Semiramis (Earth-616)

Origin and early years[]

After Zarathos was defeated by the supernatural Blood about twenty-five millennia ago, some among the Blood began worshiped Zarathos, and became known as the Fallen, with Salomé being one of the most powerful in their midst.

Salomé was possibly the ancestor or the namesake of the millennia-old line of sorceresses of the same name, including Salomé and Taramis,^[2] twin sisters from the Hyborian Age of Conan^[5] (circa 10,000 BC).

Circa the 13th century BC she became the Sorceress Supreme, by her own account the first denizen of Earth to do so. She presumably protected Earth's dimension from various threats, but her ego demanded that she be worshiped as a goddess, which she received in the Assyrian city of Nimrud. Eventually, Salomé and her fellow Fallen were banished to another dimension, while the role of Sorcerer Supreme apparently fell to a sorcerer on another planet within Earth's universe.^[2]

Modern Age[]

In recent years, Salomé unleashed the Fallen^[2] and, due to being only able to access Earth herself via Nightmare's realm, launched hundreds of psychic assaults against the current Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange,^[6] then engaged in leading the Midnight Sons against Lilith and her Lilin. Absorbing energy intended for the awakened Zarathos, she bonded with Earth's biosphere and entered the Earth dimension through Cypress Hills Cemetery, a nexus point for occult forces. Confronting Strange at the Sanctum Sanctorum, Salomé prepared to fight him for her former title, but Strange, too depleted to match her, surrendered the title after a brief battle and withdrew into a null-space dimension to rebuild his power, creating two doppelgangers, Strange and Victor Stevens, to aid him, unaware that he had been contaminated by Salomé's magic which now suffused his creations as well.^[2]

Seeking to rebuild her worship and remake Earth to suit her, Salomé posed as a mortal scholar to initiate the curious into her cult. Dr. Strange's reluctant ally Modred the Mystic manipulated fellow Midnight Sons Morbius, Werewolf, and Vengeance into battling Salomé's new minions, then lured her to Cypress Hills, where she fought the Sons and escaped. Strengthened by her followers, she attempted to locate Dr. Strange but discovered the doppelganger Strange instead, travelling the world to gather mystic artefacts. When one such effort threw him against Namor the Sub-Mariner, Salomé channelled the emotions of Namor's subjects into Namor, but Vengeance's intervention disrupted the spell, allowing Strange to depart.^[2]

Reclaiming her citadel in Assyria (now Iraq), Salomé organized the Shrieking Rain Jihad, who stirred negative emotions through terrorism. Salomé captured the second doppelganger, Victor Stevens, but Strange intervened, and, due to Dr. Strange still staying in null-space, used Stevens as a conduit to join the fight, but his creation's energies were so similar to Salomé's that neither side could triumph. While Dr. Strange clashed with his own rebelling doppelgangers, ultimately destroying one and sending the other to the Dark Dimension, Salomé observed the Midnight Sons from afar, recruiting Vengeance's enemy Diabolique as a potential apprentice, then invoked the godlike Vishanti, whose patronage Dr. Strange had recently rejected. Suffused with their power, she penetrated Dr. Strange's null-space sanctuary. Her enemy, drained by the ordeals, had weakened further, but nonetheless briefly banished her limbs to unconnected dimensions, weakening her in turn and enabling him to summon the biospheric magic she had used, either banishing or destroying his corrupted predecessor of so many centuries before.^[3]

Salomé usually employed three forms of magic: elemental forces from Earth's biosphere, mystic energy derived from negative emotions, and necromancy using human skin as conduits. Her magic usually manifested as green flame manipulated via mystic dance. She could fly via her largely leathery wings and probably possessed various other capabilities due to her Blood/Fallen status. Salomé is also a teleporter. Salomé was declared the Sorceress Supreme of the Marvel Universe, indicating that she possessed a greater mastery of magic than any other in her reality, and has even defeated Doctor Strange himself on several occasions. Fueled with the power of the Vishanti, her powers waxed to a point where Doctor Strange's remaining magic was nearly nothing to her and she grew capable of destroying entire planets with a spell.^{[citation needed]}