Khera
Khera is the planet that all the Kherubim in the various Image and Wildstorm titles originate from.
To outsiders, Khera seems like a utopia, with its highly advanced technology, crime-free cities and fair government. In reality this is the furthest thing from the truth. Despite how things may have been in the past, present-day Khera is a planet populated by elitists. They live in a system that separates people by race, sex, species and type of superhuman ability. There are 3 types of being that are considered true Kherubim on Khera. The Pantheon (of which Mr. Majestic, Mythos, Spartan, Imperator, Lord Entropy and Emp are members) consists of all males who possess a Superman power set. High ranking Pantheon members are also called "Lords" and are capable of becoming "High Lords". High Lords can abandon their physical bodies and ascend to a higher level of being. After the Pantheon there are males and females who are "normal" by Kheran standards. All their physical attributes are superhuman (though not nearly as high as that of Pantheon members) and they extremely long lived. The Coda (of which Zealot is a member) are the females who are trained from birth to be warriors. The Pantheon and the Coda make up the government of Khera and are usually in opposition. The Pantheon prefers to ignore their violence-filled past and strive for intellectual and scientific advances. The Coda feels they should always be ready for war and actively looking to conquer others. In both groups there are Lords, beings with vast psychic powers and the ability to control energy. The last group is the Shaper’s Guild. Genetically they are not true Kherubim but they are not considered different by the other two groups. The Shapers are all like Warblade; they can turn their bodies into liquid metal, shape it, and harden it into various bladed weapons as well as create projectiles. They are the architects and engineers of Khera. There is also a whole population of sentient robots like Spartan that are used for personal protection. The Titanthropes, or Titans, are the original race of Khera. They live underground and are used for heavy labor. Maul was a Titan-human hybrid. They are treated unfairly by the “true” Kherubim and not considered as good as even the human-Kherubim hybrids, but they are not as bad off as the Daemonites. After the war, all Daemonites were made slaves. They are the lowest of society and live in the hidden ghettos of Khera.
Every Kherubim is a member of one of 7 military factions. They are called factions like membership is a choice, but membership is decided when a Kherubim is born and is connected to the type of being each Kherubim is. Members of the Kherubim Pantheon are Warlords that lead other Kherubim into battle and thanks to their amazing abilities can handle the biggest threats on their own. Not all Pantheon members are Warlords, but all Warlords come from the Pantheon. Warlords all all have a Superman power set and they are the "most highly evolved members of the Kheran nobility". The normal Kherubim are split into two groups, the Coda and the Brotherhood of the Blade. The Coda, as mentioned, are all female and the Brotherhood are all male. Other than sex, the two groups are basically the same but the Coda has more political power. Some members of the Brotherhood have taken to splicing Shaper DNA into their own to give themselves similar metallic-blade powers. The Titans are all Titanthropes and are used for their brute strength and massive size. The Shapers Guild and the Spartan Guards don't change at all from how it is when they are not in war. The last faction is the Adrastea. They are like the normal Kherubim but they all have psychic powers (many are empaths). The group was originally a slave caste but became a powerful underground criminal organization.
In Majestic, Mr. Majestic's second solo series, the true history of Khera and the Kherubim was revealed. The original Kherubim came from somewhere else a long time ago and the Kherubim race that exists now are just copies, made and distributed through space thanks to Kherubim Technology. The first Kherubim created Planet-Shapers, massive terraforming machines that could be sent to suitable planets and through a long process, would rebuild the Kherubim race there. The Planet-Shapers would land on a still-forming planet and stay dormant beneath the mantle until sentient life evolved on the planet. At this point, the Planet-Shaper would release Kherubim (made inside the machine from "pure Kherubim gene-stock" it carried) and the natural sentient race of the planet would be made into a servitor race. To ensure that the new Kherubim flourished, the Planet-Shapers would restructure climate and geographic conditions to best suit the Kherubim. Also, giant robots would come from the Planet-Shapers and kill most of the servitor race, thinning down their numbers so they would never pose a threat to the new Kherubim. Sometimes the native sentient race was considered "unusable or deviant" and therefore had to be destroyed. The Daemonites (the Kherubim's worst enemy) are just a slave species that were able to fight back, not actually evil creatures. The only people that know this secret history are Mr. Majestic, Zealot and Helspont.
Kherubim Technology
The Kherubim are a race of aliens from the planet Khera and have an understanding of science that has allowed them to invent amazing technology.
Technology on Khera
Because the technology comes from Khera, some of the greatest examples of what the Kherubim have created is there, but since the planet has only been in the comics for one arc, there aren't many. When the WildC.A.T.s visited the planet and couldn't speak the language, they were given patches that would allow them to instantly learn it. Language is encoded onto molecules on the patches so when they adhere to the skin, knowledge (of language in this case) can be transmitted through the blood to the brain. Locations all over Khera displayed creative uses for Kherubim technology. The WildC.A.T.s stayed at a place called Coincidental Mansion which demonstrated Kherubim technology capable of directly altering probability and chance for entertainment purposes. In the entire area in and around the mansion, bizarre and improbable happenings were more likely to take place thanks to a "low probability field generator". While the other WildC.A.T.s stayed at the Mansion, Zealot, as leader of the Coda, stayed somewhere else. The base for the Coda was built in a desert called the Bay of Numbers. In the Bay, the grains of sand continually shaped and reshaped themselves into ever-changing geometric forms. Perfect spheres, cubes and other, seemingly random shapes would form out of the sand, but the order and placement of them never repeated (and never would for all eternity). Though Coincidental Mansion and the Bay of Numbers were just for decoration and entertainment, there are other Kherubim creations that serve more practical purposes. The most noticeble piece of Kherubim technology are the Spartan Guards. The Spartans are fully sentient robots that are built as personal bodyguards as well as a police force. Each Spartan has a "brain" more powerful than any other computer (on Earth or otherwise), is programmed to be able to use any technology it comes across, is equipped with powerful lasers, is skilled in armed and unarmed combat and has superhuman levels of strength, speed and durability. Spartan, one of these androids, is a permanent member of the WildC.A.T.s and also shows up in several other comics. In the Majestic one-shot: Wildstorm Spotlight: Majestic, he gets so advanced that he becomes a god, a powerful example of the limits (or lack thereof) of Kherubim technology. Of all the Kherubim creations though, the Kheran Dream Engine may be the best. It can warp reality to make thoughts and dreams real.
