Power sources

So, I thought it might be useful, especially with the RPG coming up, to make a list of where each of the heroes and villains get their powers from.  I find this sort of thing useful when creating characters and adversaries in RPG's, and the exercise was instructive in showing where we're missing information.  Some gaps and question marks will be filled in as they're covered in the Letters Page.  Feel free to correct, comment, or debate!

Note about "magic": Per Episode 71 of The Letters Page, there's a distinction between how someone accesses their magic power (ritual, magical artifact, direct invocation, etc.) and the source of that power.  This has been clarified to describe only the source.

Skill

• Baron Blade (partially, pre-Vengeance, not counting his suit)
• Ermine
• Expatriette
• Glamour II
• Heartbreaker
• Mr. Fixer
• The Operative (mostly)
• Sergeant Steel (partially)
• Stuntman
• The Wraith (partially)

Resources

Characters who derive a significant amount of their power from money, a leadership position, or other social or material resources that they do not directly wield in combat.  Control of minions of any type regardless of how they were created/recruited/enslaved unless they can be created on the spot, in the middle of a battle (e.g. Unity).

• Baron Blade (partially)
• Biomancer (partially)
• The Chairman
• Grand Warlord Voss (mostly)
• Kaarga Warfang
• Mayor Overbrook
• Rahazar
• Sergeant Steel (partially)
• The Wraith (partially)

Super-Scientific Transformation

• Absolute Zero (partially)
• Ambuscade
• Citizens Assault and Battery
• Citizen Dawn
• Citizens Hack, Slash, and Burn
• Citizens Truth and Dare
• Dark Mind
• The Dreamer/Muse
• Empyreon (pre-Scion)
• Exemplar
• Fright Train
• Highbrow
• The Hippo/Hippocalypse
• The Idealist (partially?)
• Judge Mental
• K.N.Y.F.E.
• Major Flay
• Man-Grove (partially)
• Miss Information
• Plague Rat
• Professor Pollution
• Proletariat (partially)
• The Radioactivist
• Re-Volt
• Setback (partially)
• Tachyon
• Visionary

Super-Scientific Equipment

• Absolute Zero (partially)
• Baron Blade/Luminary (partially)
• Benchmark
• Bunker
• Chokepoint (partially)
• Chrono-Ranger
• Cueball
• Desert Eagle
• Friction
• Greazer Clutch
• Hippocalypse (partially)
• Muerto (partially)
• Ray Manta
• Revenant
• Spite

The Void

• Akash'Bhuta/Akash'Thriya (partially)
• Argent Adept and the other Virtuosos of the Void
• Nightmist (partially, later)
• Writhe

Elemental/Ley Lines

• Akash'Bhuta/Akash'Thriya (partially)
• Deadline/Lifeline (partially, later)
• The Naturalist

Blood Magic

• Bugbear
• The Crimson Conductor (Franz Vogel) (partially)
• Fleshwalker Gloomweaver (partially)
• Hermetic (partially)
• Lifeline
• Vampires

Discordian Magic

• Citizens Blood, Sweat, and Tears
• Gloomweaver
• Man-Grove (partially)
• Ruin
• Spite, Agent of Gloom

Arcane Magic

• The Matriarch/The Harpy
• Headlong
• Ignazio Gallo
• Nightmist (initially)

The Host

• Apostate
• Fanatic
• The Idolater
• The Seer

Alchemical Magic

• Biomancer
• Hermetic (partially)
• The Scholar
• Zhu Long (partially)

Witchcraft

• Citizens Hammer and Anvil
• Glamour I (Marjorie Mittermeier)
• Kismet
• Setback (partially)
• Unity

Egyptian Mythology

• Ammit
• Anubis
• The Ennead
• Ra

OblivAeon

• Aeon Girl
• Aeon Master
• Captain Cosmic
• Cosmic Omnitron (partially)
• Infinitor
• La Capitan/La Comodora
• Muerto (partially)
• Parse
• Progeny
• Proletariat (partially)
• Void Guard
• All the other Scions of OblivAeon (partially)

Nonhuman

• Balarian
• Deadline/Lifeline (partially)
• Doc Tusser
• Grand Warlord Voss (unimportantly)
• Magman
• Myriad
• Omnitron/Omnitron-X
• Sanction (partially)
• Sky-Scraper
• Tempest

Isoflux Alpha

• Choke
• Doctor Medico
• Green Grosser
• Mainstay
• Night Snake
• Quetzalcoatl
• Rockstar

Multiverse Manipulation

• Haka

Other Singular Entities

• The Crackjaw Crew
• Faultless (pre-Scion)
• Galactra
• Guise
• Legacy
• Wager Master

Unknown

• Argentium
• Calypso
• Citizen Gate
• Citizen Lance
• Citizens Pain and Gain
• Citizens Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter
• CON
• Equity
• The Idealist (partially)
• The Shrieker/Glamour IV
• Tantrum
• Voidsoul
• Zhu Long, partially (explicitly held back for now)

I would probably describe both Biomancer and Hermetic as blood magicians.

Skyscraper powers are due to the fact that some thorathians are born with powers she's explicitly explained as a genetic mutation 

C&A haven't specifically said that what they do is "blood magic," though it's possible.  Sky-Scraper's bio doesn't say she's a mutant, it just says Thorathians with power are rare and she's one of them.  You could say the same about humans.

Hermetic I'm not sure about but Biomancer is described as using necromancy so if he's not a blood mage he is a necromacer , definitely above the level of a natural biologist 

In the video game ,which gives power sources for all characters ,Sky scrapers power source is "Genetic Mutation" The wiki confirms this Sky-Scraper - Sentinel Comics Wiki

Good point, missed that.  Editing.

