ACHIAN race

Note: As the Achians are notorious for deception, anything reported by an Achian is potentially (but not always) false.

Classification: Insubstantial extraterrestrial race 

Location/Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
    Ru'ach reported that he was from many parsec away.

Known Members: Ru'ach

Affiliations: None revealed

Enemies: Daredevil (Matt Murdock), Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd)

Aliases: The Soulless Ones

First Appearance: Daredevil III#30 (October, 2013)

Powers/Abilities: The Achians are masters of persuasion. According to the Silver Surfer they are "sentient lies who exist on the edge of perception, visible only when it suits their ends to be so. In their natural form, they are but the elusive shadows chased fruitlessly by the corner of the eye. They can stay on the periphery of vision, even to someone with 360 degree senses. They allegedly lack souls, and neither the Silver Surfer's cosmic powers nor Daredevil's enhanced senses can discriminate between an Achian's truth and lies.
    Daredevil's enhanced hearing registered Ru'ach's voice as like ground glass, and proximity to it caused an instant migraine headache. His radar sense registered Ru'ach like static in the air. Even at close range, Daredevil felt like he was trying to grab smoke.
    Even to the Silver Surfer's senses, which largely simple vision and distinguish sentient beings by reading their "inner light" (or souls), the allegedly soulless Achians are all but undetectable.

    Ru'ach, at least, can empathetically sense the secrets of those around. Presumably, given their reputations, similar is true of other Achians.

    It is implied, at least to me, that the Achians are metamorphs, able to adopt forms enabling them to engender sympathy and/or trust in others; however, we only see Ru'ach in the form he adopted to meet Daredevil.

    Achians can also travel, at least, interplanetary distances, though it is not confirmed whether they travel under their own means and in what form, or whether they use ships, teleporters, etc.

    They use "voicewash translators" to speak and understand the language of other races...or perhaps they just learn others' languages via telepathy, and that was just another lie...

Traits: According to the Silver Surfer "They are guileful manipulators who live to sow discord and malice on countless worlds." The known for their deceptions, the Achians will use fact or fiction to disturb their enemies; there is nothing they won't say, as unease can be an effective weapon as well.

    Via his empathic abilities, Ru'ach uses duplicity and flattery to cripple a planet's defense systems from inside to make it vulnerable.

Type: Allegedly sentient concepts;
    the only form actually shown was that taken by Ru'ach on Earth, but it was implied that was a form he adopted to engender sympathy/trust. Regardless, that form was a bilaterally symmetric semi-humanoid biped
Eyes: Unrevealed, possibly none; Ru'ach's form on Earth: Two (on head; solid red color seen)
Fingers: Unrevealed, possibly none; Ru'ach's form on Earth: Four (plus opposing thumb)
Toes: Unrevealed, possibly none; Ru'ach's form on Earth:
Skin color: Unrevealed, possibly none; Ru'ach's form on Earth:
Average height: Unrevealed, possibly none; Ru'ach's form on Earth:

History:
(Daredevil III#30 (fb) - BTS) - According to Ru'ach, radio waves from Earth bounce through hyperspace, and the Achians often make music from them.

(Daredevil III#30 (fb) - BTS) - According to Ru'ach, the entire Achian race heard a transmission of Murdock's university speech on a proposed extraterrestrial bill of rights. Murdock's speech and the music the Achians made from it was allegedly quite popular.

(Daredevil III#30 (fb) - BTS) - The Silver Surfer pursued Ru'ach across the galaxy for unspecified crimes, then sensed as Ru'ach surfaced on Earth.

(Daredevil III#30) - Ru'ach traveled to the law office of Nelson & Murdock. His arrival/presence was sensed by Matt Murdock, who confronted him. After activating his voicewash translator, Ru'ach told Murdock he had come seeking asylum on Earth and requested confirmation that Murdock was Daredevil. Ru'ach said that he had sought out Murdock because of his speech on the extraterrestrial bill of rights. Ru'ach further claimed (presumably falsely) the the Achians were devoted students of many interstellar cultures, including Earth, and then stated that he sought both "LawMurdock" as an eloquent communicator and "DareMurdock" to bring him to the Avengers.

