PHAROAH RAMA-TUT/SCARLET CENTURION/KANG THE CONQUEROR/IMMORTUS/IRON-LAD
Real Name: Nathaniel Richards II
First Appearance: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #19, October 1963 (Rama Tut); Avengers (Vol. 1) #8, September 1964 (Kang); Avengers (Vol. 1) #10, November 1964 (Immortus); Avengers Annual (Vol. 1) #2, September 1968 (Scarlet Centurion); Young Avengers (Vol. 1) #1, April 2005 (Iron Lad)
History & Powers: Nathaniel Richards II was born in the year 3000 of the alternate timeline Earth-6311 (aka Other-Earth). A descendant of Victor Von Doom and Nathaniel Richards of Earth-616, the latter’s settling in that timeline 1,900 years prior led to a prosperous high-tech era of peace and enlightenment. The ambitious and restless Richards despised his peaceful era and discovered his ancestor’s citadel and the time-travel technology within, using it to seek adventure. Adopting a series of alternate identities (Pharoah Rama-Tut, the Scarlet Centurion, and Kang the Conqueror), he traversed time and space, spawning numerous alternate timeline counterparts of himself, conquering entire civilizations and clashing repeatedly with the heroic Avengers of Earth-616. An older, weary Richards eventually retired to a life of scholarly seclusion as Immortus in the dimension of Limbo, where the temporal beings knows as the Time-Keepers selected him for tutoring in the ways of time so he could oversee 70 centuries of time on their behalf. Like others from his native era, Nathaniel ages at a slightly slower rate and is more radiation-resistant than modern humanity, though he can be harmed by concentrated radiation.
- Richards’ first time-travel excursion landed him in 2950 BC in Egypt of Earth-616, where he usurped the throne of the existing pharaoh and became the new ruler under the guise of Pharoah Rama-Tut. An expert in travel through and the manipulation of time, Rama mastered his future’s advanced technology, though he has proven unable to rebuild damaged equipment when lacking sufficient technology. He is an expert strategist, historical scholar, a master physicist, engineer, technician, and a veteran of armed and unarmed combat. By some accounts, during his second reign, he forgot how to operate his time-travel equipment.
Rama Tut’s chief weapon is his “Ultra Diode” ray gun. At low intensities, it saps others’ wills by generating a specific neuronic frequency that numbs the cerebral cortex to varying degrees, leading them to obey his commands. At higher intensities, it can prevent superhumans from accessing their abilities and weaken others by suppressing their entire central nervous system, potentially causing death by respiratory and/or cardiac arrest. Rama formerly used a 20-foot long space worthy vehicle that housed his time machine, generating a chronal displacement inertial field able to reach all eras of all timelines by accessing the trans-temporal realm Limbo.
His Sphinx ship formerly housed his satellite time-ship and contained numerous defense mechanisms, including lasers, stun-blasters, force fields, and at least two types of bipedal robot servants. Rama’s sarcophagus placed in suspended animation for nearly 5,000 years within the Pyramid of Rama-Tut, an awakened him at the exact time period he planned via sunlight-sensitive equipment and a series of mirrors that survived this millennia intact. He had access to the Chronifact during part of his first reign. He originally possessed the Eye of Ages, an artifact that granted future visions, but lost it upon his crash in his first arriving in ancient Egypt. At least during his first reign, he had access to various other weapons. Following his revival in the 21st century, he could teleport around the world at will, bringing others with him.
- After fleeing ancient Egypt due to struggle against the modern era’s Fantastic Four, a time storm diverted Rama to the modern era where he rescued a space-lost Dr. Doom. Inspired by Doom, he took the armored identity of the Scarlet Centurion. His armor had an integrated time travel feature, both for physical time travel and for broadcasting an interactive hologram to a different time period while he remained safe in his fortress. He had subliminal hypnotic devices that could catch an unsuspecting target off-guard, making them more open to suggestion and manipulation by the Centurion. It also had more traditional feature like a force field, force blasts, ice blasts, electrical blasts, etc.
