Weird unified timeline entry

[Alistaire]

Ok, so I'm looking at this "Unified Trinity Timeline", and I see something in there that doesn't make any sense to me:

1970: dramatic increase in superhuman activity

Can anyone enlighten me as to what this means? I mean, it's too early for Ab, and to late for A!, so what is it referring to? And in what book is this talked about? Given the intro to the timeline, the compiler didn't consider this a "minor" event. So what gives?

[metaphysician]

I don't think it was ever explained or detailed. Best guess is something almost happened in the secret superhuman world around that time. Maybe Donighal was making a second try at empowering the world, that didn't work well or was interrupted by the Aeon Society. Maybe somebody just had a lab accident.

Whatever it was, it got covered up by the Aeon Society *real* well, such that its easier to find evidence of weird phenomenon in the pulp era, than in the 70s.

[Sprocket]

I don't think it was ever explained or detailed. Best guess is something almost happened in the secret superhuman world around that time.

Either that, or the background level of Inspired activity was finally beginning to be noticed by the television media. People back in the Adventure! Era could dismiss any Inspired activity that made it into the newspapers as tabloid-style sensationalism. Seeing Inspired activity live on color TV that couldn't easily be explained/BS'ed away would be something that the Aeon Council of the time would *not* have wanted to happen. Remember, these were the guys who were wanting to turn Proteus into a clearinghouse for assassination, kidnapping & sabotage, so they would have had no moral/ethical problem with executing a cover-up by any means necessary. (See the Aberrant Players Guide, p. 57 for details.)

[SkyLion]

Not sure what canon book that is referenced in, but assuming that it *is* referenced in canon somewhere I would guess it's for those people who want to run Adventure! games exploitation style!

Who's the black private dick

That's a sex machine to all the chicks?

SHAFT!

Ya damn right!

::ultracool

6 (meeelion!) dollar man? Sounds like a Stalwart to me!

::laugh

[metaphysician]

I imagine it was put in the Aeon setting bible or equivalent in case the line was a hit, to give them some extra stuff to develop later. Pity the MTV lawsuit kinda quashed the line's momentum.

( we will not speak of the aeon d20 material; better to have died with dignity than suffered *that* indignity )

[SkyLion]

Yeah, D20 sucks!

:surrepititiously pushes DnD 3.5 books out of view:

::wink

(Recently started playing DnD again but it would totally suck for Aberrant style game).

[metaphysician]

Oh, d20 didn't suck, in general. D&D 3e was the best thing to happen to Dungeons and Dragons, ever, and the OGL was a big part of it. Plus, without d20, we wouldn't have Mutants & Masterminds.

D20 would just require a M&M level overhaul to work for Aberrant, and notable work to apply to Adventure and Trinity. Instead, it got practically the opposite.

[Sprocket]

Dragging the thread back onto topic... ::laugh

Looking at the timeline entry on p. 82 of the Trinity core book, I can posit 2 (in-game) possibilities for it. The first is the increased effectiveness of the media, as stated in my previous post. The second possibility would be that said increase in super-normal events was a direct result of Michael Donighal's first attempt at recreating the Hammersmith Event.

Going by what's been speculated here & elsewhere about this, it's not beyond the realm of plausibility that Donighal could have attained Quantum 6 or 7 by then. So in the best experimental fashion, he does his best to create a Telluric vortex in the early 1970s, and the results are considerably less than he'd hoped to achieve (if we can consider the events of the first N-Day to be Donighal's goal). I could be wrong about this, but the Inspired outrageousness might even have been confined to the North American continent.

Your thoughts, anyone?

[metaphysician]

Pretty much, though I'd peg it as his second attempt. The first one was in 1943, though that one was apparently fully prevented.

[Sprocket]

Pretty much, though I'd peg it as his second attempt. The first one was in 1943, though that one was apparently fully prevented.

::confused And where did that come from? I'd figured that Donighal/Primoris/Mal didn't have anywhere near the Quantum to accomplish that by the 1940s. Unless of course, he was using some sort of Innovation as a Quantum booster as per Magneto in the first X-Men movie.

[metaphysician]

Oh, he wasn't using his own power, yeah. He was using some kind of giant gadget, just like Hammersmith did ( inadvertantly ).

[Sprocket]

Oh, he wasn't using his own power, yeah. He was using some kind of giant gadget, just like Hammersmith did ( inadvertently ).

Again, where does that tidbit come from? Was there a discussion of the Aeon Continuum gameline's "bible" that this was snipped out of, or is it just more speculation? ::sly

[metaphysician]

I honestly can't remember anymore. I suppose it might be my game's canon slipping in ( when you play in a setting for five years, it tends to stick in your mind ).

