Decently short, yet muscular, and athletic, these are some of the human adjectives to describe Kurt. For Kurt, however, he offers one of the least typical appearances from the perspective of an average human. From his dark blue skin, elven ears, three-fingered claws, two-toed feet, and demon-forked tail, he is certainly a shock to the eyes if you do not know him. Otherwise, he offers black hair, glowing yellow eyes, and limited well-groomed facial hair at times. Kurt generally wears clothing that is neat, subtle, and well fitted when not in his typical uniform.

IV: An Unlikely Beginning When Kurt was born his mutation was immediately apparent, the demonic visage of the boy terrifying the manor staff and invoking in them the religious fear that something had gone deeply, deeply wrong in the conception of the child. Feared not for his X-gene, something almost unheard of at the time, Kurt was despised by his looks and believed to be the child of a demon, those around him tried to get rid of the child. In her weakened state, his mother took the boy from those who would harm him, and ran away, depleted as she was. For hours the shapeshifting Raven Darkholme tried to outrun their hunters, but realizing she was at the end of strength, the woman placed Kurt's cradle by the riverbank and let the waters take him, sparing his life and separating the boy from her. Down the stream the young mutant went, and as fate would have it, Kurt was delivered where a young Margali Szardos found him. Mesmerized by Kurt's behavior, even as a baby, playful and gentle, Margali took pity on the creature, thinking he had been put in the river to drown. She took the baby and raised him as her own among Herr Gertmann's Traveling Menagerie. A sorceress of budding power, Margali was used to the unusual and she cared for Kurt deeply as he grew alongside her other son, Stephan, and eventually Jimaine, who was born after Kurt arrived. Growing up, Kurt befriended the two, and for a while all was well with the fortune teller and her three children, but once Kurt was old enough, Margali shared with him the secret of her magic. An adept of the Winding Way like her mother before her, Margali drew her power from the natural world, and just as nature is capable of great beauty it is also merciless. Those who walked the Way, she explained to Kurt, had a tendency to lose themselves in it, leaving everything else behind, becoming detached and cruel. She asked the young boy to watch for her children if she ever fell prey to her own legacy, and that the young men protect them from her if needed be. V: Losing The Way Although Kurt was close to Jimaine, he was closer to Stephan, which allowed him to see the man was talented in Margali's magics. He warned his brother about the dangers of the Winding Way and, thankfully, Stephan did not explore his gift further. For years, their lives proceeded despite the hardships of their impoverished, destitute state. As Kurt grew stronger and his innate physical gifts began to show, Herr Gertmann demanded he be sedated between shows, to make sure he would not escape. In public, he was believed to be simply a tremendous acrobat in a costume, but in private Kurt was kept compliant even as he noticed Stephan grow more distant, stranger. The cycle would persist until a spree of child murders suddenly swept the town the menagerie was stationed at. Whereas the locals blamed the menagerie, the troupe pointed at the mutant as the culprit. Afraid for her son, Margali freed Kurt and accidentally set the circus on fire, another deed that would be attributed to the young mutant runaway. To survive, the acrobat suddenly developed his teleportation gift as his X-Gene activated, giving him the freedom to go after Stephan, the one he thought to be behind it all. His search led Kurt to the local church. As he feared, Stephan had been overtaken by the mystic darkness of the Winding Way, and when it was clear the young man could not hold back his urges, Kurt remembered the conversation he had with Margali years back and kept Stephan from harming anyone else. The young mutant still failed to deliver the final blow to his brother, convinced by the local priest, Father Wagner, to stay his frustration despite Stephan's atrocities. Stephan would, however, end his own life, in his last moment of clarity, unable to cope with the things he had done. As the mob approached, Kurt stayed with Stephan, and the only thing that kept them from lynching an exhausted Nightcrawler was the preacher, who evoked his Lord's name and appealed to the God-fearing masses, explaining what had happened. Margali, however, was less forgiving, unable to reconcile the fact Kurt had, apparently, killed Stephan. She left with Jimaine, leaving the young mutant behind. By the time Professor X appeared to enlist Kurt, the young man had been living in the chapel for weeks with Father Wagner, and he took the arrival of Charles Xavier as a sign to move on. He accepted the invitation to join the X-Men. Kurt had been recruited to the X-Men as part of Professor X's effort of saving his original team from the clutches of Krakoa, the living island. In that, the recently-dubbed Nightcrawler shined and his teleportation powers came in handy during the fight as the younger X-Men were kept hostages of the enormous being. Although the most inhuman-looking of all mutants in the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Nightcrawler was the most outgoing of them all, often listening to his friends' woes and bringing a much-needed layer of levity and playfulness to the Danger Room sessions led by Cyclops and often interrupted by Thunderbird or Wolverine. Finding in religion the means to cope with his past, and the death of Stephan, Nightcrawler filled a much needed spiritual void in the hearts of his fellow X-Men, chief among them Logan, the man without memory; and