BIOGRAPHY - Page 4
According to the Shadow King, as long as dark thoughts exist within any human soul, he will eventually return. He spent months recovering his strength on the astral plane and lay in wait, admittedly in fear of facing Xavier again until he was fully restored. After the Onslaught crisis, however, the Shadow King sensed Xavier no longer had his telepathy and made preparations for a triumphant return. He crafted a false identity as the trickster god Ananasi and insinuated himself 
amidst the Kenyan village where Ororo once lived. Ororo’s foster mother Ainet was a powerful sorceress of earth and dirt, and Ananasi assumed control of her to express his form on the physical plane through her powers. The Shadow King manipulated the villagers into worshipping him and harnessed the power of their minds for his own ends. When his plan was ready, the Shadow King had Ainet call Storm for aid, luring the X-Men into a trap set by “Ananasi.” [X-Men (2nd series) #71,73,76]
The trickster Ananasi claimed his plan was to force Ororo into become his wife and goddess, diverting attention from his true goals. Storm and the telepathic X-Man Psylocke entered the astral plane in an effort to free Ainet from Ananasi’s mental domination. They found a curious psychic circuit assembled by Ananasi from the minds of the villagers but couldn’t understand its purpose. That is, until Ananasi provoked Psylocke into lashing out at him and striking one of the minds with 
her psychic knife, the “focused totality of her telepathic powers.” One mind carried the knife’s charge into another, amplifying it each time as a feedback pulse which overwhelmed Psylocke when the circuit was complete, and released a devastating psionic wave throughout the astral plane. All other telepaths on Earth lost their powers and were crippled by the backlash, leaving the Shadow King as the sole psychic force on the planet. [X-Men (2nd series) #77]
The effects of this psychic shockwave were widespread in the mutant community. It struck down Jean Grey where she stood and removed her telepathy for a time [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #358], disabled the psychic powers of Dani Moonstar [X-Force (1st series) #84], Gaia, Chamber and Emma Frost [Generation X (1st series) #42], crippled Cable and his ability to manage the techno-organic virus [Cable (1st series) #57], cancelled out Nate Grey’s telepathy, and even dispersed Madelyne Pryor, who was a solid psychic construct at the time. [X-Man #41]
The Shadow King dropped his disguise and reveled in his successful manipulation of Psylocke. He kept the various X-Men contained in psychic prisons of their own nightmares while stretching his influence further to spread madness and evil unchecked in the real world. Farouk might have succeeded in conquering the world if not for the Crimson Dawn, a mystical force bound to 
Psylocke’s soul which provided her with unexpected benefits. A new “shadow form” allowed Betsy to reconstruct her astral form without Farouk noticing and move through the astral plane without being detected. She conveyed this same ability to Storm and Ainet as well when she rescued them.
In his hubris, the Shadow King had left himself spread too thin on the astral plane, believing he could infect every mind on the planet with impunity as there was no other telepaths left to stop him. This meant his psychic nexus, or “soul,” was vulnerable to the restored Psylocke. Using her telepathy and supernatural shadows, Betsy took possession of Shadow King’s nexus and buried it 
deep within her mind. To keep him there she needed to effectively shut down her telepathic abilities, turning them inwards to imprison him and denying him any outward purchase into other minds or the astral plane. The arrogant and selfish Farouk could never have dreamed of such an action, to deny one’s self power for the greater good of others. Without any defense, his mind was contained and left at the mercy of Betsy Braddock. [X-Men (2nd series) #78]
Temptation was always the Shadow King’s area of expertise, and Psylocke indeed faced circumstances when the need to use her telepath arose. During the Gathering of the Twelve, the X-Men found a means of circumventing her problems by using Cerebro to artificially restore some of her telepathy without overly risking the Shadow King’s emergence. This kernel of power was enough to provoke Betsy into reaching further with her abilities through the Shadow King’s subconscious influence, until Archangel pulled her back to herself. [Wolverine (2nd series) #146-147] When discussing her limitations, Jean Grey suggested she and Betsy Braddock work together in the near future to find a means of restoring her telepathy. [X-Men (2nd series) #96] This interaction apparently took place, but was never depicted fully. Whatever happened, somehow Psylocke lost her telepathic powers entirely, replacing them with Jean’s telekinesis. In turn, Jean lost her telekinesis while adding Psylocke’s telepathy and shadow-based astral presence to her repertoire. Despite this complication, the Shadow King’s prison was apparently undisturbed. [X-Men: Revolution six month gap]
At least, until the death of Betsy Braddock. With Psylocke gone, the Shadow King had the opportunity to resurface and return to the astral plane which fueled his power. Farouk faced a threat and opportunity, though, from Psylocke’s teammate Rogue. The power-absorbing X-Man’s abilities were in a heightened and uncontrollable state during this period, giving her unfettered access to the memories and power templates of any person she had touched in the past, including Psylocke and Shadow King. On the one hand, this made Rogue uniquely equipped to imprison Farouk again by using Betsy’s telepathic signature. On the other hand, carrying an aspect of the Shadow King made her vulnerable to his entry and corruption like never before. When Rogue took part in a trek to the dream-time adjacent to the astral plane, the Shadow King struck. He infiltrated Rogue’s mind and tried to rewrite history, convincing her that he had manipulated Destiny and Mystique for decades specifically to engineer Rogue as his perfect creation, a new Shadow Queen.
