This episode covers some fantastical loctions. Make sure that you're setting aside just over 2 hours if you want your conundrums solved and your curiosities satisfied.
Episode is available here: http://theletterspage.libsyn.com/episode-54-supernatural-settings
Yay, my questions got answered! Well, some of them, but there were a number of other people who asked similar things as I did, so I'm not complaining. Also, C & A, I'll take you at your word now that there's no stalling ongoing--you haven't led me wrong before, so consider my conspiratorial mutterings hushed.
One weird thing--did the episode cut out early for anyone else? It seems to cut off around the 2:05:00 mark, with 6 minutes remaining in the episode...
I didn’t notice any cutoff.
Huh--if I try to download it, it cuts off. If I play it on the webpage, it doesn't cut off. Weird.
I was actually slightly disappointed to learn that Sprit Island isn’t really in the Sentinels Comics universe with different European colonial powers being rebuffed by spirits and natives, but is instead just an alternate version of the island that mankind seemingly never settled on before. I can totally understand the main creator of the game wanting to keep its lore self containing though. The Dahan will almost certainly be a part of my version of the RPG world.
I was also kind of sad my letter didn’t make the cut but hold out hopes it will make it into an editor’s note. It did evolve really into being more about Gloomweaver and Discordant magic rather than about the Realm of Discord itself.
Part of me almost dreads if my various questions on the subject gets answered because I have invested a lot of time working on how the magic of the Cult of Gloom will work in my RPG sessions, and it is almost certainly going to be different from how C and A portray it.
Also sent in a letter as “A legitimate Rook City Businessman” who was in no way an Organization enforcer trying to muscle answers about Zhou Long out of C and A…those questions mostly likely fell under the “not gonna tell you” category. My pride and joy there was coining the term "Rook City Raincoat" to mean a bodybag, and just felt the need to share that with people.
Despite all that though this was by far my favorite settings page, but that is to be expected. I really love mystic heroes and feel like they don’t get the spotlight they deserve in a lot of mainstream comics. Looking forward to the next two weeks with Parse and Miss Information as well.
That. Is. FANTASTIC. I love it.
A+, Thumbs Up. My name is Dave, and I approve of this term. (Not that you need my approval, but I nevertheless wholeheartedly approve).
Yeah, I love that, too.
Ok, first post on forums. Let's make this count.
-I was thinking of the mysterious (young) figure who helped Baron Blade escape Mittermeier's Festival. My theory is that it was Blade's actual heir (the same one that messed up the moon in Final Wasteland's future), with the writers taking advantage of the issue's focus on offsprings to foreshadow the heir of Mordengrad.
-Ok, so let's see if I got this right: The Prime Wardens got lost in the Festival, so Biomancer went there to let them escape and continue his dastardly scheme in Return of Vengeance (since Tempest was a homunculus and all). I'm not sure if it means that the entire story was part of his plan, or if the Wardens went to the place by happenstance, with Biomancer noticing it and going "Oh no! I have to call my ex and tell her she's going to ruin this cool stuff I'm going to do".
-Apparently you need to be a powerful magician to destroy the Festival completely. I guess this means it's impossible to destroy the place without magic. I imagine it will just disappear and pop elsewhere if a huge source of "mundane" damage would destroy it, like a meteor or a satellite death-laser (but that's just my headcanon).
-Poor Anubis.
-Is Earth having the Nexus of The Void that important (outside of being the source* of Argent Adept's powers)? I mean, all other planets in the universe seem to be fine without it (cosmic villains and threats aside). I wonder how losing it would damage the planet, or if it was better underground.
*Unless the Virtuosos can get by without the Nexus itself. I have a hard time understanding anything Void-related.
I actually asked a question that wasn't answered that basically asked why the Void keeps trying to connect to reality via in the Nexus since it keeps being established how antithetical to everything of normal existence the Void is, and if any heroic person attuned to the Void ever decided to try and fully seal it off again under the theory that it was more dangerous left available than it was helpful as a power source.
I believe(I could be talking out my ass here, anyone can feel free to correct me) it's not important that Earth have the Nexus, but the fact that it's HERE is the important part. A gateway to one of the most potent yet unstable powersources/locations in the entire universe is here, and certain unsavory peeps want to abuse it.
