Letter writing, wells, menders and more
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-08-15 06:56 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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<Emphasis mine, this time>|
Hopefully, when you read this, my name is not forgotten. I don't know why that's so important to me. I guess after all I've seen, a part of me is still human. I wonder if the same can be said for my counterpart, Rularuu. As I used the blade, I shaved off a piece of myself. I am not the same man anymore. I still work among you - looking for answers. But I've also begun searching in the dreamspace for a way to protect you, and the rest of the world, from a fate that grows closer with each passing day. Something is coming and I must find out what it is before it's too late. I have never been afraid to ask for help. If you remember anything about me, please remember that. But this...this is something I must do on my own. I'm going to try and save the world... again. But by all means, don't let that stop you from trying to save it first. -The Dream Doctor |
If he has to do it alone, it doesn't sound like he'd be recruiting a team (though of course, the "do it alone" step may be over, and he's moved into more advanced plans).
I also hesitate to even suggest this, but as of i21, there will be a character in game who has actually fought against the Coming Storm...
"Trust me, it worked in the Simpsons." - Calash
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I don't think you should take twilight's son's name so literally. Requiem/Romulus' Nictus half is named "Dirge of Entropy." So My guess is that Twilight's Son doesn't mean that his parent's were named twilight. More that he was born in the last days of the Kheldian race.
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Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
I'm thinking that Mender Ramiel is the Letter Writer.
He's there with you when Ouroboros falls into the sea. He has a tense relationship with Silos (as evidenced with his discussion with Silos at the end of the Incarnate Arc). He's the ONE Mender who sends you to the future to show you at least SOMETHING of what the Coming Storm will be like. He's also the one who is giving you access to what is going to be a huge boost to your abilities, rather than putting you through a massive "troubleshooting experiment." Finally, you have to wonder about a Mender who takes the name "Thunder of God." Since the Menders tend to have been other people prior, and we've often wondered at the identities of the other Menders, though it seems the only one we've gotten confirmation on has been Silos/Nemesis (Ramiel hammers the last nail in that coffin). It wouldn't surprise me that Lazarus is Aeon (a Mender who has been said to take paradoxical copies of himself and fling them beyond his limits "just to see what happens?" I know somebody who both routinely makes paradoxical copies of himself AND does experiments just to see what happens!), and Tesseract is Silver Mantis (under her heel, indeed; she's even got that same intense glare Silver Mantis has). Just about the only one we don't really know is Twilight's Son (Yeah yeah, ha ha, the son of Twilight; funny, but has anybody met Twilight? Maybe we should focus on who in the game universe would be willing to sell out a whole lot of people to save his own skin). It would be simply awful if the Letter Writer was some character who wasn't in the game until the reveal. It would be far more interesting if the Writer were somebody who was already in the game when they introduced the Menders, Ouroboros and the Letters. Claiming that it's the Center or Requiem or a dozen other characters is interesting and all... But they just don't seem terribly interested. Requiem is obsessed with conquering the world. The Center is apparently obsessed with the same, only with him at the reigns, nobody else... In the end, the interested parties (and those who would know the most about them) are the Menders themselves. The Letter Writer knows deep, dark and intimate details about the Menders, and who else would know these things... But another Mender? |
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There already are: The Rikti.
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Originally Posted by Jasra
I also hesitate to even suggest this, but as of i21, there will be a character in game who has actually fought against the Coming Storm... |
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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The idea that the Menders (other than Silos) might be future versions of people we already know never occurred to me. I'm not sure if I agree with these two choices, but I'll be running the Ouroboros arc again to check it out!
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Originally Posted by Mr_Grey
It wouldn't surprise me that Lazarus is Aeon (a Mender who has been said to take paradoxical copies of himself and fling them beyond his limits "just to see what happens?" I know somebody who both routinely makes paradoxical copies of himself AND does experiments just to see what happens!), and Tesseract is Silver Mantis (under her heel, indeed; she's even got that same intense glare Silver Mantis has).
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He basically has super-charisma/super-leadership powers of some kind. I can't remember where this is mentioned specifically, but I'm pretty sure it's in-game somewhere.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Morbid
4) We don't know what his powers are, just that they are non-combat (according to Viridian.) Maybe he's a time traveler.
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Originally Posted by Olantern
One possibility I've considered all along is that the writing team hasn't decided on who the writer is yet, though the more letters get tossed around, the less likely that seems.
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I think his name is Plot Device and his true motive is to inspire repeated forum threads regarding his identity and motives.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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Awww, that's no fun. |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I think his name is Plot Device and his true motive is to inspire repeated forum threads regarding his identity and motives.
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"I am not a mad scientist! I am an Angry Scientist! ANGRY!"