    As the Silver Surfer flew nearby, Murdock sensed Ru'ach flinch (and Murdock took then to correlate with a jump in heartbeat that might mean a person was lying), but Ru'ach continued that he had information about a forthcoming threat to Earth, and that it was critical that he be heard before his pursuer intercepted him, inadvertently dooming Earth. Visibly shaken by the threat, Ru'ach warned that no one human could stop his pursuer, and he begged for asylum. As the Surfer approached, Ru'ach begged Daredevil to plead his case to his peers, which was the only way Earth would be safe. The Surfer then passed through the wall and angrily confronted his target after a long search, but when Ru'ach bolted through a door, the Surfer fired at him, unintentionally singeing one of Murdock's employees. This led Murdock to tackle the Surfer out a window; before summoning his board, the Surfer apologized, noting he and possibly Murdock were victims of Ru'ach's abilities. After a brief scuffle, the Surfer revealed Ru'ach to be a deceiver of the highest order, leading Daredevil to pause, and enabling the Surfer to explain the situation.

 

(Daredevil III#30 - BTS) - Taking advantage of the distraction, Ru'ach traveled to Stark Tower / Avengers Tower.

(Daredevil III#30) - As Ru'ach was at the Stark Tower lobby and asked an audience with Tony Stark, claiming to have been sent personally by Odin, Daredevil -- who had been monitoring specifically for him -- heard his voice and led the Surfer to Ru'ach. Still barely able to detect Ru'ach, the Surfer's energy blast missed, and Daredevil grabbed at him and missed, before snagging Ru'ach by circling him with his Billy Club-line. As Daredevil tightly bound Ru'ach, the Achian tried to unnerve Daredevil by whispering, "She (Kirsten McDuffie, Murdock's recently broken off romantic interest) will never love you." However, forewarned by the Surfer, Daredevil refused to be unnerved, and he physically restrained Ru'ach, instructing the Surfer to "look for the human in me--and aim for that." The Surfer then blasted Ru'ach unconscious, rendering him much more clearly visible to both heroes.

    The Surfer assured Daredevil Ru'ach would be imprisoned for his crimes, and Daredevil told the Surfer to tell Ru'ach to get a good lawyer.

 

 

Comments: Created by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee.

    Daredevil claims that this encounter with the Surfer was the closest he'd ever stood to him and that all he knew was that the Surfer was an alien adventurer with the power cosmic. They've definitely appeared together before...at least in the Nocenti/Romita run of the original Daredevil series...but I'm not sure they interacted directly.

    A parsec is 3.26 light years. From the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary, a parsec is:

Unit of measure used by astronomers to express distances to stars and galaxies. It is the distance at which the radius of Earth's orbit would subtend an angle of one second of arc, so an object one parsec away would have a parallax of one second. An object's distance in parsecs is the reciprocal of its parallax in seconds of arc. For example, Alpha Centauri, with a parallax of 0.76 second, is 1.33 parsecs from the Sun and Earth. One parsec equals 3.26 light-years, or 19.2 trillion mi (30.9 trillion km).

    I was going to do a sub-profile on Ru'ach, but pretty much everything we know is about Ru'ach, so it would be a repeat of this profile. Someone else could compile an easy profile by reformatting the data here to be a character profile on Ru'ach.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Achians, aka the Soulless Ones, have no known connections to

images: (without ads)
Daredevil III#30, story pg. 3, panel 7 (Ruach main);
        pg. 4, panel 1 & 2 (language);
            panel 4 (Ruach face);
        pg. 5, panel 1 (Ruach feet);
        pg. 19, panel 3 (Ruach feet)

Appearances:
Daredevil III#30 (October, 2013) - Mark Waid (writer), Chris Samnee (penciler & inker), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor), Stephen Wacker (editor)


 

Last updated: 10/21/13

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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