Praetorian War and A Hero's Hero....What? When? Why?

[RebornRose]

So , I recently was finishing up some things with my 50 tank on Excelsior.  I had joined several PuGs running Maria Jenkins' missions, but realized that I had completely blown off Anti-Matter.

 

Since I've done the revamped Tina MacIntyre arc, The Instant Army, a few times recently, I decided to explore the legacy version, the Praetorian War.  Once I had committed to that, I knew I was going to do a Hero's Hero (Maria Jenkins' legacy arc) if for no other reason than to get "Statesman's Pal" and some nice screenies.

 

The arcs are largely the same in terms of plot.  In Praetorian War, Portal Corp detects dimensionsl anomalies, you investigate and find that Praetorian science bros Anti-Matter and Neuron are competing a test-tube measuring contest to see who can impress their boss the most.  While in Hero's Hero, the Praetorian scanners go out, and while your hero is dealing with that, those dastardly Praetorians swipe our Statesman!(as opposed to Positron)

 

One of the biggest differences in the old versions is the Praetorian mobs themselves.  Some Praetorian AVs use reskins of existing assests for minions (e.g. Blue and Silver clockwork), but most have minions who are thematically appropiate to them.  For example, Dominatrix's goons are bondage themed, while Bobcat's posse is made up of catbois.  The Praetorians of pre-Going Rogue, were silly in other words.  More of an homage to DCs original Earth 3 than the newer rebooted dystopian version.

 

What's most interesting to me though, is that these arcs get referrenced by the contacts during the updated versions.  In Instant Army, Tina MacIntyre says, "I can't make sense of the political situation in Praetoria.  It's not like when they first invaded and we had no idea Anti-Matter and Neuron even knew each other let alone were rivals.  Now it's all Praetor this, and Praetor that."(emphasis added)   Later in Hero's Epic, Maria Jenkins mentions, ""A few years back when we discovered Praetoria, Statesman, rest his soul, was kidnapped by Tyrant and held in bonds."  Both of these quotes show that the events of the legacy arcs happened, but when why, and how?  

 

My theory goes like this: 

In an attempt to get an edge on Praetorian Hamidon, Cole ordered Anti-Matter and Neuron to scan for other sources of power that he might exploit to finally defeat Hamidon.  When they discover Primal Earth, Cole manipulates his two squabbling science advisors to "impress" him by building an army.  Cole knows these two are likely to fail for different reasons (Anti-Matter always chokes, Neuron is a bad scientist), but it will give him the intelligence he wants on this other world.  
 

With the information that they would have been able to observe, Cole deduces that he can hide his true intentions by cloaking his actions under the guise of acting as "super-villains".  Instead of sending soldiers in IDF gear, he (or more likely Marauder and Chimera) recruits operatives from within the Preatorian armed services to act as "minions" (although a case could be made that the Blue and Silver Clockwork were predecessors of the more modern versions, and the RAM and SPECTRA series robots were forerunners of the Warworks).

 

After Keyes and Berry fail, Cole goes to work on his next scheme, namely luring Primal Marcus Cole to Praetoria to see if  he can steal his powers( I'm spitballing here).  Again, as your hero fights against the forces of Cole, but they are  in disguise in order to protect the order that Cole has so carefully built.  Finally, when Cole has found no use for Statesman, he allows an Olympian Guard Clone to pose as "Tyrant"  with a captive Statesman,  In this way, duping the heroes into thinking they have bested the Praetorians.

 

In reality though, these actions simply confirm Cole's suspicions regarding the Primals.  That is, they can't be trusted, and they will lead to the destruction of what he has built in Praetoria.  Thus, he begins directing his forces to prepare for the all-out invasion of Primal that we see in the Going Rogue, the Alpha Strike TFs (tinpex), Sutter and the I-trials. 

