Ep 35 of The Letters Page! Discussion - The Sentinels podcast

4 Characters, is this podcast 4 times as long as the regular ones?

Go here to find out!

No Interlude now either they crammed Southwest Sentinels/Void Guard into this episode.   So four characters and two teams.  

A double Stacked Show. Not sure If I can listen to it in one day

Surely you have a bit over three hours free.....

Double speed is the only way to listen to the Letter's Page and have a productive day.

The only episode I have heard at regular speed is the Tachyon episode, true story!

So, if C&A started recording this episode at 10pm...and the episode is over 3 hours long... they finished--best case scenario--at 1am.

Oooof!

Yeah Christopher posted this once they finished https://twitter.com/gtgchristopher/status/909672003698864128

NIGHTSNAKE!

As Christopher hasn't logged in in a couple of days this is just a great coincidence.

How Dr. Medico and Mainstay get powers?

10 minutes of Comic book Science. . . I never need to hear that again. Ugh. Also the same origin of NightSnake and Guatzequatel. Ω

Man a lot of my questions skipped.   Hopefully since there is still an hour left someone else asked similar.  

Christopher and Adam, learning science at you! That was way fun. :D And I do believe we have seen the starting points of the origin story of Adam becoming Blenderman, the hero with mixing powers!

I feel like all the talk about Oblivaeon Shards is finally opening up the iris for us to peek into the Oblivaeon event more. I mean, they even say, you need to be overpowered to have a hope of facing him, and that explains the ridiculous mission rewards we've been seeing so far.

Aw, darn, my question didn't get asked. I guess Dr. Medico doesn't interact too much with Aeon Girl. 

I doubt we are getting any RPG stories, Save it and ask it when they go through an RPG show (or the Aeon girl show). (might be a while).

Still didn't explain Idealist all too well. . . Trying to make a question so I can ask it next week. Also much darker than I thought.

Also, Baron Blade Never gets seen after Vengeance event (with Positive energy field) except for this one shoot with the sentinels. . .

I also counted 3 retcons and a new way for people to get powers in the RPG.  This thing is super rare and requires a lot of things to work but we know at least 4 people (plus every villain of the week for like 20 comics) gets power in this way. The Omega Line of Heroes/Villains. . .

Anyways Hype train for next week! I wonder how they are going to follow her story. . .

So I didn't ask about what Idealist's personal project with Argent was because I figured it would come up during the whole initial backstory, and then it didn't and nobody else asked. Oops. What trouble are two of my fave characters getting up to?

And other people more or less asked my other questions for me. (Is Idealist fond of any geeky things other than Super Sentai and anime and tell us all the things about Caleb.)

With Mainstay and Medico's powers, it's less that I never thought to ask about them and more that "people get random powers from random radiation leakage" is such a stock bog standard power origin that it never occured to me to consider it as worth paying special note to within the context of everything else going on in the Sentinelsverse. And... well... kinda, TBH, even after listening to the explanation I'm still not sure I see it as other than "people get random powers from random radiation leakage". Sorry guys...

Idealist's origin is totally not what I was expecting, though. I feel even more protective of my precious psychic child now.

The whole stuff with the Void and with Voidsoul was downright creepy and weird, I approve. And look forward to the RPG Starter Kit even more now. And the Tactics timeline continues to suck a whole lot. A whole whole lot.

Also hands up if anyone else would totally listen to a Letters Page with C&A giving us blow by blows of Sentinel Comics comic book arcs.

I was really hoping to get more information on what is happening with Hippocratic Oath (one of the questions of mine that was skipped)

What's left to explain? O.o Outside shenanigans with Argent Adept, anyway…

I honestly can't rememeber what Argent Adept Shenanigans you guys are talking about, could someone remind me?

Also, dang, just dang.

I vaguely remember that discussion about a healing hero (must have come during Rook City cause I joined around Shattered Timelines and I didn't get to see the original conversation taking place) and it is amazing to me that they were still adding elements as large as The SW Sentinels to the storyline that late. Though, it also helps explain why the SW Sentinels are so far removed from the rest of the storylines for as long as they were.

The Idealist being a clone... never would have guessed that in a million years, though now I'm even more curious about her mother. I really hope we get her showing up in the RPG, someone who can mix Science and MAgic like that has got to be a pretty dangerous individual.

