Imperator Ix, the tyrant of the Nocturnus Clan (Sonic Chronicles)

Imperator Pir'Oth Ix is the leader of the Nocturnus Clan and the main villain of “Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood” (Nintendo DS, 2008), an adventure now presented as non-canonical. His only game leaves the cause of his imprisonment as a mere theory and his fate unresolved.

Who is Imperator Ix, the tyrant of the Nocturnus Clan?

Imperator Pir'Oth Ix is a male echidna with white and blue-gray fur, the absolute leader of the Nocturnus Clan and the main antagonist of “Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood”, a turn-based RPG developed by BioWare and published by Sega on the Nintendo DS. The game was released on September 25, 2008 in Australia, September 26, 2008 in Europe and September 30, 2008 in North America.

His names change depending on the source. “Imperator” is the title used in the game, where he rules as an emperor; the form “Pir'Oth Ix” comes from the official material accompanying the game rather than from the dialogue; “Lord Ix” is how his lieutenant addresses him. In Japan, where the game came out on August 6, 2009 under the name “Invaders from the Dark Dimension”, the character is renamed Novem, Latin for “nine”, echoing the Roman numeral IX in his Western name.

That appearance is also his last. Sonic Chronicles is the first and, to date, the only RPG in the series, and Ix has never come back in another game. He is absent from the IDW comics and from every animated series, from SatAM to Sonic Prime, and the adventure that gave birth to him is now presented as non-canonical compared with the main continuity of the games.

🎧 Imperator Ix has never left Sonic Chronicles on the Nintendo DS: absent from the IDW comics and from every animated series, from SatAM to Sonic Prime, he fits entirely inside a handheld console. In your own pocket, it's your earbuds that do the travelling, and our Sonic AirPods cases give them a snug little shell that keeps them from getting scratched.

The Nocturnus Clan and the Twilight Cage

The Nocturnus Clan is a technologically very advanced echidna civilization, rival to the clan of Knuckles. Around 4,000 years ago, the two camps were waging a war for world domination, and the Nocturnus were on the verge of winning it thanks to their armies of combat robots.

Their disappearance, however, is not a punishment inflicted by their enemies: at the height of their power, their entire civilization was sucked all at once into another dimension, the Twilight Cage (commonly translated into French as “Cage du Crépuscule”). The game never settles the cause of that event: it offers only a theory, put forward by the dissident Nestor the Wise on the basis of the Precursors' tablets, according to which a divine being named Argus created the Cage in order to lock away the most powerful and most dangerous races.

A prisoner of that dimension, Ix built an empire inside it. He has been leading the Nocturnus for as long as they can remember and has subdued or kept in check the four other peoples of the Cage: the Kron, the Zoah, the N'rrgal and the Voxai. The Cage also imposes a time dilation, so that its inhabitants are chronologically thousands of years old while remaining physically young.

Unable to go home, the Nocturnus developed the Warp Belt technology, a teleportation belt that allows them to come and go outside the Cage. Ix uses it to launch his plan: gathering the seven Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald in order to bring his people back into Sonic's world — and to conquer it.

A techno-conqueror: scepter, energy and Gizoid armies

Ix mixes the gear of a mage with that of an engineer. He wields a long golden scepter that serves both as a melee weapon and as an energy channeler, fires beams, spheres and blasts, levitates and teleports. By drawing on the energy of the Chaos Emeralds, he triggers a super transformation that puts him on Super Sonic's level.

His real strength remains industrial. Four thousand years ago the Nocturnus created the line of the Gizoids, mass-produced combat robots that served as advanced infantry in their wars of conquest. Almost all of them were carried off with the civilization into the Twilight Cage, and in the game Ix still fields Gizoid Guardians as well as senior officers, the Prefects Charyb and Scylla.

🪖 Among the Nocturnus, the Prefects Charyb and Scylla rank as senior officers: on your jacket, our Sonic patches work as rank insignia without signing you up for Ix's armies.

Only one specimen stayed outside: the Gizoid that Gerald Robotnik found by chance nearly four millennia later, and that “Sonic Battle” (2004) made known under the name Emerl. In doing so, BioWare's RPG identifies the Nocturnus Clan with the Fourth Great Civilization mentioned in that fighting game.

That retroactive reinterpretation does not fit perfectly. “Sonic Battle” told how the Gizoid had turned against the Fourth Great Civilization and destroyed it, whereas “Sonic Chronicles” explains the disappearance of the Nocturnus by their being sucked into the Twilight Cage: the two accounts coexist without ever having been reconciled.

