Magnus Greel is a ruthless scientist from the fifty-first century. He conducted time-travel experiments using zygma energy, slaughtering 100,000 people in the name of scientific advancements, actions which earned him the title of "the Butcher of Brisbane". He succeeded in building a time cabinet powered by a zygma beam and became the first man to travel back in time.
Greel took with him a device called the Peking homonculus, a doll made in Peking for the commissioner of the Icelandic Alliance as a plaything for his children. It contained a series of magnetic fields operating on a printed circuit in a small computer, along with one organic part - the cerebral cortex of a pig. Unfortunately for the commissioner and his family, mental feedback caused the swine instincts to take over. The result - the homonculus hated humanity and revelled in carnage, and nearly started World War VI.
Unfortunately for Greel, his zygma experiments were a failure. His body was ravaged by the zygma energy, which caused his DNA helix to split open. Greel struggled to keep his metabolism in balance, and had to absorb protonoids to postpone his death. He developed a distillation chamber that drained the life essences of young women, leaving their skin dry like old leaves. But this treatment was not enough - the more cells Greel absorbed, the more deformed he became, and each distillation gave him less relief than the last. Greel's aim was to use the time cabinet again - however, the cabinet had become a death trap. The zygma beam had been stretched to its fullest, and another activation would cause it to explode.
This was a moot point, though, as the cabinet had disappeared. Greel's arrival in China had been seen as a "blazing cabinet of fire". He emerged from it tired and ill, and was nursed back to health by Li H'sen Chang, the son of a peasant. While Greel was weakened, soldiers of Tung-chi took the cabinet. Together, Greel and Chang determined to track it down. The cabinet's key, a fragile trionic lattice, emitted a glow and hum when in close proximity to the cabinet.
In order to keep his hold over Chang, Greel posed as the ancient Chinese god Weng-Chiang, reputed to blow poisonous fumes from his mouth and kill a man with a light from his eyes. Weng-Chiang was also the god of abundance, with the ability to make things grow. This identity had the side benefit of endearing Greel to the powerful Tong of the Black Scorpion, who had believed that Weng-Chiang would one day return to rule the world.
Greel and Chang eventually traced the cabinet to London, where it had been given as a gift to Professor Litefoot's family. They established themselves in a local theatre, where Chang gained employment as a talented magician. He made use of the homonculus, now called Mr Sin, as a prop. At night, Greel sent Chang out to bring more girls to his lair for distillation. Chang made use of his impressive hypnotic skills to accomplish this. Meanwhile, the Tong and Mr Sin eliminated Greel's enemies. The homonculus, often snorting like a pig, wielded a vicious knife, and made a superb executioner because its doll-like appearance eliminated it as a suspect. Sin became more and more hungry for violence, and could be petulant when denied a kill, to the point where it would shoot anyone, friend and foe alike - even Greel.
Meanwhile, Greel was conducting experiments to gauge the strength of the psionic amplification field. The rats made appropriate and convenient test subjects, growing in size and becoming more ferocious than lions. Because of this, he was able to use them as sewer guards afterwards, to keep anyone from venturing too near his lair. The rats were fed chunks of raw meat, and summoned to dinner with a Chinese gong. Aboveground, Greel installed a ghostly hologram designed to frighten away anyone who came close to discovering his underground hiding spot.
To conceal his disfigured features, Greel kept himself clothed in a black-and-silver costume with a hat and a leather mask that completely covered his face. He enforced his rule by punishing failure with capsules of concentrated scorpion venom, called "the sting of the scorpion", which killed almost immediately. He brought a lot of equipment back from the fifty-first century, including a laser gun, and was afraid of being tracked into the past by a time agent. His plans came to an end when, on the verge of reactivating the time cabinet, Greel was pushed into his distillation chamber and suffered a complete cellular collapse.
