Vantage Corporation

The **Vantage Corporation**, sometimes shorted to Vantage Corp, VCorp, or just Vantage, is a technology megacorporation with its headquarters located in the city of El Asilo, California. Vantage controls the city police force, the gates in and out of the city, access to the port, and the political inner workings of El Asilo, as well as producing Vantage brand technology (phones, apps, social media platforms, laptops, pretty much anything you can imagine), food, home goods, and housing. They are also one of the biggest employers in the city, and appeared just as a job crisis was beginning - thus, it’s not uncommon for most working-class people you meet in El Asilo to be on Vantage Corp’s payroll.

## Headquarters

Vantage Corp Headquarters is at the center of El Asilo, in The Point. It is a large, steel building with Vantage’s name displayed prominently on the front. Most employees who work any sort of desk job for Vantage work here, including the chairman (Preston Winters), the CEO, and the Board of Directors, who generally meet behind closed doors on the top floor of the building. Occasionally outsiders from the city, usually government officials, will come to meet with them as well.

## Relations with Government and Human Experimentation

Word of mouth says that the U.S. Government is funding Vantage under the table for some reason - most likely to encourage a well-protected city where supers can go and leave the rest of the world alone. Those rumors are correct, but they barely scratch the surface of what Vantage Corp really does. Unbeknownst to most of their employees, Vantage has a deal with the U.S. Government in which they take in troublemaking supers from other cities for the purpose of “rehabilitation” - or, informally, experimentation. They run tests designed to figure out how superpowers originate in humans, and eventually hope to roll out an exclusive service that will give regular, ordinary humans extraordinary superpowers. It’s said, as well, that the force field around the city is held up by a group of kidnapped supers who are kept somewhere in Vantage Corp headquarters, though no one has ever been able to find them.

## Assassination Squad

Vantage Corp also employs an elite assassination squad of supers and non-supers alike. These assassins are outfitted handsomely with gadgets and weapons produced by Vantage’s laboratories, and eliminate all sorts of targets at the request of either the company or Mayor Winters himself. The assassination squad is made up of people with nothing to lose, people with grudges against supers, and most importantly, people who get a kick out of violence and murder. The citizens of El Asilo are kept largely in the dark about these assassins, and even those who know about them tend to turn a blind eye rather than find themselves on a Vantage Corp hit list.

## Laboratories

Vantage has both "upper level" and "lower level" labs - the upper labs containing products and experiments the public is allowed to know about and see or test, and the lower ones generally containing less ethical work. Vantage also partners with local app development company SterlingTech to develop apps for the VPhone, such as VStream, their live streaming service.

## Supergenius Rehabilitation Program

In early 2018, Vantage announced the Supergenius Rehabilitation Program, a new initiative designed to benefit any currently incarcerated citizens in Vantage Penitentiary whose powers could classify them as a “supergenius”. This classification includes - but is not limited to - Penitentiary prisoners with hyper-competence in any field, prisoners with advanced deductive reasoning powers, prisoners with data manipulation or tactical analysis powers, and prisoners with intuitive aptitude or intuitive replication powers. The classification “supergenius” may also be applied to prisoners with no powers whatsoever, provided they undergo testing to gauge their IQ and deductive reasoning skills, among other traits.

The Supergenius Rehabilitation Program enables participants to aid Vantage Corp in programming, weapons development, and finding gaps in their security and cybersecurity that are in need of patching. Participants are granted access to rent-free Vantage housing, as well as Vantage’s headquarters, including the laboratories. All participants are fitted with tracker anklets, and essentially placed under twenty-four hour surveillance, to ensure they cannot return to supervillainy.

## Upper Management

### True Mayor - ???

Known as Albatross, Bourbon, Chaos, and sometimes Basil Halward, El Asilo's true mayor is a being of probably supernatural origin who makes Faustian bargains with people - including some members of the Vantage board. They also pretend to be a PR intern, when the mood strikes them.

### Mayor/Chairman of the Board - Preston Winters

Preston Winters is the chairman of Vantage Corp’s Board of Directors, and the acting Mayor of El Asilo. Unbeknownst to most, Preston is a super, with the power to place a perception-altering “glamour” over himself, leading others to see him as their ideal, trustworthy mayor, and often making those people more likely to agree with his ideas.

### CEO - Lin Hartha

Hartha has strong psychic abilities that allow her to thrall people. It’s a mental trick, where she makes them believe everything she says must be done. She’s very charismatic and knows just what to say about things, even without the use of her thrall. In private, she has the personality of a person who knows what they want and how to get it. She isn’t outwardly rude, but demanding and picky in a way that makes others feel lesser.

### Vice President - Minh Nguyen

VP Nguyen is notoriously reclusive, and rarely offers statements to the public - or appears in public at all. In secret, ""Minh"" is actually a deceased lab worker, being piloted around by an extradimensional parasite that killed her and took over her body. Minh was offered the VP position in exchange for not killing everyone in the lower labs, and agreed. She has a strange diet in order to keep her body intact, as part of a pact with Albatross, and always smells pleasantly of flowers.

## Board of Directors

### Director of Assassins - Musetta Liddell

A shapeshifter. Capricious and sadistic, but usually polite. Usually wears a mask or blindfold due to having scarred eyes that are sensitive to light. Their alliance lies chiefly with the Tartarus Family.

### Director of Cybersecurity - Laurent Moss

An affable enough type. Working closely with the app development and coding teams for the new VPhone, to make sure everything is ship-shape.

### Upper Labs Director - Pandora Thorne

A business-like woman with no patience for Preston Winters.