METAPLOT EXPERIMENT: Share your headcanon!

[GraspingVileTerror]

So, looks like the wiki has been updated.  Lots to chew through.

Although, Tielleku is definitely not permanently consumed, from what I can see in the Dream Doctor's arc.

But also:

 

It seems to me that David Hazen believes he is referring to a Judeo-Christian-Islamic "God" as having arranged the ley lines and such, but my head-canon still places Lughebu (I keep getting the spelling all wrong, whoops!) as the orchestrator of all of this.

Sounds like exactly the kind of gambit that THE trickster god of malice would do.  All roads lead to Mot being fuel to the fire for the Banished's liberation.

[Take One]

1 hour ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

All roads lead to Mot being fuel to the fire for the Banished's liberation.

 

Except all he can do is feed on himself, trapped in a strange feedback loop of dying over and over. All that sweet power doesn't go anywhere.

 

Ley seem more like a natural phenomenon connected to the spirit realm and its interaction with the material world than anything the gods or spirits would create or control. Lughebu might have found the place and orchestrated the whole trap scheme, but Dream Doctor's plan circumvents it and makes sure Mot doesn't end up as food for anyone other than himself.

[GraspingVileTerror]

Except for my head-canon being a reading of everyone being lied to and manipulated by a millennia-old deity who is ALLLLLL about them lying schemes, and said spell isn't operating as advertised.

[Take One]

• The Council have finally been driven from Peregrine Island and are no longer available in radio missions in that zone. Instead, Crey, Devouring Earth, Nemesis Army and UPA will appear in radio missions.
• The Rikti have evacuated the beaches of Peregrine Island. In their place we find beach-wear Carnival of Shadow troupes entertaining themselves in the sand and the waves, when they aren't dodging the Devouring Earth creatures who seem to be getting bolder, and more powerful... Remove Rikti spawns, add Carnival spawns, make DE in Peregrine go all the way up to 50. This will make Carnie hunts much easier and make more sense, since the RIkti have a whole zone of their own and don't really need to encroach on the other level 50 zone. It will also make sweeping for DE more enjoyable for level 50 characters.
• Portal Corp has devoted some funds to security and given Unai Kemen some much needed assistance in the form of Vanguard soldiers, moonshining as guards around the complex when they aren't busy fighting the Rikti invaders. Unai can now focus his attention outward on thwarting potential threats from other dimensions before they get a chance to grow too powerful. After finishing his arc and other missions, Unai will provide endless repeatable Portal Missions for level 50+ characters, which will be incarnate level content where you can really let loose. Visit all the favorite dimensions like Axis Amerikkka, Council Empire, Peaceful Oranbega, The Hydra Dimension, Werewolf World and more, and fight the creatures living there for fun and profit! Let this be the new farming hotspot so the AE can be abandoned by farmers and finally become a haven for storytellers.

[Take One]

8 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

Except for my head-canon being a reading of everyone being lied to and manipulated by a millennia-old deity who is ALLLLLL about them lying schemes, and said spell isn't operating as advertised.

 

Sorry, I forgot what this thread was about. Of course, that makes perfect sense!

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

Also, what I consider to be a non-negotiable plot point going forward is how badly Mot's gambit destroyed the ranks of the Circle of Thorns.

 

Indeed.

Mot is/was a Damned Big Deal for them... My own are still dealing with some of the fallout from that.

 

I'm not going to spoiler anything for you, VT, but let me put it this way...  Mot's effect on the Circle is why Artemian is the way he is. And it's why Kai would pretty much translocate anyone who ever seriously suggested that she send him back there to a place so deep in the Abyss that Lilitu herself wouldn't be able to find them. Dark Astoria is a nasty business for the Oranbegans.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[GraspingVileTerror]

There's no such thing as spoilers.  We're having a frank conversation about lore here.

Just lay it out, please.

[Coyotedancer]

They're the reason Mot was sealed where he was... When Marcus brings the urn to "the end of the world" the caverns under Astoria is where he ends up, basically on the Oranbegans' doorstep. (You'll see all of that when you run Marcus' personal story.) They make sure he stays there.

 

When Mot starts to break loose, it's an absolute disaster for them.

