Final Wasteland

I'm a little confused by this promo environment. I thought the monsters taking over the future Earth could be traced back to patient zero for monster mutations, Plague Rat, and that that was why Chrino-Ranger and PR were nemeses - CR had gone to the future and saw the monster menace, and so had to beat it at its source. But if its all a bunch of mythological creatures like yeti and Loch Ness Monsters, what does that have to do with Plague Rat, Chrono-Ranger, or anything?

CR fights all the cryptids, but Plague Rat is the only one that appears as a villain. Also, it took his arm.

I think the Plague Rats are the most dominant of the creatures, they're everywhere, but there are still plenty of other monsters that he needs to stop.

So, he doesn't have anything in particular against Plague Rat, he just hates plague rats? That's not the strongest nemesis motivation in the world...

This is from the kickstarter

Jim came to hours later, and Con explained to him that he had made his way thousands of years into the future, and the time he'd found was terrible. All sorts of monstrous creatures populated the world now: giant yetis, Mongolian death worms, vile skunk apes, nasty chupacabras - the shorelines were overrun by New Jersey devils, what used to be Asia was now occupied by towering lizard creatures, and the seas were full of terrible serpents and sea-beasts. But the worst of all were the huge rat-men. They were the most numerous and most devious of the monsters, and they infected and destroyed everything they touched.

Fortunately, Con had a plan. Specifically, Con had a time-machine. Con could outfit Jim with new gear, fancy gadgets, and send him back in time to destroy these monsters before they could ever grow strong or reproduce. Jim agreed, but didn't much care for the idea of anyone, robot or not, messing with his pistol or his hat - they worked just fine, thank you very much.

Chrono wants to stop all the creatures, but the rats were the ones that took his arm and so Plague Rat will always have a special place in his heart, next to where he stores the extra ammo.

From Chrono Ranger update :

"All sorts of monstrous creatures populated the world now: giant yetis, Mongolian death worms, vile skunk apes, nasty chupacabras - the shorelines were overrun by New Jersey devils, what used to be Asia was now occupied by towering lizard creatures, and the seas were full of terrible serpents and sea-beasts. But the worst of all were the huge rat-men. They were the most numerous and most devious of the monsters, and they infected and destroyed everything they touched."

The monsters were in hiding, as last update says. Until Plague Rat came, and began spreading the infection. Humans began killing and/or infecting each other, driven by the disease. Untill there were few humans  left, and it was time for the creature of legends to get out of the shadows.

In other words : "zombie" apocalypse in the "28 days later" style, leaving room for the monsters to become dominant.

That's how I see it. And that's why Chrono-Ranger hunts Plague Rat, trying to destroy him/it before he can spread the infection throught he world. But the beast keeps escaping and reappearing.

Edit : not fast enough !!

I also don't fault Chrono for being a little petty. He's a hardened cowboy. He's probably also slightly prejudiced which means he would view Plague Rat the same as all rat men and would care little to distinguish them.

I never saw anything that lead me to believe that Plague Rat was a kind of "patient zero." He just represented the most populous single group of cryptids, and the one who did damage to CR on a personal level. If there was something that sounded like that I'd be happy to see it though. I've been known to overlook things occasionally.

Related to Final Wasteland but not this thread directly: I was going to copypasta the lyrics to Final Countdown into this thread and tweak it to make sense. But then I realized I didn't need to tweak it. So I'l just not say anything and now you can all have the melody stuck in your head for the next thousand years.

EDIT: Erratum: ¶1, S4 for "occasionally" read "all the goddamn time."

If these three things are true, it definitely seems to imply that he's a "patient zero":

• In the present, there's only one Plague Rat.
• Plague Rat can infect others.
• In the future, the entire world is overrun with Plague Rats.

I can't believe it. My friend totally guessed there'd be an environment like this weeks ago, even before Chrono-Ranger's backstory. He's a genius.

