Amora the Enchantress has devoted her immortal life to the pursuit of power and pleasure, using sorcery and sexuality as her tools.
Asgardian Mystic
Born into the other-dimensional Asgardian race worshipped as the Norse gods, she enters Asgard’s Sorcery School as an adolescent. While excelling in her mystical studies, Amora gains a reputation as a manipulative seductress, using magic to enhance her natural beauty’s already formidable allure. Despite her charms, she repeatedly fails to seduce the young thunder god Thor. Finding a kindred spirit and occasional ally in Thor’s corrupt adopted brother Loki Laufeyson, AKA Loki, Amora teams with him to make Thor her love slave using the mystical Mirror of Mycha. Still, young warrior maidens Lady Sif, AKA Sif, and Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, thwart the scheme and free Thor. This failed scheme paves the way for a long-enduring romance between Sif and Thor, while an embittered Amora eventually drops out of mainstream Asgardian society.
Still an adolescent, she runs away to the Norns’ land and apprenticed herself to the mighty sorceress Karnilla, who ultimately expels her for being too undisciplined. Amora goes on to study under many other Asgardian mages, often seducing them to learn their secrets. By the time she reaches adulthood, Amora is a powerful sorceress known as the Enchantress, famous for her beauty and infamous for her heartless scheming.
Seductive Sorceress
Enchantress has an Asgardian goddess’ physique, including a millennia-long lifespan, immunity to disease, superhuman stamina, physical density thrice that of normal humans, and enough strength to lift 25 tons; however, she seldom relies on her physical prowess. Amora prefers to use sorcery and seduction, often enhancing the latter with the former. Few can resist her beauty, particularly when she augments it with her magic; a single kiss is often enough to make a man her slave. She is one of the most powerful mystics in Asgard or on Earth, capable of energy blasts, protective shields, illusions, levitating herself and other masses, flight, teleportation of herself and others, and conjuring. Employing magic, she can travel inter-dimensionally, she has access to transmutation and time travel/alteration, and is capable of making herself and objects invisible. She can cause paralysis and remotely project her voice and image or that of others. She is also capable of mesmerism and hypnotism, and can implant subliminal impulses/compulsions in others; she can shrink or enlarge other people and objects, impair or enhance the physical abilities of others, mist generation, telepathic communication, and mind control.
She has an intuitive sense of nearby or imminent danger, decay, or outright disintegration of matter. She can animate and manipulate inanimate objects. She can cast instantly fatal death spells, cause rapid aging or de-aging of others, cast sound-muting spells of silence, and inflict severe pain without physical damage. She can generate electricity, project fire, form of ectoplasmic energy constructs, and summon/control spirits who embody the four basic elements.
As her mystical powers stem largely from Asgardian sources, her magic is most potent within the realm of Asgard and gradually diminishes elsewhere, though her powers never fade entirely. She is a gifted singer and sometimes uses this talent to aid in mesmerizing others. She also has some knowledge of advanced human technology, including that of Baron Heinrich Zemo, AKA Baron Zemo. Amora has amassed considerable knowledge of mystical lore and is an expert in the art of seduction, both natural and supernatural. She sometimes employs special potions, incantations, or talismans, such as love potions, mind-warping brews, and crystals through which she can view distant events.
She uses mystical artifacts including the spirit-entrapping Globe of Souls; the Mirror of Mysolljh, which is a passage that reveals a person’s true form/identity or shrouds them within a false identity; and the Fountain of Forever, which shows her portents of the future as well as images of remote locations in the present. Magical beings often serve her, such as harpies, ogres, giants, dwarves, goblins, and assorted monsters.
Disarming Detractors
In addition to Thor and the Avengers, Amora clashes with other heroes such as Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk, the Defenders, Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing, Asgard’s Warriors Three, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the New Mutants, Vision, and Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch.
Amora also goes up against Alison Blaire, AKA Dazzler--a mutant singer who deals the Enchantress several humiliating defeats despite Amora’s vastly greater power.
Amora’s scheming sister Lorelei the Ice Queen is also gifted with the mystic arts, and often a thorn in Amora’s side, trying to steal and romance Thor.
