91 replies to this topic

[Nero's Boot]

Right before the three Aeonverse lines collapses, staggered back in d20 format, then died completely, the metaplot had manuevered things so that the Coalition/aberrant invasion of Earth was only a few supplements/modules away. Earth had its allies: The novas of Eden, the Qin, the psi orders, and then, towards the end, the Chromatics, plus, the Upeo wa Macho had returned. Earth had jumpships, teleporters, novas, and potent alien allies. Plus, Event 418 had occured, gifting Inspiration to Qin, the Coalition, and humanity once more. Arrayed against them were a race of super-tech aliens and cosmic Mythos-esque aberrants. We were only likely a module trilogy away from The Big Event....

....but sadly, it never happened.

So, I ask the Aeonverse fans of Eononline.net how you would run The Big Invasion, or how you did run it, if you've already done so. I still have plans on running a 3 generation Aeonverse epic (one campaign using Adventure!, one using Aberrant, and the final one using Trinity), and the invasion will be the capstone to the epic.

--so, what would you have done, if you were in charge of the Trinity line? NB

[Alex Green]

I'd have the Arc make the first two moves.
1) It opens some warp gates and dumps lots of solider types on some cities.  The PCs get to repel it.

2) It turns on tech to prevent metal from warping or teleporting onto the arc.  So no porting nukes onboard and setting them off.  The PCs get to teleport on board and sneak around without inorganic tech.

[metaphysician]

Hmm. . .

From a tactical perspective, it'd make the most sense if the Colony and his forces pushed fully at this same time.  However, I'm actually inclined to have the Colony itself hold back.  Support the Coalition, yeah.  Lots of aberrants involved, yeah.  Final showdown with the Colony?  Nope.  If he or his lieutenants are present at all, I'd have them hold back from full involvement in the main fight.

Reasons:

1.  If everything happens at once, it makes the most sense for the Edenites to focus on the Colony and his aberrant forces, while the rest focus on the Ark.  The problem is, this mostly means the Colony threat is ended without PC involvement.  So, by staggering it more, the PCs can be involved in that as well, later.

2.  The Coalition is easily a world ending level threat itself, and there's not that many in the setting.  Best not to use them up all at once.

3.  The Coalition and the Colony are distinct threats, with different styles and natures.  Thus, they'd work best as independent stories.

I'd have to work up some in-character reasons for the Colony doing this, though.

[Alex Green]

IC reasons?  How about they've been planning to backstab each other from day one.  The Colony figures he'll let the two sides beat each other up, and he'll take over from whoever wins.

[Nero's Boot]

I'd say The Colony wants both the Coalition and Humanity for its own purposes.  Remember The Colony doesn't want Earth for sentimental reasons: It wants Earth because of Humanity, to use as breeding stock for aberrant and sub-aberrant servitors.  This isn't an invasion, so much as a joint rape attempt.  And the Coalition's breeders can breed with novas, thus giving The Colony yet more breeding stock!

--I'd say both the Coalition and Humanity are equally ****ed, if The Colony wins; the Coalition just doesn't know it NB

[metaphysician]

Oh, a backstab is almost certain.  The problem is explaining why the Colony doesn't simply hold back a bit during the big battle, and then attack right after, say, the Ark bites it and humanity is at its weakest.

Depending on how much damage fighting off the Coalition does, though, its entirely likely Earth's defenses will be weakened for years afterwards.  That would allow for the Colony to still ( potentially ) take advantage of it, while giving enough time for it to be a separate event.

[Alex Green]

Oh, a backstab is almost certain.  The problem is explaining why the Colony doesn't simply hold back a bit during the big battle, and then attack right after, say, the Ark bites it and humanity is at its weakest.

Who says he won't?  But even ignoring that he's insane, so far he's been playing a long term game, and playing it well.

If I were him, I might hold back a bit during the fight and then *totally* withdraw afterwards.

This gives the Earth forces time to fight among themselves... the baselines kick the Novas off the planet and think about attacking Eden.  The General has more time to burn out and their tank starts to "show it's age" even more.  Legal action is taken against the Teleport Proxy for the Europe mess.  And maybe there is another Proxy purge as the USF finally decides that with the abbies gone it's time to move against their internal threat.

[metaphysician]

Oh, I can entirely see him striking immediately. . . its just, for OOC thematic reasons, I *don't* want him to do that.

As for the rest, good point.  Especially alienating Earth from Eden, since if Eden won't help at all, then Earth is probably screwed against a full push. . .

