Bored with the whole Praetoria schtick

One of the first mission arcs on the Loyalist side has you finding and defusing bombs from around and inside around Cole Memorial. That's a hospital filled with innocent civilians.

In regards to the outside bombs, you're told:
Them bombs, they weren't gonna send much of a message. At worst, they bought us time. At best, they were gonna increase the body count

About the ones inside, Scott tells you:
The people need to see that Cole is fallible, that Cole is just a man. A blow to the hospital would show that Cole can't protect the people from everything.

Even as an undercover Resistance agent, the hospital doesn't blow up because of any moral change-of-heart but only because Doublebarrel gets in trouble and Scott wants to keep you undercover.

Still okay though, right?

There's an arc in the first Warden arc where you're stopping the bombing of Cole memorial. That's not MM's hospital; considering the Seer Program and the fact that MM is crazy, I would deem Mother's as a military target. Not Cole memorial. And did Calvin Scott think that was a good idea? Yes he did. Are you trying to tell me that you think that bombing that kind of hospital is a good idea? Where mostly people go for treatment?

Because that's much harder to argue - and that's the one that comes under assault in the actual game.

Depending on previous actions and how the conversation tree goes, Scott then admits that the Syndicate came up with the plan and Scott's great regret is... that he didn't think of it. Blowing up a civilian target not because of any military value but purely to terrorize the civilians of Praetoria.

So there's the guy leading the other side who is so much better than Cole. A man who wants to bomb a hospital, slaughtering untold numbers of civilians, who helps plant bombs outside to increase the civilian death toll and whose only misgiving about it is that he didn't think of this plan himself. Oh, but he's not evil because Cole is "eviler".

What about an alternate Stephan Richter?

Apart from Nemesis? Or are you assuming that he's already involved?

The Praetorian Recluse might not be totally dead

Of course Nemesis is involved. Why else do you think is there a guy hanging out in Ouroboros (two, come i20) telling you to go beat up Praetorians?

Because the Well has inexplicably gone from being an inert conduit to being The Overgod. And it's insane. Now this wouldn't be quite so bad if our Incarnate powers, and as the Origin of Power implies ALL our powers, didn't come from it. But they do. So it's bad. The multiverse is at the mercy of an insane god that, by its very nature, cannot be defeated. And you thought the Arachnos omnipresence in CoV was bad. (Well ok, maybe you didn't, but a lot of people did.)

I was more disturbed by Longbow's omnipresence. I mean, here there's the PPD, the Legacy Chain, and Wyvern and how often do they show up? Only a few arcs here and there if you're lucky to run into them. And why the hell do we never see Hero Corps?

Another reason to bring the Countess back!

I said Hero Corps, not Paragon Protectors.

Wait...at what point did they say he can't be defeated? I think that they're going to finish up the incarnate storyline in the next two to three issues (or maybe even two if we get another .5 issue like Alpha Strike) because that will take us all the way to the Omega Slot which will likely be unlocked by doing a Emperor Cole incarnate trial.

Then they'd finish that up and then move on to other threats. Which I would like.

I do think that you're reading too much into it - I get that you don't like it, but you're letting your dislike lead you to conclusions that simply were never there in the first place.

Unless you can find for me where anyone has said that Cole is unbeatable. Extremely tough maybe, but not unbeatable.

Am I totally getting confused again, or isn't Hero Corps a subsidiary of Crey Industries?

I think it's more the inherent contradiction that is beating "the Well". Cole's not the problem as much as "Cole controlled by the mad deity-thing that is the source of all our characters powers". It's impossible to beat the Well because doing so would mean we can't have powers anymore.

Not that I'm aware of, but their lore implies that she tried to get them under her thumb once though. It didn't pan out because of some protestors.