Man, there is just so much to digest, I don't even know what to talk about. That was an intense amount of information to go through, and I note they foreshadowed something happening to the Reactor and didn't end up discussing it at the end of the episode. So, that might be a major thing in the RPG.

From the Argent Adept episode (summary): "In the OblivAeon event he helps the Idealist with a side-project, but since it's her story we'll get to hear about it in the Sentinels/Void Guard episode."

And yeah, there's about five million interesting reveals in this episode. Poor Writhe, though...

SO. MUCH. INFORMATION.  Like, wow.  I feel like I just tried to take a sip of water from a fire hydrant.

It's hilarious how it took them 1.5 hours to get to the questions, and then they almost immediately spent 15min giving a story answer to a question.

While the length of this episode was almost overwhelming, I am loving the detailed blow-by-blows we've gotten in this and in the Ambuscade episode!

So, I haven't listened to this yet, so let the flame wars begin, but I'm a little annoyed at that time stamp. That will be a doozy to plop onto my iphone to listen to (it's 182MB which is a lot for a podcast, especially when subscribed to others) and from the show notes (and previous schedule) it sounds like they just as easily could have done this as two episodes (or even 4 episodes?!??!???). Can we just...not do it this way again? I was looking forward to my Tuesday fix, but sadly I can't listen to this behemoth yet.

Side note? Am I the only one who would prefer that they slow down and savor these a bit more? I would have been okay with several Environment Letters Pages by this point. And I would rather have an episode for each of the Sentinels instead of a 3+ hour one for all of them. It really is okay if there are less questions to go through for a certain character by themselves (if that's a concern), as there is starting to be a trend of "Here's the bare skeleton of a story since we got A TON of questions about this one thing so we will wait until 30 minutes from now to share about this thing instead of sharing it where it logically makes sense" and that is equally odd to me. If this is their way of getting rid of interludes because less people listen to them, please find a different option.

Still love the Letters Page and will eventually listen to this one in chunks...but probably not before listening to upcoming, shorter ones. Thanks, folks.

It's hard to separate this group because their story is more intertwined than even the Freedom Five.

I think that you're going to be in the minority regarding the episode length, there.  While I don't anticipate any/many more episodes pushing this length in the future, I wouldn't be surprised if pretty much every episode from here on out pinged 1.5+ hours.

I do agree with you, regarding the Environment episodes.  If there's a question of what to do instead of the "Interludes", perhaps those could fill the void (not the Void, natch). I, for one, would be particularly interested in seeing what the deal is with Atlantis after all this time, especially with us driving headlong into the Prime Wardens soon...

Also, for those curious, they mention there are 6 known oblivaeon shards toward the end of the episode.

4 = Void Guard

1 = Capt Cosmic/Infinitor (created them both)

1 = Scholar (used it to create his philosophers stone)

That…certainly changes my view of that character.  I'd always viewed The Scholar as more of a mystic-type character, rather than one powered by cosmic sci-fi weirdness.  Hmmm…

Scholar finds the shard and uses it to create his philosophers stone. To my knowledge, Scholar either costumes the shard in the process or discards it afterward, but after the creation of his philosopher stone, I do not beleive he still has the shard. But he needed that mystic-eque connection to ley lines to even find that shard in the first place, and the philosophers stone is more in line with that as well over cosmic stuff.

I did find it humorous how Nick thinks Jackson's true name is dumb and then Mainstay finds the superhero name Dr Medico dumb.   

Also, they talk about Writhe as a villain in Tactics. I had speculated as much a long time ago. It's also more likely now than ever that we actually have card art showing this (take a look at Seer and the shadowy thing grabing him).

Man, I really hope they do something with the whole omegas thing. Like it's a cool way to explain it all, but their bios said "radiation from a local powerplant", and in a Silver Age-styled comic? That's enough.

That being said, easy power origins for anyone making RPG characters...

It was certainly a monster and took me all day to listen to, but I can see how it happened that way.

You cannot tell the story of any individual one of these characters without referencing the rest, and the plan to divide the Void Guard story out was wierd, because it takes almost none of the space for the episode and it would mean the entire future section would have to be in the next episode.