Colossus, whose kind nature was often at odds with the militaristic style of the X-Men. VI: Mother's Judgment Kurt met and wooed a woman named Amanda Sefton just before the Christmas Eve when the X-Men met in Manhattan and Stephen Lang's Sentinels attacked. Despite abandoning the young woman in safety to help his friends and, eventually, taking the fight to space, Amanda showed a desire to keep seeing Nightcrawler, and so they did. The two kept seeing each other in between Kurt's sudden disappearances with the X-Men, like the airport fight against the Shi'ar-controlled Polaris and Havok and the botched recruitment of Dazzler in New York, until the man reached twenty-one years-old. That very night Kurt went to sleep on his bed, only to wake up in what looked like a hellish landscape, where he was to face a demonic-looking Margali who blamed Kurt for Stephan's death. Although well-trained, Kurt's guilt overwhelmed him, and he was ready to face the punishment for said crimes when Amanda and a man called Doctor Strange joined him in the hellish landscape. Amanda revealed herself as Jimaine, Kurt's stepsister, and she defended Kurt. With her magicks she revealed the truth behind Stephan's death, and Margali conceded, forgiving Nightcrawler and making peace with her son's untimely demise. Although Jimaine kept using the mask of Amanda Sefton, she and Kurt went their separate ways then, as Amanda vowed to find Margali and keep her from the same darkness that had taken Stephan. VII: Blood Will Tell When Rachel Summers soared through the skies and into Kurt's timeline, the young man could scarcely believe her words and all the death that would come, all because of a single mutant named Mystique. Among the X-Men who followed Storm's leadership in the mission was Nightcrawler, but he was ill-prepared for what he was about to learn. While the X-Men stopped the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly, the young Rachel proved herself to be far more desperate than initially imagined, aiming to kill Mystique for what she had done to the girl's timeline. While Wolverine and her fought, Nightcrawler pursued and pinned down the mutant terrorist Mystique. More shocked to see him than he was to see her, at first, Raven couldn't stop herself from showing some affection towards the now-grown man she had borne so many years ago, alive and well. Unable to tell Kurt the truth, however, the woman knocked her son out, and fled into the crowd, vanishing from sight along with Rogue. The X-Men had seized the day, but Kurt could not stop thinking about Mystique, something that came to a head when Project Wideawake was greenlit following the assassination attempt. When the X-Men and the Brotherhood next met, at the Master Mold factory, Mystique was there, and this time, Nightcrawler would not leave without answers. At the end of the battle, as the X-Men and Brotherhood both recuperated, Kurt faced Raven, and she revealed to him she was his mother. Wishing her child to stay away from her, and what she thought was a toxic life for her son, she fabricated the story of getting rid of him, trying to get Nightcrawler to hate her. Even as Rogue was delivered to the X-Men by Destiny, as the girl had reached her breaking point during the fight, the prophetess consoled Kurt: Raven was in his future, and he was in hers. All would be revealed in action, as had always been her way. When the Brotherhood attacked Washington next, trying to dismantle the USA government, Nightcrawler was there. The young man found Mystique and took her out, letting the terrorist go to repay how she had saved his life. As they parted, the young man expressed forgiving Raven of whatever transgressions she might have done against him, Mystique's plans of making her child despise her having met the barrier of Nightcrawler's good and forgiving nature, failing utterly. VIII: Fire and Brimstone After the chaos of the Washington battle, and the aftermath of it all, Kurt found himself mystified by his own condition and origin, the subject taking over his waking and sleeping hours, with nightmares often featuring an island surrounded by crimson skies, a great maelstrom above it where clouds ought to be. Amidst howling winds, Kurt could hear the whispers of it calling to him, until one night the young man's visions were so strong he simply teleported in his sleep, soon finding himself falling down, cracking through tree branches and smashing against the floor of the island of his dreams. Never before had Kurt performed such a feat, but disoriented as he was, the mutant teleported somewhere he did not even believe existed, and before him stood a man offering his hand out to him. He introduced himself as Azazel, one of the first mutants to ever walk the Earth, and Nightcrawler's progenitor. He explained that Nightcrawler had found his way to La Isla des Demonas, the one point on Earth where a mortal could walk, by foot, into Brimstone, the dimension lorded by him, and from whence he had escaped momentarily. As Azazel explained, although he and his family were bound in Brimstone, he found long ago that his progeny held the key to escaping it, as all of them could bend space and travel through Brimstone in the use of their fantastic gifts, including Nightcrawler. With every teleport made by Kurt, he was in fact travelling through his father's realm, stepping in and escaping it just as he so sorely desired. Unlike Kurt, however, Azazel could only spend a few weeks at a time on Earth, a curse imposed on him by a figure called the Sorcerer Supreme. The isle itself was shaped in ways to worship the figure of Azazel, even the walls chiseled to depict his many exploits and enemies. By those accounts the man seemed as ancient as he claimed. Although extremely charismatic, Azazel was also nothing like his son, something that became all too clear as he revealed the means