Earth-29449 (two-sunned Earth where a version of Excalibur team was killed)

Habitat: A life-sustaining biosphere. The fact that this Earth received its sunlight from two red suns presumably resulted in a somewhat different environment than existed on other Earths whose sunlight came from yellow suns
Gravity: Presumably the same as most other Earths
Atmosphere: A combination of gases (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) that was identical (or very similar) to those on most other Earths; breathable by humans

History:
(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - This Alternate Earth is part of a solar system in which the planets orbit a (close?) binary pair of red suns instead of a yellow dwarf star.

(Excalibur I#50 (fb)) - Long ago, the other-dimensional Sorcerer Supreme Necrom and his students Merlyn and Feron traveled to Earth-616 (the "prime Earth") as part of Necrom's plan to create a permanent energy matrix by aligning a series of dimensional interfaces across the Multiverse. The interface on Earth-616 was "marked with a tower...erected to an elder god by a race that was ancient when Atlantis was young." At the moment of alignment, Feron called upon the celestial elemental now known as the Phoenix to project the essence of the tower through the Multiverse, thereby causing the tower to exist on every plane of reality simultaneously.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - Earth-29449's version of the multiversal tower stood on an outcropping of rock that was part of a mountain range that was sometimes snow-covered.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, a squat bulbous "onion dome" was added to the top of the tower, suggesting that whoever owned the tower at that time may have been of Russian descent. Either that or he/she just liked Russian-style architecture.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, Earth-29449's counterpart of Captain Britain joined forces with this Earth's counterparts of Meggan Puceanu and Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) to form a super hero team whose name may (or may not) have been Excalibur.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, these three costumed heroes may have made the tower their base of operations. Either that or their base was elsewhere and the tower was just the site of their final adventure.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, these three costumed heroes were killed by person or persons unknown while within the tower. Their killer(s) left the bodies where they fell.

(Excalibur I#49 (fb) - BTS) - "Decades" (in local time) passed, and nobody ever came to retrieve the bodies of the three fallen heroes.

(Excalibur I#49) - As the convergence of reality approached completion, the kitchen of the Excalibur lighthouse on Earth-616 was briefly transposed with the kitchen of Butcher Britain (Barton Burdock) from Earth-9204. His hostile reaction to finding three strangers (from Earth-616) violating his kitchen prompted one of them (Cerise) to unleash an energy blast, but the kitchens switched back before it could strike the angry chef. However, Nightcrawler had heard the sound of the blast from upstairs in the Excalibur lighthouse and he teleported down to the kitchen but was shocked to find that it was devastated. Spotting Meggan lying on the floor, Nightcrawler rushed to her but discovered that she was actually a long dead and decomposed body. After noticing the decades of dust and cobwebs that had accumulated, Nightcrawler was wondering if he was in his future when he found his own skeletal remains, still pierced by the three arrows that had (apparently) killed him. Nightcrawler then realized that he was in an alternate reality, one of the infinite variations of what might have been. After seeing the corpse of a Captain Britain variant who was unfamiliar to him, Nightcrawler teleported a short distance in the hope that he would end up back home but he remained within this alternate reality. After giving the matter some thought, Nightcrawler realized that this reality was somehow "wrong" and then, by concentrating on the precise "scent" of his own kitchen, he was able to teleport back home to Earth-616.

(Excalibur I#50) - When Merlyn's tower on Otherworld was destroyed by Captain Britain and Meggan, the versions of that tower which existed on every plane of the Multiverse disintegrated as well, including the one on Earth-29449..

One interesting fact about these versions of Meggan and Nightcrawler is that they seemed to be wearing the same costumes as their Earth-616 counterparts were wearing at the time when the 616 Nightcrawler visited this Alternate Earth. The reason why this might be significant is because Meggan and Kurt acquired those costumes when they visited Earth-8910 during the Cross-Time Caper. Does that mean that this Excalibur team went on a similar caper? Maybe. However, since Earth-8910 was a planet where no life had ever existed until it was temporarily transformed into a living world by that reality's version of the Impossible Man, it seems unlikely that two different versions of Excalibur could have visited that Earth. However, I can't say that it's impossible.

When Nightcrawler from Earth-616 visited Earth-29449, the bodies he found in the tower were seemingly those of counterparts of himself, Meggan and Captain Britain. However, all three corpses were decomposed and "decades" of dust and cobwebs had accumulated on them. Since this significant difference was never precisely explained, I present these three theories:

1. Earth-29449 was one of those where time flowed more quickly than on Earth-616. In this case, the difference was slight enough that what was "1992" on Earth-616 corresponded to sometime between 2012 and 2022 on the other Earth.
2. Earth-29449 is one of those where the same events happened as on Earth-616 but at earlier points in the timeline. In this case, the events that brought Excalibur together would have happened sometime decades prior to the modern age.
3. Earth-29449 and its history was aligned with Earth-616 but this Excalibur team had somehow been sent decades into the past and then were killed there. Of course, this theory would only work if that Excalibur team had never even visited the tower before they were sent back in time.