I defintely do not want to see 3 hr episodes being common, that's too intense, but I don't think we're going to see another set of circumstances like this very often.

As for more environment pages, I'm torn about that. I would like a few environment pages, but I'm constantly itching for more story and a week feels like such a long time to wait. I'm already waiting it to be Tuesday so we can get La Capitan, and then I want Fanatic, and Apostate, and Tempest and Scholar and… ect. I can't get enough so keeping the speed like it is works just fine for me, but I get why people might want to take a breather.

Yay, they finally answered one of my questions! (I was The Burning Stickman).

I, too, am curious about the Argent Adept's thing.

Maybe we'll get one big OblivAeon episode where they go over everyonne's role in the battle.

I'm with much0gust0 that I hope this is the last time we get an episode this long. I can understand why it happened, but still, it was almost too much.

I think 2 hours is my limit. I was OK with the length of the Argent and Akash episodes and don't want mega long episodes to become a common thing.

Partly because I have trouble processing aural information so if I want to really pay attention to something spoken versus using it as background noise I have to actually sit and concentrate only on paying attention to that... and spending too many hours of doing nothing but sitting and listening to something is hard even if you don't have ADD/focus issues as well (which I do).

Content-wise, personally I'd like them to go over all the characters and teams first and then do normal episodes about the environments, possibly combining any environments without a lot of backstory or where the backstory was already mostly explained in character episodes (like the Realm of Discord or the Nexus or Champion Studios).

I think interludes should be "metaludes", where they're just devoted to things like answering people's followup questions, giving corrections or clarifications, questions about the Sentinel Publishingverse, questions that span multiple characters, etc. Ironically the Live at GenCon Letters Page was a pretty good example of what I'd expect an interlude to contain in terms of question types and content.

<o:p></o:p>

Because of how inter-twined the characters are, I don’t think 4 episodes would have been even remotely do-able (heck, they felt that they couldn’t even easily split Sentinels/Void Guard properly).<o:p></o:p>

That being said, I think that what could have worked for this episode would be an artificial break somewhere around the 110(?)-minute mark.  Basically, at that point in the episode they’ve covered the first 3 volumes, and answered the questions covering the Sentinels’ real origins.  So this seems like a decent spot to have Trevor cut the episode and add in a “Tune in Thursday to The Southwest Sentinels/Void Guard Part 2, where we answer a lot more of your questions, have more reveals, and discuss the future of this superhero team!”  Since this would have left a big chunk of info still to be covered, it might have helped drive Thursday listenership, while also breaking the episode up into 2 less overwhelming chunks.  (Granted, this brings its own issues, but most of those would be solved by simply by listening to both episodes together).

Agreed.

So is Idealist an Omega? Just we know she is not, is she still lumped in together? When I said there are unanswered questions I meant, did the experiment force some dark force into her? Did her mother had telekinetic powers (or any)? Or was it a kind of latent ability that got triggered with the explosion? Also, she made a clone in her lab at home? HOW? (I love Comic books, doesn't need an answer but since they like to talk 10 min about fake pseudo-sciencecouOmegagh, I think they can answer this.)

 After OblivAEon comes out they need to do a Void Gaurd recap once all the art comes out. They have some explaining to do.

SIde Note: does  Thiago  also go to the South West along with the Contract? Since Mainstay is protecting him from bullets.

Art: The Argent Adept giving help to the Visionary and the Idealist;

Flavor-Text: "Prepare yourselves. The worst is yet to come." - The Argent Adept, Freedom Five Annual #10

 

When does FFA#10  Happen again? Because it seems like hey crossed over early on. . . (This puts her before Unity, maybe around the Debie timeline.)

I like the longer episodes as I listen to them in my commute and since my commute is about an hour, this episode should cover 3 trips. I think listening to it all at once it might drag but split into hour chunks, I like it.

99% positive the art and flavor text do not match up given the text is from FFA 10

Apparently Adam is Christopher's only friend at GtG since no one else has a shaved head.

