Shadow King

From the Shadows

It’s unknown exactly how long Amahl Farouk has been around. The most recent records of him and his criminal activities date back to the 1800s where he was a renowned threat in Morocco and all throughout northern Africa. Poems were written about him in Egypt.

Close to when David Haller was born, Farouk lost a lethal duel with David’s father, who was a supremely powerful telepath like Farouk. The Shadow King’s physical body died and with no living form to return to, Farouk existed merely in a psychic ethereal state. In a weakened last-ditch effort, he entered the body of the telepath’s infant son, David.

Inside David, who would become an extremely powerful mutant with the power to bend and shape reality itself, Farouk waited. He fed off David for years so that he could grow in strength and become powerful enough to totally control David, getting access to his set of unearthly mutant abilities.

Farouk contributed to decades of mental duress and strain for David.  Eventually, the pressure of hearing and seeing things that weren’t there drove David to extreme violence, drug abuse, and self-harm. During David’s childhood, Shadow King would appear to him as a family dog named “King,” who only David could see. Additionally, he’d show up in David’s psyche as a nightmarish image from the children’s book “The World’s Angriest Boy in the World” or as a bloated, yellow-eyed man. After a while, it all became too much for David, and he tried to commit suicide. This action landed David inside Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital as the Shadow King continued to bide his time.

Planes of Existence

The Shadow King has a vast and seemingly unending array of psychic and telepathic abilities. This includes mind reading, mind control, and mind infestation, in which he can enter the thoughts of another person and manipulate how that person experiences reality.

Shadow King can also transport his foes to the Astral Plane, a metaphysical arena where he has total and utter dominion over the rules—except when fighting a similarly powerful foe.

Within the Astral Plane, Shadow King’s powers are very strong. If he kills someone within it and disposes them mentally, they die in real life. Likewise, when Shadow King possesses someone else, that person’s active essence is still present in their body but is captive, forced to watch whatever the Shadow King is doing with their body.

Shadow King is also capable of taking a dead person’s psyche into whatever body he’s occupying. When Clockworks inmate Lenny Busker is killed during a mutant mishap, Shadow King brings her into David’s mind with him. Later, when Shadow King leaves David’s body and shuffles though a few other people, Lenny’s mind stays with him.

Astral Adversary

Shadow King claims that other mutants have been trying to stop him for years and release his hold on the criminal world. It is not until David’s telepathic father that Shadow King is both notably tested and defeated. As revenge against his hated enemy, Shadow King infects the man’s son, with hopes of someday controlling the boy and getting payback. Later, Shadow King’s threat causes the members of both Summerland and Division 3 to work together to stop him.

Mental Toolkit

Shadow King doesn’t really see anyone as a friend, but rather as a tool to be used and disposed of or, in David’s case, a potential partner to manipulate if that person is a powerful enough mutant to benefit him. Occasionally, Farouk, who sees himself as a god, will take pity on one of his victims if he thinks it can serve some other purpose for him. This seems to be the case with Lenny, who he agrees to help find a new body if she continues to aid him in the physical world.  His method to resurrect her comes with great personal loss for David.

Far Beyond Driven

While David was locked up in Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital for six years, the Shadow King was trapped inside David’s head.  When a mishap with a fellow patient—David’s newfound mutant girlfriend, Sydney Barrett—accidentally unleashed some of David’s inherent destructive powers, Farouk was briefly seen in the ward in his yellow-eyed form.

After the incident accidentally killed David’s Clockworks friend, Lenny Busker, Farouk started to appear to David in the form of Lenny, tormenting David by reminding him she was dead because of him.

Once David escaped Clockworks, mutants at a woodland haven called Summerland took him in.  Shadow King repeatedly blocked their attempts to sift through David’s past memories. He sabotaged David’s own efforts to re-live old memories while also re-writing some of his memories to present false narratives. During this time, Farouk also started appearing to David more frequently as Lenny, trying to get David to lose control of his powers.

