Where is Citizen Dusk?

So, I was reading this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IAmNotLeftHanded

And was thinking, what if Expat does have powers that she's voluntarily holding back...? Some thoughts:

-Citizen Dawn has the power over light and life force. Citizen Dusk then should have powers centered around darkness and death? Ok, then;

-Expat is missing an eye. She can't see the light with her right eye. So there's darkness there... no? Ok, then what about;

-"Dark Watch". Darkness again! BOOM! Not enough? Ok;

-Citizen Dawn is blond, Expat's got purple hair... You don't need a degree in genetics to know that... "hair dye" you say? Well, maybe, but then;

-Expat is missing an eye... And is still a goddamn good shooter. You know you lose perspective when you lose an eye, and this makes gauging distances immensely harder... Expat looks like she's perfectly comfortable with that. Practise? Or she just doesn't need light...!? Better? Now;

-Expat uses guns. A lot of guns. And she actually kills people... Heroes are known for their kind heart, usually putting bad guys in jail, incapacitating them. Expat is described in her bio killing a psychic dude right off the bat. Connection to death? A little bit at least...? This one;

-Hammer and Anvil. Blood, Sweat and Tears. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Assault and Battery. Truth and... ehrm... Truth or Dare. From Dusk 'till Dawn...? Convinging, right? Another one:

-Wager Master's "Unwise Wager"... Do I need to add more? OF COURSE I DO! Look at it that way:

---Dawn's hair are blond and she's producing yellowish glowing energy with her hands. Expat's are purple and she's making dark purple thingy. Note how her powers seems to NOT produce any light at all... So dark... :)

---Also, Dawn's eyes are turning gold when she uses her powers. Well, Expat's eyes (well, her MISSING eye...!?) seems to glow purple... Maybe it's not hair dye after all...?

---The symbol for the citizens of the sun is like a rising sun casting its rays upward. Look at Expat's belt... That's right! The symbol is upside down! Look like a sunset to me! :O

-One last thing: Citizen Slash (and presumably the citizens of the sun as a whole, but I might be wrong...) wants Expat's back (I assume Slash is talking to Expat, but again, I might be wrong). The question is why would those "Gods among men" would want a "normal" back (instead of merely dead...)? You could explain this last part in a lot of ways, but I still thought it was interesting... (Thinking about it, who could be Citizen Hack!?)

Calling it: Expat is super powerful.

I think Citizen Dusk, if there is one, would more likely be Expat's father.  

I think Expat's power is not dying, or incredibly hard to kill. She was 'killed' by her mother, but instead lost an eye. She seems to be shot bloodied in her Incap, but the Scholar talks to her later. She booms in her second Incap, but is still around kicking. And it would be ironic that Dawn cast her out for not having powers and those powers are what kept her alive.

I've had a theory for a while that Expat has an intrinsic "Return with the Dusk" power of some sort.  I wrote it up in more extensive detail in one of the other posts around somewhere, but the gist of it is this:

1. Expatriette has the ONLY card in the entire game that prevents infinity damage.  The flak jacket protects her from any amount of damage, no matter how high.  She could get punched by Iron Legacy, shot point blank, or get Anubis thrown at her by Fright Train, and the jacket would take it.

My theory is each time she dies, she gets back up (Probably night/dusk/moon related).  The Flak Jacket is her comfort blanket- it keeps her from recognizing the truth about what just happened.  So when (for instance) the chairman's thugs gun her down in a hail of fire and she dies, she wakes back up and figures that the Flak Jacket must have kept her alive.  Her initial incap shows her down and out at nighttime, and she seems to be back on her feet in one of the Scholar's cards (though he might have healed her, I like my theory better).  We know that she gets back up from her DW incap, thanks to Tactics.  

I think that pretty much the only thing she can't recover from are wounds inflicted by Citizen Dawn.  Though if she ever regrows the eye...

Rebounding Debilitator, just to name one that can prevent damage.

Yeah, she isn't the only hero tht can do that, but still. . .

I've thought the whole time Expat has to have powers.  Not because she can't do what she does without them, but the storyline begs for it.  Citizen Dawn tries to murder her own daughter and fails.  Not likely.  Dawn is insanely powerful and she didn't send a lackey to do it, she did it herself.

