Someone explain something to me! (spoilers)

This concerns the arc Echo Down the Aeons, and it's highly convulted storyline, which I believe is the victim of an evil text error somewhere along the line. I've played through this arc maybe 5 times now, and I still have no idea what it's trying to tell me. I realise it's supposed to be open-ended and leave me guessing, but I'm convinced something in the story is mistyped.

It starts out simple enough. Echo steals a time deflector. It quickly becomes obvious he's a time traveller, so he's obviously trying to deflect someone else's time travel destination. I'm guessing his own.
Then I find a base full of Shivans and a note in jumbled order about setting up an ambush there. But for who? Erither me or himself, I'm guessing, and maybe I'm the real ambush?

PLOT HOLE

And this is where things take a turn for the weird. I find a visibly old, white-haired, mad scientist looking man. He's identified as a younger version of Professor Echo. Excuse me!?! This obviously much older man is a younger version of a significantly younger man? And he reminds me of Dr. Aeon? Fair enough. But is that an older or younger Dr. Aeon? I haven't seen the guy in person.
If that weren't bad enough, my souvenir explains that I saw an older Dr. Aeon. Come again? So, Professor Echo is an older version of his companion, who in turn is an older still version of Dr. Aeon, who, himself, is supposed to be pretty old to begin with? Wow, Echo looks good for his age. OR something is screwed up along the line.

END OF PLOT HOLE

And then finally I find a tattered drawing of on Professor Echo which he was trying to give to, uh... the other guy, however he may be actually defined. So Echo was trying to want Aeon? Is the one identified as "Dr. Aeon?" a time traveller, too? What is his part? Wouldn't the tattered picture be in HIS hands? Wouldn't the warning come from him, as he has seen his demise? Or if it comes from Professor Echo, then isn't he giving it to the wrong person?

I really, really don't get that arc. Any help on making sense of it is welcome. I'm usually not one to ask for help on plot matters, but I am convinced something is mistyped along the way, and I have no way of knowing how much esle is mistyped and as such, what to trus.

Thank you in advance.

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Probably a typo, but even without em, Time Travel just makes my head hurt.

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Furio--Lvl 50+3 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, Virtue
Megadeth--Lvl 50+3 Necro/DM/Soul MM, Virtue
Veriandros--Lvl 50+3 Crab Soldier, Virtue
"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2

A typo, yes, no doubt about that. But WHAT is mistyped?

Normally, I can brainstorm time-travel stories, but not when they're written wrong

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If I'm not mistaken (and I very well could be), not only is time travel involved, but so is an alternate dimension.

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Someone find Manticore.....he prolly wrote the thing in the first place.

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Furio--Lvl 50+3 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, Virtue
Megadeth--Lvl 50+3 Necro/DM/Soul MM, Virtue
Veriandros--Lvl 50+3 Crab Soldier, Virtue
"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2

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Someone find Manticore.....he prolly wrote the thing in the first place.

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And now we wait until he checks his pm box.

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Isn't the professor responisble for the demon being trapped in the mountain? Or draining the seals? Might of been warning him of that.

Also I forget where it is mentioned but Arachnos has forbidden all portal+time travel. Not sure why.

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Aeon is doing the PTS dealy in Cap, which is purportedly drawing power off of the demon.

And yeah...Recluse doesn't want any time travel going on, iirc, it's because of the Recluse's Victory zone, or someone screwing up the Destined One prophecy.

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Furio--Lvl 50+3 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, Virtue
Megadeth--Lvl 50+3 Necro/DM/Soul MM, Virtue
Veriandros--Lvl 50+3 Crab Soldier, Virtue
"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2

Alternate dimentions? Hmm, now that might help explain a lot of things, as soon as we get the typos out of the way. But how was I supposed to know it had ANYTHING to do with alternate reality?

For that matter, how did you know that?

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PLOT HOLE

And this is where things take a turn for the weird. I find a visibly old, white-haired, mad scientist looking man. He's identified as a younger version of Professor Echo. Excuse me!?! This obviously much older man is a younger version of a significantly younger man? And he reminds me of Dr. Aeon? Fair enough. But is that an older or younger Dr. Aeon? I haven't seen the guy in person.

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Dude. Time travel. And ... have you ever read T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone ...? In it, Merlin is described as aging backwards - he gets younger as everyone else gets older, and vice versa. Thus, a to-chronological-time "younger" Aeon might indeed be physiologically more aged than his "later" incarnation.

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If that weren't bad enough, my souvenir explains that I saw an older Dr. Aeon. Come again? So, Professor Echo is an older version of his companion, who in turn is an older still version of Dr. Aeon, who, himself, is supposed to be pretty old to begin with? Wow, Echo looks good for his age. OR something is screwed up along the line.

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Possibly we're looking at a Temporal Paradox.

In all honesty, IMO if any encounter with recursive temporal displacement doesn't leave you scratching your head and thinking W, T, freakin' F?!?!? ... it wasn't properly handled.

Time Travel is nearly impossible without creating a paradox - it's how the timestream FIXES itself that creates the headaches and ocnfusion. For reference, go read A sound like Thunder; all of human history derailed in massive order, because one stinkin' butterfly was killed when it wasn't supposed to be.