It bears mentioning that I agree with most of your list

That being said however , rereading the list ,I have to disagree with you on both Voss and Warfang both have the power source of being an alien ,thus should be in the same category as tempest

Biomancer can't actually raise the dead, so I'm not sure he counts as a necromancer.

Also, is Writhe actually connected to the Void? I know his shadow cloak is called Voidsoul, but I don't know if it's ever actually described as being anything other than freaky shadow energy.

The first line of his bio in the wiki says he has knowledge of necromancy . I`m just trying to make the point ( perhaps not clearly) that Biomancer is using more than just natural abilities. He is using some sort of flesh alchemy that seems like magic to me

Re: The Scholar, someone recently said he made his stone out of an Oblivaeon Shard. That being said, I'd love a source for the claim, because it was the first I'd heard of it!

Ah, you're right, I'd forgotten about that. I reiterate that I can't wait for Biomancer's episode because dude is one big fascinatingly creepy question mark.

@TakeWalker: I know, right? It seems weird that someone as chill as the Scholar would have such a corrupting power source. (Though to be fair, Captain Cosmic doesn't seem all that corrupted by his own power source.)

[quote="padcurtin"] I have to disagree with you on both Voss and Warfang both have the power source of being an alien ,thus should be in the same category as tempest [/quote] "Being an alien" doesn't get them anything, though.  Maerynians have weather-control powers.  Procitors have a special talent for leyline magic.  Thorathians and whatever Kaargra is don't have any special abilites.  They're competent in combat, but not especially so.

[quote="Jeysie"] Biomancer can't actually raise the dead, so I'm not sure he counts as a necromancer.Also, is Writhe actually connected to the Void? I know his shadow cloak is called Voidsoul, but I don't know if it's ever actually described as being anything other than freaky shadow energy. [/quote] Biomancer's bio specifically says he uses necromancy.  Might be useful to draw a distinction between "slow" magic (that one can use to create objects that can be used in battle, not dissimilar from Tachyon's ability to invent things) and "fast" magic (that can be used in battle directly).

As for Voidsoul, that's a good point.  I assumed Voidsoul was a creature of Void essence, but we didn't get a ton of detail there.  Hopefully we'll get a Scions episode of the podcast.

Something else I didn't mention was the connection between Visionary and the Void.  We know that "real" Visionary's consciousness was somehow trapped in a cage in the Void by Dark Visionary, but we didn't get much of an explanation of how that happened.  There's no other suggestion that psychic powers can be used to tap into the Void in any other way--but Visionary does have the ability to cross realities with nothing more than her own mental powers, so who knows?

Yeah, I got tripped up by remembering in the Nemeses episode that it was said Biomancer can't raise the dead and so isn't on the same level as Gloomweaver or Anubis, while forgetting his actual bio. I suppose he probably uses the dead in part for resources (ewww) and can animate flesh obvs, but can't actually animate or resurrect dead people.

I asked a fairly in depth question on this very topic for the (hopefully soon) upcoming Fanatic episode, considering that her powers are tied to “The Host”. Whether that implies a Judeo-Christian deity (complete with Adversary) or is some other source of mystic power, it definitely has some important bearing on the world of Sentinel Comics.

"Just Born With It"

Maybe it's Maybelline?

@mwc146: Booooooooo.

@PlatinumWarlock: I found it interesting that in the GenCon episode they explicitly call Fanatic an "angel" but dodge heavily around the concept of there being actual gods in the Sentinelsverse (as opposed to "beings with godlike levels of power").

That's where I disagree with you.If being an alien gives you abilities no human can have it counts as a power source. Because of their alien nature they have abilities no human can have. Let's deal with them separately :

1. Voss : We see a lot of Thorathians in the DokThorath deck so we can infer a lot about them. They are taller than human beings on average and are built more proportionally(thus are stronger) than a human of the same height .So Voss is 67" and instead of being the lanky mess a human would be at that height, he's built like the proverbial outhouse, besides that  can summon fire with his hands either he was born with this ability or it was given to him thus giving him more than just natural human skill to work with.

2)Ok not as much evidence on Kaagra, also we don't know how much of her power is derived ex officio But again she's massive and well proportioned ( Any human woman her height would be built like a gazelle with most of the height coming from long legs) This gives her an advantage over an average person.Her most basic punch is as strong as Legacy and she seems to be immortal . That's an advantage over natural human skill to me

I would possibly argue that The Scholar could possily be under Leylines as a powersource as well for the mere fact that he can percieve them before he even gets the Philosopher's Stone, let alone the fact the stone let's him alter the lines as well.

He still belongs under Magical Artifact, I agree with that, but I'd still say he can be under Leyline as well.

I swear it was in the Podcast that they said the Scholar's stone was made with an OblivAeon shard through LeyLines.  But I can't for the life of me recall which one.  Maybe one of the GenCon ones?

It's been a while, it might have even been the AMA that Christopher did a few years back.

I did some Googling, and I get the impression from what I found that it was mentioned in those mysterious art streams people keep talking about that don't seem to be archived anywhere.

(Also found this: https://studylib.net/doc/9230499/cursedronway--%40gtgchristopher-does-that-mean-kvothe-will-... which doesn't have anything about this query but does have a lot of other random info. Like the part where Christopher says Beacon has a boyfriend(!)) 

Well recently on Twitter Christopher has said no on the OblivAeon Shard for Scholar x.com

Visionary and Vanessa Long was Born with it.

Picking up the relics of the old Egyptian "gods"doesn't their power source comes from objects. 

The Void Guard also get there power boost form stones. 

Wish we knew more about Fanatic. I still believe her power is of Believing in her self. Ultimate shonen power.

