In her bio on the Sentinels website, it mentions that she fought alongside the Freedom Six, but Iron Legacy became Iron Legacy a long time before 2018 didn't he? So is she just from another timeline that developed a Freedom Six?
She is from the Iron Legacy timeline. 2018 is just the year she decided to go back into time after she realises she can't do anything else to help that timeline, but could possibly save another.
Do we know that for sure? I've never really seen confirmation that Iron Legacy recognised her when he crossed into the 'normal' timeline
Prophetic Vision gives it away from her side. I don't think there is anything from the IL's side.
Right, we see a Legacy looking all Ironish, does that mean she came from the same IL timeline that jumped ship to here?
I didn't think the "Fall of South Korea to North Korea" or "President Hargett secretly authorized the Department of Defense to begin testing methods of creating bio-engineered soldiers" was confirmed for IL's timeline, speculation was IL wouldn't have allowed it.
Legacy didn't become Iron Legacy until long after that stuff happened. Vanessa was already born by the time Legacy changed. She then went back in time and stopped the experiments that her parents were involved in, then spent the next 6 years keeping an eye on her family. So she must have been around 11 when she traveled back in time if her bio lists her as 17.
This isn't official, but I think the IL storyline is the original time line. The base game refers to the original time line being the death of Legacy, but Visionary was already in that timeline, so it wasn't the original, it was already being alterred.
Plus the only alternate approximately present day things were Iron Legacy, The Dreamer and Dark Visionary. I think the Timelines crashing may have been much more localized to specific events, notably the events surrounding Visionary returning and changing the time line.
Like as time edged closer to the point where the original death of Pauline would change to the death of Paul the two paths were set at odds with each other and the rules that govern the multiverse, seperate realities and time started colliding. I think The Dreamer was the biggest part of the time cataclysm, it is possible someone was messing with her powers because visionary showed she could travel through time. Someone with a nefarious use for such powers.
But, if she travels back to 2011 and she was experimented on since the early 2000's, presumably, she could go visit her own captive self. But if she is still part of the experiments in 2011, how could she have freed herself in 2018 and traveled back, oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
Visionarys bio specifically says she fought with the freedom 6 before her time jump. Freedom 6 is from the IL timeline
A Freedom Six is in the IL timeline, looks like we're getting one in our own too (according to Tactics).
THE Freedom 6 was exclusively created to confront Iron Legacy. Sentinel Tactics takes place after all of the timelines merge into one, so there are some shenanigans involved there.
Visionary was from the IL timeline, and went back to try and stop it. She tampered with her own creation, so OUR Vanessa Long is the Dreamer, rather than the Visionary. Then, because IL intruded upon our timeline, and our Legacy and Young Legacy were tired/injured in the fight, they didn't get around to confronting Baron Blade, so neither of them died, leading to their coexistence in Tactics.
I don't think it's a big leap in logic to rename the group Freedom Five into the Freedom Six once a new member joins regardless if which timeline it is in. They did it when it went from Four to Five.
They haven't done it yet, though, and when they do it will be a different one, with Legacy in it instead of Tempest.
The one that actually exists, the one with Unity and Tempest but no Legacy, is from Visionary's initial timeline.
And you know that Visionary fought with this exact Freedom Six because... ?
Because no other Freedom Six existed?
She fought with the freedom VI, she knew Legacy as Iron Legacy. . .
Yep, she's definitely from a different timeline that had a different Freedom VI and a different Iron Legacy. Because it makes sense for the makers of the game to create a timeline with a Freedom VI and Iron Legacy, and a Character from a Timeline with the Freedom VI and Iron Legacy, and then make them different timelines.
Christopher likes being vague, not intentionally misleading.
Exactly; there's just no reason to think otherwise.
Back of the Sentinel tactics Visionary card
"Years have passed, and the visionary continues to work with the heroes of this time - Not her time, but a time she helped make and helped prserve.'
There ya go. She's from the Iron legacy timeline, though that only split and became its own after the trap at Wagner which killed Beacon. Otherwise she is from Project Coccoon in our time line (Same as Truth and Dare!)
I don't think she changed realites, she travelled back when there wasn't a time cataclysm.
I think Iron Legacy was the original timeline, and Visionary coming back changed it, and the Cataclysm changed it further.
That, or something was already messing up the timelines when Visionary came back, and drew her to this timeline instead of her own. Or maybe she came back to a fixed point and alterred all of the timelines.
There were two options:
Paul died on Mars
or
Pauline died on Mars
Now, was it Vanessa that stepped on the butterfly, or did Iron Legacy do it himself when he crossed timelines?
