Rus

Rus was the adopted homeworld of Kamo Tharnn,^[1] the planet where Tharnn had chosen to live.^[2] Rus has most recently been located in the Beta Scorpi star system^[3] where it was the fourth planet from the sun.^[4] However, since Kamo Tharnn is known to have the ability to move his entire world through space, that is only the latest of several places where it has been located since its first appearance.

An eternity ago,^[5] Kamo Tharnn came to Rus. Tharnn was an Elder of the Universe who had devoted his immortal life to the pursuit and recording of all knowledge in the universe, and on Rus he chose to found a huge university and library. After transferring the vast store of information he had accumulated to a huge master computer, Tharnn opened the doors of his interstellar academy of learning to knowledge-seekers from anywhere in the universe. Within a century, his institution of advanced knowledge was filled with scholars, students and researchers from over a thousand different intelligent starfaring races, and for countless millennia Kamo Tharn was content to be the master librarian and chief administrator of his university.^[6]

However, centuries or millennia ago, one of Tharnn's researchers brought an alien and mystic Runestaff to Rus. Since Tharnn had assumed that he possessed all knowledge, he was astonished to learn of something unknown to him and he earnestly pled for knowledge of its use^[1] and to be allowed to examine the artifact to record its properties for the master computer personally. However, the researcher feared that Tharnn might take credit for the Runestaff's discovery and refused his request.^[6] This led to violence, as Tharnn's quest for omniscience was so zealous that he could not control himself and he killed the researcher in order to obtain the Runestaff. The fact that he had committed this inexcusable crime unhinged Tharnn's sanity and, since he had killed the only one who knew about the Runestaff's mysterious physical and mystical properties, he began to recklessly experiment with the artifact. During one of those experiments, an improper conjuration with the Runestaff blinded Tharnn and transferred the hundreds of thousands of faculty and students then on Rus into a limbo-like pocket dimension within the staff.^[1][6]

Driven further insane by the ruin of everything for which he had striven over the eons, Tharnn began calling himself the Possessor of the Runestaff and ruled over the empty planet, paranoid that someone would come to Rus to take his last remaining possession away from him. The planet's buildings soon fell into disrepair, the master computer ceased functioning, and a furry pre-intelligent humanoid race began to breed wildly and overrun the planet.^[6]

Eventually, the Asgardian goddess Sif and the Olympian god Hercules came to Rus^[2] seeking Tharnn's aid in saving the life of a dying human, Jane Foster. However, the irrational Tharnn refused to allow his power to be used for anyone other then himself, and he and Hercules soon began fighting. Realizing that Tharnn would never give up the Runestaff, even for a short while, Hercules knocked Tharnn out and took the Runestaff, and then Sif transported them and it back to Earth.^[5]

Seeking revenge against Hercules for having stolen the Runestaff, Kamo Tharnn began moving his entire world through space in pursuit of the thief. The planet was on the outskirts of the Solar System, near enough to glean faint warmth from the star-sun Sol,^[7] when six Champions materialized in the palace of Kamo Tharnn, having been transported there by the Stranger to retrieve the Runestaff.^[8] Although two of the Champions were able to leave for Earth after determining that Kamo Tharnn did not then have the Runestaff, the other four were stuck there but managed to defeat Tharnn and his beast-men, and were later transported back to Earth by the Stranger.^[7]

For some reason, Kamo Tharnn decided to not continue on to Earth and instead transported Rus to some other star system, possibly the Scion System in the Andromeda Galaxy.^[6]

Kamo Tharnn eventually remembered the Ritual of Retrieval and used it to mystically transport the Runestaff back to him from Earth. Tharnn later made another attempt to master its powers, but only succeeded in transferring the bodies and souls of all those trapped within the Runestaff into his own immortal body.^[1]

Later, a Kt'kn prison transport crashed on Rus, freeing the criminals who then killed their guards. The criminal Kt'kn found and captured Kamo Tharnn, and began torturing him in an attempt to force him to help them escape to their homeworld where they could continue their terrorist campaigns, but Tharnn refused to help them.^[9]

Back on Earth, the Asgardian god Thor began searching for the Runestaff in the belief that it could help him locate the missing Jane Foster. When Thor consulted Earth's Glossary:Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange used his Orb of Agamotto to discover that the Runestaff was back on Kamo Tharnn's planet and mystically implanted knowledge of the Runestaff's location within Thor's mind.^[10] Thor, Sif and Dr. Keith Kincaid then used a borrowed Avengers Quinjet to travel to Rus. After encountering and dispersing the murderous Kt'kn, the trio entered the palace of Kamo Tharnn, found and freed the Elder, and eventually succeeded in releasing everyone trapped within Tharnn's body, including Jane. With his sanity seemingly restored, Kamo Tharnn vowed that Rus would be rebuilt to serve its original purpose as a center and academy for gathering and disseminating the combined knowledge of all the galaxy.^[1]

Rus was subsequently restored and became the Tri-Galaxy area's academic center, and may (or may not) have been relocated again. When Quasar needed information about the Ultimate Nullifier, he was told about Rus by Epoch who gave him the coordinates for the Beta Scorpi star system. Once Quasar had quantum-jumped there, Epoch emerged from her pocket dimension and assisted him by searching the master data directory. Later, when Quasar had to leave to return to the fight against the Magus, Epoch chose to stay on Rus to continue her studies.^[3]

• Palace of Kamo Tharnn
• Intergalactic Institute of Advanced Learning^[11]
• Society of Higher Interstellar Education and Logistical Development^[11]

• Kamo Tharnn
• Multiple scholars, student and researchers (None named)
• Beast-Men (None named)

• Although it has been established that Kamo Tharnn is able to move the entire planet Rus through space, exactly how he does this has never been revealed. Additionally, the fact that Rus can be moved makes its location uncertain unless the story specifically states where it is.
  • When Rus was first visited by Sif and Hercules, it was the sole planet in orbit around a distant star^[2] in a galaxy that "was as far from the Milky Way as Earth's Sun is from Andromeda."^[5]
  • When next seen, Rus had been moved through space until it was on the outskirts of the Solar System.^[7] This indicates that Tharnn was able to move Rus more than two million light-years in only a few months time.
  • When Rus was first visited by Thor, no clues as to where the planet was located were provided in-story,^[12] so it could have been located anywhere that was not the Solar System. This means that Tharnn might have moved it back to its previous location or that it might have been in the Scion System in the Andromeda Galaxy that was mentioned in the entry for the Possessor in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Vol. 2) #10.
  • By the time that Rus was visited by Quasar, the planet was located within the Beta Scorpi star system.^[3] It's possible that it was already in that star system at the time that Thor visited it.

• Most stories set on Rus occur within the city where Kamo Tharnn's palace is located. As a result, little information has been provided about the rest of the planet. Thor #335 showed only a desolate plain outside the city but Quasar #39 presented the whole world as being covered in buildings.

• While the Intergalactic Institute for Advanced Learning is known to be located on Rus, it has not been revealed if that's the name of the entire repository of knowledge or if it's just the name of one of several (or many) such educational institutions on the planet.