Since the original tower marked the location of a dimensional interface on Earth-616 and the essence of that tower was projected through the Multiverse by the Phoenix Avatar at the moment when a series of these interfaces were aligned across the Multiverse, it seems reasonable to conclude that Earth-29449's version of the tower also marked the location of that same interface. This would imply that the area where the tower stood was probably that Earth's counterpart to the British Isles on Earth-616.

However, the fact that Earth-29449's tower is topped by a squat bulbous dome, an "onion dome" that is a typical feature of Russian architecture, could mean that the tower's location on that Earth might have once been Russian territory. So maybe that Earth's version of Britain was dominated (or at least influenced) by Russians?

The fact that the tower existed on every plane of the Multiverse simultaneously meant that there were, effectively, an infinite number of them. Despite this, the tower from this profile was one of only five versions that were visited by members of Earth-616's Excalibur. The other four versions were:

Several other versions of the multiversal tower were glimpsed in Excalibur I#50 as they disintegrated. One of them was in the middle of city whose buildings had rounded domes as roofs, another was in a desert with what looked like a flaming corpse in its vicinity, and a third was on an island in a lake, a sea or an ocean. I wonder, did Alan Davis ever devise any backstories for these towers and the Alternate Earths on which they existed?

Earth-29449 and its solar system are part of a timeline that must have diverged from Reality-616 (and most other known realities) at least 4.6 billion years ago. The divergence occurred when the small fragment of the giant molecular cloud that collapsed under its own gravity to form the single star Sol in most realities instead formed two stars that orbited their common barycenter in this reality. One would think that such a difference would have resulted in a SIGNIFICANTLY altered history of the human race and ALL LIFE on Earth...but apparently it didn't or else those counterparts of Meggan and Nightcrawler could never have existed.

Having said that, it must be acknowledged that it is not uncommon for Alternate Earths in the Marvel Multiverse to be, well, EXTREMELY improbable. Another good example is Dino-World (Earth-99476), an Alternate Earth where the dinosaurs were not wiped out in a mass extinction event that occurred approximately 66 million years ago. The odds that life on that world would evolve in such a way that many of the present-day inhabitants were essentially dinosauroid versions of humans from Earth-616, having almost-identical names, personalities and powers, are so incredibly low as to be practically impossible and yet it happened anyway.

Of course, since Reality-29449 diverged from Reality-616 almost 70 times further back in time than Dino-World did, that means that there was a VASTLY greater number of paths which evolution/history could have taken, so the odds of this Earth beings inhabited by a human race whose members included counterparts of Meggan and Nightcrawler are really ASTRONOMICALLY low. Then again, it is fiction.

The fact that Earth-29449's planetary system developed around two red suns instead of one yellow dwarf star could mean that the other planets in the system (assuming there were any) might have formed and evolved in radically different ways from how they did in Reality-616. Some of the other seven planets might not exist while others might be very different. For example, the Mars in this reality might have been able to accumulate enough mass that its gravity was able to retain its atmosphere and its water, thereby keeping (or making) it habitable.

The Problem with having Two Suns
It's not uncommon for science fiction movies and TV shows to reinforce the idea that their fictional alien planets are really not Earth by making their skies look distinctly unearthly. And since the only large natural objects that are usually visible in Earth's sky are the Sun and the Moon, showing their viewers that a large planet (or two suns or multiple moons) can be seen from the surfaces of those planets is a very effective visual reminder of the alienness of the planets. Perhaps the most famous example would be how the desert planet of Tatooine was lit by twin suns in the movie, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. A more recent example would be from the premiere episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds where the planet Kiley 279 was shown to have five moons visible in their daytime sky.

However, while placing an unfamiliar number of stars/planets/moons in a fictional planet's sky does emphasize that it's an alien planet, their presence can also work against the story by introducing scientifically implausible/impossible elements that disrupt the audience's suspension of disbelief. For example, in the SNW premiere, two of the five moons seen in that shot from the planet's surface were quite large and each had a smaller moon in close proximity to them. Now, I'm not an astronomer or an astrophysicist so I may be wrong, but it seems to me that those smaller moons are SO close to the large ones that they should have been pulled together long ago by their mutual gravitational attraction. The fact that they're maintaining impossible orbits makes that scene look less "real" to me.

