Ep 33 of The Letters Page! Discussion - Haka

Who will die this episode? Will Adam or Christopher be the one who is fired?

Listen here to find out!

34? I don't know what you are talking about.

Haka got better at least from the intial death

Shhhhh! You're spoiling it.

Well... at least no one turned him into a Nuit

I don't know how others feel but I really don't feel sorry for any birds being killed in the making of this episode.  

The origin of Hakas powers, as briefly (and confusingly) explained in this epsiode, was 100% brand new information. Thats always exciting. I know I have a whole lot more questions on that whole topic, but it seems like they will be covered in a future episode. 

And not for nothing, but yet again we go through another episode where the extent of the Tactics future story is summed up in a single sentence ("yeah, he shows up") and nothing more. Really bumbed how Tactics story doesn't get near as fleshed out or given the same enthusiasm.

Yeah I kept expecting some further comment to be made during the RPG/spoiler section

So much to unpack! I can't even remember all the things I wanted to comment on! (I listen to these while walking around town, it's not great for taking notes.)

If there's any character from Sentinel Comics I'd like to meet and hang out with, it's Haka. He's just the best. It continues to amaze me, for all that he's one of the first heroes I ever played, and his mechanics are really straightforward, I still find myself having a ton of fun every time I play him.

I'm guessing Faultless for the source of his powers. It's always possible it's someone we either don't know about yet, or don't know could do something like this, but – from what little has been revealed of him – he seems to fit everything they gave us so far. Darned if this episode doesn't feel like they gave us more questions than they answered, though.

That stinger with the birds is maybe the funniest thing that's happened on any of these podcasts. XD

I'd just like to say that, right after I wrote the Animalverse question, I came here to see that thread where people were complaining about too much roleplaying in the questions section. :V But I'm so glad Christopher and Adam liked it. Even if Ehkrickor beat me for most single letters read. (Not that it's a competition. <3 But yes, timeliness!)

Is it my imagination, or did they get Haka's last name wrong through almost the entire episode? Like, even including the show notes. I thought there was another "rewa" in there. (Then again, I also thought he was 200 years old. No idea where that came from…)

Lastly, I'm glad they put paid to the complaint about the one incap image with the Hippo. I remember someone saying, y'know, what's Hippo gonna do with a school bus against Haka? Well, if it's full of kids…

This was such a fascinating episode in many ways and I'm not even sure where to start thinking about it.

Unfortuantely, two of the biggest things I want to comment on are spoilers… well actually, sort of spoilers.

The first is the origin of his powers person, that this exists was not a spoiler, but I'm putting my theory in spoiler sections just in case. It is here -> So my guess as to the person who combined all the Haka's into one is actually two-fold. My first guess is La Commodora. We know she can harness time anomolies because that is one of the cards we are shown in the KS update and there is a solid chance that that is the sort of thing which would be required to make Haka possible. But, it is such a huge scale, it might be bigger than what her and the ship are actually capable of doing, since it requires reaching across multiple realities to pull off. My second guess then is Tim Cosing. They are the only other one I can see with the skill, power, and opportunity to reach across multiple timelines and realities and create this sort of entanglement.  

His power source and the spoiler reveal though also got me thinking about this -> So, after watching the movie Moana I got interested in how accurate it was. This led me on a little bit of a journey. Now, I know Maori culture is probably quite different in a lot of ways with the various cultures shown in that movie, but the South Pacific cultures share a lot of similiarities and the mention of Fishhooks and spirals being important makes me feel like they share enough. One of the complaints about the depiction of Maui in Moana  is how he is shown doing all these great deeds by himself, when in fact he had a "partner" who was a female figure named Hina in many stories. Double checking Wikipedia and these figures do exist in Maori legend. So, in legends, Maui and Hina are some of the most important gods of humanity, and in Sentinels we have Ataa and Atawari(sp?), male and female who are tied to each other and are the reason for the others strength. This is an amazing mythic connection and tie-in that makes me giddy inside. Also, I'm glad Haka still exists in the RPG, and now that we understand some of how this works the way the story develops makes a ton of sense.

The Haka episode was the one I'd been most looking forward to, so I'm glad it turned out so well. Definitely my favourite in quite a while, so much fun!

I've had a theory for a while that the source of his power is The Host, based mostly on the "death" / resurrection and "righteous warrior" similarities between Haka and Fanatic's backstories, which seems unlikely not to have been intentional. The fact that they said we'd find out soon and that Fanatic's episode should be in the near future makes me think that might be right.

