Dark Riders
The Dark Riders are mercenaries in the employment of Apocalypse, put together from cast-offs of various mutant weapon programs around the world. Well trained, experienced and utterly ruthless, the Dark Riders serve as the enforcers of Apocalypse's plans, and the generals of his thralls in battle.
First Appearance
Current members
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Gauntlet |width="600pt"| The leader of the team, Gauntlet is a mercenary with decades of experience. When Apocalypse's powers augmented his own, it twisted his features into an inhuman form, but unlike Blaquesmith, Gauntlet seems to relish the fear it causes. His primarily uses firearms and edged weapons in combat.
Powers: Enhanced strength, speed, endurance, and a highly acute sensory processing ability. He also has green skin and needle like teeth.
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Foxbat |width="600pt"| The team's recon person, Foxbat is especially adapt at hand to hand combat, and hit and run tactics. A common strategy is to use Foxbat to hit the opposing foe first, sending them to attack him, and then spring an ambush.
Powers: Augmented strength, speed, agility, and reflexes, flight, eyes adapted for nocturnal vision, clawed hooves, finger talons, and bone spears that extend themselves up past his shoulders or forward past his wrists.
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Tusk (and the Underlings) |width="600pt"| A massive mutant with a bizarre power, Tusk is the team's tank in combat. He especially enjoys combat, loving to crush and rend. When the Underlings are deployed, his personal powers are cut in half.
Powers: Enormous size, strength, endurance, resistance to injury and two razor pointed tusks on his back that extend from a shell casing which can produce Underlings. These Underlings are half-sized duplicates of Tusk that possess enhanced strength, agility, and share a psychic link with the main Tusk.
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Psynapse |width="600pt"| A former Eastern European experiment, Psynapse was a telepath who was put into a coma following a failed experiment. He was revived by Apocalypse and his powers twisted to suit the man's purposes. Unlike the rest of the Dark Riders, Psynapse has never been a mercenary, and serves as a sort of 'political officer' on the team for Apocalypse.
Powers: Taps into the ambient psionic energy of the planet to read and project thoughts, and unleash bursts of stunning mental energy.
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Barrage |width="600pt"| Barrage is another experiment, this time Taiwanese, having had his hands surgically removed, and the end of his arms forcably cultivated to accept energy generating cells from another mutant. He killed his way out of the experiment and began a career as a mercenary. Barrage is largely adapt at using his feet for eating, typing, and manipulating objects.
Powers: His forearms have been transformed into organic weapons that can collect ambient energy from the environment and focus it into discharges of heat and explosive power. He can also hit people with the energy-charged arms for greater physical impact.
|-valign="top" |width="100pt"| Mainframe |width="600pt"| A technopath of some power, Mainframe is the only member of the team never seen in combat. His role is to tie together the complex communicators each of the Dark Riders wear, creating a sort of technological version of the telepathic communications net. Mainframe uses this to maintain a big picture view of the battle, and supply tactical information to his teammates.
Powers: Merges his molecular structure with technology, allowing him to instantaneously download information from computer systems and manipulate them.
Details
The Dark Riders originally came together following individual contacts in various hotspots around the world. They quickly grew into an elite six man force, known both for their success in completing contracts and utter lack of interest in anything other than getting the job done and getting paid. Their existence has been largely secret, operating using cutaways and selecting clients carefully to keep their price high.
Apocalypse learned of them, and offered them a lucrative one year contract, to serve as his personal enforcers, a few months before Day Zero. He purposefully kept them out of the attack on Manhattan, to ensure that his organization would not collapse if something went wrong. While the Dark Riders are ruthless, they do respect the contract, and decided to break Apocalypse out from confinement.
Following the apparent death of their employer, it is unknown whether the Dark Riders have gone back to the mercenary world, or if they still maintain Apocalypse's organization. It is also unknown whether or not Sabretooth remains with them at this time.
