WITNESSWITNESS
Real Name: Ness
Identity/Class: Terrestrial variant ("Hidden race"; Hellbent)
Occupation: Adventurer, mentor; otherwise unrevealed
Group Membership: Hellbent
Affiliations: Blaquesmith, G-3 (Cinder Fontaine), Nate Grey (aka X-Man), Slaine, a number of Morelle Pharmaceuticals employees;
formerly Madelyne Pryor (aka Red Queen)
Enemies: Dawn, Dusk, the Manx, Madelyne Pryor (aka Red Queen), Strikesquad: Gauntlet (Scanlon, G-1/Barone, G-2/Vise), Stryfe (Nathan Summers clone)
Known Relatives: Unidentified wife, Slaine (cousin), unspecified relationships to the other Hellbent
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
formerly the MacAleers bed and breakfast house in Dublin, Ireland;
formerly a home on the Nest, unidentified Caribbean island
First Appearance: X-Man#39 (June, 1998)
Powers/Abilities: Ness has precognitive
abilities, allowing him to glimpse potential futures (often
representing alternate realities). He can sense the presence of others
without seeing them, perhaps representing some low level telepathy or
energy-sensing.
Well built, fast, and and agile,
he may or may not have slightly enhanced strength and/or durability. He
could punch solid metal without injuring himself.
An experienced combatant, he is
prepared for most eventualities, and he can take advantage of sudden
occurrences that surprise others.
He is skilled with the use of automatic weapons.
He is experienced in piloting a
motorboat and driving a snowmobile, as well as operating a giant drill
with which he likely had no prior experience.
Height: Unrevealed (when first encountering the 5'9" Nate Grey, he seemed significantly taller, so perhaps 6'2")
Weight: Unrevealed (perhaps 225 lbs.)
Eyes: Orange (or light brown)
Hair:White with brown streaks
Distinguishing Features: Witness has a scar on his neck consistent with either severe rope burn or a major laceration.
History:
(X-Man#47 (fb) - BTS) - A group of Hellbent, the "last of the night-tribes," established a home on an island in the Caribbean that became known as the Nest. They believed themselves to be the last of the surviving Hellbent.
(X-Man#39) - Ness/Witness shared a precognitive flash with Nate Grey of Grey's powers destroying a large portion of Earth (this destruction happened on Earth-9806).
In the Nest, Ness awoke in a sweat as he laid in bed with his wife. Because of his observation of this future, Ness would become known as the Witness. He left his sleeping wife and took their motor boat, heading North towards Nate Grey.
(X-Man#40) - Ness arrived in the Arctic Circle at an immense crater created by Nate Grey as he drove the Great Beasts off of Earth, sensing the powerful energies Grey had unleashed.
(X-Man#41) - Ness followed Nate Grey's trail away from the crater. En route, he used a large ice drill to stop the armored warriors of Gauntlet from telepathically ripping information on Grey from a Morelle Pharmaceuticals base nearby. Surrounded by Gauntlet, Nate bluffed them into believing he was transmitting a live image through his personal satellite to the major media networks. Unwilling to have their existence publicly exposed, Gauntlet teleported away. Ness started to ask those he'd saved if they had information on Nate Grey, but he was distracted by a distinctive metal shard, which he obliterated with an energy gun. After finding out where they had found it and assuring that none of the others had touched it ("know the taint of the Shasteel"), he departed.
(X-Man#42) - Ness tracked Nate Grey to the western coast of Ireland and confronted him at last. They were swiftly separated as Nate had to leave to generate a rain storm to put out a fire caused by Blaquesmith's Tech-Gnomes. Ness joined Madelyne Pryor in rushing to check on Nate after he exhaustedly crashed to the ground, but they were surprised to find him gone.
(X-Man#43) - In Dublin, Ness lamented having lost his family and his people, noting that his only purpose in life was as the Witness to a future that could end the world. He was left with only a fragment of a Tech-Gnome and some soil to use to track Nate.
(X-Man#44 (fb) - BTS) - Ness tracked Nate to New York City.
(X-Man#44) - Ness spoke to his Hellbent cousin Slaine, noting that he had lost track of Nate Grey again, and that there were other powerful beings after Nate. He asked Slaine to get his people to help him, and Slaine agreed that he owed Ness just enough to try; Slaine further noted that Ness had the stink of humanity on him and that he would never be allowed to return to the Nest.
