in a given area to make it completely dark. She herself is of course capable of seeing through this darkness. Nightside has also demonstrated the ability to summon small spatial apertures in thin air by waving her hands, using them to harmlessly swallow up bullets or other projectiles before they reach her. Like Cloak, she can also displace living beings into the Darkforce Dimension, where they are subjected to a metaphysical sense of cold and fear for as long as they remain there. Her manipulation over the Darkforce also extends to that used by other super beings. For example, when Darkstar of Siberforce attempted to blind and cage the Guard with blocks of Darkforce around their heads, Nightside was not only capable of seeing through the barrier, but also of manipulating that Darkforce to make it strike out at Darkstar. Since she was surprised by this, it's possible Darkstar could have fought back against Nightside taking over her Darkforce, in a battle of wills.

Starbolt is constantly aflame with pyroplasmic energy. He underwent a transformation process to achieve his current state. His incendiary physiology does not require food, water, or oxygen to survive. Instead, he feeds off of outside sources of heat, maintaining his health and abilities by absorbing thermal energy from his surroundings. Starbolt possesses infrared vision to assist him in locating heat sources for his abilities. Naturally, his artificially-increased incendiary physiology gives him superhuman resistance to heat and burning, so much so that he can thrive inside of magma flow. He is capable of flight and can radiate pyroplasma as heat, light, and flame, either in all directions from his person or as focused bolts from his hands.