Origins[]

Orchis was inspired by a paper written by A.I.M. researcher Alia Gregor about mutant repopulation after the Genoshan massacre. She noted that by standard population growth models, the mutants would have become the dominant form of humanity within a decade, but the attack on Genosha and the Decimation had delayed this, though by only a dozen or so years, and that if mutantkind ever formed a nation again, then preventing their rise would require a well-resourced organization to expertly deploy the skilled agents at its disposal, with projections of the amounts of personnel and material it would require. This paper was quietly circulated among espionage agencies as a thought experiment.^[4]

Years later, this paper was used as a blueprint by Doctor Killian Devo after he had been brainwashed by Omega Sentinel into believing he was from her timeline. In Omega Sentinel's timeline, the mutants supplanted both humans and the Children of the Vault and almost destroyed the Titans and Dominions with the Phoenix Force. Omega was sent back through time by the "Trickster Titan" to prevent the mutant ascension, which she did by brainwashing Devo and forming Orchis earlier than in her timeline.^[3]

Formed from the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D., S.T.R.I.K.E., S.W.O.R.D., A.R.M.O.R., A.I.M., Alpha Flight, H.A.M.M.E.R., HYDRA, as well as the CIA, FBI, Mossad, and FSB, Orchis was an organization dedicated to a response to a "doomsday" scenario involving the rising population of mutants.^[4]

House of X[]

Orchis salvaged the remains of Sol's Hammer and retrofitted it into the Orchis Forge, a site for the creation of a Mother Mold. This coincided with the realization of Alia Gregor's projections; mutantkind had reversed the Decimation and created a new mutant nation: Krakoa. A strike force of X-Men led by Cyclops successfully destroyed the Mother Mold, with heavy casualties on both sides.^[8]

Despite the success of the X-Men's mission, they were unable to achieve their true goal in destroying the Mother Mold: averting the creation of Nimrod. Dr. Alia Gregor's husband Erasmus Mendel had sacrificed himself in the X-Men's assault,^[9] and Gregor attempted to bring him back as Nimrod. However, when the mutant Mystique attempted to bomb the Orchis Forge, Nimrod (with Erasmus' personality) sacrificed himself again in front of Gregor. This erased Erasmus Mendel from Nimrod.^[10]

Fall of X[]

As it prepared itself to kill mutantkind for good, Orchis attacked Krakoa during the third Hellfire Gala. Orchis made sure to first target the Omega-level mutants before moving onto the rest but faced opposition from the X-Men. At that point, Orchis decided to reveal to everyone that it had sabotaged Krakoa's drugs and through this it could kill every single human who had ingested it. Orchis threatened to kill all humans for every mutant still living on Earth, forcing mutantkind to leave the planet. Professor X left with no choice used his powers to force all mutants through the Gateways, but a small number of them resisted his telepathic abilities and escaped to New York. To the Professor's dismay, Orchis had also meddled with the gateways, causing all mutants who passed through them to disappear and presumably die. 250,000 mutants were killed, which was most of the mutant population on Earth at the time. With the mutant race in shambles once again, Orchis began operating throughout the entire world, intending to go after the remaining mutants left while presenting itself as a benevolent organization.^[6]

Unfortunately for Orchis, their victory was shortlived as the mutants managed to regather themselves and planned to strike back. The X-Men soon managed to bring down some of Orchis' bases, and take out its staff, including several high ranking members and leaders.^[11][12][13] To make matters even worse for the organization, its own Sentinels, led by the true leaders Nimrod and Omega Sentinel, betrayed their human partners,^[14] instead allying themselves with the Enigma to bring victory to the machines.^[15]

Nimrod and Omega Sentinel unleashed their ultimate weapon, the Sentinel City, a massive space station capable of wiping out all life on Earth. The X-Men and Avengers Unity Division impaled Sentinel City with a S.W.O.R.D. space station and boarded the station to stop the renegade AI. Karima was freed from Omega Sentinel's control by Psylocke's psi-blade, and Nimrod was defeated by Storm with help from other mutants on Earth who attacked Nimrod's copies. Nimrod's death resulted in the Sentinels he controlled to immediately shut down. The X-Men and Unity Division then returned to Earth before Sentinel City blew up.^[16]

• Sentinels, Mother Mold, Nimrod, Stark Sentinels
• Uniforms: Orchis forces have two variants: one wear full red suits and red "beekeeper" looking helmets like A.I.M., one wear full black suits.

Formerly Sentinel City

Inheritance

• Orchis' roster was recorded as "4% former Hydra."^[4] Later, Orchis' roster was remarked as containing six former Hydra operatives.^[17] From this, we can deduce that Orchis' starting roster was roughly 150 operatives.
• Omega Sentinel and Nimrod are actually against humanity and work for the machines. Omega Sentinel is the true founder of Orchis in this timeline after manipulating Killian Devo. Their true goal is to become a part of a Dominion and prevent mutants from becoming powerful enough to kill the Dominions.^[3][12][18]

• The first letter of each Orchis petal spells "ORCHIS." The first letter of the second half of each Orchis petal spells "NIMROD."^{[citation needed]}
• Jonathan Hickman left the X-Office midway through the Krakoa era. Orchis noticeably received several changes between Hickman's House of X/Powers of X/X-Men (Vol. 5) and Gerry Duggan's X-Men (Vol. 6).
  • There was a reduction of focus on Alia Gregor and Killian Devo. Instead, Duggan introduced new Orchis members Feilong^[19] and Doctor Stasis^[20] and added M.O.D.O.K.^[21] and an evil, mechanized Moira X^[22] to be the new faces of Orchis.
  • Hickman's Orchis was mostly behind-the-scenes. Duggan's Orchis was significantly more prominent (even to involve Iron Man in Invincible Iron Man (Vol. 5) for the Stark Sentinels), as Orchis grew in power.
  • Kieron Gillen created Enigma to be the post-Hickman villain (which included Doctor Stasis and other Essex clones). As a consequence, Hickman's Dominion and Omega Sentinel set-up from his Powers of X and Inferno (Vol. 2) was effectively hijacked by Doctor Stasis and then by Enigma,^[23] and the "Trickster Titan" that had sent Omega Sentinel back in time to start Orchis early was retconned to actually be Enigma pretending to be a Titan.^[15]