Slaves to the Enchantress
Centuries ago, Amora renewed her acquaintance with Brunnhilde, who had served as the leader of Asgard’s Valkyries. Bored and restless after the King of Asgard Odin Borson, AKA Odin, disbanded the Valkyrior, Brunnhilde accepts an offer to work with Amora, who promised a life of adventure and new challenges; however, Brunnhilde soon tires of Amora’s dishonorable ways and seeks to dissolve their partnership. Expecting this, Amora had been secretly siphoning away Brunnhilde’s power and life essence for months, finally removing Brunnhilde’s spirit and trapping it within the crystalline Globe of Souls. Amora later uses the Valkyrie’s vacated form as a shell for herself and various pawns to inhabit over the centuries that followed.
Amora’s longest-serving pawn is the savage warrior brute Skurge, the Executioner. He was madly in love with Amora, who favored him with just enough affection to ensure his loyalty, but she continues to seek other lovers regardless of Skurge’s feelings.
She has a fierce infatuation with Thor. When Asgard’s ruler Odin seeks to break up a new romance between his son Thor and the mortal Jane Foster, Loki suggests Odin use the Enchantress. At Odin’s command, Amora travels to Earth and tried to seduce Thor in his mortal form, Don Blake, but he spurns her because of his love for Foster. A bitter Amora sends Skurge to eliminate Jane, but he switches sides and frees Foster after Thor offers to give Skurge his magic hammer. Furious, Amora attacks Skurge and might have killed him had Thor not intervened, hurling both Skurge and Amora back to Asgard.
Amora joins the Lady Liberators, Mandarin’s Minions, and the Masters of Evil. She has been known to partner with Thor, Skurge the Executioner, Erik Josten, AKA Power Man, Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, and Heimdall.
An Enchanted Tale
Exiled to Earth as punishment for their misdeeds, Skurge and Amora saw their powers reduced. Needing a guide to the modern mortal world, they joined criminal mastermind Baron (Heinrich) Zemo’s Masters of Evil. The Masters repeatedly clashed with Thor and his Avengers teammates, sometimes allied with other menaces such as the time master Immortus and the Zemo-empowered ionic strongman Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man, who seemingly died after betraying the Masters to save the Avengers. The Masters ultimately broke up after Zemo’s death in battle, but Amora remained one of the Avengers’ most powerful and persistent foes.
Using Zemo’s ionic technology to transform her lovesick pawn, Erik Josten, into Power Man (later Atlas), Amora pitted him against the Avengers but abandoned Josten after he failed. Twice allied with the villainous Olympian war god Ares against the Avengers, she once used Ares’ heroic half-brother Heracles, AKA Hercules, as a thrall, but that plot failed in part because she became genuinely smitten with him. Amora and Skurge next joined the Mandarin’s world conquest plans, foiled by the Avengers. Later, wearing Brunnhilde’s form as the Valkyrie, Amora tricked several Super Heroines into joining her radically feminist Lady Liberators super-team, but the Avengers defeated her yet again. They also thwarted her subsequent alliance with warlord Arkon of Polemachus, then prevented her and Ares from conquering Olympus, Earth, and Asgard.
During a period when Skurge had abandoned her, Amora briefly employed Dane Whitman, AKA Black Knight, as her love slave, but she callously turned Whitman to stone after Skurge returned. Around this time, Amora twice empowered mortal pawns as the Valkyrie using Brunnhilde’s form. When social activist Samantha Parrington was briefly active as the Valkyrie, she unwittingly battled Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk, on Amora’s behalf. When madwoman Barbara Norris had the Valkyrie’s form for years after Amora empowered her to battle rival sorceress Casiolena. Norris contained Brunnhilde’s amnesiac spirit within her as well as her power, and this Valkyrie renounced Amora and joined the Defenders. Years later, the Defenders helped reunite Brunnhilde’s spirit with her true body while thwarting Amora’s efforts to woo a cosmic personification of Love, and a vengeful Valkyrie trapped Amora’s own spirit in the Globe of Souls for a time.
Amora was among the various Earth-linked villains forced to participate in the godlike Beyonder’s “Secret Wars,” during which she shared an intimate interlude with Thor. He offered her a chance to switch sides and reform, but Amora lacked the courage to accept, losing her best chance yet to win Thor’s heart. Her shame over this failure may have influenced her to act somewhat more honorably after that. She and Skurge were among the Asgardian outlaws who came to Asgard’s defense during a cataclysmic war with the forces of Surtur, enhancing her standing in Asgardian society after Surtur’s defeat. Amora’s similarly scheming sister Lorelei had selfishly refused to aid in the war effort, however, so the Enchantress paid her back by helping free Thor from Lorelei’s love spell.