Oh she doesn't believe in herself, she believes the the God who believes in her

I really like the mystery of Fanatic, and I hope the mystery remains.

The beautiful thing of her character (and religion in general) is the balance of choosing to believe in something unprovable, with the acceptance that you could be wrong.

That struggle of Faith, when approached honestly, reveals ourselves and the world in really interesting ways, and when approached fearfully or self-centeredly leads us the wrong way, many times a very wrong way.

Seeing Fanatic go from blind aggressive faith, to doubt, to a kind of balance is a really cool character arc, and I hope that journey is a journey of faith, rather than a journey of finding out the answers.

Long way of saying I hope in the end the answer to her power source is not fully known.

I have the same feeling as phantaskippy, I admit. I feel like any answer we could get about Fanatic's origins would probably be one, disappointing, and two, just raise more thorny questions than it answers. It would remove an important axis of the character for her status to actually become concrete.

(Ironically I don't understand faith at all IRL and having faith runs pretty counter to how I think, but I appreciate the idea and uncertainty in a literary context.)

I am curious about Apostate, but that's because he's clearly not what he seems to be anyway, so the answer is less likely to be disappointing.

So they mentioned in the Void Guard cast that there were six known OblivAeon shards -- if the Void Guard have 4 and Captain Cosmic and Infinitor got their powers from the same one, then what's the sixth?

Do we know if possibly any villains have OblivAeon shards at their disposal?

This is a stretch but perhaps Progeny is some sort of animated shard

Galactra seems to have the same/similar powers as Cosmic, could be from a shard.

That's quite possible. Though I'd hazard a guess that if she did, it wouldn't count torwards the six on Earth.

If Galactra had a shard, wouldn’t she be more than a mini-nemesis?

Edit: scratch that, just remembered their comments about how crazy powerful Zhu Long is.

Hmm. I guess that's a question for the Captain Cosmic episode.

Generally a good list, however I’d put the Vanessa Longs into born with it or inherent - they will all always develop powers, so that’s innate to them to some degree.

I also think the entire Supernatural (other) list is superfluous with the following being able to go into the other lists as follows:
Anubis - magic innate or inherent
Apostate? - unknown
Bugbear - magical artifact
The Ennead - magical artifact partially/in same list as Anubis partially
Fanatic? - unknown
Ra - magical artifact partially/in same list as Anubis partially

The Scholar's, as was discussed earlier.

Really?

Huh. Does/can Guise know? Would Guise tell her?

If no to either, I think there's no problem with the audience/writers knowing, even if it's never explicitly revealed in the pages of the comics. I agree that Fanatic as a character is immeasurably more interesting when they can (endlessly?) explore the journey of faith almost everyone goes through, including times when faith is absent. However, I think that for comic book consistency reasons, having an established power source is fairly necessary, so that we don't get silly places where they get rando powers for the sake of solving one issue's problem, and then don't carry through that new power through subsequent issues.

TL;DR: Fanatic doesn't have to definitively know what her power source is to have a definite power source.

I also like the idea of Apostate bringing different explanations to Fanatic every time they meet, just trying everything they can to convince Fanatic of a truth they can then control and manipulate.

I think giving Fanatic a named power source is also very important, to avoid certain issues.

Her faith=her power, that is amazing and fine, but the question is why does her faith equal power. If we just allow that God has granted her power like she believes he did, then why don't other people of immense faith have power?

It becomes a mess and a philosphical discussion that g=can take away from the story instead of adding to it. If we find out that she came into contact with Element X, but that her faith still equals her power, then we have no problems. Her Faith and that journey is still maintained, while universe derailing questions of the nature of divinity and the selection of individuals to gain power are side-stepped.

The Pope, The Dalia Lama, and Aunt Gertrude who are all extremely religious and faithful people don't have the same power as Fanatic, not becuase God chose not to reward their faith, but because they were not exposed to Element X, which would allow their Faith to be directly translated into the power to create bursts of energy and throw cars.

Well… thats news to me! Definitely changes things…

For the same category of reason that there's a lot of very talented musicians in the world but not all of them are able to become a Virtuoso of the Void, presumably.

But honestly my problem with giving any sort of answer is that: If Fanatic's powers come from God that opens up a lot of cans of worms, but also if Fanatic's powers don't come from God that makes her look foolish and deluded (if not possibly kinda awful, considering she's done some questionably extreme things to "evildoers").

So as I put it in a Twitch chat once, there are some types of literary questions where the author just can't give any answer that could live up to the question.

The ‘Fanatic is deluded’ issue can be solved by addressing it in comics. If there is an issue where Fanatic has to face the fact that the source of her power isn’t what she thought it was, but ultimately decides that it is her faith in God that gives her the mental strength to use her power at its maximum potential and that God is working through this other power source then you can maintain Fanatic’s faith based powers while explaining them at the same time.

And my impression was that this is basically what the Redeemer Fanatic storyline is about.

We're also overlooking how Fanatic came back to life in a setting where coming back to life, one, usually requires a massive amount of magical ritual and power, and two, is usually a pretty horrible experience.

Also the fact that Christopher explicitly called her an angel in the GenCon episode.

The situation is already all around strange. Might as well leave it that way. (Especially considering how, I hate to say it, disappointingly Voodoo Shark-like the whole Isoflux Alpha thing was, and that was much more minor.)

I have a theory that it's what started the Powered Parsons line, but that's almost entirely guesswork. I think it's one of the things Chrostopher has mentioned that hasn't paid off yet

I highly doubt that.  OblivAeon Shards have shown to give an immediate increase in power so if it impacted the Parsons they wouldn't slowly gain powers over time.

But in the episode they said there were six confirmed, six that we already know about.

See, I don't think it makes her deluded or foolish.

