| Thanos | |
|---|---|
 The Mad Titan | |
|
Birth |
Centuries ago |
|
Aliases |
Son of Alars Prophet The Mad Titan The Survivor The Great Titan Dark Lord The Most Powerful Being in the Universe Masterlord Overmaster He who is Worthy |
|
Affiliations |
Titan (Formerly) Himself Death Chitauri |
|
Age |
Unknown |
|
Powers |
Enhanced Physicality Master of the Mystic Arts |
Thanos is a powerful Titan warlord. Supposedly the last of his kind, he is the only survivor of a planet-wide extinction event and currently rules over a distant region of space, commanding two massive armies: the Chitauri, and the Outriders. He also has a small group of followers known as the Black Order. His main objective is to bring stability to the universe by harnessing the combined might of the six Infinity Stones.
History[]
Early Life[]
Thanos, son of Alars, was born as one of the Titans, a race of powerful, god-like beings that evolved on a planet with which they shared their name. Thanos was born misshapen, bearing a physical mutation that left him marked as an anomaly among his people, which therefore left him an outcast.
Approach of the Cataclysm[]
Despite his exile, Thanos managed to get by as a farmer, providing for the good of his people. This gave him a lot of time to think, helping him become a deeply philosophical dreamer and enabling him to see the flaws in Titan's society as well as predict that some disaster might come about because of it. Ultimately, this became a reality when the people of Titan were faced with an immense problem: overpopulation. The government acted slowly, only implementing restrictions on making offspring late in the game, quickly causing major problems as hordes of families were forced to cram together in living spaces. Worse, the planet simultaneously suffered from pollution as well as a severe low in reserves for resources. This cataclysm brought all of Titan's best minds together in a desperate attempt to figure out how to solve the problem and enable the survival of their species. Thanos himself pondered a way to save his world, but was unable to procure an answer.
A Prophecy of Doom[]
One night, Thanos was visited in a dream by the cosmic entity, Death. She showed him a vision of the future, allowing him to see not just his world but others as well, that would all suffer the same fate; concluding with the end of the universe via "Heat Death." Death explained that this fate was unavoidable, as the other cosmic powers disregarded such a fate as fantasy and believed the universe would perservere as it had done so before. She spoke of a great potential in Thanos, having chosen him among all others in the universe for his calculating mind and careful analysis of power and resources, believing him to also one day become a charismatic leader and great warrior. More than these, she saw in him the singular strength and intelligence necessary to wield ultimate power.
Death offered Thanos an ultimatum; watch the universe, starting with his homeworld, cease to exist, or embark on a quest to save it with a power that would place him above all the cosmic entities and gods of the universe, in order to correct the course that the universe was currently heading and ensure that it would live on throughout eternity. The quest required him to acquire the fabled "Infinity Stones," objects of immeasurable power that were scattered across the universe and were almost impossible to find. If he should succeed, the quest would reward him with godhood and governance over all of creation, and be made as an equal to Death, who offered her love to him for inspiration.
Thanos, doubting his importance and selection to save everything, believed himself unworthy of such a great cause, and would not abandon his people in the time of their greatest need to find these stones; additionally, he would not be her loving companion, as his heart already belonged to his wife and child. Believing that Death was in ultimate command of the fate of his people, Thanos made an offering of half of the populace in order to save the rest, dismissing the notion that the rest of the universe was at risk.
Death, dissatisfied, refused to accept his offer, claiming that the fate of the universe was more important than sparing half of his world. Thanos then bid Death to leave him and his people alone; in response, she stated that his defiance would doom his people, and the rest of the universe to follow, his selfish refusal to go on the quest therefore making him responsible for the deaths of everyone he has ever loved, including his family; and that he would be cursed to remain alive, the weight of his actions to burden him. In furious anger, Thanos cast her from his farm and cursed her name, insulted at the seeming threat that she had made.
Having denied his fate, however, Thanos doomed his people to the wrath of Death, who would come to claim them all.
The Death of Titan[]
Having sealed the fate of his world, Thanos could only watch as the apocalypse approached closer and closer. The government acted slowly, only implementing restrictions on making offspring late in the game, quickly causing major problems as hordes of families were forced to cram together in living spaces. Worse, the planet simultaneously suffered from pollution as well as a severe low in reserves for resources.
