Naze is a character whose importance is much bigger than the amount of time he actually spends on the page. Most of his place in these stories comes through Forge, but he's part…

Naze is a character whose importance is much bigger than the amount of time he actually spends on the page. Most of his place in these stories comes through Forge, but he's part of Forge's life long before the X-Men become involved. He's a Cheyenne medicine man and Forge's teacher, with a relationship that goes back to Forge's childhood. He's also a father figure to him. Forge refers to having known him his entire life, and Naze thinks of Forge as his foster son. So when they argue, there's a whole history behind it that the reader is only gradually getting to see. When Naze first appears in Uncanny X-Men #184, he's trying to get Forge to acknowledge a supernatural threat and accept the role he was trained for. Forge wants no part of it. He's established a life built around invention and technology, while Naze is warning him that something is going badly wrong and that he can't simply walk away from it. Naze also gets directly involved when the Dire Wraiths attack Forge's building. Storm is powerless by then, and he helps her survive long enough for them to try to reach Forge. That part is worth remembering because it shows him taking action himself. He sees the danger, turns up armed and helps someone who's in the middle of it, even while she has very good reasons to be angry with his former pupil. Then the story becomes much harder to follow if you treat every appearance of Naze as the same person. A Dire Wraith takes his place, and the Adversary takes over the impostor. The figure using Naze's face later guides Storm toward Forge while convincing her that Forge is the threat. By the time that deception comes to a head, Storm has been pushed into attacking the very person who was trying to stop the disaster. That's an important distinction in talking about his history. The real Naze's warnings about Forge needing to face the Adversary and the false Naze's manipulation of Storm are pointing in opposite directions. An enemy is using the appearance and authority of someone who belongs to Forge's past. I'm keeping this to the early stories I've read, including the lead-up to Fall of the Mutants. Within those stories, Naze gives us a lot of the background needed to understand Forge: who trained him, what was expected of him, and why the magical side of his life still matters even when he wants to put all his attention into building things.