Phastos

The engineer and Eternal Phastos is a superhuman created by the Celestials, and he uses his knowledge and powers to aid his people until his search for something more to life keeps him on Earth.

Deviant Origins

Phastos is one of the Eternals, created cosmic beings called the Celestials around one million years ago during the Celestials’ First Host and tasked with safeguarding Earth. Their immortality and near limitless power are unlike anything humanity has ever known.

As an Eternal, Phastos is distantly related to the genetically unstable Deviants (also descended from Celestial experiments) and normal humans but possesses cosmic energy within his body, which immediately sets him and other Eternals apart from the other races. However, the Deviants raise Phastos before he leaves their ugly world to seek his destiny. 

The Eternals establish a society separate from the Deviants and humans, having little to do with either race for many centuries. Phastos becomes the Eternal’s weapons smith and engineer on Earth in the city of Olympia, but his true passion lay in the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and truth.

Cosmic Energy Manipulation

As an Eternal, Phastos’ bodily cells contain cosmic energy, and he maintains constant mental control over every molecule of his body. He is virtually immortal and can be restored to life even if the molecules of his body are scattered. 

He also possesses the capacity for superhuman strength, telepathy, flight, teleportation, illusion-casting, and matter transmutation. As an Eternal, he can also generate various forms of energy from his body, including force, heat, light, and other electromagnetic radiation. Some Eternals have devoted themselves to specializing in a particular facet of their powers, and can increase their proficiency in one area by decreasing their power in another.

After Kronos, the leader of the Eternals, isolated the cosmic energy that empowered the their people, the containment vessel ruptured and exploded, disintegrating him and destroying Titanos. While Kronos exists as a disembodied cosmic entity whose life force and consciousness expands throughout the solar system, the remaining Eternals’ powers increase by the explosion’s energies. Zuras becomes the Eternals’ leader.

Phastos and the other Eternals discover that with their new powers, they can unite to form the collective Uni-Mind, merging into a single form to make decisions for their race together.

Eternal Enemies (For a Time)

The Deviant race and their Warlord Kro often go head to head with the Eternals, and while Phastos defends his people and aids them with his powers, he often expresses dissent towards any conflict, aggression, and war. Eventually, Phastos remains with the Deviants to help them solve the deadly plague that’s killing their race to save his friend Ransak and give the Deviants a fighting chance.

Duty-Bound Allies

As an Eternal, Phastos is duty-bound to his people and acts as their engineer solving their weaponry and technical problems for centuries. He even invents the reactivation chamber, a device that can heal or resurrect Eternals, which effectively makes them immortal.

Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, often allies with the Eternals, and seeks their alliance when the Deviant Ereshkigal seeks to hold ultimate power over the Deviants by using an alien stone that could unravel dimensions. To fix the broken reactivation chamber which the Deviants stole, Thor travels to the Savage Land with Phastos, who believes that the element Vibranium is needed to solve their problems—though Phastos eventually tells Thor the truth that the Vibranium could be used to stop the destructive stone from annihilating the Deviants.

A Technician’s Tale

When Deviants infiltrated the lair of Sigmar of the Polar Eternals, Phastos protected the lair and prevented them from stealing a molecular recording tablet. One of them sacrificed themselves in the process, yelling that life was meaningless, and Phastos admitted that he also lived with such torment. When fellow Eternal Ikaris implored Phastos to help the Eternals fight their enemy the Deviants, Phastos resisted on moral ground but helped them regardless of his verbal dissent.

Phastos made a bargain to gain more knowledge, but it only caused anguish, and afterward, he exiled himself from his people. His torment continued, but then the rogue Eternal Sprite rewove the fabric of reality, and for a time, he was allowed to forget his life as an Eternal. In losing his memory, Phastos became Phillip Stoss, an automotive engineer in Zuffenhausen, Germany, who married Gretel Stoss—though Phillip experienced recurring dreams of his former life as an Eternal. The Eternals discovered him there and attempted to recruit him back into the fold to help them undo the Dreaming Celestial’s handiwork, who placed the entire mortal world into a slumber. Though Stoss retained no conscious memories of his former life, Ikaris blasted him with cosmic energy, which jolted his memories back into place. Phastos then leaving his wife behind felt haunted by this decision but returned immediately to help his fellow Eternals fix The Reactivation Chamber, a device that granted the Eternals their prolonged life. The goal was to replicate the murdered Makkari, vaporized by the embittered Eternal Ajak, and integrate his consciousness into a new husk. While Phastos attempted to fix the device, the Eternal Sersi used her power of transmutation to merge with the Dreaming Celestial, and together they restored Makkari though at the cost of Sersi’s life. The activation chamber remained destroyed though Phastos remained steadfast in his determination to fix it. He warned Zuras that until he discovered its power source any Eternal that dies would not come back. 

The Eternals then fought the Horde, also known as world reapers. Most of the Eternals joined the Uni-Mind and entered the Dreaming Celestial’s body, and in attacking the Horde, they defeated them. Meanwhile, the Dreaming Celestial visited the all-powerful and all-knowing Fulcrum to ask it to spare Earth and then, in doing so, evolved to become an individual. With the Celestial’s plea accepted, everything returned to normal, and the Eternals returned to protecting Earth in the shadows. Phastos continued his work on the reactivation chamber.

Phastos was then able to restore the Eternal Virako’s memories and attempted again to repair the resurrection chamber while Deviant allies, Ransak and Karkas, guarded the city. While he tinkered, Thor visited their city of Olympia, and Phastos and Thor met for the first time with Thor calling him the Aesir’s God of Thunder—worshiped by the humans of Northern Europe and Britain. Thor sought the immortal Eternals as allies against a growing threat, Ereshkigal of the chaotic Deviants who live in the underwater city of Lemuria. Her people fell into civil war, and she sought power to restore order and stole the Unbinding Stone of Oshemar—an alien weapon of ultimate destruction capable of unraveling dimensions. The Deviant Warlord Kro arrived with his allies breaching the Eternal’s defenses and demanding the reactivation chamber to help their dying race. Virako offered it up to them in a bluff, but Phastos tried to put a stop to it, promising he could fix his own invention. But the negotiation turned into a fierce battle, one which the Eternals, even with Thor by their side, lost. The Deviants captured Phastos and the chamber and left for Lemuria. 

The Deviants, upon order of their leader Ghaur, tried to beat Phastos into submission, but Thor arrived with Eternal allies and Deviants Karkas and Ransak to liberate Phastos. Though Thor defeated, Phastos intervened to save his life and lied that he needed Vibranium in the Savage Land to proceed with the repair. Allowed to leave Lemuria, Phastos and Thor left to retrieve the Vibranium, but upon their arrival to the Savage Land, Phastos admitted to Thor that he lied. They returned to Lemuria with the Vibranium, and Phastos revealed that he thought Vibranium could stop Ereshkigal’s Unbinding Stone. Thor attached it to the activated stone which had caused a maelstrom and prevented the city and populace from being destroyed. Though Kro intended to save their race by using Ransak’s stable Deviant DNA, to create super-Deviants, and in threatening to take him, Thor defended Ransak. Phastos intervened and offered himself in Ransak’s place, claiming that he would discover a solution to their dilemma. He saw the Deviants as shimmering life forces and not aberrations to be reviled, and remained with the Deviants to help them.