St. John Allerdyce is an Australian mutant born in Sydney. Though his powers manifested at puberty, he did not make use of them for years save for emergencies. Unable to employ his abilities for profit, Allerdyce drifted from job to job, until he became a journalist for an Australian wire service, covering Vietnam and Indonesia. His experiences and travels inspired him to start writing novels (though he also wrote torrid romances). Although Allerdyce's novels were despised by renowned novelists and critics, he found a wide readership throughout the English-speaking world. Eventually, under unrevealed circumstances, Allerdyce met the mutant known as Mystique and joined her rebranded version of the terrorist Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, under the name of Pyro, the man who controls the living flame.
