Onimar Synn
1820 BCE - Onimar Synn is born on Thanagar.
1596 BCE - 224-year-old Onimar Synn, Thanagar's foremost expert & advocate on the manipulation of Nth Metal, kills the ruling council of Thanagar and assumes complete control. Driven completely mad and assuming god-like powers, Synn leaves Thanagar a ruined hellscape as he begins to destroy surrounding systems. The last surviving Nth Metalsmiths forge the Claw of Horus, using it to banish Synn into the Paths Beyond. Thanagar is lost.
8 years ago - Onimar Synn breaks through from the paths beyond and begins accumulating Nth Metal from across the universe. Vril Dox contacts Carter Hall, bringing him into space to find the Claw of Horus, and to battle Synn, the demon of Thanagar.
Onimar Synn isn't a character with a lot of appearances, part of which may be because he's designed to be virtually omnipowerful, and that's not the sort of character you can bust out very often. He's really designed to fill a very particular story purpose, and while our version of him is slightly different, he's basically filling the same purpose for us.
Onimar Synn's Comic HistoryOnimar Synn was introduced in JSA #23 in 2001, in the Return of Hawkman story arc, which did just what it said on the tin; it brought Carter Hall's Hawkman back from obscurity. Synn was an ancient devil of Thanagar, a holdover from their ancient empires that conquer other planets. He had full mastery of all of the potential powers inherent in Thanagar's psycho-reactive Nth Metal and was something called a "sin-eater", which translated to him using orifices in his palms to drain life energy out of people, leaving them undead zombies under his control. He was basically an endgame boss of a bad guy, and he served that story well, requiring the combined Justice Society to defeat.
He would later appear again as the main villain in the crossover Rann/Thanagar War, leading an undead Thanagarian army. This version of the character was depicted as far more powerful, but also traded in his menacing stoicism for demonic ranting and being unreasonably tall. |
Our Onimar Synn StoryOnimar's main purpose in our timeline is to be the catalyst for the destruction of Thanagar and the downfall of their civilization. We're making a few small changes to him, because in canon he's clearly meant to be some sort of ancient demon-thing, and we don't actually need that. Instead, he's the leading expert on the use of Nth Metal.
In cannon Nth Metal is theoretically capable of controlling the four fundamental forces; gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak & strong bonds of nuclear force. If Synn is able to harness that level of power, then that makes him more than powerful enough to lay waste to an entire civilization, so that's how we're using him. By trapping him in the Paths Beyond, we're able to bring Synn back into our current timeline, which will give us an excuse to give Hawkman a standalone space adventure, hunting down the artifact used to banish Synn the first time. It's not meant to be a major story, just a quick Clash of the Titans in space with Synn standing in for the Kraken. |