Character Profiles - Villains - Ra's Al Ghul II
Real Name: Nyssa Raatko
Occupation: Criminal
Marital Status: Single
Base of Operations: Gotham
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A
Eyes: N/A
Hair: N/A
First Appearance: Detective Comics #783 (August 2003)
Created By: Greg Rucka
In the eighteenth century, the immortal warlord Ra’s al Ghul took a lover in Russia. Before he left, the woman became pregnant, and bore her child, Nyssa. Nyssa’s mother filled her head with tales of her father, so that one day, Nyssa left home and began searching for Ra’s. When she found him, Ra’s was impressed with her. So impressed that he made her his right hand woman, and even showed her the mysteries of the Lazarus Pit.
But after a time, Nyssa left Ra’s and went about her own life. She had mastered the Lazarus Pits on her own, and had found a way to make them work indefinitely, something Ra’s could not do. Ra’s assumed that Nyssa and her children would return to him one day, but Nyssa proved resistant to this idea. In 1923, Ra’s attempted to take Nyssa’a newborn son from her, but Nyssa bested him and escaped.
In World War II, Nyssa was taken by the Nazi’s and placed into a concentration camp. Among the officers Nyssa saw, was her father. She asked him to help free her, but he refused unless she agreed to serve him with all her family. She refused, and her entire family was wiped out by the Nazis, and she was the victim of horrible experiments.
Nyssa spent the next years wandering the world, disillusioned and haunted by her past. One day, her father came to her, telling her of his own eventual death, as Batman and Bane were destroying all the Lazarus Pits. Nyssa was pleased with this, and began to finally act again.
Nyssa moved into the same building that had become the home to Talia, her sister, and befriended the woman without revealing her identity. After telling Batman to stay away from her plans, Nyssa and her lover/henchman Misha kidnapped Talia. Nyssa waited for Talia to awaken, and then killed her, only to revive her with the Lazarus Pit. Nyssa continued to do this until Talia broke, becoming her sister’s loyal friend and right hand woman.
With Talia by her side, Nyssa’s plan moved forward quickly. She snuck into the Batcave and stole a sample of Kryptonite, so that Misha could kill Superman with it, making the world feel the despair she had for years. While Misha went on to do this (and was foiled by Superman, who was warned by Batman), Nyssa and Talia went to confront Ra’s. Revived by the Lazarus Pit, Ra’s stood before his daughters for one final battle. He quickly defeated Talia, but as Nyssa approached him, he allowed her to kill him, whispering one sentence to her before he died, “Take care of your sister, Nyssa...care for her the way I never could.” With Ra’s dead, the Ubus, the tribe that worship and serve Ra’s, declared Nyssa the new Ra’s al Ghul. The plan that Ra’s had begun all those years before had reached fruition. Both his daughters stood united, working to complete his plans as they never would have if he were alive.
Nyssa is a master strategist, and a formidable hand-to-hand combatant. With the Lazarus Pit, she is functionally immortal, able to recover from any wound, and to even return from death.
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