Real Name: Dr. Karl LykosHowever, when Lykos attempted to drain Havok a little, a transformation occurred and Lykos became Sauron. Sauron is a humanoid pterodactyl with the power of flight and energy-draining abilities. He can sense mutants and has hypnotic eyes. Sauron needs mutant energy to remain dominant; without mutant energy, he reverts to Lykos. The change to Sauron also submerged Lykos' personality and created a new, evil one bent on conquest and vampirism. Sauron fought the X-Men but returned to the Lykos form when Havok woke up. After an argument with Dr. Anderssen, Lykos drained energy from Polaris to become Sauron again, whereupon he tried to kill the Anderssens. The X-Men stopped him again, and Sauron fled to Tierra del Fuego, where he reverted and tried to starve himself out of guilt over trying to kill Tanya. The X-Men arrived and Lykos fled, but fell off a cliff and was presumed dead. In reality Lykos fell on a ledge and eventually found his way to the Savage Land. He resolved not to feed on people again and so rowed out to an island in one of the seas in the Savage Land. He was later found by an amnesiac Iceman and tried to keep control of his urges with fair success. At the time, Sauron was trying to use the remains of a failed Nazi project to tap the geothermal energy of the locale to fulfill his energy requirements, and was sustaining himself on the life force of animals. Unfortunately, the island was also found by a weakened Magneto and when he attacked Lykos to gain control of the energy-collecting apparatus, Iceman touched Lykos and converted him to Sauron. Sauron fought Magneto, and was nearly defeated when the island was partially destroyed by a lava flow. He emerged victorious, but with the arrival of Havok and Polaris and the destruction of the energy machines he realized that he could not continue to fight and so wiped their memories of meeting him and left them for the Savage Land proper.
With no mutants around, he reverted to Lykos and only when the "New" X-Men found him there did he briefly return to the Sauron form by touching Storm. Sauron reverted to Lykos after attempting to drain Colossus, who changed to metal, causing a backfire of Sauron's power. Lykos was saved by Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land and revealed that he became an ally of Ka-Zar's. He described to the X-Men his observation of the resurrection of Garrok, the Petrified Man, and the team used that knowledge to assault Garrok's fortess city together with Ka-Zar.
Some time afterwards, he returned to New York and began living with his love Tanya. Unfortunately, Toad had other plans for Lykos and placed him and Tanya in a machine that forced Lykos to absorb Tanya's life energy and transformed him into Sauron. Sauron joined the Toad's Brotherhood and impaled Cannonball with his wing talon during their attempt to return Feral to the Morlocks. At this point it seemed like any life energy that Sauron drained would keep him in that form, not just mutant energy. Sauron was shot by Cable and left for dead, though somehow he survived.
Sauron's next bid for power in the Savage Land was foiled by Wolverine and Jubilee. He then had the Savage Land Mutates kidnap Havok, hoping to use his energy to satiate his hunger. When Cyclops, Phoenix, and Polaris came to the rescue, Sauron had both Summers brothers placed in a energy-transferring machine, and the mix of energy mutated Sauron even further, making him larger and stronger than ever. Phoenix tried to engage Sauron on the astral plane, but it was Lykos' personality who prevailed, making a suicide leap into the abyss of his own mind, taking his hated alter ego with him. Sauron appeared to be stuck in an animal state, but recently escaped from the Savage Land and attacked the X-Men again, in full command of his mental faculties. Upon his defeat, he was handed over to S.H.I.E.L.D., from where he was apparently acquired by the reconstituted Weapon X.
As an agent of Weapon X, Sauron was given enhancements that at first appeared to allow him to detach his wings from his arms and flap them independently using mechanical "wingbones." His energy-draining range was also significantly increased. However, after his failure to recruit Emma Frost and his shattering of replacement telepath "Jack," it appears these enhancements were removed. Sauron's mental state also seems to have deteriorated somewhat, and he functions more like a cowed teen, and often lapses into talking about himself in the third-person. More importantly, he recently began sneaking out at night to feed on people. Agent Jackson confronted Sauron about this and manipulated Sauron onto his "faction," which eventually defected to Cable's "Underground" movement.
Following the Underground's attack on Weapon X, Sauron was apparently incarcerated by the government. In his Lykos form due to a lack of mutant energy, he was eventually rescued by Brainchild, who hired Electro to break him out of the Raft, a maximum security adjunct to Riker's Island Prison. Lykos returned to the Savage Land, but, the New Avengers tracked him down, though they were initially captured by Brainchild's mutates. Lykos advocated killing them all, but Iron Man's armor effected a rescue, and Wolverine stabbed Lykos, which brought him into contact long enough for Lykos to feed and return to his Sauron persona. However, Sauron was immediately shot in the head by a sniper (SHIELD agent Belova, formerly Black Widow II).
28