I'm not sure I buy it. I can see Kaargra and Sky-Scraper being needed for Tempest and Voss, but Greazer? The Operative? Spite? Scholar, Guise, and Wager Master? I suppose they want the Settings episodes to be spaced out, so that makes at least some sense, but come on.
I'm also a little irritated because I wrote some letters for those episodes way back when it seemed like they'd be coming up soon, and now they're going to sound more than a little ignorant and passé.
No lie, I'm still sore on the Greazer episode. I came away from that one honestly wondering why he deserved to have a deck, as he's so inconsequential. I could still easily see him being replaced by someone with a more notable story arc: while I earlier put my chips on Heartbreaker, I now think Highbrow would have made a much better deck, especially considering her prescence in Termi-Nation and her willingness to work with other villains.
Waiting for a core hero and a major, world-shaking villain until after that? Yeahhh...that stings.
Considering this wasn’t a thing a year ago and took so long before it launched I’m fine with whatever order they choose whether it makes sense to us or not.
I’m with Powerhound on this.
Also, I’m glad that there’s still BIG story coming. Because they are eventually going to run out of characters, and spacing out the big story is, I think, a better idea. For those who don’t enjoy the “minor” villains and setting episodes: Do you really think you’d be better off if we covered all the “important” characters/stories first and then had a month of settings episodes followed by weeks of “secondary” characters?
We’re a year into this podcast, and we still have major, exciting, non-OblivAeon story we can look forward to hearing. How is that a bad thing? (Like, I can see how if all someone cared about was getting the most important story covered in the most time-efficient manner possible, the schedule C&A have gone with would be not ideal… But that person is already clearly listening to the wrong podcast anyway.)
To get this back on topic to content from this episide, I have THOUGHTS about the Baron Blade / Young Person thing, but this post is already long, and I might want to relisten to the BB episode to confirm something first.
Basically:
It's still not and never will be "stalling" to talk about Sentinels topics on a podcast devoted to talking about Sentinels topics, since all of these topics would still be given episodes at some point no matter what.
I mean, yes, we're getting episodes about Wager Master, Guise, etc. because they're major Sentinels characters on a podcast about Sentinels topics. Why is this a problem? Were we supposed to just randomly skip and never talk about certain characters?
Further, some of them I'm actually excited to hear about; I've been curious about Iron Legacy and the alt universe characters for a while now.
On top of it, we've already had people on Reddit complaining that we got a Nexus of the Void episode before we saw the content on the cards to be able to ask educated questions about it. So we're literally setting them up in a no-win situation: Either they don't talk about OblivAeon stuff and get accused of stalling, or they do talk about OblivAeon stuff and get accused of being vague or giving spoilers or not giving us a chance to look at stuff so we can ask properly about it.
And I'm sorry Rabit, but I'm not in the mood to sugarcoat stuff right now, nor am I going to apologize for "going after" people. I'm sick to death of going into Letters Page episodes and seeing repetitive complaining about how C&A are "stalling" because they picked the Magically Wrong Week to talk about a topic they were always going to talk about at some point anyway. I'm sick to death of going into OblivAeon update articles and seeing the same repetitive complaining that GTG can't wave magic fairy dust wands and make the product magically be instantly printed and teleported to people. I'm sick to death of opening a thread about Sentinels of Freedom and seeing people complaininng about Prime War which isn't even freakin' related to the product! I'm sick to death of looking at the fandom hoping for discussion of Sentinels and instead getting the Broken Record Negative Nancy Brigade.
Especially since so much of it is so hostile on top of it. So many people with snotty attitudes, accusations, even slurs and swears on some other venues. Being aimed to people who've never been anything other than nice and kind that I've seen. I actively cringed at Christopher having to deal with a very snotty-toned question on the test stream, and had been hoping maybe he'd just delete or ignore it instead. We have one guy who seems to literally post nothing else on the forum except snotty-toned gripes about Prime War. There was that one person a while back who just spent an entire thread going full nuclear about GTG in regards to OblivAeon. How is any of that OK? Seriously. Because yep, I'm sick to death of that too.
And I'm especially 5000% sick to death of being treated like a bad guy for saying I'm tired of the endless repetitive negativity and asking that people actually talk about something else for a change. Because no, I'm not wrong for wanting my own feelings on the matter to also be considered and respected. Namely: My feelings that I'd like to stop having the fandom be a hostile and miserable place to read.
