CXXXIV
The Elsewhere Compendium
I hope you're sitting comfortably, because it's time for…
The Elsewhere Compendium!
A recap which is pretty much a book onto itself.
There's a lot that has gone on over the past six months in the previous one hundred thirty-three chapters, so it's a good time to recount the events that have led us here.
Our story began a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
It did actually. Ten billion years ago in fact. On the lovely planet of Maltus.
That was when the very first sentient life forms in the entire DC Universe came into being. As it was for the beginnings of all sentient life, these Maltusians struggled, fought, survived disasters natural and otherwise, overpopulated their planet, over consumed, and eventually established balance and order on their home world.
Millions of years after that, these blue-skinned Maltusians discovered the secret to immortality and devoted themselves to larger, nobler causes. Having also developed interstellar space flight and constantly discovering new intelligent life forms, these immortal aliens decreed themselves the 'Guardians of the Universe' to protect and assist other civilizations.
To achieve this goal, the Guardians developed and constructed the Manhunters... Artificially intelligent robots who were programmed to maintain law and order throughout the Universe. These Manhunters acted as an interstellar police force, protecting life from galactic threats and preserving peace and order among the worlds.
And all was well.
Order was maintained throughout the Universe… until the time of Ragnarök, when the Old Gods waged war against one another, destroying themselves and the worlds of mortals as well. Programmed to maintain order, the millions of Manhunter robots fought to prevent the Gods' fated war from spilling over into the mortal realm. Many Manhunters were destroyed this way, but they also managed to destroy a number of deities with their superior numbers and adaptive technology.
Offended by such a counter-attack, two Goddesses of magic (Selene and Hecate) appeared on the home world of the Manhunters and proceeded to extract a heavy toll on those who would confront the Gods. Maltus was a battleground. The Guardians would have been obliterated from this divine onslaught if not for the assistance of Metron, the God of Knowledge. Metron gave the Guardians the technology to capture and harness the magical power of the two Goddesses who were laying waste to their planet.
At the cost of legions of Manhunters, the two Goddesses were finally captured. In time, the Maltusians used their new power to also acquire Ananke, Goddess of Fate. With the advice of Metron, the Guardians then created a new interstellar police force – this time enlisting worthy sentient beings from the worlds under their protection. This was the beginning of the Green Lantern Corps.
Maltus itself had suffered too gravely, the land contaminated with bitter magic. The Guardians left the three Goddesses crucified, while they journeyed to the planet Oa – to establish a new base of operations for the Green Lantern Corps. All harnessed power of these three Gods was transferred from Maltus to the new Central Power Battery on Oa… to become the source of all Green Lantern's power.
And all was well once more.
After Ragnarök, the New Gods came into existence, elements of the Old Gods reborn. Ravaged Asgard was torn asunder and two new, separate worlds were created… The lush New Genesis ruled by wise King Izaya and his loving Queen Avia and the fiery Apokolips ruled by despotic Yuga Khan (a God of immense power) and the greedy, conniving Heggra. In his quest for ultimate power, Yuga Khan later became a victim of the Source Wall, leaving Heggra to rule alone with their offspring.
Heggra had two sons… Drax (Trigon) and Uxas (Darkseid). Drax was an outgoing, brash young God while Uxas was studious and quiet. The amorous Drax had many trysts, adventures and intrigues, while proud Uxas had loved one Goddess only… the sorceress Suli.
Suli bore Darkseid's first son Kalibak and was pregnant with twins when the adventurous and boastful Drax sought to claim the Omega Effect – a source of power for the Old Gods. A descent into the Infinity Pit to claim this ultimate power was a dangerous affair, as many Gods had already lost their lives in such an attempt.
Only days before ambitious Drax was to descend into the Pit, Uxas discovered his older brother's infidelity… with his wife Suli. Of the twins she carried, only one had been conceived by Uxas. The other was Drax's bastard child. Silently boiling with rage, Uxas plotted his brother's demise when Drax was to descend into the Infinity Pit.
On that fateful day, Uxas sabotaged and 'murdered' his brother deep in the Pit - leaving Drax for dead. Claiming the full Omega Effect for his own, Uxas emerged from the Pit as one of the most powerful of all Gods… and became Darkseid.
