Main Page: Teams


First Appearance: Number of the Beast #1
Base of Operations: Palatine Hill


History:
As the 1940s dawned over America, men and women began discovering incredible skills and abilities. When their moral strength inspired them to be heroes, these humans and posthumans were brought together to assist the American government against the Nazis. The hope was to turn a group of iconoclasts into a team of champions... of Paladins.

However, as the Second World War began winding down, a Daemonite flying saucer crashed in the American Southwest. General Zebulon McCandless looked at the teleportation, virtual reality and suspended animation technology of the saucer, and an impossible idea occurred to him. He began drafting a plan to capture the heroes and train them to fight off the End of Days.

The Paladins were sent to observe the Hiroshima bombing, but were teleported into the facility built around the saucer. Their allies and enemies were similarly captured and placed in suspended animation, and so almost sixty years, the Paladins protected "the City"(the name of the simulation) from the portents of Christian eschatology, while around them the world suffered forom the lack of their moral fortitude.

Eventually, the greatest hero of their generation, the High, was collected after he smashed against Stormwatch's force-shield, and placed in the City. Despite being cinically dead before being placed in the system, the regenerative technology of the saucer brought him all the back, and with his assistance, the Paladins and their enemies and allies were able to escape. The breach of the program led the American government to launch the Reaper Initiative, an army of engineered superhumans designed to exterminate superhumans. However, before the Reapers arrived, the Authority arrived and collected the newly awakened heroes. Frustrated from their prime directive, the Reapers spread out across the world, attacking all the superhumans they could find. Despite the best efforts of Earth's heroes, the Reapers ultimately exploded in the upper atmosphere, creating a catastrophic Extinction Level Event. Now, as their new world is destroyed, the surviving Paladins agree on one thing... this is a world that needs them.