Styrakos
Styrakos, also known as the Styrakan Zones, was a small universe, one of the many "Dark Places" existing "a stilled heart-beat away" from the primary universe, associated with nightmares and the darker aspects of human consciousness.
The time travelling bounty hunter Death's Head was created in Styrakos, although his earliest conscious memories were of his time on the planet Scarvix in the regular universe, to which he had been transported by an unknown party after being stolen from his creators; (COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"]) he would later discover the Seventh Doctor had meddled with his destiny at several key points. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head [+]Loading...["The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)"])
Nature[[edit] | [edit source]]
As one of the Dark Places, Styrakos existed outside of normal space-time, once being described as "a place that is not a place, a time where time has no meaning". Although home to at least one beautiful City, the Zones were principally composed of hostile wilderness riddled with sulfurous pools and treacherous rock formations; although there was some amount of vegetation, such as spikers, it seemed to house no animal life. A given Zone within Styrakos would alternate between running on the principles of "techno" or "majik"; when techno ruled, no magic would be usable, while in turn, when magik reigned, technological devices would become unusable. (COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"])
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
At some point, one man, the mad hunter Ty Rejutka Lupex, became an uncontested master of both techno and majik, becoming a feared warlord and sorcerer. As the power he had accumulated was too much for a human body to handle for long, he learned to transfer his essence into new vessels, which he would steal from unwilling victims after hunting them across the Zones. Eventually, a mysterious woman known as Pyra came to him, hoping that he would teach her his secrets; seducing him, she became his consort, though she did not love him. Whenever Lupex left his fortress, the Nest, Pyra would commune with his vassal spirits, the Vukils, who taught her everything Lupex knew.
However, finding her relationship with Lupex unfulfilling even on a carnal level, Pyra decided to take a secret lover, Klu, and wound up actually falling in love with him. Around this time, Lupex, finding that his possessed bodies were wearing out faster and faster, began to build an invincible robot body, combining the principles of majik and techno, in which he could transfer himself once and for all. After he discovered Pyra's adultery, Lupex decided to take revenge on her by not simply killing Klu but taking him as one of his final mortal vessels, forcing Pyra to sleep with him in her true lover's body. Pyra pretended to submit to him, but meddled with the programming of the unfinished robot, giving it a mind of its own and "a clinical, business-like approach to death" that was the exact opposite of Lupex's crazed bloodlust, in the hope that the android would rebel against its creator and kill him before he could effect the transfer.
Instead, a mysterious individual stole the robot from Styrakos, (COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"]) dumping the newly-created being on Scarvix, where he became the bounty hunter Death's Head. Death's Head would later discover that the Seventh Doctor had manipulated his life at several significant junctures. (COMIC: The Incomplete Death's Head [+]Loading...["The Incomplete Death's Head (comic story)"]) Pyra, who had the power to move through time and between realms at will, deserted Lupex's fortress, tricking Lupex into believing that she mistakenly thought Lupex had completed the transfer and become the bounty hunter Death's Head. However, she had some difficulty tracking him down due to various factors, including the Doctor and Reed Richards, bouncing Death's Head through time. She eventually made contact with Death's Head partners Spratt and the vulture in 8162, sending both of them, as well as the bounty hunter Big Shot, back in time to find Death's Head in 2020.
When Big Shot nearly killed Death's Head, Lupex, who was observing these events from Styrakos as Pyra had planned, used his own power to transport Death's Head back to the Styrakan Zones. After Lupex explained his past to him, Death's Head refused to merge willingly with him, initiating one final hunt across the wilderness. Death's Head eventually defeated Lupex by using his onboard computer to calculate and predict the patterns between which a given Zone of Styrakos shifted from majik to techno, something which Lupex mistakenly believed to be wholly random. Death's Head then lured Lupex into a Zone that was about to shift from majik to techno at a crucial moment, timing things such that Lupex's attempted soul-transfer spell was interrupted by the shift, and taking advantage of his surprise to kill Lupex. Pyra then appeared to Death's Head and explained her true motivations to him, congratulating him on doing what she'd wanted her to do all along: killing Lupex. She then deposited him back in 2020 New York City, telling him that he'd earned his freedom, before returning to Styrakos. (COMIC: The Body in Question [+]Loading...["The Body in Question (comic story)"])
