| HistoryText
| - As a young boy, Karl Lykos went with his father on an expedition to Tierra del Fuego near the Antarctic Circle. Along with them on the journey were a physician, Dr. Anderssen, and his daughter Tanya, who was about the same age as Karl.
At one point during the trip Tanya became lost, and Karl found her in a cave being attacked by gigantic Pteranodons, a form of flying reptile from the age of dinosaurs. Karl drove the Pteranodons off with his walking stick, but not before he was severely bitten. Traumatized by their experience, neither Karl nor Tanya remembered the Pteranodons, and Dr. Andersson used his medical skills to save Karl's life. Grateful to Karl for saving Tanya's life, Dr. Anderssen allowed Karl to live with him and Tanya after Karl's father died.
In a way that has never been explained, the Pteranodon bites somehow changed Karl, apparently altering his genetic structure. Karl discovered that he needed to drain life energy from other living beings to survive. His first unintentional victim was his dog Jager, whom he drained of energy simply by touching him. Karl kept his condition a secret, even after he found himself forced to drain energy from other human beings. However, he killed none of them, merely leaving them temporarily weakened.
As Karl grew older he fell in love with Tanya, but the stern Dr. Anderssen refused to let her marry Karl because of his lack of financial means. So Karl Lykos set off for medical school, vowing to become wealthy so he could marry Tanya. Lykos became a hypnotherapist, but his need for life energy increased as he became an adult. Hence, he constructed devices through which he could drain his patients' life energies into himself.
Lykos met the geneticist Professor Charles Xavier while Lykos was still studying to be a doctor. Together they worked on the secret "Project Mutant." It has yet to be explained exactly what this project was, why it was secret, what results it might have had, and who, if anyone, had commissioned it if not Xavier himself. Xavier knew about Lykos' need and ability to siphon the life energy of others into himself, but he never told his protégés, the mutant hero team known as the X-Men, about it.
Following a battle between the X-Men and the Brotherhood, the X-Men's Havok, at that time unable to control his superhuman abilities, tried to kill himself by releasing his full power. The resulting explosion buried him in rubble, nearly killing him. Aware of the connection between Xavier and Lykos, the X-Men rushed Havok to Dr. Lykos' Manhattan office, believing he was the only physician they could trust with the knowledge that Havok was a mutant.
After treating Havok's wounds, Lykos began using his equipment to drain life energy from him. However, this was the first time that Lykos had ever siphoned energy from a superhuman mutant, with a result that he had never experienced before. The energy triggered his metamorphosis into a creature that resembled a half-humanoid Pteranodon, who retained his human intelligence and ability to speak. However, the transformation distorted Lykos' personality, turning him evil. Hence, Lykos took the name Sauron, after the archvillain of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Sauron soon battled the X-Men, but fled when Havok awoke, causing him to begin to change back to human form. Soon afterwards, Lykos had an argument with Dr. Anderssen, who still refused to permit him to marry Tanya. After battling the X-Men once more, siphoning more energy from them, Sauron flew to the Anderssons' home to kill them. The Anderssens recognized Sauron's voice as that of Lykos just before the X-Men arrived and Sauron fled.
Sauron flew all the way to his father's cabin in Tierra del Fuego, and then reverted to human form, having expended the mutant energies he had absorbed. Horrified at having tried to kill Tanya, Lykos decided to starve himself to death. But several days later, Tanya arrived, followed closely behind by the X-Men. Feeling the urge to drain Tanya's life energies, Lykos instead fled, only to fall over a precipice. Tanya and the X-Men searched to Lykos to no avail and assumed he had been killed.
However, Lykos somehow survived and made his way through underground passages, to the Savage Land. There he managed to remain in human form, until he had to rescue an unconscious Iceman from hungry pterodactyls. Iceman, in his current state failed to recognize Lykos until it was too late and Lykos became Sauron once more and aided the X-Men as well as the jungle lord Ka-Zar in taking down Magneto and his Mutates one more time. After the battle, Lykos reverted back to his human self and became an ally to Ka-Zar.
Many months later the new X-Men arrived. Compelled to siphon energy from the X-Men's Storm, Lykos briefly reverted to Sauron once more. But when the stolen energies faded, he returned to human form and proved to be an ally to the X-Men.
Lykos reverted to Sauron once more sometime later and teamed up with the Savage Land Mutates against Ka-Zar, the Angel, and Spider-Man. Sauron continued to make repeated attempts to conquer the Savage Land and use its people for sustenance, but has been defeated every time.
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