Mars? Was Baron Blade's plot on Mars? Where did we learn this?
Beacon's Bio in Sentinel Tactics. That where either her or her father would of died at the hands of Baron Blade.
cough
died at the hands of Baron Blade.
...cough...cough..."would have"...
Wasn't there something about how, with Visionary traveling back in time, she actually got memories of ALL possible futures? Like... Yeah, check out Mental Divergence's flavor text.
Plus, "Fast forward to 2018: the U.S., already severely crippled by an increase in super powered criminal activity, fell to the combined forces of the Pan-Asian People’s Republic," from Visionary's online SOTM bio. That doesn't sound... exactly like a world tyrannically ruled by Iron Legacy?
In Vanessa's original timeline, there was never a Time Cataclysm. Whatever caused the Time Cataclysm and brought these two different worlds together is what changed our main timeline. Iron Legacy beat the crap out of Legacy and Pauline, or at least caused some serious injuries during the fight. Thats why neither of them could respond to Barons trap on Mars.
Okay guys. This is getting really confusing. So i went and started to map it out. It took me all night. I havent slept. My eyes are bleeding.
This is what I came up with.
I struggled and I tried to piece everything together.
I finally came up with the answer.
---
Save the Cheerleader. Save the World.
So your saying that SotM will quickly lose their audience, have very weak writing, then finally get cancelled?
Only if they get lazy and insult said audience.
I can honestly say that will never happen. I don’t think I have ever heard of a designer that was as enthusiastic as Christopher was about his customers reaction to his designs and stories. Seriously, he spent time at a packed convention talking about the amazing reaction of [REDACTED] when he realized Christopher was in SotM.
…
I think I have filled my quota of serious posts for the day.
I believe the actual timeline that was supposed to occur was Paul Parsons dying at the hands of Baron Blade and Pauline taking up the mantle of Legacy. The Visionary came from a timeline where for some reason, Pauline joined her father in the fight and was killed thus creating Iron Legacy. The timeline that is now canon is that both are still alive and serve as their own heroic personalities.
Thus, in my opinion, the Visionary is from an alternate timeline and the real question is, why did Pauline go to Mars with her father in the first place?
Experience and the Baron needed a beating on.
Yes, Visionary is from an alternate timeline (the Iron Legacy one).
Young Legacy and Legacy never never fought Iron Legacy in that timeline, so they both were able bodied and willing when they heard of another Baron Blade scheme. They are heros after all. They go where they gotta go. I think thats why we see Legacy holding his daughter in space on his incap side, because the plan took place on Mars.
But the actual timeline is the one that actually plays out. Our main timeline, the one that the story is being told about, is the main one. Things that were supposed to happen or did/didn't in the main timeline ceased to really matter because of the Time Cataclysm and how that affected damn near everything. Any timeline were either of the Parsons die is effectivly an alternate timeline from the main one.
Thats my take anyway.
Problems with Visionary.
1. Late 2000's project Cocoon starts.
2. 2018 she travels back in time to the present, where she is 17.
3. Travels Back In Time. Not travels to a different dimension.
4. Further the Late 2000s is when the political situation starts with rumors of nuclear testing. When they announce their nuclear stockpile project Cocoon is started. You don't go from tests to stockpile in a few days, that takes time. Then the response is engineering soldiers, which starts with active troops and moves to Project Cocoon. Visionary should be 6-10 at most in 2018.
5. She transports back to "Our Present" which gives a norrow range of years, and comes back to save "her infant self." The game was released in 2011, or roughly when Cocoon was occuring, so that time makes sense. 2018 needs to be 2028 for the timing to work. Otherwise WTH?
We have a few options to work this out.
1. Visionary's timeline was first, and her presence after coming back created what we know as the main timeline. The main timeline already involves a from-the-future Visionary, so it would make sense that the main timeline wouldn't have to be the original. The Trap that is key to the 3 possibilities doesn't happen till after Vengeance, so she had plenty of time to change that event, even unwittingly. That trap hasn't occured yet in the card game, it happens after the Dreamer and Shattered Timelines. It is an event that affected them before it happened because of the shattering. It is quite possible that the varianc in the possibilities is due to the Visionary being present.
2. Visionary not only crossed time but entered a different dimension, which would be irrelevant because she went before the key events that would create her timeline differences transpired. The late 2000's happening differently doesn't work, because we have The Dreamer. Visionary can't save her younger self in a reality where she doesn't even exist. Project Cocoon has to happen. Besides.look at fixed point. It doesn't make sense that she enters a timeline where the point of creating Iron Legacy has passed, because she's around a long time before that trap, and it is the result of the trap that makes the big changes.
