You wont amount to a hill o' beans if you don't listen to this week's episode.
http://theletterspage.libsyn.com/episode-25-chrono-ranger
With added extra info about that mysterious entity known as Con!
So much for all the fanon about Con! (Also your beloved ChronoDora ship... :V)
I'm still frustrated that they don't really discuss how the timelines can split. My assumption has always been that all timelines and realities are present and unified in the presence of Oblivaeon, so I'm now even more incredibly confused about how the heroes can make two different choices(precipitating the two different timelines) while Oblivaeon is still there.
I would be more than happy to be wrong, but at the moment it seems like we're not going to get anything more than "hand-wavey-comic-book-sci-magic" to explain why it happens. I'm frankly rooting for La Comodora to micro-time-travel back to create paradoxical copies of herself to fight Oblivaeon with the very concept of time itself. The inifitely branching La Copydoras would break Oblivaeon's grip on the lynchpins of reality for long enough for the timelines to split as Oblivaeon is attempting to resolve the paradox.
All that to say, this was a great episode that answered a lot of neat questions! Very excited for ThymeSlingr, Master Chef Extreme! Definitely going to be a key ingredient in our games when he's released for the RPG!
I wish they would have elaborated a bit about how exactly completing these Bounties charged his time badge. I'd also like more context on what happened in Hippocratic Oath though I would guess that occurs when he is trying to complete the Bounty "The Whole Gang"
I thought they mentioned that changing the timeline by fulfilling the bounties created enough temporal energy from the ensuing temporal disturbance that the badge could harness that and get charged that way... now it's time to re-listen to quite a wonderful episode for timestamps!
I'm a little disappointed that my questions regarding Con didn't make it into this episode...the stuff I asked was much more comprehensive than the questions that were chosen, and I feel like much of the lore behind Con still is unanswered because of it.
Care to list out those questions?
I think I owe Christopher and Adam a bit of an apology. I asked the question about his Plague Rat nemesis command his pre La Comodora arm. I accidentally implied that they didn't necessarily read all the questions. What I meant to say is " thank you for reading my comment on air...". Because I'm not going to actually thank someone for doing a thing if they don't do it.
So to C and A, I apologize for implying a lack of diligence on your part. And once again, Thank you for reading my letter on air. Also, thanks for not reading the question about Con, since it was clearly no longer relevant based on what you said in the overview.
Powerhound - I totally agree with you on the Hippocratic oath card art. I totally forgot about it, or I would have included it in my letter.
I missed this on the first listen they give it at about the 22 minute mark.
Also, I'm surprised there isn't at mention of the Progeny fight since Chrono-Ranger is the center figure on Scion of the Storm
I liked this episode quite a bit(Almost forgot there was an episode with the holiday and how busy I was!), and I'm glad we got a bit more insight on Chrono Ranger and his motivations. It was an interesting gamble that the editors made, using a character from so long ago and with giving so little information to the fans or even the writers/artists! The more peeks we get at the lore of the actual Sentinel Comics company, the more I want to know.
I know down the line they're gonna work on a 'History of Sentinels Comics' book down the line, but I know I'd love if they had a 'Letters Page' episode on just the lore of the company itself!
Unfortunately, I submitted them almost two months ago, when they first announced that the Chrono-Ranger ep would be the first one of July. And, of course, I didn't make a copy...
I forgot to ask questions about him and La Comodra. I need to get my La Comodora questions in. And I wish I knew more about the young LaCapitann and Chrono Ranger went. But i quess there is head canon for that.
I thought it was Ambuscade on Hippocratic Oath, to go with Quick Draw.
This episode was great! Add “Temporal Targets” to the list of books I’d love to read (with TermiNation and the Iron Legacy stuff).
Also, I love the idea that when you play Displaced Armory or a Bounty, you’re playing Con from across time.
Thats clearly Jim to me. At the least it's not Ambuscade as it's missing the scar and the hair is brown not blonde.
I feel weird about Con now, who's gone from feeling like Al to Chrono's Sam to feeling a little creepy/sinister after finding out that Con keeps sending Chrono after dodgier and dodgier bounties and that it's not good enough for Chrono to fix the timeline in a non-lethal way when dealing with Ambuscade. What game is Con playing, and is it playing it deliberately?
Also now curious about the Chronoist. Based on the brief physical description, me and some folks on Reddit are wondering if it's a Be The Gate-esque version of Biomancer.
And yeah, kicking myself about not remembering the Hippocratic Oath thing. I think after the Legacy podcast I didn't consider it too much because they called out Chrono as "not a team player/hard to work with" so I assumed he was just kinda ornery so of course he got into a few tussles with the heroes... but now in this podcast he was described as fairly laid-back and more of simply a stoic loner than antisocial so now I'm curious about the incident on Oath again.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he and Expatriette scrapped -- and I remember someone somewhere somewhen saying that they've never really gotten along -- over the whole "shooting people" thing. Since, y'know, one won't and one will.
And one is becoming darker/more violent while the other is becoming less so. Definitely some good dialogue opportunities there.
I don't know if Chrono necessarily had become more violent at the time that card would have happened. The Tactics timeline is a later beast AFAIK.
(As someone put it on Reddit, the Tactics timeline is the "crap timeline". Which makes it amusing that it's the timeline where Blade is nicest.)
But still you're right, there is a personality conflict there. Maybe I/we can ask it for the Sentinels podcast...
This was the first episode of my present listen-thru that made me want to respond, even though Ra was the first one where I actually did. So here are my ever so slightly belated thoughts.
Of all the heroes to build a time machine, the trio we’re given for Con are a thoroughly baffling set of choices. The Argent Adept does nothing with technology whatsoever, Fixer is mechanically skilled but not really technological, and Unity knows a fair amount about science from studying under Tachyon, but mostly relies on her magical powers to make golems out of metal rather than building a functional robot. It’s hard to believe Omnitron-X wasn’t involved at all, and HR Walker is pretty old already by the time Unity is born. I really want a more detailed story about how this assemblage was even possible, as well as how the Wasteland started to happen during the lifetimes of these three. I have some theories about all this, but they’re going to take some serious thunking before I’m satisfied with them.
This is something I think I do have an idea about. In order for CON to have a persistent record of history to be able to pinpoint where things went wrong, without that record being undone by the changes, I feel like it would have to keep its data storage module in the past, when there was a single timeline, and the various CONs in the future all compare their current files to this eternal permanent record that’s sequestered in some spot in the world that will definitely never change. This might well be part of why AA was involved with CON, as one of the best candidates for a time when the timelines hadn’t yet split would be the era after Akash Bhuta had just been rendered dormant by the first Virtuoso. Virtually everything else comes after that, possibly including the shattered timelines, so CON being able to do travel within a timeline is a lot better explained if it can refer back to this singular temporal reference point.