During this period, Amora grew increasingly close to Asgard’s noble watchman, Heimdall, who helped the Enchantress overcome her intense and surprisingly genuine grief after Skurge’s heroic death in battle with Hela’s forces. Under Heimdall’s influence, Amora became an increasingly courageous and unselfish figure in the Asgardian court, defending Asgard from the Egyptian death god Seth, Karnilla, Loki and other menaces, even helping restore Odin to the throne; but she eventually parted with Heimdall on bad terms when she realized his blind devotion to Asgard’s rulers would always outweigh his feelings for her.
By this time, Amora had already begun dabbling in earthly schemes again, clashing with foes such as the Avengers, Steven Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, Clea, Rintrah, Hercules, Wendell Vaughn, AKA Quasar, and a new mortal version of Eric Masterson, AKA Thor. Trying to insinuate herself into Masterson’s life, she adopted a dual identity as Leena Moran, a beautiful roommate of Eric’s close friend Susan Austin. Meanwhile, the Enchantress cultivated an alternate career in Hollywood, posing first as actress “Amora Lorelei” and later as associate producer Helen Eve, conspiring to win the hearts and minds of men through her films. During both of these schemes, she tried to seduce her old ally Wonder Man, who had become a Super Hero and a Hollywood actor since his resurrection, but he rejected her.
Amora offered Thor shelter and assistance without any tricks during a period when he was ailing and cut off from Asgard, finally winning his affections honestly. When Thor inherited Asgard’s throne, a supportive Amora became his ally, advisor, and lover until Thor was lost during the Onslaught disaster, and Amora, stripped of her magic, was enslaved by Frost Giants.
The Asgardian gods were then scattered around the world, powerless and amnesiac until Amora helped reunite her fellow “lost gods” and restore them to their proper place. Thor eventually returned from his seeming demise and adopted a new human identity when he merged with paramedic Jake Olson. Still, he did not seek to renew his romance with Amora. After helping her ex-pawn Atlas and his Thunderbolts teammates invade Mephisto’s Hell-realm in exchange for a promise of future favors, the Enchantress secretly re-entered Thor’s life by adopting a new mortal identity as Olson’s partner, paramedic Christine Collins. Jake repeatedly rejected her aggressive romantic overtures, even after she revealed herself as Amora.
Later, Loki led a revolt in fulfilling the Ragnarok prophecies, destroying Asgard and killing its people, including Amora. However, a reborn Thor has since restored Asgard and has begun resurrecting his fellow Asgardians, whose spirits had lain dormant in human host bodies. Subverting this process, a reborn Loki tricked Thor into unwittingly restoring many dangerous Asgardians during a hasty mass rebirth. These reborn figures, including Amora, swiftly departed to seek their respective destinies.
Amora began an effort to resurrect Skurge. She attacked the World Tree, Yggdrasil, but Thor, Loki, and Balder thwarted her. Later when Donald Blake, having been separated from Thor, asked Amora to make him a god again. Though she did, the god was twisted and the real Thor defeated Amora and banished the two out of Asgard.
In her banishment, she met Mary Alice Walker, AKA Typhoid Mary, and Yuriko Oyama, AKA Lady Deathstrike, who invited her to join The Sisterhood and go up against the X-Men who hunted Lady Deathstrike and Sisterhood member Arkea. It was Arkea who restored Amora’s powers from the Odinforce spell and as a thank you, Amora restored Selene, the mutant witch. Amora then helped Arkea resurrect Madelyne Pryor but the group suffered an attack by the X-Men who killed Arkea in the battle. Amora faced defeat at the hands of X-Men member Monet St. Croix, AKA M.
Amora later joined Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, through Loki to fight back Red Onslaught to protect the mutant island, Genosha. Amora successfully used her charms on Onslaught but faced off with one his Sentinels unable to beat Onslaught. Amora then became morally inverted after Scarlet Witch and Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom, cast a spell that caused everyone’s moral axis to flip. Amora joined Magneto’s heroic Avengers to fight the now malicious X-Men who planned to detonate a bomb that targeted non-mutants. When a reinversion spell undid the initial inversion, Amora returned to her typical immoral self.
Afterward, Amora joined Malekith’s dark council and helped him control the Queen Aelsa of the Light Elves so he could conquer her realms. Amora later used Amadeus Cho, AKA Hulk, to steal Uru metal, though he defeated her and her army.
