Why is Matriarch Tachyon's nemisis

I just recently bought the enhanced edition core, unfortuantely the expansions are too expensive for me at the moment, and I've spent the last few days with my eyes either glued to these forums, catching up, or playing. During this time I noticed a few things in the nemisis section that made little sense to me, possibly due to my lack of expansions to explain them; however, Tachyon and the Matriarch is driving me nuts.

I've looked at all the bio information I have access to (the website and the enhanced bio pages mostly) but I can't find a good story reason for these two to be nemisises... (by the way does anyone actually know the plural for nemisis?)

Could someone please explain why these two hate each other on a similiar level to Tempest and Voss or Legacy and Blade?

Well lets see. The main reason is that Tachyon and Matriarch are both cousins. Tachyon also being the cousin that is refered to in Matriarch's bio. So essentially Matriarch is just really envious of the attention Tachyon recieves and just angry at the fact that people wish she would be more like her cousin, a successful scientist that is also saving the world. That's really all I can think of putting in on it at this time.

The plural of nemesis is nemeses.

The Matriarch/Tachyon nemesis relationship is hinted at in The Matriarch's bio on the website:

Tired of hearing about “how a young lady should behave” and “you should behave more like your very successful cousin”, she rebelled.

The very successful cousin is Tachyon.

There might be a more concrete or explicit link between the two around the place somewhere. I'd check the Rook City Kickstarter page first.

I've always kinda wondered that myself.

Plural of nemesis: nemeses, or at least thats what Merriam-Webster says.

As far as why they'e nemeses, I've always been a bit unclear, but for some reason a seventeen year old girl got it into her head to be jealous of her 38 year old cousin.  Blame the matriarchs parents I guess.

And I would say their relationship is more complicated than hate, especially on Tachyons end, they're family after all and The Matriarch is being a stupid kid, with super powers...

The real villains are The Matriarch's parents.  Who compares their kid who isn't even out of high school to her 38 year-old, cancer-curing, fuel-revolutionizing, superhero-scientist cousin?

On the level of Voss and Blade's relationships with Tempest and Legacy?  I doubt it.  It seems to be nothing more than the scorn of a 17 year-old girl for someone who has her life together.

Okay, I had no idea they were cousins, would have never guessed that was Tachyon they were referring to. So Tachyon probably is trying to help out her misguided and very angry cousin... and the Matriarch is still an angsty teen with superpowers... well, at least it's better than no reason :P

Thanks for the quick responses everyone

And remember we are talking about a comic book, not "real characters" : a "simple" family problem, like an unexpectedly super powered teenager trying to prove her worth by defeating her super heroic cousin, can be the beggining of an unending feud, with the Matriarch always trying, again and again, from comic to comic, to finally get rid of this cousin that keeps putting her down. While Tachyon doesn't know if she should put her in the Block, slap her, or hug her.

Especially because the Matriarch, angsty as she is, is very powerful- if she ever puts her mind to it, in the comics, she could become one of the most dangerous would-be Master of the World with her terrifying armies of birds obeying her every thought and desire... Seeing how "dark" all villains/story lines in Rook City are, I think her stories are probably more horrifying than what we expect, and the fictional "reader" far more impressed by her villainy than we are. After all, she is inspired by a movie where birds kill, maim, and destroy whole villages.

She reminds me of one of the stories in the Grey Mouser/Fafhrd cycle, where a bird priestess used her control of birds to terrorize Lankhmar, and women, fearing to be disfigured,put cages of their head to protect their faces and jewelry.

Finally - the game reflects the "comics", and she is a difficulty 4 villain, as dangerous as the Chairman and his organization. I take this as a clue that she must be a terrifying villain in the comics. The card "Carrion Field " may very well be the results of her actions...

Edit : I just had this strange idea - what if, after Vengeance, there was another "villain team" expansion about the mysterious Undead Poets Society ?

Another strange idea : you know who would be a great "guest writer" for a Matriarch mini-serie ? Neil Gaiman !

