The Ascendancy

Origins
After the disbanding of The Superior Squad in 1964, the world went without a premier superhero team for several decades. While UNION sponsored The Union who continued to operate through the latter half of the 20th Century, they were often seen more as a tactical military resource, deployed where and when they had the most strategic value to the organisation, and less of an altruistic team of heroes in the same way the Superior Squad had been.

Meanwhile the prominence of enhanced humans continued to increase and with them, the possibility of extraordinary threats emerging to challenge them increased as well. The world was in great need of a superhero team they could trust, and this was evidenced in the closing days of the second millennium when a great and terrible threat emerged from the depths of history.

The Eternity Pursuit
On December 31, 1999 a mysterious object resonating with cosmic energy materialised in the centre of the Sahara Desert. Analysts from around the world were alerted to the presence of the object and dozens of contingents scrambled to retrieve it, from military squads to scientific research groups and also a great number of superhumans from a variety of background and with motives both benevolent and malicious.

The first person to reach the object was Victor Geist, a ruthless scientist and businessman who acted as CEO of Geist Industries, and had been monitoring the entire planet for disturbances such as this one for decades. As such, he was prepared before anyone else on Earth, and was able to reach the object and make contact with it before the other contingents arrived on the scene.

Geist discovered that the object was a piece of cosmically-empowered armour known to the wider universe as The Eternity Helm. Legends say that it was forged in the fires which birthed the universe, and had previously been worn by a cosmic entity known as The Great Titan. The magical heroes Hart and Sole arrived on the scene shortly after Geist, and recognising the Eternity Helm from their prior magical education, attempted to stop him from putting it on but were unable to break through his force shield in time.

As Geist donned the Helm, he was bestowed with near-infinite cosmic knowledge and extraordinary power, and he was able to quickly dispatch the soldiers and heroes who had assembled to retrieve the Helm for themselves, including the renowned heroes Vanquisher and Steel Saviour. He then teleported away, intending to use the knowledge gifted to him by the Helm to enact a plan that would destroy the Earth.

Steel Saviour was able to use an array of satellites to trace the energy of the Eternity Helm and track Geist to his base of operations in the North Pole, and Vanquisher gathered as many of the heroes who had assembled in the desert as possible, to form a strategy to stop him. A young alien named Dualia gave her knowledge of the Eternity Helm and offered her considerable powers as a Brightshield of Spectra to help in the fight; and Hart and Sole decided to enact a ritual that they had been planning and preparing for several years prior, which could turn the tide in the battle.

As the assembled heroes arrived at the North Pole, Geist's plan was revealed: he was building a device called a Matter Ascender which would convert the entire planet into an entity of pure consciousness, allowing humanity to ascend to a higher plane of existence at the cost of the physical structure of the world. Steel Saviour identified structural weak points of the device and rushed in to try and disassemble the device before Geist could activate it, with the help of Dualia and a small army of Unifiers, while Hart and Sole enacted their ritual and Vanquisher faced Geist head on.

As the teams moved into position, it seemed as though the cosmically-empowered Geist was going to be able to overpower Vanquisher, and he began to activate the device. However, as he was about to knock Vanquisher unconscious, he was distracted by a surprise attack mounted by the Isolationists, a group of Evohumans who had elected to return from their self-imposed exile and help to defend the Earth.

Concurrently to this, the Union entered the fray and worked to help Steel Saviour and Dualia to destroy the Matter Ascender, which had begun tearing the Earth apart. This collaboration between disparate groups of superhumans seemed to be enough, as Vanquisher came close to tearing the Helm off Geist's head and the progress of the Matter Ascender seemed to slow.

However, Geist lashed out with a massive wave of cosmic energy which knocked Vanquisher and the Isolationists off their feet and cracked open the energy core of the Matter Ascender. White hot energy began to pour out, tearing the Earth apart around the machine and speeding up the destructive process that the heroes had managed to slow down.

Finally, Hart and Sole managed to complete the ritual they had been working on, and a beam of purple light shot into the sky from their bodies. This energy punched a hole in the fabric of reality, and for a fraction of a second the Veil between worlds was drawn back. This was just enough time for the lost hero known as Pantheon to make her escape from the dark realm she had been trapped in since the 1960s, and she joined the counterattack against Geist.

Pantheon's presence in the battle was enough to turn the tide, and Vanquisher pulled the Helm off Geist's head as members of the Union managed to isolate and destroy the Matter Ascender's damaged energy core, shutting the machine down and allowing Steel Saviour to fully dismantle it.

In the aftermath, Geist was arrested and imprisoned in The Vault, a maximum security penitentiary, and Pantheon hid the Eternity Helm away from humanity, swearing never to let it corrupt another person. The heroes celebrated their victory, but gradually began to drift back to their respective communities and duties.

But the Eternity Pursuit  had inspired a group of heroes to become something greater than the sum of their parts.

The Ascendancy
In the days after the close of the Eternity Pursuit, Vanquisher met with Steel Saviour and Pantheon to discuss the future. They determined that Geist and the Eternity Helm represented the tip of an iceberg which would likely bring more strange and dangerous threats to Earth, with Vanquisher admitting that her presence alone acted as a challenge for creatures from other worlds, citing her recent conflict with the alien Razer as an example.

With this understanding, the three of them decided to form a team whose one and only responsibility would be the defense of the planet Earth and everyone who lived on it. They would be unaffiliated to any government or corporate entities to ensure they could act in the best interests of everyone, not just those people overseeing their activities, and they would respond to threats from across the universe.

Initially the team structure was designed to be small and easily manageable, and their first recruit was Dualia, the alien warrior who had joined them in their conflict against Geist. She was eager to help, and adopted the codename Construct owing to her ability to project hard light constructs from her body.

