In the annals of comics, few villains are more misunderstood than Cain Marko, aka the Juggernaut. An antihero commonly mistaken for a villain, an enchanted warrior commonly mistaken for a mutant, and a rounded individual so simplified on film that he ended up played by Vinnie Jones, the Exemplar of Cyttorak has a lot more going on than most readers get to see at first glance. In fact, he's the key to some deep, mostly unexplored Marvel lore more reminiscent of hit video game Dark Souls than anything that currently exists in comics.
Created in 1965's The X-Men #12 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Cain Marko is the adopted sibling of Charles Xavier, aka Professor X. Despite this connection to the mutant race's de facto leader, Cain's powers actually stem from a mystic artifact - the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak - which he finds during military service. Reading the inscription that accompanies the gem, "Henceforth, you who read these words, shall become, forevermore, a human juggernaut!" Cain is granted enhanced strength, speed, and durability as well as magic momentum - once the Juggernaut picks up enough speed, he can't be stopped by any force; a result not just of his speed and strength, but of the magical patronage of the chaotic demon lord who powers Cain through the gem.
Since then, Juggernaut has stumbled around Marvel comics fulfilling whatever role was open for a big, strong character with an intriguingly specific set of powers. He's been a Hulk villain, a major Spider-Man threat, and a full-fledged member of the X-Men. Sometimes he's treated as a deep, conflicted everyman, sometimes as a work-for-hire brute, and sometimes as a misunderstood galoot. But for fans of the Juggernaut, there's a mostly untapped side to his story,
The Octessence
Juggernaut is one of Marvel's less intelligent characters, but that actually suits his origins perfectly. Cain Marko is a man who stumbles into trouble, never quite understanding the grander scheme of things. While that's tended to make him a heavy to other more ambitious villains, it also makes him ideally suited to confront (and survive) the implications of his origins. In true Dark Souls form, Cain Mark frequently finds himself standing before a new eldritch challenge without really knowing why. In fact, this is because Juggernaut is just one small piece of a vast story that unites some of the most powerful characters in Marvel lore - the Octessence.
Farallah, Cyttorak, Balthakk, Ikonn, Raggadorr, Watoomb, Valtorr, and Krakkan are the Octessence - the eight mighty Demon Lords, also described as deities, who underpin Marvel's magic. When Doctor Strange uses the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to stop an opponent, or Doctor Doom wields the Wand of Watoomb, these are the dark gods whose power they're borrowing. In fact, in Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #49 (by Len Kaminski and Geof Isherwood), Doctor Strange is unable to make any progress in a battle between the major magical forces of the Marvel Universe because all the spells he usually relies on would automatically align him with one of the forces at play.
What makes the Octessence so much fun is that rather than being a new threat randomly created for one story, they're woven throughout Marvel history. When Norman Osborn attempts to gain magical power in Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man #32, he must pass a test involving the Emerald Oracle of Ikkon; when the X-Men's Magik encounters the High Seers of Nox, she discovers they wield the vapors of Valtorr; and various Wands of Watoomb show up in Marvel Team-Up, Infamous Iron Man, and Savage Sword of Conan. In short, if you stumble across an item of major magical importance in the Marvel Universe, the Octessence are probably involved. But even with that being the case, some items are more special than others.
The Items of Power
When Juggernaut stumbles across the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak in a hidden temple in Korea, the chaotic Demon Lord doesn't empower him by accident. Cyttorak is simply the first member of the Octessence to find a human champion, and Cain Marko benefits Cyttorak in several ways. First, the chaos Juggernaut creates feeds Cyttorak. In Kieron Gillen's run on Uncanny X-Men, Piotr Rasputin (aka the X-Men's Colossus) manages to persuade Cyttorak to empower him rather than Cain Marko after Marko accepts the patronage of the Asgardian fear God the Serpent. Cyttorak grants him the power, but when Colossus tries to hand it back, he refuses:
Creatures like Cain spent most their lives slinking, hiding from people like you. His offerings were like tiny bursts of light in a long night. But you heroes? In your constant battles, you destroy daily. Your offerings are an eternal banquet.