Expat is a survivor, and she regularly takes out super-powered targets to the extent that she mocks them and thinks less of them (read her bio)

I love the idea that Expat is really powerful in a subtle way that she doesn't even realize.

I love the "we want you back" reverse prodigal son angle.

As for Citizen Dusk.  Citizen Dusk is only her father if her father is important to the story past his death.  Otherwise it could be Amanda.

Amanda as Citizen Dusk would have a Truth/Dare relationship with her mother, they can't co-exist.

I am super pumped to play a real Expat vs. the Citizens of the Sun.  I made my own, and she is fun, but I expect GtG to have an even better version of her.

I like the whole "return with the dusk" notion. It's fitting for a character that doesn't show any outward powers like strength, flight, or energy beams. It also makes me wonder how many times Setback may have off-ed her by accident, maybe she is the only girlfriend he could find who can put up with constantly being struck with lightning bolts, rocket propelled grenades, falling pianos, etc.

Yeah, but the Debilitator doesn't block the damage, thematically, it prevents the attacker from making the attack. Very different concepts. One stops a bullet, the other stops a trigger.

A lot of very interesting points, thank you guys...! I really like the "Return with the dusk" thing too. I also noticed her being seriously injured by the citizens on her incap and then talking to Scholar shortly after and it really does make sense...

Fun theory: Perhaps it's her death that triggers her powers. What I mean by that is that she can't access her powers until she died and then she grows stronger each time she passes out...? That would at least fit her connection to death as opposed to her mother's connection to life...

I don't know if this is a good theory, or if someone has already mention this. 

But let's say that Citizen Dusk is Expat's dad. When Citizen Dawn decided to kill Expat, Dusk intervened and that's why Expat only lost her eye. While this whole battle broke out, a weird series of events made it to where Expat got some of Dusk's powers in the battle. (This is me assuming the Dusk's power is to survive heavy hits). That's why Expat can survive the battles she faces when we meet her in the card game. 

Of course this is just my crazy theory that might make sense only to me...

Also, if she had the "Return from the Dusk" power that makes her stronger each time she gets knock down, then she would have a very similar power to Haka's abilities.

So you're saying Expat is Saiyan? I LIKE IT

Haha, I didn't even think about it that way.

In a way, Haka is also Saiyan.

It was a few years ago, but I'm fairly sure Christopher said that Dawn killed Dusk, and implied the main motivation was because he didn't provide her with a super-powered child.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. I don't remember the name being mentioned but definitely Dawn killed Expat's father because of Expat's (apparent) lack of power(s).

In the Something Special thread, I asked if Expat's father would be introduced and be relevant to the story, and Christopher answered yes.

Y'all know I posted a consolidated transcript of that thread at BGG, right? (For the sake of reference)

I personally think Expat getting powers in some way would be a rather stark and thematically unsatisfying validation to Dawn’s superhuman eugenics stuff with her citizens.

I’m perfectly fine with her just being superheroic with her gun-toting skills due to dedication and practice rather than “My mom bred selectively with another superhuman so that I would have superpowers. She thought I didn’t have them, took my eye, and kicked me out of her compound and our family. Except she was wrong and I’m actually superhuman. Boy, does she have egg on her face, eh? Probably from all of that selective breeding away from the normals.”

It just seems to defeat her entire premise of being a flatscan vigilante that takes down forces packing supernatural gifts with natural, trained, calculated efficiency and skill.

But if her powers only involve her "coming back from the dead" every time she goes down, that has nothing to do with her shooting abilities (unless she has some kind of empowered eyesight and hasn't just learnt to compensate for being missing an eye), so she does still have all the trained ability and skill and stuff...she just has "can survive a ridiculously high amount of damage" added on ;).

Expatriette comes back to life. Her guns deal death.

Thematically, I prefer a non-super Expatriette. She's powerful because she trained hard, and that's more interesting to me than latent superpowers.

Also, with no powers, it fits a little better the theme of the heroes from Rook City.

I know she has a power, but it doesn’t come up often so she generally is the gun’totin girl that everybody says is underpowered but really isn’t.

Wasn't there a post where some one pointed out the glowing doves all over Expatriettes artwork, and Christopher made some vague comment indicating they were relevant beyond the John Woo reference?

