Ten Rings (Earth-199999)

Ten Rings
Name	Ten Rings
Members
Leader(s)	Xialing Formerly Wenwu
Current Member(s)	Razor Fist, Jon Jon, Jackson Norriss
Former Member(s)	Death Dealer, Abu Bakar, Raza
Affiliation and Identity
Identity	Public
Allies	Soldiers in Congolese Army
Enemies	Iron Man, Obadiah Stane, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force
Origin and Status
Origin	Formed by Wenwu a thousand years ago
Status	Active
Reality	Earth-199999
Base of Operations	Ten Rings Fortress
Place of Formation	China
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
First	Iron Man (April 30, 2008)
First	Iron Man (April 30, 2008)

History

Origins

The Ten Rings was formed a thousand years ago in Ancient China by Wenwu, who found the Ten Rings that gave him great power. He used the Rings to conquer and forged the Ten Rings into an organization that had for centuries directed the world's history from the shadows. While searching for mythical Ta Lo, Wenwu encountered Ying Li. He fell in love and started a family with her, putting aside the Rings and settling down. This emboldened his enemies, and one day the Iron Gang attacked Wenwu's compound, killing his wife. Overcome with grief, he put the Rings back on and waged vengeance on his enemies.

Afghanistan

Stark Industries' second in command, Obadiah Stane illegally sold the Ten Rings cell in the Middle-East Stark weapons to help them achieve their goals. Stane later made a deal with them: they would kidnap Stark Industries' CEO Tony Stark, force him to create a Jericho missile and then kill him, allowing Obadiah to take over the control of Stark Industries.

After weeks in captivity, Stark created a suit of armor powered by the new invention of a miniaturized arc reactor, rather than the weapon he was tasked to build, and successfully escaped. Stark subsequently designed and built a far more sophisticated suit after his return to the United States, and attacked various camps of the Ten Rings, destroying the stolen Stark Industries weapons. Days later, the Ten Rings found the rest of the armor Stark used in his desert escape and informed Stane about it. Ten Rings' commander Raza proposed a deal with Obadiah Stane: he would give Stane the armor free of charge only if Stane supplied him with an army of iron soldiers. Obadiah refused, instead paralyzing Raza and taking the suit. Stane's men then executed the remaining Ten Rings soldiers.

Other activities

When an experimental ship created by Justin Hammer for the U.S. Army crashed in Congo, soldiers of the Ten Rings-flagged Congolese Army tried to execute the pilot, only to be stopped by Iron Man. The Black Widow took down a couple Ten Rings cells, one of which was a network of Russian arms dealers linked to Richard Frampton and his company Sojourn Enterprises. They plotted to launch a new line of Jericho missles towards North Korea, but they were foiled by the Black Widow following a trail of missing Starktech.

During the Battle of New York, Lt. Col. James Rhodes, the War Machine of the US Air Force, tracked Ten Rings cell activity to Hong Kong, where he was ambushed by insurgents with a nuclear powered tank seemingly powered by Hammer tech. Rhodes managed to incapacitate the tank and apprehend the insurgents. He also discovered the tank had pieces of old Stark tech and that the Ten Rings set the trap for Rhodes specifically, to seize the latest Stark technology - Rhodes' new War Machine armor. A Ten Rings agent later reported to their master the Mandarin, who was displeased with the development.

A member of the Ten Rings was present at Cross Technologies during Darren Cross' unveiling of the Yellowjacket Suit. However, the presentation was interrupted by Ant-Man and the building imploded during Cross' escape.

A pretender

One year after the Battle of New York, the Mandarin sent video messages to TV Stations claiming to be the leader of the terrorist group. It was revealed that this Mandarin's activities were in fact a ruse conjured up by Aldrich Killian and A.I.M. to cover up failed Extremis test subjects and to profit off the war on terror. The "Mandarin" propagated on television was really a drug-addicted, narcoleptic actor named Trevor Slattery. Following the arrest of Slattery for aiding and abetting Killian's crimes, he was abducted from prison by Jackson Norriss, a man claiming to be a member of the real Ten Rings, who had been posing as a reporter. Norriss stated that there was a true Mandarin and that they were going to meet him. Slattery was taken to Wenwu, but impressed his captives with his acting prowess and was kept prisoner to as as Wenwu's court jester.

Ta Lo

Ten years after his son Shang-Chi refused to return to his side, Wenwu began hearing a voice of his late wife, who sai to be trapped in Ta Lo and begged him to rescue her. Wenwu set Ten Rings operatives to retrieve the pendants his wife left their kids, with Razor Fist and four others attacking Shang-Chi and his friend Katy in San Francisco. Later, Death Dealer and others attacked Xialing's Golden Daggers Club Club in Macau.

Wenwu's children and Katy were taken to the Ten Rings compound in China, where Wenwu explained that he had met Ying Li in a mystical realm called Ta-Lo which could only be accessed through a specific path at a specific time of each year, and demonstrated the way that Shang-Chi and Xialing's pendants allowed for the creation of a map which led there. Wenwu explained that he believed his wife was being kept beyond the walls of Ta Lo and away from him because the people who lived in that realm didn't believe he deserved Ying Li and that he had stolen her away from them, but he planned to return there and retrieve her while burning the village to the ground. When Shang-Chi, Katy, and Xialing expressed their disbelief and disagreement with that idea, he imprisoned the three. However they came across Trevor Slattery and, along with him, managed to escape the cave where they were held and made their way down to the garage, where they stole Razor Fist's car and used Morris, a friendly dijiang from Ta Lo who had been captured by Wenwu, to guide themselves through the perilous shifting bamboo maze to get to Ta-Lo.

On the day on which the path was opened, the Ten Rings followed, and Wenwu arrived in Ta Lo with his cohorts. A began as Wenwu made his way directly for the wall where he believed his wife to be held. Wenwu began breaking the protective barrier, which let through the Soul-Eaters that began attacking both the Ten Rings and the Ta-Lo residents. Since only the dragonscale weapons could hurt them, the Ten Rings ceased their hostilies and joined forces with the Ta-Lo against the creatures. Many, including Wenwu himself, were fell to the Dweller-in-Darkness and the Soul-Eaters. Wenwu passed his rings to Shang-Chi, who used them while riding on the Great Protector with Xialing to fight and defeat the Dweller-in-Darkness, though it was at the cost of many of the Ten Rings' forces and the lives of the villagers of Ta-Lo.

Afterwards, Shang-Chi returned to San Francisco with Katy while Xialing stayed behind. She claimed to be dismantling their father's operations to her brother, but in fact took it over and reshaped in her image, making the Ten Rings more modern and gender-inclusive.

Paraphernalia

Weapons

Military grade armaments; formerly stolen Stark technology armaments.

Notes

Being formed by Wenwu, a character composed of Mandarin and Zheng Zu, Shang-Chi's father in Earth-616, the Ten Rings also resemble the Five Weapons Society commanded by Zu, over the years, had names like Si-Fan, Order of the Golden Dawn and Order of the Hai-Dai.

Trivia

• The name "Ten Rings" was originally a nod to the Mandarin's Rings.

See Also

• 15 appearance(s) of Ten Rings (Earth-199999)
• 2 mention(s) of Ten Rings (Earth-199999)
• 7 image(s) of Ten Rings (Earth-199999)
• 12 member(s) of Ten Rings (Earth-199999)
• 1 item(s) used/owned by Ten Rings (Earth-199999)

Links and References

Footnotes

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