A question does come to my mind, but if this was covered in the episode and I just happened to miss it, pardon me. They talked about how Medico sort of came about as an idea from the forums, and then the rest of the Sentinels were created to form a single deck. Now, was this thread and disscussion before Infernal Relics came out? I ask because we see the Idealist(without her mask but still in costume) on one of AA's Melody cards.If the idea came around before IR then the image makes sense, but if it was afterwards then I've got to wonder if Idealist was a character in the Multiverse before the conception of thidea for the Southwest Sentinels...

Again, I may just be a terrible listener and that info just went in one ear and out the other. :)

I thought the image of Medico was very old. I think Ronway had something about that awhile back.

This is the thread being referenced https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/why-no-healers

Based on the dates it would appear this occurred about a month after Rook City was put on Kickstarter

Ah, okay. So it all makes sense timewise. Thanks! :D

Oh man, this episode made me realize, Interludes should definitely be "Editor's Notes"

And finally it clicks into place, it always bothered me we were told that was the Idealist but she looks so little like the Idealist is supposed to look like.

That's because the character she was going to be was instead subsumed into the SW Sentinels and Idealist. I bet the clone story was pre-established and it just slotted in well with the team. Thinking about it, the SW Sentinels are a team of supers, but their "origins" have always been disconnected. Mainstay abd Medico being Omega's, Idealist being a clone given true life by a "lab accident", Writhe being permenantly bonded to his suit while testing on himself.

 3 different stories, but capable of being bond together to form a stronger whole.

@speedyolrac to answer what I can

So is Idealist an Omega? Just we know she is not, is she still lumped in together? When I said there are unanswered questions I meant, did the experiment force some dark force into her? Did her mother had telekinetic powers (or any)? Or was it a kind of latent ability that got triggered with the explosion?

Not an Omega, and not lumped in with them.

I'd say no to the Dark Forces, she was being blasted by Dark Forces before the machine was broken, the reverse polarity gave her life and they kept referencing her upbeat attitude and positive outlook, making me feel that it is because of this. She is such a positive person because the machine forced some force of life and light into her, probably acting like a magnetic pole. She can be angry and frustrated, but her very nature doesn't like that so when it was forced upon her (like with Judge Mental) it being unnatural weakened the emotions.

Mother probably has powers, I'd go mad science and magic, she did make a mindless clone and a machine that could blast someone with negative energy for the purpose of raising the dead. Telekentic powers seem unlikely though in light of the powerset that machine represents.

Latent ability is my guess, mother had powers, she is a clone of her mother, but the powers are mental, being a clone with no mind meant they wouldn't manifest but when the machine gave her life and sparked her mind it also sparked powers.

Also, she made a clone in her lab at home? HOW? (I love Comic books, doesn't need an answer but since they like to talk 10 min about fake pseudo-sciencecouOmegagh, I think they can answer this.

Magic and a personal laboratory in the basement, would be my guess at least.

does Thiago also go to the South West along with the Contract? Since Mainstay is protecting him from bullets.

Doubtful he followed the Contract, but it is possible that Thiago ended up in the Southwest at some point on vacation or something similiar. I have a feeling he;s a common side character who is building in importance to the main storylines. Also, the guys with guns don't have to be Organization goons, we still have the Drug Boys and other criminals in the SW main stories to deal with too.

Since Human Shield references the same SW Sentinels issue as Fling Into Darkness this is likely Gunmen who came with the Contract 

I like the name "Metalude", because they can go all Xtreme Argent Adept with the theme and give us something METAL. :D

I have a feeling the molecule quantities are way off, since they are normally measured in multiples of Avogadro's Number: 6 x 10^26 which is much greater than "millions" or even "trillions".

But this is a podcast about superpowered entities in a fictional comic line.

I... don't know that I want to open this can of worms but here goes.

Dr Medico and Mainstay are not heroes when they "rescue" blank slate Idealist. The Idealist is nothing at that point, she is not aware, conscious or has any "life-spark" within her until after they mess with things, they simply kick in a door because something on the other side of it is inadvertently causing Dr Medico pain. If my music is too loud you don't get to come in trash my stereo. They are just being thugs at that point.

Technically it was Mainstay who broke in and Medico arrived after the machine was stopped.   I would agree that the way it was presented they would come off as thugs.   I think the piece that is supposed to make it ok is that Mainstay was doing it for the sake of his friend and Energy that would cause him to be unable to do anything can't be a good thing.  