Shade the Echidna, the lieutenant who turns against him

Shade the Echidna is the clan's best warrior and holds the title of “Procurator”. She is the one who carries out Ix's orders in Sonic's world, and she calls him “Lord Ix” — even after betraying him.

Her break with him comes down to the exact nature of the plan. Shade believed she was working towards a simple homecoming for a people exiled for 4,000 years. When she discovers on Angel Island that Ix in fact intends to conquer the world, and not merely to resettle the Nocturnus there, she openly objects.

Ix's answer is immediate: he hurls her off the floating island. It is Knuckles, and not Sonic, who saves her from the fall. Shade then joins the hedgehog's team, becomes a playable character and heads back with it into the Twilight Cage.

The remorse, for its part, does not go away. Placed under the mind control of the Voxai Overmind, she lets slip a revealing line — “I betrayed Lord Ix” — even though her betrayal had become inevitable.

The echidna on the other side

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An open ending: Super Sonic, the teleportation and the cliffhanger

The final duel pits Super Sonic against a super-transformed Ix. The Imperator is defeated, but he is not killed: just as the Nocturne breaks apart, he teleports away, and his fate is never resolved.

The last scene, moreover, belongs to another villain. Back home, the heroes find that several years have gone by during their expedition, an effect of the Cage's time dilation, and their ship is shot down by Eggman, who has taken advantage of their absence to rebuild his empire.

That cliffhanger has never been answered. Plans for a sequel were abandoned after BioWare was bought by Electronic Arts, no other game has picked up the thread, and Imperator Ix's story remains unfinished to this day.

🖼️ With no sequel after BioWare was bought by Electronic Arts, the duel between Super Sonic and a super-transformed Ix remains the Imperator's final showdown, frozen for good. On your bedroom wall, a scene stopped in time like that belongs in our Sonic posters and prints.

Is Ix canon? And who not to confuse him with

The status of his game was debated before being settled: “Sonic Chronicles” is today presented as a non-canonical adventure compared with the main continuity of the games, including by an official book such as the “Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia”, which nevertheless keeps mentioning the Nocturnus Clan.

The legal background is part of the explanation, provided one stays precise: Ken Penders sued Sega and BioWare for copyright infringement, considering that the Nocturnus Clan reused the Dark Legion echidnas he had created for the Archie comics. The case was dismissed without prejudice twice, decisions upheld on appeal in 2013: no court ever “banned” the character.

Two confusions come up often. The first concerns the clans: the Nocturnus one is not the clan of Pachacamac and Tikal, known as the “Knuckles Clan”. The latter is the ancestral enemy of the Nocturnus, and it is that clan, not Ix's, that Chaos wipes out in “Sonic Adventure” at roughly the same period.

There is also, in the Archie comics from before the 2013 reboot, a separate Pir'Oth Ix: the Imperator of a Nocturnus Clan presented there as the advanced Sciences caste of echidna colonists from Albion, with his own history tied to the Dark Legion and to Mobius. The two biographies do not mix. Finally, Ix has no voice actor in any language, since the game contains no voiced dialogue, only combat grunts.

Summary

Frequently asked questions

• Who is Imperator Ix in Sonic?
  An echidna, the “Imperator” of the Nocturnus Clan and the main villain of “Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood” (Nintendo DS, 2008, developed by BioWare for Sega). He wants to get his people out of the Twilight Cage and conquer Sonic's world thanks to the Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald. It is his only game.
• Why is the Nocturnus Clan locked inside the Twilight Cage?
  Around 4,000 years ago, just as the Nocturnus were about to defeat Knuckles' clan, their whole civilization was sucked all at once into that prison dimension. It is not a banishment decided by an enemy clan, and the game gives no certain cause: Nestor the Wise merely theorizes that a divine being named Argus created the Cage.
• Does Shade the Echidna really betray Imperator Ix?
  Yes. The clan's “Procurator” and Ix's lieutenant, she believed in a simple homecoming. When she discovers on Angel Island that he wants to conquer the world, she opposes him; Ix throws her into the void, Knuckles saves her and she joins Sonic's team. She nevertheless keeps calling him “Lord Ix”.
• Does Imperator Ix die at the end of the game?
  No. He is defeated by Super Sonic, but he teleports away while the Nocturne collapses and his fate is never resolved. The game stops on a cliffhanger, with a world taken back over by Eggman, and the sequel planned at BioWare never came out.
• Is Imperator Ix canon in the Sonic universe?
  No, not any more: “Sonic Chronicles” is presented as a non-canonical adventure compared with the main continuity of the games, notably by the “Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia”. Ix has never reappeared in another game, nor in the IDW comics, nor in an animated series.