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The writers needed a plot device to tell players about the Incarnate Trials and since their current one was on loan to Sheep in the Big City, they came up with our giant Angry Smurph.
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How'd that passage go... "Renfield, being mad, cleared the wall with ease. Harker, being merely annoyed, required a ladder."
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Originally Posted by Pendix
"I am not a mad scientist! I am an Angry Scientist! ANGRY!"
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There's a reason for it - Lazarus says that he is from the 76th century, "roughly 5600 years in your future" and is already at the end of his tether. He dares go back another couple of years, maybe, but not much before. Aeon is at least in his 30s, possibly his 40s, and it's hard to imagine a person whose origin in time is so far ahead that he can't travel back to the time of his own birth, unless he somehow lived for 5600 years, which even in comic book logic is not something to throw around willy-nilly.|
Originally Posted by Pattern Walker
The idea that the Menders (other than Silos) might be future versions of people we already know never occurred to me. I'm not sure if I agree with these two choices, but I'll be running the Ouroboros arc again to check it out!
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In fact, all of the Menders are from the far future. That's why they recruit you - because "of all the Menders, you have the greatest access, because you're a native of THIS time." Now, granted, all of this comes from Lazarus and we can claim he's just lying through his teeth, but again - that sort of storytelling is just bad. Yes, you can have characters who lie about events in a story, but if you use their narrative as a vehicle for exposition, you don't get to contradict them entirely. The most you can do before I start calling a story a waste of my time is have the truth be ALMOST like the exposition tells me, but different in one crucial detail, and that detail can't be the origins of all named Menders. Not unless we want to call the whole of Ouroboros a hoax.
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Originally Posted by Olantern
One possibility I've considered all along is that the writing team hasn't decided on who the writer is yet, though the more letters get tossed around, the less likely that seems.
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And that's not a bad thing, to be honest. So long as it makes sense in the end (fingers crossed!), then that would actually make for a nice approach to it.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Or, Mender Lazarus could have been misinformed about the tether. I wouldn't put it past Silos to lie about something like that. Considering that "bad stuff" is supposed to happen if one proceeds to travel beyond their "tether", but Silos somehow seemed to avoid that "bad stuff". Could it be that there is no actual temporal tether and Silos made that up to help conceal what he's really doing? A Nemesis plotter by any other name still plots Nemesis-ly.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
There's a reason for it - Lazarus says that he is from the 76th century, "roughly 5600 years in your future" and is already at the end of his tether.
... In fact, all of the Menders are from the far future. That's why they recruit you - because "of all the Menders, you have the greatest access, because you're a native of THIS time." ... Now, granted, all of this comes from Lazarus and we can claim he's just lying through his teeth, but again - that sort of storytelling is just bad. |
I'm fairly sure that Mender Ramiel came back from further than 5600 years as well.
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
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Mender Ramiel came back from farther into the future expressly because your future super-Incarnate self broke the laws of nature to send him back, and that's in his own words. Also, if Mender Silos lied, then so did the Letter Writer when he described Lazarus. According to the letter found at Requiem's final stand, Lazarus has a shared temporal consciousness and routinely sends copies of himself past their tether to see what lies beyond the void or veil or whatever abstract word was used there that I can't quite remember.|
Originally Posted by Twisted Toon
Or, Mender Lazarus could have been misinformed about the tether. I wouldn't put it past Silos to lie about something like that. Considering that "bad stuff" is supposed to happen if one proceeds to travel beyond their "tether", but Silos somehow seemed to avoid that "bad stuff". Could it be that there is no actual temporal tether and Silos made that up to help conceal what he's really doing? A Nemesis plotter by any other name still plots Nemesis-ly.
I'm fairly sure that Mender Ramiel came back from further than 5600 years as well. |
The entire purpose of Ouroboros coming to our time is to recruit people who can operate in our own past. Yes, we can consider that, to quote Gregory House, "everybody lies," but a story where all the exposition is a lie just isn't a very good story to follow and it makes the reveals all incomprehensible and not very good.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Nemesis is known for making precise duplicates of himself. Mender Silos is the far-future version of Nemesis, so he still has the know-how to do that. All he'd have to do is jump backwards, make a clone of himself with a fresh jump range, and perform the feat recursively back to the present day. Easy. Also explains why he claims to know so friggin' much at any given point: the clones still communicate.|
Originally Posted by Twisted Toon
Or, Mender Lazarus could have been misinformed about the tether. I wouldn't put it past Silos to lie about something like that. Considering that "bad stuff" is supposed to happen if one proceeds to travel beyond their "tether", but Silos somehow seemed to avoid that "bad stuff". Could it be that there is no actual temporal tether and Silos made that up to help conceal what he's really doing? A Nemesis plotter by any other name still plots Nemesis-ly.