In that case, I think it might be a neat resolution to have Expat be completely powerless, but the doves being a manifestation of her father's power watching over her after his death(if we are following the "Citizen Dusk has powers related to death" thread)

I agree thematically. It's part of why one of the Wager Master's cards was so interesting to me as I was working through unwrapping and adding text/counts to the spoiler sheet. (I don't have them in front of me, but you'll know it when you see it.) I was intrigued nearly as much as seeing Ryan's face for the first time.

She does have a power.

Maybe the "power of the doves" come from the guns, not herself.

That's a very fair point Pydro.

Let's see if I got this right. The options for who we think Citizen Dusk is as of right now are:

• Expatriette: Who could have hidden powers/"Return from the Dusk" or just her hard-earned shooting abilities but now with a fancy name. 

• Expatriette's Dad
• Some Random Character that was just made for plot development and nothing more

Are there any other theories I've missed?

Hmmmm.... The Scholar is Expatriette's father and former Citizen Dusk? ;)

Scholar Promo Confirmed

We've CRACKED THE CASE!

I know what Expatriette's power is!

Load

Power:  Play a card.

...

I apologize.

That... would actually be pretty neat. "Notable lapses in judgment," indeed.

I was pretty sure Dawn actually KILLED ExPatriette's father, but if he can come back to life, then I suppose he could have faked it. I'm sure she faked it, after all...

I agree that Expat having supreme power would defeat her image as the powerless daughter of a superpowered villian with a god complex.

However, as Wager Master's card I think shows, Expat does somewhat long for powers. She was raised by Dawn in the Citizens of the Sun compound, she was raised to believe she had powers and her mother cast her out when she didn't devlop them. We don't know the exact timeline, but Expat couldn't have escaped from Primalus if she was too young, and she's not that old when we see her. It had to have scarred her deeply and developing powers would be the ultimate slap in the face to her mother, especially if by then Expat had come to accept herself without powers and proceeded to deny them. A castout daughter, beleived to have been powerless, develops powers and then denies them in favor of being a "normal", Dawn would lose it

Thinking about Expat's story and how it would have been framed in the comics I would bet "Emigrant's song" would start with Expat on Insula Primalus, show her in conflict with her mother, then show her escaping and making her way to Rook City. Especially with how red her scar is in all the pictures I could find, it is very fresh. I like to think that RPG launcher happens before Expat leaves and she's hunting the T-rex.

I definitely buy the idea that somewhere she wants to be acknowledged by her mother, as terrible as she is.  And, as much pride as she can take in her achievements through training and experience, she would probably have a much easier time taking on enemies if she were able to fire energy bolts, fly, AND be an incredible sharp-shooter.

Pride and Prejudice have a completely deeper meaning than I thought..

Here's a question for you....why does Expatriette not need to reload her guns unless she's using special ammo?

Her guns use ammo from the first Mass Effect game

Because she has plenty of regular ammo.

And, comics.

She has plenty of comics? What kind? I am guessing My Little Pony.

I thought that game mechanic was going to ruin it for me. But it was actually a great game. I'm playing the second one at the moment.

Yeah the third person shooter portion gets better with 2 but now you have thermal clips instead of overheating weapons.  Personally I feel ME2 is the best out of the series.   

I wouldn’t doubt, considering she’s dating Setback. He is the BIGGEST Brony. /headcanon

Hollywood clips.

Do we know, for sure, that there IS a Citzen Dusk? I mean, where has the name been referenced, if anywhere?

Since when have we had to have actual facts to base our speculation on? Baseless speculation is the best kind.

I prefer my speculation on a pizzabase, tastes better.

I prefer al fresco speculation, something completely out of left field and just plain wrong on the surface. Then even more wrongerer on the inside. Kind of like if Heston Blumenthal were to serve speculation in his restaurants, and it would look like like a pineapple on the outside but taste like fish and be filled with popping candy in the middle.

It's more the lack of reference that has people wondering, after all, all the other citizens of the sun have their little cliques.

Truth or Dare

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Assault and Battery

Hammer and Anvil

Slash and Burn

Spring, Summer, Autum and Winter

So where's Dawn's counterpart?

Honestly, given the picture in Wager Master's deck (one of these day's I'll memorize the bloody card name), I think that Amanda Cohen would have been Citizen Dusk.