I've read the Plague Rat background story in the Multiverse section again last night, and found out the style of the story, and the many references to "urban legends", was an hint to Chrono-Ranger's role in the multiverse. How carefully crafted.

It's almost like we'd planned it all along!

It is? I reread it a couple of times and I don't think I'm catching any signs of references to Chrono-Ranger's role.

It could be that many of the monsters in the enviornment will also have Chrono-Ranger's nemisis icon on it, much like Anubis. Who knows? Just hope that you can walk without rythem...

But what if I have my weapon of choice?

"hint" was not the best word… But now that we know that Chrono-Rangers stories are about fighting urban legends, the fact the villain with his Nemesis Icon 's story was written as a testimony about an urban legend "clicks" right. And the whole "Urban Legends" comic book line takes a new meaning in the "Multiverse Comics" publication history.

It's not a hint, but subtle things that we accepted with no second-thought, but suddenly become clearer and take a new meaning now that we learn more about the fictional publication history behind the scenes. As I've already written this kind of "fictional history", I am very sensible to this level of mastery in the craft. I am impressed.

Plague Rat is the only one that appears as a villain so far. The nemesis symbol is Chrono Ranger's badge, and thus has nothing to do with Plague Rat. Other cryptids can show up in future expansions and be enemies for him as well.

Maybe Plague Rat was just yet another rat based cryptid that got sent back in time to become "The Plague Rat."  After so many years, he manages to infect more and more people, turning them into rat based cryptids, until he founds the race of rat based cryptids that is so popular in the future, including himself.  Time loop paradox for the win.

Mind = blown.

I always thought that he was a scientist who worked at the chemical plant. Got muatted, then so on. But this makes more sense. The chemicals from the muatted sewers in Rook CIty made him even more  merciless…

Damn… >G are really clever

But it's not the chemicals that made him so merciless, it was the checmicals.

Plague Rat's bio in the rook city rules tells he was a drug dealer, who had to hide in the sewers and was slowly mutated by the chemical spills from Pike laboratories. He now "infects everything he touches".

Edit : full text for the lazy reader :

"Many decades ago, a foul drug-dealer controlled large swaths of the Rook City drug market. He made his hideout deep in the Rook City Sewers, keeping his stash safe from competitors and law enforcement alike. However, his criminal enterprise was worn down by a long battle with anew criminal organization taking control of the city. Over time, he was entirely ousted from the streets of Rook City, and lived in the sewers to survive. Years of handling the vile drugs he sold, mixed with toxic wastes from the industrial plants, slowly twisted and mutated the dealer into a giant, hideous, rat-like monster. Now, his last shreds of humanity all but eliminated, he stalks the Rook City Sewers in search of his next meal, infecting all he touches."

SHoot. yes. I completely forgot about that. Maybe he got infected by the rats?

He could be a drug dealer FROM THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!

For me, he was the "first rat monster" - and he is the "point in time" where the former "equilibrium", where monsters were weaker than humanity and had to hide, began to collapse. But it's just my interpretation of what we know.

Oh man, I forgot that the bios in the books and the bios on the website are different. Face, meet egg.

He's still at most patient zero for plague rats, as other cryptids CR has been described as fighting predate PR. And I still think that, given the description of Final Wasteland in CR's bio he has both a personal reason to consider PR a nemesis and a reason to hunt other cryptids.

Even if we say that Chrono-Ranger has a reason to hate Plague Rat because PR is either (a) a member of the genus/species who ate his arm or (b) the father of all plague rats (my preferred interpretation), that doesn't give PR a motive to hate Chrono-Ranger, especially.  Unless we figure that Chrono-Ranger has gotten up in PR's grill enough times, trying and failing to take him out, that PR finally sees red anytime anyone waves a cowboy hat and a poncho in his face.

