Reality-Hopping Post-Oblivaeon (Letters Page Spoilers)

One of the recurring themes of the post-Oblivaeon timelines, as mentioned in the Letters Page a lot, is that with Oblivaeon gone, reality is no longer fracturing--and that the reality-fracturing encountered within the Sentinels of the Multiverse card game was what enabled travel across time, jumping between probabilistic worldtracks (OK, OK, I'm putting Anathem down now, I promise), and the like.

Does this mean that time travel and parallel realities are somehow verboten within the "Tactics Timeline" and "RPG TImeline" (for lack of a better set of monikers)?

Of course, if I wanted to, as the GM of a Sentinel Comics RPG session, I could easily say "you're in SIlver Gulch now, it's 1884--or indeed 1882" as easily as I could say "you're the Freedom Five, and it's time to play through the Vengeance Event," but as a matter of "the official rules" of the universe(s), are time travel stories and parallel-reality stories off limits to the Two Timelines? Or is it just that they are, effectively, isolated from each other, so there's no way to cross between them? Even if members of those timelines go back in time or to parallel realities, those are "localized" around their branch of the split, and never the twain shall meet? (Which again doesn't stop me as a GM from saying "you're going to meet the Freedom Six when you get transported to a place called Broken City, which looks familiar and yet not," but you know what I mean.)

As far as I am aware, they are entirely seperated from each other.

The Multiverse in all it's infinite glory still exists, it is just that the various "rivers" cannot cross or meet or flood into each other.

However, there is something odd with the way they described Haka in this last episode. They made it sound like he was not in the Tactics timeline, and then later he was during the events of Prime War. This makes it sound like somehow he broke the new rules and traveled between timelines and realities.

They may have just mispoken or I may have just misheard or misinterpretted, but, like you said, nothing prevents us from breaking this rule at anytime we feel neccesary as GMs

You missed part of the episode I think. Spoilers: Haka actually travelled through during the OblivAeon event while doing his hero searches, then got trapped when the gates collapse right after OblivAeon's defeat. Probably what they meant was that he didn't show up on everyone else's radar until Prime War, not that he wasn't in the timeline before then. No actual rule-breaking.

I am now curious about what will be the end results of what you (I think it was you) said about Argent's new personal goal in the RPG, though.

One thing I did notice in a recent episode is that time travel is still possible post-Oblivaeon, it's just that you're actually travelling in time instead of going to another reality, like Visionary did. Which makes me wonder if time travel is now deterministic...

Wasn't that them just joking around? Like, "You can still travel in time; you can just only go forward at the usual rate of time happening?"

The way I understand it, it's kind of like a funnel with two spouts.

Up until OblivAeon, crossing into realities was easy, as each swirled together.  Try to go back 'up' the funnel by time-traveling, and you really just ended up in a different stream, still heading down the funnel towards OblivAeon.

OblivAeon, naturally, is the apex of the funnel:  all of time and reality pours towards that single point.

After OblivAeon, all of time and reality goes in one of two directions: RPG-ward or Tactics-ward.  And, just as you can't 'pour up' the funnel, you can't time-travel past OblivAeon (or, really, even at all).

Haka spoilers:  In my mind, the "core card game reality" Haka heads through the Mistgate in search of other heroes, ending up marooned in the Tactics timeline.  Meanwhile, his alternate-reality female counterpart takes on the role of Haka in the RPG-reality.  Together, the two make up the "final pair" of Hakas which make each other effectively immortal.

Just my 2 cents.

This thread is already listed as spoilers so why are we hiding text?  

I would like to point The Marvel Comic Exiles. I am sure moving between reality and time is not possible, untill it is.

I mean OblivAeon started off as an end to ALL realities but one (Tactics) until the RPG became a Viable thing, then it split into two. They Mentioned that the "writer" made the Tactics timeline after the RPG. So what came first?

And they are going to keep talking about the Cannon RPG story line. I mean  in pathfinder my group killed TreeRazor, a demon keeping some powerful elves opupined and start to fix a lot of the problem in the game, that still exsist in the lore. 

I plan to have NightMist as a NPC because I Love the 1920 Noir feel. And if it is a problem with her need to be dead, the players can find out that is was more of lingering Magic that took her form, or whatever it need to be impactfull to the players and make sense (comic book Sense). 

That's how I understood it as well, it sounded like he ended up somewhere else, and then in Prime War showed up in the Tactics timeline. Its possible he was in that timeline the whole time and just not doing anything but that's not how it sounded to me. Or maybe the mist gate spit him out at exactly the Prime War arc skipping over the time difference?

First rule of comics right there.

My understanding of the Watsonian (as opposed to Doylist) explanation is: after the defeat of Oblivaeon (and thus the end of the "Multiverse Event"), the writers and editorial directors of Sentinel Comics began (and have remained in) a period of…let's say, less apocalyptic stories; we know that as the RPG Timeline.