[SkyLion]

Except that I remember reading about that somewhere as well... ::unsure

[metaphysician]

It certainly is one of the most logical things to explain the final battle between Mercer and Donighal. After all, Donighal wanted to secretly manipulate events to avert WWII, and Mercer opposed such actions. If we assume Donighal still gave credence to his friend's arguments even then, its not a huge leap to go from "the problem with a small elite guiding the world is that it prevents individuals from learning" to "the solution is to inspire the whole world. That way, it is not a small inspired elite saving them, but they themselves saving themselves."

Of course, this doesn't work out well, due to Mercer actually being a pretty awful person underneath, and having one's best friend reveal himself to be an epic hypocrite who condones genocide is the kind of thing to sour one on the human race in general. . .

[SkyLion]

Not to mention he wouldn't give up the booty... ::sly

[Sprocket]

It certainly is one of the most logical things to explain the final battle between Mercer and Donighal. After all, Donighal wanted to secretly manipulate events to avert WWII, and Mercer opposed such actions. If we assume Donighal still gave credence to his friend's arguments even then, its not a huge leap to go from "the problem with a small elite guiding the world is that it prevents individuals from learning" to "the solution is to inspire the whole world. That way, it is not a small inspired elite saving them, but they themselves saving themselves."

Of course, this doesn't work out well, due to Mercer actually being a pretty awful person underneath, and having one's best friend reveal himself to be an epic hypocrite who condones genocide is the kind of thing to sour one on the human race in general. . .

OK, so it's an embroidering of the basic "future fates of the Aeon Society" as presented in the Adventure! core book. Fair enough. That said, let me know if/when you can recall the source of the tidbit in question. It certainly sounds like something worth hunting down.

Not to mention he wouldn't give up the booty... ::sly

::laugh ROFLMAO!

[SkyLion]

Seriosuly! Sexual Frustration can drive one mad, MAD I TELL YOU!!! ::unsure

Enough to drive one into becomming a taint-maddened megalomaniac. Hmmm...Taint-Maddened...

Seriosuly though, I don;t know where I read it...could have been one of the developer's made a comment at some point.

[Sprocket]

Seriously though, I don;t know where I read it...could have been one of the developer's made a comment at some point.

Fair enough. Reading what few email digests from Innocence.com I could find made for enlightening reading. Too bad that I only found them after the game lines had died, though. ::brick

[Gideon]

Well the 1970s stuff is referenced in Aberrant:Project Utopia, pp.97-8

December 9, 1964 Railroad Crossing Disaster Narrowly Averted. Is a sample newpaper clipping cleansed from the public record by Project Proteus (inferred by Aeon originally).

March 18, 1981 "Radiation sickness", that Aeon intercedes to remove a tainted erruption from a physician's care.

A:PU, p99 - "Different issues of newspapers and news circulars all over the country (not to mention some international ones) have been selectively removed from archives and databases as far back as the 30s and 40s."

So that is a cannon reference covering 1930-1981 cover up by Aeon of Aberrants.

[Alex Green]

So that is a cannon reference covering 1930-1981 cover up by Aeon of Aberrants.

That's "presumed aberrants"... and it does raise a number of interesting questions, namely, 'What happened to them?'

Are these decades old abbies the reason behind the few seriously powerful ones? Divis, Pax, Sophia, Scripture, etc?

Antaeus and Gaby we think we have origins for... but honestly I'd rather post date them too.

Further, does this mean that there are *other* power-houses out there?

I think the setting was started with that idea, but it was never pursued beyond Divis.

[Sprocket]

That's "presumed aberrants"... and it does raise a number of interesting questions, namely, 'What happened to them?'

Are these decades old abbies the reason behind the few seriously powerful ones? Divis, Pax, Sophia, Scripture, etc?

Antaeus and Gaby we think we have origins for... but honestly I'd rather post date them too.

Further, does this mean that there are *other* power-houses out there?

I think the setting was started with that idea, but it was never pursued beyond Divis.

Agreed that the idea of pre-N-Day novas is a fascinating topic. It was used in one of the old N!Prime PBEM Aberrant games where they were essentially Adventure! Era stalwarts who managed to attain Quantum 1 & erupt as full-fledged novas. IIRC, the name of the chronicle in question was "Wizard's Watch".

As for the two cases mentioned by Gideon, I like to think that Aeon never got their hooks into the speedster from 1964. AFA the unfortunate from 1981, I suspect he or she may have been euthanized.

[metaphysician]

I don't *mind* there being strong novas who date to the nova age proper, but I would be inclined to peg most of the Q6 novas as being older. Then again, the two main candidates for recent eruption, Pax and Antaeus, are the most public. The pre N-Day novas *wouldn't reveal this* about themselves.

