Durakken
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Posts
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Quote:Being a dick doesn't make you less good. It just makes you a dick.Originally Posted by Decorum
In the first novel, Stefan is portrayed as quite a bit more dickish than Cole, who is portrayed as quite dickish to begin with.
But then, that's the novels, not the game lore. -
Quote:Tartarus is a Titan and is the brother of Cronos... Gaia's his both of their's mother. In greek, and many other mythologies, places can be entities too. It's a bit weird but it's true. Tartarus is actually not hell per say... Hades is the entire underword, while Tartarus is the place for those special enough to be needing extra watching and such. The Elysion fields are heaven. The general hades is more akin to purgatorial hell than Tartarus is... but not important ^.^ so let's move on.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
that's better
Recluse is an incarnate of Tartarus. In Greek mythology, Tartarus is essentially hell (where souls go after death if they need to be punished). It's also 'historically' where various (still living) entities were locked away to protect the rulers of the earth at the time. For example, the titan Cronus locked the Cyclopes in Tartarus. Zeus released the Cyclopes, and locked most of the titans in Tartarus when he rose to power.
While Tartarus is a place, it's also a force. Not quite a god or titan, but not inanimate, either. (And therefore, incarnates in CoH aren't necessarily granted power by gods specifically.)
Hesiod says that a hammer falling from heaven to Earth would taken 9 days. Homer asserts that Tartarus is as far below Earth as Earth is below heaven. Tartarus literally means "deep place". -
Status Stefan Richter -
Primal Earth: Turned in to Lord Recluse
Praetorian Earth: Killed for no known reason in the Well of Furies
Axis America: Unknown
Also it should be noted that Recluse is or was not a bad guy if you read his bio. He was knocked out and washed to sea by the Cave's collapse in Primal Earth (might have killed him in Praetorian Earth or something else could have happened to him that prevented him from re-emerging without dying, but as far as info states he is dead) and then while figuring out how to make humanity better he joined Arachnos and slowly turned "evil" over time. Likely caused by Thanatos? (I think that's his god's name) ... So he is a lot more like Two-Face where he is a good man gone bad due to some psychosis or something and has two conflicting sides warring inside him.
Also Imperious is not Statesman or Marcus Cole as far as we have been told. He is another Zeus Incarnate and as they pick who they incarnate in it would stand to reason they choose similar personalities/appearances or change them to fit what they like. -
Quote:#1. there is this one called pixelated I found that looks much better but it would take too much work to fix it for a wiki as it had been turned into a blog format... also i think some of the things were taken out so it might of been a waste to even try.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
1: Actually, I think it looks nice. You should be able to customize anything you like with any of the skins, but the one you've got there looks good.
2: While the domain is largely irrelevant, I think you should name it just one thing, rather than FBSA and Vanguard. The Federal Bureau of Super-powered Affairs would probably make the most sense considering the content. Venguard are more concerned with Rikti than with superpowered being in general.
3: The logo size appears to be defined by this CSS:
Code:#p-logo, #p-logo a, #p-logo a:hover { width: 180px; height: 72px; }
I know i can theoretically alter anything I want, but messing with messy code you didn't right that isn't well documented and you don't have a very good background with isn't that smart when your doing this lol ^.^ though if nothing else for a logo and banner i could just theoretically make a new div and move it wherever i want.
#2. Yeah I was thinking about going with FBSA Files but something was off with that. Maybe Portal Corp or something like that as they'd have to keep files on this stuff too and probably would work better with the color scheme. I'm up for suggestions though i think short and easily identifiable is best (which fbsavanguard isn't... just more or less a place holder... it was free anyways)
#3. Tried that ^.^ unless you're talking about another css files as it is spread over 5 css files or something like that >.> it didn't change anything as far as I saw, but it might have been the case where it didn't update when i tried it as the site did (i worked on something for like 2 hours before i noticed that the reason it wasn't working is cuz it didn't update v.v quickly)
edit: yup it's just that it takes a wile to refresh...so now Any logo banner combination can be put in there ^.^ -
So... I decided to create a separate CoH lore wiki. The reason being I think there needs to be one and I felt it was obvious I wasn't going to convince the people working on paragonwiki of that (not trying to paint anyone in a bad light, everyone is mondo-helpful over there, just stating the why...), so I just created it myself. ^.^
Anyways... There are a few glitches that are a mystery to me with a few things, but nothing serious that most people will notice so decided it was ready to be shown and ready to open up to people.