 

Trouble is, when Mot devours an Oranbegan spirit it's permanent. It's not just the usual matter of "Oh, well. Guess I need to float back home and find a new body. This one's wrecked." It's the end of the line. Poof, Gone. A light snack for an angry, evil God of Death and Decay. 

 

'Pretty scary thought for a bunch of otherwise basically immortal ghosts... 

 

Now add the presence of the Talons to that... A group who are all too ready, willing and able to rip those bodies they're usually cruising around in to pieces, making them even more vulnerable to being devoured than they already were. A group who actually manage to take over a part of Oranbega in one of the arcs, apparently corrupting it so thoroughly that they break Tya's green crystals... and things get dire fast.

 

Arte's story is that he's the only survivor of a cabal who were sent to try and re-enforce the wards. He got to experience the Talons tearing apart his entire group, and then watched Mot devour every one of them. Knowing that when that happened those people were gone forever. His cabal and the Oranbegans who called the part of the sunken city that the Talons took over home likely weren't the only ones Mot chowed down on. I have no trouble imagining him going after every single Oranbregan he could get a tooth on, as payback for having bound him for so long, and we know his reach extended well beyond Dark Astoria itself. (The last arc mentions him devouring other places. Chicago, I think?)

 

He didn't have time to find and devour the entire Oranbegan population (In my own storyline he never found the Temple in Primeva, for instance-), but it's not a stretch to think he probably took a sizable chunk out of them, in and around Paragon City in particular. That could end up being a lot of people that they aren't ever going to get back... Magi, elemental casters, their Thorn Wielder guardians. People like Tavaris and Amtes and Bahir likely lost some very old friends to Mot, without even being part of a group like Artemian's.

 

In Arte's case, that loss was pretty much total, and it just broke him.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[Luminara]

I keep misreading the title of this thread as "Meatplot".

 

Which suggests a whole other kind of story.  Or seven.

[Coyotedancer]

*Kai and Arte eye their Nick's Chiliweenies doubtfully*

[Take One]

• After giving the press conference in WWD, I walk out, open a portal to Ouroboros and go back in time to before Darrin Wade was born. By punching his father in the mouth, I make his mother fall out of love with him, BTTF-style, and I return back to a new timeline. Statesman and Sister Psyche are still dead, but from reasonable causes, and oops, now we're at war with Praetoria. Darrin Wade never existed to foul up my beautiful game with that ridiculous arc, Maria Jenkins' and Tina McIntyre's arcs can make sense again, and there's no doubt about when exactly during the Praetorian invasion Statesman actually dies.

[RebornRose]

On Reunion shard, I have a time-lost 16 year-old who is inadvertently responsible for the creation of Ouroborous!

 

Zephyr Kurtz is the daughter of heroes Snow Bee and Napalm Blossom from about 20 years in the future.  Unfortunately, her timeline was destroyed by a cosmic being trying to rewrite all existence.  Zeph travelled back to 2021(ish) Paragon, and helped her moms and aunties stop the menace.   In the process she was stranded in the present supercharged to "Incarnate" power status by her cosmic adventure.

 

Zephyr wants nothing more than to go on adventures with her moms, but she gets in trouble fairly often, thanks to her pigheadedness and inappropriate sense of humor.  As a result, she is grounded when her parents get involved with trying to stave off a new Rikti invasion.  While her parents slug it out with Restructurists and the Lineage of war, Zephyr and her teenage super friends stumble upon a Nemesis plot!  

 

It seems that Lord Nemesis is planning to invade the Rikti homeworld with his own consciousness and take over the whole Rikti homeworld.  Zeph tries to contact the 'rents, but they are on  Vanguard radio silence, so she and her intrepid pals head into the tunnels below the Rikti Warzone to stop the Prussian Prince of Automatons.  

 

They arrive just in time!  Zephyr's valient parents and allies are in the midst of being overrun by the of invading Rikti Linage of War soldiers and Nemesis Army troops, along with the Rikti High Commander General Hro'Drotz, and Lord Nemesis himself(?)!  The super teens are the spark that turns the tide for the heroes of Earth, as Zephyr, Snow Bee, and Napalm Blossom combine their might together and take down Lord Nemesis, and then turn their attention smashing Hro'Drotz and his military portal technology.