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Alternate dimentions? Hmm, now that might help explain a lot of things, as soon as we get the typos out of the way. But how was I supposed to know it had ANYTHING to do with alternate reality?

For that matter, how did you know that?

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I think there's a second story arc with Aeon and Echo. I'm not really sure, my memory sucks and I didn't take notes.

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Aging backwards notwithstanding, the situation is needlessly confusing, and I'm fully confident it's a typo. Furthermore, the way CoH handles time travels in on a firts-time basis. What that means is that anything a time traveller may change is yet to happen, so therefore whatever Echo is here to acheive, he is yet to acheive, so it is yet to change the future.

This is different from Soul Reaver's understanding of time travel, where everything is predestined and anything a time traveller can change has alerady happened and influenced future events. The only way to cheat time is to create a paradox by bringing two same entities (in this case two alterations of the Soul Reaver) together and in this moment change time.

In CoH, we don't have these paradoxes, at least not as far as I've seen. The one confiremd time traveller on the heroes side, Holsten Armitage is able to change the future, by having you save a senator who would have otherwise been killed and this started a war that ended up not happening. We don't treat time with an eye for paradoxes, we treat it with an eye for continuity, and that seems to be broken here.

I'm not dissing on other theories (and that's all they are) about time travel, but I don't think the kind used here is as complicated or deep-seated. And I also don't believe all time travelling instances should be convulted to senselessness.

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Given the facts as we know them, I could float at least any one of the following scenarios if I were GMing this in a tabletop game:

<ul type="square">[*]The majority opinion: Echo is Aeon, attempting to prevent some future disaster involving the PTS.[*]Echo is not Aeon. He is an Arachnos operative, sent back to put you and Aeon on a collision course. Recluse's Victory requires that Aeon be removed from the picture retroactively, but Aeon is too close an ally for Recluse to do the job himself or order it done directly.[*]Echo is not Aeon nor is he a time traveller. He is a Rikti shapechanger attempting to sow discord in Arachnos' ranks and/or cause you or Arachnos to destroy or shut down the PTS and deprive the Rogue Islands of much of its power supply. Any "future knowledge" Echo has was actually obtained through telepathy.[*]As above, but Echo is a Nemesis automaton, as per "Automatic Villany". Nemesis has always been shown to be able to know things he's not supposed to know.[/list]
In short, it is impossible to know what is going on here from the facts we are given. Perhaps there's an arc or mission in the upcoming 41-50 material that gives more information.

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Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

Hmm, I didn't think this had anything to do with the PTS. Given that Echo had my picture on him when I finally killed him (I assume), I thought the warning he was willing to give his life to deliver had something to do with me.

But then why would he need an ambush, and for who? Why did he say "you can't defeat me before you've defeated me?" And what was his connection to the PTS anyway?

Yes, let's go with that. I think I missed something, but it occurs to me that I never understood what Echo wanted with the PTS.

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In CoH, we don't have these paradoxes, at least not as far as I've seen. The one confiremd time traveller on the heroes side, Holsten Armitage is able to change the future, by having you save a senator who would have otherwise been killed and this started a war that ended up not happening. We don't treat time with an eye for paradoxes, we treat it with an eye for continuity, and that seems to be broken here.

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Yep. Sound of Thunder.

Trust me - the critters affected by that butterfly's death didn't know any better. The people in teh FUTURE didn't know, either - the guy responsible only knew because, well, while things were changing, he was not a part of the timestream.

It's something often called "the observer effect".

Indeed, Holsten Armitage SAYS that the Senator was supposed to die, but what if the truth was, he KNEW you had saved said Senator, but figured out the only way to get you involved and in the right place, at the right time, with the right knowledge ... was to say he needed your help changing that future?

^_^ Time-travel, if it even is possible at all, is migraine-inducing. If a time-travel scenario isn't headache-inducing ... then trust me, you've got it wrong, and/or haven't thought of something important. ^_^

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Well, that's certainly one way of looking at it, but that's a few too many "ifs" for my taste. Mostly, I like things in order, and once you start thinking "what if" you can potentially come up with many, many seemingly consistent scenarios. An infinite amount, I would wager.

Any "ifs" in any good story come to light sooner or later, usually by the end of the story itself, or in a sequel if they are planned ahead. Those are generally called plot twists. When, however, "ifs" come to light that weren't initially planned but later found to be conveniet plot devices, that is no longer a plot twost. Those are ret-cons. The act of rewriting your own backstory to fit your current story.

Which is which is mostly subjective, but I like to thing that plot twists outside the main story, or such that were never hinted at are undesirable. However, seeing the 5th Column affair, that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Regardless, what I'm trying to say is that I feel you're digging too deep into this, and you're also expressing just one view on how time would work. The observer effect, as you call it, is just one idea. The idea that the time traveller instantly knows both the new time and the old time is another that I have seen. If I put a little thought into it, I could probably come up with a few more takes on temporal paradoxes.
And then there is the digging too deep. Once you start questioning people's motives without sufficient plot justification, you can pretty quickly warp a storyline into something completely different, and every fact isn't explicitly stated in a story. I, however, choose to follow the storyline that I feel was intended to work with the story without looking for logical loopholes in them that could throw another twist at things. Of course, I've ended up being surprised many times, But I would sooner be surprised for lack of attention than spend the time and attention to come up with stories that probably won't turn true anyway.