#1. Let me know what you think about the skin. I like it well enough personally, but I have no idea how much of it I can actually alter and it was the one I liked the most.
#2. The site name. What do you think? Again it's alright, but I get the feeling that it could be named something better. I was gonna go with FBSA, but found that taken grrr. Anyways, not really worried about it as registering a domain and transfering the paths is hardly a challenge so if you have any ideas on it let me know.
#3. Logo... it sucks. If anyone want to take a crack at making a better one the image dimension apparently are 72x180, but not sure how accurate that is. When you click on it you can see the out line around it. Changing the size in a template didn't do anything to it so i assume it's perma set to 72x180 (also the current image is 80x200 and click on it shows that it is off center as if the rest of the image was cut off on the right side)
#4. Please Contribute ^.^ and Cite anything you can. I want to make sure that every bit of info can be tracked back to it's source so that we can get the best understanding of the whole possible. Also please use the same formatting already established for the various areas (like all characters like statesman should have similar looking pages) This can be pretty easily done by going to the particular page, copying it and pasting it in the new page you create and just changing the parts that are different... It saves a lot of time.
Anyways come join in and contribute...
edit: i forgot to post the site addy lol...
It's http://www.fbsavanguard.org/ -
Quote:Reading isn't your best friend, is it?Originally Posted by Decorum
No, plus two, like it said. GR isn't marketed as a "stand alone" like CoV was, you have to already have CoX for it.
Not to mention, though, that if you've been playing since Day One, you also have several Veteran Reward slots. Is that what you meant?
CoH = 8 slots per server
CoV = +4 slots per server
together = 12 slots per server
GR = +2 slots
Vet Rewards = +6 slots
together = 8 slots
if you play on 1 server. All together = 20 slots on one server. -
So... if you've been playing since day one and got both CoH and CoV... you should have 12 slots per server. Plus 8 extra placeable slots after getting going rogue... So if you play on 1 server you should have 20 character slots of the 36 available.
Even games that make you pay for slots you have monthly don't allow you to even have 20 slots so... -
look up 'New AT: Pets!' by me... It would work, but i doubt it would ever come into game.
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If i remember right with CoV you got 1 or 2 extra slots to use...
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On the one hand i agree that the amount of time is a coutner incentive, because it has worked that way at least for me. I came up with an idea and the idea simply wouldn't work without something in the game existing... looked through all the stuff and found it in vet rewards... that vet reward was I think 3 to 6 months away at the time and that just annoyed me.
On the other hand... the Veteran reward is meant to be a reward for sticking to the game. The problem that this game incadentally created with vet rewards is that they are largely aesthetic or are just QoL items that while nice aren't necessary... and that is what a lot of the game's players actually want as regular content. And some vet rewards are complete flops to some while others are great to others... My next vet reward is the boxing set and I dn't see how or where I'll ever use it so It's a waste to me...along with the following 12 months till I get to the one i want.
There have been solutions to this suggested, like have a selection or something like that, but they people would pick all the good ones first, which i say "so?" to, but then people will start complaining when the good ones run out anyways.
I would love a solution, but I just can't see one that doesn't take away from the idea of it's for veterans that doesn't eventually just end with people whining anyways. -
It's best just to ignore it as if you don't then a lot of the reast of the game doesn't make much sense... what do I mean?
2002 = rikti Attack
How long has it been since that date according to the game?
According to updates and Lore it is exactly present day.
