The fate of Praetorian Earth in Dark Astoria? (spoilers)

The loyalists who stop a serial killer, prevent a hospital being blown up, break up an organised crime syndicate, get IVy fixed so she can help the people of neutropolis, and stop arachnos blowing up one of Keyes' reactors? Those are the main threat to Praetoria?

Good thing we have the resistance to save the day by detonating a neutron bomb in nova praetoria! Or maybe by blowing up the only source of clean water in the city!

I'm not sure you're going to listen, but could you please please please quit talking about Beta stuff on the general forums?

They should have just waited for Tyrant to do it for them:

There's a spoiler warning in the thread title

There's a Spoiler Warning about Dark Astoria in the thread title. Not beta content

But thank you for answering exactly as I knew you would (emoticon and all)

And it would be poor writing to portray as war as only having two sides. Fortunately, that's not what we have here. The conflict is not fully Primal vs. Praetorian or Reistance vs. Loyalist. There are characters on all sides that want to do the right thing.

There's only one right side, and anyone who wants to do the right thing has to be on it

...

You have no idea what a neutron bomb is, do you?

Perhaps in Golden World, but the rest of don't share in your objective morality.

The Praetorian storyline appears to support the good vs evil battle

Responsibility Loyalists are the "banality of evil": people willing to look the other way and do the work required to keep a society running even under an oppressive regime just so long as they don't personally have to get their hands dirty. They may not deserve to be shoved up against a wall now that the revolution has arrived, but they ain't no kind of good guys.

That would be the Wardens. Of course, you could say much the same thing about them, as they were more than willing to benefit from the Crusaders' combat expertise and such, so long as they didn't have to blow up any civilians to benefit the cause.

Keep in mind the creatures in DA are NOT from Primal Earth's Furies. Primal's Furies probably have no clue they're here. Nor would they probably be listened to if they tried to communicate with them.

The Talons are a result of Praetorian's Furies being driven insane by Emperor Cole's choices and actions. Nobody knows where the Praetorian Furies are, or if they're even alive anymore.

And the Talons, like someone else pointed out, don't care about the morality of those they punish, only that it's percieved that they have commited 'sins' whether it's to someone else, or or even just something they personally regret. Following Diabolique into a place as miserable as Dark Astoria... well, you can see where it all starts going downhill from there.

Edit, which keeps me scratching my head about how they got into Primal Earth's past...

Resistance Wardens would be akin to superheroes in Primal.

So, you're basically saying the same thing as GG but in reverse.

Loyalists were oppressing people to keep them safe. That doesn't make them heroes. It doesn't even make them right, except of course, in their own mind.

But then one could say that the wardens breaking the laws (though they didnt kill) trying to bring a government down.

Which reminds me of a quote that I'm sure Im butchering (and forgot who said it, so cant find it) "Try to change the government and win, you're heroes and patriots. Try to change the government and fail, you're criminals and terrorists."

Now I know I screwed it up, but it's close enough.

Only time will tell, and right now it looks like the Wardens are winning...people know they've been lied to and oppressed. They know their government is willing to kill them if they think it's for the good of the people. Loyalist to that type of government usually isn't seen as the heroes.

So, GG has a point. Don't like the methods of various Resistance? Makes sense. Some of the crusaders are in fact in it just for the violence (like some of the loyalists are in it for the power).

But they all find out Cole and his praetors are lying, power hungry, and oppressing the people. To stay with that gets one looked at as a villain.

Are they different Furies, though? Given that the Well of Furies is a pan-dimensional thing, and the Furies are Incarnates that are now acting against the Well due to a disagreement with its current Modus Operandi, the Furies (and their Talon servants) could certainly also be pan-dimensional. That, or the Furies are sending their servants through interdimensional portals (and through time) in order to act against the Well and its multi-dimensional interests.

Possibly the Furies have access to one of the other 13 methods of time travel that have not yet been revealed?

(Which raises the question- where is the Furies' base of operations? Are they acting out of an Ouroboros-like pocket dimension?)

That's actually where my 'suspension of disbelief' has lain when it comes to seeing the Talons in Cimerora. Yes, they're seperate, but potentially the same (presuming the implied 'The Well' is the same for ALL humans- and has been supported so far) and go where the root of 'sin' exists (that being Mot and his influence, in this case). I just wanted to see if I was the only one who thought about that possibility.

As an aside, if 'The Well' covers all of humanity, does this also have anything to do with the Rikti? Based on everything we've seen, they may have broken away from the concept of a 'Well' alltogether, and because of such, bested Battallion.

Not sure what that says about humanity as a whole :-/

Anyway, based on everything I've read about them maybe the Furies don't intervene because they are curious, and the fate of Praetorian and Primal Earth are so intertwined at this point.

That's my personal theory anyway.

Nonsense. There's a big difference between knowing in your gut that a government is evil and actually having tangible proof about it. Try running the Responsibility story-line again, not until the very last mission are you shown proof that Emperor Cole is directly involved in any sort of shady business at all. Or are you saying that every police officer who worked during Nixon's administration should be shoved against a wall as well?

And before you question the Responsibility PC's actions, keep in mind that this story arc doesn't care what faction you belong to. You don't always have to take the Loyalist side to act responsively - in fact, one of my PCs refused to murder Cleo and Kang "for the greater good", taking the rebels' side two times out of three and still considers himself a Loyalist, just not a puppet of whoever happens to outrank him.