 

As the heroes celebrate their victory, Nemesis slips away to nurse his wounds.  He cannot believe that his well crafted master strategy was laid waste by a silly teenage girl.  Still, he has overcome greater setbacks.  He vows to learn everything he can about his new enemy, which it turns out requires only a quick social media search.  Armed with the knowlege that his new foe is a time traveller, Lord Nemesis begins a new scheme.   He will master time itself, and then he will deal with that little interloper... 

[GraspingVileTerror]

I think it should be mentioned that there's a difference between fan fiction and head-canon.
Head-canon is when we read what's already in the game, and put a personal spin on the context of that existing lore.

Fan faction is when we write something that self-services us as fans.

 

Another way to look at it:  Has it happened in the lore already, and you think "X is why it happened?"  Head-canon.

Has it not happened (yet)?  Fan fiction.

[Darmian]

4 hours ago, Take One said:

• After giving the press conference in WWD, I walk out, open a portal to Ouroboros and go back in time to before Darrin Wade was born. By punching his father in the mouth, I make his mother fall out of love with him, BTTF-style, and I return back to a new timeline. Statesman and Sister Psyche are still dead, but from reasonable causes, and oops, now we're at war with Praetoria. Darrin Wade never existed to foul up my beautiful game with that ridiculous arc, Maria Jenkins' and Tina McIntyre's arcs can make sense again, and there's no doubt about when exactly during the Praetorian invasion Statesman actually dies.

Told ya, I'm working on that!  Sheesh.

[Coyotedancer]

41 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I think it should be mentioned that there's a difference between fan fiction and head-canon.
Head-canon is when we read what's already in the game, and put a personal spin on the context of that existing lore.

Fan faction is when we write something that self-services us as fans.

 

Another way to look at it:  Has it happened in the lore already, and you think "X is why it happened?"  Head-canon.

Has it not happened (yet)?  Fan fiction.

 

'Probably my fault, starting that... Nova Primeva is very much farther into fanfic territory than it is related to anything in the current canon, and Arte's background is just personal fluff.  Apologies for side-tracking the thread's intention.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[Luminara]

14 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I think it should be mentioned that there's a difference between fan fiction and head-canon.

 

And head cannons.

[Coyotedancer]

That sounds like something the Freaks would be all-in for.

[Luminara]

5 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

That sounds like something the Freaks would be all-in for.

 

Not if it was part of a meatplot.

[TwoDee]

I have, at least right off the top of my head, two innocuous headcanons, and two thermonuclear headcanons.  The thermonuclear headcanons are spoilered for your safety.

 

• There is a pervasive and enduring stereotype that super-strong metahumans are terrible at fighting because they don't have to try, as indicated by the ridiculous hammer blows and performative wind-ups in the Super Strength set, but also just the common sense that anyone with enough raw strength to hurl a tank isn't going to have to worry about lift form or punching behind the target.  There are 'super strength martial arts,' but they tend to be extremely heterodox to common self-defense practices, instead focused around maximizing the usage of the superpower because 'using your opponent's force against them' fails to matter when you are a human freight train.  Super-strong martial artists and conventional martial artists mesh like oil and water.
• Stolen from @CellyEl, but there are a kajillion Praetorian refugees with derivative names to Marcus Cole - Cole as a first name, Mark, Marky, Marcia, Colin, Collette, and so forth.  'Marcus' and 'Cole' are to them as 'Noah' and 'Oliver' are to us, and 'Marcia' and 'Collette' are like 'Emma' and 'Sofia.

 

Now, the thermonuclear takes:

• Spoiler

   