After the birth of her twin daughters (Zareah and Abraxas), unfaithful Suli was poisoned by Heggra, leaving Darkseid heartbroken and alone. It was at this very moment that the Dread Lord's heart turned to cold stone…
A tactician and student of history, a master plan began to hatch in Darkseid's foul mind. He first managed to barter Element-X for the secret of the Guardians' power-stealing technology with Metron. Darkseid then engineered the Paix Arcana with the Guardians and began to search the Universe for the forgotten remnants of their abandoned Manhunter robots.
Also during this time, Darkseid's mother Heggra arranged for her son's second marriage to the wilful Tigra. Although their marriage was extremely bitter, Tigra still bore Darkseid his second son, the wild Orion. Years later, heartless Darkseid had Tigra thrown into the dungeon and Orion tossed to the kennels.
While trespassing on New Genesis during a hunting expedition, Darkseid's belligerent uncle Steppenwolf accidentally killed Izaya's wife (Avia) – thus beginning the Great War. Some believe that Darkseid may have even engineered this…
New Genesis and Apokolips were now at war - with increasingly devastating consequences for both sides. After countless tragedies, Steppenwolf was slain in battle and the battle-weary Izaya discovered the Source in grief, realizing that to continue this war would be to destroy all New Gods. There could be no victor.
Peace was negotiated.
Izaya and Darkseid exchanged their sons as part of The Pact. A young Scott Free was imprisoned on Apokolips while Orion was raised on New Genesis. Loveless Darkseid had never forgiven his mother for the poisoning of his first-and-only love… In cold-blooded revenge, the Dread Lord poisoned his own mother while they celebrated the end of the war, thus claiming the throne of Apokolips for himself.
It was on that day, in the deepest catacombs of Apokolips, that the creation of Darkseid's Manhunters truly began in earnest…
(If you wanted to go get a drink, maybe a snack at this time, no one would blame you…)
Continuing on...
Since the time of his betrayal in the Infinity Pit, a near-dead Drax floated through the endless expanse of space, kept alive only by the immense hatred he bore for his brother and the vast power he had absorbed deep in the Omega Realm. For millennia, this immobile God simply floated – with the New God of Death (the Black Racer) as his sole companion.
While his brother drifted through icy space for hundreds of years, Darkseid plotted and secretly built his robot army. Meanwhile on Earth, another betrayal sparked a devastating chain of event…
One thousand years ago in Arabia, the powerful Sultan Ra's al Ghul fell in love with a beautiful and powerful mystic… Zara. She promised to turn his kingdom into an eternal Eden where their spirits would reign supreme.
Only after Zara was impregnated with his child did the powerful spiritualist discover the foul darkness that had grown inside the soul of her Ra's al Ghul. A demon had been born within him. Making the difficult decision to leave her husband behind, Zara transported the entire Kingdom of Azarath (and its people) to a new plane where they could build their Eden… without her husband.
Zara became the first High Priestess of Azarath. Shortly afterwards, she bore the daughter of Ra's al Ghul whom she named Azar (who would later become the second High Priestess of Azarath). The denizens of Azarath soon learned how to cleave all negative and base emotions from their souls and project them through the Great Door – casting them into the void of space.
Spirituality and enlightenment were the cornerstones of blissful Azarath… but those discarded emotions also found a new home… within the heart of near-dead Drax. When these emotions interacted with the New God's yearning for revenge, the spark of life was reignited within the deep darkness of hate.
Drax was reborn as the God of Revenge… Trigon.
Realizing that his brother had become incredibly powerful, Trigon plotted his revenge. The God of Revenge learned that Darkseid had forfeited Suli's daughters to Maltus as part of the Paix Arcana. Locating and appearing before his own daughter Abraxas, Trigon convinced her to make a pact with him to act as her agent of revenge… to avenge the imprisoned Goddess of the Unseen against the cruel treatment of the Guardians.
Like his father Yuga Khan, Trigon possessed the ability to steal life force which made him stronger. Attacking worlds that were under the protection of the Green Lanterns, Trigon went on to destroy hundreds of worlds in the name of his daughter, growing more powerful with each life taken.
