Marduk

"I'm searching for Marduk, a creature the Babylonians worshipped as a god. But he doesn't live in Heaven, just on another plane."

―Gennadi Volodnikov^[src]

The main god of Babylonian mythology, Marduk, was an energy-based being who ruled a mysterious alternate dimension called the Aetherium.

Biography[]

Marduk urged King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to construct a great engine to serve as a gateway between the two planes of existence: reality and the Aetherium. According to Soviet theoretical physicist Gennadi Volodnikov, "Marduk himself crossed over from the Aetherium to inspire the Babylonian priests".^[1] However, when the completed machine began to activate, the fearful Babylonian people toppled the structure holding the device.^[2] Four priests, disciples of Marduk named Urgon, Taklit, Azerim and Nub, were each able to escape with a crucial part of the Machine and fled to opposite corners of the world (Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Mexico and Sudan respectively) wherein they each established themselves as a ruler among the local population and kept the parts safe within secluded sanctuaries.^[1]

Many centuries later, soldiers from the Soviet Union led by Dr. Volodnikov attempted to find missing pieces so that they could reactivate the machine and use the powers of Marduk and the Aetherium to take over the world themselves. Indiana Jones was able to find each of the parts before they did, but then made the mistake of giving them to CIA agents Sophia Hapgood and Simon Turner. Turner, corrupted by his newfound power, reactivated the Machine himself and pushed Sophia into a cage of the otherworldly substance aether, planning to send her down into the Aetherium for "scientific purposes." Jones killed Turner, but Hapgood was still lowered into the Aetherium and Jones soon fell down after her.^[1]

Twomarduks — Marduk's two physical forms before and after he merged with Sophia Hapgood.

Within the Aetherium, Jones at last encountered Marduk, an unusual, winged, quasi-physical hollow being made of light and energy with no apparent biological sex but Jones perceived a deep masculine voice that spoke to him in fluent English: "Welcome to the Aetherium, mortal!"^[1]

The creature's power source came from a pink gem worn around his neck and known as the Marduk Medallion which allowed Marduk to charge up his energy beneath a suspended electrical power sphere and consequently fire purple energy blasts. Upon encountering Jones, Marduk charged himself and then launched a violent barrage of attacks upon the human intruder. Jones almost nearly defeated Marduk by reflecting the luminous attacks back at him with a large mirror but the weakened Marduk briefly fled and reappeared to graft his ghostly body with Hapgood's to form the harpy-like "Mophia", a feminine half-Hapgood, half-Marduk hybrid. Ultimately, Jones was able to harness the same deadly powers that Marduk had displayed by charging his whip with the same aether energy. After striking the entity several times with lightning from his bullwhip, Jones sufficiently disabled Marduk's aethereal form, freeing Hapgood's body as a result.^[1]

As the dimension collapsed and merged with reality, the already-diminished Marduk, unable to survive in a non-aethereal atmosphere, was erased, like the Aetherium itself, from all existence.^[1]