Thanos, in desperation, came before the leading council of Titan with an audience of all its people, proposing the offering he made to Death: sacrifice half of the population, selecting people at random from the rich and the poor, the wise and the slow of mind, the young and the old, to help restore balance in the planet's ability to sustain life. He was quickly turned away, believed to have gone insane, though he refused to leave the chamber and tried to strike fear into the populace, telling them that it was the only way they would survive and that everyone would die if they did not go along with it. With this fury and fearsome display, he inadvertantly cast himself from the love and affection of his family and friends, and branded himself a madman before his people. For this, he was forever exiled from his home, and sent to live the rest of his days in isolation, alone on Titan's barren moon. Ultimately, the doomed fate of Titan was proven to be set in stone as Death made her claim on all those that lived: the planet was completely depleted of all its resources and was ravaged by the aftermath of overpopulation. A massive war was fought, with mass-effect weapons being used to such an extent that the entire planet's life was completely wiped out. Thanos was left as the only Titan remaining in the universe.
Stranded on Titan's moon, devastated from his fate, Thanos was once again visited, though this time by an emissary of Death instead of Death herself. The emissary revealed that Death was ultimately responsible for the end of his planet, though the rest of the universe was still doomed beyond her control. She would give the last Titan one final chance to change his ways, to go on the quest and save the universe from its annihilation. With a heavy heart and shattered resolve, Thanos accepted Death's quest, and set out on his journey to locate the Infinity Stones after escaping his exile. He would raise himself upon a mantle of power like no other, in order to save the universe from its doom and properly govern it afterwards.
Raising an Empire[]
Setting out with nothing to his name, Thanos scoured the universe for the Infinity Stones. His journey began with his arrival at Sakarr, where he became a gladitorial warrior and rose to be feared as the planet's Champion. Gathering a band of followers, he broke them free of their imprisonment and interrogated the figurehead for knowledge on the Infinity Stones. However, he was unable to extract any information, so the Titan killed the leader and escaped the planet with his band of gladiators.
Earning the loyalty of the warriors that escaped with him, Thanos began conquering world after world, acquiring their armies, resources, territory, and servitude. Few of these worlds became fanatical worshippers, while most of them feared his name, reluctantly pledging their allegiance to escape death. Though he was a tyranical ruler, his tight fist of control ensured their ongoing survival; so long as they remain loyal, Thanos protected them from outside invasion and stabilized their societies, beginning with a general purge of half of their population and reorganized their resources and people afterward. In time, a number of worlds that feared him came to give him a begrudging respect, even looking up to him as a wise king and appreciative of his arrival.
With each conquered world, Thanos selected an individual that stood out to him, chosen to serve right by his side in a group that named themselves the Black Order. Thanos made them his lieutenants, helping to inspire and reward his people when they served him or punish the disloyal and instill fear and terror in the rest to serve as an example. More importantly, they were used to help him find the Infinity Stones.
Infinity Quest: The Mind Stone[]
After years of searching, Thanos finally came upon a planet that had concrete evidence for the location of one of the Infinity Stones: knowledge of a hive world that occasionally raided nearby planets, seemingly directed by one collective mind. Thus, Thanos set out with his Black Order, believing that they had finally located one of the Infinity Stones.
Travelling to the Hive World with the Black Order, Thanos scoured its barren landscape and had one of its members, Supergiant, telepathically search for the Stone. She felt a strong presence somewhere deep in the planet, but urged caution as they were not alone, and vastly outnumbered. As they proceeded, Thanos and his children were assailed by the native creatures on the planet, the feared raiders that were spoken about: the Chitauri.
Though the Chitauri had the advantage in numbers and a technological edge, Thanos and the Black Order fended them off, using their various abilities and skills to push through the defense and slay scores of them while moving in, finding a large cave enterance leading underground that Supergiant detected incredible power within. As they continued on, fighting more and more Chitauri, Supergiant became more and more unstable, the proximity to the power source slowly overwhelming her mind and causing severe psychic backlash and agonizing pain; however, fearing Thanos' wrath, especially reminded from grimacing looks each time she faltered, Supergiant lead on, hesitant to suggest retreat. The other members of the Order were also hesitant to fall back despite their situation.