I do find it rather strange that Mister Fixer and Expatriette are often ranked lowest on the power scale by many players, but The Organization and The Matriarch are two of the hardest decks in the game.  Guess those two just have their work cut out for them in cleaning up Rook City.  It's interesting that a Big Business Ra's Al Ghul fellow and an angsty teenager are two of the biggest threats to the whole Multiverse.

I think their difficulty is more a measurement of how unstoppable they are, than how dangerous to the world. The Chairman probably has a long term plan including world domination, but is, for now, just controlling Rook City and "perfecting" himself - but he is so incredibly efficient in his planning that heroes can't stop him. Baron Blade and his lunar attraction beam is a threat of greater magnitude, but easier to defeat...

The Matriarch seems to have limited ambitions - for now. But the power of the Mask makes her some kind of Goddess of Birds, with enough power to wipe out whole hero teams. If she ever "grows-up" and begins to use her powers for a greater scale plan, humanity will know fear.

I wonder how much impact these two have on "history" in the comics - could it be that the Matriarch and her Mask were partly responsible for the destruction of humanity, leading to the "Chrono-Ranger" future ?

I suppose I just don't really understand why they are any more unstoppable than a self-proclaimed Demon, an alien warlord that has turned entire planets into genetically-enhanced, brainwashed super-soldiers, or a team of nine actual gods.

The reason can probably be found in the "tone" of the comics they appear in : Rook City is a darker part of the multiverse line, set in the gritty "dark age" of the publication. Villains are darker, stronger, more ruthless - even if they should be less powerful than most other big villains of the line. In stories of this "age", heroes suffer a lot more at the hand of the ennemy than in other ages. People die. Heroes lose or fail,are wounded, sometime broken. Sometime they die - for good.

Voss is far more powerful than the Organization - but he is more of a "silver age" villain, often defeated, rarely winning... Like Galactus in the Marvelverse, a being so powerful that you wonder how the Four have been able to keep him at bay for so long. A villain meant to be a "faire-valoir" (foil ? a character used to make another look good) for the heroes - while in the "dark age" of comics, heroes often become the foil for the villain...

I think they are the most difficult villains not because of their sheer power, but because the fictional "writers" of the comics they appeared in wrote them as unstoppable frightening villains, while the other villains were "just" your typical "meant to be defeated somehow even if you wonder how it was possible" powerful super-villains.

We would probably have better results discussing everything in the multiverse from a literary point of view than from a simulationist one !

I think the problem is that Matriarch is Tachyon's rival. Tachyon herself is pretty cheerful and lighthearted, and even though there could be some interesting contrast between her and the Matriarch, I just don't see Tachyon being the subject of dark, gritty, realistic comics. That kind of tone works great for characters like Wraith and Fixer, but for Tachyon, it seems a little out of place. It would be kind of like if the Joker and Flash were nemeses.

I think Unity is cheerful and lighthearted. Tachyon? Not so sure.

Where has Tachyon not been lighthearted in any of the published material?  All I can think of is NPH quotes and her constant smile and puns in the FF Annual.

Also, how is Voss silver age?  The flavor text and artwork on the Gene-Bound Shock Infantry is some of the darkest stuff in the published material next to many of Spite's Victim cards.  Applying the argument consistently that Voss is a silver age character, that would mean Tempest is a silver age character.  Tempest's story, from a literary standpoint, is completely tragic and painful.  Voss destroys Tempest's planet, brainwashes and genetically modifies the strongest of his people and kills the rest, leaves him a refugee on a strange planet, and all this forces Tempest to take up arms after his pascifist culture has been destroyed.  That is dark.

The Matriarch, meanwhile, has formed a poetry circle who has a parody name from a Robin Williams flick, has a pun name (Corvus, from the Corvidae family that all the birds in her deck hail from), was born "next to the mall," and has an animal theme.  That screams silver age to me.  The character, from what I can tell, is a joke.  I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just saying that the tone I've seen throughout all of her story has been humorous and tongue-in-cheek from what the creators have presented us with.

