Lore AMA 2014

[Peacemaker]

Why were the remaining members of  W.I.S.D.O.M.,  Rose Star and Spark Blade never added to the game?  Were there plans to add them?  Also, what is W.I.S.D.O.M. an acronym for?

[Peacemaker]

Was the Air King (one of Dawn Patrol's earliest foes) intended to be the mysterious backer for the Sky Raiders?

With Citadel being an agent of the Battalion was the code inserted by the Battalion placed when he was created by Crey and transferred via memory to the new android created by Positron and DATA or placed in the recreation?  Would Citadel have sided with the Battalion or would his free will have kept him on the side of earth and the heroes?

With the exception of the Ghost of Scrapyard were there any heroic giant monsters that could have been added to the game or any planned for the game, to take down villain side?

[Blondeshell]

I meant the thread discussing AMA 2013 here.

Ah, then you mean this thread.

[Little David]

Yeah. That's the one ... let's see. Ah!

So, if Lady Grey is a Battailion mole. and Mender Tesseract is an important redeemed Battailion agent...
Is Tesseract Grey's future?

Okay, so it wasn't necessarily my question, but I think this is definitely one that should be included for AMA 2014.

[Arcana]

Okay, so it wasn't necessarily my question, but I think this is definitely one that should be included for AMA 2014.

That's certainly an interesting conjecture, but I'm not sure it fits (to me, whether it fits to the devs would be a totally different question).  Tesseract is apparently one of Battalion's most powerful generals, which is why Silos targets her for defection as an ace in the hole.  Lady Grey is implied to be very powerful herself, but given her role as a mole and as a sleeper agent intended to disable Earth's defenses via Vanguard, she seems less of a direct assault type of person.  And although this is limited in meaningfulness, Lady Grey appears to be older than Tesseract.  I don't know why a being like her would choose to appear older while a sleeper, and then appear much younger afterward.

Still, would be interesting to get their word on this.

[primeknight]

That's certainly an interesting conjecture, but I'm not sure it fits (to me, whether it fits to the devs would be a totally different question).  Tesseract is apparently one of Battalion's most powerful generals, which is why Silos targets her for defection as an ace in the hole.  Lady Grey is implied to be very powerful herself, but given her role as a mole and as a sleeper agent intended to disable Earth's defenses via Vanguard, she seems less of a direct assault type of person.  And although this is limited in meaningfulness, Lady Grey appears to be older than Tesseract.  I don't know why a being like her would choose to appear older while a sleeper, and then appear much younger afterward.

Still, would be interesting to get their word on this.

Just to clarify from all the Lore.

Posi wanted Lady Grey to be a Battalion sleeper, but the other developers and writers had issue with that:  specifically the couldn't answer this question satisfactorily:  Why didn't she just take over: she was easily the most powerful being on the planet when she first arrived. 

And there were other holes in Posi's plot line idea.   

[Kaos Arcanna]

Just to clarify from all the Lore.

Posi wanted Lady Grey to be a Battalion sleeper, but the other developers and writers had issue with that:  specifically the couldn't answer this question satisfactorily:  Why didn't she just take over: she was easily the most powerful being on the planet when she first arrived. 

And there were other holes in Posi's plot line idea.

Lady Grey was some 200 years old, I believe. At that point, firearms existed, so I'd think that someone would have been able to kill her by being outside the range of her attacks.

[primeknight]

[Felderburg]

Just to clarify from all the Lore.

Posi wanted Lady Grey to be a Battalion sleeper, but the other developers and writers had issue with that:  specifically the couldn't answer this question satisfactorily:  Why didn't she just take over: she was easily the most powerful being on the planet when she first arrived. 

And there were other holes in Posi's plot line idea.

Well, it was also stated that Earth's Well is the only well that granted its power to the denizens of its planet, making it a much more "lucrative" target, but also a much more potentially harder-to-take-over target as well. So it stands to reason that the Battalion would want to understand our Well, and undermine its unusual defenders, before beginning a full assault.

It's also possible that the standard method of taking a Well's power wouldn't (or didn't) work on Earth's Well, because of its unusual nature.