I'm splitting hairs perhaps but for me there is an important distinction between "Her power is her faith granted by the Divine" and "Her power is her faith, unlocked by some outside force that is defined but not Divine"

In both cases, her faith and her belief are her power. This is an indisputable fact of the character because when her faith wavers, she is weakened and when it is firm her strength increases. No matter what the truth of the source of the power that allows her to utilize her faith, she is powered by that belief and faith.

And, personally, it changes nothing about her actions either way. She has (potentially) done some really horrible things, things that she has had to confront many times. She has killed, she was destroyed, all in the name of a greater good, but these are still sins she must confront. Looking at the region she grew up in, she's 99% likely to be Roman Catholic or some minor variation on that. She probably goes to confessionals a lot, she spends lots of times in meditation, confirming whether or not she believes she did what she needed to do while sticking to her faith as best she could. 

And, again personally, I would consider her discovering her powers do not come directly from God to be the ultimate test of her faith. Fanatic is the only Good Angel we are aware of, if she finds out the power she was granted came from this Host of evil or at least dangerous beings, could that not also have been God's will? God, according to the Churches, is Infinite, Omniscient, and works in mysterious ways. Having this Host accidentally give her the power, creating a warrior of virtue and honor who could stand against them, seems like a very "god-like" thing for him to do. But, it is a test for her, finding out she does not have God's Mandate to act as she has would shake her more than anything else she could have discovered or found out, and would lead almost directly to the PW Fanatic story arc. She doesn't know her place in the world, but that doesn't mean she can allow evil to run free. There is a chance that she is wrong about the nature of her power, but that does not mean she is wrong in using that power in God's name.

But, I can see how this is all splitting hairs. It's a tight-rope and I'm honestly eager to see what Christopher and Adam reveal about all this and the way they have handled such tricky balancing.

Fanatic having Faith based powers that were granted by something known is incredibly problematic.  You cannot have Faith in things you know are true, that is definitionally impossible.  And if she has powers from element F that are based on her own faith, then the internal reality of her character becomes power through self-delusion.  

Fanatic knows she has powers through real things, but has to believe in other things in order to use that power, so there is no pursuit of knowledge, no soul searching, her ability to fight is her ability to not question, to supress her own mind.

That may work, but man, that internal struggle is not engaging.  "Oh no, I thought too much, and now I am going to lose, if only there was a handy brainwashing kit nearby"

Or if her power is known to be faith in herself, then her struggle becomes against irrational doubt, which could be engaging if the character struggled with depression or anxiety, but even then her growth and failure would have a known solution internal to herself, and that is more of a short arc than a long term quest.

I know these are off the cuff examples, but my point is that fact and faith can't interact like that.  When you know something, you can't believe in it, you can't hope for it.  Fanatic is a walking crisis of faith, what is right, what is wrong, what am I, why am I this person, all these unknowns that she carries with her are her.  I would love to see C&A surprise me by pulling off an engaging story that keeps alive an engaging struggle of Faith while resolving the Faith itself, but I haven't seen it accomplished yet.

One thing I think is missing in the concept of faith and not being allowed to know the source of Fanatic’s power is that we are basically dealing with at least three points of view here - Fanatic’s and other characters within the comics, the fictional comic readers, and the extra meta level of us as observers of both these fictions.
We are so far removed from what impacts Fanatic that we are capable of learning such facts behind her powers whilst she’s still unaware of them, they wouldn’t even need to be outright stated within the comics, but our own awareness is a level ahead of both of these, so isn’t burdened by such issues of fact vs faith.

The concept of deities, or deity like beings, of them providing their followers with powers, nor even a single supreme god figure are anything new in fiction or comics, so there’s very little problem with such an analogy existing within Sentinel Comics too.

As someone who was raised Roman Catholic and is mainly only no longer Catholic because I don't believe in God, I could probably wax philosophical on the matter if pressed.

But yeah, faith and fact are kinda diametrically opposed. The main reason I don't have faith in anything is because I'm incapable of believing anything is true without some sort of proof in the form of fact, empirical observation, or good logic. (This plays merry heck with trying to go through therapy, too.) Conversely, yeah, the very definition of faith is believing in something that can't be proven. Phantaskippy put it all pretty well.

Or Fanatic can have faith that God gave her her powers using element F.

Also, are her powers faith based, or will based? If she believes that they are faith based, then will based powers will effectively become faith based as her will well weaken as she loses faith. But it means that learning the truth about her powers won’t break her power, because she can wield will independent of faith.

Jeeze. I am not gonna envy Adam and Christopher when it comes time for Fanatic's episode.

To contribute to the discussion, I'm in the same party of thought as Arcanist Lupus.

I would like to point to the Idolator. Whatever he did to earn Fanatic burning a cross across his face (Brutal Censure) probably didn't fit the crime. She also burned down the church (incap of shiny). He did it early in her career (Fanatic 2) so it set the pace of her stories.  That look on her face is someone who must believe what she did was right because if not she has done something irreversibly wrong. 

He comes back proclaiming that Fanatic is not an agent of the Lord but of Hell (Fanatic 32). The Idolator has gains some amount of resistance (-3 damage taken) and prevents healing in the area. His word forces Fanatic to focus only on him, lest he spreads falsehood and doubt(in her).

Knowing who the Host is will also answer a few things. I for one would love to her solo book. before all the crossover water her down to just a punching machine.

https://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=File:Fanatic_Original_Foil_Back.png

Side note: Fanatic's Sword breaks when she strikes (the) Truth. Citizen Truth but I still think it is poetic. I am sure Apostate had some doubt seed growing inside Helana.

