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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 5427406" data-attributes="member: 16760">DiabolusDiabolus was one of the greatest threats Shadow-Force ever faced.  An extradimensional archmage powerful enough to conquer several dimensions single-handedly, he'd intended Earth to be next.  Breaching our dimension in Seattle, he was narrowly defeated and banished by the combined efforts of Shadow-Force, Mystra, and the Freedom Squad.The archmage is capable of looking like whatever he pleases;  he 'honored' his new slave race by taking human form during his attempted conquest, but upon being banished his true form was revealed as that of a satyr.  It is now speculated by some scholars that the satyrs who breached our dimension causing much trouble in the 1930's were partly advance scouts and partly refugees.Diabolus has only two real weaknesses.  The first is his towering ego, which is greater even than his immense (and seemingly limitlessly versatile) power justifies.  He proved resistant to the belief that mere mortals could threaten him in any serious fashion, and realized his mistake too late.The second is his phobia of science and technology - which he cannot understand and thus fears and hates.  Photon, of all people (he was painfully green at the time) reduced the mage to incoherent terror for a time by reflexively taking light-form when Diabolus attempted to control his mind.   The experience of relativistic travel through Photon's mind, and the associations leading to Jon's world-class knowledge of the subject, nearly unhinged the wizard - enabling the other supers to get in some devastating attacks.  (Diabolus wasn't nearly that hysterical about, say, Technoid;  it seems that it was more scientific theory than actual technology that bothered him.  Or perhaps it was the unexpected onslaught that brought on his fit.)Jon for his part, in struggling to throw off the mind control, ended up beyond the orbit of Jupiter and had some HIGHLY awkward and dangerous moments getting back to Earth without a spacesuit.  Back then, he could only travel in straight lines with his light-form, and had to materialize multiple times to get his bearings to find the Earth again.  He was lucky to get back alive;  Technoid made him a spacesuit afterward in case of future mishaps.Diabolus' name has become a byword for evil and fear in many dimensions, even those he is not known to have visited - it seems that traumatic events sometimes 'echo' across dimensional boundaries.  Some now theorize that the Devil is in some esoteric sense named after him, rather than the reverse.</blockquote>

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