[Phantasm]

CHTHON

Real Name: Chthon.
Occupation: Inapplicable.
Identity: Chthon's existence is not known to the general public.
Legal Status: Inapplicable.
Other Aliases: "The Great Wolf-Father", God of Chaos, the Dark God, the Dark Mystic.
Place of Birth/Creation: An unidentified location on Earth (believed but not confirmed to be Mt. Wundagore in the Balkans).
Marital Status: Single, possibly inapplicable.
Known Relatives: The N'Garai race of demons, the Other (spawns); Gaea, Oshtur (sisters); Set (brother); Agamotto, Atum (alias the Demogorge), Ouranos (nephews); Hyppus (brother, deceased).
Group Affiliation: The Elder Gods of Earth; manipulator of Modred the Mystic; worshipped by the Darkholders/Cult of the Darkhold.
Base of Operations: The Flickering Realm, his own pocket dimension typically accessed on Mt. Wundagore, on the border between Latveria, Transia, and Romania.
History: According to accounts in both the Darkhold and the Book of the Vishanti – tomes of black and white magic respectively who are held as mirror images of each other – billions of years ago, when the Earth was new, the enigmatic Demiurge seeded the planet to create life. Among this life were the planet's first deities, known collectively as the Elder Gods: Gaea, Oshtur, Set, Chthon, and numerous others (see Gaea; Set).

Chthon and his sister Oshtur were among those most interested in the mystic arts; Chthon quickly learned (some have said "created") the black arts of chaos and necromantic magic (see Appendix: Magic). Everything he learned and created he inscribed on a series of parchment sheets, rendered indestructible with the magic inscriptions; over time, these parchments – at first presented as scrolls but later bound in leather bindings – became known as the Darkhold (also known in some circles as the Book of Sins).

Chthon shared the basics of black magic with his serpentine brother Set, notably that one could gain power from the energy released at death. Intrigued with the idea of gaining power in such a way, Set devoured their centaur-like brother Hyppus. Over time, the other Elder Gods – save for Gaea and Oshtur – grew in power at the expense of their kin, devolving into demons by becoming addicted to the necromantic energies, or were killed off (Oshtur was absent from Earth exploring the rest of the universe at the time, while Gaea merged with the Earth's biosphere to protect and nurture life). In desperation, Gaea summoned and mated with the Demiurge to produce an offspring powerful enough to combat the demons that now ran rampant across the planet. This offspring, Atum, became known as the Demogorge after consuming several of the demons and forcing most of the surviving others to flee.

As one of the two greatest demons (Set being the other), Chthon fled to a pocket dimension he created, which became known as the Flickering Realm, leaving behind the Darkhold as his anchor on Earth. Eventually, the four surviving Elder Gods of Earth came to an agreement: none of them would attempt to invade the realms of the others, nor even attempt passage unless invited; any such uninvited incursion would trigger the transformation of Atum back into the Demogorge. (As per the agreement, Earth was Gaea's realm; Oshtur created her own realm of Ma'at in order to avoid the Demogorge's attention; and Set fled to a realm known as the Serpent Sea after fighting futilely against the Demogorge.)

Chthon created the N'Garai to serve him in the Flickering Realm (see N'Garai). From time to time, he would unleash the N'Garai or other creations/spawn on Earth; as lesser demons, they were able to cross the barrier without drawing the Demogorge's attention while Chthon himself could not. However, Chthon had worked a loophole into the agreement: he could return to Earth if invited through the proper rituals, rituals he made sure were inscribed into the Darkhold.

The first known use of the Darkhold by mortals was in antediluvian Atlantis, where the scrolls were used by a mystic cult known as the Darkholders (see Atlantis). The Darkholders used the scrolls to create the first vampires, but the scrolls were lost during the Great Cataclysm that destroyed the island continent (see Vampires).