[primeknight]

I apologize for my attempt to give Lore info in a discussion about the lore thread.  Discussing a fictional plot point that the writers themselves disagreed upon is something I'd like to skip.  I'll back out of the thread now....

But first:  Please see my above post from the original lore Q&A.  Direct from Matt Miller, Aka, the former and forever (but not legally) Positron.

[Arcana]

Well, it was also stated that Earth's Well is the only well that granted its power to the denizens of its planet, making it a much more "lucrative" target, but also a much more potentially harder-to-take-over target as well. So it stands to reason that the Battalion would want to understand our Well, and undermine its unusual defenders, before beginning a full assault.

Harder, maybe.  But to a race that devoured uncountless Wells in the past, and have Prometheus *and* the Menders scared shitless?  The guys who already know exactly how the Battalion will try to beat us?  We're a race of beings that was almost wiped out by an army of alien pacifists that didn't even have access to magic powers.

When I conceptualized the Immortal Game backstory, I concluded the only thing that could possibly be a threat to something like the Battalion was an Ascended being.  I ended up piling on Rularuu, the embodiment of Earth's Well, *and* Hamidon to make it credible.  Trying to write it as the Battalion has thousands of Wells of power, but we have the really good one so its a tie, is, well, I can only describe that as cheap.

The other really weird problem with the sleeper agent idea is that undermining Vanguard would weaken Earth but Lady Grey helped form Vanguard in the first place.  Why would you make a defense force you were going to then undermine?  Wouldn't it have made more sense to join the Midnight Squad, the Freedom Phalanx, the Salvation Army, something that already existed that you could undermine?  If you make it, then take it away, that's a net zero.  99% of the combat forces that would attempt to repel a Battalion invasion of Earth aren't Vanguard.  It would even have made more sense for Lady Grey to join Arachnos, because that's a credible fighting force that would be a potential threat to the Battalion's invasion forces.

Since, as you say, Earth's Well is taking matters into its own hands by just superpowering everything in sight as a defense against the Coming Storm, disrupting Vanguard seems to be a relatively trivial endeavor.

Incidentally, if the Battalion have been here all along and were observing us looking for the right time to strike, that time was December 2002, after the Omega Team closed the Rikti portal and after enough time had elapsed for the remnants of the Alpha team to disband.  There has never been, and would never be, a better time to strike Earth than then.  We could have been taken over by the Mystery Men.

[Eskreema]

Your vision was not cheap.  We may indeed have in our midst a truly exceptional version of the well.  Where as Battalion may be very experienced bow-men with *compound bows* and cool arrowheads and have master horseman.  We have gun powder; maybe even nuclear weapons.  Heck, Rularuu can gather all the dimensions it wants - they may only be a futile addition of zeroes to a decimal. We have a game changing advantage.  What we lack is experience and developement - which is mender silos and tessaract are.  I wish we had the whole story.  Tessaract could been one  of the Furies (Dimensionless?) and intentionally (that's the advantage - this version of the Well magnifies intentions.  I can flesh this out further) gave us access to the Well that was needed to stop battalion and ultimately make the Deimensionless accountable for its haphazard gifting, but after we clean up the mess (the things that are released when battalion is stopped).

I still don't see where the true Rikti fit in the scheme other than they are also very powerful.  I would have put them below dimensionless, or the Furies represent the true Rikti within the dimensionless or vis versa.   Or we are all the same entity just at different times and levels of power all balancing each other out.

[Arcana]

Your vision was not cheap.  We may indeed have in our midst a truly exceptional version of the well.  Where as Battalion may be very experienced bow-men with *compound bows* and cool arrowheads and have master horseman.  We have gun powder; maybe even nuclear weapons.  Heck, Rularuu can gather all the dimensions it wants - they may only be a futile addition of zeroes to a decimal. We have a game changing advantage.  What we lack is experience and developement - which is mender silos and tessaract are.

