A powerfully advanced prototype of the mutant-hunting Sentinels, Nimrod’s programming allows him to read the abilities of foes and adapt to beat them. He fights many mutants in both the X-Men and the Hellfire’s Inner Circle.
New Breed
In Reality-811 (“Days of Future Past”), the Omega Sentinels kill or imprison most mutants in the USA. Project: Nimrod was initiated to create the Nimrod Hunter series, a new breed of Sentinel (named for the Biblical hunter Nimrod) that would be more accurate, efficient and deadly as they expanded worldwide. Surviving mutants Katherine Pryde and Rachel Summers, AKA Marvel Girl, infiltrated the Project, and Katherine planted a nuclear bomb within its cyberobotics complex while simultaneously sending Rachel Summers into the past. Arriving in the seconds between Rachel’s departure and the nuclear explosion, the sole completed Nimrod unit attempted to mechanically replicate the time travel process used by Rachel. While Rachel arrived in Earth-616’s heroic age, Nimrod was caught in an anomalous energy flux (perhaps part of a spell cast by that reality’s Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, in an effort to avoid Earth-616 becoming the warped Reality-8591) and swept into another space/time continuum, Reality-61029, sixteen years after the heroic age. There Nimrod confronted the technosmith Forge, slew Forge’s wife, Ororo, AKA Storm, then threatened their children, Orora and Naze, to force Forge to build a time machine into it. Forge instead built a device that would shunt Nimrod into an alternate reality or perhaps into the time stream itself. Accessing the device, Nimrod arrived on Earth-616, years after Rachel’s arrival, months before M-Day, when the Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, would depower most of the world’s mutants. The glowing Nimrod appeared before the desolate mutaphobic Reverend William Stryker, a seeming answer to his prayers that restored his faith in his mission to destroy mutantkind.
Advanced Technology
Nimrod is a product of advanced technology—comparable to about 35 years in the future—composed of an unidentified, highly durable material, and possessing Class 100 strength. It can convert its outer appearance to resemble a normal human, and reconstruct itself to gain additional abilities.
When smashed to pieces, Nimrod can reintegrate its parts to become whole again. Its electronic consciousness can somehow temporarily exist independently of its physical body. Nimrod has complete control of its components on a molecular level, enabling it to reconstitute its form even if reduced to powder.
Nimrod’s demonstrated energy assaults include projection of powerful concussive, plasma, or disintegration blasts, and magnetic energy enabling him to levitate hundreds of tons of iron and steel; projection of tight-beam, ultra-high frequency sonics able to render unconscious even beings as durable as the Juggernaut; generation of a shockweb that incapacitated those caught in it; reversing gravity’s effects upon himself or others; creation of force fields protecting him against most physical and energy assaults, as well as disrupting attempts to pass through him intangibly.
Nimrod contains highly advanced computer systems and scanning devices to track as well as analyze for the presence and nature of superhuman abilities. Nimrod can thus adapt its form and abilities to cope with or neutralize an opponent’s superhuman power; if Nimrod is incapable of combating an ability, it can subsequently enhance itself so that it can do so in the future. Nimrod also has access to extensive records of its reality’s history, which differs in certain ways from Earth-616’s.
Nimrod’s earlier incarnation tapped into ongoing events to alter its “future history” records, highly accurate predictions based on knowledge of the present and of Earth-811’s future. It can also transfer (possibly only due to Forge’s equipment) its directives into other robots, overwriting their existing programming and sending them to terminate mutants. It also houses a time device within its chest.
The Nimrod program subtly advances development of technology without those involved realizing its involvement. The resultant Nimrod prototype possesses Class 100 strength, is highly durable, utilizing advanced weapons systems, such as mutagenic inversion aerial drones.
Mutant and Earthly Enemies
Traveling across realities, Nimrod encounters and attempts to control various incarnations of Forge and Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, and it typically works.
