A brief, speculative muse on the Coming Storm

I've heard rumours that the Coming Storm is the "Battalion" - but quite who, or what, this is, I've no idea. I suspect I'm not alone in that either.

But I may have inadvertently stumbled on something that either ties in with the Coming Storm or actually has the potential to BE the Coming Storm: The invasion of the Titans.

Titans as many of you may already know where the supernatural beings that fathered the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. Perhaps the best known are Cronus, the father of Zeus - alongside Prometheus who gave fire to humanity, and Atlas, who holds up the Sky.

You might be familiar with Prometheus and almost certainly with Atlas, in game already. Atlas... there's a bit of a landmark to him in one of the minor zones in game I believe, and Prometheus appears somewhere too.

So... I wanted to make a new Titan Weapon character and so I googled a couple of links on Titans - I first learned of the Titans as a kid and that was a while ago so I wanted to recharge the old grey matter a bit. But what I noticed was that none of the main Titan names are available. That got me thinking a bit - and I tried them on several servers. None of them are available - and spelling variants are taken too. Not every one, but the majority.

Other connections that may be significant is that Prometheus is apparently helping humankind in Ouroboros - where we are told to prepare for this Coming Storm by Mender Silos.

Wild speculation? Maybe, but it could be a very interesting story: Titans, the original Incarnates from the dawn of time, are coming to the End of Time to destroy Silos and his forces and reclaim the Universe, and it's up to us to stop them or fall under their capricious sway.

Well it's a nice dream anyhow...

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

The Battalion are the guys that wrecked the Nictus Empire and chuck Shadow Cysts into their spaceship engine like so much coal. They're such bad dudes they even beat (not) Lord Nemesis in the far-flung future and he cooked up the Ouroborous scheme.

Pretty sure they're going to be coming to eat the world like a fleet of Galactuses. Praetoria can only keep on being the place Incarnates keep raiding for so long--gotta bring out some kind of alien super-Incarnates.

There isn't a whole lot we definitively know about the Battalion (much of what others have posted is extrapolated from fairly vague statements in game and may not end up being accurate) but there isn't anything to suggest that they are the titans. The only titan in-game at this time is Prometheus and he at least claims to be on our side, though he's a jerk about it.

FYI the Atlas referred to so often in-game is not the mythical titan, but a (really big) human hero who lost his life defending Paragon City against a German sneak attack in 1941 (which seems to be Primal Earth's closest analogue to the real world's Pearl Harbor attack.) A number of characters in game have names taken from mythology (Talos, Ajax, and pretty much every named Warrior are examples) but are unrelated to the myths that inspired them.

In regards to the original post, I wouldn't be surprised, really. It would be cool to fight the Titans, and it does work to a theory I had on Prometheus while discussing various spoilerific things in issue 22 (which I'll leave untouched until it actually comes along)

My theory is that Prometheus' excuse for starting the war, which is an unsettling grudge towards Tyrant and The Well of Furies, is a little too... pathetic to be believable.

From what we know of Batallion, they are a terrifyingly powerful entity or group of entities who seek out great power to fight, defeat and destroy. One reference I remember being told about is that the Rikti have encountered the scouts of the Batallion before (may be wrong on this, I keep forgetting to ask for a reference when told) and were sorely beaten. Seeing this, the Batallion ignored them and went on to do other things.

This kinda got me thinking. The Batallion go forth to seek power, and do this by watching where the Shivans go. If the inhabbitants of that planet can fight the Shivans, they make a note of it then proceed to attack to test their might.

Prometheus explains that the intention of Tyrant was to protect both the inhabbitants of Primal and Praetorian Earth from the Coming Storm, and was doing what he was doing to gain favour from the Well. By becoming its champion, he would be granted enough power to fight off Batallion and keep both earths safe. Prometheus further explains that the Well has a similar ideal, but because it values the strength and will of those connected to it, the Well will only give all that power to those it can truly trust; it wants to be sure that the guy with the power will stop the coming storm, and not just go gun crazy and rule earth.

I started to think, then, that the War with Praetoria wasn't exactly the best of things. Given most circumstances, the entire situation could have been solved diplomatically if it had the chance. Really, the only reason why we were going to war is because Prometheus flat out told us that Cole was evil and had to be stopped, only telling us the 'true' story when we were too far into the conflict to stop and make negotiations.

Looking back on the history of the game, two things stuck out: The Golden Age of Superheroes and the Power Crash.