I guess the weird thing is that in Catholicism, while faith is important, grace is more achieved through the state of being a good Catholic in doing God's work via charity, helping people, affirming and saving life, using your skills to better the world, etc., and because these deeds mean you're using your grace to further God's work and grow closer to His perfection, He grants you more grace to use. Faith is really more like you affirming your existing friendship with God. God doesn't take the friendship away forever if you stop believing in Him; you just stop experiencing it. (Kind of like how in Catholic doctrine, Hell is more like "the eternal absence of God", and the punishment is more in the sense of being forever apart from God and denied His eternal life and love.)

So probably theologically speaking you'd expect Fanatic's powers to work more like D&D paladins where their power waxes and wanes on how well they're furthering their god's goals and ethics, but since Protestantism has asserted more of the "saved by having faith" and "fire and brimstone and punishing evil" angle of religion in people's minds, you get, well, Fanatic.

Scholar belongs under OblivAeon, not magical artifact. The Philosophers stone was specifically created from an Oblivaeon Shard he found as told to us in the Art Q&As

Apparently he lied about his lies    https://twitter.com/johndubois/status/910916546230407168

Sure, he's big and strong.  But is he as strong as Haka, Legacy, Setback, or Fright Train?  Not even close; they're supernaturally strong.  I don't think he's even as strong as The Hippo (who can lift a bus), but even then, The Hippo is only a mini-nemesis because that level of strength just isn't that impressive.  The vast majority of Voss's "strength" comes from his army.  As for his fire attack, it's unclear whether that comes from his hands or some sort of tool.

That's possible, but I haven't seen that in print anywhere.  I'll want for the Scholar podcast episode before nailing that down.

Were they?  We've never yet seen a version of Vanessa Long that wasn't exposed to prenatal experimentation.  It's a "fixed point" that she gains powers, but fixed points are things that happen in every timeline.  She may just gain them, one way or another, every time.  Innevitable doesn't mean inherent.

That's the trigger, but the power stays with them even when the artifact is removed from them or destroyed.  It's not unlike Xu's Bell in AA's origin story.

My answer would be that half of a shard is a shard.

I actually agree with you about Anubis, since he's the original deal.  I'll edit that one.  Good chance I'll edit Apostate and Fanatic when their podcasts come out.  Bugbear was empowered though a ritual; even though it's unclear whether the temple itself was magical, he remains magical after being removed from it, again like Ra and the Ennead.

Don't feel bad, I made that same mistake.  I had originally thought, "Oh, Scholar…heremetic/alchemical magic dude.  Wait, OblivAeon shard?  What?  What do you mean he's not magic?"  And now its, "Wait, so he IS magic?  So confuse."

I know this is kind of de-railing things, but man do I find this an interesting discussion.

I think the question of Faith vs Knowing is more confusing.

I think I'm going to reference Michael Carpenter of the Dresden Files. In fact, the Dresden Files in general does this whole thing very well. We meet Archangels who speak of God, but we never meet God himself. Also, the magic of those people who are people of Faith is immense and subtle in ways that Harry acknowledges but can hardly believe.

There is a scene in one of the books where Micheal and HArry have to go on some dangerous mission. Harry tries to convince Micheal not to go, or at least delay, because someone has to watch over Micheal's family. Micheal sighs and opens the front door, where a mutual friend is standing, just about to knock, because his car broke down right in front of their house and he was hoping he could come in and stay for a bit.

At a certain point, having divinely granted power, having a divinely mandated sword, speaking with Angels, and having things work out in inesplicable ways, it would take a madman to say that someone or something isn't looking out for that person. It would take a far stretch to say that Micheal acts solely on Faith with no evidence, he has plenty of evidence that he has been chosen for a mission and that some limited protection has been granted him and his family because of it. When he retires due to injuries, there is a small squad of angels that simply patrol around his house, protecting them from supernatural threats.

They know God is on their side, and many people even in our world would say they know. That there is plenty of evidence to support their Faith without them having to meet an angel or meet God himself.

Fanatic doesn't need faith in herself, she has faith that God will support her and carry her through the toughest of trials. She doesn't need to delude herself, even if she discovers that her powers would accidentally given to her by a hostile alien force, that does not mean that the accident which created her was not God's will. She has clearly done good work in the name of the Lord, so her Faith does not need to become a false faith.

It's not a very difficult step to take that many of the heroes came about because of a similiar situation to her own. What force led Blake Washington Jr or Anthony Drake to these very specific artifacts which unlocked thier potential and made them into hereos who protected thousands of people? How was it that Mainstay and Medico just happened to be exposed to a material that granted them power, before any of their villains or monsters also got that same power? The Parson line has been blessed has it not? How did Ryan Frost survive an accident which clearly should have claimed his life?

Eventually the answer to these questions (in a world not in a story) narrows down to two possibilities. Random Chance in a universe of spiraling numbers or Divine Will of something greater.

Getting to the point of accepting that it is Divine Will is the challenge, it is the part of this which Fanatic must take on faith, and that is not a bad thing to be reduced to that point.

As for the conflict between her and Idolater, I'm really interested in learning what it is that he did. He pulled off some grand betrayal of the people or of Fanatic herself, something which drove her to mark him. The church burning was a result of their battle, obviously, but I'd love to know their relationship.

And her expression, to me, says more "I did what had to be done, may I find forgiveness for those actions" and less "I did this terrible thing because of my mission"

She knows what she did was terrible, and I really hope that Fanatic was rarely a character who fell onto the terror of "God demands I do this so it is right, even if it is a terrible crime" because that is the dark side of Faith, that is where all the evils of religion breed and spread from. I'd like to think her faith is more geniune. She has done terrible things in the pursuit of the greater good, but she never lies to herself and says that they were not evil or terrible. Instead, she seeks to make sure that the good of her actions outweighs the evil, that she seeks forgiveness whenever possible and makes recompense even more often.