I have a feeling Fanatic/Apostate are near the end of characters talked about which wouldn't make it soon.  Also, the Host doesn't seem like one that would do anything that potentially beneficial to deal with a particular threat.  

Ah, OK, my mistake - I thought I'd heard it stated that we were getting all the Prime Wardens in the very near future.

Has The Host been talked about a lot before then? I'm not as familiar with the lore of Sentinels as a lot of people here, I thought that character was one of the big mysteries and nothing had been revealed at all yet. Your post sounds like his / her motivation or personality has been discussed before?

The information overall on the Host is sparse but since Apostate doesn't seem to play a huge role for Haka it would be odd for Haka to tied to the Host.  

I was going over old files on my computer and found a thing where I noted down names for RPG characters/places. Of note for this thread is that Ariki means heredity chief and Wakarewarewa is a village in Rotorua New Zealand.

Here's a link to the Wiki page for this episode.

On the subject of names, "Arataki" is a Maori girl's name (I don't know about a "common" one, but I had no trouble finding it for the purposes of spelling) derived from the verb "to lead or guide".

OHMYGODTHEYREADSOMANYOFMYQUESTIONS!!! There was also so much there, i'm gonna have to listen to it again to upack all teh reveals. Also There was a competition!? What do I win, is there a medal? Cookies? Little pies from Haka!?

looks guilty with mixed berry pie all over his face

Oh, um, nope no pies for anyone.

Competition? No! No. Who said anything about a competition?

In which Powerhound and Ehkrickor hold an ever-escalating question-asking contest until Christopher implodes.

He better not go through my Guise set of questions.    And I'm likely to come up with more when they get to him.  

I'm very pleased to learn that Haka is a G&S fan.  

Also, to whomever is doing the Biomancer clones - lots of kudos for adding another Latin animal name pun while impersonating me.  Your limerick was excellent too.

That was actually my thought too. Something about the "powerful enough to see the need and reach across timelines and parallel reality" aspect–and there was a notion, I think, that the source retroactively made Haka have existed. That is, reached back in time from the future and caused the collapse of what I have to assume are really screwyideas about worldstates and parallel timelines and probabilities and I should probably read Anathem again.

See, I don't think "the name of the person you have redacted" is responsible for all this. We know what he/her/it does during the OBlivaeon fight and I believe they are confirmed "no longer existing" after they do it, so I just don't see the opportunity and it also does not fit the theme or style of that character to do something like create Haka.

They have the oomph to pull it off, but I don't think they have the desire, time, or propensity to go mucking things up and causing what I assume is a large cosmic mess when you pull back far enough to see such things as what has happened to Haka metaphysically.

Haka isn't the way things are supposed to be, which is a big red flag in my mind.

I'm not going to lie, I got misty-eyed listening to this episode, particularly the parts about loss. All the feels.

On the topic of the Role Play and meta stuff:

You know, people might think it's hard to hear, that it takes up too much time or whatever. Let me tell you, it is hard to PARTICIPATE. Basically, if you want to, you have to listen to an episode and you have less than 3 days to send in a message if you want to RP. And you gotta make it a good question not to waste everyone's time. If you don't wait until AFTER the episode is out, you may get facts wrong or be incorrect with the details of where the "story" is. Or, you can wait and only send a message every second week, but then if you have real question, you kinda have to skip them.

All this to say, a question I sent for the Slaughterhouse Six mentioned the "animalverse" version of Christopher and Adam and they are not the same as what was mentioned in this episode. Oops...

Ooh, sorry, Leo. :C

Maybe it's an alternate Animalverse. I mean, who's to say there's only one?

I'm sure there are multiple animalverses.  I've sent in some early RP questions as well and am just waiting to see if someone contradicts them in the meta-lore before they come out--or possibly in the same episode.

No need. It wasn't really a complaint against you, more pointing out how much work it takes sometimes. I'm sure they'll mention it or come up with their own explanation for things. Animal Biomancer clones perhaps?

On a related note, I've been wanting to make a post somewhere to collect the animal and biomancer names of all the Sentinels characters and question askers and suggest new ones. I need to have Omnitron-Pi submit a post as "Omnitron-Lie". And possibly "Omniprawn-Pi".

I tend to send in questions closeish to the deadlines anyway if only to ensure that what I want to ask didn't already get answered or invalidated somehow in a podcast in the interim (or if something in a podcast makes me think up new things to also ask).

I loved this episode. Haka is wonderful!

After the KNYFE episode, I just had a feeling that the image of her and Haka in a tavern somewhere fit in perfectly with what I knew of both their characters. Both of them are on the happier side for heroes and both enjoy battle. So I posited a throwaway question…

Christopher and Adam supplied what might be my favorite answer on this podcast.