The character of Expatriette's dad is a character that exists.

The name Ciizen Dusk is a name given to Expatriette's dad by the forum.

So Citizen Dusk does exist, and will be a significant figure at some point, but the name Citizen Dusk might be wrong.

Just like The Hippo was called Hippocalypse, before we found out he wasn't nearly as awesome as the forums thought.  The Character was real, the name was a placeholder.

Or how Setback was called Plucky (if I remember correctly)

Twitchy

From expat's shock rounds

Twitchy - named for the quote at the bottom of Shock Rounds, where he's getting zapped by Expatriette.

Also, something that I've only just thought about (when I saw the list of citizen names a few posts above), though it's nothing to do with speculation or anything - Citizen Autumn is called Citizen Autumn, even though it's an American game and Americans refer to Autumn as "Fall". I never thought about it before because...well, I suppose because I'm English and we call it Autumn anyway :).

We call it both.  Because Freedom.

Dangit, I knew I was wrong

That would be Hack and Slash.

Slash and Burn was from when Hack and Slash had a falling out and Slash hooked up with Burn before Baron Blade had them served with a Cease and Desist order.

Ironically, while Slash and Burn (formerly Hammer) got C&Ded and fell into obscurity fairly quickly, Anvil & Hack made quite a name for themselves, and are still going strong to this day.

Scoop : two new Citizens join the rising Dawn ! Citizen Cease and Citizen Desist are the new mini-expansion for Sentinels of The Legalverse !

The rules for Sentinels of the Legalverse are still in question.  We expect the playtesters will be debating them for years.  Especially the meaning of the term "next".

[Redacted] has a whole new meaning in the Legalverse.

Yeah, it's not just a playtester being a smartass, it's an actual gameplay mechanic!

As for what it does... Well, that's [REDACTED]

Like Fish and Cushion?

I wish Chip and Pin had been as successful.

EXACTLY like Fish and Cushion

And everyone overlooks the citizens in charge of making the installation on Insula Primalis comfy. The citizens of the sun would just not be the same without citizen Bed and citizen Breakfast,,,

Citizen Hammer, Citizen Anvil and Citizen Stirrup go into a bar...

It was really loud.

that's quite an earful

Then Fanatic joined them, and made it a holey experience.  

There's a response I'm looking for.  I hope someone spots it.

Why is no one talking about the most important Citizen of all, the one who produces the weekly news letter, Citizen Kane...

Because he's incapable of walking without assistance.

With a little help from Citizen Limp?

It is possible that when Expat's dad was "killed" he was stripped of his citizen status, therefore leaving the mantle of Citizen Dusk available for Expatriette to possibly step into one day. Honestly, I just want her to walk up to Citizen Dawn and be all "Hey mom, you know how you thought I was worthless? Well I have guns AND superpowers now!" (Insert epic fight here)

I got hooked on this Expatriatte father Citizen dusk speculation and I noticed that Ambuscade happens to have some features that would be consistent with Citizen Dusk.

1. He is good with guns (not that this is neccesarily heritable) it is the same power source as expatriette. Consider that pride and predjudice are wielded in a similar way to ambuscade's hand cannons and her RPG launcher is his explosive launcher. There weapon choice has parallels.

2. As an actor he was probably quite a looker and I imagine Dawn would insist on a fine specimen

3. We never actually see his face (christopher said we haven't seen him)

4. But maybe we do see his face...in the healing light artwork Dawn is healing a Citizen but it isn't one of the citizens in the cards. It looks a bit like Dare/truth but wait the uniform isn't quite right and this unnamed dead citizen has brown hair not black. Dawn killed the father but did she bring him back once her rage died? She has a tendency to bring her citizens back.

5. Ambuscade is 45 Dawn is 48 and Expatriatte is a very young 22. The math works.

6. The birds man, Ambuscade has white birds on his character card and expatriatte has them all over her cards. That has to be worth something. Ambuscade also has some black birds in charged attacks, not sure how those relate to the white variety.

7. The setting, Ambuscade is always fighting in a jungle, I originally thought he was stalking Haka in the south pacific but maybe it is insula primalis. Maybe he is an exiled citizen not far from his old home.