  • Statesman, like most American WASPs born around the turn of the century and especially those with patriotic, law-and-order, American-exceptionalist, and isolationist viewpoints, was sympathetic to Nazi Germany at the outset of World War II.  He - and most of America's domestic hero community - had no desire to go fight a war on foreign soil, and it was this reticence to face the Column that allowed Requiem's strike on Paragon to claim Atlas' life before the Phalanx and other defenders mustered an effective counterattack.  In the wake of the twin attacks on Pearl Harbor and Paragon, it was very easy to sweep isolationist sentiment on the parts of heroes under the rug with a smokescreen of patriotic fervor, and Statesman never examined the role his hesitation played in Atlas' death.
  • Nemesis is explicitly referred to in the Lore Bible as reaching out to entitled young white men who feel aggrieved by their own mediocrity with promises of a halcyon past where they could live like Kings - in the modern era, this takes the form of Nemesis supporting, through a network of proxies and persona forks, a sprawling network of alt-right, white nationalist, Christian Dominionist, neo-pagan, 'domestic traditionalist,' pickup/seduction community, and other fringe conservative and misogynist movements online, who are not necessarily aware that they are all being supported by the same master.  These groups serve as feeders into the Nemesis Army, who despite their anachronistic and comical appearance are actually the most internet-savvy of all the villain groups, far outstripping the flagging recruitment of the Column and Council.

   

Edited July 7, 2021 by TwoDee
removed a double negative

[GraspingVileTerror]

Frankly, @TwoDee, I don't think any of that is head-canon.

I think it's just straight-up solid canon.  At the very least, it was all implicit from the subtext of the lore.

Kudos.

[Darmian]

4 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

Frankly, @TwoDee, I don't think any of that is head-canon.

I think it's just straight-up solid canon.  At the very least, it was all implicit from the subtext of the lore.

Kudos.

Nope.  The first half of that Nuclear option is very much head canon. Here's my head canon on that head canon, 🙂

 

Spoiler

 

Simply put, Marcus Cole was NOT a WASP. Growing up in the poor side of Paragon City, orphaned and then he and his brother being raised by the Richter family, a first generation immigrant family, while he is definitely white, possibly Anglo Saxon, possibly protestant, he isn't a WASP, that's a very definite thing that implies a very definite set of expectations.  Plus Marcus Cole is very much the redeemed son, the one who came back into the light from a life of crime, so law and order? Yes, but not a WASP version of law and order where the privileged grow up believing that the law works for them. Marcus Cole's law and order is partly based on making up for not being there when his brother, Ezra, the lone good cop in a corrupt city, was murdered. 

If he and others like him opposed entering WW2 at the time, it was, IMO, stemming from personal experience of WW1, a war that literally left scars on him and almost killed him. As for a sneaking admiration for Nazi Germany?  He'd had enough rants from Stefan in the 20s about how Mussolini was making Italy an ideal state and didn't buy into that then, so why would the German version impress him? At the point where he experiences fascism for the first time, in Europe in the 20s, unlike most of his fellow countrymen, Marcus Cole was simply intent on not dying and had no interest either way in this ideology. " it was this reticence to face the Column that allowed Requiem's strike on Paragon to claim Atlas' life before the Phalanx and other defenders mustered an effective counterattack.  In the wake of the twin attacks on Pearl Harbor and Paragon, it was very easy to sweep isolationist sentiment on the parts of heroes under the rug with a smokescreen of patriotic fervor", reasonable summation I think, however, "Statesman never examined the role his hesitation played in Atlas' death", well, we literally do not know this.

 

 

The second half of that nuclear option seems eminently plausible. 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by Darmian

[Darmian]

My head canon on CoX is informed by as much close reading of the game's narrative "now" while trying to allow for rough spots left over from unfinished/half assed retcons. These rough spots can be explained mostly, though, as I posted in another thread, some of it does need to be fixed - so if there's a Dev position of continuity editor going (and as an actual editor IRL I look for these things) I'm volunteering :).   Couple that with the two novels and the run of comic books and you have the totality of what is. The novels and comics are not secondary, they are complementary. The Lore AMAs are a fascinating read - and I'd advise people to do so - but at the end of the day they're still only apocrypha and not canon. That statement may annoy some people but I stand by it. What you intended to do or meant to do or what was really going on, all these things are interesting but not concrete or carved in stone when the ones saying it are very definitely no longer the authorial voices of the narrative. With the best will in the world these are deleted scenes for a movie.

 

The two novels IMO are absolutely canon, as per my statement above, with the reinforcement that neither of them contradicts anything in the game whatsoever. Easy to do when one is set in the early part of the 20th century and the other in 1986.