According to the night/day cycle... It is around the year 2298 -
Quote:You know, the whole, "Nazis would exist without Hitler" thing shows how right I a about the difference between knowledge and understanding, because when I said "Without hitler there would be no Nazis" it would be assumed that you all would understand what I meant is not the exact words that I said.Originally Posted by Mylia
Sorry to cut some of your post but to Durraken...here is a interesting book to read for you clickie(not the greatest but good)
Ms Rachel sums up how the Third Riech came about cause they were the Thule Society before that. Reading books help enlighten and make valid points.
What I meant is, before Hitler joined the Nazi party and started his propaganda, they were a small political party that no one cared about. Without Hitler Nazis would likely have never became such a big political party or win any election, and likely would either died out or remained small to this day. So in the form that most people know the Nazi Party would not have existed. -
Quote:These are not my rules. This what we automatically assume with any work of fiction that takes place on any thing we have foreknowledge of. It's basic human knowledge and psychology.Originally Posted by Decorum
...method of looking at this.
These are fictional systems following comic books super-heroes. Your way of looking at it is not the only way. In a multiversal system, your choices are infinite. The way you're looking at it is the Marvel way. Precedent is there for non-divergent dimensions that are very similar without there being some kind of divergence point or points (as I mentioned, the DC way).
I take issue with "nearly but not completely exact". That's nothing but something out of your own head. "Close, with a lot of details changed" is more like it, and even that doesn't HAVE to be.
In short, you're trying to force your own rules inappropriately on something fictional in order to fit your own questions/theory. Hammering the proverbial square peg into the inevitable round hole, as it were.
And again, all you are saying is "it fiction they can do anything" and again while that is true, when authors do that it more often than not results in being universally considered a bad thing. That is because we make those automatic assumptions. -
Quote:How is it that you completely missed everything I said? 1 little iota had to do with the Holocaust in that post tangentially. The whole point of that post was to show why and where I was wrong about my idea about where the divergence took place.Originally Posted by Old_Gray
I think you need to define what you mean by 'the Holocaust' because you are simply assuming that in the Reichsman timeline, it occured as it did here. Even here, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, what we think of as 'the Holocaust', was not determined until after World War Two had started. Many Germans, shoot, many Europeans and an uncomfortable number of Americans thought the Nuremberg Laws and the isolation of Jews were perfectly acceptable and even necessary. It does NOT mean that they wanted the Jews dead. Who is to say that 6 death camps ever existed in the alternate timeline? The Germans did not exactly advertise what they were doing, either, and intentionally misled both Germans and the conquered populations. For God's sake, they made Jewish prisoners send home postcards saying what a great time they were having, just before they sent them to the gas chambers. But that is in THIS universe. Again, perhaps the sterilization route was taken. Perhaps Reinhard Heydrich was killed sooner, and never organized Wannsee. Perhaps Adolf Eichmann never existed to carry out Heydrich's grand vision. We just do not know.
And perhaps Reichs Cole saw in Germany, a country of culture, a country with a glorious military history, a country full of pride that had been pointlessly humiliated and deserved his support. Perhaps he saw America as abandoning its promise to Germany to negotiate a just peace, and abandoned his birth place for his new home.
And can I just say that as a Pole, it is not easy to write nice things about early and mid 20th century Germany. :-/
The other Coles, presented as they are, wouldn't never be ok with the Holocaust. If they found out it was happening they'd stop it. This is because they as far as been told have virtually the same past. My reading of Reichsman description led me to think he did to, but rereading has shown it hasn't and one who didn't...who was more corrupted and disaffected as Reaichsman Cole seems to have been might given the proper coaxing. -
Quote:The important information I need from there is a reference to the Elite Five and Surviving Eight. It seems it was on the original website or something like that, but i can find no source for the information, let alone, mentioned very often.... and I've been looking for hours now.Originally Posted by TonyV
A lot of it probably came from the novels, Web of Arachnos and The Freedom Phalanx. They deal extensively with Statesman's background.
