“Ghost orphans” are exactly what they sound like – spirits with no homes. They were created centuries ago when a disgraced and exiled Roman general named Marcus Octavias discovered a pool of demon’s blood in a cave near the Mediterranean Sea. He used the cursed substance to forge a sword, but he soon learned that what seemed to be just an ordinary – if wicked-looking – blade, was in fact an instrument of immense mystical power. He discovered this during his first attempt to exact revenge on one of his former fellow commanding officers. He went to the home of General Titus Velens in a settlement near the city of Carthage, with the intent of killing him quietly in the middle of the night. However, the ghost blade gave him a variety of extreme powers – including enhanced speed and strength, flight, teleportation and energy projection – and instead of simply killing his intended target, he was able to wipe out the entire village. It was at that point that he decided it was time to expand the scope of his ambition – it was time to dethrone the emperor and take control of the Roman Empire.

Though his blade was powerful, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He used the rest of the demon blood to forge seven more ghost blades and recruited five men and two women to join him, gifting each of them with a blade of their own. They began calling themselves the Sapphire Cult and set out to march against the Roman Empire. Just as with Marcus, each blade gave its wielder immense powers. But the blades’ most dangerous attributes was their power to separate an individual’s spirit from his or her body. And as the members of the Sapphire Cult massacred their way through the colonies of the Roman Empire, they left a trail of wandering lost souls in their wake. It would soon be discovered that the spirit of anyone who fell victim to a ghost blade was afforded no sanctuary in heaven, and no passage to hell.

Kallisto was one of the Sapphire Cult’s final victims. She was a priestess in a temple in Greece, when the Evil Eight took up refuge in her city. Their campaign against the Roman Empire had been successful for several years. Then came the rise of Seven Holy Warriors, – known collectively as “The Veil” – all equipped with powerful swords of their own, that would come to be known as living-blades. The Battle at the Temple of Artemis was violent, but The Veil prevailed. Marcus and The Sapphire cult were slain, and the Ghost Blades were destroyed.

The damage, however, had already been done, as thousands upon thousands of ghost orphans were left to roam the planet. Lost; aimless; barely aware of their own existence, but eternally overcome by the urge to indulge in the certainty of an afterlife they could not experience. For centuries they were simply specters, seldom seen by natural eyes, but often felt in the natural world through hauntings and other paranormal activity. And then one day, something extraordinary happened – the ghost of Kallisto discovered a way to reverse the soul-splitting effects of the ghost-blades. She learned how to inhabit the physical being of living humans by fusing with their spirits. It was a metaphysically brutal process, but it was the key to transforming a ghost orphan’s existence from barely natural to supernatural. The game was about to change.

Kallisto first inhabited the body of a peasant woman in 12th century France. Invigorated by the power of tangible ability, she set out to find and train as many ghost orphans as possible in the art of phantom-fusion. Within just a few years, hundreds of ghost orphans had taken up residences in human bodies. And though these bodies would eventually expire, ghost orphans could still find no rest in the afterlife, as they would simply be forced to defuse with the dying spirit and jump to another human host.

While some ghost orphans decided to live out eternity peacefully and quietly, others, led by Kallisto, chose to use their new powers to steal, kill and destroy anything they could get their hands on. Through the centuries (and through many bodies) Kallisto amassed an underground empire that had worldwide (though covert) influence in politics, religion, governments, illegal trafficking of all sorts, mercenary work and much more.

Everything was going fine for Kallisto’s empire, until the turn of the 15th century, when seven children were born through the bloodlines of the members of The Veil. These men and women (and their descendants) were equipped with living-blades and tasked with tracking down ghost orphans, in order to finally offer them passage to the afterlife – more specifically, heaven. The Seven Families were each named for the cities their original Veil descendant came from: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea (all in the region of Asia that was colonized by the Roman Empire at the time).