In the case of this Earth, the presence of the two red suns in its sky established that this Earth existed as part of a binary star system. The fact that the two stars seem to be side-by-side could mean that they were a contact binary system whose components were so close that they touched each other. Alternatively, the two stars could orbit each other at much greater distances (up to several hundred times the Earth-Sun distance) but just seem to be close when viewed by an observer based on Earth. This would be an optical illusion, like planetary conjunctions in the real world where two or more planets appear close to each other in the sky even though in reality they are millions of miles away from each other. One would think that this would be called a stellar conjunction but it seems that, since extrasolar stars move so slowly in the sky with respect to one another, they are generally considered to be "fixed" in place.

Planets that are part of binary star systems can orbit their primaries in one of two ways. Planets that orbit around both stars are in circumbinary (or P-type) orbits while planets that orbit around only one of the two stars are in non-circumbinary (or S-type) orbits. The possibility of a planet orbiting two stars in a "figure-of-eight" orbit will be ignored because it's inapplicable to this situation and it's silly.

Unfortunately, the only images of this Earth's suns do not provide enough information to determine what type of orbit it follows around them or how closely the two stars orbit each other. This lack of data means that each possible combination should to be examined, beginning with the possibility that this Earth is a circumbinary planet. If so, then its orbit would only be stable if its distance from its stars was significantly greater than the star-to-star distance. If the two stars orbited each other tightly, then this Earth could orbit them at the same distance as Earth-616 orbits its Sun. However, if the stars actually orbited each other with a great deal of distance between them, then they would be a wide binary pair and this Earth would have to be in an orbit that was much farther away from them.

On the other hand, if this Earth was only orbiting one of the two stars and their apparent closeness was only an optical illusion, then it could again be orbiting at the same distance as Earth-616. However, the planet's day-night cycle would be very different and would vary greatly over the course of a single year, depending on where the suns were in relation to the planet. When they were both on the same side, then this Earth would have a nearly-normal day/night cycle, but when they were on opposite sides, then the entire surface of this Earth would be in daylight and there would be no night anywhere on that Earth for a period of days or weeks, until the angle that the planet formed with the two stars diminished to something less than 180 degrees.

The Same Planet...or Not?
The image at the upper left of this profile shows an external view of the tower to which Nightcrawler was accidentally transported in Excalibur I#49 while the image at the upper right shows the disintegration of a similar-looking tower. For the purpose of writing this profile, I have presumed that both images are of the same tower due to the fact that both towers have the same "onion bulb" top and are located in mountainous areas on Alternate Earths that orbit a close binary pair of red suns. However, there are three clear differences between the two images which I will now list:

1. The mountainous area where the left tower is located is covered by snow and blowing snow. In contrast, the tower on the right, although seen only hours later, is in a snowless mountainous area. This could mean that the towers were on different Alternate Earths but it could also mean that it was one tower located on an Alternate Earth where time passed more quickly and that the snow on that Alternate Earth had enough time to melt away while a much shorter period passed on Earth-616.
2. The sky in the first image is mauve while the sky in the second image is pink. However, it's very possible that the apparent color of the sky on that Alternate Earths does vary somewhat, just as our Earth's sky can appear blue, grey or red, due to changes in atmospheric conditions.
3. The two stars in the first image are purplish-red in color, have pink(?) coronas and the smaller one is about 45 degrees downward to the left of the larger star. This differs from the second image where the two stars are red in color, have yellow coronas and the smaller star is almost directly to the right of the larger star. However, these differences in the apparent colors of the stars and their coronas could be due to the same phenomena that made the atmospheres appear to be different colors. Additionally, since binary stars orbit each other, this could account for how the smaller star apparently moved from one side of its larger companion to the other. If the stars orbit each other on the same plane as this Earth, then both stars would repeatedly alternate between moving closer to it and receding away from it over the course of its year. This could account for why the smaller star in the second image is less than 40% as wide as the larger star while in the first image it is about 50% as wide. If the smaller star was farther away in its orbit in the second image than it was in the first image, then it would definitely appear smaller. In fact, it's also possible that the leftmost star in the first image and the leftmost star in the second image are both the same star and that the apparent change in its size is due entirely to how its distance from this Earth changes over the course of its orbit. It's like if two cars were positioned exactly across from each other on a round track: If one car were close to an observer, it would appear much larger than the other car but, as both cars moved around the track, the "near" car would seem to shrink while the "far" car would seem to expand.

Of course, since that planet will probably never be seen again in any Marvel story, all of this speculation about how it and its two suns orbit each other is pretty pointless...but it was fun to write it all out.