Technically, its Prometheus that guides us on the path to Incarnate power.  Its unclear what Ouroboros' ultimate plans are, but while Ramiel seems to know more about how the Well of the Furies works, Silos seems to be not well-versed: its Ramiel that explains to Silos that the physicality of the Well as they knew it was just a link to the true source of the Well of the Furies.

How powerful Rularuu is probably depends on which developer you ask, but all evidence suggests that Rularuu is the closest example we have to an ascended being, which is the power step above Incarnates where one becomes a wellspring of power itself, in effect becoming a Well.  Darrin Wade's attempt to bind Rularuu to himself was part of his giant gambit to Ascend and effectively gain unlimited power.  That power far exceeded even the power that Statesman had from our Well, and he's essentially a "fast path" Incarnate.

It can't be the case that we just happen to have the best cosmic arsenal in the galaxy.  The Rikti nearly kicked our asses in 2002 from long range: the Alpha/Omega gambit was considered a last-ditch effort to stop the Rikti invasion and it cost most of the supers on the planet at the time.  The "surviving seven" aren't called that for nothing.  And the Rikti were mostly pacifists before Nemesis arrived on their world: not only did they almost destroy us, they built up a war machine to do so in a very short period of time.

Even though he could be an unreliable narrator, the fact that the Dream Doctor felt that Tesseract in her own time could have probably ruled the Earth personally also suggests that the power of the Battalion isn't like that of a well-oiled but inferior force.  And everyone with any knowledge of the Battalion or the Coming Storm from Prometheus to Ouroboros to the Dream Doctor isn't just worried about it, they are (in their own often inscrutable ways) practically terrified about what will happen when the Battalion get here.  The Battalion use Kheldians for fuel and Shivans for bullets.  They've supposedly been taking over other planets since humans were learning how to write on clay pots.  We might be special, but that's really pushing it.

Incidentally, Prometheus might also be an unreliable narrator, but he believes that the Well - our Well - had chosen its champion, Tyrant aka Emperor Cole.  And Prometheus felt that even with the Well fully powering both Cole and his lieutenants, he would not have the power to stop the Coming Storm.  If he was right, then our Well isn't just so special that its power can defeat the Battalion alone. 

[Little David]

Come to think of it, those are questions I'd like to add to the AMA.

What would the Battalion and the True Rikti have looked like? As well as the Dimensionless? Had there been any preliminary ideas on that?

[Felderburg]

Come to think of it, those are questions I'd like to add to the AMA.

What would the Battalion and the True Rikti have looked like? As well as the Dimensionless? Had there been any preliminary ideas on that?

As I recall, the Battalion concept art was mentioned, and is covered by and NDA (as is all unreleased concept art).

[Arcana]

As I recall, the Battalion concept art was mentioned, and is covered by and NDA (as is all unreleased concept art).

I believe our initial encounters with the Battalion were going to be through proxies and disguises, so they would basically look like us.  Eventually, we'd see them and I believe the idea was that they would look frightening but with a lot of flexibility in how they looked; the gimmick there was that since they had been absorbing power from hundreds or thousands of worlds and species, they themselves should look like a varied conglomeration of visual appearances.  Beyond that, I don't know.

[Little David]

Oh. Dammit, why is that stuff still under NDA ...

Okay ... What about Ascension? I've seen this turn up in a lot of topics and mentioned on the AMA article, but I didn't see anything saying, exactly, what that is.

[Arcana]

Okay ... What about Ascension? I've seen this turn up in a lot of topics and mentioned on the AMA article, but I didn't see anything saying, exactly, what that is.

Conceptually, Ascension was supposed to be the next step in power above Incarnate power.  Incarnate power is when you receive sizeable power by unlocking your potential with a Well.  When you Ascend, you essentially become your own Well, you are your own wellspring of power.  I think at one time Hamidon was going to be an Ascended being but I don't think that was ever locked into canon.  I believe Darrin Wade was attempting Ascension when he took Statesman's power and tried to bind himself to Rularuu.  And I think Rularuu was supposed to be on the path to Ascension by consuming all his alternates.

In terms of gameplay, I think Ascension was the power they were going to give us after we filled our Incarnate slots, but beyond that I don't think even the devs had any real solid ideas about what that would look like, since even the Incarnate slots were not fully developed yet (although some devs had ideas about what they would attempt to do with the final slots).

