Bounties

Two of Chrono Ranger's Bounties show targets we haven't seen yet.  Dead Or Alive looks like an evil Wild West-themed character, reinforced by its flavor text - that's fun enough.  I was surprised not to see him on the Paradoja Magnifica - is he in the Silver Gulch deck, maybe?

The other one, though, is much more interesting.  The Whole Gang is a super 80's evil team of Ghost Rider wannabes... lead by a woman in a chair.  It's hard to tell without any color, so this may just be me, but doesn't she look suspiciously like Miss Information?

Ironic

P.S. As an aside, am I the only one who thinks Con is being kinda arbitrary, saying that Ambuscade needs to die at all costs?  Why not Spite?

Spite's in a different card, isn't he? Kill on Sight, I think? Actually, is that Ambuscade and I was getting confused because their outlines look similar...

Ambuscade is Kill On Sight, Spite is not in evidence, I think.

If KOS is Spite, then I take back all the bad things I said about Con.  Well, except the one where Eternal Haka would be cooler in that role.

Ironic

I think Ambuscade was chosen for the fact that he has a habit of going invisible. Thus it will make him harder to track down. Plus the fact that Ambuscade is hunting people, mostly just heroes, and not carry about civilians in the cross fire, I think he is up there on the terms of evilness. He's doing it for sport, that to me is actually more evil than being a uncontrollable drug-wrecked monster.

Spite does appear on another card, not from a Bounty though. He appears in The Block, under Defensive Displacement!

The guy appearing on Dead or Alive looks to be the same guy on Terrible Tech-Strike, and is not currently found in Silver-Gulch. I am curious as to what his role is and what he may do in the near future.

The Whole Gang is the one I have been the most curious about and am looking foward to seeing what this group is and what kind of powers the possess. Sometimes I wish they would only use art from characters already established rather than torture me so. Then again this game might not be nearly as fun without all this speculation.

Con is totally up to something.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who got immediately suspicious when he was all, "hey Chrono, over here.  I'm totally going to save you and help you for no reason."  And the name.  "Con".  It's very obviously short for something or an acronym for something so that when we finally get the Big Reveal, we're all going to go, "Oh snap, that dude was Con all along!"

So I say Con is totally working his own angle with the bounties.  We're going to find out he's been tricking Chrono into taking out the super-villain competition to clear the way for whoever Con actually turns out to be.  Mark my words.

I'm telling you, it's a set-up.

I never thought of Con as a set-up before, but it is possible. After all, the guy on the taken alive card looks suspiciously like Blade, if anyone needed to die before doing something irrevocable it'd be him (Iron Legacy). Con might be using Chrono-Ranger to ensure his own creation, yet still give him enough targets that are real to throw off the scent.

As for Ambuscade, he's hunting the heroes and, perhaps, is one of those guys who end up with a long villain career. Spite might not be as important because he get's set in the Block after a year or two and never really causes devastation on the long-term scale like AMbuscade does.

The Whole Gang is the one I'm most in, wild specualtion ahoy

Taken Alive is Citizen Truth, I'm quite certain.

It's funny.  Ambuscade is a pastiche of Kraven The Hunter, of all people - a supervillain who has repeatedly gained more powers as a reaction to getting no respect, and who generally keeps right on getting none* - but Con is gunning for him, he takes down Tachyon in the future, and he enigmatically opts for death before co-operation with heroes.  Pretty sinister, for someone who felt so minor.  Also odd: I do not believe we've ever seen him interact with Haka.

As for Con's sinister agenda... I would really like to believe that (it was my first thought when I read the Ranger's bio, too), but SotM has yet to feature any kind of false leads towards the real audience, only the metafictional "readers".  Maybe this will change, but it would (by definition) be a surprise.  But, hey, it'd be a neat twist, and at least give some reason why it's Con instead of Eternal Haka, so I hope I am wrong this time.

Ironic

* Grim Hunt is awful, and I shall not dignify it further.