The member of the Corps that was assigned to this Earth. Aside from the fact that he died by violence while within the multiversal tower decades (local time) before it was destroyed, nothing else has been revealed about him. He presumably had the same basic powers and abilities (superhuman strength, enhanced stamina and reflexes, enhanced senses, flight and extreme durability) as his Earth-616 counterpart and the other members of the (Captain Britain) Corps.

Notes: His real name may have been a variation of "Brian Braddock" but, given that many members of the Captain Britain Corps are not counterparts of Brian Braddock, there's a very good chance that his given name was something completely different. Similarly, while part of his code name was probably one of the names by which England has been known over the centuries, the title part of his alias might have been "Captain" but it could easily have been one of the many other ranks/honorifics used by the members of the Corps. Since neither his real name or his code name were established in Excalibur I#49, I've chosen to put quotation marks around the title of his subprofile.

The design of his helmet is presumably based upon the helmets worn by warriors from whatever culture controlled the territory around the tower. It looks like it could be ancient Greek/Spartan but that would conflict with the Russian "onion dome" on the top of the tower.

This Earth's counterpart of Meggan Puceanu from Earth-616. Aside from the fact that she died by violence while within the multiversal tower decades (local time) before it was destroyed and her hair appears to have been white instead of blonde (see note), nothing else has been revealed about her. She presumably had the same powers and abilities (including, but not limited to, shape-changing, flight, superhuman strength and durability, empathy, energy manipulation and projection, power duplication and magical energy manipulation) as her Earth-616 counterpart.

Note: Her real name was probably a variation on "Meggan Puceanu" and she probably used her first name as her code name but, since this was not established in Excalibur I#49, I've chosen to put quotation marks around the title of her subprofile.

Perhaps her hair was white either because she was significantly older at the time of her death, or perhaps it was either bleached white by the sun or otherwise whitened somehow--Snood

This Earth's counterpart of the Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) from Earth-616. Aside from the fact that he died by violence, with three arrows in his chest, while within the multiversal tower decades (local time) before it was destroyed, nothing else has been revealed about him. He presumably had the same powers and abilities (superhuman agility and reflexes, teleportation, heightened night vision, and a prehensile tail, among others) as his Earth-616 counterpart. His skin was presumably also covered by a fine coat of blue fur while he was alive.

Note: His real name was probably a variation on "Kurt Wagner" (or "Kurt Darkhölme") and his code name was probably a variation of "Nightcrawler" but this was not established in Excalibur I#49 so I've chosen to put quotation marks around the title of his subprofile.

tower of Earth-29449
Note: This subprofile only deals with the aspect of the tower that existed on this Earth

The tower whose essence the Phoenix Avatar projected through the Multiverse originally existed on Earth-616 which was considered to be "the Prime Earth" by Merlyn. After the Phoenix had performed its task, the spatial configuration of that tower existed on every plane of the Multiverse simultaneously, and all of these towers were both separate and yet the same. The version that existed on this Earth was located on an outcropping of rock that was part of a mountain range that was (at least sometimes) covered in snow. Despite being mountainous, the geographic area in which the tower was located was this Earth's counterpart to the British Isles on Earth-616. As such, it is presumed that this was an area of this Earth's surface where an unusually large number of dimensional interfaces existed in close proximity to one another.

The tower was about five "floors" tall, or about 50 feet in height. The only opening on the ground floor was the single doorway and the only openings in the top four floors were rectangular windows, one on each floor. The tower's shape was that of a truncated cone that was widest at its base and narrowed slightly but steadily as it rose. As with all incarnations of the multiversal tower, its exterior wall was extremely durable but any internal structures (like floors, staircases or internal walls) were no more durable than the materials from which they were built. The reason for the exterior wall's durability has not been revealed but the most likely explanation is that it was built out of an unidentified substance that was chosen for its durability.

At some point, a squat bulbous "onion dome" was added to the flat top of the tower, suggesting that whoever owned the tower at that time may have been of Russian descent. Alternatively, he or she just liked Russian-style architecture.

Nothing has been revealed about the history of the location where the tower manifested on this Earth or about who lived in the tower over the ages of its existence.

Note: The only two images of this tower are presented in the upper corners of the main profile because they're also the only two images that show anything of this Earth outside of the tower.

images:
Excalibur I#49, page 15, panel 4 (main image)
Excalibur I#50, page 33, panels 3-6 (disintegration of the towers)
Excalibur I#49, page 15, panels 5-7 (corpse of the Captain Britain variant)
page 15, panel 2 (corpse of the Meggan variant)
page 14, panel 3 (corpse of the Nightcrawler variant)

Appearances:
Excalibur I#49-50 (April - May, 1992) - Alan Davis (writer/penciler), Mark Farmer (inker), Terry Kavanagh (editor)

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