The Omniversal Guardian Roma empowers many interdimensional Super Heroes to protect the Multiverse.
Lady of the Northern Skies
Over four billion years old by her own species’ standards, Roma is considered the equivalent of a teenager. Like her father Merlyn, Roma is a gestalt of all her multiversal counterparts, and for eons she assists him protecting the Omniverse, chess players playing thousands of games simultaneously; but unlike Merlyn, to whom necessity overruled compassion, Roma cares about those manipulated in the service of the greater good. In various guises, Roma accompanied her father as he recruits members for his multiversal Corps; other allies included Reality-616’s Naze, a Cheyenne shaman who assisted the two mages against the chaos-worshiping Adversary, and King Arthur, who helps defend Otherworld against the Nethergods.
Merlyn foresees a powerful, insane reality manipulator, Mad Jim Jaspers, arising on several worlds; in Reality-98125, a Corpsman could avert his threat, but in Reality-238 only that reality’s destruction would stop him, and in one, Reality-616, even that would not work. Additionally, Merlyn expected an old enemy, Necrom, of whom Roma was unaware, to eventually return to Reality-616, to use a tower that focused an interdimensional energy matrix to collapse the Multiverse into a singularity. Thus Merlyn sends his agent James Braddock, Sr. to Earth-616 to father a champion, both to protect that world, and, allegedly, to one day rule Otherworld.
Brian, James’ youngest child, is chosen, and Merlyn and Roma, the latter as the Lady of the Northern Skies, offers him a choice between the Sword of Might and Amulet of Right. Concluding that he was no warrior, Brian picked the latter, and is transformed into Captain Britain; the new hero defeats the Reaver, then Roma covertly directs his development.
Omniversal Guardian and Sorceress
One of the greatest sorceresses and scientists of the Multiverse, Roma could resurrect the dead, grant superhuman powers, teleport herself and others across time, space and realities, generate mystic shields, bonds and energy bolts, and magically perform almost any imaginable feat.
Immensely intelligent, her Omniversal knowledge is matched only by that of her father and a handful of similar cosmic entities. Like her father, Roma is a master manipulator, planning several moves ahead, but also capable of improvising on the rare occasions she was caught off guard.
She is virtually immortal, and immune to aging. Roma is also an expert swordswoman, at one point leading the defense of Camelot.
Threats to the Multiverse
Roma helps her father Merlyn to defeat his enemy Necrom, a powerful sorcerer intent on collapsing the Multiverse, by gathering a team of Super Heroes known as Excalibur.
Often working against the tyrant of Earth-794, Sat-Yr9. Roma enlists Earth-238’s survivor Linda McQuillan, AKA Captain U.K., and later the X-Men, Sat-Yr9 is successfully overthrown twice. Though Sat-Yr9 combines forces with Doctor Doom and captures Roma, the X-Men come to her aid.
Family Ties and Multiverse Allies
The Omniversal Guardian Merlyn is Roma’s father and while she assists him in helping to defeat his enemies even if it means working against him in the process.
Roma forged the Super Hero team Excalibur, and helped hone their powers with subtle persuasions to defeat her father’s enemy Necrom. The team successfully defeats the enemy. She also bestows mystical items to the mutliverse’s champions including Captain Britain, the X-Men, and Earth-833’s Billy Braddock, AKA Spider-UK.
Roma resides and leads the Otherworld, a pocket dimension adjacent to Earth that’s also home to Camelot and King Arthur. Her headquarters are located in the Starlight Citadel and from there she makes plans to protect the omniverse and leads Camelot’s forces against dangerous threats. It is also here that she commands the Captain Britain Corps.
An Otherworldly Record
Later, when the Nethergods attacked Otherworld, Roma led Camelot’s forces in battle. With Reality-616’s Jaspers’ rise to power imminent, Captain Britain was dispatched to Earth-238, to face that reality’s Jaspers, only to be slain by Jaspers-238’s creation, the hero-killing Fury. Unaware that her father intended Captain Britain to be a lure to draw the Fury to Earth-616, Roma helped Merlyn resurrect Brian. As Merlyn expected, but to Roma’s surprise, after Reality-238 was destroyed to stop Jaspers-238’s madness from spreading, the Fury traveled to Earth-616 and battled Jaspers-616. Merlyn, seeing one game ending, began his next, and faked his own demise to draw Necrom out of hiding. After the Fury slew Jaspers-616 and was destroyed in turn by Captain Britain and Earth-238’s Captain U.K., Roma brought them and another pawn, Earth-9’s Opal Luna Saturnyne, AKA Saturnyne, to Otherworld to attend Merlyn’s state funeral.
