Gaia Online

Real name: Kurt Darkholme Wagner
Other aliases: None
Identity: Secret
Occupation: Adventurer
Legal status: Criminal record in the United States, later overturned by the courts; still wanted internationally as an outlaw
Place of birth: Somewhere in the Bavarian Alps

Bio: Kurt Wagner was born with certain unusual physical characteristics, but his power of self-teleportation did not emerge until puberty. Margali Szardos, a sorceress and gypsy queen, found Wagner an hour after his birth, in a small roadside shelter in the Bavarian Alps. She found his father, Eric Wagner, dead of a heart attack on the road outside. Margali took the baby to the small Bavarian circus where she worked as a fortuneteller as a "cover" for her activities as a sorceress. Wagner was never legally adopted by anyone, but was raised by all the members of the circus who had no prejudices against "freaks." Margali acted as Wagner's unofficial foster mother.

Wagner grew up happily in the circus, and his two closest friends were Margali's natural children Stefan and Jimaine. Long before his teleportation power emerged, Wagner had tremendous natural agility, and by his adolescence he had become the circus's star acrobat and aerial artist. Circus audiences assumed that he was a normal-looking human being wearing a demon-like costume.

Years later, Wagner quit the circus and made his way towards Winzeldorf, Germany, where Stefan was. He discovered that Stefan had gone mad and had brutally slain several children. Two nights after leaving the circus, Wagner found Stefan and fought him, hoping to stop his rampage. During the struggle, Wagner unintentionally broke Stefan's neck. The villagers, who assumed him to be a demon who was responsible for the child killings, discovered Wagner. They were about to kill him when they were all psionically paralyzed by Prof. Charles Xavier, who had come to recruit Wagner into the X-Men. He agreed to join the group, and now, known as Nightcrawler, Wagner became a member of the X-Men.

Height: 5 ft. 9 in.
Weight: 195 lbs.
Eyes: Shining yellow, no visible pupils
Hair: Indigo
Other distinguishing features: Nightcrawler has only 3 fingers (including an opposable thumb) on each hand, and only 2 toes, each longer than an ordinary human's, on each foot. Nightcrawler also has a prehensile tail about 3 1/2 feet long, which can carry his own weight. His body is almost entirely covered with a fine indigo-colored fur, making him so dark that he seems to blend into deep shadows. Nightcrawler also has pointed ears and pronounced fang-like canine teeth. His spine is more flexible than an ordinary human being's, allowing him to spend much of his time in a semi-crouching position without damaging his posture and enables him to perform contortionist-like feats.

Known superhuman powers: Nightcrawler is a mutant with the ability to teleport himself, the clothes he is wearing, and, within limits, a certain amount of additional mass which is in contact with him. He teleports by displacing himself into another dimension, travelling through it, and then returning to his own dimension at a certain distance from his point of departure. He consciously determines his point of return. The entire process occurs so quickly that Nightcrawler is unaware of being in another dimension at all. Nightcrawler guides himself through the other dimension by an unconscious, natural direction-finding sense. Although Nightcrawler controls his teleportational ability with his conscious mind, his power to teleport is not psionic. Rather it is the result of an unknown biochemical/biophysical reaction which he triggers mentally.

When he disappears in teleporting, Nightcrawler leaves behind smoke with a stench reminiscent of burning brimstone. This is a small portion of the atmosphere of this other dimension that escapes while the aperture is open. His teleportation is invariably accompanied by the muffled sound of imploding air rushing to fill the vacuum left where Nightcrawler's volume was.

Other abilities: Nightcrawler is a superb athlete and an Olympic-class acrobat. He can do a standing high jump of about 8 feet. He is skilled at hand-to-hand combat and is a master at fencing, which he can even perform with his tail.