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Quote:Praetorian history is somewhat funny in that aspect... a quick gleaning appears to put the divergence point in 1823 when Paragon City was instead named Shroud city... and this had no effect at all on the world until Cole randomly killed Stefan at the Well of the Furies... which had no effect known... until MacArthur launched a nuke at Korea and then everything starts going in another direction...Originally Posted by Ironik
I see where you got Far East -- it says so on the official timeline. However, there are two things I think you're conflating, "east" and "Far East," and somehow combining them into the search for the Well.
After WWI, "east" would've been anywhere on the other side of the English Channel, because England is almost certainly where Cole was taken after the mustard gas incident. I don't recall where the novel said he was exposed to the chemical, but it was probably somewhere in France or Belgium, in what was then known as the Western Front. So France, Italy, Greece... these are all east from Cole's starting point after WWI.
The official timeline says "1918 - Marcus Cole, who becomes Statesman, travels the Far East." The only way he would be strong enough to do that is if he had already opened Pandora's Box. I also think the reason that it says that is because the Pandora's Box notion occurred to the Devs after they wrote the timeline. Statesman's original backstory said he'd gotten his abilities because "he'd mastered his inner will." That really sounds a lot like typical comic book shorthand for "learned amazing techniques from wise teachers of the Orient." It's been used by many characters from The Shadow to Iron Fist to recent versions of Batman, to name a few. Now, of course, the "mastered his inner will" line is being waved aside as Cole prevaricating.
Normally that leads to slight incongruities when trying to retcon a new spin on an original story -- the most famous recent example being Obi Wan Kenobi's lame offering of "What I told you was true... from a certain point of view." -- but in this case, it actually supports the notion that Cole is, at heart, a bad guy who somehow managed to beat the odds on Primal Earth and become a good guy, where all his other incarnations turned out evil.
So it seems that Stefan Richter and the name Paragon City is the reason Cole turned out as Statesman...who would have thought. -
Quote:first, why would you add "says one and only one:" That makes no sense...Originally Posted by Decorum
You're wrong from the beginning because you make the assumption that alternate/parallel dimensions must be the result of some divergence point. Ain't necessarily so. In fact, that's the way Marvel Comics do it in What If? and Exiles, but all their dimensions aren't so. DC, on the other hand, virtually ignores the concept and things simply develop differently in different dimensions. The reason is "because they did".
I highly suspect that what we're looking at here is not What If? but rather the old-school Earth 1/Earth 2 thing from DC. They're simply different. No divergence point needed or given.
In fact, given all the discrepancies mentioned in this thread, I'd be almost assured of it.
Secondly, I don't care where the divergence is. It may have happened 2000 years ago like in the case of the Rikti or if it was yesterday at midnight. It doesn't matter. When you're looking at a history you look at the Prime history and any point before the point that is altered it is the same as the prime history. I'm not talking about a branched system. Universes that happen completely separate and and never interact if you were to look at them and find they are relatively close to each other then their history will be nearly if not completely exact. Because of this the assumption is always that they are unless other wise stated...and when it is stated you move the divergence point back.
It has nothing to do with a branching system. Just chance and probability. -
Old Gray, as I keep saying, unless other wise stated it is automatic that you assume that the same course of events happened up until the point of divergence. So if it is not implied and stated then the events happened exactly as they did for Primal Earth...
Now i haven't looked at and compared the 2 descripts, but rather read, processed, read... When you do that some things are lost so I'm willing to say that my previous idea on how and where the divergence occured may be wrong, so let's look at the descripts and see...
Statesman - "During the war, he had been exposed to Mustard Gas and become ill. He knew that he would prematurely die if he did not find the Well. Friends from his unit joined him in his search including Marcus's best friend, Stefan Richter. They became mercenaries trying to help Marcus find more information on where the Well of the Furies was and how to unlock its power"
Reichsman - "This Marcus Cole, from an alternate dimension, was a rogue and a mercenary who was exposed to mustard gas during World War I. In search of a cure for the effects of the gas, Marcus discovered the Well of the Furies."
Statesman implies that Cole enlisted with the military, got close with his units during the War and then been exposed to the Mustard Gas. After the war he became a merc with his unit to find the Well.
