Saviour

## Origins

Born into the wealthy and powerful **MacTaggart** dynasty, owners of **MacOne Enterprises** and their countless subdivisions, **Jacob MacTaggart** was nonetheless a sickly, unwell child who suffered from various maladies throughout his youth. Seen as an embarrassment by his cold, business-minded father **Gregory MacTaggart**, then-CEO of the company, he was hidden away from public view and doted on by his mother and her army of paid help.

Jacob saw how distant his father was, and in his early teens he tried to run away from home, however this escape attempt was cut short when he was hit by a car while crossing the street in front of his family’s apartment building, and severely injured to the point that his lower left leg and entire right arm had to be amputated. His mother **Angela** was distraught and succumbed to the drinking problem which she had previously managed to keep under control, and surprisingly his father dedicated his time and energy to helping the boy, although maintaining emotional distance from him throughout the process.

Soon after being discharged from hospital, Jacob was outfitted with state of the art cybernetic prosthetics to replace his amputated limbs. These were made of high grade materials, had a revolutionary interface with his nervous system and brain, and actually functioned better than his old flesh and blood limbs. Overjoyed with this advancement, Jacob began studying under his father’s **Cybernetics Division**, learning all there was to know about the discipline. To his father’s outrage, he even began tinkering with his own prosthetics, staying in the lab after hours to build himself new, streamlined versions which he could cover with synthetic flesh to be almost indistinguishable from human limbs.

### MacOne Enterprises

In his early 20s, Jacob was forced into a position of power as his parents and older brother Jeremy MacTaggart were killed in a plane crash, and he was forced to take over as CEO of MacOne Enterprises. He proved surprisingly adept at manoeuvring complex boardroom situations, and was allowed to continue his own research into cybernetics alongside his responsibilities as the Chief Executive.

A few years into his tenure as CEO, Jacob grew restless with his endless business meetings and longed for something more exciting. He began working on a secret project in a concealed laboratory underneath his personal accommodation, completely off the books of MacOne Enterprises. Moving on from cybernetics, Jacob had developed a revolutionary new form of nanotechnology that could be used to form an exosuit which could be used for a variety of purposes, with possible defensive and even military applications.

Bored one night after a particularly tedious string of meetings, Jacob donned the exosuit he had spent months building in secret, flew to the outskirts of the city and used it to stop a weapons deal taking place out of the reach of the police. This act of rebellion gave Jacob a thrill he had been looking for his whole life, ever since he was first struck down with illness as a child, and he began going out on longer and longer excursions.

### Steel Saviour

Ultimately his actions drew the attention of the press, who dubbed this new technological superhero the **Steel Saviour**, a name Jacob happily adopted. As the years went on, Jacob continued to operate in secret as the Steel Saviour, taking a particular interest in stopping criminals who were using advanced technology for nefarious purposes.

One enemy he made early on in his career as a superhero and who reared their heads many times over the subsequent years was a terrorist group known as **The Technarchy**, who believed that the future would be ruled by those with access to the most advanced technology and sought to gather as much of it as possible through whatever means necessary. Steel Saviour went up against these villains on numerous occasions, frequently clashing with their leader, a man who simply called himself **Technarch**.

Although he has come close to being unmasked on a number of occasions over the years, Jacob is one of the few heroes who has managed to maintain a complete balance between his everyday life and his work as a superhero. He regularly uses decoys, including autonomous drone versions of the Steel Saviour suit to throw people off the trail if they come too close to discovering his secret identity, and thus far it has proven totally effective.

### The Eternity Pursuit

When **Victor Geist**, CEO of **Geist Industries** and Jacob's biggest rival in the world of business retrieved a powerful cosmic artifact known as the **Eternity Helm**, the Steel Saviour joined forces with other great heroes from around the world in an effort to bring him to justice. He formed an alliance with **Vanquisher**, the world's greatest and most powerful superhuman, and the sorcerers **Hart** and **Sole** as well as a friendly young alien who went by the name **Construct** to face off against Geist and retrieve the Helm before he could do serious damage with it. However, the Helm granted Geist incredible power and he was able to defeat the assembled superhumans and escape.

Jacob tracked Geist to the **North Pole** soon afterwards and the heroes found that he was building a complex device which was resonating with vast cosmic energy. Once confronted, Geist revealed that he intended to destroy the world, uplifting the planet and its inhabitants to become beings of pure consciousness and allowing them to ascend to a new plane of existence, where they would be protected from an unspecified catastrophe that the Helm had given him a glimpse of.

Steel Saviour played a key role in foiling Geist's plans as he was able to identify a series of structural flaws in the device which allowed him to destroy it, while the other heroes attacked Geist and managed to separate him from the Eternity Helm. Geist was imprisoned, the Eternity Helm was removed from this plane of existence by the newly-returned hero **Pantheon** and Steel Saviour took the remains of Geist's machine away to be disposed of.

### The Ascendancy

After the close of the **Eternity Pursuit**, Steel Saviour approached Vanquisher and a select group of other heroes with a proposition: to form a team which would act as first response for global and universal threats to the safety and security of planet Earth. He would provide a base of operations and a range of advanced technology which they could use for these purposes, and they would be able to continue to operate alone as well as being part of the team.