8. The french connection. Why Expatriette? She was born in Insula Primalis and none of them are obviously french. She fights in rook city. She is evidentally paying some tribute to her French heritage, perhaps on her father's side.

Well we can do the math and find Dawn tried this progeny strategy at a fairly young age. Considering some time for wooing and the typical 9 month gestation...25 year old Dawn may have been young and naive enough to be decieved by a world famous french actor who was secretly getting augmented powers. She wasn't just mad the kid didn't have powers she was mad that Ambuscade tricked her with his fake nonheritable powers.

Lets also consider why Ansel was going to such length to have these powers. He didn't need it for the hunting, he needed his energy manipulation to fit in with the Citizens of the Sun. He needed to keep up with Dawn and he couldn't.

Also lets consider Ambuscade is not a villian with such a bad motive. He finds the heros and villians alike dangerous and he would hunt and stalk either I suppose. He is just unfortunate to have Haka as his white whale he should probably move on... He is just barely bad and expatriate who also distrusts these hero types is just barely a hero.

I save the biggest evidence for last. Expatiette saves Ambuscade by "accidentally"  setting off his sonic mine. Expatriette is a tactician, she does not accidentally set-off the sonic mine. She can choose between a variety of weapons, she only sets off the mine if she wants to. She wanted to cause the heros to be unable to deal damage. Can't imagine why she might want that...

Sorry for the length...

Dawn's Canadian, which might explain the French, n'est-ce pas?

French Canadian is even worse than French.  

This makes so much sense that even if it's not what they had planned, it should be now. The key to me is Ambuscade convincing Dawn (or I suppose, just letting Dawn think) that his powers are innate and thus heritable. She certainly would be ticked off when she found out that he had not only lied, but that that lie had resulted in a baseline child. 

Brilliant bit of speculation!

Citizen Dawn doesn't care where the powers came from, she only cares if they have them. Several of her Citizens were not innately born with them.

I do constantly wonder why Ambuscade is always everywhere since his release. At least it feels like I'm always seeing him everywhere in Sentinels, whether it be the cards, Tactics, online updates for Villains...there's no where to turn that doesn't have Ambuscade's silly face on it. If he's got such a direct tie, one that would pull many emotional strings, it would make sense to keep him so focused in the public eye. Or, they just likeh him.

Dawn is from Manitoba and has a very English sounding last name. Probably an anglophone. As a Canadian she might be able to speak french a bit.

Cohen's Jewish, right? Doesn't strike me as "English sounding".

It is weird how she allows citizens not born with powers to hang out with the rest. It seems to undermine some of her schtick. Still if she wanted a super child she would probably try to have it with another citizen she thought was innately powerful. It is implied in the story that she thought the child would naturally be born with superpowers. That means she thought the sire had some special genes that would work well with hers.

Shoot, you are certainly right, I didn't realize it was a very cocmmon Jewish last name. Anyways I don't suppose it is also a very common francophone name as well. I really don't know though. For Quebecers I think of names like Roy, Dion, Tremblay, Gagne, Bergeron... Ya know sort of french sounding.

I think that Dawn was simply keeping her around, hoping her powers would manifest someday, and meanwhile training her to fight for the cause so that when her powers came into being, she could fight with her guns and her superpowers. But when they never came, Dawn tried to kill Expatriette, seeing her daughter as her greatest failure.

I think Expatriette only started using guns after she had that fight with Dawn and thought "Right, I'll show you…"?

Wrinkle in this theory: Dawn DID kill Expatriette's father.

(I've said that before right? I'm never sure anymore.)

Yes, you have.

Shucks and I was growing fond of the Ambuscade theory.  

This is a superhero universe.  It's not like anybody actually stays dead anyways.

Me too! It was quite convincing. The bird thing got me hard.

Oo-er!

That was back in the Romance era of Sentinel Comics.

Ambuscade isn't Expat's Father, his twin was, but Ambuscade posed as his brother for a while in order to break up the burgeoning romance between Citizen Truth and Citizen Autumn.

Obviously this just means that Expat's father is Ambuscade, who is actually Mister Fixer.

He isn't wearing the hat!  Totally dead.

Nailed it.