After around five years of this, a group of writers asked for, and received, permission to do a separate, branching timeline of "so what if Oblivaeon's defeat had been a more Pyhrric victory?" that examined what the state of the World of Sentinel Comics would look like, and came up with the "superheroes are less trusted, and much more vigilante" arrangement that we know as the Tactics Timeline. B ecause it was about that long between the last issue of the Oblivaeon event in the comics and the first issue of this Ultimate take cough sorry, what? , the in-universe gap was also five years; the first issue of Ultactics  cough sorry, frog in my throat  does the "Five years after the defeat of Oblivaeon, all is not well. The former Rook City, now Broken City, is swarming with disease, death, and despair. The Freedom Five, no longer affiliated with the United States Government, wage a vigilante war against onrushing darkness…"

Certainly; as I said, once you're in the RPG, there's "the canonical story of the sourcebooks and supplements," and then there's "what your GM and PCs do." That's inevitable. But as a matter of "the canonical story," what's the status?

This is turning into a specific question for the podcast…

It was me who mentioned that in the Starter Kit Argent Adept mentioned that the Prime Wardens broke up after the loss of Haka. He's caring for Akash'Flora and it seems part of the Starter Kit story is getting the Prime Wardens back together again, to deal with some new threat. IT involved SPider-Bots that used a lot of different tech. And by a lot of different tech I mean tech from every major source that I am aware of. Bunker, Tachyon, Unity, Omnitron, Baron Blade, Voss, FILTER, and I think Revocorp if memory serves me.

We also know that part of getting the team together is going to involve the Femae version of HAka fighting Tempest. And Tempest doesn't rejoin, perhaps only if she joins but that seems signifigant. But it was almost mentioned in passing by our DM so it is hard to know for certain how much is revealed in the Starter Kit.

As for not actually breaking the "no dimension hopping rule" it is very possible that you are right, but wouldn't it be odd for Haka to lay low for 5+ years in the tactics timeline, allowing so many people to be injured and hurt in the events that follow, without showing up on anyones radar?

We know he isn't in Broken City, and if we take their original production schedule as the timeline for Tactics it is quite a long while before Prime War and Haka showing up. It seems exceedingly strange to me that he would just be laying low and not doing anything of importance. That isn't Haka.

That's an interesting idea. We do know there is this Mist in the Tactics Timeline that is making things vanish and disappear.

Let us assume that the Gates are more built like tunnels. There is a section where you are in neither reality, but instead between them. Haka is mid-journey, or trying to run and jump back thru the Gate when it closes. He's smashed in the middle where he is between realities instead of in any single reality.

Most people would die, but Haka is "quantumly entangled" or however you would phrase it, and cannot die as long as his counter part is still alive and therefore he is simply floating and existing between realities.

Eventually, when someone tries something new to combat this mist, it results in Haka getting spit out into the Tactics timeline, right in time for Prime War. This works as well as a narrative retcon, Haka was lost and "gotten rid of" by the writers of the RPG timeline, but the Tactics writers found a way to bring him back for ther story that does not break any of the new rules, just bends them in half.

I like it. Headcannon for now until disproven or displaced.

Only two people have ever traveled directly in time in the Sentinels of the Multiverse Story. Chrono-Ranger and La Capitan/Commodora. Everyone else reality hopped.

Officially, reality hopping is no longer possible, because that was only possible because of Oblivaeon and Oblivaeon no longer exists in a capacity that allows for that to happen. That is the canon answer as far as we the consumers have been told.

As for Time Travel, Chrono-Ranger can no longer travel like he used to. And instead works with manipulating Time and traveling in short bursts, like no more than an hour or so, as far as I understand from the future section of Chrono-Ranger.

I do not know the fate of La Comodora or La Capitan, so I cannot comment.

However, since what they were doing is seperate from traveling to different realities, it is reasonable to assume that time travel is possible. However, it would be incredibly risky and perhaps locked down by some force. Because, if it is possible to jump back in time the Oblivaeon fight could be affected. A change could end up turning the fight at a crucial moment and allowing Oblivaeon to win, which would cause massive problems for the Multiverse if it were to happen.

This is actually a good spot for La Commodora, acting as the Gate Keeper for Time. Preventing or closely monitoring anyone who might travel back to before Oblivaeon so that the timeline is not disrupted and the events unfold like they are supposed to.

Or, because of the Death of Oblivaeon and it itself probably becoming a massive fixed point in time, it might have become impossible to travel back before that. There is simply too much chronal interference and energy released during that battle that it would be like taking a sailboat thru the Red Spot of Jupiter, you'll be smashed to pieces and killed nearly instantly, so it is a really really bad idea.

