Oldeb

They looked better back in the '60s. All the fashion trends for today's modern henchmen have been a big step back in taste, if you ask me.
This is the kind of guy you want running your volcano lair:

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More seriously but less successfully, I assume you're talking about General Aarons from Serpent Drummer's arc? The only way is either to have someone baby-sit him while the rest of the team heads off or bring some FF users and buff him up. He really loves to charge Fake Nems and War Hulks with his revolver.

Your description of the mission was par for the course. I don't know of anyone who has not encountered that problem. Even a dedicated Emp is not going to keep him alive for long. So take heart! It's terrible mission design, not you or your teammate.

Clicking bombs and saving the world should have been an option.

Neither.

Can we please be a MMO without a fantasy-esque looking character on the main page?

In-Game it's fine, there's backstory and lore and whatever. And yes, there are certainly fantasy styled superheroes/villains. But first impression for someone new looking at Shadowhunter there is not Superhero MMO.

Top 8 overall:

1. Thunder Battery (Metallica vs. Prodigy) by Aggro1
2. Burn by NIN (aka the Mayhem Mission song)
3. Super Villain by Powerman 5000 **This one has a naughty word in it, so you'll have to look it up on your own**
4. Switchback by Celldweller
5. Heroes and Villains by Powerman 5000
6. Alles Neu by Peter Fox
7. Ballad of Barry Allen by Jim's Big Ego
8. Superman's Song by Crash Test Dummies

*links go to Youtube.com
**not responsible for language, content, etc - watch/listen at your own accord
***I think only Super Villain has a swear, but I've been wrong before
****The veal is a lie

The Titan Network forums.

Naw, Electric-Knight is right. It's this face:

I just think it looks like he's struggling to maintain a neutral expression.

The dark haired male face looks like he's tying not to cry. Possibly due to some accident in his suit that is now pooling at his feet.

The costume parts are awesome.

I'd go with unfortunate implications. Psyche's death is pretty clearly (at least to me) meant to drive the Manticore storyline. Psyche's entire relevance lately is only to define him; she has no real purpose otherwise. I think there was a Sister Flame quote at the time of the wedding about stopping being superheroes and having babies or something like that. She was fairly close. As a character Psyche ceased to be an independant entity and became no more than another way to define Manticore. She was done as far as character development goes at that point. Possibly sexist, I suppose, but not spiteful towards Jack. And I don't think it was sexist so much as they didn't think it through. It looks bad that she was married and then done as an individual while here husband gets character development and storylines, but I think they weren't looking at it as a whole. They have two seperate stories, the marriage and Manticore's fall, and just never considered how they looked together.

That she was Jack's creation is just bad timing. They'd have killed off anyone who was married to Manticore no matter which developer was responsible for their creation. It's obvious he's being set up for a clear switch to vigilante and possibly even towards villain as the game defines the alignments.

So no intended spite, it's just that Paragon Studios doesn't think about how their storylines intertwine after they move on to the next shiny thing.

And just to be complete:

Time Travel Concepts and Rules

The timeline is not static. - This should be obvious. The Menders are clearly out to adjust the past based on their observations of the future. If the timeline was static then they would know it's impossible to prevent The Coming Storm and are just doing a pointless Dr. Manhattan impersonation. Fortunately Recluse's Victory and multiple story arcs provide a clear answer that the timeline is not set. Amazingly I think all of CoX lore manages to remain consistent on this, with nobody acting as if events are unchangeable. This prevents closed time loops (the Predestination Paradox) from forming but leaves the Grandfather Paradox unresolved. And yes, your character should be able to do the nasty in the pasty and remove their delta brainwaves before they're ever born.

It may be possible to experience the the Bootstrap Paradox, but I don't think any examples exist.

The Devil's Timepiece of the Midnghters is odd in that it seems to prevent you from visting a time and place where you existed a second time around. Since the we've seen Aeon/Echo have conversations with himself, participated in events we've already experience through the Pillar of Ice and Flame, and talked to ourselves in the My Other Selves mission, it would seem that this is a property of the Timepiece and not something that can be applied to time travel in general.