As a last resort, David was sedated so that Melanie Bird, Ptonomy Wallace, and Sydney could explore his memories on their own. Shadow King disrupted the entire process however and, after they all barely escaped his mind, David remained trapped inside. Farouk tricked David into waking up in the real world, with Farouk as an active ally in his mind, so that they could use their combined strength to save his friends from a mutant-hunting agency called Division 3. David enjoyed feeling more in control, though, in reality, the Shadow King was the one gaining ground within his mind.

A Farouk-controlled David rescued his sister Amy from Division 3, using his extraordinary powers to kill all the guards. The real David, from inside his own mind, secretly reached out to Syd for help. Syd and the Summerland gang headed out to aid David.  When things turned bad and Division 3 bullets started flying, David used the last of his strength to put everyone in an alternate plane of reality—a replica of Clockworks.

Unfortunately, Shadow King was still the dominant force in the alternate Clockworks. It took the combined efforts of David and the other mutants to thwart Farouk and then trap him inside David’s mind, using a device crafted by Summerland scientist Cary Loudermilk.

Once trapped, with a plan underway to eliminate him permanently, Shadow King contacted Sydney and told her that he’d kill David as they killed him, unless she helped him escape. Not wanting David to die, she helped Farouk leave David’s body. After a fight inside Cary’s lab, Farouk escaped the compound in the body of Melanie’s husband, Oliver Bird. Using Oliver as his vessel, with Lenny’s psyche in tow, Farouk began a search for his physical body, knowing that he would be even more powerful should he be reunited with it.

A year passed, and during this time, David was abducted. and told by a future version of Sydney that he should actually help Farouk find, and return to, his old body because Farouk was needed to stop terrible events from unfolding. Afterwards, David met with Farouk on the Astral Plane to talk. The Shadow King appeared to David in his old human form for the first time, rather than the previous nightmarish incarnations he’d used.

Farouk attempted to convince David that mutants like them were akin to gods and shouldn’t war with one another. Lenny, in the meantime, tired of being kept like a pet, asked Farouk if she could be set free. Farouk agreed, but the consequences would be tragic.  With the aid of the possessed Oliver, the body Shadow King put Lenny in was that of David’s sister, Amy, who was painfully killed and reshaped to resemble Lenny’s original form.

Shadow King then discovered a way to telepathically travel to the future so he could speak to that version of Sydney, the one who’d told David to help Farouk. There, Farouk learned that the reason she wanted him to find his old body was so that he could stop David himself from, one day, causing the ruin of mankind. Farouk found the idea of David being the real villain and he the “hero” to be endlessly amusing.

Farouk then invaded the mind of Melanie Bird. Using Oliver as her weakness, he brought her over to his side, creating a mole within Division 3. With the future Sydney’s aid, Farouk and Oliver learned the location of the driver who knew of Farouk’s final resting place. They then contacted her and learned the body was in the desert.

Knowing that David would come after him, Farouk set traps, including soldiers, a Minotaur, and Melanie. She told Syd all about David’s dark side and unhinged nature that, apparently, never had anything to do with Farouk being in his mind. With the others distracted, Farouk was able to retrieve and reunite with his body. Farouk was at long last back in his human form.

Farouk and David confronted each another, engaging in a mental battle with their massive powers. Suddenly, a power-dampening tuning fork brought by Division 3 temporarily robbed them of their mutant powers. An enraged David used the opportunity to physically attack and brutally beat Farouk, intent on killing him. Believing that Farouk was now needed alive so that he could stop David from destroying the world, Syd confronted David, telling him about the threat he could pose and stopping him from killing Farouk.

Taken alive, Farouk found himself imprisoned at Division 3. Soon after, David, having caused concern in his allies and caught using his powers to tamper with Sydney’s memories, was put on trial. Much to Farouk’s delight, he was brought into the room where David was being held. After being confronted with the nature of who he might become someday, David vanished before he could be fully contained, leaving Farouk and the others behind at Division 3.