Spoilers for the Underground Trial

Soooo....errrr.....ahhh....ummmm....


The Well is tied to Earth, and has taken a vested interest in Earth. The Well wants Earth to survive. Therefore, it's created a gauntlet of Cole, Hamidon, and Primal Earth's threats to create kind of a Doomsday scenario: forcing a crucible gauntlet on the two Earths to produce a group of super-powered beings capable of withstanding the Battalion.

Is that what we're being told?

Listen, strange ponds distributin' super powers is no basis for a system of government!

Or for tha' matter, a system for determinin' the fate a two universes!

Supreme executive power over th' fate of th' multiverse derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!

Prometheus says the well is being "directed" - but so far, he's not told us anything more than that.

I love the way that completing each Trial gets Prometheus to give us more info - and it also ties into one of my favorite things about the Incanrate system and storyline in general - the way it's broken the security of the 1-50 game.

Before Incarnates, there was a 1-50 story framework for the whole game - even if there wasn't that much endgame content, there was actually an "end" to the game - once you'd hit 50 and run all the arcs and TFs, you'd experienced the full story, from the streets of Outbreak to the portals on Peregrine Island, and while there might be new TFs for 50s from time to time, or new lower level content you could exemplar for, the basic 1-50 story framework remained the same.
But now the Incarnate system and storyline has broken that up - it's gone beyond the 1-50 framework, so we don't have that to put it in context - we can't say "this or that won't or will happen because this or that is the game situation at 50, so it has to sync up with that" - by going beyond 50, the devs aren't required to tie up lose ends and plot threads to make sure they flow into the higher level content, because this is the higher level content - lose ends and plot threads just progress into new stories.
For example, they've just killed off the Praetorian Vanessa DeVore, and Desdemona has taken her mask - but we have no idea where that will lead us, because there's no higher level content to put it in context for us - because it goes beyond the 1-50 framework, there's no limit to where the story can take us - it's like a constant rolling expansion of the game world and lore.

I'm very interested in the Letter Writer at this point. We know that the Coming Storm is the Battalion, and that the LW is forming a team to fight the Coming Storm. We know that Ouroboros is not what it seems.

Anyone wanna place bets on if the Battalion was caused by Nemesis too? :P

My working theory: Nemesis is an Incarnate, and he has spent his long life on the "Slow" incarnate path (like players) and the Well has no control over him. Mender Silos is Nemesis (obviously) but not from as far in the future as he claims. He's been orchestrating events through Ouroboros to make sure he comes out on top. Perhaps he learned about the Battalion from Twilight's Son, who allegedly sold out all the Kheldians in his time. Perhaps, eventually, Nemesis' patience and incredible will allow him to direct the force of the Well, and it's his voice we hear.

As for Emperor Cole, he's not a bad guy, he just took the only option available to save his world. When he learned of Primal Earth, he launched the invasion not to show Hami he's in control, but to create a super-powered arms race in Primal Earth (his power dampeners forcing so many of us into Incarnate levels) to amass an army in our world strong enough to save his own world even if it means his own downfall.

Some more stuff related to the subject - Vanessa DeVore's updated bio from first Ward:

On her First Ward arc, Vanessa gives a neat little bit of foreshadowing:

Something else that might give a clue as to just how powerful the Batalion are going to be is that the 3 enhanced Goliath War Walkers on the Undergorund Trial are level 54+1 - so already the "lesser" threat of Tyrant and the loyalists is starting to throw a few level shifted enemies at us.

And putting that together with what Second Measue said in the February producer's letter:

I've gotta admit, I'm rather disappointed.

On Virtue, 50 of us once took out Hamidon is about 7-9 minutes.
All the super powered people on Praetoria couldn't beat that thing?!

So Emperor Cole/Tyrant has Dominatrix as his sidekick (among other things...) and Statesman has taken Desdemona as his new protégé. So I think it's safe to assume that no matter what reality Marcus Cole exists in... he digs chicks in leather.