Again, I'm really excited to learn more about her. I feel like Fanatic is one of the least understood heroes in the entire game, and this makes her fascinating to consider the possibilities.

The problem is that this would open up a big can of worms that 100% absolutely exists in real life as well: Why is God only on the side of certain good people, then, while other equally good people are left to suffer and struggle?

To quote a bit of my favorite Babylon 5 dialogue:

"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

Honestly this was a factor in my own deliberations on faith; I had seen too much suffering inflicted on good people while the people who hurt them prospered, too many good people with terrible luck and bad people with grand luck, to want to believe in a world where that sort of thing was planned and enforced by a divine entity as opposed to just being how the world as created by us mortals worked and therefore something us mortals could possibly actually fix to make right.

Hence, you know, one reason why I tried to politely say I didn't feel like this was a thing I wanted opened up.

Oh I completely agree about the real world, but I find faith and spirituality a fascinating literary device to explore.

In terms of the Dresden Verse, the reason "God" helps the Carpenter family in more obvious ways is because Micheal is the wielder of one of the Three Holy Swords of that world. Thus Micheal has been given a burden to fight vampires, dragons, 13 fallen angels, ect ect ect, and so making sure he has a babysitter is kind of small potatoes compared to the burden he has been given.

But, once more, I'm talking literature and fantasy worlds, I like considering these questions with that buffer and with the freedom to change the various conditions to explore the questions from various angles.

From the files on this computer I have

>

arenson9: @Gtgchristopher Where did The Scholar get his magic stone? Is it magic?

GTGChristopher: @Arenson9 That's the alchemist's stone that he made.

GTGChristopher: @Arenson9 Sort of.

But that's all, I'll look on other computers later.

(From the art stream of 5th February 2016)

Oh, have a link to the complete document too

And check the thread, again – he's posted a clarification that the Philosopher's Stone was definitely not created from an OblivAeon Shard. ( x.com )

Sorry, I think I am a bit lost of the Fanatic discussion, although i admit, I haven't been following every piece of lore that has come out. It seems like her power is "faith", but doesn't the website say it is "divine" (whatever that means within this context)?

Between this further clarification and what Matchstickman posted I'm not sure where the assumption it was an OblivAeon Shard that Scholar used. I would say I also thought I recalled that being mentioned an OblivAeon Shard played a role just couldn't find the source.  

I LOVE the Dresden Files. Part of what i find interresting is that Michael's whole power source is boiled down to, to quote Harry, "He's a Rigtious man." Because when your faith is rewarded again and again it really is that simple. Michael knows that he has an ability to protect other people so it's his duty to do so, because other people can't. He wouldn't shirk from that even if his faith in God were questionable. And because he would act in uh… good faith?.. anyway he recieves these blessings and help.

On the other hand if we look at one of the other Knights of the Cross from those books, Sanya if i remember his name right; is an Agnostic. Yep, he's weilding a holy saber with a nail from the Crucifiction, captial C in his hand guard, and he's a self described Agnostic. But Sanya still gets the same divine grace and assistance as Michael because he is working towards the same goals in good faith but for different reasons. He's a Comunist. That's why he keeps stepping into danger for other people works to fight the things that go bump in the night; Because as a Comunist everyone has a job for the good of the people & this is his.

[edit, His name is Sanya]

It's stated in the wiki, if you'd like to take a look: https://sentinelswiki.com/index.php?title=Scholar

Well, honestly the matter's actually even more terrible in the Sentinelsverse. Look at Rook City for the ultimate example of how bad people get to thrive and succeed and good people get killed, hurt, or worn into misanthropy.

Plus like I waxed about earlier, technically speaking as a Catholic, Fanatic's powers should likely be based on how well she does or doesn't pursue divine goals, rather than based on her faith. And those goals would probably not be "punish evildoer" type goals. (Catholic doctrine is more like "convince the evildoers to stop being evildoers, and/or do so much good yourself that it outweighs the evil into irrelevance".)

But can he do that without the Philosopher's Stone?  It doesn't say.

Looks like I was wrong about Captain Cosmic's and Infinitor's shards counting as two, but we still don't know where the other one is/was.  (Unless it was in the La Capitan episode, which I haven't finished listening to yet.)

Not La Capitan 

It says he can see the leylines before he gets the stone in the wiki, I'm pretty sure.

"John had always had an affinity for altering the very threads of existence. He could feel them as they stretched around him, connecting everything to everything else. So, when those lines drew him to a mysterious, glowing stone, he knew it was right and proper to take it with him. The stone allows him to twist the lines, rather than just perceive them, and he can now easily transmute objects into other materials."

Seems to me an innate ability boosted by an artefact exactly like Lillian Corvus. Now the only question is who created the artefact and is it related to the metaplot in some way 

This is a retcon then. I'm 110% sure he said it was at one point during the art Q&A

*Shrug* Well we've seen that there's been retcons to the stories in the past(The first Ennead attack, the omni-religious Fanatic), but if they say that it now isn't an OblivAeon shard, then I guess it's not.

I'm not arguing that I didn't say it, but I certainly do not recall ever saying that. The Scholar's alchemist's stone was never supposed to be related to OblivAeon in any way.

So what is the sixth stone, then? In the episode, you made it sound like all six were already publicly known.

I thought we were pretty clear about it in the Vengeful Five episode, but maybe we weren't? Hard to say - that was quite a while ago now.

The Sentinel Comics RPG Starter Kit mentions it in unambiguous terms, but that's not helpful to you... yet. 

So Proletariat was given his powers by an OblivAeon Shard is what I'm inferring from that since a space rock was mentioned being used on him 

It's been a while since I listened to that, but the Quicknotes on the wiki makes no mention of an OblivAeon shard.