Finally, after penetrating a concentrated defensive formation and destroying a Leviathan, Thanos and the Black Order succeeded in reaching the Hive Center. Here, Supergiant immediately collapsed, screaming in terrible pain at such close proximity to the source of power, which they quickly located in the center of the planet's chamber upon a pedistal: a glowing gem, which seemed oddly sentient to all of them even though not all of them were psychic. The Chitauri momentarily ceased the fight, and Supergiant was spared her pain as they were confronted by an emissary of the stone. The emissary claimed they made a great mistake in making an enemy of the Chitauri and setting foot on the planet, though congratulated them on making it to the center of their hive, revealing none had ever defeated the Chitauri before. Supergiant pointed out that the emissary did not seem to be himself, suggesting that he was mentally possessed by the object of power. She was correct, as the emissary explained he and all the Chitauri were mere pawns of the object. For earning the object's respect in getting past the Chitauri defense, the emissary offered them safe passage off the planet to keep their lives, but demanded a price in return: leave the psion behind, as it wished to keep her for the hive.
Afraid, Supergiant begged Thanos to protect her and not let her be taken by the hive, fearing its immense power. Thanos, calculating that her change of mind in what she feared instead of him, realized that this object must indeed have been one of the Infinity Stones. He offered the emissary an escape from the stone's dominance, promising them mental freedom if they stood aside and let him take it for his own purposes. Insulted by this, the emissary proclaimed the stone as the dominant mind of all the universe, and for his defiance and arrogance would extract the price of death of him and the other members of the Order while claiming Supergiant for the Chitauri.
Thanos and the Order were then attacked by the Chitauri again, and the two sides did battle once more. The emissary watched Supergiant as she fought, enthralled by her psychic power and desiring to add it to its own. When Thanos finally created an opening in the defense and moved closer to the stone, it lashed out on them all in defense, sending them visions of their pasts and forcing them to relive something terrible. For Thanos, he was reminded of his failure on Titan and was momentarily stunned. With this, the stone attacked Supergiant with its power, using its influence to feed off her intelligence and dominate her mind, her screams filling the chamber as her mind was erased.
Quickly recovering from his vision to the stone's surprise, Thanos approached the stone and reminded it that he had come to claim it for himself. The stone struggled to possess Supergiant's fighting mind, and tried to first use her to demoralize him with the sound of her voice, then fight him off with her psionic power, but still he came, batting his adopted daughter to the side. The stone made one final attempt to protect itself, hurling visions of his past and possible futures to get him to stop; however, Thanos powered through with his immense will, and finally ripped the stone from its pedistal.
The Titan was immediately struck with power and mental energy, flooding him with vast knowledge and memory. For a moment, the Titan's mind was elsewhere, being swept with vast information on the universe, including the Infinity Stones. He learned each of their aspects, finding out that the one he held in his hand was the Mind Stone, and learned clues as to the locations of the other Stones. Returning to his senses a minute later, Thanos observed the Chitauri before him, who had all stopped in their tracks.
The emissary, now free of the stone's direct influence, gazed at Thanos, who held the defeated stone in his hand. He revealed that the Chitauri would serve him, as they were given their mental capacities by the stone which now obeyed him. Being given his own freedom from the stone's dominion, the emissary thanked the Titan and pledged his servitude to him, offering to help him on his quest of power.
Thanos, victorious, added the Chitauri to his forces and made them his primary army. Though the Black Order had lost Supergiant, Thanos believed it a worthy sacrifice and was barely moved by the loss. He made the emissary his second hand, a speaker to those deemed too lowly to speak to him directly or serve as a mediator in conversations with others; the emissary came to be known among Thanos' contacts as "The Other." To protect the Mind Stone from others, Thanos had it placed within a scepter that allowed him safer use of the stone's power while dulling its sentience, inhibiting its memories and ability to fight his dominance while in his ownership.