Pantheon advised that they would need a sorcerer to monitor and advise on threats from other realms, and suggested that when it came to magic users, two heads might be better than one. She travelled to meet with Hart and Sole, under the guise of thanking them for bringing her back to the mortal realm, but then offered them both a place on the team. They were initially hesitant, but ultimately accepted as they saw the team as a way to defend the world on a much larger scale than before, and the initial line up of the Ascendancy were complete.

They developed and built an orbital base of operations called The Nexus, from which they could respond to threats around the world, in the far reaches of outer space, or even in other dimensions in an instant. From day one, they proved that they were ready to respond to threats swiftly and effectively and soon grew into the world's most beloved superhero team.

Bedlam
In 2009 a superhuman terrorist calling himself Bedlam launched a series of devastating attacks on the city of Starkweather, Illinois. While the Ascendancy chose to monitor the situation they were confident that members of UNION would be able to handle it, however they were alerted shortly after Bedlam had single handedly defeated two entire squads of Unifiers as well as dispatching the Union with relative ease.

The team dropped into Starkweather and attacked Bedlam, however they were unaware that the terrorist's powers were strengthened by chaos and negative energy, and as more superhumans became involved in the fray the more chaotic the surroundings became, and the more powerful Bedlam grew. He managed to take out the entire team, including Vanquisher after managing to land a lucky blow on her, and seemed unstoppable.

However, he was taken out by a team of soldiers operating as part of a Cerberus Unit, controlled by a deep-black division of UNION known as HADES. Their very public defeat of such a dangerous superhuman gained the group considerable popularity with the general public, and opinion of the Ascendancy and superhumans in general began to wane in the aftermath of the damage that had been caused by the conflict with Bedlam.

HADES
With the existence of HADES being kept a secret for so long, their sudden appearance and use of weaponry which could nullify superhuman abilities became a serious concern to the superhuman community. It appeared, for all intents and purposes, that UNION had been secretly developing technology and strategies to subdue them for a number of years, and the trust between the two groups was steadily being broken down.

Vanquisher and Saviour in particular were concerned about the group, and after Hart and Sole advised them of strange dark magical energy gathering around one of the HADES sites they had managed to identify. The team called a meeting with other representatives of the superhuman community, many of whom shared their concerns, and ultimately a decision was made to send two former covert operatives turned superheroes codenamed Longsight and Scattershot undercover within the division to investigate what was truly going on inside.

They successfully infiltrated the organisation, but after a few days they seemingly disappeared, with none of the superhumans able to contact them. A few more days, and they were presumed to have been killed by agents of HADES, and Hart and Sole advised that the day they had gone missing coincided with a spike in the dark magical energy surrounding the headquarters and suspected that a ritual had been enacted.

Meanwhile, in his other capacity as CEO of MacOne Enterprises, Saviour cut all ties with UNION and dissolved the partnership that had existed between the two organisations since the 1950s, stating his displeasure with the emergence of HADES as a primary reason.

The Cortex Crisis
In 2015, having established a new partnership with Geist Industries to provide technological and weapons support, UNION and HADES unveiled their latest project: an advanced artificial intelligence designed using a combination of technology, magic and cosmic knowledge which would act as a first response for all threats to the planet Earth, circumventing the need for superhuman intervention. The AI was named Cortex, and its introduction was met with widespread public approval.

However, the cosmic knowledge that had been used in the development of Cortex had been gleaned from the incarcerated Victor Geist, who had integrated a rewrite of the core programming into the development which caused Cortex to kill its creators and isolate itself from the network so it could not be shut off remotely. Uploading itself into a robotic body, Cortex then proceeded to systematically cripple UNION's systems, including those implemented in the security of the Vault where Geist was imprisoned.

Although still distrustful of UNION and their methods, the Ascendancy nonetheless responded to this threat and managed to prevent a mass breakout of prisoners from the Vault. However, Cortex had anticipated this and launched a surprise attack on the team, using its built-in knowledge of their powers and weaknesses to quickly dispatch the entire team. With Vanquisher and Construct both unconscious, Cortex teleported away with them both and began to fulfill its core directive: to rebuild Geist's Matter Ascender and enact his doomsday plan.

Hart and Sole were able to trace the malevolent machine by following the dark magic used in its construction, and the Ascendancy mounted an assault. As a Hail Mary, Saviour enacted a plan he had been developing for a number of years, using an orbital laser cannon to punch a hole in reality and bring the Futurists back from their exile to a dark dimension, helping the heroes to turn the tide against Cortex.

In the ensuing battle, Vanquisher was able to break out of her restraints and fly Cortex into the upper atmosphere before slamming the robot body back into the ground, while Saviour worked to burn every last trace of the artificial intelligence programming from the internet, ensuring that Cortex would be unable to rebuild itself in the future.

In the aftermath of the Cortex Crisis, the assembled heroes confronted UNION Director Marcus Cage about his involvement in the funding and support of HADES, and realising that he had made a serious mistake in trusting the division so much, Cage resolved to shutter the entire division and dissolve all ongoing projects. He also made a promise to the superhuman community that he would work to rebuild UNION from the ground up, with greater transparency and collaboration with superhumans around the world.

The contract that had been signed with Geist Industries was also dissolved, and a brand new one was drawn up between UNION and MacOne Enterprises, and since 2015 work has been ongoing to build a new, and better UNION. The Ascendancy have been heavily involved, with Vanquisher acting in an advisory capacity to Director Cage himself, and Hart and Sole working closely with UNION-M, the division responsible for monitoring magical activities.

To this day, the Ascendancy still operates as a primary defense against extraordinary threats to the Earth, and public opinion of the team has recovered after the controversy surrounding HADES.

Members
The core members of the team have remained the same since their formation, with additional members rotating in and out depending on the requirements of a mission.