Darkseid surmised that Trigon had also been harvesting the divine light from his victims' souls within him to create a new Source. This is the power Trigon will use to create a new Universe. For centuries, Trigon was able to avoid capture and detection as Abraxas protected her father from being discovered by the Green Lantern Corps.
Near the end of his bloody conquest, the cruel Fates allowed Trigon a glimpse of the future… a future carved of stone, a Universe ruled by an all-powerful Darkseid. Driven to madness by this nightmarish vision, Trigon vowed he would destroy the Universe before he would allow Darkseid to rule it…
Meanwhile back on Earth…
One thousand years after his wife had betrayed him, the spirit of Ra's al Ghul also sought out his revenge… upon all humanity. As the new Champion of the Green, Ra's plotted to eliminate human life on Earth. Enlisting the aid of an unwitting Rachel Roth (Arella), Ra's formulated a scheme to summon the vengeful Red Angel (Trigon) to Earth.
The outcome of Ra's al Ghul's plan went astray as Trigon seized an opportunity to create a second child with young Rachel Roth. As the God of Revenge, Trigon can not simply initiate his own will - he must perform the desires of another, acting in the cause of their vengeance. He may initiate a response against those who have assaulted him.
As Ra's believed the 'sacrifice' of Rachel was necessary to complete his own vengeance, Trigon was able to use Rachel to sire Raven. The God of Revenge immediately saw the potential of his unborn daughter… a hybrid of God and mortal unbound by his own restrictions. She could attack whomever she wished without having to be provoked.
Striking a bargain with the Lord of the Unliving (a foul immortal called Nekron), Trigon pledged his newborn daughter Raven to the Undead Lord in exchange for the Black Ring of Power. With this ring, Raven would be able to raise and control the dead, creating an army of the trillion lives Trigon had taken in order to exterminate all life across the Universe when she became twenty-one.
Trusting that his own evil nature would become dominant, Trigon allowed Raven to be born and raised in Azarath. Unknowingly, young Raven learned to control her inherit hostility and rage from the Azarathians, suppressing her New God identity.
As Azar knew that Trigon would collect his daughter upon her twenty-first birthday, the High Priestess of Azarath exiled Raven to Earth the day before she turned twenty-one… praying that the Earth's soul barrier would keep Raven safe.
(Phew! At least we're done with the historical narrative…)
The night that Raven tearfully left Azarath and appeared on Earth, she met Bruce Wayne. Bruce's parents had been killed in the terrorist attacks on Gotham Towers nineteen years before – and he was visiting the rebuilt site in memory of them on the anniversary of the death, having completed the reconstruction of the towers.
Bruce harboured a terrible secret… that the nanite communications technology that Wayne Industries had developed and deployed was also an ultimate microscopic weapon. Bruce had the ability to end the lives of all respiring life forms on the planet.
However, the two dark children of tragedy found love in one another and married shortly thereafter. Raven was aware of who her father was and feared that he would come for her. Bruce wrestled with his own inner demons, relying (too) heavily upon Raven's natural abilities to absorb his trauma and suffering.
Their relationship was stretched to the breaking point when Captain Richard Grayson was enlisted by President Lois Lane to steal a Kryptonite/Plutonium core from a nuclear device deposited in Kahndaq…A mission which cost Dick Grayson his life. We learned later that it was Lex Luthor who had engineered the lethal trap - not intended for Captain Grayson - but instead hoping to lure Big Blue (Clark) to Kahndaq.
In the resulting international tension, the League (led by Ra's al Ghul) seized the opportunity to put its long range plan into effect and signalled David Cain to abscond antimatter from the CERN satellite and then directly attack the White House. In the blast, Lois Lane and most federal politicians were killed - but Vice President Lex Luthor was saved by Scott Free.
In Kahndaq, the ancient hero Teth (Black) Adam was resurrected by the leaders of that desperate country. Black Adam challenged a wounded Clark, but could take no joy in defeating a Champion who had just lost his true love. Instead, lusting for the beautiful and powerful Barda, Black Adam challenged - and fought - Scott Free.
