Hath-Set
2067 BCE - 18-year-old Hath-Set chronicles the birth of Ke-Dre, daughter of Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal
2054 BCE - 31-year-old Hath-Set becomes the favored advisor of Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal. He dreams of one day marrying Ke-Dre & assuming the throne.
2050 BCE - 35-year-old Hath-Set realizes the implied immortality of Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal, meaning he can never take their throne. He steals the soul-knife and kills them in their sleep, planning to advise Ke-Dre to marry him.
2043 BCE - 42-year-old Hath-Set tries in earnest to win Ke-Dre now that she rules the known world but is forever rejected.
2031 BCE - 54-year-old Hath-Set is discovered as the killer of Ke-Dre's parents Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal. They both die in the ensuing battle.
Hath-Set really only becomes part of Khufu & Chay-Ara's story at its end. Most depictions of these two in the middle of their lives feature advisors like Teth-Adam and Nabu, with very little mention made of Set. Working his story backward and imagining how he interacted with the Pharaohs during his lifetime is actually pretty fascinating, and he winds up, we think, as a pretty interesting villain by the end.
Hath-Set's Comic HistoryHath-Set actually appears in the very first Hawkman appearance in Flash Comics #1 in 1940, featured in Carter's flashback revealing that he's a reincarnated Pharoah. This means that he's been responsible for Khufu's death for as long as Hawkman's story has existed... which is actually pretty remarkable. In the same issue, we met Doctor Hastor, Hath-Set's modern-day reincarnation.
While Hath-Set himself has remained pretty well secured in the ancient past, we've met a few different takes on his modern-day reincarnations in characters like Helene Astar. He's also been depicted as a sort of disembodied entity that is able to possess other characters, most notably Hawkman & Hawkwoman's son Hector Hall in the pages of Infinity Inc. |
Our Hath-Set StoryBecause we've chosen to make Khufu and Cha-Aya actual Thanagarians, it's given us an excuse to make them incredibly long-lived, and allow us to expand their rule across a lot of the historical Eleventh Dynasty, and also let us give them lots of different adventures. Because of this, in order for Hath-Set to be responsible for their deaths, he actually needs to only become part of their story much later on, essentially in the third act of their lives, as they become parents to Ke-Dre. In practice, He actually almost becomes a more prominent character in Ke-Dre's story than in Khufu & Chay-Ara'sAfter the deaths of her parents he continues to serve as her main advisor, always scheming to somehow win her over and marry her.
Of course, for both Ke-Dre and Hath-set to die in their final battle, we have to assume that he must actually be a pretty formidable combatant. Of course, he'll be using the soul-knife, but my assumption is that he's actually a really gifted magic-wielder, perhaps having amassed his power after the deaths of Khufu & Chay-Ara. He might even have some access to the powers of Ahk-Ton, which means that for Ke-Dre to have defeated him even at the cost of her own life is an act of profound heroism. |