Nathan Dayspring

Nathan Dayspring is a teacher at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and the founder of the mutant-focused humanitarian organization known as Elpis. He is also an active member of the X-Men.

Details

Character Journal: x_cable

Real Name: Nathan Morrow

Codename: Cable

Aliases: Nathan Dayspring, Nathan Winters

First Appearance: February 21, 2004

Date of Birth: April 1, 1966

Place of Birth: Bethel, Alaska

Citizenship: American

Relatives: Dr. Moira MacTaggart (wife), Rachel Kinross (daughter), Saul Morrow (father, deceased), Rachel Morrow (mother, deceased), Gideon Faraday (uncle, deceased), Aliya Sundell-Dayspring (first wife, deceased), Tyler Dayspring (son, deceased).

Education: BA in History, MA in International Affairs, J.D.

Relationship Status: Married

Occupation: Researcher and lobbyist for Elpis, languages teacher

Team Affiliation: X-Men

Biography

Childhood

Nathan knows very little about his childhood. Repeated telepathic alterations of his mind caused enormous holes in Nathan's memory which his traumatized mind attempted to fill with fabricated memories. The damage was so severe that, thirty years later, even Charles Xavier is unable to help restore what was lost.

What he knows is that when he was twelve, something happened to make him leave the family home in Alaska. His father, Saul Morrow claimed that his memory of a violent confrontation was inaccurate, but did not provide an alternate explanation. Somehow, Nathan wound up in San Francisco, living on the streets and attempting to manage his newly manifested psionic abilities. Two years later, he was picked up by Social Services and sent to New Mexico to be enrolled in a government program known as Mistra.

The Mistra Years

Mistra was one of several government programs designed to take mutant children and turn them into operatives - in this case, 'super-soldiers' indoctrinated them in a pseudo-Spartan collective culture. They made use of extensive telepathic and empathic conditioning, as well as more traditional methods.

Nathan spent sixteen years as an operative, rapidly rising to the rank of field leader. He has not shared many details about his time with Mistra, although he has at various points made reference to spending a great deal of time in Iran, having been involved in the Gulf War, and spending a year undercover in Kazakhstan. His popularity with his fellow operatives and his ability to teach them ways to sidestep their conditioning led the Mistra directors to devise a plan to get him under tighter control. Sending him and his team to destroy a bioweapons facility in China, they set up a trap; Nathan's team was killed, and he was exposed to a biological weapon that he would discover, years later, was specifically tailored to put checks on his powers.

There were unforeseen consequences. After some time convalescing on Muir Island under the care of Moira MacTaggart, who had been called in as a specialist because of the unexpected virulence of the virus, Nathan returned to Mistra a changed man. His conditioning broken, he made plans to escape with his wife and child, but Mistra sent a retrieval team after them. Aliya and Tyler were killed, and a badly injured Nathan barely managed to escape to Mexico.

The Pack

During his first year out of Mistra, Nathan traveled the world, tracking down each and every member of the team involved in the deaths of his family. On one such hunt, in Cambodia, he encounted GW Bridge, a CIA officer dying by the side of the road after having been betrayed by his partner during an arms deal. For reasons he was never able to fully explain, Nathan rescued the dying man, who soon became his closest friend. Bridge remained with him, and followed him to New Mexico when Nathan went back to destroy the Mistra home facility, preventing him from walking out into the desert and dying.

Once Nathan had recovered, Bridge had a proposition; as neither of them could go home again, he suggested that they take their skills and experience and go freelance, offering their services as mercenaries. Joining them in this was David Rabin, a former Mossad agent. The three of them gradually recruited others.

Shortly after the Pack was founded, Nathan and Bridge found themselves, on a trip to Hong Kong, in the audience at one of the underground fighting pits. There, they saw a very young fighter by the name of Domino taking on two fully-grown men. Nathan refused to leave that night without her, and purchased her contract from the manager of the fighting pit. He and Bridge raised Domino, who insisted upon putting her skills to work with the Pack as soon as she was of legal age. She and Nathan have a close if tempestuous relationship.

Over the next several years, the Pack operated in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin and South America. They earned a reputation for being tough, highly effective, and scrupulously attentive to the terms of their contracts. At various times they were employed by national governments, especially Britain, for high-risk missions such as nuclear sabotage in Kashmir and North Korea.

