**Spoilers** Why Not Revive Statesman With A Ritual?

I looked at the Paragon Wiki page for Arbiter Hawk and the mechanics of calling the Red Widow back from the dead. I note this bit of information:

>>>I see, then you would need two obols, one to send Charon across the river Styx and one to bring him back with the soul in question in tow. Is the soul expecting to be brought back? I don't believe so. Then might I suggest a part of you take the trip as well, and for that you will need a third obol.<<<

It has already been noted that our heroes have access to Time Travel through Ouroboros, and once Darrin Wade has Described In Detail His Brilliant Evil Plan, it would not even take Bill and Ted to hop back into the past and foil him in about a dozen ways.

But if I am to understand things correctly, Ms. Liberty is also soliciting folks to raise the Red Widow from the dead, whether she wants it or not.

(I am leaving aside the notion that the terminology used by the Devs in this quest again has real-life meaning in many cases, and they go far beyond the typical Orpheus Descending sort of Go Into Hades retrieval mission and utilize self-cutting and some other unfortunate actions during "the ritual" in this scenario. This isn't Manticore swimming in the floaty-floaty netherworld and grabbing the deceased and getting beamed out sort of stuff.)

So, Ms. Liberty, why not get Statesman instead?

I mean, other than the fact the Devs want him dead.

Statesman died happily and can be with his lost family again. It'd be a bit selfish to bring him back.

Obviously, with Statesman dead, we don't have anyone to stand up to Recluse. The only hope is to find a person who can temper Recluse' madness. Sure, she might possibly make him worse than before, but without Statesman around to save us, we have to take that chance.

*nod* yep, that's some ironclad reasoning.

What about reviving Miss Liberty, then? Did she die happily as well?

Hero-side, the Contact who gives you the obols warns you that some spirits prefer their afterlife and will not return no matter what. I haven't done the villain one (and probably won't) but it probably says the same thing somewhere in there.

Mind you, I still think the whole arc is garbage, but they did cover their bases here.

Leave it to us players to find the inevitable loophole in the story.

As a reader and a player, I never found Statesman's 'giving up' and going to die as credible. Does he just go into so much shock that he finds himself in a 'better place' and chooses dying over fighting for his life? Doesn't that rather betray the very values his daughter, his granddaughter, his wife and his closest contemporary recognise in him?

Instead, you get the 'but there are others who can fight the fight for you' bit which conveniently misses the point that beyond Recluse, Statesman has no equal. And oh yeah, he's an Avatar of freakin' Zeus. This is all just going to be accepted with no sense of righteous fury?

All I had to do was put myself in Statesman's shoes for a few seconds. If that had happened to me (ie I was too boneheaded to not recognise the Obvious Trap(tm) and ignore the fact Wade's been playing a master plan game which just might include taking him down), there is no way I would willingly enter the afterlife. By giving up, I'm betraying the very principles which I claim to fight for. Protecting the innocent. Upholding the law. Representing justice.

If the rationale is that Statesman was so tired of his life he just wanted to give up, then we the players didn't see it until the moment of his death.

I can happily throw down the gauntlet to Doctor Aeon to justify in a solidly consistent way how he thinks this works as a story, because we as players can and should be expected to get the gist of it from what we play.

And frankly Doc, it doesn't cut the mustard.

Just like I'd challenge him to answer why going to the Underworld, making a reasonable argument to Statesman and letting him reclaim the power that is his (Wade only stole the power, he doesn't own it) would fail beyond 'oh, he doesn't want to be'.

I swear, every time a reasonable response to the story events come up, the more embittered I am that we got a sub-standard story instead of this heavy-handed fan-fiction.



S.

Statesman is also well over 100 years old. Even though he's physically incarnate, he's still emotionally human. He must be emotionally tired, too. And remember, all this time Statesman thought he was the ONLY one who could stop Wade. He now realizes that you, the player, has just as much potential and he doesn't need to stay around forever because his principles and his efforts will be passed on to a new generation of heroes.

Not to mention, the later Statesman was only holding us back by trying to forbid access to greater power.

They should just do the same thing with Statesman as they did with Silver Agent in Astro City.

*spoilers*

Silver Agent was their finest hero, the one everyone looked up to, always did what was right.

Then in 1973 he was put on trial for the cold blooded murder of a foreign head of state who was also an alleged super villain. There was video of the assassination, but he always proclaimed his innocence.

He was found guilty, and the government pushed hard for the death penalty to send a message to the hero community. While he was in his cell waiting for execution, he disappeared and then reappeared a few seconds later. Not long after they took him to the chair and the execution was carried out. After his death, of course they find out that all the evidence was faked, and he was railroaded by the very man he was supposed to have murdered.

However, while the Silver Agent was in his cell, a group from the future with time travel technology took him to their time so he could help them fight off a massive invasion. He has many more adventures, travels through time and appears after his death in 1973 to save the day many more times. But he knows that he'll have to go back to 1973 eventually to face his death, which he does willingly, appearing back in the cell awaiting execution seconds after he left.



In CoH, time travel isn't that unusual. There's nothing to say what happens to Statesman between the time he storms off from his daughter's funeral and when he arrives at the ruins to confront Darrin Wade. Heck, if he knew what he was walking into, it would make the whole scene more powerful, instead of him blundering into an amateurish trap.



.

This probably would have been better mentioned in one of those other threads, but has anyone noticed that Monica's text bubbles in WWD5 are the same color as some of those in WWD3?

States probably didn't make the decision to not struggle entirely by his own will.

Putting aside the concerns about "Who Will Die?", I have to think that just deciding Willy-Nilly to revive someone is a decision that could have consequences greater than you might be expecting.

I was never a big Buffy fan, but one of the most powerful bits ever in that show (for me, anyway) was during the "singing" episode. Buffy is still coming to terms with being revivified and she sings "Heaven... I think I was in Heaven..."

The looks on her friends' faces as that sinks in and they begin to realize the enormity of what they've done to her by resurrecting her is a moment that every hero group ought to witness before they decide that they know best about whether life or death is a preferable state of being for another person.

Forget ritual, just last night I was wondering...

"Why can't the Empath user Ressurect him?"

"What about the Thermal Radiation user who can use Power of the Phoenix?"

These powers bring you back from the dead, and they're not being used! Did Wade somehow limit these characters from using these powers?

Quasadu....

Is that the ritual that responds to your powers by saying 'Because'?

Why won't my powers work? Because.

Why won't my empathy work? Because.

I could kinda go on, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel at that point....



S.

The answer is not "because", it is "because the soul refuses to return". Wade's ritual, in Statesman's case, had nothing to do with it.

Yes, this is A Wizard Did It ad-hocery but it does satisfy the complaints. Whether or not the work is served by an axiom that makes death and resurrection arbitrary is another question.

The reason States won't be brought back using this is simple, no matter how much i hate it personally.

When he comes back, he comes back a mortal. He won't be the States we knew, and it is very unfair to put him through the rest of his life if we can't figure out a way to get his powers back 1st.

Let his death stand for a reason, not bring him back and have age/time torment him for years, esp after he already lived well over a 100 years on this planet.

As much as i'd like to revive him, let him be with the loved ones who have been waiting on him so long. The people we all know he missed for many decades.