Reichsman says that Cole was a rogue and a mercanery and then got exposed to Mustard Gas. And also no mention of Stefan, but he still goes and looks for the Well.
So it seems the divergence happened before 1918... and if he's a Rogue it might imply that he never got over his parents death and that he was moved to Austria earlier as the only reason he's over there as Statesman Cole us cuz he's in the military and I don't think you could leave the country to go be a merc then, especially if you're a rogue at that time in history...
Also I never said they started the holocaust as soon as Nazis took over. I said given history that Marcus Cole wouldn't allow that to happen unless there was something else we didn't know in his background... -
All Marcus Coles we've been introduced to have been mercenaries. By definition. Don't add conotation to the word.
Even if you don't accept the idea of divergent reality, which is stupid, you are forced to assume that most if not all of the history was exactly the same. Especially all major events and people, save for those stated be different and those proceding after that point.
If you want to say "it's fiction" stop. You have no more reason to post. You have nothing to add. Everyone gets that it is fiction and you can do anything in it. However, fiction that works on the princple "it's fiction so i can do whatever" is almost universally panned. Guess why.
And AGAIN I never said all Coles were inherently "good". They all Share the exact same environment for most of his life which would produce, the exact same person or close to. -
Why do people think using a lot of words to say the same thing is going to change someone's opinion? You just said "It's a comic" again and that doesn't refute what I said. Congratulations on being wrong and unable to read.
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Quote:I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but how the **** do you people read any sort of fiction with that thinking. EVERYONE FOR ALL FICTION ASSUMES IT IS DIVERGENT REALITY. If it takes place on Earth then it is divergent reality except where stated. If you don't you cannot possibly understand most books because to understand most books relies on the idea that you have a common understanding that this is a divergent reality and everything not said to be different before this point is the same.Originally Posted by SlackTech
Whilst you may not have intended it, it seems you have spoken for me. For the record, I don't go into game lore with any assumption of chronology or relativity.
Even if it's convenient for your argument that Reichsman is the result of a divergent reality, it doesn't mean it's fact (as much as 'fact' can be used to describe fictional lore in a MMO). I'm not saying he didn't come from a divergent reality, but I'm still to see evidence that he did.
And, if he didn't, your key assumption would be proven unsubstantiated, and this whole thread has been entertaining, but ultimately pointless.
You do it automatically. It has been implied by what the devs had said. (They haven't just come right out and said it, but they have said what I just said about why the there are no supers in history). So to argue that "you can't say that because it hasn't been explicitly stated" is... I'm gonna stop there, because you guys, are either incapable of understanding or trolls. Either way this is a waste of time.
Quote:Originally Posted by Ironik
I wanted to call this out in a separate post because I'm wondering where you're getting the notion the Well of Furies is somewhere in the Far East.
Given no other information besides the fact Cole and Richter were in Europe, Cole has the powers of Zeus Incarnate and that it was the opening of Pandora's Box that brought the heroic age back to Earth... I would assume the Well of Furies is in the Mediterranean somewhere, since these are all Greek myths we're talking about.
Besides, the first CoH novel explicitly states they found the box in the Mediterranean.
"Born Marcus Cole, he began his transformation from a poverty born child to world hero after serving in the US Army during World War I. Instead of coming home in 1918 he headed east, bent on exploring the world now that he'd had a taste of it."
"Instead of coming home in 1918 he headed east, bent on exploring the world now that he'd had a taste of it. Where he went and what happened to him during that lost decade remains a secret to this day."
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_inf...roduction.html
It says East or Far East
However they are looking for the fictional Greek island of Praxidae which would be south east of Germany in the Mediterranean... Maybe the clues for it led them further east and then back, either way they wouldn't have had to cross germany in that time and i doubt they would have. -
Quote:No but...Originally Posted by SlackTech
The question is, therefore, is there any official documentation or reference to say that Praetoria or any other non-Primal dimension in City lore is 'divergent'? If so, a link would be great!
I'm asking with genuine interest, as I can't remember any mention of this.