We have seen Haka and Ambuscade interact with the Haka of Shielding and one of Ambuscade's trap cards. Haka himself has no personal grudge against Ambuscade, it's Ambuscade who keeps hunting him. I could see Haka feeling pity for the man who knows nothing about life then how to hunt.

It's not a trap card, it's the Personal Cloaking Device - it has the Haka of Shielding image from Ambuscade's point of view, right before he unleashes that fiery blast.

On the subject of Con, "Concordant Harmony" sounds a bit like the kind of name given to the Adept's songs. Maybe there's something there? I mean, Con is an ordered machine, sending Jim out to keep order by destroying critters in the past so they can't create the chaotic world of Con's present. And the Adept, in his bio, is decribed basically as the force of order (presumably not the extreme version as that's just as bad as extreme chaos) against the chaos of Akash'Bhuta. So maybe Con is the Adept? Or something? Um, dunno how or why, though. First thing I thought when I read Chrono Ranger's backstory was "ooh maybe Con is Omnitron", seeing how it's a sentient computer-machine thingy...but yeah, I'm not entirely sure Con is a "good guy".

I assume no one is a "good guy". You either die a hero or you live long enough to enslave the world in your grief-stricken quest for iron-fisted justice.

You either die a hero or you live long enough to enslave the world in your grief-stricken quest for iron-fisted justice.

Quote of the week. A++, would shout "YES" at my screen again.

I love these discussions.

But you've all met Con before! Er... I mean...

*smoke bombs*

TOLD you!

Wait, is Con... an Omnitron?

Edit: I guess I'm not the first one to say this. Whoops! I guess that's why they teach reading comprehension in school... and reading. 

If he is, I called it before you about three posts ago ;).

Of course!  Con was Wraith all along!

We really need to take away his smoke bombs. Now I'm really curious to see what happens.

Wikied :D

Might make a lot of sense if we look at the definition of the word con:

con ⁴   (kn) Slang

Technically, it's not confirmed that Con's a bad guy - just suspected.  It is confirmed that we have "met Con before".

Omnitron seems unlikely, since Shattered Timelines already has an Omnitron.  Con is an AI, or at least a being who will have access to vast technological power in the future.  And Con is very cheerful and casual.  Could Con be Golem Unity?  It talks like Unity, it's a robot, "Unity" and "Concordant" are close in meaning, and Golem Unity's incap side doesn't really make it clear what's happening, or how bad it will be long-term.

Of course, we also don't know what Golem Unity's game is, aside from thinking itself to be the real thing (at first).  So even if I'm right, it doesn't answer the good or bad question.

Ironic

It would also mean that we don't have Freedom Six bios for a reason... Hmmm.

*giggles that blue got this on the wiki before i could*

YAY! all of you update the wiki like that yay!

I do like the idea of Con being the extreme force of Order, kind of the opposite of Akash'bhuta, and as mentioned by someone else that can be just as destructive as an extreme force of Chaos... but that doesn't really match up with Christopher's enigmatic clue  of having seen Con before... 

Seconded!

Ooh! I really like the idea of Unity downloading her personality into something robotic, and as it slowly degrades over time, the playful nature stays intact, and she helps out the world, and Jim, as CON. That's just swell! The world needs more Unity!

I imagine what you would see is a slender, bearded and long-haired gentleman looking rather silly.

Yes, the personality really does seem to fit between CON and Unity. And ever since I first read CON's dialog I imagined it's voice being female. The uniqueness of Chrono's guns(Which I take were designed by CON) look like they have the same 'feel' as some of Unity's work, at least to me. And the theory of Unity's brain being transfered to G-Unity but then somehow becoming CON afterwards just fits too well for me to think otherwise at this moment without more information.

Thanks for bringing that up, as I was recently thinking the exact same thing about Chrono's new arm. CON asks Chrono what color he wanted his new arm in. That is quite frankly all the evidence I needed to link CON and Unity. What that connection is and how it happens though is anyones guess though.