Living At The X-Mansion

After the event of X2, Nathan's precognition began to cause him significant difficulties, beginning with nightmares and violent precognitive episodes and later increasing to blackouts. Eventually he was unable to continue working with the Pack and contacted Dr. Moira MacTaggart, with whom he had maintained a close and affectionate friendship over the years. She encouraged him to come back to the United States and to Xavier's school for help, and he reluctantly agreed.

His first few months at the mansion were marked by increasing health problems due to his precognition. Although he managed to form strong relationships with some of the staff and students, including Angelo Espinosa, Amanda Sefton, Cain Marko, and Alison Blaire, his health problems worsened. He had several episodes of cardiac arrest and was briefly comatose following one. Charles Xavier eventually intervened, and managed to make contact through the precognitive link with the Mother Askani, who was initially hostile, insisting that Nathan needed to help her people.

The situation was eventually resolved when Nathan took it upon himself to play host to Askani's astral self. Left with the memories and psychic essences of her and her clan, Nathan found himself with a new outlook on life. Shortly thereafter, he began working as a teacher at the school, seeing it as a way to contribute to a better future for his fellow mutants. Not long after that, he was asked to become a reserve X-Man.

The Road To Youra

Early on in his tenure at Xavier's, Nathan was summoned to New York by an old acquaintance of his from Mistra, Colin MacInnis. He returned to the mansion two days later with only fragmentary memories of his time away. What happened to him remained unknown for months, until a Mistra retrieval team kidnapped Moira in an attempt to get Nathan to trade himself for her. It turned out during his previous disappearance, he had been implanted with a psionic worm program. Upon activation, this Trojan Horse would destroy his conditioning and do the same for any Mistra operative within his telepathic range. Unfortunately, the latter would result in Nathan's own death. MacInnis provided Xavier with the triggering phrase and the Trojan Horse was successfully triggered under controlled conditions, freeing Nathan of his conditioning.

After some months of recovery, Nathan found himself drawn back into MacInnis's anti-Mistra operations when he was alerted to the presence of a conditioning centre in Vermont. The recovery mission saved Kyle Gibney, the sole survivor of the group of children undergoing conditioning. Mick Foley, a member of the Mistra team Nathan's team encountered at the conditioning center, experienced a break in his own conditioning and fled. Nathan, again warned by MacInnis, went to Belgium with Alison to retrieve him before Mistra could recapture him.

Over the following months, the threat of Mistra temporarily receded, and Nathan continued to train to become an active X-Man. He assisted Remy LeBeau in a complicated operation in Las Vegas, and helped save Cain Marko's life when the Crimson Gem was shattered, an act that left Nathan himself temporarily blinded. He also asked Moira MacTaggart to marry him. The two of them found out near the end of the year that they were expecting a child, something that made the events of New Year's on Muir Island hit particularly hard.

Early in the following year, the X-Men received a call for help from MacInnis, whose helicopter had crashed with several rescued children aboard in Northern Canada. The X-Men went in to retrieve them and fought a Mistra team charged with the same mission. In the process, the conditioning of the Mistra field leader, Timothy Morgan was broken, and he was brought back to the mansion along with the children. With Mistra's operatives in disarray and the directors on the run, the government, MacInnis's people, and the X-Men made plans to cooperate to take them down for good.

The final operation took place on the Greek island of Youra. Though a last-ditch, scorched-earth tactic by one of the Mistra directors led to a high death toll on both sides, the joint task force was ultimately successful. Nathan himself successfully triggered a modified version of the Trojan Horse to stop the fighting, but was severely injured holding the triggered operatives away from the door to the training barracks.

Tomorrow's Children

Nathan's physical recovery was faster than expected, although emotionally he continued to struggle with the aftermath of the Youra mission and its consequences for his fellow former operatives. Two months later, he and Moira MacTaggart were married on Muir Island, and Nathan fulfilled a promise to himself that he would be able to dance with his wife on their wedding day.

While preparing for their child's arrival, Nathan was shocked to discover that Mistra had possessed a copy of his birth certificate. With the help of the government taskforce, he reunited with his father, Saul Morrow, only to discover that his fragmentary memories of his childhood were apparently inaccurate.

Deeply confused, Nathan devoted himself to continuing his rehabilitation, and was soon back on active duty with the X-Men, taking part in a number of missions. In the meantime, he continued to investigate his father's claims, with the help of Remy LeBeau, Madelyn Bartlet, and Jake Gavin. The search eventually led to a businessman by the name of Gideon Faraday. Nathan and Remy broke into the headquarters of his company, Eris Consulting in Philadelphia, only to be surprised in the act by Faraday himself, who displayed a mutant ability to synch to the powers of others - in this case, Nathan's telekinesis.