by which he had been assembling his space-bending children from anywhere they could be found: Margali Szardos, the Mistress of the Winding Way, was at the nexus of it all, her powers greatly augmented by a captive who Azazel claimed was blessed both with his powers and innate magic gifts, making her the perfect anchor to bring his children to him, and with their amassed powers, bring Brimstone to Earth. Margali had been easy enough to find and seduce: now close to mastering the Winding Way, the woman was more drive than reason, and her desire for completion in the path of knowledge blinded her to anything else. His plans revealed, the ancient mutant was shocked to see his son betray him as the X-Man swept for the captive girl and teleported out of the island in one desperate move. Although he tried to bring Margali with them, the sorceress refused, and in the end Kurt turned up at New York, too weak to do anything else as he fell down unconscious by the mysterious mutant girl's feet. Much to his surprise, the young man woke up at Westchester, taken there by the girl herself. Revealing herself to be called Talia, she explained, later, that she had been yanked from her world by Margali's magic, not revealing the truth of her origins to the man just yet. The two of them watched from the medbay in Westchester as the X-Men did battle with Apocalypse in Central Park. IX: Finding Faith When the Magistrates attacked, Nightcrawler was present and he acted with the other X-Men to defeat them and subdue Havok. Even if he was not fully healed from the teleportation from his father's island, Kurt still demanded he be allowed to go to Genosha to get the captured mutants, leaving Talia behind at the mansion where she could be safe. In Genosha Nightcrawler ended up being instrumental to Cable's plans, as his mobility and speed allowed the X-Men to completely shut down the Genoshan military before they knew what was hitting them. While invading the facilities targeted by Cable, Kurt saw many strange pieces of machinery that did not feel like they belonged there in the least, complex and fed by energy sources that almost seemed too surreal to work. Still, they all crumbled in the end, and the X-Men were victorious in ending the evil of Cameron Hodge, with Kurt there. The mutates, however, were another matter. Their existence impacted Kurt deeply, as the man, up until that point, had never seen something so cruel and so casually inflicted upon others. There was something disturbing about how many humans were accepting of the conditions imposed on the mutants of Genosha in the name of nation and prosperity, something within the man absolutely shaken by what he had witnessed. Realizing he could not go home with these questions in his mind, the mutant stayed behind, and worked with the mutates and other X-Men to rebuild Hammer Bay. Even when Magneto arrived to do war against Carrion Cove and release the rest of the island of Magistrate control, Nightcrawler stayed behind, not trusting what he would do to those men. Slowly, but surely, Kurt found his answers by tending to others and allowing them to ask their own. He assisted Jean with the children of Hammer Bay, and he acted as Anna's priest, trying to assuage her worries and demons of what she had done and where she was supposed to go, while also finding their shared bonds concerning Mystique and Destiny. He even befriended the then-mysterious Gambit and provided him a nurturing energy Nightcrawler was not aware he had. Finding peace in that, Kurt stayed when many of them left, deciding the people of Genosha needed him, while keeping contact with Talia all the while, making sure the girl was well. X: The End of Reason Nightcrawler remembers where he was when the Wild Sentinel arrived, having a conversation with Rogue when the first building fell, and in a flash, hundreds of lives were ended. It all happened too fast. Kurt, never one to hesitate, tried to protect as many lives as he could, but he could not have helped even a fraction of them. The monster was just too fast in doing what it was designed to do. In the end, Nightcrawler was there when Anna was viciously knocked out by one of the mechanical nightmare's discharges, the two of them buried under rubble, with Nightcrawler unable to muster any more energy to get them out of there after so many teleports and so many people he, hopefully, had managed to rescue. Both Rogue and Nightcrawler were found by Mystique, in a move that seemed to come as a surprise to the three of them. Raven and Anna, who seemed dismayed at the developments, seemed to think that the destruction of Genosha was somehow linked with their loss of Destiny. As a last-ditch effort, Rogue and Mystique followed a letter left behind by the departed mutant, only to find not Irene Adler, but her last living descendant, Ruth, wounded and buried under rubble. Together they took the girl and left when help came, with Nightcrawler feeling inside that part of him was starting to listen to Azazel's words that humans were born of cruelty and for cruelty. Silencing that venom with faith, Kurt was one of the first to listen when Professor X revealed his plans, and where the X-Men would go next. Together with his mentor, Kurt questioned the wisdom of the Ritual of Regenesis and debated about the place of mutants under God, but in the end, he found consensus with Charles. He was there when the first revived mutants crawled from under the roots of the Breakstone Hatchery, and with Talia, that day, he learned that the girl was his daughter, from another timeline. Realizing the new path ahead for his kind, and the new stakes to him and his growing family in Westchester, Nightcrawler set out to prepare himself for the future, and the wars to come. He swore that mutants would win their battles, but that he would never allow them to lose their souls in the process.