And that's why the Southwest Sentinels book doesn't deal in vigilante laws!

My opinion is more the "I don't really see what else they could do" attitude, especially when comic logic comes into play. Mainstay wanted to stop whatever was killing his friend (it clearly seemed to be more than just loud music levels of unpleasantness). The only alternative I could think of would be to contact the police... and what would happen is the police would probably politely knock on the door... and then probably open it themselves anyway when there was no answer.

I just don't see "let Medico continue to be in considerable pain and possibly dying" as a thing Mainstay would be willing to do.

Why not try leaving the area?

My guess is that it wouldn't solve the problem because comics. 

It stands to reason that something that is killing a being made of life energy is probably a dangerous thing in and of itself.

So it's less like, "The music is too loud," and more like, "Why are you setting off fireworks in your basement? One of them already flew out and knocked out my friend, you're going to burn the neighborhood down if this keeps up!"

So the response is to set fire to all the fireworks at once instead? Great work "heroes"!

The machine was taking life energy from something and (trying to) put it somewhere else, that's Dr Medico's whole power! I think Dr Medico was just faking it because he didn't want competition.

The debate I thought was going to happen was about when a life becomes a life, not this analogy battle!

Yeah, they were already "not in the area" to begin with; Medico had to actually direct Mainstay all the way to where the whatever it was, was located. (Trying so hard not to picture Mainstay and Medico stuck playing a game of "Hot and Cold" to work it all out.) I doubt distance would have helped.

I mean, they had two options: Let Medico continue to be in severe pain, or stop the whatever it is. The former seems unreasonable to expect/choose and going to the authorities for the latter almost certainly would have led to the authorities forcibly entering the building and destroying the machine anyway.

Why?

Aside from one person in the entire world who was it hurting?

And the goal was to resurrect people, I'll expect that a lot of people would have preferred that to a single superhero, needs of the many and all that.

Nah. How amazing is it that you can heal people with energy when anyone can buy a machine that can do just that? I'm sticking with my he heard about this invention through some medical journal and faked pain to got it destroyed theory.

You seem to be forgetting the small little minor issue that you have to kill someone in order to resurrect someone else, which presumably would mean you'd also have to hurt someone to heal someone.

So, even if we're OK with throwing Medico to the winds (which is kind of a big if) it's not very amazing compared to a superhero who can heal people without having to harm anyone.

When it can be a cloned someone? Someone who has no "life-spark" yet? Yep, I'm certain that some of society would go along with that.

Feels a little bit weird that we're sitting here chastising Mainstay and Medico for committing property damage via arguing it's perfectly OK to farm clones or let someone in severe pain remain that way.

Also the fact that Christopher has described that being brought back to life is not a pleasant experience and every time we've seen it happen it has indeed been pretty messed, so there's the fact that even if we were OK with the clone farming it still might not be a good idea. The Sentinelsverse definitely seems to run on the idea that magic power always requires some sort of equvalent sacrifice from the magic user.

We also don't know what was powering this machine fully and the costs related to that may not be worth it.  

Yeah I feel like any machine that can channel death energy is of slightly questionable sanity to be messing with on a regular basis (or at all, really).

Also, it’s unfair to criticize Dr. Medico and Mainstay on the basis that Miranda was not a real person, as this is a detail that they had no way of knowing (and in fact still don’t know). As far as they are concerned they rescued a young girl from a machine funneling death energy through her.

Also, I think they tried to make the point about Medico being sensitive to life force/life energy or whatever, and that there was a great disturbance in that.  So this wasn't a case of "lady is doing something that just happens to be hurting Medico", but "lady is doing something that's greatly perturbing life energy, probably harming it in some way, and since Medico is sensitive to that it's causing him incredible pain".  I got a very Obi Wan Kenobi I-sensed-a-great-disturbance-in-the-Force vibe from how C&A described that.

Basically, if you're harming life energy and/or harnessing death energy, and doing so to such a degree that's it's causing pain to someone "nearby-ish", it's probably safe to assume that you're not using said energy to prep orange slices for the local kids' soccer team post-game snack.  (And even if that is what you're doing, your chosen method is probably going to lead to one or two rather harmful side-effects for those around you).