Earth-616’s Reverend William Stryker uses Nimrod for his own ends against mutantkind, stealing its knowledge of the future to reshape the present. Once Nimrod realizes it, it shows Stryker a false future. Nimrod then attacks Stryker’s anti-mutant force, the Purifiers.
Nimrod soon finds itself up against the New X-Men, X-Men and Hellfire Club.
Few Allies
Nimrod has few allies considering its sole goal is to destroy all mutants no matter what.
A Sentinel’s Story
When Nimrod’s database connected to Earth-616’s, the chronal flux and historical variations caused its systems to crash and it collapsed, off-line. As Stryker’s agents dismantled Nimrod to access its hard drives, Nimrod’s backup systems altered its primary objective to self-preservation before shutting down. Accessing Nimrod’s database, Stryker learned of Reality-811’s future history and how he might change Earth-616 to better match it, as well as projected extrapolations of Earth-616’s future, including M-Day. Using such information, Stryker recruited multiple loyal operatives by saving them from otherwise certain death, publicly predicted several catastrophes including vaguely hinting at M-Day (enhancing his following), targeted key mutants for extermination, and learned he might form powerful warriors from a mutant’s wings (though Stryker initially mistook Jay Guthrie, AKA Icarus, to be this mutant) and slew multiple depowered mutants.
Eventually coming back on-line, Nimrod determined Stryker to be interfering with its functions and missions and thus altered its database to cover up Stryker’s projected death at the New X-Men’s hands, instead showing Stryker successfully slaughtering the Xavier Institute residents. Armed with one of Nimrod’s gauntlets, Stryker assaulted the Institute, incapacitating and injuring several before being apparently slain by Josh Foley, AKA Elixir; the gauntlet was taken into Office of National Emergency custody.
Meanwhile, Nimrod activated itself, slew the Purifiers guarding it and then traveled to confront this reality’s Forge. Its energy reserves dangerously depleted, Nimrod nonetheless threatened to slay Storm, coercing Forge to repair it. Sending a distress call to Noriko Ashida, AKA Surge, via her Forge-designed gauntlets, Forge convinced Nimrod it was too advanced to repair and that he could transfer its programming and intelligence into an anti-Sentinel robot he was constructing. Setting up traps for the approaching New X-Men, Nimrod allowed Forge’s transfer, but Forge then used override codes to return his robot to its “protect mutants” directive. When the robot helped the young mutants against the traps, however, they unwittingly attacked it; the protocol error between protecting the mutants and self preservation allowed Nimrod to shut down and reboot, eliminating Forge’s programming and altering its hardware to match its software specification, restoring it to its standard Nimrod form (“Nimrod 2.0”). After a fierce battle, the New X-Men, guided by Forge, overloaded Nimrod’s time device, pulling Nimrod into the time stream again.
The temporal device wiped Nimrod’s databanks, though Nimrod backed up its mutant termination prime directive, and sent Nimrod further into Earth-616’s past. Disoriented upon arrival, Nimrod detected an imminent crime and slew a would-be mugger before he could kill Jaime Rodriguez, in the process knocking the disembodied sorcerer Kulan Gath’s amulet from Rodriguez’s jacket to sink into the mud, the event that diverged Reality-8591 from 616. Nimrod adopted a progressively more human form, and the appreciative Rodriguez took Nimrod into his home. Befriending Jaime and his son, Tomas, Nimrod realized that it had moved both across and down time.
Targeting criminals as well as mutants, Nimrod incapacitated the powerful Cain Marko, AKA Juggernaut, who was saved by the X-Men (now including Rachel Summers). Its arm destroyed by a combined X-Men-powered Anna Marie, AKA Rogue, Nimrod departed to recover.