Oh, is it the mysterious space rock that gave Proletariat his powers?

C: "[The Soviets] had this lump of otherworldly material; this rock from space. It wasn't even really from space for them. They got it from the Nazis."

A: "They stole it from a Nazi facility in a raid in World War II."

C: "And before that, the Nazis had taken it from a synagogue where it had been for hundreds of years in a lead case."

Then they talk about what the effects of the rock are, but Rock From Space + Proximity Grants Power = OblivAeon Shard isn't a hard leap to make, although they weren't explicit about it. There's also a passing mention in one of the answers that his powers work because of "cosmic" weirdness.

Sorry for not being more explicit! Yeah, that's definitely an OblivAeon shard. Always has been. Proletariat's bio was the first hint at those shards, though it was intended to be a very subtle hint.

Thanks, Christopher!

Well, that answers that "what."  It raises questions about "why" and "how," though.  OblivAeon or one of his scions must have been to Earth and been injured at some point in the past, then--although we don't have full answers about how the other shards arrived on Earth.  I inferred that the Lowsley shard was a result of the defeat of Cosmic Omnitron, but it looks like Progeny was after Termi-Nation, so I'm not sure where the Void Guard shards came from.

Off to the Letters Page form!

From their episode: brought back from first moon landing, found at the Arizona Meteor Crater (a real thing), found under 200 feet of ice in Antarctica, and recovered from the Ruins of Atlantis where it had been for who knows how long.

I'm not sure that we're supposed to be able to tell what events caused these particular shards to break off.

That's where they were found, yes.  But we know that OblivAeon shards are created as a result of damage (direct or indirect) to OblivAeon, and we don't know that part of their stories.  But you're right, I forgot that at least two of those also imply earlier visits to Earth by scions.

One came from the moon, maybe was the reason we went there

One came from Atlantis, where it did weird stuff

One came from Arizona, in a crater

One came from Antartica user 200 feet of ice and water 

The military collected them and put them in Ft Adamant

Damaging OblivAeon is one way a shard is formed, we don't know if there are others.

I mean with OblivAeon being the big weird timey wimey ball that they are, it's entirely possible that shards were formed from damage and then those shards got lost in time.

This has been my assumption.

That's the assumption I'd always made. That all OblivAeon shards come from his defeat, but the nature of him means they scattered over space and time.

That's where they come from in the future, but the 6 that already exist in the world before the OblivAeon event come from a thing that also predates the OblivAeon event.

Well that raises absolutely no new questions.

Yep, no follow up questions here. Everything is now perfectly clear.

Nevermind.

Well, we've known for a while (or at least it has been heavily assumed and I just accepted it) that Oblivaeon has been injured in the past. Particularly, I believe we had confirmation that Tim Cosing fought hard with Oblivaeon before being subjugated because it was able to tell the heroes that he can be injured.

So, we don't need time wierdness, we just need to know why Earth was a spot where all these various shards ended up.

Also though, it has been implied that Oblivaeon may be unique in his goals, but he is not a unique being. Other people of his "race" do exist, and theoritically they could have been destroyed in fights and they could have shards floating around the cosmos too. They might be a rare phenomena, but no where near as rare as only six in the trillions upon trillions of stars and planets of a near infinite universe.

I'm fairly certain this is categorically untrue. I believe C + A have said that there are other "similar" beings, in that there are other Cosmic Entities with power apporaching OBV's level; however, I don't think there has ever been a time when they have said there are other beings that share enough physiology to be considered the same "race", and consequently be able to spread Shards on taking damage.

Willing to be wrong because it would open up the world in a different way, but expecting a multiverse-condensing nigh-omnipotent brittle-skinned mega-being to be the only one of their kind.

I see and agree with what you are saying, but that just means I need to clarify what I meant, because I realize I'm making an additional assumption.

Oblivaeon is an energy being at his base, to my mind at least, and so physiologically I bet there are other beings like him, but in terms of scale and raw power I do not believe the others are anywhere close.

I realize I then begin bending over backwards to make this all fit, but if the shards have power due to their nature (they are power sources but the big thing they keep doing is altering people) instead of by proxy of how powerful their source is then a weaker being of similiar nature could create similiar shards.

It becomes then like fusion reactors. Oblivaeon is a Fusion reactor like a pulsar star or whatever else is on that extreme scale, while others of his race are more like the Fusion Reactors on Earth. Still immensely powerful by our way of measuring, but magnitudes weaker than the guy trying to end all of reality.

And I think the certain member of Daybreak who we now know the name of (Aeongirl ) might be important to learning more about that possibility in the years to come.

I wanna guess that maybe The Wager is involved somehow here, but I'm keen on shoehorning that thing in anywhere I can.

Do you think Oblivaeon is one of the beings involved in The Wager?  I always thought of him as the loser and his actions now are to correct that loss.

Perhaps losing that wager and the very existence of space and time are damaging to Oblivaeon in some way?

IIRC, Christopher once shot down him being the winner or loser of The Wager. But if this thread taught me anything, its not to rely on my memory or what Christopher might have said in the past. So idk!

Wager Master episode is coming up soon, don't count on someone else to ask that!

I'm curious about Con being in the "Unknown" category when we know Unity, Fixer, and Argent Adept built Con together.

We also know that Biomancer was involved in its creation, but not how.  More importantly, its main power is that of time travel, and we learned in the La Capitan episiode that the kind of control over time that she and Con enjoy are not possible with technology alone--OblivAeon has to be involved somehow.

We know Biomancer has an impact on Con but that was after CON already sent Jim on adventures not in its creation that I recall.  