Well, this podcast coincided with a business trip involving a 2 hr flight. So, perfect! Christopher and Adam, if you could do this every time I travel, that’s be great.

Whoever did the Biomancer letter this week missed out on having the letter being addressed from Trevor "Casterlyin'."

This would be the cruz of my argument.

Medico is screaming (in my mind) in pain because something is "WRONG" with the flow of energy in the area. They have no idea what it is and just now it is something. They come to a perfectly normal looking house.

Now, at this point, technically, you might be able to bring Mainstay up on property damages for busting through the door, but there is precendence for forced entry if you believe a crime is being committed, and something causing that sort of energy signature screams "Supervillain up to something really bad"

I'll grant, they are civilians not cops, but that's muddying the waters when talking superheroes, and this falls under the same blanket as the events of "The Trial of Baron Blade" did you technically do wrong by breaking a machine that the creator only claimed was going to vaporize the city even if it was incapable of doing so… maybe, but would you want the heroes to stop and go through the proper channels only to find out the machine could actually vaporize a city and they let innocents die?

Mainstay busts in and sees a woman, an infernal machine (I'm going to say comic book logic says the machine is clearly dangerous and unhealthy looking) and at best a young girl passed out in the machine, at worst a young girl in obvious agony in the machine. Yes, Idealist did not have any "sentience" but her body was alive meaning it could likely react to pain stimulus.

Are you going to take the time and confirm the young child is actually a livnig being and not a mindless clone. No, she's a child and she's in pain and who knows what this "Anit-life" machine is going to end up doing. We know in fact, the machine was going to kill her.

So he acted, and it may be a legal mess to sort out in real-life, but in the end the most juries are going to agree that there was every reason to suspect that Mainstal was saving a minimum of two lives with his actions, acting in defense of his friend's life and the life of a young child, and possibly more if the device had been some sort of weapon. He'd get in trouble, but it would be a light sentence, probably a fine and some community service with minimum jail time, since no one died.

One thing I want to know for when the RPG finally comes out: Does my character have to be based in the Southwest to be affected by Isoflux Alpha, or is it an effect that can happen anywhere on the planet thanks to 'science'? Again, this is info that might have gone in one ear and out the other while I was listening to the podcast...

Considering we're dealing with particles travelling at relativistic speeds, I'd say no. Possibly a higher concentration of affected characters there, but there's no real reason they couldn't be elsewhere.

Also, who knows if shady organisations have been hoarding the stuff?

Quetzalcoatl was affected, and that was somewhere in Central America? (Can't remember exactly where it was...)

On the other hand Quetzalcoatl was tranformed by water in an ancient temple, and it sounded to me like the water was part of the temple design. If that’s the case, it wasn’t caused by the power plant.

Hey folks!

I was incredibly excited to hear my questions read this week.

I am Techfire80.

I hadn't expected some long and complicated answer to my question about the origin of their powers . 

I figured they might have been involved in some experimental drug trials or something.

And Idealist...I could never have imagined that her back story could have gotten any darker than it already was.

as to the length of the podcast, I enjoy it so much I don't really care how long they are. I just download them and put in my Bluetooth headphones and listen while I work on Tuesday. I spend the day doing mostly mindless physical labor so it is a nice distraction 

It was the water at the temple, but they said Quetzalcoatl was an Omega, so that water had been effected by the (Leyline Spiral?) and was altered by the particles.

I'm saying Omega's could appear anywhere, those particles move fast enough to reach space in seconds so they can hit various parts of the Earth theoritically.

Not necessarily.  Space isn't that far away.  But they said that the exotic mesons lasted "a few seconds" (quote from the wiki cliffnotes), and travel at relativistic speeds.  1 second at 1/20th speed of light is long enough to pass through the diameter of the Earth.  All that said, the Nolan Generator isn't the only source of mesons out there - it's only most productive one.  Anything from a random science experiment to a crash-landed spaceship with a matter/antimatter drive could produce Isoflux Alpha - but it's going to produce a lot less than the Nolan Generator does.

Incidentally, the fact that you can plug "speed of light * 1s / diameter of the earth" into Google and get back an answer that takes care of all the conversions for you is way cool.

