BIOGRAPHY - Page 5
The Shadow King returned to torment his old prey, Storm, after learning of her marriage to King T’Challa of Wakanda, the Black Panther. Ororo divided her time between her responsibilities as queen and as a member of the X-Men in San Francisco, a schism which Farouk found delightful to exploit. The Russian-Wakandan mutant Nezhno had been Storm’s student at the Institute and was long an outcast in Wakanda due to his “impure” lineage. The Shadow King stirred Nezhno’s feelings of rejection into a murderous rage, leading him to kill a venerated spirit shaman named 
B’Chaku. Farouk deliberately left clues which made Storm suspicious enough to release Nezhno from custody, playing into the King’s hands. Having possessed the Black Panther as well, Farouk had T’Challa denounce his queen for siding with her fellow mutant and half breed against the values of Wakanda. Storm and Nezhno were now on the run from the Black Panther, Dora Milaje and the Wakandan military.
As Ororo fought to survive, the Shadow King taunted her with knowledge of another pawn. Farouk slithered into the mind of Cyclops and convinced Scott that Emma Frost had turned against him and the X-Men, and now she was mind controlling the team to violate Xavier’s dream. The Shadow King left Storm to decide whether to stay in Wakanda and free T’Challa from his clutches, or return to America and protect her team from their founding member. Ororo used a storm to delay Cyclops while she communed with the Panther Goddess. Ororo gained the favor of Bast and proved herself to the Wakandans as a legitimate ruler. With T’Challa now in protective 
custody until his mind could be cleared, she could focus on Scott. The Shadow King toyed with the X-Men, even taunting his old host Karma when she recognized his psi-signature. After wearing Storm down with several X-Men brought under his control, Farouk believed her weak enough to be possessed as well. This was his mistake, for Ororo and Bast had bonded, and the Shadow King was ambushed by a true deity hiding in Storm’s mind. The Panther Goddess ripped apart Farouk’s astral presence, swallowing his avatar. [X-Men: Worlds Apart #1-4]
When next he appeared, the Shadow King amused himself by attacking a top-secret nuclear facility specializing in “stealth nukes.” His true goal was to draw out Elizabeth Braddock and her X-Force squad so he could seek revenge on Psylocke for his one-time imprisonment. Once Psylocke was distracted in psychic conflict with him, Farouk seized the minds of Deadpool, Wolverine and Archangel (along with the military base’s personnel) to launch the nukes for his sadistic pleasure. Only Fantomex’s psi-shielded mask kept him free to defend Elizabeth’s body while her astral form warred with the Shadow King. However, Farouk faced the unexpected when 
he learned Psylocke was keeping Archangel’s Horseman personality psychically contained as he once was. If he thought releasing Death would net him an ally, he was wrong – Archangel’s mental strength forcibly expelled Farouk from his mind. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #8] The Shadow King was left with a rather petty revenge when he turned over video footage from the base to a newspaper, showing Archangel’s murder of an officer. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #10]
[Note: Above, the Shadow King seemingly appeared in the physical flesh of Amahl Farouk for the first time since his original encounter with Charles Xavier back in Cairo. The following stories would reveal this wasn’t actually Farouk’s body, but a psychic construct shaped by his telepathy to seem real.]
Farouk changed tactics and sought out allies to help him target Psylocke and X-Force. A new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants formed with Shadow King’s support, led by Daken, Sabretooth and Mystique. Many Brotherhood members had a personal hatred for Wolverine, or opposed his hypocrisy for leading a “good guy” team of assassins and murderers. Farouk plucked from X-Force’s minds information about the first murder of the child clone Apocalypse, then Fantomex raising a second Apocalypse clone in a wholesome virtual family inside The World. The Brotherhood planned to kidnap “Evan,” aka Genesis, reveal X-Force’s lies about his origins, and provoke him into unleashing his potential as Apocalypse to kill Wolverine and his crew. Farouk would then take advantage of Evan’s troubled mind and turn him against the other “heroes,” while broadcasting to everyone that this was all X-Force’s fault.
As the Brotherhood prepared to strike, they acquired programmable assassins of their own from the White Sky facility. The Omega Clan were a trio of artificial siblings partially cloned from the late Omega Red and imprinted with the belief that X-Force murdered their parents when they were young, spurring them into a lifetime of justifiable (if totally fabricated) hatred. The Shadow King easily took advantage of White Sky’s initial programming and helped Omega Red, Omega Black 
and Omega White discover new “suppressed” memories whenever convenient to steer them in the Brotherhood’s cause.
Once the Brotherhood set in motion, Evan was kidnapped and Farouk had the opportunity to psychically torture Psylocke with her accumulated guilt over X-Force’s series of murders. Fantomex sacrificed his life for Elizabeth to escape in EVA, only for the unstable Ultimaton to kill Gateway and go nuclear inside Cavern-X. The Shadow King and the Brotherhood stripped away Evan’s self-delusions while waiting for word over whether X-Force survived the blast.