Yeah, Biomancer used the Clone-Ranger to alter or mess with Con somehow after Chrono had been already going on missions; Biomancer didn't help create Con even indirectly.

Likewise, Con discovered how to enact time travel after they were created, so while OblivAeon's shenangians likely allowed Con to do that, OblivAeon wasn't involved in how Con actually works either. (Con doesn't seem to be a child of time like La Cap became either; just able to harness chronal energies.)

Con themself seems to be basically some combination of Unity's technopath power, Argent's Void-related power and knowledge, and Fixer's mechanical know-how.

And most importantly, CON can grow and learn, much like Omnitron. Combining that with Void Energy shenanagins probably means CON is more than just a machine, and gets into questions of "life" much like O-X

Con really is kind of interesting, in that magic/Void/skill is pretty much the triangle of main sources of things in the Sentinelsverse, and Con is at the confluence of all of them.

The CONfluence, you might say? :V

Yeah I realized that pun about five seconds after I typed it out and decided to just run with it.

But we like puns! Bring it back!

Updated list with some newer revelations.

Updated for Legacy! Cool. We even know the singular entity’s name: Wellspring.

I disagree about Haka’s categorization. I don’t think he gets his power from OblivAeon, or even knock-on effects of OblivAeon. He gets his power from La Comodora, and her temporal sciences. Yes, she got the start of HER power from OblivAeon, but she is far more integral to Haka than OblivAeon is.

I've internally waffled about that one myself.  But not only does everything about how La Comodora works come from OblivAeon, it also functions because of OblivAeon.  Travel across realities is only possible because of OblivAeon's shattering of the timelines, and La Comodora uses both that weakness and the power she's accrued through that fact to create Haka.  OblivAeon didn't grant her powers intentionally, like a Scion, but she is wielding its power in everything she does.

If Haka had been created by another hero that crossed realities, Visionary or Omnitron-X for instance, who exploited the shattering of the timelines but didn't get their power from them, I'd more likely agree with you.  Or if he'd been the creation of a different hero whose powers originated with OblivAeon but wasn't bound to it, such as Parse.  Or if we had some indication that La Comodora would have retained some component of her abilities after OblivAeon was defeated.  But as it stands, I sort of see her as a proxy of OblivAeon's powers.

I’m not quite sure I agree either that La Comodora got her powers from OblivAeon.   She got lost in time on the ship before OblivAeon shattered the timelines.  Add on the fact that bringing the ship into reality from outside time and destroying it is what left her stranded outside time.  Her powers came from the ship originally, tech she gathered, and experience she has gotten from using those.  

If I make a pan, and someone cooks an omelette in that pan, that didn’t mean I made the omelette.

If OblivAeon shattered the timelines, and La Commodora used those shattered timelines to make Haka, that doesn’t mean that OblivAeon made Haka.

I mean, you're saying that the timelines were shattered later, but time shattering makes bad things happen in every time period. Because time shattered. That said, while the initial time rift in Spanish waters that ends up giving her ship power is definitely an OblivAeon thing, he's not the power source. The Sea of Time is the power source. He just causes the thing that lets her get to The Sea of Time.

Similarly, while actions taken by OblivAeon end up coincidentally leading to Haka gaining power down the line, he isn't the direct cause of that power nor did he have a hand in causing Haka's powers to develop. Haka gets his powers from a temporal anomaly that is made possible by OblivAeon, but saying that makes OblivAeon the power source is like saying the geneticist that creates the radioactive Schmider that bites Schmider-Man is the source of Schmider-Man's power. OblivAeon is an enabler, but he does little beyond that.

I think you’re argument isn’t self-consistent…

Why not consider what Maria Helena does “exploiting” OblivAeon’s effects?

But besides that, while I agree that the start of Maria Helena’s story involved fallout from OblivAeon, there is far more of La Comodora’s action in Haka’s creation than there is OblivAeon’s action. La Capitan could not have created Haka - she needed to master temporal manipulation. There is a huge amount of skill, power, and… technology? involved in what La Comodora does that is the benefit of Maria Helena’s own growth and experience. In addition, she is the one who conceived this plan and made the choice to execute it.

Fair arguments, all.  As I said, I was on the fence.  I'll make the change.

To me it's unclear where exactly the "chronal energy" Maria Helena gets her power from comes from.  To me, it's a byproduct of OblivAeon's shattering of the timelines.  It's less "if I make a pan, and you cook an omelette in that pan, you made the omelette," and more like if Baron Blade goes to a Nolan Generator, captures some of its particles, artificially creates Isoflux Alpha, shoots it at someone, and grants them powers, they're still an Omega.  You wouldn't say Gregory Nolan was the direct cause of their creation like he was with other Omegas, you'd blame Baron Blade, but they're still Omegas.  The power comes from the same place.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking, but I see your point and I seem to be in the minority.  This was supposed to be a reference, not just a list of my opinions.

Updated with the Citizens we learned about in Sunrise (some of which we already knew through Tactics, but I wasn't aware of them).  Still don't know the Seasons or any of the ones that never appear in either game.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm going to continue to maintain this list the same way I have been despite the Power Sources podcast episode.  C&A's approach in the RPG is very different from mine, being intentionally vague and open-ended, with many different ways approaching the same character.  They're more driven by storytelling than world-building.  I can see why they'd see Absolute Zero and Nightmist as being similar (with the "accident" or "cursed" origin), but that doesn't really explain anything from a "how the Sentinels world works" perspective.

Edit: I did, however, make a number of changes based on some clarifications from that episode, mostly about the nature of magic.

But the RPG is focused on telling stories and making characters in a world. Both lists are made for different purposes. I would argue with a few things on your list but it is not for me. You list is to group heroes based on where they draw their power.

I do hope that once the RPG comes out you try their system for making characters.