(X-Man#45) - In the New York sewers, Ness met with Slaine, who
told him that neither he nor any of the Hellbent knew anything the Tech-Gnome
technology he had obtained. Before Slaine could say anything further, he was
attacked from behind by the Manx who was accompanied by the Shadow-Sisters, Dusk
and Dawn. Dawn noted that Slaine had led them straight to his fellow traitor and
then released a burst of light to stun Ness who instead took advantage of the
distraction to leap onto the ceiling. 
Ness then tackled Dawn and threatened to
snap her neck unless Dusk called off the Manx. Dusk said that the Manx answered
to no one, but then Slaine used the last of his strength to skewer the Manx,
apparently killing it. Slaine encouraged Ness to slay Dusk, but she then
teleported away with Dawn, presumably returning to the Nest.
With his dying breath, Slaine told Ness that he had
identified the location from which the Tech-Gnome had been grown, the small
Philippines island Tramahoi.
(X-Man#46) - Ness arrived in Tramahoi and entered Blaquesmith's ship, intending to get answers about Nate Grey.
(Cable I#63) - As Ness confronted Blaquesmith, Blaquesmith set off his ship's self-destruct mechanism and they rushed outside. Blaquesmith then told Ness that Nate was in Latveria fighting Stryfe.
(X-Man#47 (fb) - BTS) - Blaquesmith flew Ness to Latveria in another ship.
(X-Man#47) - As some of Latveria's border nations tried to prevent Latverians from fleeing during Stryfe's assault, Ness took advantage of the distraction to slip INTO Latveria. He noted that he was less than impressed with the future that Blacquesmith represented, and he prepared to prevent Nate from causing the destruction they had foreseen.
Ness entered Sryfe's castle, following shortly behind Nate
and Cable and noting that things were proceeding exactly as he had foreseen.
When Nate rallied his power, preparing to sacrifice himself to stop Stryfe, Ness
rushed forward, explaining that if Nate's final power outburst occurred there,
it would combine with Stryfe's accumulated power and create a wave that would
destroy half the planet.
Nate instead levitated Dr. Doom's power siphon device atop Stryfe. As Nate grabbed Ness and fled, the device kept draining Stryfe's power and feeding it back into him until it overloaded and blew up. As they met with Madelyne and Cable, Ness noted that his and Nate's destinies were linked, and Nate would understand why in time.
(X-Man#49) - Back in Dublin, Ness sat atop a church,
pondering his future as an exile of the Nest and considering that the
entire planet was now his new world. Madelyne Pryor appeared
behind him, but he sensed her presence before she spoke. Madelyne
accused Ness of worming his way into Nate's life and of driving Nate away.
Ness told her that knowing any more about his own past (beyond his being an exile of the Hellbent Nest) would endanger both Madelyne and Nate. He further questioned what exactly Madelyne was.
(X-Man#50) - Madelyne appeared with a knife over the sleeping Ness. He sensed her presence and told her he knew she was there, and she responded that she knew he knew before she vanished again.
(X-Man#51) - As Strikesquad: Gauntlet confronted Nate and
Madelyne in the MacAleer's house in Dublin, Ness watched from above, noting that
one of the Gauntlet agents wasn't what he or she appeared to be. When the
armored agents began attacking, Ness leapt down and joined the fight. The
Gauntlet agents' armor proved immune to psionic attack, and Ness saved a pair of
civilians from collapsing architecture, but Gauntlet's unarmed commander Scanlon
grabbed Ness and held him in a headlock.
When the ceiling collapsed as Nate
fought Gauntlet, Ness took advantage of the distraction to free himself from
Scanlon's grip, then saved Scanlon from falling to the next level. Learning of
the extent of the operation -- as a multi-national pan-governmental agency -- from Scanlon, Ness tried futilely to get Nate to
leave, but Nate continued to fight. After pulling Scanlon to safety, Ness leapt
atop Gauntlet agent G-2 (Vise), pummeling her, while Madelyne cracked G-1/Barone's
psi-fields, and then Nate tore G-1's armor open, incapacitating Barone.
Two dozen or more Gauntlet agents then arrived to continue the struggle.
(X-Man#52) - Ness convinced Madelyne not to teleport Nate away, as Gauntlet would find him again, and more innocents would be hurt in the process; he then tackled another of the Gauntlet members. After Gauntlet stunned Madelyne, Ness had Nate bury her under a protective wall of debris.
After Gauntlet agent Vise murdered Scanlon and revealed herself and
half of the group to be rogues control of Gauntlet, Cinder Fontaine
flattened much of the rest of the group, and Ness and Nate teamed up
with her to take out the others. Ness vowed to protect Madelyne and
then blast her out when it was safe. Nate drew away most of the
Gauntlet agents, and Ness led the remaining ones away from Madelyne.
