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+--- Thread: So, Millennium City... New universe or Primal Earth? (/showthread.php?tid=5857)
So, Millennium City... New universe or Primal Earth? - Matrix Dragon - 12-03-2012
I've been wondering about this for a while. With my personal canon, Millenium is another city on the same Earth as Paragon. Organisations like PRIMUS can easily fit as part of the FBSA, Viper as another terrorist group. I found myself doing that without too much trouble, and was wondering if anyone else was taking a similar style.
- Ankhani - 12-03-2012
Well, personally, I'm considering it either an alternate dimension. Or, at the least, a "This Is Not The Plot Hole You Are Looking For" in regards to how my characters might differ.
---
The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."
>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
- Acyl - 12-03-2012
I'd always kept the two as two distinct universes in my mind, but this is a function of:
a) binge-reading a good number of the Champions RPG sourcebooks, and hence developing a pretty good respect for its lore - there's a lot of awesome deep backstory in the Champions books, it's just not well-reflected in CO. But knowing it as I do now...well, the two universe backgrounds still can be merged. Such is the nature of comic books. But I appreciate Champions for what it is.
b) I always had Alec Kazam on both Champions Online and Virtue, but with slightly different backstories to allow for different lore and villain groups. Again, the divergence is sufficiently small, I can still reconcile both, but I'd gotten used to thinking of them as separate.
-- Acyl
- Matrix Dragon - 12-03-2012
Hmm... Fact is, I wouldn't mind making a few native versions of existing characters. Slightly alternate takes on them, now that I think about it. *Gives the issue some more consideration.*
- Logan Darklighter - 12-03-2012
Since I've been collecting the Champions books for the better part of two decades, I'm in the same position as Acyl. There are certain ways in which it'd be very difficult to reconcile "Paragon" Earth and it's neighboring dimensions (the shadow shard and the local multiverse of alternate universes that Praetorian Earth and the Rikti Earth are a part of) with that of the Champions cosmology.
A friend I made during the last couple of months - Captain Electric, was on early this morning and I welcomed him to Champions. (and his Champions outfit, more than anyone I've seen so far, is remarkably like his COH counterpart! He lucked out!) He's an avid roleplayer and was really getting into attempting to RP the silver-age nature of the universe while we did some adventuring. Somewhat to my amusement, really, he's a VERY "silver age" character. ^_^
One of the more interesting things he came up with - and I don't suggest this universally - I just mention how he did it - is he considers himself a dimensional transplant from Paragon City and Primal Earth. But he ALSO says he's aware that "he" has never really left and still flies the skies and patrols the streets of Paragon City as he always has. In other words, he's sort of been duplicated in the process.
While we were doing a mission, C8 was ambushed by minions of his CO Nemesis. And I had to explain where they came from and who was sending them. In the process I improvised on the spot and came up with the following vague outline/bullet points:
- This is the original C8 from Primal Earth/Paragon City.
- C8 has all his memories from Primal Earth, but he also has what could be considered some "native" knowledge of the CO World. Some of this could be due to wi-fi connections in Millennium City he's able to access (MC has a very robust internet system - part of that whole "city of the future" thing) and being able to look up information on background data on-the-fly. But some of it he seems to just -remember- as if he's been here a longer amount of time than he can account for.
- His current nemesis is "Prototype 6". P6 is one of the original 7 failed attempts at the process which created C8.
- Like in the original universe, there were 7 "failed" attempts by Dr. Tani of the procedure that created C8. Dr. Tani never actually activated number 6 back in Primal Earth.
- C8 isn't sure HOW Prototype 6 could even be active. C8 understood that the nature of the previous 7 failures was that a consciousness - the "spark" if you will - of a human intellect and/or soul - simply failed to take hold or survive the transfer intact. So there shouldn't even be any "ghost in the shell" inside of Prototype 6. Either there's a demented A.I. driving that android or someone completed Dr. Tani's work.
- There may be a native universe version of C8 somewhere. But if there is, he hasn't been seen. C8's been able to look up records in the local history that reference him and his adventures. But the details are different than he remembers them from Primal Earth. And also none of them are any newer than 1974, which is consistent with when the Primal Universe C8 was trapped underground and went inactive. In Paragon City C8 was rediscovered and revived in 2006 when Faultline was re-opened to development and they started to recover the zone and unearth several of the underground bases there. In this world there is no Paragon City or Faultline. So C8 isn't sure what happened to his local counterpart.
That's what I've come up with so far. It's subject to change/retcon as we figure things out.
- Dragonflight - 12-03-2012
I've become a fan of the fan-dev story that's posted around here somewhere. But it's still more confusing than that for me.
Silhouette, my title character, was always based on Evil Ken's IST-Marvel game, and as a result, she's from a world which is a combination of the two source materials. She was on Thibor Sawchyk's London-based team, and fought a combination of villains ranging from evil cultists to M. Bison and his calendar of mind-controlled assassin girls. She's teamed with Reflector and the Great and Powerful Turtle. Run with Jubilee and Wolverine.
Then she's contacted by Thibor, and told about this door that another reality opened into IST HQ. And they're looking for a heroic ambassador. So that's where Silhouette came from. She's already a dimensional traveler even before Paragon city. So in Millenium city, she's the same person. Just continuing her job traveling from place to place, representing her reality and ideals.
As for Paragon, between Disney and the possibility of a private server emulation at some point, I like the player-dev ending because it suggests that Earth was sharded into Dreamspace. Everyone's still there, they're just inaccessible for now. So until then, Sil continues representing her Earth parallel wherever she goes.