Basically my argument is that The base storyline we consider the original timeline was already affected by The Visionary's presence. Her being there changed what would happen, basically her trip succeeded at stopping Iron Legacy from occuring, intentionally or not.
Of course I also think The Visionary is the reason the Time Cataclysm occurs. Either her, her younger self, or a combinatino of them.
I hold to the theorem that Visionary's temporal jaunt actually created a new universe. If one subscribes to a certain brand of multiverse theory, that may well be the only way to travel in time.
Wait, if Visionary is from the IL timeline, then which timeline is the Final Wastelands (and, therefor, Eternal Haka, Chrono Ranger, and Con) in?
All of them. The Final Wasteland is the ultimate end of every timeline.
No. The Final Wasteland was specifically the alternate timeline CHRONO-RANGER was from, in which Plague Rat was allowed to infect humanity. It is not a fixed point, and will not happen in the current timeline, since Chrono's killing all the cryptids.
In one of the timelines in the Multiverse, the monsters and bizarre creatures we think of as myths and urban legends grew stronger and stronger while hiding from the human race, which hated and feared them. Given enough time to flourish and multiply, they finally broke out of their hiding in darkness and obscurity, hellbent on revenge! They slaughtered their way through the human population of the world, destroying all they touched. The human race rallied, but ultimately, the monsters from their greatest nightmares were too strong and too numerous.Decades turned into centuries, and centuries became millenia - the world, now overrun entirely by monsters of all sorts, is a terrible wasteland. The few points of light in the darkness have long been extinguished. This could be the most terrible era for heroes, lost in time, to end up.Hope that you never do.The Final Wasteland is the true end to all time. Do not think that you can overcome its dangers: pray that you might survive it.
See that last 2 lines. Ignore everything else.
EDIT: I also thought there was a flavor text that said it was inevitable, but I am probably wrong.
Yeah the description for the environment is the only place I see where it lists this is the true end. Though in reading it the first line and the last two lines seem like they contradict each other.
Maybe the last sentence is within the vaccum of the first, since the "one of the timelines" part is mentioned first thus has precedence, possibly? "The Final Wasteland is the true end ... [within this] time[line]."
Reasoning is truth is relative and so is time. If it is the true end of time, the "time" part I would guess is limited to within its own time-line and thus does not apply to other time-line's "truth" and "time", just it's own.
Take the statement: "Legacy becomes Iron Legacy." It is true, to a degree. Within at least 1 timeline within the multiverse, Legacy does become IL. But in at least two (?) timelines within the multiverse, Legacy does not become IL. (In one he dies and in another he continues on as Legacy, correct?)
though, this does raise another question if the timelines converge at a point and ceases to split. If that happens, and Final Wasteland does Infact still exists within the Converged Timeline, then this concept would make it the "true end of all time", since no other possibilities exists and they all become one. But if the final wasteland ceases to exists after the convergence, well then you have your answer.
TL;DR
Maybe "time" is limited to within it's own timeline.
There's also the GSF universe to consider, which takes place after Sentinels. There is no Earth sector.
There's a Vognid Prime sector, but it's a dead planet.
It's possible that Earth in GSF is a desolate wasteland, long abandoned by the metahumans who took to the stars.
Hm, that's an interesting hypothesis. With that concept, why did Haka choose to stay behind?
Where is this confirmed?
That Truth and Dare were given powers from Project Cocoon? Their bio in Sentinel Tactics.
Logically speaking, this pretty much has to be true. For anyone who doesn't travel in a police box, temporal paradoxes are just a dead stop to any attempt at conceptualizing traveling back in time within your own history. I mean, "the butterfly effect" isn't just a fuzzy conceptualization - the moment you stepped out into the past, the air you exhaled would have bacteria in it which had survived a few generations of battling with your immune system, and those would now be in the past, spawning new generations of offspring that were more resistant. You couldn't possibly not alter your history enough to create a paradox; just physically occupying a space that was previously empty would alter too many molecular-level interactions for the result not to affect your future self. And those alterations would be compounded when your future self traveled back in time just as you originally did, and then they'd compound again and again until the results were macroscopic, and catastropic. At which point, once you've killed your future self, he no longer travels back in time and the entire thing didn't happen. So there's just no possible way. There is simply no part of the universe that isn't connected to the gigantic clockwork mechanism which is "all matter and energy ever"; nothing can ever not affect all other things to a microscopic extent, and those changes inevitably add up.