Also remember that that the mean lifetime of these mesons is measured  relative to them .So t(us) = gamma*t(meson) Where gamma is the lorentz factor which is approaches infinity as c approaches in speed.Thus as long as their half life is  of the order of lets say nano seconds and the mesons are almost at c( closer than .9c) the particles can travel pretty far

Edited to give mesons more realistic lifetimes

So these particular exotic mesons cross paths with leylines, therefore making the Isoflux Alpha. And as long as someone comes in contact with it in some way AND has the potential to become an Omega, then they can gain powers. Okay, I think I get it.

I can work with this.

I think I just fell in love with this forum all over again.

In the Oaxaca region of southern Mexico - on the order of 2500 km from Phoenix.

Because I am a nit-pcker, I don't think that there is such a thing as "has the potential to become an Omega", it sounds more like poison ivy (I've got a bad case right now so it's on the brain.)

Bodies react to Isoflux Alpha, your reaction will be different but exposure=reaction I don't think there are people (canonically) who were exposed and did not have a reaction.

Also, one exposure uses up all the Isoflux Alpha in a given source, effecting the speed of the reaction but nothing else.

But, this is all me nit-picking

If I'm understanding this correctly, (and i'm almost certain i'm not) then the halflife of the IsoFlux alpha would in theory be fractions of nano seconds in length, unless it changes in such a way so that the IsoFlux itself is stable, so a human would almost have to be there as the IsoFlux is created to be properly exposed. That would explain why Omega's are as rare as they are. That's a good question for one of their unfocused letters page episodes in the future… or a response here i guess…

Also @Chaosmancer, iirc everyone we know(Dr Medico M.D., Mainstay, NightSnake, Quetsocoatl) that has been exposed to the IsoFlux has been changed into an Omega.

I think that @padcurtain is specifically talking about the half-life of the exotic mesons. Once they do magic and transform into Isoflux-Alpha, they presumably hang around as long as the liquid they are suspended in remains a solution, or they are "consumed" by transforming a being into an Omega.

So the SW sentinels are the last characters introduced before OblivAeon (Outside of Benchmark). If #BringDebbyBack happened in the early 1990's that mean the SW Sentinels appear in the not so early 90's after Unity was created?  

Another problem they have with when the Sentinel Comics Issues were made. Since they are just releasing information about them it feels likes the OA issues are coming out when the OblivAeon Board game comes out. But In reality the Sentinel Comic Book Writer's Universe already had it out years ago, we are just catching up. I mean for them OBlivAeon already happened and Tactics had it spot in the sun before getting canned. They Probably already have a 2nd wave of tactic stories having their relaunch of the Darker timeline. I know it is going well because I missed out on wave one and like the grittiness of it all. That means they already have years of RPG timeline stories they are reading because Tactics came out after the RPG was out for a bit. (I sure that was the case always and no retconing was involved. 

(i can't decide if I like them as beings who can look into that world and steal their Ideas or as or a lunatics who created a whole different world just to add complexity. .)

Also, I want my Sentinel Comic Writers Universe Interlude! (Editor Notes, or however they are going to rebrand it).

Paul confirmed it: Omegas can pop up wherever really on the planet. That's good to know. :)

It's hard to tell when somebody is exposed without becoming an Omega since by definition nothing happened to them to notice. Christopher said that IA exposure can result in powers/transformations, but it's not guaranteed (just before the podcast hits the hour and forty-five minute mark).

Not neccesarily, remember, Sentinel Comics is the largest and most popular comic creator in their universe, much like Marvel and DC here. They are large enough and multi-faceted enough that the teams could have had a bunch of stuff changing in a short period of time.

After all, Christopher and Adam hinted that there are far less popular lines that are not shown in the card game.

I'm not neccesarily following what you are saying here.

However, if you are saying that The SW Sentinels would have come out around the same time as OBlivaeon, that doesn't track. Oblivaeon feels like a 2010's comic line, maybe even as far out as 2015 in the Writer's Universe.

My logic?

SW Sentinels exist before Benchmark.

Benchmark exists before Termi-nation, even if it wasn't much. I'd say he had to have been around for a few years for the writers to get the feedback he wasn't that popular and that they needed to change things up within his story.