[Nero's Boot]

......and what would you do with the Doyen?  White Wolf was obviously setting that species up to be the next Cosmic Menace, after the combined aberrant/Coalition force had been dealt with.

--maybe the Doyen have biotech that rivals low-end nova abilities NB

[Alex Green]

I wouldn't do anything with the Doyen right now, except perhaps a blurb.  Process 418 blinded them like the other psi-types, and some of them had hoped that it would result in mankind's extinction.  It didn't, but with the situation in flux mostly they are going to wait and see what happens.  They are deep thinkers, not quick ones, and are perfectly aware that by the time they could come up with a plan the situation will likely have changed so much to make it moot.

[metaphysician]

Yep.  The Doyen are still out there, and probably still doing various low level plots, but any conflict with them isn't coming to the fore soon.  Especially since they still have their hand in the psi orders.

I don't see the Doyen actually getting involved en masse until either the psi orders completely escape their control, Earth makes peace with the various friendly eximorphs, or both.  And even then, with Process 418 happening, and the mortal threat high quantum novas pose to their existence, its possible their ultimate response would be flight, not war.  After all, they *are* almost pathologically cowardly.

If they did go to war, though, I'd tend to have them be, if anything, the scariest threat posed to Earth, even moreso than the Colony.  High end Doyen having psi powers approaching the magnitude of Q6 quantum powers, combined with biotech lightyears more advanced than anything even the Qin have, should do the trick.

[Alex Green]

...If they did go to war, though...

They'd be pathetic.  Combine 'pathologically cowardly' with 'can't think or react quickly' and you've created something whose war performance is going to suck no matter how powerful they are.  Worse, they also have known weaknesses, aka quantum.

[metaphysician]

Well, yeah.  Hence why I'm rather disinclined to have them go to actual war.  They'd need a "gumption faction" to have a real chance, unless the biotech was truly ludicrous.

Of course, that reminds me of an idea that passed through my group on how to remove Divis Mal from the setting for a while. . .

Divis Mal: "*blink*blink* . . .I just realized, an alien race is screwing with Earth. . . *why* didn't I realize this before. . . ah, okay.  Psionic manipulation, done by a telepathic gestalt.  Clever, and potent.  Unfortunately, now I know you exist. . . "

*to the Teragen* "Bye, guys.  Be back in a couple decades.  I have a race of alien jerks to commit genocide against."

Well, okay, he probably wouldn't talk like that, but its still amusing. . .

[Hyper-Focus]

If the coalition invasion is the capstone of the Trinity universe is this where Max Mercer makes his final appearance? I devoured the information on him in Adventure. He's obviously still pulling some strings in Trinity.

[Finbar]

Legal action is taken against the Teleport Proxy for the Europe mess.  And maybe there is another Proxy purge as the USF finally decides that with the abbies gone it's time to move against their internal threat.

Suing: If they went after Atwan, it really would be a mess. As Atwan was running from the Legions, electrokinetics, and telepaths, it would really mess things up for the psis, as well as call into question the QK purge. Odds are that the teleporters would be found innocent, but the other three orders would suffer some serious backlash.

Proxie Purge: That would be interesting to see, especially as only one proxy has been nailed, and that took Doyenne possession to make happen; it probably would have not happened without Doyenne interference...

FR

[metaphysician]

Thing is, the Doyen wouldn't want the proxies to be purged *unless* they were abandoning efforts to do anything but destroy Earth.  The proxies are their biggest resources.

As for Mercer. . . I'll just leave that be.  I subscribe to my GM's vastly-less-flattering interpretation of Mercer.

[Alex Green]

Suing: If they went after Atwan, it really would be a mess. As Atwan was running from the Legions, electrokinetics, and telepaths, it would really mess things up for the psis, as well as call into question the QK purge. Odds are that the teleporters would be found innocent, but the other three orders would suffer some serious backlash.

Exactly.  None of this is public... yet.  But if Atwan comes back, the next question is, 'why did he leave before/during/after the Europe mess?'  Considering how bad governments are at keeping secrets over the very long term, it's almost certain to come out.

Actually this would make a good chapter in one of the books.

Proxie Purge: That would be interesting to see, especially as only one proxy has been nailed, and that took Doyenne possession to make happen; it probably would have not happened without Doyenne interference...

There has been one purge and one attempted purge.  The bio-k-Proxy has already decided the electro-Proxy is next and made plans to kill him and take his stuff.  Mind you, he's not doing that out of a sense of evil, or greed, but just a realization that (IMHO) he's come close to painting himself into a corner.

And on the subject of purges, the proxy most likely to see them coming... is hiding in a bunker in space or the moon or something.  That's suggestive.

