Hydra

"Hail HYDRA!"

- Hydra Agent

Pre-Chrell Invasion
During the earliest recorded days of human history, a group of Egyptians, led by a man named Imhotep, fought back a Brood invasion. Spurred by this, the survivors formed two secret organizations - the Brotherhood of the Shield and the Brotherhood of the Spear. The Brotherhood of the Spear spread out, ingraining itself into all facets of human society - science, magic, politics - like a multi-headed beast, aparently destroyed around the time of the French Revolution. And although it went by many names - the Cathari sect, the Thule Society and all its antecedents - it is under the name of the many-headed Hydra that it is most well-known. Reformation and efforts

Formed during World War II, HYDRA originally had a State Shinto Imperialist as its Supreme Hydra. Baron Strucker slew and replaced this man, but Captain Savage and the Leatherneck Raiders thwarted Strucker's attempt to gain an A-Bomb. HYDRA then clashed with the Invaders. Earlier, Strucker had uncovered Gnobian advanced technology, while he also time travelled to the future from 1942.

HYDRA's history is a long, tumultuous and convoluted one, spanning the decades from the end of the Second World War up to the present day, tied directly to surviving fugitive members of governments of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Shortly upon joining the original HYDRA, Von Strucker seized control of the organization from its Japanese founders and slowly steered it towards the goal of conquering Earth. That campaign brought him into conflict with Charles Xavier and the future Magneto among others, and once HYDRA became more brazenly public in its operations, eventually led to the creation of the agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. After the apparent assassination of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first executive director, Nick Fury was appointed as executive director. This decision, after several HYDRA campaigns including the creation of the Overkill Horn (designed to detonate all nuclear explosives worldwide), and the bio-engineered "Death-Spore" Bomb, led directly to von Strucker's first death at the hands of Fury and several deceived HYDRA operatives.

In the wake of von Strucker's first death, the surviving elements of HYDRA broke into factions that each adopted its own reorganized modus operandi. Several of these factions developed "super-agents" that would occasionally break away in turn to become freelance operatives, or, in some rarer cases, superheroes such as the first Spider-Woman. Von Strucker was eventually revived and reunited several of the HYDRA factions under his leadership to renew his campaign against S.H.I.E.L.D. and humanity for several more years.

Despite his reorganization of the group, various independent HYDRA factions continue to operate around the world, and a HYDRA Civil War would later result. While Baron Helmut Zemo had Strucker placed in stasis for his own ends, Gorgon and Strucker's second wife Elsbeth von Strucker mystically created a clone of Strucker who they set up to fail, allowing for a public execution of him, after which - as part of an alliance with The Hand, they utilized an army of brainwashed superheroes and supervillains, including Northstar and Elektra to launch a massive assault on SHIELD. The assault was ultimately repelled and Wolverine would kill Gorgon.

Edgar Lascombe took over as leader and under his command, Hydra planned an all out attack on the United States by smuggling missiles into New York for use in a planned bio-weapon assault on the Ogallala Aquifer. Lascombe know the reason why hydra had failed so many times, was the lack of superpowers, so they formed a distraction using clones of the Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hawkeye, who was dead at the time) but were foiled when Spider-Man joined the Avengers' new line-up.

Post-Chrell Invasion
Information Coming Soon

Leadership
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