Nine beings with ties to the occult were drawn together by Doctor Strange to battle Lilith and her demonic children, the Lilin. The various individuals that comprised the initial group had already had their own brushes with the Lilin, but most were unaware of the full magnitude of their predicament until Strange magically drew them together to halt an incursion of Lilin in Greenland. The disparate warriors were not formally grouped at the time, and some of their number were openly hostile to certain others, only working together out of a need to deal with the more imminent threat posed by the demons. Despite this, Strange still named them collectively as the Nine after sending most of them away in the aftermath of the battle.
