King Family

In modern history, only a few families have changed the world more than Jericho King's. They lead no armies nor any political movements. Every known member of the King family started with the name Jericho, and all but one worked in genetics.

Since the 1800s, genetics, and mutation have taken several leaps forward thanks to the King family. Much of the enhancement programs Legion uses today were created thanks to their work.

The first Jericho King was born in Mississippi in 1834. He grew up on a plantation working the fields. At a young age, his father took him west. He spent a few years in the Utah territory until his father joined the military. His father died fighting the Mexican army leaving his son alone.

Lost and alone, Jericho lost his home within the year. He lived in the wilderness until he found his way to a group of outlaws. His father taught him to shoot and hunt animals, but they showed him how to shoot and hunt humans. He spent seven years raiding and killing across the Utah territory.

As a young adult, he stumbled into a homestead. Bleeding from a robbery gone wrong, a young schoolteacher cared for him and saved his life. During his recovery, she taught him to read and write. For a few months, she gave him peace. He chose her when given a choice to return to his violent life or remain at her side forever. His peace didn't last. The violence he turned away from found a way back to Jericho. His violent band of thugs and thieves found him at that homestead. The law followed only to find a farmhouse coated in blood.

The schoolteacher was found in a shallow grave. A marker read, "A woman who shared peace with a man unworthy." Another shallow grave sat next to her. The grave sat uncovered but with blood soaked into the ground. A few bullets were found around the farm.

Jericho, the first, died that day. His son took vengeance on the gang and traveled east. He went to school to study medicine and focused on the works of Gregor Mendel. Every book he read on genetics pushed only showed him how much he still needed to learn. His lab work contained samples of unknown blood, and his journal was written in a code that made them a mystery to anyone who looked at them. A lab accident set fire to much of Jericho's work.

For a long time, the King family fell out of history. We get mentions of them now and again at different universities. They always seemed to be working on cutting-edge theories, but every few years, the family relocated. The King family stayed in the area of Germany during the early 1900s.

The family moved to work on new theories every few years until 1933, when the Nazi party got control over the government. At that time, Jericho King worked on several projects in Berlin. In his journals, he joined the Nazi party stating "To shut the government up and let him get back to work." Until that year, his family worked apolitically.

The Jericho King we found in 1930 is much different from the one in the 1800s. This Jericho is cold, calculating, and only focused on one thing, mutation. His work attempted to change human DNA within a subject. Party officials figured out what he was doing and put him in charge of a concentration camp. He requested specific groups of people, POWs, prisoners, and traitors. Most of the data from his experiments were destroyed. The inmate all got the impression he was trying to create something.

The allies grew close in the latter part of 1944. Much of the camp fled, but not Jericho. American GIs found the camp. The GIs opened the doors and found many prisoners addicted to a drug made by the good doctor. Their eyes and skin held a blue tint to them. Prisoners became violent and racked with pain if they weren't given injections from a blue liquid. A few days, the prisoner died as their cells tore themselves apart.

The soldiers found Jericho working in his lab. He toiled on a new formula. Jericho began explaining his work. The drug is meant to corrupt the human body giving the taker a random mutation. He felt it was close to creating an army of mutant soldiers. The soldiers took a gun out and shot Jericho in the head. When asked why by their superiors, they spoke about the body of a young girl. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin a dark shade of blue. Her legs and arms were strapped to the table. The drug killed her. They stated, "there were thousand more just like her."

We don't hear anything from the King family for a few years after that, but before 1940 ended, another Jericho King appeared working for Polycephaly industries. He continued his father's research into mutation. Polycephaly Industries allowed him to work within an insane asylum.

The infamous drug would appear in his office but labeled flawed. Instead, he worked to mutate the human body by taking the subject's genetics and changing them. The asylum allowed him to take blood and samples at will. He changed a red blood cell to hold twice as much oxygen in a few years. He only needed to find a way to make the host's body accept it. He chose to infect a subject with a virus.

The first few experiments went wrong. The subjects died each time. The fourth worked. The subject's body accepted the virus and mutated the red blood cells to hold eight oxygen molecules.

Jericho looked at the process of infection. He used a powerful virus in the first three that infected the host and spread the mutation through the body too quickly. The bodies expired because his blood took all the oxygen from the lungs. The overworked organ shut down, killing the subject. The fourth subject was infected with a virus that would infect the subject at a lower rate and mutate his blood slower. He also put the man on a machine that pumped oxygen.

Dozens of patients were mutated the same way. Jericho succeeded, and he wanted to take the next mutation even further. He mutated a subject with a different blood sample. The doctor shot the man in the shoulder, only for the body to fix the wound in a few moments.

