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Wayne Administrator

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 369 Total Words: 506,046
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EMC Q&A And other letters and acronyms
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Posted: Wed, August 09, 2006 04:48 PM
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I may have cut ties with the tournament scene (except for the ones I've already agreed to be in) and the community, but I do appreciate the people who want to use the continuity that some of us put so much work into. To that end, this thread. It's meant to be a forum-based "question-and-answer" topic, where you can ask questions about the continuity or even just weird stuff only tangentially related to it and [hopefully] get replies fro me or the other guys who know a lot about [or have written for] the EMC.
Q: How about a brief timeline of the stuff that's gone on in the continuity?
A: The Multiverse was created about 16-18 billion cycles AC (Age of the Creator, if we ended up using another acronym for the "BC" equivalence, I don't remember it), originally as one universe that was "iterated" out by the Creator when it was threatened by the Void. The next major events haven't been explicitly placed (for example, the Planar Void War could be anywhere fro 14 to 10 billion cycles AC) until c.400M AC (which is when "The Others," the characters fro S9 and S17, did their stuff). After that comes the creation of the Eternals at 75M AC, and they've had six "Void Wars" in that time (the most recent one being Vire's attack on Eternal City in ED ("Era of the Daughter") 3508). Most of that time is taken up in the space between RT1 (ED 15 or so) and S11 (3500 ED); S11, S12, and S16 are assumed to have happened within a few cycles of each other.
Q: How do you explain the differences in the Eternals fro the early Survivors to S10/S12, or compared to other races (like the Others/Guardians/Endless)?
A: The Creator wasn't a particularly warlike goddess... in fact, while the Eternals were created to "safeguard the Multiverse fro the Void," the vast majority of that work was done by one man: Vante, an avatar of the Creator cast off by lame plot machinations to rid herself of her "darker half." The Eternals were originally fairly plain foot soldiers meant to throw themselves at the armies of the Void and die in order to buy the named characters enough time to deal with the incursion in a more permanent manner. When manga fans like Kyo and Tenken got ahold of the continuity, the Eternals became many times harder core individually (instead of their power coming fro plot devices (literal devices, like the Memory Pools)). My best explanation for this discrepency is that the Eternals didn't really take their duties seriously until the Third Void War (when Miracle was introduced) and only then started to become personally more powerful. The other ancient races also seem to have been created by the old gods, but we either don't have any information about that (with the Others), or they were created for more specialized reasons: the Guardians (ELOC) were more warlike, the Endless were thinkers more than fighters (limited to only their homeworld, interestingly, until very late), and so on.
Q: Why are you so grumpy when someone talks about crossing between universes?
A: Because being able to cross universes leads to infinite loops. If you've never read the DC Comics series "Crisis on Infinite Earths," the plot is that heroes fro multiple parallel realities (in the EMC, they'd be iterations of the same core universe) are brought together to defeat a really big robot (I forgot his name, the Monitor?). Now, pretend that instead of ignoring it and proceeding to write themselves back into another forest of retcons, the authors had instead run with that, and had fifty Supermen come and declare war on Marvel 616 (or whatever the "main" Marvel universe is)?
Q: Ack! So what happens instead?
We have to come up with reasons why that doesn't happen (since obviously there's not much point in running an Eternity when a host can summon the X-Men, the JLA, and the entire cast of Chrono Cross to deal with the problem... and that's just in the first round). The answers focus on two parts: one, restricting the availability of these shenanigans (which means extremely few people can cross realities) and reducing the power obtained by doing so (which is why I came up with the idea of iterations being extremely weak relative to "Core universes," but not each other).
It's never come up, but it's to be assumed that iterations don't have the energy available to allow anyone fro them to cross realities (though it's possible for those in iterations to cross with each other; this doesn't trigger the singularity effect or anything because no real energy is being added, only moved around). This includes mechanical energy (which is otherwise the same between cores and iterations): it's impossible to build a ship with an "ether drive" in an iteration, and they can't be brought out of one externally (as to why that is, I don't particularly care: I'd hand-wave away something based on mass), else you have Zorduu the Very Patient who crosses universes to build an army of a hojillion Enterprises and Super Star Destroyers.
Q: How much influence should non-hosts have on the EMC?
A: How much influence do the writers of Star Wars fiction have over the canon? (For those who don't know, the answer is "Over everything George Lucas doesn't.") Once they have the LucasArts seal of approval, they're canon until the old guy says otherwise. I figure essentially the same procedure should work here: writers can handle pretty much whatever they want to, but it's up to the "council" for final approval (as well as retconning, if that's ever necessary), and tournament hosts using the EMC get priority treatment.
The obvious problem is that your vision of the continuity may not fit everyone else's. Lisa was pretty amused when I hinted at Euterpe having a thing for Fabian, while I thought it was cute (ultimately I agreed with her and dropped it). Just remember that whatever you do end up writing affects things for everyone else. Respect that and ask questions when you think it might be appropriate, and everyone should be happy.
Q: Who would win in a fight between--
A: LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU
And that's all I've got for now. I'll keep an eye on this thread for at least a few days, so don't be afraid to post Qs (and likewise, don't be afraid to offer As if you know the score).
Edit: Note that I may not respond to anything if nothing's done about these 403 errors. :[
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Lucent The Undreaming


Joined: 10 Apr 2005 Posts: 885 Total Words: 388,792
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Posted: Thu, August 10, 2006 10:48 AM
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Expansion on Q1:
...S16 are assumed to have happened within a few cycles of each other.
Rurouni Taikai: Legacy took place less than a cycle after the events of s16, and s18 took place roughly 500 cycles beyond RT:L. Eternity: Lines of Conflict is still placed in an indeterminate period of time after s18.
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Fri, September 08, 2006 12:54 AM
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As an expansion to Lucent's addition:
S12 takes place very soon after the end of S11; not years; more like weeks. The state of the Eternal City after the meddling caused by the theft of the Memory Pool control gauntlets in S11 is what created the 'perfect opening' for Miracle to launch his strike, so S12 not only recognizes but is almost like a continued reaction from S11. The first of S12's trailers is actually Miracle praying at the Fudo temple, and he runs into S11's host Adam Reeve, who came to burn some incense for his departed partner, Ion. So, from the time S11 wraps up to the time S12 'begins' is maybe...three weeks, four tops.
But yeah, S11, S12, S16, and RT:L, at least, are fairly close from a time standpoint, as far as I understand. As far as S18, I don't know - I'll just defer to Lucent there.
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Thirdtwin No fancy avatars for me! ... >_>;

Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 315 Total Words: 146,826
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Posted: Sun, September 10, 2006 08:39 PM
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I had a question, if questions are still being answered now. What it essentially boils down to is, what's the rough "power level" of the Eternals' fighting forces? Clarification on the post-S18 levels are of course most pertinent, but at various choke points (i.e. tournaments) it would help to know what we're talking as well, especially considering the confusion caused by different conceptions of such power. In particular are these points of interest:
How skilled would the average "grunt-level" Eternal be, in terms of combative prowess? We of course presume that the majority of the Eternals' forces HAVE grunt-tier units, of course. A comparative judgment would probably be best (as good as ten Master Chiefs?! wtflol), since whatever system was supposed to refine/replace the Color Standards never seemed to get off the ground (or if it did it never got put into the public view). And, as has been brought up before, if these guys really are fighting the Void, they have to be at least somewhat hardcore; the question becomes, are the majority hardcore on a personal level, or is it the nature of the "warrior-scholar society" that promotes a powerful union of otherwise weaker forces?
How do these majorities (generally) fight? Obviously conflict with the Void probably engenders certain tactics and combative styles, but we've seen a wide variety of archetypes (blaster mages, finesse swordsmen, bardic buffer/healers etc) amongst the prime Eternals at least, and much the same amidst the other lower-tier members (cf. AEGIS). But how do the armies do things? What kind of tactics are they using? (My own personal expectation would be a tendency toward heavy magic-based tactics supplemented by mid- to long-range combative ordnance--all the better to keep your Essence out of the way of the thing that can instantly nullify it--and yet we've seen a surprising number of pure meleers.)
How skilled are the high-tier units? (and, if necessary to clarify, who ARE the high-tier units? Guys like Fabian are kind of obvious, being both high-ranked AND a skilled combatant, but some of the other Knights Arcana (lol), for instance, may have powers comparable to or even surpassing his.) Again, comparative measurements would probably be best (can he own Dark Schneider??!? omgwtf). By getting these two measurements we can at least determine how much of a gap there is between named characters and redshirts, so we can have a good rubric of where other characters stand (probably somewhere in between the two extremes, unless of course the extremes have gotten less extreme in a run of retconning >_>)
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Wayne Administrator

