[Neo Queen Serenity]

It all started with Gionvanni Divo, the private secretary to Sergius the III in the tenth century. Rome was in chaos, and when Pope Sergius was deposed, his private secretary was killed, and many of his papers and works destroyed. Gionvanni was no simple secretary-- he was rumored to have the gift of prophecy, along with extraordinary intelligence. He predicted computers, and built clocks, and wrote about calculus long before any of these officially came into existance.

He also wrote Nievus Luna Occulto, what is now known to Neo Queen Serenity and the senshi as 'The Prophecy', the one that speaks of the Shitennou.

A few loyal followers of Giovanni's gathered his works, included a book that is rumored to contain the secret of immortality-- at least, those artifacts that they could salvage before they were destroyed in the backlash against Sergius III. These followers believed what Giovanni professed-- that reason surprassed all other systems of belief, and that heaven was establishing a utopia based purely on a reason on Earth.

These followers built a cloister deep within the Carpathian mountains, as they hid from the chaos and suspicion of the Dark Ages. They eventually took on the name Ulterius, Latin for the remote, because they lived in a harsh and remote environment, jealously guarding their knowledge, and suspicious of the world. These loyal followers did venture out, and would search for promising talent that they could recruit into their ideology, to protect the works of Giovanni and promote the march of reason. A secluded community of Savants grew. Some seemed to possess more than just intellect, however. Any locals who crossed paths with some of the savants would swear they knew sorcery. Anyone who seemed to be gifted with foresight or prophecy soon rose to become the leader of the community. What began as commune focused on scholarship and preservation of the most advanced inventions and writings of the time, turned into a far more militant and autocratic sect by the time of the Renaissance. The Ulterius were no longer content with waiting for reason to dominate the world on its own. No, they had a vital role in ensuring that Giovanni's vision came to pass. The organization began to orchestrate political events, and assassinated or otherwise made impotent anyone who seemed to oppose their agenda.

The organization was at its height at the beginning of World War II. It had more followers than ever before, and the keen interest of Third Reich in mystic relics and the paranormal enthused many in Ulterius's ranks. The leader of Ulterius at that time was said to be an unparallelled seer. Known only as Dante, his visions accurately predicted the outcome of battles and the movements of both the Allies and the Axis powers. However, as WWII progressed, some in Ulterius began to have doubts about Ulterius's Nazi allies. The community split, and those who opposed fascism left, and were ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated.

One night, just before the D-day assault on the beaches of Normandy, Dante awoke from a catatonic state, which he had been in for several hours, in prophecy. He declared to his aides and confidants that he had finally uncovered the path to immortality. The next morning, when his valet went in to wake him, Dante had disappeared. The sect was told that their leader had gone into occultation, that is, he had disappeared, and would return again when they had finally established the utopia of reason upon the Earth.

Soon after Dante's "occultation", Ulterius, leaderless, and with its fascist patrons losing the war, went into diaspora. The cloister that had housed them for almost millenia, was abandoned as the Allies rolled across Europe. Ulterius was no more, but the sect's adherents carefully hid Giovanni's artifacts-- some in the great collections of art and knowledge in the world, others in the most remote of places. All vowed to find and mentor future savants so that one day reason would prevail and their leader would return.

And thus, Giovanni Divo, and his prophecies, were little more than a memory when Neo Queen Serenity took the throne. As part of the fall out of the war, and the new one-world government, a band of 25 former intelligence agents banded together to form a mercenary organization known as Unirsi-- Italian for 'the joining.' They dealt in weapon sales, assassinations, just about any other illicit activity imagined. But 18 of the original alliance of 25, were descendents of the last members of Ulterius. And with the revelation to the world of the existance of Silver Millennium reincarnates, as well as magic, Unirsi knew what they had to do to eventually come to impress their vision on the world: find the Shitennou before the senshi did.