[Sprocket]

Re: Suing Atwan
Considering that both she and the Upeo Prometheus Tank are still in the Sphere and are unlikely to resume long-term residence anywhere in the Solar System, a lawsuit sounds kind of futile. AFAICT, Bolade's just as well-protected as Otha is, if not more so.

Re: Unflattering interpretation of Mercer
Oooh, this sounds good! Would'ya mind sharing that with us?  

[metaphysician]

Heh, well, the rough version is, my GM Pendaran noticed a couple things:

1.  The Aeon Society in the Aberrant era is linked in to all the most horrid goings-on, typically as patron

2.  All the extraordinary events and technologies of the Adventure era, despite many of them being outright public, are completely gone from all historical record a few decades after WWII

3.  The letter to Michael Donighal, notably its effective claim that WWII needs to happen for the good of humanity

Add that all together, and he smelt a rat.  A Four-esque, Dowling-esque rat.  Or, to put in the most generous light, Mercer believes that humanity is best off without the intervention or activity of superhumans.  And so, he puts his efforts together to minimize said influence as much as possible.  Of course, *he* has the wisdom to know when intervention actually is necessary, and *he* has the fortitude to keep from letting power corrupt. . .

So basically, for quite a long time, Mercer has been doing his best to keep the world mundane. . . and keep the extraordinary under his control.

Is this the only possible interpretation of the canon material?  No, not really.  At best, though, I can see Mercer as a victim of foreknowledge, rendered personally impotent by his visits to the future, and thus unwilling to do anything to prevent the corruption that happened in the wake of his absence.  I think even that is stretching it; the stuff the Aeon Society does in the Aberrant era is just too foul to be mere faltering idealism.

And thats the bad interp of him in canon.  In the modified timeline of the Ancient Aberrant campaign, he is almost certainly far worse.  ;)

[BlueNinja]

I can't say I disagree too much of the broad scope of that, since a number of the A! era people are still around and in the Aeon Society in the Aberrant era.

[metaphysician]

Yep.  The one letter by Whitley Styles implied that Mercer would disapprove, but that could just be because Mercer shielded his ( effectively ) adopted son from the horrible, but necessary, truth.

[Alex Green]

Another way to look at this is Max was the equiv of Pres Bush... did the Pres give permission to have those prisoners in Iraq tortured?  No, he didn’t.  And he probably would have been (and was) horrified that it would/did happen… but at the same time, he did supply the tools, and it did happen on his watch.  Worse, from some stand points it was fairly predictable.  

Max is personally a very nice guy, and a very moral guy, and he is used to being in charge and making the right decisions.  However, all of that is in person.  He’s also the head of a (by 1998) very large organization and it’s effectively immune to micromanagement, and run by others who don’t share his dream or have his morals.  Things that compound the problem are…

Max lacks the skill set to deal with the situation.  He simply has the wrong set of skills for this, and as he didn’t grow with Eon (he time jumped) he doesn’t have the contacts.  

There are some things, actually a LOT of things, that simply can’t be dragged into the light, so his options are limited.  Mostly what he’s tried to do is appoint people willing to do the right thing.

The judgment of history is that abbies are EVIL.  Assuming the higher ups in Eon are cognizant of this, other people’s judgment on what the right thing is can differ dramatically from his.

Moving back to “the wrong skill set”, he may not be expecting things to happen under his nose.  He’s appointed the right people didn’t he?  And they say they are doing the right things, and he believes them.  And it can be extremely distorting at the top in terms of what information you are exposed to.  Information gets filtered and/or interpreted incorrectly and passed up the chain.  

For an example:  Max’s people told him that Corbin was a screw up, he got kicked off of T2M because he was a screw up and because he was emotionally unstable and also had the power of making other people emotionally unstable.  All of this is true.  Max’s people tell him that he was personally (perhaps intimately) connected to Slider, and one of the best theories out there is that Corbin’s emotions simply got the better of him.  Corbin has Mega-Strength.  Slider was killed with Mega-Strength.  All of this is also true.  Corbin then runs during the funeral… and the “best” theory is that his emotion power told him that several novas had figured it out and were going to talk to him after the funeral.

[metaphysician]

The problem is one of magnitude.  Given the sheer scale of what the Aeon Society is backing via Proteus, he'd either:

1.  Need to be approving, or at least intentionally allowing, it

2.  Need to be specifically deceived by his subordinates

Both cast him in a bad light.

