History
Arion and his twin brother Arak were employed by the powerful and corrupt merchant Kyras Shakati as aides and bodyguards, and both were aware of his criminal activities, including the slaving operation. Both brothers liked to indulge in the decadent pleasures available to them on Shakati's anti-gravity palace that floated two miles in the sky above the planet Cinnibar. They both also liked using blades on women.
After Arak and Shakati had both been killed by Sandy in the floating palace, Arion attempted to kill her with a hand-held energy weapon but Kip Hölm saved her from his shot and Dirac convinced him that he could best serve his brother's memory by fleeing to warn Prince Gareth. Arion and Dirac escaped from Shakati's palace before a destruct sequence that the merchant had secretly activated just before his death caused its anti-grav generators to overload, resulting in a multi-megaton fusion explosion.
Arion and Dirac quickly traveled to the imperial throneworld Sparta where Kip and Sandy were later secretly captured by Prince Gareth's men and imprisoned within the prince's wing of the Imperial Chalet. After allowing Tikos to work on Kip for three days without learning anything, Arion called him a brute and took over. Arion stated that the mind-ripper that was on its way from Kandahar would tear Kip's secrets from his mind and that their resistance should first be broken down. He then prepared to use a blade-tipped glove on Sandy, telling the "Pretty-pretty" that, since she had killed his twin on Cinnibar, he was grateful for the chance to repay her kind-for-kind. However, before he could begin, Star-Lord made his presence known. Surprised to be facing someone who had supposedly died when his ship had been seen to go down in flames, a distracted Arion watched as Star-Lord quickly knocked out Tiklos, turning his back on Kip as he did so. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the boy wrapped his legs around Arion's neck and twisted, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. With the obvious threats handled, none of the trio noticed that an Anubian (presumably Dirac) had been watching these events while hidden in the shadows of an upper gallery, It may have been a warning from this Anubian that enabled Prince Gareth to intercept Star-Lord and his two young friends soon after they left the torture chamber.[1]Paraphernalia
Weapons
- Knives
Notes
- Since Arion first appeared in a black-and-white story in Marvel Preview #11, there was no way to show that his skin and hair colors were, respectively, anything other than light and dark. As such, his skin color could have been the same as that of Shakati, Star-Lord, Kip and Sandy. It was only when the story was colored for its reprinting in Star-Lord Special Edition #1 that it was established that he and his brother had chalk white skin and red hair. However, their eyes remained blank white, lacking either visible pupils or irises.
- Artist John Byrne included characters who looked like Dirac, Shakati, Arak and Arion in a crowd scene set on the Shi'ar Empire planet known as "Imperial Center" that appeared in X-Men #125. However, none of these four characters were named and those twins had yellow skin and orange hair.