Voss and Tempest are very similar to Galactica and Silver Surfer right? Very similar stories. And very much Silver Age comic storylines

Its not a perfect representation, but even Silver Age villains and heroes had tragic pasts and difficult things happen to them. But the heroes always won. And always won against impossible odds. Thats more what i think Sound was getting at. Silver Age heroes werent perfect they often had gand tragedies that pushed them into heroism or gave them motiviation.  Spiderman (not any of the new stuff, the older stuff) can be considered a Silver age hero, and his backstory is pretty tragic. Hell superman lost his entire planet and people. Thats tragic.

Yes, lynkfox, that's what I meant :)

I think the big difference between the "dark age" (or Dork Age, to use the TVTrope designation) and the other ages was who is most often "winning" and how.

Maybe I should not talk about "ages", but just about "sub-genres" : Rook City villains and heroes seem more part of the "urban crime stories" sub-genre of comics, the "Mistery Comics" line of Multiverse publications Wraith appeared in. The stories work on different rules (tropes) and, especially, the villains are not "cosmic level" powerful, but at the same time worst for the heroes. That's like the Joker : he has no cosmic power and, in fact, no power at all, his plans stay at a "city" level, but he is Batman's most feared ennemy.

@Nielzabub

I think you are right : the styles of Tachyon and her cousin, from what we now, seem to clash, they don't feel as a "natural" pairing. Even if, the more I think about them, the more it seems they have a lot in common and work as deformed, mirrored images quite well...

We probably will learn more about these two someday - it feels like we are lacking something, just like we lacked some information about the Plague-Rat/ChronoRanger relationship.

Oh, Reckless, by the way - I agree with you about Voss. He is not my favorite villain, but I think he is the most really terrifying one - you can hardly do worse than a genocidal geneticist controlling a whole galaxy.

Honestly, it seems very likely to me that The Matriarch was supposed to be Wraith's nemesis.

A Rook City expansion without a foe for the main Rook City hero is odd.  A six-year age gap between people living in the same city would be much more plausible for a pair of cousins than a 21-year gap between people with no apparent correlation.  And, of course, one is angsty in the face of a easy life, while the other projects a bubbly persona despite personal tragedy.  They're a great fit.

However, canon is that she's Tachyon's foe instead.  Sure, crazy things happen in comics (see: Wonder Woman, a clay statue animated by Greek magic, often put opposite a vapid socialite who got mutated into a thundercat), so this might have exactly the kind of "it makes sense in context" answers which are so hard to convey in card games, but lacking those, my group and l had been assuming that Matriarch was Tachyon's adopted daughter, until we decided to switch her over to Wraith as a house rule.

Spite is Wraiths Nemisis, and was in the Rook City Expansion. (expatriatte and Cit Dawn, Mr Fixer and The Chairman, and Tachyon and Matriarch)

Ah, right you are.  I always forget that, since once again, there's no clear connection between them, short of him being a bad dude (in her town, but still).

The reason Spite has to be her nemesis is because of what made the Wraith start fighting crime: violence causing death. There's a reason (that I now understand) why there isn't much information on Jack Donovan before he was Spite: he's supposed to have always been a killer. Hell, Jack Donovan was a murderer, and that's all the information we're given on him. Basically, Spite is supposed to be unambiguously evil; he's a murderer, always has been, and always will be. So it makes sense for Wraith (who I'm sure has gotten the info to know that Donovan was always a murderer) to want to stop this guy so badly, since he is so evil. You could call him the "Avatar of Murder"--he literally has to kill to keep living, and does so with extreme prejudice. If I was Wraith, this guy would definitely be at the top of my list. He would be the ultimate target.

I think Spite would be on the top of most people's holy crap this guy needs to be in prison and off the streets list.

And at the top of quite a few "that man just stole my child and is going to eat her soul, please for the love of God stop him" lists.

oh... crap i can't recall the card (it might be a playtesting card which isnt helping either) but i -remember- artwork that seemed to indicate Spite killed Wraith's parents.

next time I'm at smafdi's and can look at the cards Ill go searching.

That'd be a neat trick, given that Wraith's parents are alive.

But, sure.  Spite is bad news, and Wraith has somewhat more reason to want to take him down than the other heroes, he's not a flat-out nonsensical nemesis like Matriarch.  It just feels a little impersonal to me, whch s why  sometmes forget about it.