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 369 Total Words: 506,046
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They shoot ya for that in Texas pardner
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Posted: Sun, September 10, 2006 10:28 PM
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Well, you're the first person to actually ask anything, so....
...nope, they're not being answered. Anything else? :]
Since Lucent sent me that old datafile on Saint I've had things like this on the brain, so here we go....
Quote: | How skilled would the average "grunt-level" Eternal be, in terms of combative prowess? |
I didn't like the idea, but S16 and Legacy established that the Eternals do indeed have redshirted Ensigns, so that's canon now. Ultimately all it changes is a couple paragraphs of backstory, so no biggie.
Typical Eternal soldiers are probably on par with the "high-level generic humanoids" from various RPGs. They are a threat, especially in numbers, but they don't beat people with class levels (like Vire) unless they have levels themselves (like Miracle).
My opinion (which as of S18 is canon) is that the Eternals were originally pretty weak, and even their leaders weren't exceptionally personally powerful (with notable exceptions like Cronimus, Senares, and Anko-- those by virtue of their race, not by being Eternals, though). When Saint and Fabian were kidnapped by spacefaring lizardmen, it was not a particularly shocking event. What changed that was the Creator's death, and the realization that they weren't immortal [at the time]. Chances are their enemies hit them hard and fast at that time, and the survivors-- Eternals' numbers had dwindled from several dozen million to about 1.5 million by S16, about 3500 cycles after Yume was born-- developed substantially during that time.
But yeah. One "typical" Eternal soldier is capable of beating a "big monster" (like golems and lesser demons and such) on his own, and they use squad tactics for bigger threats (like the WEAPONs and stuff Vire brought in). In d20 terms, they're probably in the CR 5-10 range, except with good equipment and stats.
Quote: | since whatever system was supposed to refine/replace the Color Standards never seemed to get off the ground (or if it did it never got put into the public view) |
I was waiting on Seril to get back to me on the "threat level" system. He might've sent me something about it and I forgot, but I don't remember (>_>).
Quote: | or is it the nature of the "warrior-scholar society" that promotes a powerful union of otherwise weaker forces? |
Mostly that. Eternals are better than "typical" soldiers-- each one could probably take down a small squad of Marines, who are themselves pretty awesome, simply from sheer experience and technology-- but they win battles by working together and coordinating their wide amount of powers that can be brought to bear. A "typical" Eternal squad could have a Hermetic Mage, a Fire Bender, an "only human" superhero like Green Arrow, and Arngrim all on the same team, and a group like that is much better than the sum of its parts.
Quote: | How do these majorities (generally) fight? |
Oops, see above. I assume that the Eternals are individually strong enough that most "military" fighting consists of skirmishing, where the Eternals break into the most efficient groups possible and launch multiple attacks. They will probably use "traditional" tactics, like long-range bombardment (magical, mecha-based, thrown colonies, whatever) followed by diversionary tactics followed by a charge. The difference is that they tend to be extremely efficient and adaptable, because while the best human generals can have up to 50 years or so of experience-- the typical Eternal general has been at it for millenia.
Quote: | --and yet we've seen a surprising number of pure meleers |
Well, there's two reasons for this.
1) The Eternals are written by people, and most of us tend to prefer writing melee characters. Maybe it's flexibility, and some of it's the fault of our source media (compare how many heroes use swords to how many use guns), but the reality is that most characters have a melee specialty, whether it's the smartest choice to use it or not.
2) In most source materials, bringing a sword to a gunfight is actually a really good idea. For every Rushuna or Cleric Preston that can mow down melee combatants, you have a Cecil or Li Mu Bai who can do supernatural things like parrying projectiles, soaking massive explosions and walking away, cleaving through sheets of steal, etc. Real power in fantasy comes from a special effects budget, and if you don't glow blue when you unleash your super move chances are you're going to run into a fight where you don't matter, and that's where practically all gunslingers are (I can't think of any exceptions, except first-person shooter leads like Joanna Dark with the lolsight).
There's also the thing where magic tends to be more powerful than normal attacks anyway, and more melee types than ranged learn magic (because it's more useful to them). I don't know about you, but I can think of about 10 "magic swordsmen" offhand, and the only "gun mages" that come to mind are from Final Fantasy (Mustadio, Yuna Croft, and Kaze).
Quote: | How skilled are the high-tier units? |
> you
Quote: | who ARE the high-tier units? |
Miracle, despite a post-S18 nerfing that is still largely unwritten (but I am working on it, sort of >_>), is technically an Eternal and is probably highest-tier. He has basically every power printed in RPG books except psionics, and he's arbitrarily high-level in all of them.
Senares, being a former Overlord who is billions of years old, is just under pre-crisis Miracle (meaning he's probably a bit better now) in his Makai form, although Miracle would probably beat him in a duel because even though Senares has higher stats, he's more limited (to mostly psionics and blood magic).
Anko is an arbitrarily skilled "monk" with perfect combat teleportation. She can theoretically beat any normal opponent in a "duel," but practically she would end up losing to people that hit harder or with status effects (since basically all she does is deal damage DBZ-style). Just under her power-wise is Daisetsu, who's probably "stronger" but with more clearly defined and thus more limited powers. The rest of his posse are much lower-tier.
Post-S18 Mishnu is next, because she's the best Eternal mage and mages own your fase. Yuo is slightly weaker than Mishnu, and all other Eternal mages are somewhere below them.
Fabian is either just above or just below Mishnu depending on whether a dramatic organ swell preceded his scene or not. His powers are solid, but he has the "red mage" problem (not as good a swordsman as a dedicated fighter like Senares; not as good a spellcaster as a dedicated mage like Yuo) and is canonically a terrible judge of opponents' skill. If he were in a shounen manga instead of an RPG-themed story he'd jump at least one spot.
The combat-focused Epsilons (except for Sean >_>) are probably here, among them Amondi, Kaimuro, Lenna, etc. They tend to be strong, but not as experienced as other Eternals and more prone to making mistakes.
Nicolai is normally below them, but can move tiers depending on what kind of gun he's using. If he ever broke out Irvine's hyper ammo, it's on. Same deal with Adrien.
"Combat toughs" like Sean, Ashilyn, and Taev round out the bottom-- better than the "red-shirts," but they don't exactly intimidate named NPCs.
In a separate category are the Eternals with "plot device" powers, like Septerra and Euterpe, who tend to either automatically win a battle, or be useless for the entire thing.
And in his own tier is Keir, who instantly loses every fight he gets into.
---
Hope that helps. If you want to ask anything else, or maybe need some clarifications, I'll be around. (Got nothing else better to do. So cold. So lonely. )
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Seril I am TOMAHAWK MAN!


Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 542 Total Words: 138,122
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Posted: Sun, September 10, 2006 10:46 PM
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Quote: | I was waiting on Seril to get back to me on the "threat level" system. He might've sent me something about it and I forgot, but I don't remember (>_>). |
We actually got the physical structure down one night in IRC and had to call it quits at some point. I *think* I sent you the .txt I have....I HOPE I did, anyways. We have to hammer out the weaknesses section, then it should be good to go for community overview.
I've just been so busy with my alotted Eternity free time with E21 and trying to go over H&S to some degree that I haven't really been able to find a good time to get together with you and finish it up. (Granted, at least over half of that document is me just jotting down and organizing your ideas, but still :p)
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 01:14 AM
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Here's another question - one that I have my own take on, but I wanted to get your opinion, Wayne.
Obviously, when an Eternal is born from a union of two Eternal parents, they resemble a generally homogenous 'humanoid' race, which is what the Eternals are. But the Eternals who are transmogrified from mortality - to what extent is their physical body altered in the conversion? Are they an exact copy of what they were, except with eternal life? Are there some modifications that occur to every mortal made into an Eternal, to bring them up to some standard? Or is there some invisible 'line' that, if you're 'less humanoid' than that level, your body gets junked and you get one that can operate the apparati in the Eternal City, which are made to be used by people having at least a roughly human anatomy? It's like...let's say a mermaid or a colossus gets made into an Eternal. The mermaid has a fish bottom-half, and the colossus is a giant stone lifeform. To what extent are these two changed upon being made into 'Eternals'?
Also, as a note, I've brought up the 'lost essence' phenomenon before as a way to explain where some Eternals pick up 'unique' powers and what exactly dictates what happens when a mortal is converted into an Eternal, but since I don't think it's ever been mentioned in a tournament specifically, I was wondering if it was, in fact, accepted. If this isn't in the Wiki, I need to re-draft the article.
Also, the issue of last names. Personally, I followed the Saint tradition of having Eternals go by only one name, since I think it makes sense for the society. Many Eternals have no parents (having been changed from mortals to be Eternals), so where would they pick up a family name? But, despite this, a number of writers have given Eternal characters surnames, which sort of leads to one of two options: either all Eternals have surnames, and many of them just have never been mentioned, or the Eternals with surnames are SPECIFICALLY ones who have been born to Eternal parents, and therefore have a family name (which is the best reason I could figure for having them at all). It makes no sense to have an arbitrary last name when there's no significance to it, especially since the society has no particular need of it.
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Lucent The Undreaming


Joined: 10 Apr 2005 Posts: 885 Total Words: 388,792
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 02:16 AM
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The Eternals that NS and I created for AEGIS were either mortals given the opportunity to become Eternals, and thus opted to keep their full name, or ones whom were born of the union of two Eternals (in the case of Jamie, Adrien and Christien). All of which had "families" whom served since older times.
I figure in ancient times the Eternals may not have had surnames, but as their culture grew and they (in so far as I didn't know about it and I think somewhere along the line we need to figure out how >.>) they stopped "forgetting" who they were before becoming Eternals.
I'm imaginign sometime after the Death of the Creator, the process to make Eternals changed, and thus the "butterfly does not remember the caterpillar" way of things changed a bit. Probably to the chagrin of older Eternals.
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 02:29 AM
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Yeah...you brought up the other 'thing which cannot be two ways at once', Lucent - the Eternals and their memories. Now, way back when, I understood it that the Eternals that were transfigured from mortal life either didn't remember their past lives at all, or had only vague recollections of it. The past memories might come back in some clearer form gradually, over the eons, but as far as I know, no Eternals taken that way fully remember their mortal life, or their own identity.
Of course, this has been bent several times over the course of the tournaments. Miracle and Yuo, both transfigured for being 'epic heroes', seem to clearly retain all memories of their mortal life - indeed, their identities are as intact as any Eternal's can be. Whether this is just a special case scenario for that particular accolade I can't say, but it sets a precedent for the Creator being able to do it without the memory loss. The implication, then, is that the removal of previous memory is in most cases a choice and not a side-effect.
A number of Carly's Eternal characters in S14 also seemed to display knowledge of the past life, though which ones did so escape me at the moment. Personally, I think that knowledge of past life is purposely repressed, so that the Eternal can embrace their identity as an Eternal without ties to who they once were or things they desired that were perhaps left undone. It also works as a preventative measure against racist dispute and partiality toward one's home world, I'd think. For the kind of society the Eternals are, and the major purpose with which they're tasked, it does make sense that their ties with their mortal life would be cut. They technically cease to be whatever they were, and instead become an Eternal - which I think qualifies enough as its own separate race. Eternals are a race sort of like America is a nationality: they're not a completely homogenous people because they draw from many peoples, but they definitely share enough common traits to represent a unique society and lineage.
So...that's my two yen about that.
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Ashilyn Dream


Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 516 Total Words: 119,470
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 08:42 AM
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Admittingly, the fact that the AEGIS members have last names and remember their pasts is a flub on my part when I was making them and Lucent and I's when we were giving them backgrounds - those were two aspects of the Eternals I was unaware of when I created the characters, mostly cause they hadn;t come up in the time I'd been there, even when I asked people about quirks the Eternals have.So thta's where that source of confusion comes from.
In retrospect, it might have made sense for them to be among the "don't remember their past:" lot, as in the big scope of things, most of the AEGIS aren't originally of the particularly important crowd, they're built around being high end "everymen (and women)" who were picked for higher things, at least in their original design, before things like Ashilyn's Paper Mastery and Kaira's almost all encomposing magical skill were added to allow them to be more viable as main characters in a tournament. I like the idea of the Eternals not remembering their pasts before becoming an Eternal, it adds a sense of mystery to the characters (imo)
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Alexander Krizak Ace Detective


Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 281 Total Words: 113,012
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 03:28 PM
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As regards power creep: That's technically a Magic term for how cards get incrementally better from set to set, but I'll use it here for the rise in Eternal power levels. I think a major factor is that, to a degree, the potential of an Eternal remains roughly the same as when they were a mortal, though amplified a degree due to their spark of Creation Energy that connects them to the Creator or her suitable replacement. The Creator had a lot more Eternals than currently exist, but I believe she gave them much less of a spark, partially so they would grow to look down on mortals, and partially because, as much as we say the Creator's power was "limitless," there really had to be some sort of limit, and each Eternal probably added to the strain on that limit.
Yume has far less Eternals, but only slightly less power than the Creator, and with the Void growing as threat in the current era, she has probably increased the spark she gives to each Eternal significantly, given them more potential. There also might be a psychological factor to this; while Yume has grown to accept her role, it still bothers her to have so much power seperating her from others, and so she (most likely subconsciously) makes it so Eternals can approach her on the power scale.
As regards melee vs. ranged combat in the Eternals: As Tenken has pointed out in the past, the problem with ranged weapons in a setting where high personal power levels are achievable is that ranged weapons don't benefit from your personal power. Swords can be faster and blows harder when you improve yourself, but, badly made games where Strength determines the damage from a gun aside, your own power does not influence the power of a gun or a crossbow. All you can do with such mechanical weapons is be more accurate; Nicolai, for example, has the skills to pull the Billy Lee/Jr. style "bullet richocheting," which often becomes his only method of shooting someone who can cut bullets in half with their blade.
Having said this, it should be pointed out that a lot of Eternals DO use primarily ranged combat. It's just that the generally preferred method of ranged combat is spellcasting, because that does benefit from personal power levels.
As regards Eternals and their race: To be an Eternal is to have, in D&D terms, a certain template. The template grants the person eternal life, but it's not just that; essentially, an Eternal's Essence is transformed from its mortal form and inflused with a shred of Creation Energy which is connected to a divine being. This divine being was once the Creator, and is now Yume. Technically, this process isn't limited to just the Creator or her daughter/reincarnation/mortal form. Any divine being with sufficient Creation Energy that they afford to break chunks of it off could make their own Eternals; Krizak could have had some (and knowing how random they were, he might have, for all we know). Of course, any Eternal-like beings Krizak had linked to them would have lost their eternal life when he died; they wouldn't have reverted immediately to their mortal lifespans, as the shred of Creation Energy within them would have lasted a while, but they would eventually die off.
As for "fitting in," for the most part, beings which become Eternal retain their original forms. This is a society that had adapted to Cronimus, after all; few creatures would really present problems after that. The Eternals will strive to facilitate any communication, mobility or manipulation problems of those made Eternal; in Tenk's example, the mermaid would get some sort of "easy convert" method of transforming from her regular form into something more humanoid, while if the colossus was intelligent but incapable of speech, a thought-to-speech interface might be implemented. In general, I think that with all of their technology and magic, the Eternals should be more accepting that the DC Universe's Green Lantern Corps, and they have among them giant amoebas and space barnacles and sentient planets.
As regards mysterious pasts: I personally think that, unless they become Eternals under peculiar circumstances, Eternals retain their memories of their mortal lives. Remember that Saint was not a typical Eternal transformation; he was saved from death by being made an Eternal, so in a way, his mortal self "died." The same applies to Fabian and Mishnu, who were actually taken and made Eternals AFTER they were dead (though we still need to revise Tenk's origin story for those two to take into account the millions of years between the two becoming Eternals). But I'm quite sure that most Eternals do remember their past lives, though some may have asked to have the knowledge of their mortal lives to be removed, a request that would usually be granted after some consideration.
However, I'm not saying that Eternals all DO remember their past lives. The majority of us are in our early to mid twenties; think about how much of your life you remember with perfect clarity, and then consider that Eternals can be thousands or millions of years old. In this case, the simplest answer is the best one; many Eternals have simply forgotten all but the more pertinent info about their mortal life.
As regards Keir: One day, just like Renji, Keir will actually win a badass fight. Mark my words.
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Lucent The Undreaming


Joined: 10 Apr 2005 Posts: 885 Total Words: 388,792
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 07:30 PM
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;_; Lucent, those uniforms are so...unisex! I was cool cycling through the males, then I got to the females and thought "Wait a minute...too conservative! Where's the arbitrary slit cut in the top to enhance 'cleavage respiration'? What about the shapely spandex that accentuates the fine form of the hips?" Oh, my kingdom for a few uniform alterations~
Also, I'd think that each specific 'Greek Letter' classification would have an overarching 'basic uniform', but that each division may have alterations or specific designs adapting those uniforms, or perhaps use another template entirely (as the Beta Epsilons sort of model their coats on Fabian's). They seem like a race that, military applications aside, don't really enforce a strict dress code.
Cronimus swimsuit calendar due out 12.6.06! Pre-order now and get the Trieste Memorial Book! XD
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Ashilyn Dream


Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 516 Total Words: 119,470
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 08:19 PM
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Soujiro Seta wrote: |
Cronimus swimsuit calendar due out 12.6.06! Pre-order now and get the Trieste Memorial Book! XD |
I hope you die in a fire!
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Wayne Administrator

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 369 Total Words: 506,046
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Posted: Mon, September 11, 2006 09:49 PM
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Well, Eternals probably only wear uniforms in combat situations (if even then, mages still fight in their robes because they offer stat bonuses), and contrary to what JRPGs would have you believe, a cleavage window is a nasty disadvantage to female soldiers, since it basically draws attackers' eyes to their heart (well... not directly, but you know). And that remains the case until you're awesome enough to fight in whatever clothes you want.
I'd think that each specific 'Greek Letter' classification would have an overarching 'basic uniform', but that each division may have alterations or specific designs adapting those uniforms
That's probably true, being as mages (Tau) wear robes, soldiers (Kappa) wear armor, workers (Zeta) probably don't even have uniforms, and others (like Xi and any High Council members) wear whatever is appropriate (or not, nobody really cares, and chances are that only their equivalent to "enlisted troops" are expected to follow any sort of dress code, like you were saying).
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Krizak's contributions are all good ideas, and I don't have any objections except to these--
Quote: | the Eternals should be more accepting that the DC Universe's Green Lantern Corps, and they have among them giant amoebas and space barnacles and sentient planets |
Actually, I disagree with this. For various reasons (some of which date back to Star Trek) the vast majority of intelligent creatures are humanoid, and every Eternal has also been humanoid (at least in terms of body type). Some have monstrous traits, like Cronimus, but as far as I know there aren't any Eternal slimes (Dragon Quest) or Hutts or whatever.
In fact, most Eternals aren't even elves or orcs, or the various flavors of "human" found in fantasy (like Martians, Azurin, Numenorian, etc.), even-- they're just human, like the kind you find writing angry rants on the Internet. That's dumb, but it's canon, and it should be canon for a reason.
My explanation is actually that the Creator had a flaw-- she was mildly racist and thought that humanity was 1) an ideal standard of beauty, 2) made in her own image, 3) cuddly, 4) whatever-- and that carried over to her "chosen race." So in response to Tenk's examples, I actually think she'd have turned the mermaid into a human, and ignored the colossus entirely (a golem is already "immortal," assuming repairs; so it would've fallen upon other Eternals to help it out with technology (like Krizak's suggested speech device)). I mean, the old gods aren't like God, they're never assumed to have been perfect and all-good (which really goes without saying, because just like a goddess like the Creator might have "Life, Love, and Fluffy Bunnies" in her portfolio, down the block in the Plane of Creation is the pad of Cthulhu Sr., who values "Evil, Madness, and Comedy Central", and they are both roughly equally powerful, and equally worshipped and venerated), so why not?
Quote: | Also, the issue of last names. |
Like RPG characters, most "older" Eternals probably just chose their names (I mean, seriously, you think a brooding orphan was named "Leonheart"?). This becomes almost certainly true if you accept as canon the argument that Eternals in the Creator's day tended to forget their past lives, and the ones made by Yume do not (though Krizak's explanation of extenuating circumstances works too, and I have no opinion either way). As more Eternals were born "naturally" and the population grew, and last names became what they are in our world (a way to mark families, both in terms of social position and caste and also to tell people apart by their names), more Eternals began to take them. Chances are it was mostly a gradual process, with high-ranking Eternals only going by one name for tradition's sake.
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though we still need to revise Tenk's origin story for those two to take into account the millions of years between the two becoming Eternals
As of S18, what we're running with is that Fabian was already an Eternal when he met "Liselle," who fell in love with his dark bishounen looks. Phaetheon had chosen her to inherit some of his power, but when she died the Creator made her into an Eternal. She probably did that to try to appease her 'brother,' which of course backfired, and to help make up for it she asked Fabian to take care of "Mishnu," which he did (adopting her, both to establish "peerage" and to rather obviously discourage any romantic interest in him, because it's harder to be more friend zone'd than to be adopted).
It's a mess, and you can blame Tenk for it, but it does work while retaining basically everything that'd been established between the two [...in a way].
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Sat, September 23, 2006 10:13 PM
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I had a couple questions, and since they all are sort of tied to each other, I thought I'd get some discussion about them going here.
Question zaa First!
The Eternals have a lot of unique proprietary technology, one of the most important being the Memory Pools. But...how proprietary IS the ability of the memory pools? If we hold that a sponsor not affiliated with the Eternals could hold a tournament in which characters are not only pulled from all the representative sponsored worlds, but also could take that group to any story's continuity, at any time, wouldn't that imply that the ability to do this is not unique to the Eternals? And if so, is there some way that the Eternals keep it in check by not allowing people to go back and (at least over a certain extent) change what is known to be 'history'? The Eternals exist and perceive in 'absolute' time, meaning that their history cannot be changed, but what of the rest of the multiverse?
Request zaa First!
Whether the appropriate place for this is here or not, I was wondering if someone (either Tenshi, Wayne, or Lucent would be the most likely to have this info on hand) could compile here a list of the Eternals' attack force technology. Things like flying fighting craft (jet/spacecraft), what the standard mecha is like, what the standard military land vehicle is; things like that. Even just the names would be appreciated.
Question zaa Second!
This might be kind of a doozy, because I don't ever think there's been a formal discussion or concensus on it, so if that's truly the case, we can take this as a brooching of the topic.
Eternal Space Travel. We know it happens; we know it has happened from the earliest times of the Eternals' civilization - as we'll recall from Saint's notes, Millon M'Tai had a spaceship named the Blue Star, and with it, traversed much of the Continuous/Multiverse in his travels. So we know that Eternal spacecraft must be capable of two impressively high-level functions: firstly, they must, by necessity, be capable of some sort of incredible warp travel. If they're to be useful in large-scale transport or reaction to a conflict on a given world, they need to be able to get their with a decent amount of haste. So, how do they do it? Do they achieve the mythical Warp 10? Do they have something like Dune's spice-powered visionaries transporting their ships quickly across universes? Is something like Crest of the Stars's "Plane Space Travel" utilized? The second point is that they must, by necessity of the Eternals' jobs, be able to cross over dimensional and universal boundaries. In other words, they have to be able to cross over the theoretical 'gap' between any two given universes (and what is in this gap? Two-dimensional space? 6-dimensional space? The Void?). Doing so might entail crossing universal 'planes' that aren't the 'main' plane of that universe inhabited by the most commonly-thought-of forms of living beings. So...what kind of larger-scale spacecraft do the Eternals utilize, and by what systems do they accomplish the things a ship with those purposes should be able to do?
Those are my questions/requests; more will likely come at a later time. So...any thoughts?
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Peptuck stole yo' bike


Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 618 Total Words: 122,075
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Posted: Sat, September 23, 2006 11:42 PM
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In regards to your second question, tenk: I'm fairly certain this was covered already in S18, but isn't the "barrier" between universes Ether? because I definitely remember one of the Eternal spaceships traveling through an Ether area to get back to Arcadia, and Dry's Artellian Empire operates entirely on using Etheric currents to move around.
I also second tenk's request; a list of what the hell the Eternals use as war machines,a nd what their military is structured like and equipped with would be spiffy. If I ever do get around to my canon fiction proposal, it will be in regards to the Eternal military to some degree, so this information would be nice....otherwise you get me making up the Eternal weaponry, and by the time I'm done you'll have the Void crying for mommy. (Seriosuly, in the RT:L Beta I gave the Eternals some badass souped up Ragnaroks already; you don't want to see me get serious ) So, some established Eternal firepower and military capacity would be cool.
I also second Tenk's first question, as this would be very important to Eternity: Black and White, though I will add that Rugal Bernstein does have access to Memory Pool-tier technology following the RT:L Beta.
I also want to add a question of my own, that sort of ties in with the above one asked by Tenk: now that Yume is in charge instead of teh Creator, are the non-humanoid ranks of the Eternals starting to grow a bit? Are we expecting to see an infusion of more "variable" critter types prancing around in the Eternal City in modern times, causing the older Eternals to rankle a bit at how different things were in the good old days?
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 12:08 AM
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Well, I posit these questions largely because they're important for my Into Eternity story. The main character is an ace fighter pilot, and over the course of the story, the main characters will have to be on a giant spaceship (like, Xenosaga fleet-class big) that's capable of not only fast travel on the universal scale, but capable of crossing the universal/dimensional barrier. Basically, a ship should be capable of moving people/things anywhere that the Memory Pools could, with the obvious exception of 'to a previous time, chronology-wise', and 'not instantaneously'.
I think you're right, Pep, in that the space between universes is filled with some sort of Etheric energy, but since I know that Wayne drew a lot on the D&D planar system for those explanations, I'm curious to know exactly how it works. There's this diagram of "the temporal lifespan of a universe" that I saw in some scientific journal, where in three dimensions, it sort of looks like two cones placed bottom to bottom, melded together, and with a gradual bulge in the middle. Through each of the cones' tip-points, a line stretched through the inner space. According to this model, a universe begins at a single condensed point and begins to expand, eventually reaching a fairly stable size for a while, then gradually shrinking back in size to that single point, after which it ceases to exist. That's the universal model I have in my mind when considering the 'physical appearance' of a universe as seen from the outside - to the Eternals, when in the etheric spaces between universes, the universes can probably be seen on the entirety of their axes up to the present time which is currently being formed. Like adjusting the slider on your DivX player, entering the universe at a spexific "vertical" axial coordinate will land you in a certain ballpark time period, while lateral axes will determine physical location. Of course, this method of access isn't accessible to ships, just Memory Pools, but the whole of the universe can probably be seen from outside, if we maintain that the universes AND the etheric middle-space in which they are suspended all constitute the greater multiverse.
It may be something like Crest of the Stars' "Plane Space," where normal matter cannot exist in the space outside universes, so the ships have to extend some sort of field around them that makes the existence of conventional matter possible while in transit through such space, like an imaginary number used for the sake of solving an equation. It's also possible that this etheric space is something that exists, but has no physical dimension, therefore one could cross into any universe from any other universe simply by exiting one and setting up entry to the other.
If there are no clear answers to these ideas, I'll just have to take the best I can gather from the discourse here and try to define stuff myself over the course of the story as required, and we all know what happens when I set out to define stuff.
Tenken: Hey guys, guess how the Eternals travel between universes!
Wayne: :|
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Peptuck stole yo' bike


Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 618 Total Words: 122,075
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 12:53 AM
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Allow me to say, tenk, that this is a damn fine way to define how the Memory Pools work. It may have not-so-readily apparent holes, but those can be fixed pretty easily with a well-placed Retcon Beam 
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Helmar :|


Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 525 Total Words: 638,562
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 12:57 AM
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Quick answer to the first, based on what I remember. Kriz or Wayne will correct me if need be.
Edit: Good ol' wiki.
Essentially, by way of Singularity Effect, whenever you visit another Iteration, the Multiverse spawns a brand new one for you to muck about in, which then (usually) ceases to exist once you leave.
Time-travel (which is really just visiting an iteration that's at an earlier point than the one in question) is impossible in the Continuous, where the Eternals et al are, because there simply isn't another Iteration of the Continuous.
The ability to travel from Iteration to Iteration isn't propretary to the Eternals themselves, though the method will obviously differ for other people or groups; travel through the Ether by some means (ships, spells, whathaveyou) is the usual method. Travel directly from Iteration to Iteration without crossing the Ether is exceedingly rare.
As to policing... I'm not honestly sure, although we do know they do form specialized teams to investigate large-scale alterations (AEGIS formed to investigate the Wave Existance).
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Soujiro Seta The Second Layer


Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Posts: 167 Total Words: 109,314 Location: The Teahouse
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 02:21 AM
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Thanks for the heads-up, Helmar - I'd forgotten about the Singularity Effect. However, my view on the SE is that it's a sort of 'reality failsafe' designed into creation for the purpose of making universes crash-resistant.
Now, it's been my view that Eternals sort of escape the Singularity Effect, or at least large parts of it, because they themselves are singularities. There is only ever one of any Eternal in any iteration, so even with the Memory Pools, Fabian should not be able to go back and duel his younger self in order to prevent the happening of some tragic experience in his past. Whether this means that all Eternals possess automatic "Transcendance," though, I'm not sure.
The pocket-universe in which the Eternal City resided up until after SXII was also a singularity, as there was only ever 'one time' of it. I think you're right - the Continuous is a singular universe too, but whether that's because the Eternals now exist in it or because it's the 'centerline' universe of the Multiverse I'm not sure. The case is this: The Eternals can, via use of the memory pools, jump into a 'source universe' to collect a tournament sponsor character at a point before what we know to be the end of their story. This means that Eternals can appear and disappear from other universes' histories at will. However, this cannot also be true of the Continuous, because if it were true, the Eternals could've used the Memory Pools to go back before the time of their creation to get all their lingering questions about the Old Gods answered. Even if we accept that the Memory Pools cannot go back to any time that happened before they were created, the fact remiains that, at the very least, Yume or someone else would have used them to go back to a point at which the Creator was still alive, if doing so was at all possible.
We also have this scenario: The Eternals, in their fight against the Void, usually fight around in other universes. Why is it not possible to go into universes before the Void appeared? My best guess is Wayne's Wiki postulation that a significant enough Void presence neutralizes the singularity effect, so that time before the present can perhaps be accessed, but no longer altered.
My idea for an Eternals' military/policing force comes from the idea that there already exists things such as mechs, space-fighters, Vicers, and enough of a military organization that I can't really believe that all that exists solely to fend off the Void. There's probably always been a steady stream of cases in which intervention in a world's conflicts was seen as strongly beneficial, and a detatchment would be sent to deal with it. If the Eternals didn't care about the politics of individual worlds, they wouldn't care to send out ambassadors either, but they do. Also, the Eternals had some enemies before when they weren't very accessible, but now that they ARE rather accessible, and that people like Vire and Phaetheon have taken advantage of that vulnerability, I think security has become a higher concern for them. The advantage of them taking preventative action against hostile mortals, especially in the Continuous, is certainly obvious, though their position as 'guardians' sorta forces them to maintain a defensive, reactionary stance.
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Peptuck stole yo' bike


Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 618 Total Words: 122,075
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 07:54 AM
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Quote: | Thanks for the heads-up, Helmar - I'd forgotten about the Singularity Effect. However, my view on the SE is that it's a sort of 'reality failsafe' designed into creation for the purpose of making universes crash-resistant.
Now, it's been my view that Eternals sort of escape the Singularity Effect, or at least large parts of it, because they themselves are singularities. There is only ever one of any Eternal in any iteration, so even with the Memory Pools, Fabian should not be able to go back and duel his younger self in order to prevent the happening of some tragic experience in his past. Whether this means that all Eternals possess automatic "Transcendance," though, I'm not sure.
The pocket-universe in which the Eternal City resided up until after SXII was also a singularity, as there was only ever 'one time' of it. I think you're right - the Continuous is a singular universe too, but whether that's because the Eternals now exist in it or because it's the 'centerline' universe of the Multiverse I'm not sure. The case is this: The Eternals can, via use of the memory pools, jump into a 'source universe' to collect a tournament sponsor character at a point before what we know to be the end of their story. This means that Eternals can appear and disappear from other universes' histories at will. However, this cannot also be true of the Continuous, because if it were true, the Eternals could've used the Memory Pools to go back before the time of their creation to get all their lingering questions about the Old Gods answered. Even if we accept that the Memory Pools cannot go back to any time that happened before they were created, the fact remiains that, at the very least, Yume or someone else would have used them to go back to a point at which the Creator was still alive, if doing so was at all possible.
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Now, this is just my two cents on the matter, but they way I've viewed the Singularity Effect (and had it explained to me as such) was simply that the reality stops producing iterations whenever you enter it. IIRC, that was the entire basis behind much of S18, going to universal iterations in danger of falling to the Void and saving them. Similarly, Metzen wnet to the GGX00001 universe because it was in danger of falling to the Void. This would be rather pointless if every time a singularity-equipped being popped in, that a seperate iteration was generated just for them.
Quote: | We also have this scenario: The Eternals, in their fight against the Void, usually fight around in other universes. Why is it not possible to go into universes before the Void appeared? My best guess is Wayne's Wiki postulation that a significant enough Void presence neutralizes the singularity effect, so that time before the present can perhaps be accessed, but no longer altered. |
I'd postulate that its not simply wiped out past a certain point, but that its completely destroyed; when the Void arrives, it consumes the entire universe across both physical and temporal axes. If a universe is gone, it is friggin' gone.
The Void may end up pushing for attacking at a specific instance in a universe's existence, but once that happens, it floods in, overwhelm's the universe's defenses, consumes it on a physical level, and then moves outward and destroys everything on a temporal level as well. I'm imagining something like a cancer popping up on tenk's "universal diagram" and moving across the timeline in both directions.
But that's just my view of how things operate.
Quote: | My idea for an Eternals' military/policing force comes from the idea that there already exists things such as mechs, space-fighters, Vicers, and enough of a military organization that I can't really believe that all that exists solely to fend off the Void. There's probably always been a steady stream of cases in which intervention in a world's conflicts was seen as strongly beneficial, and a detatchment would be sent to deal with it. If the Eternals didn't care about the politics of individual worlds, they wouldn't care to send out ambassadors either, but they do. Also, the Eternals had some enemies before when they weren't very accessible, but now that they ARE rather accessible, and that people like Vire and Phaetheon have taken advantage of that vulnerability, I think security has become a higher concern for them. The advantage of them taking preventative action against hostile mortals, especially in the Continuous, is certainly obvious, though their position as 'guardians' sorta forces them to maintain a defensive, reactionary stance. |
Building on this: we know, from what Wayne has said, that the Eternals' ranks have been cut back rather heavily with the Creator's disappearance and the various wars during their vulnerable state. With such fewer Eternals running around, they'd likely look to boost their numbers any way possible, but without straining Yume's Creation Energy. I'd imagine that thusly, the Eternals may invest in some backup of the robotic/construct variety. I mean, we've already seen a few constructs in action (Vicers, Weapon, Asli, and so on) but with the Eternals' access to some very hefty technological and magical power, I'd imagine that they could churn out any number of specialized or general machines and constructs for various purposes. Even if they're just on the logistic and construction sides of things, a few hundred thousand worker drones and droids wouldn't be out of place in the Eternal society.
Similarly, I've yet to note the presence of any artificial intellgences in the Eternal society, be they of an electronic or magical nature. I know that we've got people like Fabian and his Epsilons who are very speedy thinkers, but they can't be everywhere at once like an AI can. Though admittedly, I would be a bit hesitant to adopt an active AI, knowing their track record across the multiverse thus far 
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Helmar :|


Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 525 Total Words: 638,562
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Posted: Sun, September 24, 2006 10:36 AM
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Quote: | The pocket-universe in which the Eternal City resided up until after SXII was also a singularity, as there was only ever 'one time' of it. I think you're right - the Continuous is a singular universe too, but whether that's because the Eternals now exist in it or because it's the 'centerline' universe of the Multiverse I'm not sure. The case is this: The Eternals can, via use of the memory pools, jump into a 'source universe' to collect a tournament sponsor character at a point before what we know to be the end of their story. This means that Eternals can appear and disappear from other universes' histories at will. However, this cannot also be true of the Continuous, because if it were true, the Eternals could've used the Memory Pools to go back before the time of their creation to get all their lingering questions about the Old Gods answered. Even if we accept that the Memory Pools cannot go back to any time that happened before they were created, the fact remiains that, at the very least, Yume or someone else would have used them to go back to a point at which the Creator was still alive, if doing so was at all possible. |
Right. The Continuous is a "non-iterative material universe"; that is, you can think of the Continuous as a central Universe formed of one, single Iteration that prevents any further iterations from spawning. Since we define time-travel as visiting a new iteration set to an an earlier point of the iteration you want to travel to, the Continuous prevents that by definition. There is only ever the "now" in the Continuous; since it doesn't spawn iterations, you can't visit an earlier iteration thereof.
The Continuous is non-iterative as an innate feature, regardless of Eternal involvement. Actually, you could say the presence of the Eternals is pretty much a non-factor in this, at least for the "pure", non-transformed Eternals (or at the earliest point in their history, before the first Transformed Eternal was created). Since the Continuous is their home plane, they wouldn't trigger the Singularity Effect with their presence there.
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Wayne Administrator

Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 369 Total Words: 506,046
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Posted: Tue, September 26, 2006 01:57 AM
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Ugh, Eternal "physics." I can tell you guys up front that most of them basically came from mulling things over with Krizak, and then pulling something that sounded good and logical from my Democrat. Since I have the unfortunate habit of making major decisions when ill or sleep-deprived (not to mention having a terrible memory in the first place), some of those ideas were bad ones.
Anyway, Helmar and Peptuck got most of it settled (thanks, guys). As for the rest....
Quote: | My idea for an Eternals' military/policing force comes from the idea that there already exists things such as mechs, space-fighters, Vicers, and enough of a military organization that I can't really believe that all that exists solely to fend off the Void. |
OK, the thing is, the Eternals' primary purpose is fighting off the Void, and when the Void shows up, it's always with more power than the Eternals can deal with on their own. When Vire attacked, they needed the couple dozen sponsors with superpowers to help out; in the previous major wars, they needed to do things like bring in Miracle's recruits (3), or planar lords (the first one). So the vast majority of their military presence is essentially constantly scouting and training, and when the Void tries to make inroads, they send people to deal with it, and most of the time, that works. So while there probably is some military presence that isn't used to fight the Void, it's only a tiny fraction of their actual forces.
As for what they consist of? Well, part of the issue is that we never really decided how "normal" things interact with Multiversal travel. "Mechanical" energy, or "objects," can't really be neutered by coming from iterations, so while we closed the Lich, Transcendent, and Slayers infinite loops, there's still the Star Wars one-- where some Democrat goes crazy with portals and Etherdrives and makes an army of billions of Star Destroyers, Enterprises, etc., and then can do various things to keep them in line (remote-control bombs, mind control, etc.) that someone with dimensional travel can easily do.
So... the thing is, we don't know what kind of "normal forces" the Eternals have, because we don't know how "normal things" work on the Multiversal scale (because they can't work as-is without becoming a game of Disgaea, where you level grind to build your "massive starship" statistic to 5 billion). As a stopgap measure, I basically decided that only ships from a Core universe could survive the transit to the Multiverse, and even then with so much damage that they had to refitted using "multiversal" building materials. Maybe the additional "energy" works like extra mass on its feeble Earth steel, whatever.
What that means is the Eternals have the best of stuff they can realistically control, and that means few, big weapons helmed by loyal troops-- think more small-crew, ultra-powerful warships (like Vorlon cruisers and "Sun Crushers") and Gundams. This reduces the damage a Vagrant captain can cause, but more importantly, it's consolidation-- "smaller but better" tends to beat "bigger but worse" because they're, well, arbitrarily better. Loknar's Avenger takes essentially no damage from a typical Star Destroyer (since laser weapons are so puny compared to the kind of technology Master of Orion gets up to), and any Eternal warship probably has that level of power-- which takes a lot of non-reproducable resources, which means there aren't many of them, and they are extremely well-taken care of.
On the personal scale, probably every Eternal warrior who isn't a mage will probably wear armor and at least be proficient in a ranged weapon (guns, force lances, catapults) of some kind. Since they can make as many suits of "powered armor" as their warehouses can hold, given the millions of years they work with; every soldier should have suits capable of: stopping bullets, reducing energy damage, flight, space-survival support, etc., typically a few of them (and the highest-ranking would have all of them). Of course, even the best "normal" armor has weaknesses, and thus people like Fabian who just wear "Etherite cloth" or whatever don't do it because it's more protective-- it's because they don't need normal armor. Fabian can just take a Desert Eagle shot to the face; it probably wouldn't do more than dirty his complexion, and that's because he has so much inner chi and magic he makes scouters explode and babies cry. Most Eternals can't even get that super awesome, and the ones that can probably never will (since they're going to die before their million years of training are up).
That leads into an entirely unrelated question ("Why are sponsors so cool compared to Eternals when the typical Eternal soldier has spent so much time in training his BAB is measured in hexadecimal?"), which I might as well address. The reality is because you guys are jerks who want to push your own characters at the expense of NPCs, and there's nothing wrong with that; nobody really cares. So the storyline reason becomes the typical fallback: "energy." Let me explain.
When a sponsor is brought into another Core reality (or the Continuous), they get a D&D-style [Multiversal] tag on them. This tag is temporary, and it only lasts as long as the "residual" energy they possess (their own, and that gained from long-term exposure to energy from their home universe as well as from other Multiversals they interact with) lasts. As it fades, your energy battery loses its charge, and it has to be plugged back into a power outlet-- except that your voltage level is set to "small and weak," and the Multiverse's is "large and angry." So you have to spend time to increase your power in the Multiverse, and that takes a long time. Like... really, a long time. Millions of years of long time.
And so we finally have an explanation for why older Eternals are so much more hardcore than younger ones (countless years of Superman solar power), and why "Let's host a tournament!" is always the first recourse (because it brings in people with power you can use, and fighting keeps it going for much longer than it would if you brought people from DBZ in to play Tea Party with Septerra).
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Peptuck--
Quote: | Are we expecting to see an infusion of more "variable" critter types prancing around in the Eternal City in modern times, causing the older Eternals to rankle a bit at how different things were in the good old days? |
Yes, S18 was starting to hint at that with Yume being hit on by a Romulan, Mishnu's advisor being a Gardhyi, the Knights Arcana all being different races (including demons, giants, and lesser gods), etc. And yes, older [and mostly human] Eternals both resent the younger ones for being different, both in terms of appearance and in the comparatively "easy road" they've had under Yume's guidance and power. In the days where Serpines were a credible threat, the Chain Gang would've never happened, for example-- Sean would've gotten punished for slacking, Weapon would be fighting all the time, and Taev would be stuck in class until he got Teleport right, darn it. Older Eternals see that that's no longer necessary, but they can't help thinking there's something wrong with that arrangement, and since a lot of that resentment goes to Yume anyway (nobody likes having to be rescued, so the fact that an entire generation of immortals had to get bailed out by a teenager, who incidentally replaced the goddess they loved for a younger, sassier, smaller-chested version, leads to unhappy feelings), it festers.
Quote: | I also second tenk's request; a list of what the hell the Eternals use as war machines,a nd what their military is structured like and equipped with would be spiffy. |
Most of it got answered beforehand, but as for the second part... the Eternals are basically set up like UN forces. There's no real division amongst the various "branches," simply different arrangements of equipment and manpower. The vast majority of soldiers are from the Kappa cast, although officers might be Xi, Lambda, or Omicron. Due to need for efficiency, the military is divided much more strictly than other castes-- Kappas are primarily divided into "forces" (think US military "armies"), each of which answers to a commanding officer, who in turn answers to the operation's director (typically a high-ranking strategist, like Malachi or Amondi). Forces are subdivided into units, sorties, and finally squads or teams (I use generic terms here because specific military ones sound too reminiscent of actual military forces-- but this is just my idea; anyone who wants to make this more "official-sounding" is free to do so).
The vast majority of Eternal forces are infantry, who are technically also mechanized forces (due to using power suits and [in smaller numbers] mecha). Since so much of Eternal fighting is done in space, in planes, or other dimensions; there are extremely few land vehicles or sea ships (unless they are also capable of space flight).
The Eternals also use their "special forces" far more frequently than actual military forces. Specialists are usually Xis, and they handle assassinations, scouting missions, etc. Starships, since the Eternals have so few [again, see above], are actually used more for special operations than for war-- although they do assist in bombardment and support (think what actual battleships were used for in World War 2).
Quote: | Even if they're just on the logistic and construction sides of things, a few hundred thousand worker drones and droids wouldn't be out of place in the Eternal society. |
Actually, it would. Droids definitionally can't "improve," barring upgrades, and thus an excessive use of robotics would be anathema to the Eternals, who view self-improvement and strength as the only thing that keeps them and the entire Multiverse safe. Think of it kind of like a jealous Union member, except that instead of complaining to his boss when R2-D2 is taking away some of his hours, he blows the robot up with a kamehameha. Asli was only there because she was ridiculously advanced beyond what even most powerful Eternals could do, and Weapon actually can advance, albeit through a loophole (having an essence imbued into his magi-reactor), which I would imagine is a process they're not going to use often even if it "works," since it's so limited in functionality.
Quote: | Similarly, I've yet to note the presence of any artificial intellgences in the Eternal society, be they of an electronic or magical nature. |
Truly intelligent AIs are essentially supercomputers who can smart off to you, and the Eternals have plenty of supercomputers. :]
Seriously, AIs probably do exist for what they're needed to do-- help run starships and advanced vehicles, plotting battle simulations, and tactical assistance-- and probably not much else (see above; an AI can't sharpen its mind the way Sophia can, so having more general AIs wouldn't "help" anything). And, yes, the Eternals are as afraid of SHODAN as anybody else is.
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Tenk--
Quote: | I think you're right, Pep, in that the space between universes is filled with some sort of Etheric energy, but since I know that Wayne drew a lot on the D&D planar system for those explanations, I'm curious to know exactly how it works. |
Sort of. I kept the idea of a Planescape mostly separate from the idea of universes and their iterations. Defining a "universe" as a "material plane" is just semantics, for example-- they both refer to functionally infinite stretches of space filled with "stuff."
Quote: | Of course, this method of access isn't accessible to ships, just Memory Pools, but the whole of the universe can probably be seen from outside, if we maintain that the universes AND the etheric middle-space in which they are suspended all constitute the greater multiverse. |
The thought of being able to physically see and interact with actual universes isn't something I ever considered, and from the Memory Pools to Etherdrives, the process is basically "magic"-- hitting the proper coordinates and time and then going there. Sort of like the Wayback machine, or the time machine in Carmen Sandiego games, heh.
The thing is, each "core universe" has matching millions of iterations, which are shunted off into the Void. The Void can't be everywhere (obviously, else there wouldn't be any universes), and it obviously can't "surround" each universe (otherwise there'd be no way to travel between them). So as far as the spatial position of universes go, I assumed they basically coexisted in the same general space but extended in different "directions" ("branches of the tree," or something), and in parallel dimensions or universes walled off by Ether. So it's not so much traveling to another place, but shifting to a different level of reality and plotting a course that kept you out of the iterations that became Void slurpee.
Wow, this is hurting my brain. Let's come back to that later. @_@ Anything else I might've missed that needs pointed out again?
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Lucent The Undreaming


