Sphynx II
Unknown

Powers

• Serial Immortality-Rebirth: Any time she dies, Sphynx is reborn into a youthful body of Egyptian or Arabic ancestry. She retains all her memories and abilities, and may learn new skills etc. in her new lifetime. She possessed this power before her exposure to the Ka Stone. Since merging herself with the original Sphynx's abilities via the Ka Sceptre, she has gained most of the powers of the original Spynx, although no longer consciously capable of reshaping reality on such a grand scale, her abilities remain formidable.
• Body Resistance: Sphynx's flesh is dense enough to offer Amazing protection against physical attacks, and Remarkable protection against all others.
• Energy Absorption: Monstrous abilty to absorb energy and channel it into Strength and/or Endurance ranks or to increase the ranks of any existing powers. She may drain up to 150 pts of energy, this energy disapates at 10 pts/round.
• Eyebeams: Project heat, light and forcebolts of Amazing range/intensity.
• True Flight: Amazing speed
• Growth: Sphynx may control the size of her physical form, allowing her Monstrous growth, for +3CS to hit in combat.
• Life Support: Unearthly. She need not eat, breathe, excrete, nor sleep, and may survive temperature extremes, weather conditions and outer space indefinately.
• Teleportation: Monstrous
• Telepathy: Incredible
• Mental Probe: Amazing

Talents

Archaeology, Mystic Origin, Mystic/Occult Lore, Multilingual: English, Arabic, Ancients: Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Sumerian and possibly dozens of others.
Sphynx II may draw on the memories and skills of countless lifetimes of learning, as such she may concievably possess any talent the Judge wants her to have

Contacts

Archaeology, Finance. If neccessary, she can and has mustered a large number of skilled and devoted followers.

History

Thousands of years ago, an Egyptian magician in the service of Pharaoh lost a battle against Moses and was punished by being exiled from Egypt. Living as a nomad in the desert, he stumbled upon the ancient temple of Ka, where he discovered a mystical gem, the legendary Ka Stone. Placing it on his forehead, he was transformed into the immortal being who would become known as Sphinx. Dazed by the powerful energies surging through his body, the magician collapsed. He was found and nursed back to health by a lonely outcast woman.

This woman, whose name is not recorded, fell in love with Sphinx, but he could not return her love and walked out of her life. For the rest of her days, she sought and dreamed of him. She finally died, lonely and bitter-only to reawaken in the body of an Egyptian boy from a wealthy family.

Her next life was an improvement: as an upper-class Egyptian male she became an architect and scholar, and in her researches, she located the lost temple of Ka. She deciphered the cryptic parchments found in the temple, and uncovered many of the Ka Stone's secrets. Finally she died, but was reborn again, once more a woman, this time of noble birth. In her third life, she would marry the Pharaoh. Her wisdom and memories intact, she deduced that she had the power of perpetual reincarnation due to having absorbed some of the Ka Stone's energies when she tended the Sphinx. Seeking to increase her link with the stone, she arranged for her body to be entombed with the Scepter of Ka, an artifact from the temple which would attune her with the energies of the stone still worn by the Sphinx.

Realizing that she was also immortal, she began a grand scheme to reunite herself with her loved one. Over the centuries, she plotted, living scores of lives and accumulating many fortunes. Finally, in the latter half of the twentieth century, she was reborn in the body of another Egyptian woman, just as the Sphinx showed himself again. She made plans for their reunion, but before she could meet the Sphinx once more, her dreams were shattered. Her loved one, tiring of immortality, had come into conflict with Nova, then with Galactus himself, and been destroyed.

But she was not defeated. Using her personal fortune, she built up a sizable organization of devoted followers. She and her underlings then journeyed to her eons-old tomb in the Temple of Ka. Wielding both modern technology and the ancient power of the Ka Scepter, she used its jewel to gather the Ka-stone energies that had been scattered through the Earth's atmosphere with the defeat of the Sphinx. She succeeded in imbuing herself with the power of the Sphinx, but in her eagerness, she was overwhelmed by the mighty energies coursing through her body. Without conscious thought she used these energies to twist reality itself, altering the world's history to the way she wished it had always been, creating a cosmic lie.

In this new reality, the Sphinx had not left her those millennia ago in Egypt. Instead, he had returned her love and they had lived happily together for millennia as immortals. The Sphinx and his lover had defeated Moses, and they used their powers to ensure that Egyptian culture dominated the world until the twentieth century. Egypt even colonized America, which became known as the United States of Assyria. In this false reality, the Sphinx eventually tired of life, passing on his great powers to his consort, but leaving a mystic cat infused with his love as a keepsake for her.

But reality was not so easily changed. Two beings existed who were connected with the Ka Stone: Sayge, a mystical embodiment of Truth who had been companion and nemesis of the original Sphinx, and Richard Ryder, the man called Nova. They could subconsciously sense the basic "wrongness" of the altered timeline. With the help of a mutant rebellion who opposed the Egyptian hegemony, Nova and Sayge were able to pierce the self-deception of Sphinx II. Unable to maintain the truth of her own created reality when confronted with it, Sphinx II's own self-deception was shattered, and this returned the Earth to normal.

The second Sphinx survived her defeat, but was bitter and heartbroken at the loss of her perfect world, swearing vengeance against Nova and the New Warriors.