Temporal Scaling - This isn't, as commonly stated, a result of going into the past. There's no reason you can't experience it going into the future as well (And you do in Mender Silos' mission). According to Mender Tesseract it's more like your body going into shock when you jumped through time. ("It was basically your body adjusting to a different time stream. We call this Temporal Scaling. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it can come as a shock.") The Menders never give a good answer for what causes it or how to avoid it. I'd say they don't know, but Tesseract says she deliberately picked a time to send you where you would be hit hard. So they do know how to predict when it will happen even if they can't do anything about it. It seems to be tied to using the Pillar of Ice and Flame for travel, since nobody else ever mentions finding themselves weakened after transit. (Most notably your godlike self in My Other Selves does not attribute any weakness to Temporal Scaling and that's likely the farthest jump we've seen)

The Midnighters seem to have dodged Temporal Scaling with their Aspect of the Pillar. This could be because of it's fixed destination rather then the more flexible ones used by the Menders or it could be just sheer luck on their part where they managed to hit a pocket of time without it. Alternately, of course, some or all of the Menders are lying about what causes Temporal Scaling. I'd go with them lying except Mender Tesseract is specifically stated to be suffering very badly from it in our present time. There's no reason at this point to suspect her of deliberately weakening herself just to maintain a charade.

Temporal Shielding - Daedalus does this so Malta can never use time travel to reach the Cimerora era. How big a range it shields isn't clear. Nor is it ever mentioned whether this is a specific block to the tech Malta uses or if it could be used more generally. It clearly doesn't work on Arachnos' technology, The 5th Column's or the Pillar of Ice and Flame. As it's only use is by a Marty Stu character in a poorly written arc I find it much easier to just pretend this doesn't exist. Frankly, it doesn't fit with the way time travel is portrayed in the rest of the game.

Carbon Law - As explained by Mender Lazurus this mean no traveling more than 5,730 years in either direction from your "native time", which is a maddeningly vague term. Go farther and you disolve into the timestream, never to be heard from again. He may mean from your departure point or your birth or your natural lifespan. This doesn't raise as many questions as Temporal Scaling since nobody but the Menders is seen to have traveled that far, with the possible exception of your godlike self in My Other Selves. Mender Silos openly claims to be violating this law and is all smug about it. Whether he actually is, however, is open to debate depending on who he really is and how the law really works. Likewise, depending on how "native time" is judged your godlike self may never have been in any danger from the Carbon Law.

Time Travel is not dimension specific! - This is probably the the most interesting thing as far as I'm concerned. Time travel that works in one dimension seems to work in multiple dimensions as well. It should be entirely possible to take one of the known time travel methods to Praetoria, hop into the past and either prevent the rise of Hamidon as a world destroying entity or kill Marcus Cole before he becomes Tyrant. You could alter Praetoria so that Stefan Richter becomes the new Tyrant (and, in fact, always was). You could travel to the Rikti dimension and screw with their civilization. If there's an infinite number of dimensions accessible via Portal Corp or through Arachnos you could simply give every villain on Earth Prime their own dimension to be god-king in, as long as you don't mind screwing over the entire multiverse for the sake of your goals on Earth Prime. Of course there's also no reason another dimension couldn't do this to Earth Prime. The biggest downside of all this is that it is entirely possible to tie the Highlander 2 movie to the CoX universe and make the events from that movie The Coming Storm without any contradictions. And that's terrible.

There's two proofs for this one. First, Ouroboros is accessible from Praetoria. I'd consider this a game play consideration and not count it except for the second proof: Ouroboros is capable of traveling through time in the Shadow Shard. Yep, it's been possible since I11. Mender Silos is indeed in position to potentially master every dimension. Makes the Letter Writer a bit less paranoid sounding, doesn't it?