- Attempts to return to his native Earth-6311 future timeline were met with temporal disruptions, causing his time machine to overshoot his mark, landing in the 40th century of his timeline. Unable to escape to a more hospitable era, he became the warlord Kang the Conqueror. An expert in travel through and the manipulation of time, he’s mastered his future’s advanced technology. He is an expert strategist, a veteran of armed and unarmed combat, and has an indomitable will to succeed through struggle.
Kang’s full-body armor (composed of an unidentified future metal) enables him to lift at least 5 tons, and can project a gravito-electromagnetic force field around him that’s extendible up to 20 feet and can shield him from a direct nuclear assault. The suit has its own self-contained atmosphere, food supply, and waste disposal system. Its weapons include anti-graviton particle projectors in his gauntlets, rendering weightless objects up to 2.2 tons; concussive force blasters equivalent to up to several thousand pounds of TNT; circuitry accessing his ship’s time machine (or his other resources), allowing him an “automatic recall” of a few seconds as well as enabling him to peer into various timelines; and various other weapons, regularly updated. Kang formerly used technology that transferred his mind into an alternate body upon the point of death.
Kang typically carries various weapons, such as an anti-matter defense screen generator, a “vibration-ray” projector, and electromagnetic field amplifier, neutrino-ray warhead missile launcher (handgun size), electrical paralysis generator, nerve gas sprayer, and a “molecular expander”, which seemingly enlarged molecules to giant-sized projectiles. Kang commands a vast armada of warriors from across the galaxy of his future era, armed with advanced weaponry. He uses numerous robots, most notably his Growing-Man stimuloids, packed with Pym Particles which cause them grow in size and strength by absorbing kinetic energy.
- Immortus is his final alternate identity. He engineered the temporal disturbances that led Rama-Tut to the modern era and sent Kang to the future of the 40th Century. He also led the Scarlet Centurion to divert the Avengers to Earth-689, leading to the Centurion’s defeat and progression to becoming Kang. Ceded to him by the Time-Keepers, as well as custodianship over 7,000 years of time and space, Immortus has absolute control over Limbo, the transtemporal realm that exists outside the timestream itself (and through which all time travelers must pass in order to get from one era to another). As he spends most of his time in Limbo, his already slowed aging is virtually halted. Limbo is under his control, and it is affected subconsciously by his moods.
He wielded technology beyond the understanding of man, typically controlled mentally or through some other unobservable means. He could travel throughout time and space, enter specific moments of frozen time or watch epochs pass up close. He could materialize undetected in any era or observe it remotely from Limbo. Immortus's control of time allowed him to perform actions like freezing projectiles in mid-flight or aging matter to dust. Within Limbo, he can alter the course of timeline events, transform others and override enchantments (such as those on Thor’s hammer). He had far more advanced forms of hypnotic technology, allowing him to remotely influence people in various ways. He could compel simple decisions, guide actions, or obscure reasoning to make people prone to believe a certain set of facts without considering others.
A master manipulator, Immortus prefers to dupe others into doing his bidding rather than force his will upon them. Immortus could summon armies of time from various eras, subliminally programming them in transit to fight for him. He makes use of various minions: Tempus, an immense crystalline warrior he created from Limbo’s ether, has super-strength and carries a club, which is both a physical weapon and can age others. Tempus can also cause people to relive painful memories, and he can reflect assaults back on attackers. Immortus also commands the Space Phantoms, beings who have lost their forms, sanity, and identities after prolonged exposure to Limbo. The Space Phantoms can usurp the form and power of others. Immortus also has employed the Dire Wraiths, shape-shifting Skrull variants who were banished to a sub-realm of Limbo by the Spaceknight Rom, as well as robot warriors he fashioned in his Rama-Tut identity. Immortus has also held the Forever Crystal, an immensely powerful object able to wipe entire timelines from existence, to affect divergences, and control events across the entire timestream.
- Iron Lad is merely a divergent Nathaniel Richards II, one whose teenage incarnation met his future self of Kang the Conquerer. He managed to steal the elder Kang's neuro-kinetic armor before journeying back in time to the modern present to prevent his fate of becoming Kang.
