Chronopolis

Chronopolis was the time-spanning stronghold of Kang. The city-state was located on the outskirts of timeless Limbo,^[1] existing half in Limbo and half in reality.^[2]

The city was circular in shape and covered by a huge transparent dome. It contained access points to all of the time eras that Kang had conquered or was in the process of conquering. All of the blocks that made up the city existed in their own time eras and each encompassed the entire Earth as it existed in those time periods. Travel between blocks was usually only possible via hidden portals and travelers who could not find a portal would be doomed to wander about in that subsection of the city forever.^[1] However, when the city was damaged, visitors could stroll between eras without using the portal-points.^[2]

The most important component of the city was the Heart of Forever, a trans-chronal engine that enabled Chronopolis to exist in every branch of the timestream simultaneously. Being a construct that touched and affected all time at once, Kang could have used Chronopolis to change past events without creating divergent branches but his obsession with conquest caused him to refuse to use such methods.^[3]

Origins[]

It was after being forced to retreat from his first battle with the Avengers^[4] that Kang realized that it would not be as easy to defeat them as he had hoped.^[1] A divergent Kang^[5] realized that he would need a base from which to strike. Deciding that he also wanted it to be a base from which he could design the 20th century, this Kang traveled back in time to 12:01 AM on January 1st of 1901 and chose a wooded area in Wisconsin as the place where he, as Victor Timely, founded the town of Timely. While Timely existed on Earth-616, Chronopolis was constructed to exist in the same space as Timely but to be just out of phase with it in the timestream, making it undetectable by anyone on Earth.^[1]

The divergent Kang who built Chronopolis ruled it until he was killed by the Council of Kangs that the Prime Kang had formed in order to eliminate his other selves. After being tricked by Immortus into downloading all of the life memories of the slain Kangs into his own mind,^[6] the Prime Kang first traveled to Chronopolis which he considered to be his because he could now remember every detail of its planning and construction.^[5]

Citizen Kang[]

Kang's enemies first learned of the existence of Chronopolis after the Vision discovered an anachronistic part within his android body and went to Timely to investigate, somehow ending up as Kang's prisoner in Chronopolis. When Captain America later went to Timely to search for the Vision, he ended up passing through a time portal that transported him almost 5,000 years into the past where he encountered the Eternals Gilgamesh, Sersi and Utnapishtim in ancient Mesopotamia.^[7] Then Thor (Eric Masterson) was sent to Timely to look for both of them and he ended up traveling to several different time periods, most significantly to France in 911 A.D. where he battled Prester John and prevented him from changing history.^[8] At the same time, the female assassin who had previously called herself "Kang Nebula" approached her former pawn Doctor Druid and convinced him to take her to the Fantastic Four so that she could warn them that Kang was in their time. The Temptress (as Druid had begun calling her) then led the FF and Druid to Timely and through a time portal to the outskirts of Limbo. After they had arrived in Chronopolis and been joined by a group of four Avengers who had come in search of their three missing members, the Temptress manipulated the two groups into fighting as a distraction so that she could pursue her own plans alone. By the time the heroes had stopped fighting, the Anachronauts had arrived, sent by Kang to secure them with all due force.^[9] The resulting battle ended when the heroes, who wished to be taken to Kang, threw the fight and were captured. Once the heroes were imprisoned within the palace, Kang Prime appeared before them and explained some of his plans for conquering the 20th century before adding the three missing Avengers to the hypercube prison. As this Kang continued to brag, he was murdered by the Temptress but she was then captured by the true Kang who revealed that he had allowed his enemies to enter his citadel so that they would deliver the assassin to him so that he could finally determine her true identity. Kang was shocked to learn that the Temptress was actually the Ravonna who had sacrificed her life to save his years earlier. As the two of them began battling, with Ravonna now calling herself Terminatrix, the heroes escaped from their prison and defeated the Anachronauts. However, when Thor attempted to use Mjolnir to penetrate the force field that Kang and Ravonna had placed around themselves, Kang sacrificed himself to prevent it from striking Ravonna, leaving him in a state between life and death. Once Ravonna had teleported away with Kang, the heroes took the opportunity to escape from the city. Ravonna then began ruling Chronopolis in Kang's place and while impersonating him.^[1]

Soon afterwards, Chronopolis was threatened by a temporal anomaly caused by interference in the history of the Ebony Blade but Ravonna and the Anachronauts traveled to Camelot where they helped Professor Gamble to eliminate the time anomaly.^[10]

Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective[]

Later, while Ravonna was still secretly ruling Kang's empire while posing as Kang,^[11] the three Time-Keepers covertly visited the chamber where Kang lay in a life suspension tube, concerned that Chronopolis might fall later that day without him and thereby reduce their realm of influence. Soon afterwards, the threat to Chronopolis manifested when the time being known as Alioth the Usurper attacked.^[12] Ravonna was forced to revive Kang so that he could provide a special weapon, the Chrono Key, that could be used to stop Alioth. Once activated, the Chrono Key turned into the artificial being Tempus who expanded until he became a reality-wide time barrier between Alioth's realm and Kang's empire. Once the city and empire were safe, Terminatrix stabbed Kang in the back, sending him back into his sleep while she gained experience in ruling the empire.^[13]

Ravonna later revived Kang again and the two of them ruled their empire together^[5] until Kang, as his sixtieth year crept upon him, lost his taste for conquest and decided to go back to the kingdom in ancient Egypt that he had first ruled as Rama-Tut.^[14] Kang turned Chronopolis over to Ravonna when he left but returned to Chronopolis after being inspired to fight against his apparent destiny of becoming Immortus.^[5]

Avengers: Forever[]

As his first act in the Destiny War, Kang prevented Rick Jones from being killed in the Blue Area of Earth's Moon by Tempus and the Army of the Ages that Immortus had sent.^[15] Thwarted in his first attempt, Immortus decided that he had to take more severe measures and sent his forces to attack Chronopolis.^[2] Despite a fierce defence by Kang's army, it soon became apparent that they could not win against the overwhelming force that Immortus was sending against them. After ordering his men to retreat to the citadel and to hold it as long as possible, Kang ordered the seven Avengers that Jones had summoned from various time periods to take the boy and follow his ally Libra to safety aboard Kang's Sphinx time machine. Kang then went to the Heart of Forever to destroy it before Immortus could claim it but was attacked and immobilized by the revived Tempus. With Kang unable to stop him, Immortus reached the Heart of Forever and activated it, using it to cause Chronopolis to begin to implode around it until the citadel and the city and all those who had dwelled within were no more, with everything crushed together, fusing their chronal essences with the Heart of Forever and converting it into the Forever Crystal, a device that Immortus could use to change history at will.^[3]

Kang escaped as Chronopolis collapsed around him,^[5] something that Immortus presumably had remembered happening.^[3]

• Central Citadel (Kang's palace) (destroyed)
  • Council chambers (destroyed)
• Grand Timeport (destroyed)
• Replica of the Sphinx time machine use by Nathaniel Richards

• Prime Kang
• Terminatrix (Ravonna) (deceased)
• Anachronauts (deceased)
• armies of Chronopolis (deceased)