 

The comics have their issues (no pun intended). The intro comic and the first run with War Witch, Apex and Horus are solid and work.  After that it is a bit hit and miss. The introduction of Prometheus is awful.  The matter of the BP and Lughebhu are not.  the Praetorian 3 issue has literally been retconned out of existence by the arrival of Going Rogue, and even when it wasn't it didn't make any sense as to where it fit in.  Read them, enjoy them, I'd treat them as Elseworlds. And the last few? They're fine.*

 

*Note to self: Must go back and do a full read and sort out where stuff actually fits and where it should be thrown in a dumpster.

[Take One]

Okay, based on comments in this thread, I will now add some actual head-canon of mine, and not just wishful thinking.

 

• Nemesis recruits most of his army not from Primal Earth but from other dimensions he has access to. Most of his activities are probably not even happening on Primal Earth but in other dimensions where he might be ruling the world or fighting against its rulers, or simply hiding his activities much like on Primal Earth. His war against versions of himself spills over to Paragon City only once that we know of, but there's no reason to think that it isn't constantly happening in the reverse, i.e. Primal Earth Nemesis invades, kills and takes over the organisation and army of the Nemesises of other worlds.
• Nemesis is using the Shadow Shard as a safe place to hide against incursions from other dimensions. The Shadow Shard is difficult to access, and was found more or less by accident by Portal Corp - possibly because it was created from Primal Earth. It's possible and even likely that it can't be accessed from other dimensions. This means that Nemesis can stash his armies there, and protect them from being captured or subverted by other Nemesises from other dimensions. (Apparently Praetor Tilman and Malaise managed to visit the Shadow Shard at some point, which kind of bursts this bubble of mine a bit. Unless Praetorian and Primal Earth are somehow entwined due to the many portals connecting them, which would allow Praetorian Earth to open portals to the Shadow Shard. Ah, head-canon restored.)
• Sub-dimensions that are locked to other dimensions and only accessible from them seem to be uncommon, unless there is something special about Primal Earth that allows Portal Corp to access them despite this. Prime candidates for a sub-dimension would be the version of the Shadow Shard that was created by Black Swan and the Quill of Jocasta, and the Black Shroud dimension which supposedly powers Nightstar, but Portal Corp is able to access them so my theory about them being locked to and only accessible from Praetorian Earth doesn't seem to apply. Unless there is something special about Portal Corp or Primal Earth.
• There is something special about Primal Earth's dimension. It's not just that our characters live there or that it's where the game is set, but something else is going on that makes it a special place to be, and the dimension where a lot of activities are going down. It's likely that this specialness would have been revealed at higher Incarnate levels, or beyond, as our characters moved from being merely world-shakers to dimension-shakers and owners and rulers of entire universes ourselves. But we'll probably never know for sure. For now, I'm just going to claim that Primal Earth is special because it is easier to access from other dimensions, and vice versa. It could be a dimensional nexus that way, and if allowed to continue to exist, could become an important hub in interdimensional affairs.
• The demons summoned by the Circle of Thorns seem to exist in a Hell dimension that is the same for many other Earths - at least for both Primal and Praetorian Earth, since there is a version of Infernal in both worlds. My belief is that the demons of this Hell world were locked in there by the Dimensionless (literal angels), after some kind of cataclysmic cosmic battle, and that they are constantly trying to escape in order to regain their former power and take up the fight against their ancient foes once more. It is my belief that in a far future issue of CoH, the demons would have been released or escaped en-masse, and our characters would have to pick a side in their war, the rewards of which would turn our characters into Dimensionless beings as well.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Take One

[Coyotedancer]

For what it's worth, I share at least one of those ideas with you, Take One.  More than one of my Oranbegans has said something in-character along the lines of "The Abyss has paths to many places". 👍

 

Likewise the Void. (That's the name Kai and the others use for what City canon tends to call the Dark dimension.)

[WhiteNightingale]

On 7/5/2021 at 12:11 PM, Piecemeal said:

 

Also, what I consider to be a non-negotiable plot point going forward is how badly Mot's gambit destroyed the ranks of the Circle of Thorns.

...and then the re-rise of Malta now that the three heads are back in business.

...and the love lost between the police and the hero community after the beating (the protagonist) gave Blue Steel.

...and the potential global political climate since Mot's climax is for all intents and purposes when the torch was passed and (the protagonist) succeeds Statesman as the new savior of the world. 🙂