Roma foresaw that in Reality-616 the cosmic destroyer Abraxas, normally held in check by Galactus, would be unchained by Galactus’ future demise, and so when mutant Franklin Richards reached back in time to save his stillborn sister, Valeria, Roma directed him to send the child to Earth-99315, then secretly watched over the girl as she grew up, knowing that the Richards siblings’ combined powers could resurrect Galactus when the time came.
Roma also schemed with Naze to stop the Adversary; Naze’s apprentice, Forge, had the potential to permanently defeat their old foe, but the Adversary had tricked Forge into rejecting his mystic heritage, and he needed to be pushed into embracing it again. Naze faked his death at the hands of a shape-shifting Dire Wraith, fooling the Adversary into possessing a Wraith in Naze’s form. Meanwhile, Roma asked Captain U.K. to relocate to Earth-794 to overthrow the tyrant Sat-Yr9 (a counterpart of Saturnyne) and, in repayment, resurrected Linda’s dead husband Rick. With Corps members now aware of one another, Roma brought many to Otherworld for training; she also placed Saturnyne under more direct control, to monitor her dangerously ruthless ambitious streak.
Roma learned that Merlyn had intended to gather together five specific individuals—Captain Britain, the energy-manipulating mutant Meggan (who had already become involved with Brian, perhaps through Merlyn’s covert influence), and the X-Men Kurt Wagner, AKA Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, AKA Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers, AKA Phoenix—to combat an unidentified future threat, Merlyn’s enemy Necrom. Roma continued his plan, ensuring Captain Britain’s sister, Betsy Braddock, AKA Psylocke, joined the X-Men.
With Nightcrawler and Shadowcat convalescing from recent injuries, and Phoenix the extradimensional madman Mojo’s prisoner, and thus all three, perhaps not coincidentally, out of harm’s way, Roma prompted the steel-skinned Piotr Rasputin, AKA Colossus, to rejoin the X-Men, then let the Adversary capture her. When the Adversary fought the X-Men, his vulnerability to cold iron allowed Colossus to destroy the Adversary’s host form. Seeing no other option, Forge then used the X-Men’s life forces, willingly given, to magically bind their foe; their deaths were broadcast live around the world, as Roma had planned. Roma covertly resurrected them minutes later, but they let the world believe them dead, and Roma left them the Siege Perilous, which could provide them with new lives should they ever choose to use it.
Roma then sent a dream of the captive Phoenix to Shadowcat and Nightcrawler, who were recuperating on Muir Island, Scotland, awakening their shared psychic rapport with Phoenix to generate a telepathic beacon, prompting her escape. At the same time, Betsy’s apparent death alongside the X-Men had left Brian inconsolable; Roma projected a firebird image to Meggan, who recognized it as Phoenix’s avatar, inspiring her to seek Nightcrawler and Kitty’s help, then dispatched the mercenary Technet to Muir, ostensibly to capture Phoenix. Arriving moments after Meggan did, and with predictable heavy-handedness, the Technet took Shadowcat and Meggan hostage, and Brian and Kurt teamed up to free them. After Phoenix materialized in London and helped free the captives, the heroes formed Excalibur, partially to honor their “dead” friends. They set up shop in Brian’s lighthouse, unaware it was the interdimensional tower Necrom sought to use.
Believing Brian’s individuality might sunder the team, Roma jinxed him with a “blunder factor” that hampered his ability to work solo. Needing to acclimatize Excalibur to the ravages of unprotected cross-time transit and to hone Rachel’s control of her temporal abilities, Roma secretly arranged for the group to go on a prolonged cross-time jaunt. Later told by a disguised Merlyn of Roma’s manipulations, Brian confronted her, and she removed the blunder factor shortly before Necrom triggered his multiversal collapse; combining powers, Excalibur repaired the damage and destroyed Necrom. During this crisis, Merlyn revealed his survival to Roma and Saturnyne; when he and Roma visited Excalibur in the aftermath, Roma telepathically told Brian and Meggan how to destroy the lighthouse focus; his own plans for the energy matrix apparently disrupted, Merlyn angrily departed.