Several weeks later, while investigating a training camp for mutant children in Chad, the X-Men encountered Gideon again, whose company had been involved in setting up this camp and others. His suspicions mounting, Nathan nevertheless continued to stay in contact with his father. Shortly after the birth of his daughter, Rachel Kinross, Nathan met with his father in New York, and was introduced to his uncle - Gideon. Gideon and Saul revealed themselves as mutant supremacists adhering to a Social Darwinist ideology, Gideon informed Nathan that he had been responsible for his enrollment in the Mistra program, as well as for the deaths of his wife and son. All of this had been done to turn Nathan into the ultimate survivor. Devastated, he fled the scene.

With support from Moira, Charles, and many others, he determined not to allow these revelations to derail his life. Continuing in active service as an X-Man, he began freelance humanitarian work in an attempt to work against his family in that sphere as well. Over the following months, he did a great deal of traveling with the X-Men and also with Angelo, whom he hired as a research assistant to help him in his humanitarian work. Gideon made repeated attempts to intervene in his life, mostly notably assisting Pete Wisdom with a trap that left Nathan in the hospital. Later in the year, reeling from the loss of Askani in the events at the Hellfire Club, Nathan was left frantic when Gideon kidnapped Domino to lure him and Pete to Namibia to rescue her. There, Nathan discovered that his mother's involvement in his family story was also more complex than he had imagined. A precognitive as well, she left him advice in the form of a map that allowed him and his team to rescue Domino.

The New Year turned tragic when Gideon lashed out yet again, killing Bridge with Nathan's own powers. Nathan struggled to find a way to fight back more effectively, and with the X-Men's help, was successful in entrapping Gideon and exposing his involvement in mutant slave trading. Saul, in desperation, set up a 'summit' between his son and his brother. Nathan, unbeknownst to his wife and friends, went along with this, trusting in his precognitive visions to lead him to a resolution. Gideon betrayed his brother, kidnapping Nathan and taking him to South America, where he revealed that what he wanted was to synch to Nathan's precognition and see the distant future. Outside Ushuaia, the 'city at the end of the world', he succeeded in recreating Nathan's precognitive link and was fatally injured by Askani, who told Nathan that Gideon's death meant that her future had been definitively changed, and then vanished from his life forever. Saul then killed his brother by allowing him to synch to his cell-altering ability and then committing suicide. Nathan and the team of X-Men sent to rescue him returned home.

Elpis and the Way Forward

Nathan returned to the X-Men immediately after the events in Ushuaia, diving into that and his other work in an attempt to avoid having to deal with his father's death and the implications of what had happened. A few weeks after Saul's death, he discovered that his father had left him his company and his fortune. Nathan sold the company and put the proceeds and most of the rest of his inheritance into the founding of a new NGO, Elpis. Specifically addressing mutant issues in the developing world, it is to some extent Nathan's way of repairing all of the damage done by his family over the decades, but it has also become one of his abiding passions in life.

Currently, he is working with the X-Men, serving as a lobbyist and the head researcher for Elpis, and has also returned to teaching at the school. His schedule is insane, and he likes it that way.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 6'4"

Weight: 245lbs

Eyes: Gray

Hair: Graying brown

Other Features: Significant number of scars of varying types.

Powers

Nathan is a broad-spectrum psi. He has experienced a great deal of powers instability both prior to and during his time at the mansion (usually as a result of outside interference), but his experience and extensive training make him a very effective psi in the field.

Telekinesis:

His telekinesis is his primary and strongest ability. Even after his self-adminstered lobotomy to cure himself of the virus after The Rictor Effect, he is still an extremely powerful and experienced macro-telekinetic. With a few moments to prepare and meditate, he can lift weight equivalent to the Blackbird without significant strain. He is capable of a high level of multitasking with his telekinesis, able to control multiple objects on individual trajectories. His telekinetic endurance is exceptional, the product of long practice and harsh training at Mistra. His telekinesis is so well-trained that it has to some extent become second-nature even in everyday life; Nathan is as likely to levitate a coffee cup to his hand as he is to pick it up.