As Nate and Fontaine took out Gauntlet's ship, Fontaine warned Ness to get out of the way of the falling ship. Ness then blasted open the material surrounding Madelyne but found that she had already vanished. Vise then ambushed Ness, preparing to crush him before teleporting away and leaving everything to be destroyed by a nuclear explosion, but the Gauntlet ship then fell on them. The explosion was contained (orby the ship, and Madelyne stood over Ness' apparently dead body, noting that she could have saved him but had other things on her mind as her plans had recently changed.
Comments: Created by Terry Kavanaugh, Mark Pajarillo, and Bud LaRosa.
Ah, the secret of Ness...what was it? Loosely associated with the forgotten and mostly extinct Hellbent, with secret ties to X-Man, I think Ness will just continue to languish in obscurity and enigma.
Why would stopping Nate from blowing up the planet get him exiled from his home? He chose to abandon his wife and his life to be a nebulous mentor to Nate Grey. Excellent choice...
This profile was completed 4/08/2021, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20th anniversary 's celebratory event.
Profile by Snood.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Witness/Ness should be distinguished from:
* | (X-Man#47 (fb) - BTS) - A group of Hellbent, the "last of the night-tribes," established a home on an island in the Caribbean that became known as the Nest. They believed themselves to be the last of the surviving Hellbent. (X-Man#39) - Far from traditional Caribbean trade routes, surrounded by seething seas, and shrouded by tropical storm clouds, the Nest was absent from modern maps and was considered the stuff of legends and myths. In the Nest, Ness awoke in a sweat as he laid in bed with his wife. Because of his observation of this future, Ness would become known as the Witness. He left his sleeping wife and took their motor boat, heading North towards Nate Grey. (X-Man#44) - Ness asked the Hellbent Slaine to get his people to help him determine the location of Nate Grey, and Slaine agreed that he owed Ness just enough to try; Slaine further noted that Ness had the stink of humanity on him and that he would never be allowed to return to the Nest. (X-Man#45) - Dawn, Dusk, and the Manx fatally assaulted Slaine, presumably for aiding Ness. After the dying Slaine slew the Manx and Ness threatened Dawn, the two Shadow-Sisters teleported away, presumably returning to the Nest. |
 | (X-Man#39) - Ness and his wife dwelled within their home on the island known only as the Nest In the Nest, Ness awoke in a sweat as he laid in bed with his wife after having a vision of Nate Grey destroying much of the Earth. He left his sleeping wife and took their motor boat, heading North towards Nate Grey. She awakened shortly thereafter, sensing his absence and calling his name. Note: She was/is presumably Hellbent as well. Her fate following Ness' departure is unrevealed. | 
|
X-Man#39, pg. 4, panel 4 (observing vision of Earth-9806);
pg. 13, panel 1 (Nest);
panel 2 (sleeping in bed with wife);
pg. 22, panel 1 (wife awakening);
panel 3 (face, showing apparent rope scar on neck)
#41, pg. 17, panel 2 (straight-on face)
#45, pg. 9, panel 1 (full)
#49, pg. 9, panel 4 (seated atop church);
pg. 11, panel 1 (face, eyes glowing);
#51, pg. 8, panel 3 (combat pose);
#52, pg. 20, panel 1 (dead)
Appearances:
X-Man#39 (June, 1998) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Mark Pajarillo (penciler), Bud
LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Man#40 (July, 1998) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Richard Pace (penciler), Bud
LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Man#41-44 (August-November, 1998) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Roger Cruz (penciler),
Bud LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Men#45 (December, 1998) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Mark Pajarillo (penciler),
Bud LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Men#46 (January, 1999) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), J.H. Williams (penciler),
Mike Gray (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
Cable I#63 (January, 1999) - Joe Casey (story), Stephen Platt w/ Andy Smith
(pencils), Matt Banning w/ Rodney Ramos (inks), Mark Powers (editor)
X-Men#47 (February, 1999) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), J.H. Williams (penciler),
Mike Gray (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Men#49-50 (March-April, 1999) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Luke Ross (penciler),
Bud LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Men#51 (May, 1999) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Mel Rubi (penciler), Bud LaRosa
(inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
X-Men#52 (June, 1999) - Terry Kavanaugh (writer), Luke Ross (penciler), Bud
LaRosa (inker), Glenn Greenberg (editor)
First posted: 09/15/2021
Last updated: 09/14/2021
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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