And, hey, at it's not like he's a smaller version of a creature she's already killed five house-sized versions of in her backstory or something, so the story of Young Batman versus B For Banedetta sounds quite dramatic and cool.  Spite is my favorite of the Rook City villains, and I don't have any real issues with him Nemesis being Wraith, it just seems like it would have been easy to justify it being someone else, had they wanted.

The funniest thing about the Matriarch is how >G managed, by a combination of gameplay choices and short background info, to convey her "psychological drama" in the game and up to this very thread !

She became a ruthless evil doer because no one took her seriously. And in the game, even if she routinely vanquishes heroes again and again, players consider her as a teenager with a bad poetry inclination and not as an horrifying Queen of Birds feeding her feathered hordes with the roting corpses of her victims :)

I like how the way she is seen by many players reflects the way she was continuously dismissed by her family as a never-good-enough girl. I am beginning to wonder if (read : I begin to be sure that) it was planned by Christopher all along :D

Even if it wasn't, I'm sure Christopher will claim that to be so now.

whistles innocently

More often than not our group manages to defeat her.  The process, however, is extensive, tedious, and there never seems to be a choice that is terribly "fun."

There is an environment that makes her an absolute blast in Shattered Timelines, however.  Look forward to it.

Yeah, I like her as a character/story element, but she is not very fun to play against. I think it is in part because, like the Chairman, you know when you fight her that you will probably see all her cards, while with other villains, you never exactly know what will happen. Baron Blade is often weak, but has the advantage of playing differently each time.

I think that Citizen Sun strikes a great balance - she's an awesome character, is very challenging to face, and is both consistent enough to feel like you some idea what to plan for while skewing in different ways based on what Citizens come out in a given game.

Citizen Dawn totally kicked our arses once when two of her starting citizens were Sweat and Tears - we lost half our starting hands before we even had a chance to have a turn, and while we did manage to take them down, she ended up with two "Return with the Dawn" cards in play, so every time we killed anyone they just came back the next turn, and we didn't have/couldn't get hold of (can't remember who we were playing with) any Ongoing deetruction in order to deal with them :P. I'm pretty sure she played at least one Devastating Aurora which didn't exactly help either.

One of my proudest games was when Citizen Dawn started with Blood, Sweat, and Tears in play, and she played Blinding Blast her first turn.  The heroes started with 0 cards, but were able to pull out of it with a couple turns of Ra and Haka beating up on Tears.  I don't remember any other details except that we won a very hard-fought game.

Fought against Dawn last night - Legacy, the Adept, Bunker, and Wraith. We were going quite well - Adept had all but one of his instruments out and loads of songs, Legacy had all the important buffs, Bunker had half his deck stacked under the Omni-Cannon, and Wraith had a fair bit in play but so far no Eyepiece which meant every turn was a risk. Dawn was down to around 30hp. And then...an Aurora. BOOM. Bye bye all our stuff. A couple of turns later, the other one came out. We never fully recovered from it and a couple of Healing Lights later Dawn was back up to 50-60hp and first Legacy, then the Wraith, and then in the final turn Bunker and the Adept all went down. ARSE :P.

And yes, all three Infra-Red Eyepieces were in the bottom six or so cards of Wraith's deck, as were her remaining two Impromptu Inventions - one of the latter had come out but if I remember rightly she didn't get a chance to play it :P.

Anyone notice that the Matriarch / Tachyon play more cards than any other villain / hero? Just noticed that.

My group and I noticed that the first time we played her. It's really the only aspect of their rivalry I find interesting.

It's an ongoing theme throughout the game that heroes and their nemeses have similar deck play styles and/or function as counterparts to each other. Think of Tempest and Voss–Voss has a lot of targets, and Tempest has a lot of cards that do damage to a lot of targets.

I never really noticed too many parallels between Mr. Fixer and The Organization.  Thoughts?