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| I'm fairly sure that Mender Ramiel came back from further than 5600 years as well. |
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
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Right. I'd considered the same, but also noted the previous lines. Its as if the first stage is his alone, but the reminder is there that he might come asking for help at some point.|
Originally Posted by Jasra
<Emphasis mine, this time>
If he has to do it alone, it doesn't sound like he'd be recruiting a team (though of course, the "do it alone" step may be over, and he's moved into more advanced plans). |
I've read Samuel_Tow's comments potentially negating the Dream Doctor. They are good points to consider. I'll have to put some thought into whether there can be a counterpoint to them. I do think whatever character LW ends up being, there will be greater familiarity with the character before the final revelation. By the way, we've already had one character revealed in the game who was only spoken about in text before: Hero 1.
Part of my considerations for the DD were what the "blade" and the shaved part of himself actually were. For purposes of this discussion, I've considered the possibility that the "blade" is a crystal, and the shaved portion of himself may be a version of himself bound to the crystal, bound to time. Samuel noted that Mender Lazarus used copies of himself. (though I've not seen the writings on how that was done). The revised cape mission shows a magical avatar of Hero 1 bound to a time capsule. Perhaps Dream Doctor has discovered similar possibilities.
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Well, there's Wolfgang Ubellman and maybe Holsten Armitage.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The only time travellers aside from Ourobors that I know of are Arachnons, and they're using a "Stargate."
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| Of course, Montague is said to be aware of changes to the timeline as they happen, but just what the devil this means is anyone's guess since pretty much everything about the Midnighters that isn't Mercedes Sheldon is a right mess of bad writing and leaps of logic. |
The suggestion of The Doctor is rather interesting. If the Coming Storm is coming now, then we know that Nemesis survives it. Not just immediately but more or less for all time. How does he do that? We know that he can upload his mind into machinery; he does that routinely. Likewise, he at least thought he could upload himself into a biological mental network. Given the general hand-waving about Nemesis, I suppose that he could also upload himself into a Batallion computer or machine or android. If he could do that, then the door is open for The Doctor to do that also. It might even be the other way around - She uploaded herself and he copied her method.
Hmmm... I'm not disliking that idea.
I like to think there's a Dev reading this and taking notes. Either the Devs read these threads and laugh, or they read them and go "heyyy... that's a good idea..."
I got such a kick out of Mender Ramiel's first mission when I re-upped and it dropped onto Cap's to-do list. Seriously, man? 'Cause I tell you what, if the fate of the entire universe depends on Captain Photon participating in a serious of loot raids? The universe is hosed, 'cos Homey don't play dat.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
I'm sticking with the Lady Grey and/or the Dark Watcher. Everything that has happened so far makes it appear that Vanguard is the group looking to fight ALL threats external to our world and dimension. I-21 shows that Vanguard is again going to be on the front lines against the Battalion, which is certainly the Coming Storm.
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
She'd use a more direct approach to accomplish her goals.
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Let´s see, the LW is stealthy, bold, willing to manipulate others and get his own hands dirty, practically enslaved Protean and can´t stand Silos/Nemesis... I´d say it´s (future) Manticore.
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Originally Posted by Mr_Samoa
I like to think there's a Dev reading this and taking notes. Either the Devs read these threads and laugh, or they read them and go "heyyy... that's a good idea..."
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@Redcap
ANARCHY = A Society that does not need government
114. Ahrouns do not appreciate my particular brand of humour, so I should stop bleaching bulls-eyes in their fur.
Re: the 'Tether'
What if Mender Siolos going back in time so far is the event that causes the "Coming Storm" in the first place? Maybe this race of beings who have attacked the Rikti and use Khelds for fuel, the Batallion, is like a race of creatures akin to the Langoliers? Perhaps the Batallion is tasked with the cosmic duty of cleaning up that which is broken in the universe... like a section of reality in which the cardinal laws of physics/time have been torn asunder?
Of course, this seems far too interesting to be the case. And, this would lend a bit more credence to the idea that the Dream Doctor is the Letter Writer since his experience with a cosmic entity like Rularuu (who seems to be a primal force like Galactus is in Marvel), might clue him in to the greater purpose of the Batallion as well as a way to stop them: Taking down the Menders (esp. Silos) so that they can stop meddling in time completely thus giving the Battallion no reason to "eat" our reality/time.
I was going to mull over some theories about divergent timelines and temporal mechanics but even though it makes NO sense...
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All I can think of now is Mender Silos shouting, "Scaring the little girl!?"|
Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
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"I have an important temporal event to Mend yesterday morning at 9 o'clock! And I FORBID YOU to fly us into some whistle-stop pocket dimension! You hear me!?"