When the spiritual Radha Dastoor, AKA Haven, seeking to bring about Mahapralaya (a period of perfect balance), inadvertently freed the imprisoned Adversary, Naze and Roma raced to warn Forge, and helped him reconcile the dual sides of his nature, mutant technologist and mage, in order to destroy the ancient entity. Sometime later Roma officiated at Brian and Meggan’s wedding on Otherworld, and Excalibur disbanded; both Merlyn and Roma suspected the other had arranged this, but compared notes and discovered this was not the case, and chose to let the heroes pick their own path.
When young Franklin Richards created a duplicate Earth, Roma had Saturnyne send agents—Technet, Warwolves, then Corps—to abduct him, ostensibly to monitor and control his powers; but Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch’s plea and Galactus’ assurance that the Fantastic Four’s word could be trusted persuaded her to leave Franklin in his family’s care. However, Roma apparently used the opportunity to plant Corps member Caledonia (Earth-9809’s Alysande Stuart) in the Four’s household.
When Sat-Yr9 returned to Earth-794 and seized back power, Roma asked Earth-616’s X-Men to assist the Corps in overthrowing her again; while the X-Men were absent from their home reality, a damaged Cosmic Cube fell into Victor von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom’s hands. He transformed the world to make himself its ruler, but to do so the Cube merged Earth-616 with Earth-892, triggering a reality storm, and Roma sent the X-Men, who had successfully returned to Otherworld with a captive Sat-Yr9, to undo the damage before she had to destroy their reality. Though Doom was captured and taken to Otherworld, the Cube passed to Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, who combined another reality, 7124, into the existing merger, and then Red Skull seized it and added Earth-2192 to the mix. Meanwhile Doom escaped his cell, freed Sat-Yr9, and together they took Roma captive, torturing her by splitting off and slaying some of her aspects, such as Reality-5127’s Dallentré of the House of Fallon. Luckily, before the multiple mergers destabilized the entire Multiverse, the X-Men undid the damage, freed Roma and recaptured the escapees.
Sometime later, temporal conqueror Kang the Conqueror reprogrammed Jason Wyngarde, AKA Mastermind, an Earth-616 computer created by James Braddock, to lead an invading Warpie army against Otherworld. Roma was captured, but Captain Britain-616 and his allies freed her; she apparently destroyed Mastermind, then crowned Brian king of Otherworld, foreseeing that her own time there would soon be curtailed. When Galactus’ long-anticipated death happened, Abraxas was unleashed; Roma summoned Franklin and Valeria Richards to her, revealing her part in Valeria’s survival long ago, and informed them how to resurrect Galactus. Though Abraxas seemingly killed Roma moments later, the Richards’ children carried out Roma’s plan, resurrecting Galactus and ending Abraxas' threat.
Returning from death, Roma acted as advisor to Brian’s monarchy; however, Earth-616’s Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch’s “House of M” reality warp triggered a causal tsunami that struck Otherworld, apparently traveling via a breach left behind where Excalibur’s lighthouse once stood. Roma sent Brian and Meggan back to Earth giving them 48 hours to seal the breach before she would have to destroy their reality to prevent the damage irrevocably spreading across the Multiverse; they were narrowly successful. Shortly thereafter, Roma secretly arranged for Psylocke to join the Exiles, heroes who repaired damaged realities. Resurrected as a side effect of the Scarlet Witch’s reality wave, Mad Jim Jaspers was convinced by Merlyn, seemingly overtaken by an insane aspect of his gestalt, to attack the Starlight Citadel. While the defenders, including Captain Britain’s new Excalibur team and the Exiles, battled Jaspers and his Fury army, Roma was fatally stabbed by Merlyn’s agent Rouge Mort, but passed on her Omniversal knowledge to the Exile member Sage just moments before Merlyn found Roma and apparently slew her. Initially struggling to cope, Sage has become one with the Exiles’ Crystal Palace base, and appears to have learned to deal with the pressure of Roma’s vast mind within her.
Roma is later restored and while at the Corps discussing incursions with Majestrix Saturnyne, they receive a visitor from Earth-833, Spider-UK. He informed them that spider totems across the omniverse are dying. While Saturnyne has more important matters to attend to, Roma thought there could be a connection between their problems and gave Spider-UK a talisman, means of travel through the Great Web of Life and Destiny, and charged him to investigate and put an end to the slaughter.