As such, I find the take on time travel in the CoH universe to be straightforward. To this point it has been presented as such, and until I can actually see Recluses Victory, I have only Holsten Armitage and a typo-ridden story arc, which may contain trans-dimentional travel as well, to judge by. And even then, convulted as it may be, Echo's list of things to do is pretty straightforward as well.

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I shall continue in my saying that time travel sucks, and that all time travel machines should be destroyed. All it does is create confusion and messes with time. Do you want the Campaign for Real Time breathing down your neck? I sure don't.

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Personally, I think the typo was with calling the older-looking guy Aeon. Granted, I don't remember much about the arc, or about aeon - just that supposedly, Doc Aeon is this guy who was once known as an extremely deranged man, who supposedly died, but was actually living as Aeon. Whereas, so far as I can tell, Echo isn't deranged at all. He's just an extreme goofball.

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Alternate dimentions? Hmm, now that might help explain a lot of things, as soon as we get the typos out of the way. But how was I supposed to know it had ANYTHING to do with alternate reality?

For that matter, how did you know that?

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I think there's a second story arc with Aeon and Echo. I'm not really sure, my memory sucks and I didn't take notes.

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That's the one where he spawns as an elite boss right?

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Holsten Armitage is not a confirmed time traveller -- it is entirely possible given the facts that he could just be crazy.

The only absolutely certain confirmed time traveller in the game is Wolfgang Ubelmann.

The people in teh FUTURE didn't know, either - the guy responsible only knew because, well, while things were changing, he was not a part of the timestream.

That's a crock -- the metaphysical equivalent of "a wizard did it". Time travel would be a part of history. Your actions in the past will not change history, because they did not.

If a time-travel scenario isn't headache-inducing ... then trust me, you've got it wrong, and/or haven't thought of something important.

Actually it just means you haven't made a mountain out of a molehill.

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Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

The ultimate main thing to keep in mind is that Dr. Echo and Dr. Aeon are the same person - or at least, thats what we are supposed to believe unless a 41-50 story arc says otherwise, that much they made pretty clear. They also made pretty clear that you are important somehow, as the future (or was it past?) version of him has a picture of you. From what i remember of the story, a younger Dr. Aeon/echo (I'm going to assume that the younger one is in fact, a bit older then the "Present" Dr. Aeon though, otherwise its just that much more convulted) travels to the future, grows old, travels to the past, comes here, fights you a few times, then you fight both the old and the young him, though one of him was trying to stop the other him from doing something unknown...or something extremely convulted like that. I don't ever believe you really figure out exactly what he was attempting to do/stop himself from doing with all his time travel - but whatever it was, you stopped it, for better or worse. And the present Dr. Aeon is just fine, and I'm not even sure if he realizes what hes done/is going to do/whatever.

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Doesn't that mean that:

Dr. Egon = Dr. Aeon = Dr. Echo?

This isn't City of Villians, it's freaking Knots Landing! ! !

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Alternate dimentions? Hmm, now that might help explain a lot of things, as soon as we get the typos out of the way. But how was I supposed to know it had ANYTHING to do with alternate reality?

For that matter, how did you know that?

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I think there's a second story arc with Aeon and Echo. I'm not really sure, my memory sucks and I didn't take notes.

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That's the one where he spawns as an elite boss right?

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Totally and completely don't remember. But, maybe.

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Time travel for the most part is bunk.

You have two possible outcomes.

1. You can't change the past. All actions you have done have been done already so time travel in this instance is useless.

2. You can change the future and create an alternate timeline. In this alternate timeline technically the "You" no longer exists in the future. This allows for paradoxes to happen.

Even so no one else would be aware of the time line changing except you, and techincally all you have done is pushed yourself to another alternate reality. Something that portal corp does daily, except that time divergences have already happened in that instance. But shows that you don't actaully destroy the other timeline. So again for the most part time travel is useless except for the observer.

The whole echo mission though is very bill and ted type time travel. What I mean is you go back in time, noticed that something happened that would make you fail so you tell yourself after completing said timeframe you will travel back and do something to stop yourself from failing.

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1. You can't change the past. All actions you have done have been done already so time travel in this instance is useless.



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But you can keep the past in line. I'll use the example I used in that other thread a while back:

Let's say history books say that a priceless vase was stolen from a mueseum some 200 years ago. So, someone could go back in time to when it shoudl be stolen, and make sure that it was stolen. If no one comes to steal it, the Time Traveler would have to steal it, in order to keep history the way it should be. By not stealing the vase, history would have to totally rewrite itself from that point on. Temporal fluxes and rapid changes occur. Theoretically, the time stream would mess with someone's memory (or maybe they just never existed) so that theey fit into the new reality. But if someone wa reminded of their previous life, and remembered it, then the time stteam and reality itself would come undone.

And they all lived happily ever after.

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