A portion of ghost orphans readily accepted the sanctuary offered by the Seven Families through the living-blades; many more of them – especially those like Kallisto who’d gained earthly wealth over a multitude of lifetimes – decided to fight back. The war, which has spanned all over the world, still rages on to this day. And not only that, but there is a third element – the Reapers. Just as heaven sent the Hunters with living-blades to bring ghost orphans to Paradise, the Prince of Darkness himself sent a hoard of minions (equipped with new and improved ghost-blades) to bring them to the gates of hell. Having to fight battles on two fronts, Kallisto’s empire was weakened, and in time became more akin to a rebel force. Still, the ghost orphan resistance had considerable resources and were eventually able to find tactical advantages against their predators, especially in the wake of the hunters and reapers clashing with each other more and more.

Kallisto’s battle acumen was so great that she in fact was able to lead campaigns to whip out two of the seven noble families (Ephesus and Pergamum). It was at this point that she became the primary target of the most skilled group of hunters – The House of Philadelphia. It was in late 18th century Japan that Kallisto first encountered the Philadelphian hunters. She had formed an alliance with the powerful Matsuzaki Yakuza, and was determined to set up a foundation for a new empire.

At the time, the Iga Ninja Clan acted as one of the main protectors of Japan, and the greatly renowned warrior Danzo, who was a young man at the time, was right in the middle of the action when the clan took up arms against Kallisto and her minions. The combined powers of the orphans and Yakuza, however, proved to be too much for the Iga and they were on the verge of losing everything, when a group of warriors from the House of Philadelphia showed up and offered their services. It was Chihiro Philadelphia and Danzo himself who officially cemented the alliance, and together they thwarted Kallisto’s threat.

The war, however, was far from over, and in the late 21st century Kallisto and the House of Philadelphia clashed again, this time in the United States. A young hunter named Disa Philadelphia led her family deep beneath a cemetery in the Midwest region of the country where the lost souls had established a base. Another in a long line of brutal battles ensued, as dozens of hunters and hundreds of ghost orphans fell.

With much of her crew gone and the house of Philadelphia closing in around her, Kallisto managed to avoid the edge of a living-blade and took her own natural life, ensuring her the ability to jump into another human body, and spurning Disa of her opportunity to catch the most dangerous ghost orphan to ever walk the Earth. The huntress spent the next 30 years searching for Kallisto, who had phantom-fused with the body and spirit of a woman in Platinum City named Nadine Perrineau. Through Nadine, Kallisto was able to rest and regain her strength, as she methodically recruited and reorganized a team to strike back at Disa and the other hunters. In the early 22nd century she was ready, and that’s when she found mild-mannered greeting card writer Virginia Ice.

After the phantom-fuse, Virginia quit her day job and proceeded to reestablish the dark empire Kallisto had begun. As Virginia, Kallisto was more deadly than ever – faster, stronger, more agile, more adept with firearms and blades, and much more cunning. She became the hunter, tracking down members of the Seven Families and reapers alike, thinning out the ranks of her would-be predators. It wasn’t long before Disa and Virginia found each other, and the showdown was as epic as expected. However, Virginia’s brand new body and enhanced abilities proved way too much for the battle-weary master huntress, and she would have been killed if not for the appearance and intervention of her son, Peter Philadelphia. Virginia would escape, but her and Peter’s destinies would prove to be intertwined in a way they could never imagine.

As Peter took over as the Seven Families’ top hunter, his and Virginia’s battles became more intense, more personal…. and more intimate. Yes, Virginia and Peter fell in love, but continued to hunt each other during, what became a secret, and somewhat twisted love affair. As hard as they fought, neither one of them could deny their feelings for the other, and neither one of the could shake the feeling that they could merely be a pawn in the other’s game. The only one to suspect anything, of course, was Disa. And on several occasions she came close to discovering them.

Despite their passion for one another, their passions for their respective purposes on this planet were still paramount. Virginia fought and slaughtered hunters with as much ferocity as ever, and Peter hunted down lost souls better than anyone else in the business. This went on for longer than a decade. Then two major events sent everything into a tailspin:

First: Peter married a fellow hunter named Reagan Smyrna.

And second: a powerful hell-spawn, calling himself Legion, rose to power as the new lead reaper, and in his first order of business set out to form an alliance with the ghost orphans against the hunters; an alliance that Virginia Ice readily agreed to.

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