Heck, even Power Loyalists can probably be considered good guys, apart from one wild night out where you drank a little too much. It was probably a dream anyway, filled with cat-girls and spider women, and why would a Top Dog ever rob a bank? Yep, that never happened, so Power Loyalists are good guys too

The only thing that really stinks about Praetoria is the treatment they give to the Seers, but if what we saw happening to those women in First Ward has already happened in the past and in plain sight, it's understandable that people would demand them psychic ladies to be properly leashed. Still stinks though, but only in the same way we Primals place those infected with a deadly contagious disease in isolation, whether they like it or not.

Again, I call you on that. Half the PC Warden' career was spent cleaning up the messes of the Crusaders, culminating with a fight against Calvin Scott at the last mission (unless you think it's a good idea to blow up the only source of clean water in the city). Wardens are outlaws, but they're not terrorists, and if they won't compromise their ideals for Emperor Cole or the Syndicate, neither will they do it for the likes of Calvin Scott.

I'm not sure this is true, superheroes operate within the law, whereas Wardens break the law whenever they find it unjust. They're motivated by the need to help people, much like good superheroes, but they don't share the same code. They're more like the A-Team or Robin Hood, roguish but with good intentions.

No. The trials are about pre-emptively destroying Praetoria and, apparently, feeding the population to Hamidon. This may be understandable, considering we're at war (or close to, anyway), but that doesn't make it 'just'. And it's about as heroic as a private mercenary company invading a sovereign nation.

But, you know, the fact that you think the resistance Crusaders are good guys make me laugh. You should really come join us in the Rogue Isles. You will find the lack of self-denial much less stressful.

So... are you accepting that the heroic side in Praetoria consists of responsability loyalists and warden resistance? Or are you saying that there is no heroic side in Praetoria?

Interestingly, my loyalist saved Vanessa DeVore from Mother Mayhem, because she's just like me: She accepts that her allies are extremists, but is determined to try to guide them onto a better path from within. DeVore accepts that some of them are just too broken to change, and acknowledges that those have to be stopped. But she will do what she can to straighten out her side.

The Armiral Sutter, Apex and Tin Mage TFs suggest that we're not really being pre-emptive in the Trials

The Keyes Trial gives us control of the sonic fences before the loyalists can use them as a weapon against the people, just like they did in First Ward - it's one of the main reasons for the Trial, along with the need to stop another crazed loyalist sending the reactors into meltdown.

All the problems loyalists face come from their own actions, and the Trials are karma on an epic scale as we sweep through their evil empire, smashing the dictatorship at every turn, and giving the Praetorians their freedom again.
The total rout and humilaition of the loyalists is one of the heroic highlights of the whole game - instead of the necessary game mechanic of the stalemate with the Rogue Isles, we actually get to permanently defeat a cosmic scale villain along with his henchpeople and his armies, and liberate an entire world - it's kinda hard to top that.

Who built the fences in the first place? Oh, the loyalists.

Arachnos also tried to take down one of Keyes reactors, as I mentioned previously. Who stopped them? Oh, the loyalists.

Did you ask them if they wanted your idea of freedom first?

I would rather see them deal with the Rikti first, rather than rushing through the Praetorian plot and making all the stupid decisions that have happened as a result.

I'd be very surprised if the game just leaves Praetoria hanging at the mercy of the Hamidon.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet a Praetorian Hami-Raid experience is coming down the pike (which would give Blue, Red, and Gold sides all a Hami). Don't know that they'll necessarily Incarnate it, but it's another possibility.

In fact, we were ordered to stand down and let the reactor be destroyed, but Anti-Matter and the loyalist protagonist (ie. the player) wasn't about to let that happen. They defied a direct order from Cole, to prevent the massive casualties the destruction of the reactor would have caused.

The point of the responsibility story line is to slowly build up just how corrupt the system is. At first, you just run around saving civilians from being massacred by resistance nutjobs. Then you meet Mother... and you get the first taste of just how unstable this corner pillar of the Regime really is. And your first opportunity to oppose the regime from within, without changing sides. Then you meet the glorified Praetor Berry who is lauded as a genius but obviously doesn't care about anything but himself.

And that's when you start getting orders to 'let people die to unite the population against the resistance', and you have the option to start working more directly against those orders and save the people that Cole obviously no longer cares about. As an NPC tells you (I forget who): "I admire his vision, but not the thing he has become."

The point of Praetoria isn't whether the regime is right or wrong. The point of Praetoria is that the people behind it have become (or always were) wrong. "Rescuing" the poor deluded Praetorians and teaching them the wonders of western democracy becomes the point of the iTrials, but I think this is doing a disservice to the theme of Going Rogue and, as others have pointed out, suggest that the original idea of Going Rogue has been largely discarded at this point. Which is sad.

Oh certainly not. And I don't really like the attempt to "humanize" Cole's regime by revealing his deal with Hamidon. I liked Tyrant better when he was just being a totalitarian jerk. Now it's revealed that everything he and Mother Mayhem have cooked up might actually be justified? I think that kinda cheapens the horror of Praetoria, and paints all resistance members as unwitting villains, which I don't think was the point at all.