I'm in the middle ground here. On the one hand I love everything about sentinels and the podcast, I don't mind delays on products (I expect it and am pleasently surprised when GTG is on time) and I certainly would advocate for Christopher and Adam to do/talk about whatever they want on the podcast. In whatever order they want to. I will listen and it will make my day better.
I do feel bad for people who are disappointed for products they have not received yet, but complaining is not going to make it happen faster, just get your money back and be done with it. Or wait it out and it will be awesome just like you knew it would when you paid for it. I do not feel bad for those complaining about the podcast, seriously if you don't like the content they are putting out don't listen to it. Only listen to the episodes that interest you. There is no profit from this (there are no ads in these podcasts, well beside Florida Power Dampeners) so its two guys talking about something they love so that others that love it and want to learn more can do so.
On the other hand, they are totally stalling. (Think Princess Bride and the battle of wits) See above, they can do whatever they want and I'll enjoy the journey. But come on, they haven't done Voss, one of the core game villians, because he is the final scion, right? Or maybe both goblets have been poisoned the entire time...
Oh, I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining about their stalling on Tempest and Voss. I mean, this is all hours of free entertainment, and I appreciate all of it. They can do whatever they want. I just don't believe their reasons for putting those two off--putting the characters I mentioned first doesn't support their argument that they had to be done in this order to make sense.
Well, look, OK, how about this: If any of you are going to insist on making the same complaints every single blessed week that C&A aren't obeying your wishes regards scheduling, can you at be respectful to your fellow fans and confine your complaints solely in the general Letters Page thread so the rest of us can focus on discussing the episode's actual topic(s)? Please? :| :|
Seriously, when I open a "Supernatural Settings" episode thread, I would like it to actually be the "Supernatural Settings" thread, and not the "Complain C&A aren't doing the podcast the way I would do it" thread. :| :| :|
Jeysie: Sorry to be blunt, but telling a mod you're not in the mood to be nice to people is not an excuse to stop being nice to people.
Sorry to be blunt, but you need to aim your exhortations to be nicer at the people I listed who are being hostile, accusatory, aggressive, disrespectful, derailing threads, etc. and not at the person making justified grievances about that not-nice behavior. Since that frequent double standard/misaiming of exhortations to be nicer was the entire reason I made that statement. 
Realized I didn't actually give my opinions on the episode.
I enjoyed it. There were plenty of good nuggets of info and story(which hopefully makes those who didn't like the last Settings episode feel better). I thought it was funny how there were more questions about Zhu-Long than his temple(the supposed focus of that part of the podcast :P ). I'm guessing since they did such a nice info-dump on him, we won't be getting a Zhu-Long specific episode. And I'm okay with that, to be honest. I'm sure there's plenty more we haven't learned about him, but for now I think we're satisfied on the topic.
On the matter of "Stalling":
It's C & A's podcast. They can scheduel it however they see fit. They want to give us specific info before the episode on X or Y? Fine by me. And if they are in fact ACTUALLY stalling? Oh well. Here's to maybe getting some more 'storytime' style episodes because of it. I love those.
I have to agree with Jeysie on this one. You have your right to express your opinion, but if it results in derailing a thread then please either find a relevant thread or make a new one. Thank you. :)
Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff here.
I liked finding out that apparently Madame Mittermeier and Biomancer are frenemies. Feels like there's a lot of good potential there in the RPG timeline especially.
The mysterious figure that saves Baron Blade, hmmmm.
Finding out about Anubis' poor wife 
and that Anubis is apparently only doing half his job.
The relationship between Lovecraft and Sentinels.
The implication with Void shenanigans that Tactics continues to leading to a dark and terrible place.
Yup. Plenty of tasty threads to pick up and take a yank at when the full shebang of the RPG comes out.
Ah, and thanks for reminding me about Anubis. I'm REALLY CURIOUS now to see if someone will get the other relic now that OG Anubis isn't around to keep it out of someone else's hands…
I am willing to bet it will be a player party member until we get a book telling me no. Or because C&A are sadists she will have wound up in the Miststorm universe.
While Anput ending up in the Miststorm universe would be bad for Anput, I'm not sure if it would necessarily be bad overall. I mean if any universe needs a goddess healing the sick and injured and watching over good people, it's the Miststorm universe.
Okay, so now I really want a Madame Mittimiers/Night Circus crossover.
I have no idea what would happen, but I'm pretty sure it would be fantastic either way.