Except that they seemed to divorce the Well's sentience with it's power to control powerflow - at least to a certain extent. The well wants Cole to win inasmuch as its the Champion, but the Well also allows Statesman and Recluse to remain Incarnates even though they're a disappointment to it. There also seems to be a limit to the well's control over an individual, if they don't want to be controlled, otherwise Statesman and Recluse would have taken over the world by now. Cole seems to be a singular case - he's not only interested in power, he's interested in gaining power regardless of means, motive or opportunity. The well grants powers to those who seek its power, but at the same time it doesn't seem to have the ability to deny those who seek its power, nor even to stop the powerflow once the valve is opened.

From the very beginning of the Alpha Slot we're told we're becoming an incarnate the slow way, which will inhibit any power the well has over us; so there has to be some kind of disconnect between its sentience and the mechanism that actually gives out the power.

My point is this: Just because the well favors Cole, and just because the well is the ultimate source of those worlds having super powers, doesn't mean it can do much about our using its power to thwart its plans; all it can do is empower Cole, it can't *depower* us. EDIT: Save for the debuff during Apex and Tin Mage, which doesn't take away power, so much as limit effectiveness for those who haven't been directly exposed to the Well's power (IE the alpha slot)

What it giveth, it can taketh away. That's usually how it works.

The Well favors Cole right now. There's nothing saying that once he's defeated it won't favor some other mustache twirling megalomaniac intent on taking over the multiverse. It's insane, and can't be trusted. We can't win unless we defeat the Well. If the Well is defeated, it's game over, literally. The devs have written themselves into a corner and handed us a no-win situation. The only way we can save the multiverse and keep playing is to defeat the Well with powers that don't come from it. And there aren't any right now.

No, not catagorically. Anyone who thinks that has never been asked the following question:


(I'm aware that Kant doesn't agree. It's important to remember that a) even Solomon can be wrong and b) Kant died a virgin.)

Ethics are situational but not subjective. To argue the contrary is to embrace ethical nihilism, which is self-refuting.

As it happens, this is exactly the rationale behind Tyrant's regime.

There is such a thing as just war theory, and the Crusaders utterly fail to meet its criteria. And the Wardens, however well-intentioned they may be, are joined to them at the hip.


Countess Crey is irredemable, having jumped over the Moral Event Horizon with the creation of Project Revenant. Of course, Frostfire is also irredemable but that didn't stop anyone over at PS.

So maybe there's going to be a Tyrant trial. We get to arrest Recluse, too, which accomplishes exactly what?

Why not? It can do anything the devs want it to do; it's just a plot device. The fact that it's spewing contradictions and Unfortunate Implications all over the place is just a demonstration of why your phlebotinum shouldn't have a speaking part.

I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

I interpret it as a belief that authority is its own justification. The most heinous murderers of history are always those who do it legally, but they receive different judgment from a lot of people than a person who does it once.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt

To me, CARE is the only important moral. Fairness is important as a subset but in any conflict CARE is the priority. But each of the moral dimensions exists as an instinct and everybody has them.

There are people who are simply wired by environment and/or genes to listen to those instincts at varying rates. Due to how authority has generally meant 'killing' it's probably adaptive.

Here's the thing. For every atrocity you can post about the Resistance, I can post something about the Cole regime that's worse. To be frank with you I don't believe the Praetoria that's presented in the arcs should be allowed to exist. Were I in the suitable role in the Primal Earth government, I would regrettably authorize the use of weapons of mass destruction against Praetoria. Folks that become squeamish at the evils of the Resistance but somehow ignore the excesses and evil of the Cole regime gain no quarter from me.

So to answer your question. Yes. Opposing a regime as evil as Cole's by any means necessary is A-OK with me.

So you have two utterly evil groups, the one you like less you've decided is "eviler" and so the "less evil" one is in the right.

Yeah. Lesser of two evils still leaves you with a whole lot of evil. But good job defending slaughtering a pile of innocent civilians in a pure and simple terrorism plot to prevent a guy from keeping those civilians alive and oppressed. Of course, if they had preferred to be dead over oppressed, they could have done that themselves. You've just ripped that choice away from them though and used them as pawns for your own gains, huh? Wow... soooo much better than Cole!