Psylocke and the others sought them out, and soon Elizabeth and Farouk faced each other in psychic combat yet again. Psylocke barely escaped the conflict but sought a different tactic. Omega White was a being of psychic energy maintained by a containment suit. Psylocke wiped his artificial personality clean to “make room” for the Shadow King. By puppeteering Omega White, she used his ability to absorb psychic energy and consumed Farouk entirely into the suit, 
which now served as his cage. Without an active consciousness in the vessel to manipulate, the Shadow King now rested in a cell with no doors, helplessly trapped in the empty shell of Omega White. For added measures, Elizabeth would later deposit the suit to her brother’s care on Otherworld, hoping the Shadow King could be contained indefinitely. [Uncanny X-Force (1st series) #25-35]
[Note: In Uncanny X-Force, Mystique was adamant about killing the Shadow King once his usefulness had ended for “what he did to Destiny.” Mystique could be blaming Farouk’s influence on Muir Island for Legion’s murder of Destiny, although it isn’t clear.]
Somehow, the Shadow King’s host ended up in a tomb in the West China Desert. The slaver Tullamore Voge sent his Crimson Pirates to retrieve it. Their captain Killian directed Bloody Bess to make psychic contact, a costly mistake. This telepathic pathway allowed the Shadow King to escape, possessing Killian, Broadside and the Sea Dogs. Bess recently developed affection for the X-Man Nightcrawler after crossing swords with him and sent a telepathic cry for help. Nightcrawler’s Bamfs brought him quickly to China, with the other X-Men pursuing their member’s mysterious disappearance. Unfortunately, by the time Nightcrawler realized whom they were 
facing, it was too late to warn the X-Men. The Shadow King claimed many puppets, including his old foe Storm and the psychics Psylocke and Rachel Grey. With Nightcrawler’s help, Bloody Bess freed Betsy’s mind and they combined their telepathic strength to empower Kurt’s astral form against the Shadow King. With their help, he overcame the fiend and Bloody Bess consigned the Shadow King back into his host. [Nightcrawler (4th series) #8-10]
[Note: No explanation was given for how the Shadow King got from imprisonment on Otherworld to a vault in China. His host was also erroneously depicted as Omega Black instead of as Omega White.]
No cage could hold the Shadow King forever, but he found new avenues to entertain himself. When Charles Xavier was killed in a Dark Phoenix event, Farouk would not allow his greatest opponent to pass on unnoticed. Instead, the Shadow King captured Xavier’s psyche as his body died and held it in the astral plane for a final battle. This battle raged for centuries of relative time in the realm of the mind, as two immense psychics battered each other with raw power, emotion, concepts, stories and more. The Shadow King indulged himself with endless warfare against his oldest foe, but always kept Xavier chained with a portion of his power, unable to reach out to others or seek any aid. In time, it seemed that Xavier gave up any hope of escape and committed his attention to their games.
In order to keep their conflict lively, Xavier subtly guided Farouk into a game involved the real 
world. A series of attacks on psychics around the world slowly built until Psylocke was the target of a brief takeover by the Shadow King. This alerted her to the threat and she guided a group of X-Men into the astral plane to stop him from causing further harm. Instead, they became the pieces Farouk and Xavier used against each other in this final game. The Shadow King cheated the rules of their game by secretly bolstering his power with the dispersed essence of the reality-altering mutant Proteus. However, Xavier cheated as well by ensuring select X-Men responded to Psylocke’s call for help, creating a team which would help him beat the Shadow King once and for all.
With Logan, Rogue, Gambit, Fantomex and Mystique in the astral plane, Xavier slowly positioned them so that some would fall to Farouk’s manipulations. Once they did, Logan and Gambit were possessed by the Shadow King back in the waking world and lashed out at their remaining teammates Psylocke, Archangel and Bishop. The Shadow King also used his vessels to spread Proteus’ psychic energy like a virus, building a web network of minds to strengthen himself further. However, this also distracted him, allowing Xavier to privately commune with the other X-Men without Farouk noticing. When Rogue, Fantomex and Mystique struck the Shadow King in his lair, 
the surprise of having to defend his “self” was one distraction too many. Something had to give, such as those psychic chains with which he had restrained Charles Xavier for relative centuries. Chains which Xavier had long stopped testing. Chains which were obliterated in a psychic onslaught as Xavier broke free. With a single stroke of his astral sword, Professor X told the Shadow King this had never been a game to him. The fight was over. [Astonishing X-Men (4th series) #1-6]
Xavier’s mind returned to Earth through the body of Fantomex, rechristening himself as merely “X.” This team of X-Men busied themselves dealing with the return of Proteus, now free of Shadow King’s control. Proteus attempted to create a garden of unstable reality as an extension of his powers, and so X and Psylocke combined their abilities to fight it. They tapped into the network of psychics the Shadow King previously attacked through… which was apparently what Farouk wanted all along. The Shadow King had hidden away inside X and emerged onto the physical plane, infused with the power of Proteus and the psychic network with vast energies at his control, planning to usher in the “Mindkiller Apocalypse.” Whatever his full plan was, though, the Shadow King failed to account for that psychic network being used against him. X quickly recovered and joined with Psylocke to turn the full power of the accumulated psychic minds of Earth against Farouk, destroying his physical form and sending him back to the astral plane. [Astonishing X-Men (4th series) #11-12]