Now, admittedly, things are complicated by the fact that he's apparently not around for most of the Aberrant era.  Its just. . . he had already seen the future by the time he created the Aeon Society.  So he either didn't know about what Aeon was doing in that era ( in which case he was a naive victim of predestination ), or else he *did* know what it was doing.  If the latter, either he tried and failed to avert that future ( again, helpless victim of predestination ), or he set it up so the future happened ( ruthless bastard ).

Perhaps what we need is a canon judgement on the nature of time travel and free will. . .

[Alex Green]

The problem is one of magnitude.  Given the sheer scale of what the Aeon Society is backing via Proteus...

How do you figure?  Project Pro can be read to be people doing bad things for good reasons.

"Scale" in this case refers to how many people know that Project Pro is up to things like Sterilization and murder.  Murder is extremely rare and I assume off the books.  Most PP members don't know that they are members.  Many of PPs other items have other explanations, and worse, fill needs.

Imprisonment of tainted novas: Mostly this is a hospital, but yes, it's also a jail.  So what?  They need treatment and/or the public needs to be protected.  Generally speaking the alternative to imprisonment is murder for most of these poor creatures.  Note also that because we have this and this system, we also need someone to capture them, guard them, and someone to take care of them if they escape.  

Unethical research of taint: It needs to be researched, what this really means is "unsupervised" research.  Considering PU is pretty much downplaying the entire issue of taint, this has to be unsupervised.  

Sterilization?: Very hidden, and the few people who know about it also know the war is coming and abbies are evil.  They may even know that the second and third generations are worse, because Max himself told them (this is IMHO).  This would be one of those things that you simply don’t talk about.

And keep in mind that Max isn't just dealing with Project Pro.  He's also dealing with Project Utopia, and any other temporal or inspired issues that abound.  It’d be extremely easy to let yourself be buried in paperwork in dealing with something like this.  10 thousand novas, every one of them has books written on them of research data.  

It has been said that the scarcest resource on the planet is management attention.  Project Pro might not be in Max’s top 5 priorities to deal with… and if it isn’t in the top 5, it probably doesn’t get done.

So he either didn't know about what Aeon was doing in that era ( in which case he was a naive victim of predestination ), or else he *did* know what it was doing.

This assumes perfect knowlege.  Max goes to the Trinity Future, and he finds that things are messed up.  Aeon exists, but by that time they'd erased the records of why things were messed up.  

Keep in mind the Abbies got the overwhelming share of the blame, and by the time he gets to Trinity, everyone who directly dealt with the problems were dead.

So he founds Utopia to head things off.  Maybe he even changes history so that things weren't as bad in Trinity as they were originally when he went to the future originally.

How's that for a thought?  Maybe Max actually was successful in making Trinity much better.

[SkyLion]

The bio-k-Proxy has already decided the electro-Proxy is next and made plans to kill him and take his stuff.

Is that in Terra Verde?  Page number?

[Sprocket]

Re: Norca Proxy's plans to off Cassel
You can see del Fuego's plot for that on p. 29 of Terra Verde.

Re: Mercer as Dowling
Loved the Planetary reference, although it's definitely an atypical view on Mercer. Perhaps this take on Mercer could be seen as an extreme version of the "pessimistic Mercer" showcased in the upcoming Trinity Storytellers Guide?

[metaphysician]

The thing is, even if its due to imperfect knowledge. . . Mercer still ends up creating the organization roughly half-responsible for the Aberrant War, and all responsible for covering up with pulp era ( well before N-Day ).  That still leaves him a tragic dupe, at best.  Yeah, he meant well, yeah, he had decent reason for not knowing enough. . . and yet he still manages to cause horrible things.

[Alex Green]

That still leaves him a tragic dupe, at best.  Yeah, he meant well, yeah, he had decent reason for not knowing enough. . . and yet he still manages to cause horrible things.

Take PU and Project Pro out of the picture.

Now we only have Mal, The Teragen, Taint, Crysalis, and (god help us) superhumans in general.

Project Utopia's surges of goodwill never happen, PU's attempt to integrate humanity with novas never happens, and nova sterility never happens.

If the 2nd Gen really is more stable and more powerful, odds are pretty good baseline humanity loses the war and becomes a slave race.

[metaphysician]

Point, but OTOH, I'd argue part of the reason the Teragen happened was that stupid-ass reply letter he wrote to Donighal way back when.  ;)

[BlueNinja]

Is it possible that Mercer believes in predestination?  You know, he saw the future - thus, no matter how much he personally hates it, that is the future he must make come about.

That really makes him tragically deluded (and IMO leaning towards novaness with Taint, like Donighal).