"He's one man vs the world, and the organization represents that world"

I was thinking about this one earlier. The Chairman has lots of people, or "tools" to do his work, and each of them do different things. Some cause soak, some increase damage, some hit multiple targets while others only hit one, and so on. He also has a few ways to bring bad stuff out of the trash. Meanwhile Mr Fixer has effects that can get past soak, give himself soak, boost his damage, hit everything or just one target, and so on. He also has a way to let everyone take stuff out of their trash ;).

someone i was introducing the game to wanted to see the nemesis breakdown.  is there already a chart available (perhaps heros on one axis and villains on another, with a mark on the chart whenever there is a nemesis?)?

I can make one easily enough but just asking if it already exists to save myself the effort.

I believe there is one in the middle of the EE rulebook where they compare the villains difficulty levels

lowendz113 compiled a list right here on the forums, and if you prefer fancy graphics, there's always the "villain comparisons" section of this file (courtesy of Spiff, though I assume that Greater Than Games put it out at some point).

Honestly, while I have never actually played Iron Legacy (still waiting for ST), I have always seen him as Tachyon's real nemesis. Sure, Tachyon is really, really good at dealing with the Matriarch, but she's just dealing with her annoying cousin, there isn't any real drama between them.

Now Iron Legacy, that's a whole different story. Before she met Legacy, Tachyon was just Dr. Meredith Stinson, a brilliant scientist who happened to have super-speed. He was the one who recruited her to the Freedom Four, the one who showed her what it means to be a superhero. We may laugh at how cheesy Legacy seems, but he is so genuine it is hard not to find him inspiring, and his cards reflect the way he inspires the other sentinels, his charisma is equally as powerful as his real superpowers.

And now, in a horrible, grim future, the man who inspired her, taught her to be a hero, has now become everything he inspired her to fight against, a brutal tyrant, a killer. Surely at one point she could have spoken up, but was afraid to, she likely respected this man so much. But eventually she had to do something, and knew that he had to be stopped as painful as it might be, and so brought together a team of her bloodied comrades to strike down the man who once filled all of them with hope. Maybe I'm projecting too much, but that is some HEAVY drama right there. It's interactions like this that make me wish we could actually see the characters in battle, see them look each other in the eyes.

Well said, Ian. That makes sense to me. The IR vs. F6 fight takes the prize as the most intense fight ever in the Multiverse (for now), esspecially since literally everyone is nemeses with the villain. I think it might be even more intense than the Vengeance battle.

And seriously, TL Tachyon must really hate IR. Considering he killed Bunker, who was most likely a good friend of Tachyon's, and that Unity is dead, who may have been presumably killed by IR as well. Especially for Unity, because we've seen that she and Tachyon were good friends, despite their little bickering. IR and TL Tachyon have a serious score to settle.

I wonder which nemesis pair has the most animosity between them. IR and TLT are certainly up there. The other pair that comes to mind would be Fanatic and Apostate, though it seems more like Fanatic has far more burning hate for Apostate than he has for her.

It seems like a similar situation for IR and TLT as well. Tachyon might have some burning hate against Legacy, but Legacy probably isn't as spiteful against her. He probably wishes she wasn't trying to stop him and would help him.

The way I see it, he actually probably does hate her, for mostly the same reason she hates him: from his perspective, she is a traitor. After all they had been through, she dares to stand in his way as he does what is needed to protect the world? Then she's just as bad as any other villain. Think about it from his point of view: Young Legacy was training with the Freedom Five, and was very close to all of them. Tachyon was probably devastated by her death. So from Iron Legacy's perspective, he is probably disgusted that Tachyon can't understand why he's doing this. She knew Pauline, she knows what Baron Blade did to her, how can she try stop Legacy from ridding the world of monsters like him? They both see themselves as doing the right thing and their opponent as a blind, misguided fool.

Not to derail this topic too much or pick on you Evan, but I have seen more than a couple of threads using the IR acronym, which I always associated with Infernal Relics, for Iron Legacy. Is there another subtitle or name for him that makes this so? I thought he'd just be Il but seeing it so many threads makes me think there's a part of the story I'm missing. 

"Friends are merely weaknessess waiting to be exploited" --Legacy, The Fall of Legacy One-Shot

True, I think of that too every time I type IR. Okay, from now on, I'll just write out Iron Legacy's full name. It'll just look nicer and cause less confusion. Hopefully others will too.

what are we not using IL? What is that being used by?