I completely agree, Cosmonaut Zero. And I had forgoten about the rook city rules bio, too - I re-read them because I remembered things I didn't see on the site and wondered where :)

There's precedent for relatively one-sided nemeses. Voss doesn't have a particular reason to care about one member of a race he's subjugated, and Haka doesn't really have a reason to especially care about Ambuscade except inasmuch as it kind of sucks having somebody who wants to kill you specifically. Which is almost precisely the same situation as Chrono Ranger and Plague Rat.

How about the fact that Rook City Plague Rat was a drug dealer. If anything, I'm sure most drug dealers don't have a full raging love affair for the law.  If any semblance of his humanity was left, maybe it associates Chrono-Ranger's shiny metal star with the law...something Plauge Rat may have remembered was a bad thing when he was human.

I'd say as far as Tempest/Voss goes - Tempest represents a race that "belongs" to Voss and the fact that there even remains anything resembling defiance from a race he subjegated probably doesn't bode well with him.

As far as Haka/Ambuscade? You got me.  Only clue I have is, I'd be pretty miffed also if someone was stalking me while I was enjoying an ice cream in the park.

I don't have a problem with relatively one-sided nemesis relationships. I'm just noting that they exist in the game. We could ad hoc all the theories in the world to explain why Plague Rat might hate Chrono Ranger, but in the end I don't really think we need to. Chrono-Ranger having it in for Plague Rat (or Ambuscade having it in for Haka) works well enough for me.

Yeah, nemesis relationships can easily be one sided. They don't have to be to the degree of a Fanatic-Apostate relationship to want to fight. Spite has no personal grudge against Wraith. Really, Ermine is more of a severe nemesis to Wraith due to mutual dislike/hate.

Nemesis are a game device that provide extra-damage for a hero and a villain. Some of them make sense, some dont.

The game mechanic sometime include Nemesis in the comic book sense, sometimes not. And Nemesis aren't always reciprocical.

Baron Blade <> Legacy Family : Blood feud that last for many generation, both are well accointed with the power/technics/capacity of the other and usually well prepared to fight each other.

Citizen Dawn <> Expatriette : Family feud, know well each other, Expatriette is supposedly an  expert against Supers.

Grand Lord Voss <> Tempest : One slave with extra power rallying against his conqueror. Voss conquer Tempest planet so know the way to fight him, Tempest is extra dedicated to kill Voss and stop his invasion, and know his methods

Omnitron <> Omnitron X : self explatory,  know thyself.

Plage Rat <> Chrono-Ranger : Chrono have a lot of experience now in fighting Plague Rats kind of creature. But little success against this one. Plague Rat is more intelligent that the common Chrono's prey, and probably escaped him several time already. He KNOW that the chrono-ranger is after him and thus prepare against him specifically.

Spite <> Wraith : Both Rook City citizens, know well each other, fight regularily one again the other. Is Spite the Wraith agressor ?

The Chairman <> M. FIxer : Known each other for a LOOOOOOONG time, the Operative is an ex-student of Mr. Fixer. Both are well fluent in fighting each other (and dedicated in eliminating each other).

The Matriarch <> Tachyon : Know each other, one hate the other. No justifiable reason Tachyon should be more efficient at damaging Matriarch,  I would rather they she would be less efficient. Matriarch is fueled by hate. Possible explanation for Tachyon extra damage : being beaten by her  unnerve the Matriarch and thus make her weaker, weaken her control of the birds.

Akasu'Bhuta <> Adepts Argent : cant justify why the hippy tree-hugger is the nemesis of a primordial chaos force... But thoses I dont know well, nor care about :p

Apostate <> Fanatic : Hate fueled rivalry, both know very well each other, know thyself.

Gloomweaver <> Nightmist : Occult detective and Voodo god, should come in competition very often so I suppose they both had trick ready against the other.

The Ennead <> Ra : Fight each other for millenium, self explanatory.

Haka <> Embuscade : Embuscade is there to kill Haka specifically so he is prepared. Haka isn't. But Embuscade is taking risk to get closer to him and his focusing on him, making him more easy to attack for Haka than other vilain. 