The next recorded activity of Chthon's Darkholders occurred during the Greek Heroic Age, when the Olympian gods and their heroic mortal progeny were most active on Earth (see Olympian Gods). At this time, Lycaon, then the king of the central Peloponnese region of Arcadia, and most of his fifty sons scoured the known world gathering the lost scrolls, collecting them in one place for the first time in millennia. In the course of the collection, all but the youngest son, Nyctimus, used spells on the scrolls which called upon Chthon for power, ultimately forfeiting their souls to Chthon. Lycaon himself used a page that turned him into the first werewolf; he was then killed by Zeus by a thunderbolt for daring to perform human sacrifices in Zeus's name (see Zeus).

In the 6th Century AD, the pages of the Darkhold were again gathered in one place and for the first time bound in book form; the tome was allegedly bound in leather made from human flesh, though this remains unsubstantiated. At this time, the Darkholders were led by the sorceress Morgan la Fey and her apprentice Magnus; together with the rest of the Darkholders, the two attempted to summon Chthon to Earth (see Magnus; Morgan la Fey). However, upon realizing the Elder God would not be under their control, the two reversed the incantation, calling upon Gaea for assistance in expelling Chthon. As a result, Chthon was bound to Mount Wundagore in the Balkans, trapped mid-transit. To prevent its future use, Magnus stole the Darkhold and imprisoned it in a tower in Cornwall, weaving spells to prevent those of ill intent from entering.

However, during the final days of Camelot, a young mystic of good heart named Modred entered the Darkhold Tower seeking a means to stand against the evil Prince Mordred (see Modred the Mystic). Chthon, speaking through his creation known as "the Other", tricked Modred into trading his soul to Chthon; Modred was then cast into a timeless realm, only reappearing recently into a changed world.

Not long after Camelot fell, the Christian monk later known as St. Brendan, fearing the evil the Darkhold could command (and mistakenly believing the book to have been penned by the Devil), removed the Darkhold from Darkhold Tower and attempted to destroy it. This only resulted in the pages again being scattered.

At some point in the past, many of the Darkhold's pages were copied, translated, and bound in book form. One copy of this book found its way into the hands of the Sicilian sorcerer Cagliostro; another, mistakenly believed to be the original, was stored in the Vatican, tended to by the Montesi family, a line of priests who were believed incorruptible and granted special dispensation by the Roman Catholic Church to continue the bloodline after the Church forbade priests from marrying (see Cagliostro). A third copy was owned by Baron Gregor Russoff in Romania; Russoff, an alleged descendant of Lycaon, was turned into a werewolf, triggering a hereditary curse which affects his modern-day descendants, Jack and Lissa Russell (see Russell, Lissa; Werewolf).

Chthon recently returned Modred to Earth, manipulating the mystic into attempting to complete the ritual Morgan la Fey and Magnus aborted centuries before. However, Modred was opposed by Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Stephen Strange, and the spirit of Morgan la Fey (see Doctor Strange). (Morgan's motives at the time were unclear. Strange surmised that she was attempting to atone for her part in Chthon's ancient summoning, but Modred himself taunted Morgan about her inability to control Chthon.)

Doctor Strange later came into conflict with the vampire lord Dracula over a copy of the Darkhold which holds the so-called Montesi Formula, a series of spells alleged to be able to destroy every vampire in existence (see Dracula).

Chthon no doubt has other long-term schemes to return to Earth from the Flickering Realm waiting to come to fruition at later dates.
Age: Indeterminate.
Height: Variable, possibly inapplicable.
Weight: Variable, possibly inapplicable.
Eyes: Variable, typically depicted as yellow, white, or red.
Hair: None.
Skin: Variable, typically depicted as either gray or as transparent with gray muscles underneath.
Uniform: None; commonly depicted wearing a long blue or black hooded cloak.
Strength Level: As an Elder God, Chthon's strength is incalculable.
Known Superhuman Powers: Chthon is the greatest of black magicians, having essentially created the black arts in distant prehistoric times. On his own plane he is omniscient and omnipotent; he is, however, bound by ancient mystic wards preventing him from crossing over onto Earth uninvited.

(Continued next post)