That's what they want you to think Jeysie. So when they break the cutie it's all the more horrific... Also because I keep forgetting to ask has anyone been back and checked the Baron Blade ep to see about wild clone / very much younger sister conspiracy theories?
Isn't it heavily implied that A. Baron Blade has a son/daughter/offspring-of-some-nameless-abomination, and that B. The figure that saved him from MMFFCC is said child?
I may be reading too heavily into this but I thought it was pretty clear.
~Komori
I was going to come here and add to @Demiher0's comment by mentioning how Baron Blade's whole deal with Beacon echoes the fact that Blade apparently had a child in the Final Wasteland timeline, but now I've been sidetracked by thinking @starkenburg_ale...'s theory might just be really brilliant along the same lines.
I think it was a decendant of Baron Blade that was mentioned in the final wasteland, or did they say child? I mean decendant implies he had a child but it could be the great-great-great grandchild that featured the breaking the moon in the final wasteland.
Oh no your right that it’s it’s an implied so very heavily. I am just in my own little world crafting crackpot theories. But the question no one is asking is who is the mother?
You bet I have! Here is my transcript of the relevant exchange on this topic from the BB episode:
Kurt (Question): I don't remember any mention of Blade having children or is he perhaps faking his death to stage a return to evil?So, yeah. I definitely think that the young person who rescued Blade was his child.…
Christopher: So the yeah Baron Blade doesn't have any children… that we know of–
Adam: Right
Christopher: --in this time–
Adam: That we know of.
Christopher: That we're, right. ...Baron Blade faked his death...
But here's a thought: does Baron Blade know that he has a child?
Good thing I asked that exact question in a letter immediately after the Final Wasteland episode!
I made a bunch of comments about MMFFCC in a new thread, because I couldn’t find this old one on my own! Thanks to Rabit for digging it up for me.
Strangely given my love of Egypt, I had no comments on Anubis stuff, but when we get to the Discord realm, I do have one thought: the makers of the Animated Series would DEFINITELY have been the origin of the stupid hair dryer voice.
Also a thing they didn’t say about Claustrophobic Delusion is that for Captain Cosmic, the threat of falling off the bridge into empty space wouldn’t be very disturbing, because he flies around in space all the time, his fear of not having ground under him would have been overcome within days of him starting to adventure around the galaxy. What would be less familiar to him is the idea of NOT having infinite freedom of movement in all of a trio of 360 degree rings around all his axes. He’s not in danger of falling off that bridge, he’s confined to that bridge, which would indeed seem claustrophobic by comparison.
I then proceed to do some yelling at my podcast device screen about the rather awkward and vague description of the Nexus of the Void they do, when it’s right there how they can describe properly…they even mention Insula Primalis! The void is like LAVA. Lava is melted stone; Void is melted reality. It is the underlying elements of reality, melted and jumbled together like liquid molecules of a normally solid substance; that explains why it’s dangerous, it explains why it shifts biomes around itself, it even explains why there are dangerous creatures in it (Ruin is essentially an Extremophile, only instead just being like a bacterium adapted to extreme heat, it’s a Xenomorph-style ultimate survivor which thrives on the primal unmaking power of the Void).
By contrast to Void being melted reality, which can solidify into musical magic the way lava solidifies into obsidian (I almost wrote ObsidAeon), I would say the Realm of Discord is more like shattered reality; instead of bubbles of a recognizable biome oozing together and blending at the edges, Discord is more like complete or incomplete pieces of reality which are still solid, but don’t fit together like they should, and grind against each other and have sharp edges.
My commentary on Zhu Long is mostly best kept to myself, but I will say that one easy explanation for why he’s ambiguously Japanese or Chinese or Tibetan is that he’s from like twenty thousand years ago, and those were not distinct cultures at the time, or at least we can say that’s true because there isn’t a surviving historical record to claim otherwise. In real life, katanas and shurikens and ninjutsu in general were all invented by actual Japanese people in the 1400s or whatever, but who knows, in the pages of Sentinel Comics, one of Zhu Long’s henchmen went to Japan in a black ninja suit with a katana and some shurikens, tried to stab a daimyo and was caught by his yojimbo, and the daimyo looked at this stealthy stabby person’s kit and went, “say this is a good idea” and that’s where Japan started having those things. It’s a good enough answer for comic books.