This leaves Earth Prime in a very interesting position. As the only (known) dimension to have access to both time travel and alternate dimensional travel, it should be possible to end any dimensional threat before they ever occur. Although if the dimensional threat really orginates on Earth Prime (like the Rikti War) this will likely involve multiple attempts as both sides hop back and forth and a large number of deaths. This may be why Paragon City is more often the focus of dimensional attacks than the Rogue Isles. The Freedom Phalanx is not going to sanction large scale killings. Meanwhile Lord Recluse probably has no problems with sending Mako, Black Scorpion, and a legion of troops 600 years into an alternate past and telling them to go nuts.

It's not updated for the Dream Doctor yet, but this is something I put together a couple issues ago. Assuming only the Menders and the Midnighter's pillars are the same, there are, I think, 9 different methods used in game so far.

Groups with Time Travel


Arachnos - Capable of traveling backwards at least as far as Cimerora (1st century BCE?) and traveling into the future as well. (Every Patron Arc; Recluse's Victory; Stolen Power from Daedalus)

Daedalus - Capable of monitoring the time stream at least 2000 years into his future and tracking travelers across that span. Easily able to not only read blueprints for experimental 21st century time travel technology, but to modify and improve upon them as well. He may not have an actual working time travel device, however, despite clearly knowing how to build one. (Stolen Power and Future Threat arcs)

DATA - Coordinating the heroes in Recluse's Victory.

Dr. Aeon - Capable of time travel into the future and (later on?) into his own past. His seems to be independent of Arachnos' time travel but it's likely that one of them is based off the other. Presumably has full access to all of Arachnos time tech as well. (Every Patron Arc; Echo Down the Aeons from Marshal Brass)

Crey Industries - Currently running experiments on the space-time continuum. Might not have time travel and may not even know how close they are to developing it. It's possible to modify their equipment to create limited duration temporal rifts which allow people from the future to travel to the time/location of the device. (My Future Selves - Alignment Mission)

The 5th Column - Travels as far back as Cimerora, claims other temporal strongholds as well. (Imperious Task Force)

The Letter Writer - Has planted messages for specific individuals throughout time, from Cimerora to the 21st century. (Ouroboros Arcs; ITF; Dean MacArthur's arc, Special Agent Jenni Adair's arc)

Malta Group - Formerly capable of traveling to Cimerora. Their technology is experimental and clearly inferior to the methods of other groups. It's apparently possible to "shield" portions of the time stream from them, preventing access to that period in time. (Future Threat from Daedalus)

Menders of Ouroboros - Claims to be founded roughly around 7700-7800 CE, so they have a pretty far reach. Nobody else has exhibited the ability to travel as far back. Introduces the "Carbon Law". Travels through the Pillar of Fire and Ice and is capable of creating Aspects of the Pillar to serve as additional travel spots. The big flaw with this method seems to be Temporal Scaling, which does not seem to affect anyone else. (Ouroboros)

Midnight Squad - Has an Aspect of the Pillar that sends people to Cimerora. It's not clear if they could retune this to another time/place or if it's permanently set to that time and location. Interestingly they seem to have somehow avoided the Temporal Scaling problem with using the Pillar of Ice and Flame for time travel.

They also have The Devil's Timepiece, which allows time travel in exchange for a small portion of your soul. What kind of range the Timepiece has isn't clear because the guy who used it wasn't too bright. It also carries the risk of paradox backlash if you revist a time and place where you already existed. This is a bit odd since we've directly witnessed others doing the same thing without any problems. (The Midnighter's Club; The Magic Man from Mercedes Sheldon)

You! - At least one possible future version of you is capable of sending small items through time but not physically traveling into the past. This appears to be entirely independent of any other group's methods, but may have been stolen/learned from someone else. (My Other Selves - alignment mission)

Groups that might have Time Travel

The Council - Requiem has it. Did he share it with them or keep it to himself?

Knives of Artemis - They work closely with Malta, to the extent that they are sometimes seen as little more than a subset of that group despite being technically independent. Did Malta share their time travel technology?

Portal Corp - It seems a little odd that they don't, but it looks like they're focused on traveling to alternate dimensions rather than different times.

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