Suffering a life-threatening injury, Scott was still able to use the Anti-Life Equation to make Adam say the magic word 'Shazam!' – which changed him back to his mortal form (a corpse that had died 3,000 years ago).
In the Land of the Dead, Adam was visited by the Wizard Shazam who offered to trade places with him… Old Shazam would face the true death while Adam would become the Wizard, to seek a new Champion against Trigon.
Adam agreed.
On Earth, Ra's al Ghul attempted to enlist now acting President Luthor into the League – unsuccessfully. Talia al Ghul then took control of Luthor's mind in order to announce the League's greatest assassination feat in the history of the world the next morning… the annihilation of all Kahndaq…
While pinning the blame solely on Luthor.
Ra's would have used Wayne's weapon to destroy all of humanity, but he had not cracked the DNA-encryption that Bruce had installed. You see, after Richard's untimely demise, Bruce had programmed the Engine of Destruction to target Kahndaq. What readers may not have realized was that a grieving Bruce was being heavily influenced by the faraway God of Revenge (who also happens to be his father-in-law) to do this.
The sudden death of eleven million people allowed Ra's al Ghul to tear a rift in the soul barrier and bring Trigon and his demon horde to Earth. Trigon had also been manipulating Ra's to achieve this rift, as he wished to personally retrieve his daughter.
In light of this invasion, Lex Luthor recruited Bruce as his Secretary of Defence and they return to the Pentagon. However, Luthor had never intended to live in this particular reality, having developed a Tachyon Cannon positioned in space that would rewrite history by firing a powerful beam back in time to save his father and alter reality.
In his madness, Luthor killed Lucius Fox and had poisoned Talia al Ghul before Bruce was able to outplay the genius at his own deadly game. Saving Talia, Bruce had surmised too late that Lucius Fox (a member of the League) had handed over his deadly nanite technology to Ra's al Ghul.
When Bruce had feared Lex Luthor would raid Wayne Industries, Bruce instructed Lucius to transfer the Engine of Destruction's engagement signal to Kahndaq., By doing this, the League had gained access to it and was then able to break the encryption. Ra's al Ghul had programmed the Engine of Destruction to send its lethal signal to all points on Earth at the moment of dawn in Kahndaq.
Coupled with this immediate threat to life on Earth was the appearance of Trigon who demanded that Raven, her husband and Arella appear before him… or else he would end all life on Earth. Moments before, Clark had been unincorporated from his own body by the spirit of Ra's al Ghul's, which effectively made him Superman.
Meanwhile, in a desperate strategy to enlist aid against Trigon and save Scott's life, Raven and Barda journeyed from Elysium to New Genesis. On their way, Raven and Barda encountered the three Norns, the Source, and the Great Tree Yggdrasil. Afterwards on New Genesis, Barda and Raven managed to enlist the aid of Orion and Lightray, but also alerted the dangerous Darkseid to Trigon's presence.
The pair then journeyed back to Elysium where Lightray (perhaps inadvertently) saved Scott Free's life by re-energizing Barda's old Mother Box. During their absence, Barbara Gordon had formulated a plan to remove Ra's al Ghul from Clark's body and trap him in Jor El's. Using the Kryptonian armour to return to Earth, her plan was successful, although it cost Jor-El dearly.
Barbara was reunited with Bruce, where they sought to deactivate the activated Engine of Destruction on a wild, predawn motorbike ride across Shiruta. The pair was joined by a saddened Raven, who had just lost her mother to Darkseid's Omega Beams. Teleporting them to the server room housing the Engine's mainframe, Bruce realized that they had been thwarted by Ra's al Ghul, who had encased the machinery in concrete to prevent tampering with the device.
In a desperate gambit, Raven went to her father and entered into The Deal. She would willingly accept the fate Trigon had chosen for her… if he could make Bruce choose an existence without her. She allowed Trigon three chances. But first, Trigon must dispose of all the Wayne Industry nanites in the Earth's atmosphere and save humanity from Bruce's Engine of Destruction.
Trigon agreed and The Deal was struck before the three Norns.
