X-Factor: History

In 1990, news of mutants and the X-Factor burst into the public eye with the publication of groundbreaking research by Dr. Moira McTaggart. Over the next decade, the issue slowly grew in the public awareness with tensions increasing between humans and mutants. In 2001, an attack on Liberty Island by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants brought the conflict to a new stage. Support for mutant registration grew, becoming a reality following the election of Roger Lowe in 2004. He was assassinated less than two years later by the Brotherhood of Mutants, with mutant registration declared unconstitutional early in 2007.

When early attempts to divert the course of an M-class asteroid on collision course with Earth in 2008 failed, however, it was mutants who averted disaster and became the heroes. It was against this backdrop that X-Factor was formed.

With the country's mutant policy stagnating under President Richards (2006-2008), a highly placed official in the CIA saw an urgent need for the United States to aswer the threat of superpowered muants. A very small, secret group of highly-placed officials filtered resources to fund and train a small group of operatives. This group was code named X-Factor, and they were considered a highly-experimental force tasked with taking on missions too dangerous or too secret for other organizations.

With the election of President Stockton, the same official approached the Oval Office with a proposition: fund the expansion of X-Factor, and it would get results where other, more conventional methods failed. X-Factor would remain top secret, highly-classified, and often autonomous. In February of 2009, the decision was forced to a head: The discovery of a mutant smuggling ring of broad scope and unknown depth, multinational and with distinctly anti-American notions, encouraged Stockton to sign off on the expansion.

X-Factor exists today in limbo. It is an organization of great power, pull, and resources, but it remains a highly-classified secret, unknown to all but the very highest echelons of government and watched every day with a wary eye. There are those who don't believe in them, those who fear them, and those who would see them fail.

And then there is Remaal al-Sahra.