Daughters of Thanos[]
One of the worlds Thanos conquered was Zen-Whoberi. When exterminating a significant portion of the Zehoberei people in retaliation for not pledging loyalty to him, Thanos's attention was caught by a young Zehoberei named Gamora. Commenting that she had "spunk", Thanos took her aside as his Chitauri army began the massacre, keeping her distracted by presenting a special knife to her as a gift. Thanos adopted Gamora as his daughter, training her to become the deadliest in the galaxy, and secretly growing to genuinely care about her. He also massacred a Luphomoid family to raise Nebula, who would be another devoted and deadly assassin. Usually, when Nebula lost in a duel against Gamora, Thanos removed a body part from her, which according to him was to make her stronger than Gamora.
Lead on the Orb[]
Through many years of searching, Thanos discovered a lead on the Orb's location, sending Nebula and Gamora to the Cloud Tombs of Praxius under Korath's command. Nebula fell victim to a trap during the mission, and Thanos, not one to tolerate failure, forbade Gamora from rescuing her. Nebula was forced to amputate her own arm in order to escape. The Orb was never recovered, but Thanos let the failure pass and resumed his search.
Personality[]
Once, Thanos had a deep and peaceful care for all things living. Even though he was shunned by his own people for a hideous mutation he bore, he loved them unconditionally and desperately sought to save them, going as far as to propose wiping out half of his kind so the other half may survive. His plan for saving his homeworld was rejected and thus lead to the fall of his race. Though his suggestion was spurred by the entity of Death's intervention, Thanos still tried to apply it so that his people could prevail. This incident turned him into the being he is now today, with his desire to exterminate a sufficient portion of the universe to return balance between life and death, and spare those that live from the fate of universal calamity. This is why Thanos truly believed his cause for killing off portions of civilizations at random on all planets to be a righteous cause, seeing himself a justified soul who is doing what is necessary to save all the civilizations of the universe, so they do not face the same tragedy as his home planet. For those that he spares, he expects absolute loyalty and the following of strict rules and regulations to ensure that they do not go out of balance again, promising that under his system they will prosper. There appears to be evidence to support this claim, as the people on Gamora's home planet do not suffer from environmental hazards, global hunger or any other form of violence now that they've accepted their fate. Thanos is seen as the ultimate personification of sadism, cruelty, megalomania, infinite destruction, death, power, and madness, with his search for the Infinity Stones noted by others as his plot to gain dominion over all the civilizations in the universe. He is extremely intimidating and unforgiving of failures. The Titan has little to no regard for his followers, showing absolutely no empathy for Nebula after her failure to retrieve the Orb. He is known to remain calm in the wake of a potential defeat, as he did while facing the Chitauri.
He is extremely confident, to the point of borderline arrogance and being almost impossible to intimidate. When he held his first Infinity Stone in his hand, Thanos smiled at his newfound power despite having an entire army surrounding him and ready to brutally murder him. Thanos is also manipulative and mistrustful, sending his daughters to retrieve the Orb for him and not telling them that it contained an Infinity Stone. He is surprisingly patient, as he keeps a low profile, lurking in the shadows and making others do his work for him, even after centuries of failure. However, his patience has limits and when it is pushed to the edge, he is fully willing to take action when necessary.
While Thanos was able to inspire absolute loyalty into his Black Order children, he is not completely flawless in his ability to fake parental affection, as he is despised by his own "daughters," Gamora and Nebula. Raising them in a brutal way, Thanos would pit them against each other in the hope that Nebula would beat Gamora; however, when Nebula lost, he would remove parts of her in order to make her stronger, taking her apart piece by piece and replacing her with artificial limbs and organs so she would be able to defeat her sister. He proves that he has absolutely no care for Nebula.
However, while he outwardly shows simple favor for Gamora and nothing more, Thanos is not completely unable to love, as is it seen that he deeply cares for her as his own child. When he first met her, he quickly took an intrest in her and cared for her enough to shield her from seeing the massacre of her people as well as sparing her from the rebellious portion of the Zehobereis that he killed, even though she belonged to them.