Using Verdandi's silver needle of Fate to draw her blood, Raven had secretly tied Bruce's thread of Fate to her own, so that if her husband were to overcome Trigon's temptations, they would be forever united in one shared destiny.
Bruce was first offered a life with the sultry Talia al Ghul where the Engine would deploy, to bring about a new world to shape to his own will… as the leader of the League where all his nights would be of passionate bliss.
He declined.
In the second temptation, Bruce was offered the life of a boy again, where the attack on Gotham Towers had never happened, and his parents still lived. The happy childhood that he had been deprived of could finally be his. As a bonus, a young Zatanna Zatara also made an appearance.
Again, Bruce chose to be with Raven.
In the third existence, Bruce was offered a reality where there was no Trigon… where a thousand worlds had not been destroyed and a trillion lives spared. To encourage his decision, Trigon had manipulated a future where he had terribly assaulted Barbara Gordon, and offered the distraught Barbara to Bruce's care - if he were but to accept this generous gift.
Bruce realized that a life without Trigon was also a life where Raven would have never existed… and chose to remain with his wife.
Returning back to Earth, Trigon was furious at his defeat, but first had to deal with an attack from Clark and then another by the alien Green Lantern Abin Sur. He easily defeated both powerful foes.
Later, as vengeful Trigon crushed a badly wounded Clark within his hand, Bruce deployed the Tachyon Cannon, shooting out Trigon's eye almost four seconds in the past… which allowed Barbara Gordon the few seconds she needed to use the slain Green Lantern's ring against Trigon, seemingly killing the God…
On New Genesis, Scott, Barda, Lightray and Orion faced off against the evil schemes of Darkseid, who had learned that his adoptive son held the Anti-Life Equation within him. Darkseid was ready and willing to destroy New Genesis to obtain it. To save New Genesis, Scott re-negotiated the Pact, placing himself back upon Apokolips and Darkseid's power.
Scott then used the Anti-Life Equation upon himself, sacrificing his existence to prevent Darkseid from obtaining the freedom-destroying Equation. Vowing revenge, Barda and Orion journeyed to Apokolips to end Darkseid's life and were followed by compassionate Lightray.
Having attacked Trigon, Bruce was teleported by the God to the planet Maltus where he discovered the truth of the Green Lantern's stolen power. However, Trigon had only used Bruce to lure Raven to Maltus - where he hoped she would learn the truth and side with her father's cause.
In his own demented way, Trigon attempted to reason with Raven (unsuccessfully) that it was better to destroy a doomed Universe and create a new one rather than have Darkseid become triumphant. To add dramatic emphasis (and make him look like Snake Plissken), Trigon poked out Bruce's eye. Darkseid himself appeared afterwards and more history between the two brothers was revealed.
In the meantime, Raven gave the souls of all of Azarath (excluding Azar) to her sister Abraxas, so that the Goddess of the Unseen could learn of mortal existence and love. Trigon revealed his plan to create an army of the dead across the thousand worlds he had destroyed and Darkseid revealed that he was already one hundred years too late… and returned to Apokolips.
Narrowly avoiding being crushed by Trigon, Raven and Bruce escaped back to Earth, where they saw Alfred briefly and then returned to the Pentagon to confront Ganthet the Guardian and his attending Green Lanterns. Ganthet was suddenly called away to an emergency and Bruce informed General Johnson that Trigon was still very much alive…
Meanwhile, Barda and Orion cut a swath across the defences of Apokolips and Orion defeated his brother Kalibak in combat. Darkseid reappeared from his brief sojourn and invited Orion to take his rightful place… by his father's side. Orion refused and Barda attacked.
Both were instantly brought down by Darkseid's ultimate weapon. The King of Apokolips had finally completed the construction of one million new Apokoliptian Manhunters – each possessing an embedded Lantern in its chest and programmed to project the supreme will of Darkseid.
With this robotic army, each with the power of a Green Lantern, Darkseid plans to conquer the Universe. Barda and Orion were saved by Lightray but are frantic with despair at the sight of Darkseid's revealed army.
And that's basically where we stand. The War is about to commence.
We now return back to Bruce and Raven at the Pentagon…