They dubbed themselves **The Ascendancy** and quickly moved into **The Nexus**, an orbital base of operations designed and built by Steel Saviour with some assistance from the other heroes in the team. Seeing this as an opportunity for a change, Steel Saviour elected to change his codename, and he became **Saviour**, acting as the tactical and strategic leader of the team while the powerful and beloved Vanquisher acted as the figurehead.

Together they faced down many extraordinary threats, from the deadly alliance of **Primarch** and **The Trust**, to the multiversal incursion of the **Crimson Battalion** and even the cosmic threat of **Anti-Earth**, and through it all they stayed true to the heroic principles on which the Ascendancy was founded.

### HADES

The Bedlam attacks of 2009 put the Ascendancy to the test, as the superpowered terrorist known as **Bedlam** caused havoc and destruction across **Starkweather** and increased his strength to the point where he was able to singlehandedly defeat the entire team, including Vanquisher. When the villain was incapacitated by agents forming a **Cerberus Unit** and working for the deep black UNION division known as **HADES**, public opinion of the superheroes reached an all-time low.

Saviour took a particular interest in HADES, as all his corporate intelligence and legal arrangements with UNION had never returned any information relating to the division and their activities. Frustrated by the existence of something so important that he knew nothing about, Saviour dedicated a great deal of resources into investigating the division, gradually becoming convinced that it was part of a conspiracy to degrade public opinion of superheroes.

He spearheaded a strategy to infiltrate HADES and uncover more information, with Vanquisher recommending heroes and former covert operatives **Longsight** and **Scattershot** to go undercover and report back. When the pair disappeared shortly after gaining access to the group, Vanquisher was racked with guilt while Saviour became obsessed with trying to get the information he believed them to have gathered.

In his other role as CEO of MacOne Enterprises, Jacob cut all ties with UNION due to their complicity in the disappearance of the two heroes, forcing them to begin a new relationship with MacOne's direct competitor Geist Industries.

### The Cortex Crisis

The collaboration between UNION and Geist Industries resulted in the creation of an advanced artificial intelligence that would come to be known as **Cortex**, designed to reduce humanity's reliance on superhumans as a defense mechanism against global and universal threats. However, the AI became sentient thanks to a programming rewrite delivered by the incarcerated Victor Geist, and systematically crippled UNION's systems, including those in **The Vault** maximum security penitentiary.

The Ascendancy responded and managed to prevent a mass prison break, but Cortex attacked with a new heavily-armed robotic body, incapacitating a number of heroes including Vanquisher and Construct and teleporting away with their bodies. Saviour managed to run a global trace and tracked Cortex down, leading the charge against the malevolent machine and ultimately enacting a Hail Mary he had been planning for several years: he used an orbital laser cannon to punch a hole in reality and bring the Futurists back from their extra-dimensional prison in the Void, turning the tide against Cortex and resulting in its defeat.

In the aftermath the Ascendancy confronted UNION **Director Marcus Cage** about his involvement with HADES and Cortex, and he enacted a protocol to shutter the entire division and destroy all existing and ongoing projects related to them. He advised that he wished to rebuild UNION from the ground up, with close involvement from the superhumans around him, and he even signed a new and exclusive agreement with MacOne Enterprises.

Saviour continues to act as a hero, and Jacob MacTaggart continues to be a visionary technologist, both sides of the same man using their abilities for the betterment of humanity.

## Personality

With his various childhood maladies, Jacob MacTaggart seemed destined to be a nervous, introverted child. However, he ended up being quite the opposite, a headstrong and impulsive young man who longed for excitement in a life spent cooped up in the dark. After the accident in which he lost an arm and a leg, he became withdrawn for a short time but once his father started trying to help him recover, using advanced prosthetics to make the boy's life easier, he quickly got back to his old self, and even started bonding with his previously distant and disapproving father.

His teens and early twenties were spent splitting his time between the Cybernetics Division, where he was well-liked for his engagement with the subject and enthusiasm to learn despite being the boss's son; and carrying out various extreme sports of increasing danger, his carefree daredevil attitude making up for the time he thought of as 'lost' from his childhood. Some saw him as something of a 'man-child', but his passion and excitement were infectious and most people found him a magnetic personality.

After the deaths of his close family members he knew that he had to step up and take responsibility for the company, and despite the appearances of his reckless lifestyle he proved to be an adept businessman, negotiating several high-profile deals including one with UNION.

As the Steel Saviour and latterly just Saviour, he has found an outlet for his daredevil desires and seems to thoroughly enjoy taking on the bad guys using the technology he has built and is constantly tinkering with. He rarely sleeps, preferring to work all day and all night on various projects, and has even developed a cranial implant which means he only requires six hours of sleep a week, just so he can take more time doing the things he loves and wants to do.

## Superhuman Abilities

Jacob MacTaggart possesses no superhuman abilities, although he operates at peak human intelligence.

## Weapons and Equipment

Saviour is equipped with a unique, state of the art exosuit which operates using advanced nanotechnology.

* **Saviour Suit** - The suit is actually made up of billions of microscopic nanomachines stored in various accessories that Jacob wears at all times, including a watch and a ring, which can be released at any time in a variety of ways. Primarily he allows the exosuit to cover his body as though it is made of liquid metal, creating an impenetrable armoured suit which increases his physical strength, speed and durability, and even allows him to fly. He can reshape the nanomachines using a neural network into a variety of weapons and defensive objects, and can even project them outwards to cover other people in a thinner, slightly less durable version of his armour.