I agree with you, by the way. The OP's whole argument and posts rest on this principle...
We go into the game lore with the assumption that history progressed like ours save for where it is said to diverge. This was done purposefully. That was the whole point of explaining why there wasn't supers for x time period so they didn't have to write up a whole new history for earth to somehow result in the same outcome...also it's the general rule of any work of fiction set on Earth that unless stated history never diverges from what we know.
From a hypothetical stand point it also is argued that if you move a piece, no matter how small, you get a large reaction over time, which means that all the universes we see must be very close if all the inhabitants are genetically the same as the one in Primal Earth as we are led to believe. Yes perhaps moving a chair will result in the two people who were to meet that day just meet later and person gets born later, but that little divergence causes many others and it is likely someone doesn't get born that would have other wise or someone dies sooner or later than they would have and it changes everything.
There is a philosophical argument for zeitgeist which is that everything important to the universe will happen regardless of who does it... IE Shakespear, if he had not been born someone else would have wrote his works. No one I know of actually takes it serious as anyone with a cursory knowledge of cause and effect and all that understands that for that to happen it would have to be that there are people that think exactly the same way and live exactly the same life as another person in the same reality and that is just impossible. -
Does anyone know where the source of this information is?
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Marcus_Cole#Background
I need it for the Elite Five reference...
Also, Statesman's electrical abilities...power wise... anyone got a clue on how it should be called? Electric control seems wrong. -
Quote:First off I'm going to ignore the posts that keep going "it's a game" or "you can't assume that" considering the first is just a stupid argument and the second I can as I have already argued.Originally Posted by Ironik
This part of the story is the key:
Between the word "powers' and the word "adopting" can be a moment or a lifetime.
We've already seen two or three really good alternate explanations for how Cole becomes Reichsman (kudos to you guys for putting those forth) but for me, the real heart of the matter is the assumption that Cole was a good guy. Even in Paragon Prime he's kind of a dick, and before he became Statesman he wasn't exactly on the side of the angels. As someone else pointed out, Statesman seems to be the only good version of Cole in the multiverse. I think the real question anyone should ask is, "Why is *our* Marcus Cole a good guy and not evil like all his other incarnations?"
Seems to me that Statesman is the aberration, not the norm. So what was it that caused him to chose the American ideals of freedom through liberty over the Axis ideals of peace through obedience?
2ndly, Well we know
the mustard gas accident happened in 1918.
Hitler fought in WWI and joined the precurser to the Nazi party in 1919 and didn't become a good orator till 1923 after an attempt to take over Bavaria. Gained power in 1933 and declared war in 1939.
So the earliest Cole and hitler could have met is 1930 because immediately after 1918 Cole took off to the far East where it has to be assumed that the Well of Furies is... And it took them till 1930 to find it, but they didn't come straight home because they didn't get back till 1931.
Between 1930 and 1933 it is likely Hitler was working on building the Nazi party which likely could have caught Cole's attention.
Also consider that at this moment he might have just killed Richter who was like a brother to him, his past, and the fact that he was learning of his power as a "superman" or Ubermench...
I still don't think that would be enough to cause him to be ok with the holocaust, but then... Now that I look at the timeline... If Cole didn't return to the US Nemesis would have taken Paragon in 1932 during Brass Monday and that likely would have started his reign of America... If that's the case Hitler could have changed his target from Jews to "look at the threat of America" and thus we have Nazi Germany vs Nemesis America. Especially considering no other Heroes likely existed at the time, or very few.
I think this is the only way to get by the Holocaust problem...
Also the 3 Coles we have seen...sure their pricks but 2 of the 3 have had the world's best interest at heart. -
je_saist, I already explained why one must assume that the history is exactly the same up until that point. If you disagree wit that provide an argument against that instead of just saying "NU HUH!!!!"
Also learn to read. None of what i said makes the assumption that Cole is inherently good. What i said is it goes against the established of his past and his MO that is derived from his path.
It's pretty obvious you don't understand cause and effect and how it works and you are still wrong.