The villainous Selene recruited a group of deadly lieutenants to assist her in her quest to ascend to godhood. Largely comprised of mutants with either a death-related mutation or a penchant for murder, Selene’s Inner Circle used a mystically-enhanced version of the Techno-Organic Virus to assemble an army of dead mutants, which they pitted against those who in the past had crossed, betrayed or failed her.
Other than the living members of her Inner Circle, some of the resurrected mutants proved integral to Selene's plan. Among the first raised was Caliban, whose mutant tracking ability led Selene to potential "recruits" for her undead Techno-Organic army. Destiny's precognitive abilities guided Selene's plots toward their intended outcomes while Cypher's enhanced linguistic abilities played a crucial role in the Black Queen's schemes.
In addition to the mutants listed below, Selene also resurrected James Proudstar's Apache tribe and the millions of dead mutants who perished in the attack on Genosha.
Leader: Selene
Membership: Blink, Eli Bard, Mortis, Senyaka, Wither
Resurrected Mutants: Banshee, Barnacle, Beef, Berserker, Bevatron, Siena Blaze, Bolt, Caliban, Catseye, Rusty Collins, Fabian Cortez, Cypher, Darkstar, Deadbolt, Delgado, Destiny, Feral, Hemingway, Hurricane, Jetstream, Katu, Harry Leland, Maggott, Leon Matheson, Mellencamp, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Pyro, REM RAM, Risque, Roulette, Scaleface, Shinobi Shaw, Skin, Spoor, Spyne, Static, Stonewall, Super Sabre, Synch, Tarot, Thunderbird I, Tower, Unus
First appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #11 [behind the scenes], X Necrosha [fully seen]
Last appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #25
Before
- Over 2000 years ago, the Roman nobleman Eliphas failed to complete a sacrificial ritual for Selene that would have allowed her to ascend to godhood. He was captured by the Romans and burned at the stake. After waking up 700 years later cursed with vampirism, he began a quest to regain Selene’s favor, which brought him to the New World. There, he slaughtered a tribe of Apache people. [X-Force (3rd series) #11]
- Cassandra Nova’s Wild Sentinels laid waste to the mutant-populated island nation of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants in the process. [New X-Men (1st series) #115]
- Selene recruited the guilt-ridden Wither, a former student at the Xavier Institute, to her cause after his deadly powers made him an outcast. [New X-Men (2nd series) #32]
- In search of souls to sacrifice to Selene, Eli Bard infiltrated the Purifiers, but betrayed them when he discovered in their possession the Techno-Organic Virus. [X-Force (3rd series) #1-6]
- After stealing the Techno-Organic Virus, Eli Bard headed to New Mexico and resurrected the slain Apache people. His sacrilege forced him into battle with their spirit totems. To defeat them, he used the spirit blade needed to complete Selene’s ascension ritual - but lost it in the confusion. Meanwhile, among the resurrected were Caliban and Thunderbird. [X Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Force (3rd series) #22]
- Selene rescued Blink from a transdimensional void and recruited her to her cause through a distortion of facts. [X-Necrosha: The Gathering]
- Selene convinced Lois London, Dazzler’s estranged sister, to embrace her lethal mutant powers and join her Inner Circle. [X-Necrosha: The Gathering]
- In Sri Lanka, Selene recruited the former Acolyte Senyaka, who had been presumed dead since the explosion on Providence Island. [X-Necrosha: The Gathering]
Chronology
| X-Force (3rd series) #11 | After 2000 years of separation, Eli Bard presents Selene with offerings: Thunderbird, the Apache people, the mutant tracker Caliban and access to the Techno-Organic Virus, which animates the dead. Selene accepts. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #18 | Using the Techno-Organic Virus and Caliban’s tracking skills, Eli Bard resurrects Cypher for Selene. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #19 | The Inner Circle presents the resurrected precog Destiny to Selene. |
| X-Necrosha | Selene’s Inner Circle raids the Hellfire Club’s New York City chapter, slaughtering its guards. They then proceed to the devastated island of Genosha. As a diversionary ambush, Blink teleports Selene’s myriad undead mutants - including Cypher - to the X-Men’s headquarters on Utopia. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #21 | Eli Bard loses control of Cypher. Nevertheless, he uses the Techno-Organic Virus to reanimate every corpse on Genosha, which the Inner Circle begins referring to as “Necrosha”. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #22 | Moments before Selene begins her ascension, Eli Bard recalls that he lost the spirit blade needed to complete the spell to Warpath. He asks Blink for discrete help in recovering it, but she reports his deception to their master, who then sends her Inner Circle to the X-Men’s headquarters on Utopia to retrieve it. Selene orders them to kill anyone who gets in their way of recovering the blade, but if they cannot find it, they are to leave Eli Bard among the dead. