Marvel Database
Register
Advertisement

History

Martian Conquest[]

The war between the Martians and humans lasted for years, and the Martians never attempted to communicate with the humans. No one on the human side were ever able to figure out the reason for the war. The Martians disguised their atmosphere entry as a shower of meteors which contained tripods which were nearly invulnerable to conventional weapons.

Earth's military were forced to deploy nuclear weapons against the Martians. Who took control of the guidance systems and directed them toward Earth's military forces. Despite this the world's military leaders continued to use nukes, and when that failed to stop the Martians they resorted to using chemical and biological agents. Though they could be beaten, it took valiant sacrifices to do so. Earth's population was decimated by the plagues and radioactive fallout unleashed by the use of humanity's WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Eventually all organized resistance was crushed by the Martians.[1]

Martian Rule[]

Earth is ruled by the Martians and their servants. It is a world in which humans are slaves and those who are not struggle to find shelter and/or food. Where the survivors have to deal with disease and radiation sickness. Martian Hunter-Slaves (Keeper's Men) are equipped with energy weapons (pulse sidearms) which have tracking devices implanted and breathing mask/helmets. They move around in smaller versions of the armored tripods.[1] Martians speak to their Keepers through human intermediaries known as Speakers who they communicate with telepathically.[2]

The Martians believe in punishing transgressions and rewarding good behavior. Their law enforcers are the genetically engineered psychics known as the Sirens, all of whom are female. Gladiatorial games are managed by the Keepers in which children are raised and trained to fight in the arena. Sirens reward victory and champions with undreamed of pleasures. They are also able to bind the minds of those who resist.[1]

Martians have maintained their power by limiting contact with humans. Denying their science and language to even their most loyal Keepers. The Martians permit only the most loyal of their Keepers to see them in the flesh. Weapons and technology given to the humans are sealed units which come with built-in status monitors and tracking devices. There are bounty hunters working for the Martians, and mutates in service to them. Martians experiment and discard on a whim, creating human hybrids (with animal and/or plant DNA). They've also created humans with super powers (e.g. telepaths and pyrokinetics).[3]

Across the Earth are bands and communities of humans, struggling to survive. Trying to avoid the notices of the Martians. They live in a world with monsters (created and abandoned by the Martians), some of them Chimera-like. Bandits and marauders exploit and terrorize the human communities. Spreading across the world is a red weed, of alien origin.[4][5]

Martian Agenda[]

The Martians are an ancient race, millions of years old, before life emerged on Earth.[2] Their homeworld was an aquatic world, where both the water and their civilization was under ice. It was a dying world, and there was no hope for the future.[4]

Some wanted to migrate to Earth but the majority refused to steal humanity's future. Millennia passed and conditions rapidly worsened on their homeworld, while mankind was destroying Earth (pollution). They decided to rescue the valuable and rare resource that was Earth before mankind destroyed its potential, simultaneously relocating their kind to Earth from a dying homeworld.[2]

The Martians themselves are a dying race which is few in numbers compared to humans. They are not a united race, though they joined forces in their conquest of Earth. Afterwards they broke up into independent groups, each with its own agenda. They operate from multi-story mobile amphibious citadels and have little to no contact with each other.[3] To study mankind's warring nature, they created the Arena. From behind the safety of glass walls (submerged in water), the Martians watch gladiatorial fights.[2]

Killraven[]

In this reality, Killraven (a gladiator of the Spartan school) escapes with his comrades the Freemen - M'Shulla, Carmilla, Old Skull, and Hawk, from a facility in Chicago. In New York, the band of Freemen encounter a young boy named John, whose mother had just been slain by slave-hunters while they were foraging for food. He escorts the boy back to a hidden bunker within New York. When the band is tracked down by more hunter killers, the only other survivor, nicknamed "Gramps", asks Killraven to look after the boy. The band departs via the bunker's escape bullet train system, and Gramps gives his life to activate a self-destruct sequence that takes out the bunker, and most of New York.

The Freemen are quickly captured by Mint Julep and her band of bounty hunters, who claim to only be working for the Martians until they can arrange to overthrow them (and seize power for themselves, of course) In the course of escaping and freeing his companions, Killraven also frees Volcana Ash, a woman with pyrokinetic powers. Mint Julep manages to recapture Volcana (her primary target) and escape, and Killraven vows to free the captivating woman who had in turn helped free them.

The group soon arrives in the area of old Washington, D.C., where they expose and overthrow a warlord claiming to be Lucifer and his demons. Killraven, M'Shulla, and Carmilla follow one of the serfs who had toiled under Lucifer to a cave entrance, where they encounter and mortally wound Cerberus, a massive beast formed from multiple monsters and a disobedient Keeper. The Keeper uses his dying breath to tell them the hidden facility is a place to experiment on mutates, and confirms that Mint Julep has been there. Killraven finds Mint Julep, and coerces her into helping him find and free Volcana. When this brings the entire facility's security force down on them, he also forces her to free all the mutates, who attack the Martians and their servants. Mint Julep escaped, but the band gained several Martian weapons and the aid of "Grok" a powerful but friendly mutate.

As more and more Freemen arrive every day to follow the heroic Killraven, the Keepers are put under pressure to find the increasingly troublesome rebel. Killraven manages to resist the temptations of nine psi-linked Sirens, while his Freemen use the captured weapons to ambush the Martian strike force sent to destroy the settlement. Among the wreckage John finds a computer indicating the location of a Martian citadel, which could taken out with one well-placed bomb in the armory. On the mission to destroy the citadel, Killraven is betrayed, first by Hawk, who takes out Volcana and M'Shulla before Killraven knocks him out, then by Grok, who proved more intelligent than he let on. Killraven later killed Grok.[citation needed]

See Also

Links and References

References

Advertisement