History:
Storm is descended from an ancient line of African priestesses, all with the potential to wield magic. Her mother, the princess of a tribe in Kenya, married an American photojournalist and moved with him to Manhattan. When Ororo was 6 months old, she and her parents relocated to Cairo, Egypt. Five years later, a bomb destroyed their home. Ororo's parents were killed, but she survived, buried under rubble near her mother's body. This traumatizing experience left Ororo with severe claustrophobia, which still afflicts her today. Homeless and orphaned, she came under the tutelage of master thief Achmed el-Gibar. Ororo soon became his prize pupil.
Years later, feeling a strong urge to head south, Ororo journeyed alone across the Sahara Desert. Finally, she reached her ancestors' homeland: the Serengeti Plain, straddling the modern nations of Kenya and Tanzania. By this time, her mutant ability to manipulate the weather had emerged; she used it to aid the local tribes, who worshipped her as a deity. Ororo played goddess for several years -- until the telepathic, telekinetic Professor Charles Xavier recruited her to help rescue his team of mutant adventurers, the original X-Men, from the island-being known as Krakoa.
Hated and feared for her strange and frightening powers -- not worshipped, as she had been in Africa -- Ororo joined Professor X and his charges in defense of a world on the brink of genetic war. Except for brief periods away from the team, she has remained an X-Man ever since -- even enduring the temporary loss of her mutant abilities to lead the Children of the Atom into battle.
For a time, Storm's loyalties were divided between the X-Men and the Morlocks. Ororo became leader of the underground community of mutants when she fought Callisto, who had gathered together the social outcasts in the sewers beneath New York City, and defeated her in single combat. But during one of Storm's frequent absences from the Morlocks tunnels, the majority of the population was slaughtered by the Marauders -- a team of superhuman assassins employed by the mysterious Mr. Sinister, an obsessed geneticist working to create the world's most powerful mutant. The X-Men were able to help some of the Morlocks to safety, and a considerable number managed to escape the Marauders on their own. Still, news of the massacre sent Storm reeling; she blamed herself for not being there during the Morlocks' time of need. |