I know I am reapeating myself, but for me, the "Nemesis" relationship exist because if the comics this game was based on existed, the readers would immediately associate this pair of characters, because the villain is the most memorable / most intriguing / most often used in the story for this character. Spite was the most memorable opponent of Wraith, Ambuscade is the most recurring villain in Haka stories, and so on.

It goes even farther, as the villain we have are not the whole story about this villain, but the villain at a precise moment in the story, with a specific plan/storyline. Like Baron Blade : in one famous story, he tried to crash the moon on Earth, so the villain we can play is Blade in this specific episode of the story. And "Mad Bomber Blade" was another memorable story line. And Vengeance will give us another memorable storyline of the comics, when Blade assembled a team of villain !

It's like Red Richards /Doom. Why are they Nemesis to each other ? In the beginning there was not even a reason, later it was just a problem of Doom having gained a little scar on his face "because" of Richards ! They are not Nemesis because they have all the reasons in the world to hate each others, but because this pair of character was so interesting that they kept making good stories when fighting each other. In fact they really began to hate each other because they fought so often. Same for, let's say, Spiderman and the Green Goblin : they did not have specific reason to be ennemies. GG did nothing (at first, he did later) to gain the hate of Spiderman. But he was, in the beginning, the obvious Nemesis of Spidey, even if later the web-slinger gained others.

In the "books", Legacy probably has tons of ennemies, most of them less powerful than the villains we have in the game. But Blade is the one that would be voted his nemesis.

I know it may be a strange point of view, but I think that the game is thought as a game about a fictional line of super-hero comics, and not directly about a world where super heroes exist. Ad so we have "strange" things like Nemesis, or some cards like AZ cryo-chamber. He doesn't take it with him when fighting ! But it is a part of his storyline, a memorable thing about him, and so it is in his deck.

But well, I am a strange person.

I don't think your reasoning is too weird or strange. The only thing I would have to say is that as Spectators we can only definitively judge the information that is given to us. I am more invested in the Wraith-Ermine rivalry more than the Wraith-Spite rivalry simply because I've been given more information about Ermine's personality and why she hates the Wraith. I like Spite, and I'm giving G> the benefit of the doubt and assuming that yes these two have had many encounters and Spite has given Wraith many reasons to hate him, but I'm still guessing. I know why Ermine hates the Wraith, which gives any possible dialogue or scenario I come up with in my head for them have more meaning and are more personally enjoyable for me.

The main reason why Spite is Wraith's nemesis is because The Wraith is the protector of the people in Rook City and Spite happens to be the biggest threat to the people. Other than that there really isn't too much, Wraith really just wants to get rid of this guy from terrorizing the people of her city.

Also I feel like since Wraith is an homage to Batman. Just like how Joker and Batman is Nemesis, but Bane and Batman also have a specific story line since Bane is responsible for breaking the Bat. They each fit as Wraiths nemesis to some extent, just like Spite and Ermine are both Nemesis just one fits more than the other due to their history.

I pretty much take the nemesis icon to mean that if these were real comics, that villain would show up mostly in that hero's books or be most strongly associated with that hero. Keep in mind this whole game is effectively one gigantic team-up book. In the context of just Batman, sure Joker is Batman's nemesis. But in the context of Justice League, all of Batman's major villains are much more strongly associated with him than with any other hero. I mean, I wouldn't call Penguin or Killer Croc Batman's nemesis in an absolute sense but if he shows up in a Justice League story Batman is the one everybody's going to be looking at. In a licensed version of SotM, I wouldn't hesitate to give Riddler or Poison Ivy Batman's nemesis icon.

Also Spite is totally Wraith's nemesis because he's a mix of Bane and Zsasz. You couldn't assign that kind of homage to any of the other heroes.