Joined: 10 Apr 2005 Posts: 885 Total Words: 388,792
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Posted: Tue, September 26, 2006 03:14 AM
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Wayne, I laughed so hard I was in tears at some points of that. XD
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Helmar :|


Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 525 Total Words: 638,562
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Posted: Wed, September 27, 2006 01:50 AM
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Wayne wrote: | The thing is, each "core universe" has matching millions of iterations, which are shunted off into the Void. The Void can't be everywhere (obviously, else there wouldn't be any universes), and it obviously can't "surround" each universe (otherwise there'd be no way to travel between them). So as far as the spatial position of universes go, I assumed they basically coexisted in the same general space but extended in different "directions" ("branches of the tree," or something), and in parallel dimensions or universes walled off by Ether. So it's not so much traveling to another place, but shifting to a different level of reality and plotting a course that kept you out of the iterations that became Void slurpee. |
Perhaps an analogy is in order.
Think of the Multiverse at any given "now" in the Continuous as a pristine beach. Surf, sun, all that good stuff, untouched by any sort of flaw: no animals, no debris, no people. The grains of sand constantly shift from wind and waves, just like the iterations of the Multiverse do. Lodge a big rock in the middle of it, staying more or less immobile compared to the sand, representing the Continuous.
Now dump a hojilion gallons of crude oil into the ocean right next to the beach.
The Void-oil slowly encroaches on the sand with each wave, trying to cover each grain of sand-iteration. Eventually, Eternal-people do come along and try to get the worst of it off the beach once it seems to be taking over, but oil is a tricky thing; no matter how much you try, it'll always come back for years, decades, and longer. Hopping between iterations involves leaving one single grain of sand, touching on the Continuous briefly (as a big chunk of rock surrounded by a functionally infinite number of grains of sand, it's about the best navigational beacon you have) to jump into another, while choosing a course around any oil that might be in the way.
Well, I hope that helped, anyway. If it confused, er, I'll blame the timestamp. *nods*
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Peptuck stole yo' bike


Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 618 Total Words: 122,075
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Posted: Wed, September 27, 2006 08:10 AM
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Friggin' Wiki and your stupid connection errors.
Quote: | Actually, it would. Droids definitionally can't "improve," barring upgrades, and thus an excessive use of robotics would be anathema to the Eternals, who view self-improvement and strength as the only thing that keeps them and the entire Multiverse safe. Think of it kind of like a jealous Union member, except that instead of complaining to his boss when R2-D2 is taking away some of his hours, he blows the robot up with a kamehameha. Asli was only there because she was ridiculously advanced beyond what even most powerful Eternals could do, and Weapon actually can advance, albeit through a loophole (having an essence imbued into his magi-reactor), which I would imagine is a process they're not going to use often even if it "works," since it's so limited in functionality. |
Understandable. I dunno, it just seems to me that, for practical reasons, a corps of robotic meat (er, metal) shields would be useful against the Void, as they have no Essence and thus there's nothing permenant to lose, which would be very important following the loss of so many Eternals in so many conflicts.
Quote: | Seriously, AIs probably do exist for what they're needed to do-- help run starships and advanced vehicles, plotting battle simulations, and tactical assistance-- and probably not much else (see above; an AI can't sharpen its mind the way Sophia can, so having more general AIs wouldn't "help" anything). And, yes, the Eternals are as afraid of SHODAN as anybody else is. |
Also understandable. Admittedly, there are some AIs in fiction that can improve over time (to pull one out of the air, the "smart" AIs in Halo, or the AIs in Marathon, for example) though in many cases it relies on processing power as opposed to actual improvement. And I doubt the Eternals would want to use one of those, considering that an AI of that nature can get...troublesome. I mean, look at Durandal in Marathon (though the Eternals using him would be rather ironic, considering that his whole point in existence at the end was to ecape the death of his universe.....)
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