Termi-NAtion represents the end of the Adamant Sentinels, the Sentinels do not apear again for "a while". Now, I'm not sure about Comic book sales, but at the fastest most issues are once a month, and that is probably too fast. So at least, The Sentinels were gone for 6 months, and probably closer to a year/year and a half before the Void Guard issues start coming out.

Void Guard gets back to Earth in time to assist with the SkinWalker fight, but this is mid-reveal of Void Guard, so they have to do a costume change in the pages of the SkinWalker fight.

Quite soon after the SkinWalker fight (despite what they say I do not believe Oblivaeon showing up was immediate, that's too fast a turn around, there had to be at least one or two issues between to give space to SkinWalker, but maybe it was immediate) The Oblivaeon event starts in force.

However, Oblivaeon and his scions had been hinted at and built up to for some time before the Oblivaeon Event hits in force. One of the first things Oblivaeon does is destroy the FV tower, this removes the FV from the actions so the spotlight can be given to other characters. After that, we get at least one or two issues of people futilely trying to injury Oblivaeon before Ra and the other Gods face him at Ft Adamant and prove he can be injured by sacrificing themselves in a charge. After that we start getting the Gates and the missions to collect power while holding back the Scions and avoiding getting pasted by Oblivaeon.

Tactics is not a comic line until many years after the RPG comic lne has existed, which starts up relatively soon after Oblivaeon is defeated. We, as players of the game, just get to cheat and avoid those waiting times.

True, but they also implied that many of the monsters and villains fought by the SW Sentinels were Omegas.

We're working with incomplete data, but if the Sentinels fought a few dozen different Omegas, with how rare the event is supposed to be, it is safe to assume that nearly everyone exposed had some sort of reaction, usually a reaction involving powers.

I try to avoid meta-thinking, but, we're talking comic books here. It is going to be rare and notable if we know someone was exposed to this stuff and not granted powers. So, I don't think you need to include the idea that you have to have exposure and potential, simply being exposed is enough in all the cases we have been given. And, it kind of helps realism. This is supposed to be a rare event anyways, billionths of a percentage point, only made possibly by the sheer volume of reactons in that generator. If we have to include yet another layer of "the person exposed to the water solution caused by the ley-line spiral which a rare exoctic stable version of this particle happened to run into must also have the genetic pre-disposition to transformation" then when we see a couple dozen Omegas it begins to strain at believability more than it already does.

I mean, yeah, they did also make the joke right around the same time that they had some one-in-a-million event that sometimes didn't shoot off into space immediately and also intersected with a ley line thing happened every Wednesday evening just in time for the latest issue. They're hanging a lampshade on how ridiculous the whole thing is, but I am just pointing out that they're leaving it at the point where it's also not guaranteed to have an effect. I can see that being a useful counter to questions of why, say, Citizen Dawn doesn't just round up a bunch of the stuff to create more Citizens on her own if you can't count on it actually working.

Just to throw a wrench in the works, Adam and Christopher have made clear that retconning and re-envisioning are things that happen among The Writers. So continuity might not TOTALLY line up…

(Thereby giving C&A an important “out” for board game creation!)

Not picking on you but having seen this several times in this discussion, is that right? I could have sworn they did the distopia Tactics timeline first and then they went back to the "bright and cheerful" timeline of the RPG after writers complained, am I wrong in my rememberings?

No time to relisten to get exact quote/timecode, but here's my notes from the Gen Con Q&A:

• Was the OblivAeon event just an excuse for a gritty reboot or are there even Tactics comics? Are there other timelines' comics? There are a lot of timelines after OblivAeon, but there's only a few with comics told (the ones we know about). What we call the RPG timeline was the immediate post-OblivAeon relaunch of the comics setting as they rebranded things and tried to make things a good jumping-on point for new readers. Some books maintain numbering across the post-Multiverse relaunch, but Freedom Five ends with The Sentinels of Freedom as a new title that takes its place. Tactics was another relaunch years later as a response to the overly-positive RPG setting that a bunch of young-gun writers do who started with the premise of "what if things went even worse during OblivAeon?" and then ran with it.

In he real-world timeline of game release, Tactics definitely came first. But in terms of the comics publishing universe, the RPG came first and then a few years later, the Tactics line was released. Tactics starts several years after the OblivAeon event, whereas the RPG begins almost immediately, so that at least lines up.