Super obscure question, but on Bangkok apparently there’s a couple NPCs (recording crew from what I’ve read) who namedrop The Church of Ascendants, the mysterious, probably Scientology-like organization first mentioned by Dalia Margolis in Paris.
Does anybody happen to know which Bangkok NPCs bring this up again, and where they’re located?
Thanks!
Not that I have the answer to your question, but this thread throws me back. Back when only Paris had launched, there were many long discussions about how the Church were likely to play a big part in the story being told because of the perceived heavy-handedness of the dialogue with Dalia.
Turns out it was nothing more than world building. 
And we all know all the lines of talking about it bc for a number of months there was only one level to play !
And the Church has been mentioned several other times across the WoA and we still don’t know what it is. And if the next game adheres to the continuity set by the trilogy (iffy at best, because they never do), maybe we’ll actually get a chance to deal with them… in addition to the Po regime, the Moreno cartel, and the Hamsun Oil company, all of which have also been mentioned across the trilogy but whom we never directly get entangled with (aside from taking out a few of Po’s current and former lackeys in Singapore and Chongqing).
I always thought the Church was just another description for the Ark Society…
I don’t think so. The way it’s been described sounds more like an actual religious group, and since the Ark Society wants to keep itself secret from the public, even putting a nickname out there for it would cause some to go investigating it. Whatever it is, I think it’s a separate outfit that we just haven’t seen yet.
No it’s not Ark Society.
It’s the hitman world version of something closer to the Church of Scientology.
Using this website, you can type in keywords that list every piece of dialogue in the game. Its not perfect, and a bit fiddly. It’s also AI-generated, so some of the names are misspelt.
https://mediabrowser.hitmaps.com/audio
The only Ascendants reference I could find in Bangkok is:
“Okay, Wes. Hey, I mean Jordan’s dad’s got more lawyers than the Church of Ascendance. That’s all I’m saying.”
Wow, I had no idea about this link, that’s incredible! Thank you for the reference–looks like it’s between a recording crew and Wes Liston (maybe up in the studio, or down in the atrium after the exterminator brings them down). I’ll follow up on this.
And thank you all for your responses…it’d sure be nice to hear anything about the Ascendants (or other forgotten organizations) again. If anybody knows more references beyond Bangkok, lemme know!
Oh, and one more I forgot: The Pax Mundus Foundation, which the father of the Washington twins runs. It was brought up in the missions at both Isle of Sgail and Mendoza, with hints that it was going to become a big deal in the future as its founder seeks revenge. So yeah, there we go: the Church, the Po, the Moreno, Hamsun, and Pax Mundus, all dangling threads that could potentially be explored in a post-Freelancer world.
I remember that conversation in the Paris fashion show with Dalia.
That could’ve been an interesting subplot through the missions 