While his lies settled into Rogue’s subconscious, Farouk had his forgotten pawn Lian Shen hire the Reavers to attack Rogue’s X-Men teammates as a distraction. The Reavers’ leader Donald Pierce acted as the Shadow King’s new host on this plane. Rogue flew to confront Pierce / Farouk directly, but the Shadow King’s telepathy began imposing her new identity as the Shadow Queen. Through her, Farouk hoped he could claim the minds and souls of everyone Rogue has ever imprinted, including Gateway, whose connection to the dream-time gave him unfettered access to the totality of time and space. The Shadow King made the mistake of entering Rogue’s own mind too soon. The aggregate of Rogue’s own will, combined with the resistance of all her imprints, shone light on his shadow, driving Farouk away. [X-Treme X-Men Annual 2001]
However, according to another source, the Shadow King was transported to another reality upon Psylocke’s death. Her brother, the reality-warping Jamie Braddock, pulled at Elizabeth’s spirit as she died to rebuild the quantum strings of her personal reality at his leisure. A side effect was 
Farouk’s spirit becoming unmoored from both Psylocke and Earth-616 itself, passing through the Omniverse until he arrived on Earth-6141. Here, he found a relatively young and unprepared Charles Xavier to inhabit as his latest host. Farouk corrupted Dark Xavier and his class of original X-Men into a new group of hounds, his Shadow-X.
[Note: New Excalibur #8’s account of Shadow King’s activity after Psylocke’s death completely ignores his return in X-Treme X-Men Annual 2001. It’s POSSIBLE the Shadow King in the Annual was genuinely nothing but Rogue’s overactive imprint of Farouk, and not the original. Furthermore, a line of dialogue from that New Excalibur issue has been frequently quoted to infer the Shadow King is a multiversal singularity, one single being whose presence is felt across all realities. In context, though, it’s very unlikely the line was meant to be taken so literally. After all, the same recap states the Shadow King was moved between realities against his will, and could not return to 616 under his own power.]
House of M and the Decimation put new cracks in the fabric of reality, allowing the Shadow King, his Dark Xavier host and the Shadow-X puppets to cross back over to Earth-616. They emerged in London and, fatefully, crossed paths with Psylocke and many past members of the X-Men and Excalibur. The Shadow King was either playing coy or submerged within his host, for Dark Xavier did not seem to recognize or acknowledge Betsy at first. Still, he survived a set of Pete Wisdom’s hot knives through his skull, thanks to the Shadow King’s power. [New Excalibur #1-3] Dark Xavier and Shadow-X were nearly rescued from Crossmoor prison thanks to Black Tom Cassidy and Black Air, with the comatose Xavier still somehow able to possess others and aid in his escape. He foolishly faced Sage in her own mind, though, and went brain dead a second time due to her extreme mental defenses. Black Air escaped with Shadow-X, but Xavier remained in custody. [New Excalibur #6-7]
Despite psi-dampeners, ELF sonics, narcotics and zero brain activity, Dark Xavier still pushed a Crossmore guard into killing his partner and then himself, asking for “Psylocke” moments before his suicide. The reformed Excalibur brought Betsy Braddock to bait the trap, but even Psylocke was not prepared to find the Shadow King lurking in Dark Xavier’s mind. He bragged and exaggerated the circumstances that led to him leaving and returning to her but, whatever the truth might hold, the Shadow King still had the power to turn Excalibur against each other. He planned 
to make Betsy watch her brother Brian die at his friends’ hands. Psylocke was not fooling around, though, as she telekinetically set off a stroke and an aneurysm in the Shadow King’s host before striking him cleanly in the forehead with her psychic katana. Psylocke was plucked from that reality at the same instant to join the Exiles at the Panoptichron, [Exiles (1st series) #92] leaving Excalibur confused at her fate. But Dark Xavier was now a vegetable and no sign of the Shadow King remained. [New Excalibur #8]
The Shadow King would recover, but he remained trapped in Dark Xavier’s useless host body. Shadow-X made an alliance with Albion and Lionheart against Excalibur, but planned to betray them. At another incursion into Crossmore prison, they tried to force Lionheart into being the Shadow King’s next host. Instead, she was prepared for their deception and was equipped with technology to prevent his entrance into her mind. She placed a collar on Dark Xavier’s neck designed to trap the Shadow King in this host when she killed it. She stabbed Xavier through the heart, finally killing him, and the Shadow King vanished. [New Excalibur #19] Shadow-X sided with Excalibur against Albion in the war that followed but, one by one, they each fell in battle until none remained from the Shadow X-Men. [New Excalibur #20-24]