I don't question that Spite is Wraith's nemesis, and I'm sure there are reasons for it, I'm just saying that there isn't much definitive knowledge of their relationship which makes it hard to immerse myself in that particular story. Right now Ermine is more interesting to me because I know what her relationship to Wraith is. Wraith caught her and exposed her identity and destroyed her social life. Ermine has a concrete reason to hate that I understand and can follow along with. Spite just doesn't stand out to me because everything that he's done to get on the Wraith's bad side is all stuff I have to assume and guess. There's nothing wrong with that, but I will always be more interested in a relationship where the goals and motivations of both characters are well thought out and established as opposed to relationships where I have to fill in most of the backstory and past encounters myself.

The big difference between Ermine and Spite, is that Ermine is a "normal" person, with hates, jealousies, rivalries.

Spite kills children. He kills for pleasure. He only seeks is own gratification, and power. And he has super human abilities. Even worse : he doesn't have the "excuse" to be a demon, or a monster. He is a human, but has no humanity. The most horrifying villain imaginable.

Ermine may be a rival, for the Wraith. The Chairman is an arch-ennemy. Spite is the worst possible nightmare.

The Wraith (and Batman) fight crime. They chose to assume this repsonsability because they believe in justice, in right and wrong. Spite (and the Joker) don't care about responsabilities, morality, or human life, even their own.

The Wraith was a victim who chose to fight back - Spite is the maker of countless victims who never had the chance to fight back.

Ermine is a warped reflection in a mirror - Spite is the complete antithesis of everything the Wraith fights for, of everything important to her. In many ways, he is not a villain - but pure horror. The boogeyman. The real one.

At least that's how I see it.

I don't disagree with that, but that doesn't really address my point. My point is that there isn't a lot of narrative information about Spite and Wriath's relationship outside of being in the same city. Yes, Spite is a crazy, dangerous person. But all of the reasons for him and Wraith to be nemesis could apply to any other hero. In the Apostate write up we know that he challenges Fanatic's faith and makes her doubt herself. That's interesting and compelling. All I have for Spite and Wraith is that one's a good guy, one's a bad guy and they're in the same place so they're going to fight now. You could transplant Spite somewhere else and give him another nemesis without really changing the overall narrative because fighting a guy because he's scary and murders people is a good enough justification for any hero to hate him with a fiery passion. I'm not saying Spite is a bad villain or that there's no reason for a rivalry. I just think that compared to other rivalries like Apostate and Fanatic and Legacy and Baron Blade, it's a little weak and requires me to fill in a lot of blanks.

It's totally fair to say that there isn't a particularly compelling personal relationship between Spite and Wraith presented in the fiction. Unless I'm missing something again, there's no explicit connection in either of their bios.

On the other hand he's a clear fit thematically. Setting aside the Batman parallels, as a super-powered serial killer he's clearly a big target for a vigilante fighter like Wraith. If there were actually comics for this universe, he would be a perfect fit for her books both in scope and in theme. Would it be nice to have a specific nod to Wraith in Spite's bio? Definitely. But I still agree with the choice to pair them up, and generally I don't really think that it should be necessary to have a personal grudge to be nemeses.

I can agree with that, and you can probably apply that answer to Chrono Ranger and Plague Rat. Just bringing that up since it was the original subject of this thread.

Haha oops. I'm bad at going on tangents in threads when the conversation spins off into another interesting direction. ^^;

I've been in many table top RPGs with way worse tangents. At least you can apply this one to the original topic.

you keep assuming the Nemesis relation is necessarily about hate. In the case of CR/PR, it's the simple fact that it's basically CR's job to hunt down cryptids like PR. It's actually very much like the Ambuscade/Haka nemesis relation, both in the reason and the one-sidedness of the relation. I actually expect other monsters with a CR nemesis icon.

In the end, all a nemesis icon means is `this fight will happen in the comic universe'. It's an indication of canon more than anything else.

I can see that point of view, and accept it.