Thanos occasionally demonstrates a dark sense of sarcastic humor and is able to remain calm and unfazed in situations that would frighten and shock most others, as he remained fully composed even as the Chitauri army prepared to kill him. Thanos has also shown himself to be surprisingly honorable. He does not go back on the end of the deal he made with others and would honor them even when angered; he extends this even to his enemies, if they prove worthy of his honor.
Powers/Abilities[]
Thanos is terrifyingly powerful, certainly among the most powerful beings in the universe. He is able to easily intimidate and overpower other formidable beings. Ruling over the Chitauri army unchallenged, Thanos proves capable of scaring most planets into his servitude without any demonstration of his might whatsoever; most of his sentient subjects believe him to be the most powerful being in the universe. Neither Gamora nor Nebula believe that anyone or anything could possibly kill him. Thanos's power is so great that he can easily handle the power of the Infinity Stones, which speaks for his immense power as very few could even survive touching one.
Physical Traits[]
- Super Strength: Sufficient to overpower most opponents he comes across, whether they be single, super-strong muscle or hordes of smaller, swarming creatures. Is also able to lift and handle immensely heavy objects with ease.
- Super Speed: Despite his massive size, weight, and accompanying bulk, Thanos proves to be fast enough to keep up with smaller creatures that would be expected to outpace him.
- Super Durability: Thanos can tank almost any attack thrown at him, be they punches or kicks, stabs or slashes, or blasts from firearms or other forms of weapons or displays of power.
- Super Endurance: To date, there has not been a single foe that has lasted longer than Thanos in a fight with the Titan. He is able to endure an extreme amount of punishment and expenditure of energy.
- Super reflexes: To add on to his speed, Thanos is highly reactive, easily able to track events taking place and acting accordingly. This usually translates as him having an incredibly fast reaction time.
- Super regeneration: There isn't much that can actually injure Thanos or even cause him pain. However, Thanos has been hurt in the past, though he has demonstrated a sufficient healing factor to be able to walk it off within mere moments of receiving the injury.
- Immortality: As a member of the race of Titans, Thanos does not age and could theoretically live forever, provided that he isn't killed.
Combative Training[]
Thanos is a highly accomplished warrior in almost any form of combat. Able to last in a situation with a melee weapon, firearm, or just his bare hands and feet, the Titan can usually defeat any opponent he comes across even if they have superior armor and weapons.
Training in the Mystic Arts[]
Thanos has dabbled in the Mystic Arts, enough to provide him with a number of magical powers. This provides him insight on situations, artifacts, and enemies he comes across from the Mystical sense.
Rage[]
Though usually calm and composed in a fight, there is the potential of greatly angering Thanos. When this happens, the Mad Titan becomes several times more dangerous, as all of his physical traits receive a huge boost in power and his Mystic spells also get enhanced, though it can have a tendancy to go wild.
Intelligence[]
Thanos possessed an incredibly gifted mind even before acquiring the Mind Stone. While a mere farmer, the Titan grew deeply philosophical and gained an understanding of his society, its people, his homeworld, and the universe around him and how it all fit together. Over time, this has developed alongside his becoming a warrior and conquerer, shaping his mind to incredible capabilities in tactical planning. He is a master strategist and is considered a genius by all who follow him, having created a number of advanced technologies himself.
Equipment[]
Armor[]
Thanos's armor is a traditional warrior's outfit from his homeplanet of Titan. Made of alien metallic alloys that is very strong and resilient to most forms of damage, the armor provides a physical layer of defense though offers no other benifits.
Throne[]
Thanos's throne is an elaborately crafted chair which he uses to observe his empire and ponder his deep thoughts. It offers him access to services and resources by a series of commands on the arms, and provides a series of defenses such as energy shielding, weapons, and an armored cocoon mode. Though it appears solidly attached to the platform floor beneath it, the chair can disengage and hover over the ground, capable of propelling its occupant through space while protecting them from the vaccum, particles, radiation, etc..
Starship[]
Thanos's vessel, Sanctuary II, is a massive spacecraft capable of housing an immensely large force of soldiers within while providing living spaces for its passengers and crew. It has enough resources to last its occupants for years, is capable of superluminal travel, and is outfitted with various weapons and defenses in the event of an attack.