Space Travel
The Kherubim have ships built (or more accurately "grown") for interstellar flight and in some cases, faster than light travel. These ships (and the other battle ships) are outfitted with some of Khera's best weaponry and are so massive, they could be considered small cities. Even with the speeds the ships can reach, travel can still take a long time depending on the destination or purpose of the trip so stasis pods are on the ships to allow the crew to store their bodies safely during travel. While in stasis, the mind of a sleeping Kherubim is stored in a crystal should anything happen to them. Upon reaching their destination, the mind is returned to the brain and body it came from. If something should happen to the body during flight, the crystal can be stored until a new body can be made for the mind to be put into. (This was actually what happened with Majestrate.) Kheran ships have a unique control system that is operated by vocalizations. Kherans sing to their ships to get them to do what they want and the Kheran vocal range is different enough from other species (at least human and Daemonite) that they can't be piloted by non-kherans without extensive modification.
Weapons
Though the Kherubim have awesome technology and a myriad of machines that can do their fighting for them, most choose to fight for themselves and use bladed weapons to do so. Just because the weapons are not as complex as guns and lasers though, doesn't mean they aren't as effecient as other Kherubim tools. Blades made by Kherubim technology (called Kusar Blades) are capable of cutting anything, even beings of Superman/Mr. Majestic level durability. Sentient swords have been created that can deliver energy blasts as they strike (if the sword deems it necessary) as well as perform other tasks in the hands of a skilled swordsman. A sword like this is not common though, and only the highest ranking and most deserving are given weapons like this. Majestic owns another special blade that hasn't been seen before. It is a large sword capable of changing its shape (even changing from a blade to a completely different weapon like a spiked ball and chain) and also releasing energy blasts and electrical charges. The fluid way that the sword changes shapes suggests that it might have been created through study of the Shaper's Guild. There are also special weapons for stealth combat. Quantum-Folded Combat Blades are invisible and can be shrunk to the size of a cell phone and enlarged for combat. Skintight Nanoflage suits make the wearer invisible to all forms of surveillance and High-Dose Damper Capsules are pills that remove the powers of whoever ingests them so their energy signature is also undetectable.All this is not to say that Kherubim don't have other, more complex weapons. The Kherubim have energy weapons, forcefield technology, genetic bombs and weapons created for large-scale warfare and world take-overs, it's just that they are rarely needed since the Kherubim themselves are war machines. One weapon that Kherubim possess is the Low-Grav Wallcrawler. It most resembles a normal Earth tank (with more cannons) but it can transform into an even bigger machine almost capable of going head to head with a Spartan Guard. These machines appear to be semi-sentient, able to be piloted or left to act on their own. The Kherubim also have bio-chemical weapons, one of which is the Haikyatu Armory. According to Emp it has two stages. The first is a bacteria bomb that destroys the nerve centers of all forms of life while keeping the bodies intact. The second stage reanimates and controls the bodies, creating an army of undead. Of course there are also the lasers and mega-bombs that most advanced races seem to have, but the Kherubim try not to totally destroy their enemies when they fight in case something can be gained from keeping them alive.
Planet-Shapers
Planet-Shapers are massive machines used for the colonization of new planets and the spread of Kherubim. The first Kherubim created Planet-Shapers, terraforming machines that could be sent to suitable planets and through a long process, would rebuild the Kherubim race there. The Planet-Shapers would land on a still-forming planet and stay dormant beneath the mantle until sentient life evolved on the planet. At this point, the Planet-Shaper would release Kherubim (made inside the machine from "pure Kherubim gene-stock" it carried) and the natural sentient race of the planet would be made into a servitor race. To ensure that the new Kherubim flourished, the Planet-Shapers would restructure climate and geographic conditions to best suit the Kherubim. Also, giant robots would come from the Planet-Shapers and kill most of the servitor race, thinning down their numbers so they would never pose a threat to the new Kherubim.
Kherubim Technology on Earth
The Kherubim have been on Earth for thousands of years and as a result, a lot of their technology has mixed with human technology. In the Majestic series, Desmond, a child genius, reverse-engineered a lot of Kherubim technology for personal use. He made suits that let him act like a superhero and rebuilt his legs so he could walk (he had been paralyzed from the waist down). After he gave up being a superhero he started to use the Kherubim technology for commercial profit. He started a company and created the Quickthink 4-Tell, a phone with instant messaging, video and holo-still, internet access, mp3, voice actuation, 4-D surround playback, simulcast conference capabilities and more for less than 100 dollars. He became a millionaire and he wasn't the only one. Spartan, a member of the WildC.A.T.s, used a mixture of Kherubim technology and Otherspace energy to in his own corporation. They sold batteries that lasted forever, cars that didn't need gas (and lasted forever) and computers that would never need to be upgraded or even plugged in. Other companies also used bits and pieces of Kherubim technology (though they didn't know it) and soon enough Earth was covered in "xenotechnology". In Wildcats v4, the latest volume, Spartan has begun to sell Spartan Guards as household tools and the world is eating them up.