Sunspot, and many of the "native" characters, are from Primal Earth, and are (as I see it,) traveling these other places to research new technologies which will make it possible to bridge back to the new "Incarnate" Earth in Dreamspace. She, and any others I make from Primal, got to MC sort of the same way Rose did in the Doctor Who series. Incarnate Earth's Portal Corps built a dimensional cannon to send a small group to a nearby parallel reality, so as to build a bridgehead to connect the realities, and open up access again. Eventually, hopefully, they'll succeed, and we'll be able to go back to Incarnate Earth. For the moment, they're on places like Millenium Earth, researching tech, making contacts, generally being heroic, and building their portal system. (Sunspot: "An old moonbase with a defunct death ray? I can SOOO use that!")
So that's my complicated headspace, if that helps any.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
- Bob Schroeck - 12-03-2012
I've been assuming that Evangelia is a refugee from Primal Earth, although I have yet to put anything like that in her bio. I need to work up a bit more detail as I've only just started her.
When I get to creating a Nemesis for her, it will probably be Sailor Null, also as a refugee; somewhere during the transfer from Primal Earth she went full villain over her antipathy for Evangelia.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- Matrix Dragon - 12-03-2012
eh, I guess it's the fact that I'm really not a fan of the whole 'Primal Earth is lost' angle. Paragon's not lost to me, or destroyed or damaged, it's just off-screen.
- Bob Schroeck - 12-04-2012
I think the idea is simply that it's inaccessible -- there, off-screen, but not reachable. A fictional framework to explain why the toons have appeared in Millennium City, and why they may reappear in Paragon if COH returns somehow.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- Matrix Dragon - 12-04-2012
Yeah, like I said Bob, the 'Lost Primal Earth' idea really doesn't appeal to me. While I might have one or two characters it might work for, in most cases it would lead to utterly ripping apart my characters lives, and from a story telling/RP perspective, I've got no desire to do that on a large scale. There's one or two it might work for, but I think making local counterparts, similar but unique, might be better for me in the long term.
(Amusingly, the one character that would jump into such an adventure headfirst, Purrfect Meddler, is a staff fighter, and thus can't be made accurately anyway. Got some ideas for a local version anyway :lol)
- Ebony - 12-05-2012
Heart of Artemis is a renegade Knife, and the Knives are pretty much all Mot Munchies at this point. Her background in CO mentions her former membership of a gynocratic cult and status as an avatar of Artemis. Anybody who played CoH should pick it up.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
- Logan Darklighter - 12-05-2012
- Morganite - 12-05-2012
There's always the traditional comic book method of "Different ones for each character, which will never be addressed or even acknowledged during the team-up books".
No?
Well, bad enough that as player I'm cut off from Paragon City against my will. I have no intention of my *characters* being in such a state. Although, given that a lot of them have independent means of travelling between worlds, that's a pretty high bar. But regardless of what happens to the game, I'm not -done- with the world. I like the "free will" variant of #1 (since, uh, most of them were already that sort of thing), although #2 would work just as well for some.
-Morgan.
- Bob Schroeck - 12-05-2012
Morganni Wrote:There's always the traditional comic book method of "Different ones for each character, which will never be addressed or even acknowledged during the team-up books".You know, on thinking about it I think this is the way to go. After all, it's not like we can dictate policy for all the other COH players moving over to CO; we're all going to have to deal with different people's ideas for their toons. For my purposes, Evangelia is a refugee from a lost alternate Earth. I just won't bring it up if I'm teamed with someone with a different concept. We don't have to have consistency between the toons' histories. Maybe it was a reality quake, mixing up natives and outworlders and their backgrounds...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- Dragonflight - 12-05-2012
Crisis of Infinite Paragons?
Oy Vey.....
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
- Baseload - 12-05-2012
For me, I thought of going with the "Primal Earth is Gone" theory as only two characters are "refugees" from that setting (Street-Knight and Arctouros). But, I tend to look at it like the DC Universe handles their Multi-dimensional Earths. Sometimes they're there, then they get wiped out, then their back again.
As for how they got here, while I imagine many have their own stories, for my two, I was considering "saved by an extra-dimensional being "Ala the Norn from M&M" who could only save a few people.
- ECSNorway - 12-05-2012
Misao and the other ninja were always supposed to be infiltrators from another parallel to begin with... I don't see any reason why that shouldn't continue.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
- Acyl - 12-06-2012
I agree with Morganni and Bob in that, well, we're going to see people with different takes on the transition in the same teams, so really this can't be examined too closely. I prefer the 'native versions of Character X' take rather than 'refugee'.
But I have no qualms about picking up past interaction with other peoples' CoH-extracted characters, as if the two characters already know each other. 'cause really, it's mostly about the form of the interaction rather than the substance of specific past events.
And here's another thing. Champions has its own thriving roleplay community. Check out Champions Online Roleplayers if you haven't already, and their associated global channels. While it's natural to look back at the past, to not want to discard the past...there's also looking to the future. Rather than shoehorn things in, I'd rather work around the elements the new environment has to play with. I want to rebuild bridges with the CORP community - I love you folks, I really do, but an immigrant needs to integrate into wider society and not stay in the CoH expatriate part of town, where people only speak CoHglish. =)
So I play 'Ultimate' or 'Animated Universe' versions of my CoH characters. I keep what I can keep, I change what I have to.
But that's me. I respect other choices. At the end of the day, that's what matters, right? So long as it's something you're happy with.
-- Acyl
- Morganite - 12-07-2012
Heh. That was kind of a joke suggestion, I wasn't really expecting it to catch on.
-Morgan.