When Marcus and Stephan gained their powers from the Well, they also opened Pandora's Box. The event unleashed the creativity, spirit and power to allow various people to gain Super powers, going on to become heroes and villains and start off the age of Super Heroes. When Positron uses the Flames of Prometheus to restore power to Paragon City after the Power Crash, the effect was kind of the same, wasn't it?

As stated by the original poster, not much information is known about the Batallion, including how long they've been around for, and given how willing Prometheus is to send humanity into an interdimensional war, I had a rather extreme idea.

What if Prometheus knew who the Batallion were and wasn't Humanity's biggest fan. Maybe, in order to become a blip on the Batallion's radar, he planned on giving the Flames of Olympus to Humanity to give them powers, but not enough to stop Batallion and save them. Humanity would be wiped out, and Prometheus would laugh in his own little lair.

Recognising his plan, Zeus narrowly stops him, punishes him via the aforementioned hawk eating innards sentence, and then seals the flames in Pandora's Box to keep it safe from the rest of the world.

In the present day, he finds himself at a loss. While he's made humanity noticeable, as according to plan, the Well of Furies is making it difficult by making everyone stronger.

How to stop it? Play the Well's own ideals against itself. Send Humanity into a war that would drain the champion and dilute his power among the many Incarnates involved, also providing a suitable distraction so they aren't prepared at all for the Batallion in all their glory. Humanity dies, Prometheus wins.

I'm more than likely wrong, but that's the theory I found myself making when I read up about everything.

EDIT:

Actually, come to think of it, it could have been an attempt to wipe out the Olympians, with Humanity being expendable in the process. If the Olympians weren't already in the scope of the Batallion, then more power would be needed to prove them otherwise. As history dictates, the three big brothers of Olympus weren't the best of people. Hades, infact, is considered the good brother in some regards. Zeus may have just been fearful, not wanting to perish at the hands of Batallion, so, he stopped Prometheus before it was too late

I read some dialog or script from an npc or exploration badge that refered to Rularuu as the coming storm. Rularuu is also the last reflection you fight on the map when you travel forward in time to open up your Alpha slot. That may not mean anything in of itself but that being what the storm is, is a possibility.

For those of you that have her on ignore or are purposely ignoring her responses, Golden Girl has answered your questions.




***SPOILER***

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden Girl From what we know so far, they're an Incarnate "race" that gain power by consuming the Wells of other species - they're also sometimes called "Battalion", without the "the", and treated as if they/it were a single entity. In this form, it might be connected to the "Dark Father" the old Shivans mention in the Drowning in Blood Trial, who has made their "Mother" it's "bride" - possibly referring to the Shivan Well being consumed by Battalion. They say that now it's hunting through space for the "Blue Maiden" - which is hinted to be Earth and the human Well. The Battalion also burned the entire Kheldian race as fuel for their starships, so the basic theme of this threat seems to be consuming/devouring, which is a logical step up from the theme of enslavement that's the basis for the Praetorian part of the Incarnate storyline - where Tyrant and the loyalists are trying to enslave the multiverse, the Battalion are trying to devour it. Quote: Originally Posted by Iannis Praetoria can only keep on being the place Incarnates keep raiding for so long--gotta bring out some kind of alien super-Incarnates. Well, they're kinda connected - the whole reason Tyrant has been chosen as the champion of the Well is because the Well is looking for protection from the Battalion. A Well's "mind" is shaped by the thoughts/hopes/dreams/fears of the race that creates it, so it can change over time - and right now, the human Well is dominated by thoughts of power, the lust for power, and the uses of power - events like the two world wars, the nuclear arms race, the Hamidon wars, Reichsman's victory on Axis Earth and so on have shifted it's "mind" to focus on power on a vast scale, used in a ruthless manner, because that's what human minds have been focusing on in the 20th and 21st centuries. And because the Well isn't good or evil, it's shaped by positive and negative thoughts - so, for example, both supporters and opponents of the nuclear option would help shape its "mind", as they'd both be focusing on the same idea of the massive use of power involved in a world wide nuclear conflict - just like the Allies fear of an Axis victory would carry the same weight as the Axis powers hopes of victory, as both sides were focused on the idea of global conquest. So now that human thoughts have made the Well's "mind" focused on massive power, it's responding to people who use massive power, such as Tyrant. Basically, Tyrant is the "ideal" human in the eyes of the Well, because he's so powerful and uses his power on a world wide scale, and is willing to use it in the wider multiverse too - he's the personifcation of modern human's thoughts about power, so the Well has made him its champion to protect it from the Battalion.