[Alex Green]

I don't *mind* there being strong novas who date to the nova age proper, but I would be inclined to peg most of the Q6 novas as being older. Then again, the two main candidates for recent eruption, Pax and Antaeus, are the most public. The pre N-Day novas *wouldn't reveal this* about themselves.

Pax could *easily* have faked it. He's a member of Project Pro, presumably he's their strongest member and he/they wanted him able to do his thing publicly.

I've done this kind of thing IC myself... you have a closet nova who "erupts" in a staged situation. The "onlookers" are clueless bystanders selected at random because they're clueless bystanders. It works best if you have Dorm or some flavor of shapeshifting... but you could just steal someone else's identity and claim you used to look different.

[Sprocket]

I don't *mind* there being strong novas who date to the nova age proper, but I would be inclined to peg most of the Q6 novas as being older. Then again, the two main candidates for recent eruption, Pax and Antaeus, are the most public. The pre N-Day novas *wouldn't reveal this* about themselves.

Given all the bad things that said pre-N-Day novas could've lived through, I suspect that living undercover has become second nature to them to the point that they would have a very hard time trying to come out as public novas. Just a few examples for such historical nightmares: WWII, J. Edgar Hoover's reign at the FBI, the McCarthy hearings, the Nixon Administration and a whole lot more. ::wacko

Living through that sort of stuff (and remaining free/covert!) does NOT give one a sudden desire to register himself with Appellate Lexington (the codename trademark company).

[metaphysician]

Screw them, you lived through the Aeon Society's hunter killer teams.

[Sprocket]

Screw them, you lived through the Aeon Society's hunter killer teams.

I was thinking of the time *before* the Aeon Council turned Proteus into their own little wetworks operation, which happened sometime during the very late 1970s or early 1980s IIRC. Shoot, just the general social climate of the 1950's would've encouraged pre-N-Day novas to stay covert, even without all the government-sponsored nastiness.

Agreed that the Proteus deathsquads would've kicked the threat up a notch or several, though.

[Alex Green]

Screw them, you lived through the Aeon Society's hunter killer teams.

Or you worked for them.

And it's possible Aeon was a 'good' organization back then.

[Alex Green]

On a side note... that train incident probably involved someone who had super-strength, hyper-movement, and probably flight. Sound like anyone we know? It more or less mirrors a scene from one of the superman movies.

Assume that Aeon *did* find "whoever" did it. Decades later, he'd probably look a lot like Pax.

[Chuckg]

Or Michael Donighal.

[Sprocket]

Or you worked for them.

And it's possible Aeon was a 'good' organization back then.

Good point, there's *nothing* to say that some of those former stalwarts couldn't have been villains in the Adventure! Era.

On a side note... that train incident probably involved someone who had super-strength, hyper-movement, and probably flight. Sound like anyone we know? It more or less mirrors a scene from one of the superman movies.

Assume that Aeon *did* find "whoever" did it. Decades later, he'd probably look a lot like Pax.

That's certainly a plausible interpretation. If Pax was the nova in question, being so old (and coming from the region he did) would certainly explain some of his canon reactionary/authoritarian personality traits.

[unkledan]

Well, I think that given: 1970 "A dramatic increase in super-normal events. Normal human society is amazed by the achievements and aghast at the actions of unusual individuals" Trinity Rulebook, p. 82 And Whitley Styles talks about the restructuring of Aeon and Divis Mal in 1977. Aberrant Players Guide, p. 57 We can assume that 1)someone created a Hammersmith/Divis Mal style effect and 2) the restructuring of Aeon was due to this event, because of the increase of supernormal events and the influx of superhumans.

Because of the vague description of 1943 on Adventure! Rulebook, p. 261 I feel that we can only assume that Dr. Primoris 1)exhibited a level of power seemingly mysterious to his peers and 2)he is a Nova at this point. Maybe he Erupted during the battle, maybe he had undergone Chrysalis already, maybe he had a 'Quantum generator' Gadget.

For an Aberrant/Trinity game it makes the most sense for Divis Mal to have been experimenting with exposing people to Quantum energies, and the reorganization of Aeon quelled the effects temporarily. For Adventure! it makes more sense for a Hammersmith event, perhaps by Divis Mal, perhaps Aeon and/or another superhuman organization.

[Sprocket]

Sorry for the belated reply, but what you've said makes perfect sense, esp. since Divis Mal is known to be lacking in patience. Once he gains the capability to produce a Hammersmith Vortex (circa the late 1960s, perhaps), he attempts to create more novas. Instead, he gets another mini-Inspired Age with precious few novas resulting from it. That would make an interesting origins hook for Jeremiah Scripture and the Mathematician, who both date back to that time IIRC. And it takes him until 1998 to master that capability until Mal can get a rough approximation of what he's aiming for.

If I ever get AB:Nexus done, that tidbit will be included in the historical fluff.