Jericho showed Polycephaly Industries. Impressed, they began wanting to know how far the process could go. No one knew a bomb waited at the asylum.

Mutated prisoners began to notice their abilities. The man shot and healed tested his by training. Other mutated prisoners joined him. The prisoners rarely stopped. The asylum took notice. They attempted to separate the mutants. The separation didn't stop their training. Within a few months, the doctors administering the asylum began worrying. All the mutated prisoners exhibited anger at their treatment. Violence became more and more common. The doctors triggered alarms that the asylum would become dangerous in a week.

Polycephaly Industries didn't respond until it was too late. News reports began speaking about something happening at the asylum. The lights of fires could be seen throughout the area. A few gunshots were heard. The mutated prisoners only numbered a few, but those few added thousands of non-mutated prisoners to their ranks. A riot broke out. The prisoner that could heal led them to overtake the guards. They managed to overpower the guards with him in front, taking much of the gunfire.

The riots got the attention of Polycephaly Industries when they called the prisoners answered. He called himself Cain and told them to bring Abel to him. Jericho took the reference to mean him. Jericho appeared at the asylum gates and walked in to find the place smeared with blood. The doctors and guards were found with much of their flesh stripped off.

No one knows what happened in the asylum. The riot stopped. Polycephaly Industries called a private security firm, Legion, to break into the asylum. The prisoners were found with their bodies torn to pieces. Cain was found, his eyes hollow, mumbling something incoherent, and Jericho was found coated in blood. He didn't say a word, only looked into an old picture before putting it away. The Legionary led him out before they cleaned up the scene. Only a few people found out about the mutants.

Cain is locked away deep in the asylum. Legend says he is still there, his mind shattered. Lost. Alone. Fated to live in the darkness but never die. Dr. King faded from the world for a while. He kept working within the shadows. Legion paired with Polycephaly Industries through the seventies and eighties to create the first soldiers with genetic and mechanical enhancements. These enhancements showed breakthroughs in technology publicly for the first time.

Behind the scenes, Jericho King worked on the biological components while a team of scientists worked to integrate the technology into the subjects. A few soldiers died during the process, but together Jericho began pushing the limits of the human body, faster reflexes, denser muscles, and minds that could consume more information. In addition, Jericho found the first signs of a twenty-fourth chromosome pair.

Leaving his notes behind, Jericho faded from the world. For thirty years, his journals laid the foundation for many enhancement programs. The largest were the ones used by Legion. Polycephaly Industries also created the Human Genome Project.

Jericho didn't stop working. In underground labs, he continued his work by looking into the human genetic code. He created a drug to unlock the human body, as he called it. Hundreds of people began turning up with a blue hue in their skin and blue eyes. Drug dealers looked for the one giving out the drug. They found him and threatened his life. Later, the dealers would be found in a dumpster, their eyes and skin dark blue.

The US military took notice of the drug killing thousands across Europe. It took most of a year, but they found a scientist named Jericho King in England. They deployed a team of Sentinels under the command of Miles Jackson.

The Sentinels described monstrous beings defending Jericho. Crude-enhanced guards attacked, and an ex-Legion officer guarded him personally. Jericho held the only nano-serum outside of Legion. Their super soldiers were addicted to the strength and abilities it created. Any ex-Legionary grew desperate for it. The Sentinels dispatched every monster Jericho sent. At the end of the siege, the last Jericho King lay dead, a bullet inside his skull.

The body was sent back to America, only for the boat to sink. Jericho King's body lies at the bottom of the Atlantic. The US Army reviewed his research, much of his notes back to the 1800s.

They started studying genetics in the 1800s. The family continued until 2007, when the last member of the King family died.

Plantation Outlaw Student Teacher at various universities Genetic Engineering at Polycephaly Industries Drug dealer throughout Europe

Doctorate Master of genetics Created the first superpowers in humans Laid the foundation for all enhancement programs

Woman he loved died Lab fire destroying lab Experiments led to the death of thousands Mutated a man only for him to take over an asylum and kill dozens.

Isolation obsessive

Obsessive

Push the human condition beyond what even god thought possible

None.

Unknown. This family held a singular focus. No one knows why. They broke laws, people, and every moral the first Jericho King held.

King's family, for several generations, focused relentlessly on one thing developing the human body. They attempted to rewrite it to make it stronger. Every generation grew less and less tethered to reality as they went. The last Jericho King descended into madness before his death.

Science, he is probably the most extraordinary scientific mind alive, especially in the field of genetics. People. He doesn't understand people.

Patient Precision The will to go on.

Suppression of emotion. Cold logic

Slips in and out of a southern drawl