You could always call him Fe, that being the elemental symbol for iron ;).

I propose the nickname Angry Paul.  Just look at him.  He's so angry!

Because it's the abbreviation for both Iron Legacy and Infernal Relics, so it's to avoid confusion.

And Ameena: very clever. I love it. 

That's where I get confused though. Wouldn't Infernal Relics = IR and Iron Legacy = IL?

I have seen Iron Legacy referred to as IR in a few threads though...

Yeah, "IR" for Iron Legacy doesn't make any sense to me.  No one calls Absolute Zero "AB".

Maybe we need to make a list of frequently used initials or abbreviated names for things...this could help new members of the forum, and some of us who've been around :)

EE, RC, IR, ST are easy and I'd think take priority over a character reference.  Vengeance? I'm not sure...just V? VG?

Some characters its easier to say their name then do initials...

Legacy, Wraith, Visionary, Haka...all the single name people.

AZ, AA, etc are easier with initials.

If we do it ought to get figured out somewhere then posted as a fresh first post of a thread with the final for ease of finding it.

Absolute Zero = Abz, AZ

Argent Adept = Argent, AA

Chrono-Ranger = Chrono

Expatriette = Ex

Mr. Fixer = Fixer

Omnitron-X = Omni-X, O-X

Akash'Bhuta = Akash, AB

Baron Blade = Baron, Blade, BB

Citizen Dawn = Dawn

GloomWeaver = Gloomy

Grand Warlord Voss = Voss

Iron Legacy = Iron Legs, IL

La Capitan = Capitan

Miss Information = The Miss, MI

Omnitron = Omni

Cosmic Omnitron = Cosmitron

Plague Rat = Rat, PR

Final Wasteland = Wasteland, FW

Insula Primalis = Primal, IP

Realm of Discord = Discord

Ruins of Atlantis = Ruins, Atlantis

Silver Gulch 1883 = Gulch, SG

Time Cataclysm = Cata, TC

The Tomb of Anubis = Tomb, TA

Wagner Mars Base = Mars

That's what I tend to shorten things as with either speaking or typing. Just throwing them out there. I guess I could of put promo heroes, but those I don't tend to abbreviate. Wrath Abz, Engine Bunker, Redeem Fanatic, Eternal haka, Young Legacy, Horus Ra, Team Tachyon, Sacrifce Tempest, Golem Unity, Dark Visionary, RC Wraith, Price Wraith.

I still don't how "IR" came to reference Iron Legacy.  Was it just a typo?

I also shorten his name to AA, I love the irony that he's a bartender in civilian life.

I believe that IR and IL exclusively refer to Infernal Relics and Iron Legacy, respectively.  I'm assuming that the reversal with either was a typo.

I didn't notice it until you brought it up in the google+ the other day. I still wanna know if it was intended or not. Maybe one of these days i'll ask him if I remember.

...Oh geez. Oh boy.

Spiff is right. IR for Iron Legacy was a typo. I'm just so used to typing IR that I started doing it automatically when I meant IL.

I am so very, very stupid. IR for Infernal Relics. IL for Iron Legacy.

I'm such a fool. I'm just gonna stop talking now and hope that everyone forgets about how dumb I just was.

hehe i was wondering why allt his talk was about and I had no idea we were using IR for legacy. IL ive seen a bunch but IR???

Yeah... All just a mistake. Iron Legacy is NOT IR. That's dumb. And so am I.

I wouldn't say dumb, just acronymically challenged!

And so, this thread has come full circle: The Matriarch is Tachyon's nemesis because she is terrible with acronyms.  When Tachyon called her "TM," The Matriarch thought that Tachyon was calling her signature style - full of hand-sewn genuine leather accessories and topped off with an expensive antique mask - was owned by the corporate complex dominating modern American life, and hates Tachyon most off all because "the System cannot own me, man."

Tachyon responded by trying to explain that any name made more sense than repeatedly calling a teenage girl "elder mother," but this also fell on deaf ears.

Ironic

P.S. Also, I am now choosing to assume that Absolute Zero calls Iron Legacy "IR" for "Idiot Revere."  Nothing shall dissuade me!