Within the past year, he has begun to use a telekinetic exoskeleton in the shape of a firebird, a trick learned from and practiced in tribute to Mother Askani. The exoskeleton itself is equivalent to Nathan's most durable telekinetic shield, and can withstand both projectiles and energy assault. It permits him to fly, although not gracefully, and his top speed is generally 50-60mph; the exoskeleton has occasionally been referred to by other X-Men as a "flying tank", an apt description. All of his 'lifting' ability is channeled through the exoskeleton, as demonstrated in San Diego when he kept the oil rig Magneto had levitated to use as a temporary base of operations from sinking again while he retrieved Scott from the platform. The one major drawback of the exoskeleton is that Nathan is unable to use his telekinesis apart from the exoskeleton while he's wearing it.

Prior to San Diego Nathan was also capable of micro-telekinesis, but the brain damage and psionic scarring have left him unable to access that level of his ability, perhaps permanently. He is however still able to see what he calls 'lines of force', potential and active kinetic energy in the world around him.

Telepathy:

Nathan is best-defined as a medium-range, communications-oriented telepath. His working range is around 100 miles, although he's capable of sensing (if not directly communicating with) more distant minds. His telepathy was very poorly trained prior to coming to the mansion, a deliberate choice on the part of Mistra; he used it mostly as an early warning system, and consequently had extremely poor shields.

Years of working on a weekly basis with Charles Xavier have solved that problem, but Nathan continues to be somewhat uneasy with his telepathy. He remains particularly sensitive to stray thoughts, and is often unwilling to exercise most of the active telepathic techniques available to him because of his experiences with Mistra. He is capable of the telepathic switchboard and has used it on a number of X-Men missions, but has some difficulty maintaining his focus on his surroundings when he does so.

Precognition:

Nathan possessed a secondary mutation that developed in his early 20s – a narrowly focused form of precognition locked on the Askani, a clan living two thousand years in the future and engaged in a fierce war for survival. His precognition, unlike that of Marie-Ange Colbert, manifested much more like a cross-temporal telepathic link - first with various Askani, then with future versions of himself. This precognitive link allowed him to play host to their astral selves for a time. It was broken with the Mother Askani's 'death' during the events of Lost in the Woods. His precognition appeared burnt out for some time, but later refocused on his uncle Gideon, who played a significant role in the chain of events leading to the Askani's future. After the final confrontation with his uncle, Nathan's precognition vanished once more, and according to Askani, permanently. Her parting words left Nathan believing that his precognition had been artificially induced, to allow him to play a specific role in the course of events. He has however accepted that with the disappearance of the Askani's future, he may never know the truth.

Miscellaneous:

While he played host to the Askani Nathan was also capable of manifesting the psionic ghosts in a form visible to the people around him. The nature of this ability was never defined, although it may combine elements of both telekinesis and telepathy. As it was never done consciously, how Nathan managed it remains a mystery. It may however be the explanation for the extremely lifelike hallucinations Nathan frequently experiences of his departed friends.

Equipment

Nathan uses a psimitar, a psionic amplifier built for him by Forge adapting an Askani design. It resembles a medieval halberd and has been broken twice: the first time by Lense in the fight following his kidnapping of Kyle, the second time by the energy overload caused when Nathan channeled the powers of three psis through it on the beach in San Diego to stop the tsunami.

Trivia

Nathan is a talented linguist, speaking over a dozen languages fluently, and has varying degrees of competence in close to twenty others. He is also, secretly, a poet. He began writing poetry during his year spent undercover in Kazakhstan, as the men of the Kazakh nomads entertain themselves around the fires with sung poetry and he needed to fit in. Nathan can be spotted from time to time with a small leather-bound notebook holding his latest poetry. It has a habit of vanishing abruptly if anyone notices it.

Plots

2004

Cassandra Complex

Collateral Damage

Trojan Horse

Blaze of Glory

X-Men Mission: Wildchild

Reclaimed

Sound and Fury

Unwell

Shattered

2005

Proteus

Shadows Fall

Lost and Found

Thermopylae

X-Men Mission: Mutant Mole People

Bad Blood

X-Men Mission: Sangue Puro

X-Men Mission: Nimrod

Stalemate

Butterfly Effect

Kashmir Waltz

X-Men Mission: Mutant Michelangelo

Lost Generations

X-Men Mission: Air Xavier

Mutants and Molotovs

Lost in the Woods

Skeleton Coast

2006

Trinity

X-Men Mission: Loose Ends

X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle

House of Wind

Masque

Law and Order: Westchester

X-Men Mission: Haunted House

X-Men Mission: The Empty Quarter

The Rictor Effect

X-Men Mission: Alcatraz

The Gates

Meta

Player: Alicia

E-mail: antiochene@gmail.com

AIM: cablewriter

Player Icon Base: Gerard Butler

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