 

As to the when, this is where time in the city gets fuzzy.  The initial launch of the game assumed that it was just after the Rikti invasion. The game now is likely meant to be set after the destruction of Galaxy City.  It seems like we can infer, that the events of these arcs is meant to take place sometime between those two events.

 

Anyhow, what do you all think?

[Darmian]

It's nice to see others pondering the arse over tit half baked nature of the retcons that didn't fully retcon and trying to sort them out.

35 minutes ago, RebornRose said:

n an attempt to get an edge on Praetorian Hamidon, Cole ordered Anti-Matter and Neuron to scan for other sources of power that he might exploit to finally defeat Hamidon.  When they discover Primal Earth, Cole manipulates his two squabbling science advisors to "impress" him by building an army.  Cole knows these two are likely to fail for different reasons (Anti-Matter always chokes, Neuron is a bad scientist), but it will give him the intelligence he wants on this other world.  
 

With the information that they would have been able to observe, Cole deduces that he can hide his true intentions by cloaking his actions under the guise of acting as "super-villains".  Instead of sending soldiers in IDF gear, he (or more likely Marauder and Chimera) recruits operatives from within the Preatorian armed services to act as "minions" (although a case could be made that the Blue and Silver Clockwork were predecessors of the more modern versions, and the RAM and SPECTRA series robots were forerunners of the Warworks).

Now, I'm currently thinking about how all the above works out, I wasn't coming to your conclusions though, because I veered off on another tangent involving when exactly, never mind how, Malaise and Mayhem show up in the Shadow Shard.

 

However this (and I even wrote an AE that referenced it, Damnatio Memoriae) led me to a different outcome.

39 minutes ago, RebornRose said:

Cole goes to work on his next scheme, namely luring Primal Marcus Cole to Praetoria to see if  he can steal his powers( I'm spitballing here).  Again, as your hero fights against the forces of Cole, but they are  in disguise in order to protect the order that Cole has so carefully built.  Finally, when Cole has found no use for Statesman, he allows an Olympian Guard Clone to pose as "Tyrant"  with a captive Statesman,  In this way, duping the heroes into thinking they have bested the Praetorians.

Where I ended up was that the capture of Statesman was engineered

Spoiler

by little Miss Duncan, and that Cole himself either knew nothing about it or learned of it after the fact. Simply put, and we are working with what we have, which is half a retcon and the existence of Going Rogue, look at Praetoria in the game.  Now look at the "Lava Throne Room". Marcus Cole is not going to have one of those, but Dominatrix might.  More than might.  It's entirely her style.  Also, why would Cole tip his hand on invading Primal Earth by kidnapping Statesman back then? He wouldn't, so he didn't. Bear with me. Duncan has already eliminated her mother, and that leaves her, in her mind, a step away from being Empress.  She just needs to get rid of gramps. It's doubtful she would get more than one chance at that, but she knows how to do a test run.  Primal Earth has a Marcus Cole.  She kills him, she knows her plan has legs, and she'll even get credit for doing it if it succeeds.  It didn't work though.

All it did was effectively sow the seeds for Praetoria's defeat.

 

 

[Pixie_Knight]

Eh, I figured that the Praetorians were wearing their 'work cloths', aka costumes, during the earlier events. While when you see them in Praetoria it's self they are wearing their formal uniforms. The work cloths aren't used when dealing with events in the imperial city it's self, but rather when acting outside it (or attacking other dimensions).

 

EDIT:

It's not like the original arcs gave that much information on Praetorian Earth's society to begin with.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Pixie_Knight

[Lazarillo]

Given that Maria's new arc references Statesman being dead, while the Underground trial references him being alive, but the Incarnate Trials take place after Maria's arc, what we're really looking at is someone having fallen through a time warp.  I recommend we put Mender Silos on the case.

[RebornRose]

5 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Given that Maria's new arc references Statesman being dead, while the Underground trial references him being alive, but the Incarnate Trials take place after Maria's arc, what we're really looking at is someone having fallen through a time warp.  I recommend we put Mender Silos on the case.