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #23 | The Inner Circle ambushes the X-Men on Utopia amidst their already-losing battle again Selene’s army of T/O zombies. Senyaka strangles Meld, mortally wounding him. Mortis slays Diamond Lil. Wither kills Onyxx. Blink and Senyaka destroy Archangel’s wings. Blink nearly kills Mercury, while Mortis almost succeeds in killing Wolverine. Eli Bard promises Warpath the killing will stop once they have the spirit blade. After Warpath retrieves it for them, the Inner Circle captures him and takes him back to Necrosha. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #24 | Once in possession of the spirit blade, Selene uses it to slay Eli Bard for his failures, leaving behind only his T/O-infected arm. Thunderbird temporarily fights his programming and helps Warpath escape. Wither, Mortis, Blink, Senyaka and the undead Thunderbird ready the ascension spell for their master, Selene, who then ascends to godhood, consumes almost every soul on Necrosha in the process. |
| X-Force (3rd series) #25 | The Inner Circle is ambushed by the reunited X-Force. During the ensuing battle, Senyaka is beheaded by Wolverine and X-23 and Wither is slain by Elixir. Mortis falls in battle against Wolfsbane, but survives. Blink succumbs to the triple-threat of Domino, Vanisher and Archangel, but she, too, survives and teleports herself and Mortis to safety. X-Force proceeds to defeat Selene. |
Afterwards
- Meld later died from the wounds Senyaka inflicted on him. [X-Men: Second Coming #1]
- With her team disbanded, Mortis resumed her grudge against her sister, Dazzler. She hired Arcade and Klaw to assassinate her, and after they failed confronted her directly. Mortis lost her fight with her sister and ended up in the protective care of the X-Men, despite Cyclops’s objections. [Dazzler One-Shot]
Members
Blink (Clarice Ferguson)
First appearance: Uncanny X-Men #317
All Inner Circle appearances: X-Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Necrosha, X-Force (3rd series) #11, 21-25
Powers: manifests spatial-shearing ability as teleportation fields that displace objects upon contact, either teleporting them away or disrupting them on a molecular level
Fact: Though she may not even know it herself, Blink is a member of Clan Akkaba, Apocalypse’s descendents.
Eli Bard (Eliphas)
First appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #1
Last appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #24
All Inner Circle appearances: X-Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Necrosha, X-Force (3rd series) #11, 18, 21-24
Powers: cursed by Selene with a vampire-like affliction, giving him immortality, inhuman strength, endurance, reflexes, and resilience, the power to transform into mist, and a second monstrous visage with fangs he uses to feed off of other beings; bonded with the alien Technarch, enabling him to produce the techno-organic virus to reanimate any amount of recovered dead tissue into a fully-formed person, bound to his will and virtually impossible to kill
Fact: Eliphas absorbed the Technarch entity Magus into his body in X-Force (3rd series) #6, which he stored in his right forearm. Although Bard was killed by Selene, his T/O-infected forearm remained intact after his death.
Mortis (Lois London)
First appearance: Dazzler (1st series) #22
All Inner Circle appearances: X-Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Necrosha, X-Men: Legacy #231, X-Force (3rd series) #21-25
Powers: generate highly-destructive energy from her hands that, through molecular transformation, can disintegrate inorganic matter or cause living things to disperse their life-energies, either causing temporary bouts of pain and weakness or instant death
Fact: Mortis is Dazzler’s half-sister. They share the same mother.
Senyaka (Suvik Senyaka)
First appearance: Uncanny X-Men #300
Last appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #25
All Inner Circle appearances: X-Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Necrosha, X-Men: Legacy #231, X-Force (3rd series) #21-25
Powers: drains life-force from other beings upon physical contact, increasing his natural strength, endurance, reflexes, and recuperative abilities, while enabling him to form psionic whips out of bio-electric energy that can channel his life-absorbing ability, disrupt nerve centers to cause pain and paralysis, and sear into the flesh of his victims
Facts: Senyaka has beaten death several times already.
Wither (Kevin Ford)
First appearance: New Mutants (2nd series) #3
Last appearance: X-Force (3rd series) #25
All Inner Circle appearances: New X-Men (2nd series) #32, X-Necrosha: The Gathering, X-Necrosha, X-Force (3rd series) #19, 21-25
Powers: possesses a death touch that destabilizes the binding forces of organic matter on contact, causing people and materials to shrivel up, become brittle, and quickly turn to ash if exposed to his touch for more than a few moments
Fact: At the time of his death, Wither was apparently infected with the same vampirism as Eli Bard.