History
In ancient times, when Asgardians visited Earth to wage war, granting their berserker warriors a staff that granted them uncontrollable rage and superhuman strength by drawing on the wielder's darkest memories. An Asgardian warrior, later known as Elliot Randolph, grew to dislike the power the staff granted and upon staying on Earth, broke it into three pieces and hid them across Europe. However, he ended up telling a tale of the staff to a story-loving woman, whose priest brother wrote up a legend, inspiring people to spend centuries searching for the staff.
By 2012, a Norse pagan hate group led by Jakob Nystrom and Petra Larsen, believing that reassembling the staff would make them gods, discovered the first piece of the staff in an old tree in Norway. Petra touched the piece and assaulted a park ranger, drawing the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. who sent Agent Phil Coulson's team to investigate. Coulson consulted Randolph, who was a professor on Norse mythology. Randolph gave S.H.I.E.L.D. a false lead in Bathen Island while he recovered the second piece from under a church in Seville. He ran into Agent Grant Ward, who accidentally touched the piece and recalled his darkest memory where he failed to save a boy from drowning in a well. Randolph nearly made a clean getaway with the piece, only for the hate group to steal it from him.
After determining his identity as a Asgardian, Randolph was convinced by Coulson to lead his team to the final piece in a church in Ireland. Unfortunately, Jakob got to it first after torturing the resident priests into giving its location and used it to impale Randolph in the heart. Ward grabbed the piece and battled the hate group, managing to incapacitate Jakob. But when he became too strained to continue using it, Melinda May reassembled the two staff piece and after knocking out Petra, attached the third piece. S.H.I.E.L.D. then took custody of the staff.[1]
The staff was taken into the Fridge, where it was later captured by Hydra. [2] It was used by Hydra in an ambush against Coulson's team, along with Centipede soldiers. [3] However Agent May was able to acquire the staff once again, and used it to defeat the super soldiers. Along with the soldiers the staff was caught in a cave-in while Coulson's team escaped.[4]