A reasonable question to ask which would not be covered by NDA would be had any dev given any thought at all to what kinds of power we might unlock beyond Incarnate slots, whether that was Ascension or something else?  Once you have things like instant recharge as an Incarnate power (which they mentioned in a previous AMA), plus what we already had, what would be different enough and powerful enough to warrant being something beyond the Incarnate system?  Did the devs still even consider having a system of powers beyond Incarnate slots at all (if that was answered in a previous AMA, I don't recall).

I do have a theory about Ascension that I don't know if the devs would confirm.  I believe the reason why the Dream Doctor is opposed to Ouroboros (and Prometheus) is because Ouroboros' plan to deal with the Coming Storm is to put us on the path through Incarnates and up to Ascension, because only an army of Ascended could defeat the Battalion.  But the Dream Doctor sees that as making an army of Rularuu, and he believes anyone that receives that kind of power would be corrupted by it, and he believes one Rularuu is already one too many.  He thinks they will only make things worse, because to him its personal.  In fact, suppose the way to ultimately Ascend is the same way Rularuu does: by combining all your alternates.  Heroes could be goaded into doing it by being sent on missions to defeat "evil versions" of themselves, but ultimately the power could be intoxicating enough to cause us to take Rularuu's path of just taking them all out.  Or at least that's what the Dream Doctor is afraid of.

[Eskreema]

A reasonable question to ask which would not be covered by NDA would be had any dev given any thought at all to what kinds of power we might unlock beyond Incarnate slots, whether that was Ascension or something else?  Once you have things like instant recharge as an Incarnate power (which they mentioned in a previous AMA), plus what we already had, what would be different enough and powerful enough to warrant being something beyond the Incarnate system?  Did the devs still even consider having a system of powers beyond Incarnate slots at all (if that was answered in a previous AMA, I don't recall).

Do you think they would have ever made powers like:  ascended radial - increase the percentage and duration of outside buffs to you for certain amount of time - higher buff caps; ascended core - increases archetype secondary modifier by certain amount for certain amount of time - higher base numbers?  Merely slotting something would give a permanent buff of some sort, but total buff could be limited by in what instance (regular miss, TF, Incarnate trial, "ascended edict") and by what level of character buffed you.

Trollers with tank level life and resistance, tanks with scrapper attack modifiers.  Radial would be great on teams, core for solo.  Not sweating numbers here just concept.  Final level:  your toon gets purple triangles, giant monster health and regen (neither permanent), and some kind of high-end melee power like judgement but more ST oriented (we never got to those :/ I'd call mine Dimentia Pugilistica! - ascended of drunken boxing!)

Math concept side question:  champions of a well = eigenvectors of their waveforms through the CoH multiverse and Ascended being capable of self-interference there unto or just scaler function?  I thought I read DJ Zero was ascended (of music - so a basic function that would remain unchanged universe to universe), but Rularuu seems flat-out whatever it wants to be.

[Arcana]

Do you think they would have ever made powers like:  ascended radial - increase the percentage and duration of outside buffs to you for certain amount of time - higher buff caps; ascended core - increases archetype secondary modifier by certain amount for certain amount of time - higher base numbers?  Merely slotting something would give a permanent buff of some sort, but total buff could be limited by in what instance (regular miss, TF, Incarnate trial, "ascended edict") and by what level of character buffed you.

Trollers with tank level life and resistance, tanks with scrapper attack modifiers.  Radial would be great on teams, core for solo.  Not sweating numbers here just concept.  Final level:  your toon gets purple triangles, giant monster health and regen (neither permanent), and some kind of high-end melee power like judgement but more ST oriented (we never got to those :/ I'd call mine Dimentia Pugilistica! - ascended of drunken boxing!)

While anything is possible in theory (because you can rewrite the game to do whatever you want with enough time) the CoH game engine did not allow for altering a player character's archetype modifiers in that way.  There were some funky games you could play, but they wouldn't do exactly what you're describing.