"Would you please be quiet? You're scaring Flower Knight."
Way to derail, Scotty. 
Now I want to re-watch that movie and/or re-read the story.
Read it, the movie sucks compared to the story.
@Redcap
ANARCHY = A Society that does not need government
114. Ahrouns do not appreciate my particular brand of humour, so I should stop bleaching bulls-eyes in their fur.
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That's actually an awesome idea, even if it's not about who the Letter Writer is. The Eternal Nemesis arc pretty much proves that the original Nemesis is "dead," in the sense that the last of his body - his brain - is now dead and replaced with a machine. From that 45-50 Crimson mission where he shows up again and says "Have we met before? Or was this another Nemesis?" it's easy to infer that there are multiple of him now, and from the way that Nemesis speaks through multiple Fakes at the same time, it's pretty evident that he now has a shared consciousness among his automatons and probably no one real body at all. So it makes sense that if he found a way to travel through time, he could have done so through a chain of interlinked automatons every 5000 years or so, instead of one direct jump, and those could potentially keep him up-to-date on the future, as well. He'd only need about 200 Fakes to travel a million years, actually, which isn't all that many.|
Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Nemesis is known for making precise duplicates of himself. Mender Silos is the far-future version of Nemesis, so he still has the know-how to do that. All he'd have to do is jump backwards, make a clone of himself with a fresh jump range, and perform the feat recursively back to the present day. Easy. Also explains why he claims to know so friggin' much at any given point: the clones still communicate.
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Great idea. I love it!
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Originally Posted by Rodoan
I've read Samuel_Tow's comments potentially negating the Dream Doctor. They are good points to consider. I'll have to put some thought into whether there can be a counterpoint to them. I do think whatever character LW ends up being, there will be greater familiarity with the character before the final revelation. By the way, we've already had one character revealed in the game who was only spoken about in text before: Hero 1.
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It's like the realising that there are 90 more minutes left in the movie so there's no way the villain can be defeated right then and there. It's not a storyline argument, but more a meta-story one.
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Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
What if Mender Siolos going back in time so far is the event that causes the "Coming Storm" in the first place? Maybe this race of beings who have attacked the Rikti and use Khelds for fuel, the Batallion, is like a race of creatures akin to the Langoliers? Perhaps the Batallion is tasked with the cosmic duty of cleaning up that which is broken in the universe... like a section of reality in which the cardinal laws of physics/time have been torn asunder?
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It's not impossible, mind you. I just don't think I'd be thrilled at such a twist.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I just want to put forward my favourite theory, or whatever you might want to call it.
Take "Darrin Wade", turn the W upside down to become an M, and now rearrange the letters.
"Dr in a dreaM" - the Dream Doctor.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I've already done both... but thanks anyway (hence the re- in front of both of those). |
Originally Posted by Nos482
Read it, the movie sucks compared to the story.
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I'm thinking that Mender Ramiel is the Letter Writer.
He's there with you when Ouroboros falls into the sea. He has a tense relationship with Silos (as evidenced with his discussion with Silos at the end of the Incarnate Arc). He's the ONE Mender who sends you to the future to show you at least SOMETHING of what the Coming Storm will be like. He's also the one who is giving you access to what is going to be a huge boost to your abilities, rather than putting you through a massive "troubleshooting experiment."
Finally, you have to wonder about a Mender who takes the name "Thunder of God." Since the Menders tend to have been other people prior, and we've often wondered at the identities of the other Menders, though it seems the only one we've gotten confirmation on has been Silos/Nemesis (Ramiel hammers the last nail in that coffin). It wouldn't surprise me that Lazarus is Aeon (a Mender who has been said to take paradoxical copies of himself and fling them beyond his limits "just to see what happens?" I know somebody who both routinely makes paradoxical copies of himself AND does experiments just to see what happens!), and Tesseract is Silver Mantis (under her heel, indeed; she's even got that same intense glare Silver Mantis has). Just about the only one we don't really know is Twilight's Son (Yeah yeah, ha ha, the son of Twilight; funny, but has anybody met Twilight? Maybe we should focus on who in the game universe would be willing to sell out a whole lot of people to save his own skin).
It would be simply awful if the Letter Writer was some character who wasn't in the game until the reveal. It would be far more interesting if the Writer were somebody who was already in the game when they introduced the Menders, Ouroboros and the Letters.
Claiming that it's the Center or Requiem or a dozen other characters is interesting and all... But they just don't seem terribly interested. Requiem is obsessed with conquering the world. The Center is apparently obsessed with the same, only with him at the reigns, nobody else... In the end, the interested parties (and those who would know the most about them) are the Menders themselves. The Letter Writer knows deep, dark and intimate details about the Menders, and who else would know these things... But another Mender?
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.