During his time as the Juggernaut, Piotr begins to crave destruction, often to the detriment of his own allies and interests, and he physically transforms in combat in ways that suggest Cain Marko was only ever receiving a fraction of Cyttorak's blessing. Empowered by the Phoenix Force, he eventually confronts Cyttorak, trying to force him to take back his patronage, but Cyttorak refuses again, revealing that each Demon Lord is omnipotent within his own dimension. It's for this reason that the Octessence truly desire avatars on Earth, where they intend to bring about the Eighth Day and settle their long-held rivalry once and for all. But for that, as the Juggernaut would eventually learn, they each need an Exemplar.
The Exemplars
Cain Marko became the Juggernaut when he held the Crimson Gem (or Crystal) of Cytorrak, but it turns out he's only one of eight Exemplars, each empowered by one of the mighty forces that make up the Octessence. The other seven - Bedlam, Carnivore, Conquest, Decay, Inferno, Stonecutter, and Tempest - were, like Cain, ordinary people drawn to objects of power by their connection to the mystic powers that lay dormant within. A hunter becomes the perfect predator, a freedom fighter the highest form of warrior, a poor artist the shaper of world-ending creations. One of these creations was the God Machine - a device intended to dampen the free will of humanity, allowing them to be carved up into eight separate armies.
This is because the Octessence only seeded their Exemplars on Earth in order to settle which devastating force was most powerful. Once the first exemplar - the Juggernaut - was activated, the other artifacts of power began calling out to suitable candidates, and the journey to the Eighth Day, the great war for supremacy, began. "The Eighth Day" was also the name of a crossover event that ran over various comics in 1999, bringing together Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Professor X to prevent the Exemplars from enslaving humanity and beginning their final battle.
Happily, it was Cain Marko who actually put an end to the Eighth Day, refusing to play his part in the battle, and the follow-up "The Ninth Day", an Avengers story by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, saw the Exemplars talked into breaking away from their masters' control and following their own goals, rather than wiping out a world in which they'd only just gained power. Since then, the Exemplars have barely appeared, most recently showing up as a non-threat in Black Knight: The Fall of Dane Whitman to give the unhinged warrior someone to stab. So what exactly makes these character special enough that Marvel fans should get hyped for their next appearance?
Marvel's Dark Souls
In short, the Octessence (and their Exemplars) are a huge untapped goldmine for some Dark Souls-style lore. The Octessence are already strewn throughout Marvel history - relevant to characters as diverse as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the X-Men - and Juggernaut has proved how incredibly versatile even one Exemplar can be. As shown by Colossus' adoption of the Juggernaut helm, each Exemplar's title and powers are transferable, and their abilities and appearance can evolve in the context of the Demon Lord who provides them, meaning that as much as fans love Juggernaut, they could have seven more characters every bit as unusual and every bit as connected to disparate strands of Marvel lore.
Generations of Marvel writers have left dangling threads connecting different members of the Octessence to unique spells, groups, characters, places, and items that tell different parts of the story of each Demon Lord, and it's now Marvel canon that each Demon Lord - ruling from their personal dimension - is engaged in a deft game of accruing power and influence, ready for the Eighth Day. Any Marvel hero or villain could become an Exemplar, and even that would only be the first step to sharing more secrets about the vast eight-way war going on behind the scenes of Marvel magic.
Juggernaut's own adventures have taken a turn for the mystic lately, with Juggernaut #1 seeing him meet the Signpost, an otherworldly tree which will only show him the way out of Limbo if he sacrifices his armor - a Dark Souls plot beat if ever there was one - but the truth is that he's the perfect way for Marvel to give fans the type of dense, interconnected lore that has made FromSoftware's trilogy of games such an obsession for so many. Cain Marko is a character who usually doesn't know what's going on but is happy to punch the next thing that looks at him wrong anyway. This makes him the ideal character to carry readers through the story of an eight-way war between impossibly powerful Demon Lords who tend to influence the world by peppering it with mysterious objects of power - a hero who brings the action but leaves the reader to figure out the complicated details for themself. It's a story waiting to be told, and if Marvel utilize Juggernaut as they could, the next Dark Souls could well center around what many consider a one-note villain.