Not sure which of these ideas I prefer.

The Haka episode tells us that the Final Wasteland reality no longer exists, post-OblivAeon.

Do you have a source for that?  We know that a bunch of heroes traveled to Silver Gulch 1886, for instance, and they also confirmed that Eternal Haka came back in time to help in the OblivAeon fight.  It's also implied that other heroes traveled to the Final Wasteland, though we haven't heard that story yet.

They did say last week that time travel was still possible within a timeline, though I can't figure out what would happen if someone traveled back in time to before OblivAeon and reality-traveling was still possible.  What if stranded Haka managed to find a way to time travel and went back to when the gates were still open?  What if Sky-Scraper went back and hid in Iron Legacy's pocket?  Or would they just find themselves in a retconned timeline in which reality-traveling never actually happened?  (And if that's the way it was–without Iron Legacy, how did Paul and Felicia both survive Baron Blade?)

I think the most likely answer is that time travel to before the destruction of OblivAeon just isn't possible, as you suggested.  But it's unsatisfying.

It was in the Letters page, Probably in Omni-X's but I'd have to go digging to confirm that.

And, with the reminders of Silver Gulch and The Final Wasteland, it is very possible that they meant it simply in terms of Visionary and Omni-X's backstories. As well as Iron Legacy. They have mentioned Silver Gulch is getting an Interlude though, so they might end up expanding on what they meant during that.

From my POV it sounds exactly like Haka, he probably realised the state the world was in and wandered around to help fix things in areas most of the world forgot, Oblivaeon's attack on Earth probably caused massive widespread damage not just in places we know, whilst places like Megaopolis probably received massive amounts of public and private funding to fix the damage what about places in Africa, China, New Zealand…

Haka is the sort who sees violence as a last resort, and would relish a chance to use his strength and ability to take large amounts of damage to help people, like helping at underfunded construction sites carrying stuff and doing the more dangerous work to prevent others from hurting themselves.  He probably only shows up for Prime War because Argent Adept sought him out to help.

Yeah I'm with bluedarky; it's actually pretty normal for Haka to go under the radar and do his own small hero things until there's a big major event to wade into again.

Especially since it's possibly implied the Prime Wardens broke up at some point in Tactics before getting together again anyway. Omnitron's Deck has flavor text from Captain Cosmic: "Well, this is rather unexpected. Looks like time to get the team together and all that." - Captain Cosmic, Prime Wardens #14

I guess the question is what Prime War's plot actually involves.

That's a good point, but I guess it speaks to my misunderstanding the… presentation, of the various heroes.

Haka is a major hero in the Sentinels world. The implication that he simply appeared in Tactics makes it sound like no one knew where he was. If he was in Africa or New Zealand helping, my assumption was that people would notice.

After all, he's a major hero, it'd be like Legacy working a soup kitchen in Cuba, everyone is going to know Legacy is down there, he's too famous. And I'm used to considering the heroes in terms of their fame and importance outside of the world of comics instead of considering how well known ther would be in universe.

Haka has saved multiple cities just from the Letters Page story, he fought Oblivaeon, wouldn't people know his face? But, actually, probably not. And how would they identify him? He's a massive man, but there are many very large men in the world.

So, I stll don't think that's the way things end up shaking out, but I acknowledge it is a possible explanation

Haka pumps himself up before battle, always wears his Ta Moko in battle, and the card text for his battle quotes comes across as loud and boisterous.  Whilst it's not impossible for anyone to notice it's him in civilian clothes it's a lot harder than people would think to associate the quiet giant who just showed up and started moving stuff around with the loud and boisterious Haka.

As for Legacy in a soup kitchen in Cuba, that would quickly turn into a massive publicity event, Paul Parsons doing the same would be probably be seen as just another do gooder american trying to show off how nice he is.

Pretty much all of the human heroes are fairly average looking outside of their costumes and powers. Even the ones that aren't, aren't usually that much different looking that you'd immediately peg them for who they are.

The ones like Wraith we see caring about having secret identities, it's because they're actually famous celebrities as their normal selves.

I hope I'm not coming across as argumenative, but I love back and forths like this.

Haka always has his Ta Moko period. They are tatoos that he took a lot of effort to make, and he does not need to reapply them. But, personality is a lot. He's probably terrifying in combat, which is not how he presents himself out of it. Still, He is unnatural large and has distinctive facial tatoos, there is little hiding who he is, and he doesn't put much effort into trying to hide it. It all depends on how famous Haka is in a given area at the time.

Paul is a completely different story. He is famous. Everyone knows that Paul Parsons is Legacy. His Father and Grandfather were famous in the wars, he's famous, he's married to (if memory serves me) a US Senator. Every aspect of his life leads to him being incredibly well known, and it has been indicated that he has no secret identity. He's never tried to hide who or what he is, so everyone knows it… at least anyone who bothers to pay attention.