To be clear, just as I often count on Dawn eventually bringing back some of her Citizens (H+1 is many citizens), the idea was Dawn killed Dusk only to bring him back exiled from the citizens. Well I'll take the spirit of Christopher's response as a definitive no even if the wrinkle was less of a wrinkle and more of an integral part of a convoluted idea.

Since that hypothesis is blown out of the water we will have to think of some different explanations for some of the things it nicely explained.

Why do Ambuscade and Expat have the white birds in common. Is it related to a shared power source?

Why did Expatriette "accidentally" blow up a sonic mine, saying "oops"? Does she have a different reason to keep Ambuscade unscathed? He is certainly a tofu villian deck and she needs to keep the likes of him around to pad her deck's win percentage. Alternatively, maybe she did it half on purpose with one of her cold rounds. I guess my original interpretation, before taking a second look was that Adept's song was annoying to her

Why the french name? Maybe the Cohens were French Canadian all along or perhaps the only channel Expatriette could get growing up in Insula Primalis was TFO and even then only when the sun hit the obsidian fields just right and the pterodactyl wasn't using the antenna as a perch. That and Citizen Winter is an inspiring French teacher.

I haven't seen the picture for Sonic Mine in a while, but I assumed that she's saying "Oops" because she accidentally set off a mine which is damaging the heroes' eardrums.  

Two things about expat.

she is a marksman and a tactician.

my concept of expattriette doesn't accidentally shoot a sonic mine that can be harmlessly diffused if you are careful. She gets by on wits and good aim.

My vision of expatriette does intentionally blow up a mine if it serves her own purpose. She might have the decency to at least feign it was an accident but she is not a great actor. "Oops?" not buying it. 

Maybe Setback was involved.

Tacticians can be out-thought and surprised.

Maybe it's a sarcastic "oops" and she blew it up on purpose?

Maybe she's actually a kender (you know, in a really good disguise) and shot the mine to see what it'd do?

Maybe her Hairtrigger Reflexes got the better of her?

This is my bet.

Fighting a stealthy hunter would make you a bit twitchy, and Expat is a shoot first ask questions later character who turns into a tactician and leader as she gets older.  Unless she's in her DW outfit on Sonic Mines I wouldn't expect her to be above shooting something without checking it out first.

Or her Sub-Machine Gun.

AA is the only character shown on the Sonic Mines. The flavor text has Expat saying "Whoops! Sorry!" We have no reason to believe she did anything on purpose.

Maybe she shot it to disable it, not realizing it was not a traditional explosive like they've seen before. Maybe she didn't see the mine at all and triggered a trap. Maybe the flavor text has nothing to do with the mines (very possible as we have been told not all pictures and text line up). 

Expat is good at what she does, but s is Ambuscade and a guy hunting heroes is going to catch them off-guard more than once or twice I think.

Spiderman has a semi-supernatural sense of danger (aka, Spider-sense), Kraven the hunter has caught him in traps several times despite this.

All valid points, i deffinitely forgot about hair trigger reflexes. i hardly ever played it with expat. ironically it does get a lot better with the aim power so i found myself playing it with a higher frequency in the few games i used dw expat.

she certainly might have accidentally brought on the sonic damage or who knows, maybe she is saying sorry for forgetting to point out that it existed and aa is actually the one who set it off. lots of open space to work with in this world.

It's a joke about the mechanics of the game. Using Hairtrigger Reflexes to blow up the Sonic Mine is in most circumstances the absolute worst thing the Heroes can do, because it prevents them from doing damage for a full round.

Only until the start of the Villain turn.

Ambuscade does start of turn effects.

Ambuscade plays Sonic Mine.

Expatriette sets off Sonic Mine with Hairtrigger Reflexes.

Heroes all take 2 and can't deal damage till Ambuscade's next turn.

Lets remember that Hairtrigger Reflexes is a may. So she doesn't have to shoot every non-hero target that comes into play, because she is just that good.

Boo!!  Shoot all the things!!

That's like using Sacrosanct martyr right after Resolute puts it into play.  It is optional, but only if you are lame.

I can’t believe that off all the people on the forum, you are the one to emphasize a “may” shoot something.

It should be obvious. Why would I want to shoot a Sonic Mine? It stops me from dealing damage thus can't kill myself. Why would I shoot an Explosive Wagon? It kills it faster and lowers the damage I do, so less damage to myself. The may is very important!

Because it was there.