Haka’s the best.

So, my other question: if you search YouTube for “haka,” it is really easy to find examples of the dance we Sentinels know as the Haka of Battle, including with translations. (Check out the flavor text when this gets to the “It is death! It is life!” bit: https://youtu.be/BI851yJUQQw) But I haven’t figured out what the translation of the other Haka cards are. Does anyone know?

Anyone else wonder how there's a XTREME Prime Wardens Haka, given what we just learned?

There is a separate thread that got started because of that https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/haka-letters-page-confusion-10701

Back on September 10th, I listened to the Haka episode, and I came up with a response that I didn’t post here at the time. I debated when exactly to post it, but ultimately the decision is made by my concern that I will forget, and I wanted to put this out there, even though it was contradicted almost immediately. So here goes the original post, warts and all, with a short comment afterwards about what I got wrong.

I find myself disagreeing with the explanation of how Haka works that C&A in fiscal year 2018 came up with (which I think I have the right to do, because they admitted themselves that it was a kind of an unsatisfactory explanation, it was just what they chose to go with when they needed to go with something). Time travel concepts and theories about human lifeforce and the soul and so forth, these are things I think I have an intuitive grasp on, and what my understanding of these topics tells me about “the what and the how” of this unkillable eternal person, it doesn’t fit with the explanation given here. It also contradicts the mere existence of things like Eternal Haka in a way that C&A18 kinda just handwaved without really properly handling; I was originally going to post on the ChronoRanger episode with some of these thoughts, but Haka (along with Visionary since then, so expect me to post on that too) expands on some of that while still leaving other things that I can say about other characters like La Capitana Della Commodora. (I don’t know the Spanish for “or”, sorry; I think Della is Italian anyway, but it sounds close enough.). Note that I have five or more years of pandemic-era podcasts to catch up on, so maybe some of this stuff has been discussed and maybe solved, but for now I’m just going to riff on what I know about and do the best I can, making sense of an inherently nonsensical fictional subject (that is probably better just accepted as “because comics” contradicting itself and who cares you dumb nerd, but that’s not how I work), so here goes.

So here’s my controversial stance: I don’t think Haka is actually a superhuman. I think he’s like Batman or Benchmark or Hawkeye, an exceptional example of human physical perfection that is then taken beyond human limits through technology. Only in this case, the technology in question isn’t an armor suit he wears, it’s the temporal technology of LC’s time ship, which interfaces with the flow of lifeforce through the human soul (and IMO that’s also a kind of technology but that gets into some very strange ideas of mine which are better set aside for now, in part because I may turn them into a book at some point and should avoid endangering my own IP). Haka is as strong as a human being becomes if he lives for six hundred years; he isn’t stronger than that, he doesn’t have the kind of super-strength that Legacy and Setback and Vengeance Blade all have, where their muscles exert more force than should be physically possible for those muscles. Haka is enormous because he has engaged in normal strength training and muscle growth, but his connection to the bottomless well of lifeforce from infinite other potential Hakas just constantly repairs his body from exercise that would permanently disable any normal person.

In terms of the Champions roleplaying game, which is a point buy system, I would give Haka the drawback of “normal human physical limitations”, which gives you twenty extra build points in exchange for doubling the cost of any attribute increases beyond the normal human maximum. Batman and Hawkeye would be built with that same restriction, but then might spend like ten of their twenty points to go into “Olympic athlete” level slight superhumanity. But Haka has been earning experience points for six hundred years! So he’s spent hundreds of points raising Strength at double cost, to represent the idea that he’s still not superhuman, he’s just humanity taken beyond the usual external limit imposed by old age or violent death or debilitating disease or starvation or any of that. He’s more human than human, yet he’s still ultimately a normal man, expressed to a usually impossible extent, because of him effectively being a fixed point in time, not in the same way as Vanessa Long, but similarly so.

So yeah, Word of God says I’m wrong, that Haka is indeed superhumanly strong and more so than Legacy (until he becomes Iron), but I still like my vision of a totally human Haka. The idea that he is just muscular hypertrophy to a normally impossible extent, and that immortality is his only paranatural quality, just seem more correct for a character based on the actual Maori culture (or any other real tribal society from any point in human spacetime). Legacy is a different thing, both because America as a nation is very different from the Maori as a people, and because the later revealed Wellspring endowment of Legacy is a very different powersource than temporally siphoning multiple universes of Hakas into just two individuals and thereby making them something with magical superpowers of muscles that break physics.