Also, it's worth noting that in Tactics the public opinion of heroes is rather low.  They're no longer being met with parades and confetti.  Now, Haka has a lot of practice being disarming with unfriendly/suspicious strangers, so I don't think the negative attitudes will be much of a problem for him.  But it means that the towns and villages that he visits are going to be less inclined to brag about his presence.

And that's even if they can.  There are a lot of people in the world who still don't have internet access.  We think of the modern world as having instant communications to every location, but that's not always true in the poorer regions.  And that's in our world, which hasn't just fought a world-spanning war against the apocalypse.  And I think that it's a reasonable bet that those poorer regions are where Haka will be spending most of his time.  

Sure, anyone who really wanted to track Haka down probably could.  But the world is still rebuilding from near destruction - everybody has better things to do.

You might need to revise your lore on that element. This comes from his bio and shows precedent of his Ta Moko disapearing:

However, Aata’s great power is what eventually laid him low, bringing his reign to an end. One morning, after the night of a great battle, his Tā Moko, the facial tattoos identifying him as a Maori warrior, faded completely. Though they knew not what Aata could have done to displease their gods so thoroughly, they took it as a sign that their once great chief had been cursed. Aata’s own right hand man, Ruru, stepped up to challenge him in order to cleanse their village of his taint. Outwitting the giant warrior, still stunned from his tribe turning against him, Ruru dealt Aata a killing blow. Ruru dragged his former friend’s body into the desert, slit his throat, and left him to the dogs.

So it has been clearly established that his immortality can cause it to heal and disapear. He's also shown without it on the picture of the FV BBQ. If I remember well the quote on Ta Moko also supports this.

This is from the Letters Page Episode

This is what Ta Moko has for flavor text

"These markings I wear on my face? I did them myself. With a sharp stick and snake venom. And you're going to punch me?"

Lastly, here is a page with the BBQ picture and he has those tattoos https://greaterthangames.com/content/fifth-anniversary-multiverse-month-and-more-and-upcoming-projects

Yeah, what Powerhound said. The Letter's Page told us he only needed to reapply them once, but it was incredibly grueling and painful.

I do agree with Arcanist Lupus, it is still possible to disappear into the world. Like I said, I'm used to considering all the heroes to be super famous, but Haka while recognizable would be one of the less recognizable heroes simply because he's a quiet guy who disappears a lot.

I'm convince that he could have gone off into the mists of the world, tending to the poorest sections of the world during the five years before Tactics starts and even however long it took to get to Prime War.

I am not convinced that is what the actual story is going to be though. There seemed to be hints in the Letters PAge that Haka showing up was a bit more than that.

So, Possible, yes, but I think when we get the story of Haka entering Prime War we are going to be getting a much different story from him.

We keep saying "Well, where could he hide in the world?" while forgetting this is a world where Atlantis definitely existed. Maybe he got himself stuck in Lemuria, or rocketed to Mars or something.

Well spoilers -> We know in Tactics that the Ennead raised and control Atlantis, clashing with each other as some of them vie for control of the Group. It doesn't feel like Haka is going to be there. The Letters PAge makes it clear that the writers of Sentinel Comics often placed him to solve problems, if he was in Atlantis it would feel like he's meant to solve that and I don't think that is the story of the Ennead, to be solved by Haka.

Plus, the Wagner Mars Base is pretty well known by this point. It's been blown up at least once and people have fought in it multiple times.

But, I grant that he could be somewhere not on the Earth or even somewhere like the NExus of the Void where really no one goes.

I think TakeWalker was more so pointing out that there are plenty of places that are just unknown, forgotten, or ignored by the world at large, and using Atlantis as an example. If Haka is in a forgotten place like that, there is very little reason to expect he's on anyone's radar.

Oh yeah, but most of those places that we are aware of are actually decently high traffick areas that are under observation by various groups, which is an odd dichotomy in some respects

This thread already has spoilers in the thread name so hiding text is unnecessary.   Please edit your posts and unhide any hidden text.  

Do we know why the tattoos disappeared in the first place? I don't remember that ever being explained

The healing factor that brought him back from death caused them to go away.  

I guess since you insist, does it bother your screen or something when I hide it that way?

From the Wiki: 

One morning, after the night of a great battle, his Tā Moko, the facial tattoos identifying him as a Maori warrior, faded completely

Preventing the ease of putting them on, that was likely his vitality and healing factor. I actually like that even more so for the Ta Moko card being his DR, not because of his actual wearing of the Ta Moko, but that the DR is because of his innate vitality and toughness, which had to be overcome by him to put the Ta Moko back on.

It adds an extra step to reading a post that is unnecessary in a post that has spoilers in it already.   I already mentioned it earlier too.