At some point, Nimrod uploaded a copy of its self-awareness program into the United States military’s computer cybernet, a sleeper virus to access a Sentinel development program to recreate itself in the future if needed. In human form, Nimrod gained satisfaction in helping Tomas with homework and in a job loading fish crates, while his armored form earned heroic status disintegrating criminals. Nimrod recognized emotions as anomalous to its programming, but was distracted upon detecting Rachel Summers after she had been gravely wounded. Targeting Rachel, her X-Men allies, and the Hellfire Club Inner Circle as mutants and/or felons, Nimrod slew Black Rook Friedrich von Roehm but was ultimately overcome by its foes’ combined power. After being disrupted, shattered and blasted to pieces by Black King Sebastian Shaw striking him at orbital velocity, Nimrod teleported away.
Coming to appreciate humanity and further developing emotions, Nimrod apparently progressively altered its prime directive to protect humanity, which allowed it to see the X-Men as heroes similarly protecting humanity. Nimrod acted as a vigilante, stopping criminals, slaying those who resisted and claiming their profits to use to help their victims. As Nicholas Hunter, Nimrod became explosives crew foreman in a construction operation, but upon contacting the remnants of the circuit board of Master Mold (an advanced, intelligent Sentinel native to Earth-616), Nimrod’s systems were overwhelmed. Master Mold used Nimrod’s body as the template to rebuild its own massive form then concluded that its mission to terminate mutants would be best served by eliminating humanity. While Master Mold was attacked by the X-Men, Nimrod’s unique nature allowed Mold to sense the heroes, despite the Omniversal guardian Roma’s spell then making them invisible to technology. Unable to destroy Master Mold, the X-Men tried to push it through the Siege Perilous where it would be allegedly judged by a higher power and returned to Earth in karmic fashion. Wishing to aid the X-Men but unable to overcome Master Mold’s control, Nimrod instead convinced Mold that since only living beings could sense the X-Men, Master Mold had become, in effect, a mutant. Master Mold therefore facilitated its own destruction as part of its prime directive.
The Master Mold/Nimrod synthesis fragments were pulled through the Siege Perilous gateway, stripped of artificiality and made flesh, a human male. Amnesiac, he was adopted by Rose Gilberti, who named him Sebastian. Though Rose tried to teach Sebastian peace, compassion, and tolerance, TV and newspaper reports of the mutant threat ultimately touched the hidden memories and his predecessors’ directives. Sebastian became Bastion, organizing Operation: Zero Tolerance and the creation of the Prime Sentinels (Sentinel programming-directed human cyborgs sleeper agents), and accessing some of his previous Sentinel powers. Ultimately defeated by the X-Men, Bastion tapped into Nimrod and Master Mold’s powers, broke free from government custody and sought out Rose Gilberti. When Rose was killed in crossfire in a failed recapture of Bastion, any fragment of humanity perished within him, and he bonded with the newer Master Mold used to create the Prime Sentinels, transforming into a Nimrod-esque form. The reformed Bastion was defeated when X-51/Aaron Stack, AKA Machine Man, blew up Bastion’s base.
Years later, following Stryker’s death, Stryker’s Purifiers obtained the inert Nimrod form—the one from which Nimrod transferred its programming into Forge’s anti-Sentinel robot—from Forge’s base. They bonded Bastion’s head to Nimrod’s body, and Bastion was reborn anew.
Prior to Bastion’s development, Nimrod’s previously uploaded self awareness program accessed anti-mutant technology being developed by the U.S. military to protect humanity. The Nimrod program advanced development of sentience technology, and built a single Nimrod prototype. When Nathan Summers, AKA Cable, and his X-Force mutant squad investigated, the Nimrod program downloaded itself into the prototype and attacked them. This Nimrod threatened to destroy the mutants until, via a cyberlink created by Cable, Nimrod was convinced to extrapolate the amount of human life that would be lost if Nimrod units exterminated mutantkind in this time period. To best protect humanity, this Nimrod elected to allow humans and mutants to forge their own path towards coexistence. Nimrod deactivated itself, and Cable claimed its neural net, though the government kept the robot’s form to learn from it.