Here is what I find interesting. Chronos new arm. Its an arm. Its a bow. It certainly seems like it can change and morph on a whim. The purple lightning on his compound bow could possibly be consistant with what we see in the art for Brain Storm. CON itself is a fully sentient mechanical building that has seemingly built multiple versions of itself (it mentions that it is on version 4). Everything about CON and Chronos arm point to clear signs of Technopathy.

It is possible that her Technopathy was so strong that after the original Unity dies that her powers manafest a sentience of its very own, eventually coming to terms thats its is a being of its own and no longer Unity. For this interpretation, consider Golem Unity = CON version 1.

And I brought this up before, but the implication of CON being fully sentient raises questions and possible other connections to the cosmic force that rebuilt and created Cosmic Omitron. If it was interested in Omitrons sentience, would Unitys powers peak a similar interest?

I don't know if the same 'Intelligence' that brought Omnitron back could really be responsible for CON if we're following the Unity theory. G-Unity apparently has some form of sentience already, so I don't see why it would need outside assistance in this aspect when it switches over to CON.

I don't think Foote was suggesting that the Intelligence was responsible for G-Unity or Con, just that it would be interested by a second sentient machine as it was by the first...

If its interesting in Omnitron that Omni created itself, then GolConUnity which (according to this theory) was just an accidental side-effect of a metahuman's powers could not be interesting in the same way, although it might be interesting in different ways.

Rereading Chrono-Ranger's bio, I am struck by a few things about Con. First of all, Con has a time-machine. I think it is fairly safe to assume that Con is the one who opened the portal to Jim's timeline in the first place, and that Con is the one who specifically wanted Jim to come to the Final Wasteland. I draw this from the seemingly innocuous line that Con speaks upon first seeing Jim: "Boy and I glad to see you." Now, one can interpret that as Con saying "boy am I glad to see someone who isn't a monster", but that's not what I took away from it. I think that Con a) was expecting Jim, and b) knew Jim in the past. This also lends credence to the idea that Unity eventually becomes Con, since she would have met Jim in the past.

On the other hand, I am inclined to believe that Con has plans of his/her/it's own. For one thing, how did Con survive this long? It seems most if not all technology has been destroy in the Final Wasteland, so what exactly is powering Con, how has Con been maintained? If Con could survive this long in such a hostile environment, why is Omnitron not still around in Final Wasteland?

Also, something about Con handing out bounties just doesn't feel right. Sure, the bounties it gives Jim are very bad people, but there are a lot of nasty people in many different timelines. Why these people, why this timeline? Clearly, Jim's efforts seem to be focused on the main timeline of Sentinels, and the villains that exist here and now. Why? Are these really the most dangerous and nasty villains that have ever existed and ever will? I doubt it... It seems too convenient that out of all the era's of history, Con just happened to choose modern times to send Jim to. I agree, Con is trying to make very specific alterations to the timeline, and for a purpose that has yet to be revealed.

Another thing, it is established that the monsters of Final Wasteland have been in hiding correct? Then why is Jim not being sent to eliminate them before they strike? The only one he's gone after is Plague Rat, everyone else depicted on the bounties doesn't seem to have much to do with the Final Wasteland timeline, at least not that we know of. I'm starting to doubt that Con really wants to prevent the creation of the Final Wasteland, or at very least, it knows more about how all this happened than it is letting on.

Maybe I'm completely barking up the wrong tree here, but this all just feels too convenient to me. At the moment, Con seems like a deus ex machina, and I know Sentinels is very well written, so >G clearly has more plans for Con. It's kind of frustrating that Jim doesn't stop to ask what Con actually is or how Con came to be.

The only real thing I can disagree with.

So, all of the urban legends you hear about the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot? The tales of creatures terrible and bizarre? No one has any proof, do they? That's because the Chrono-Ranger got to them first.

Ah, that makes sense. Though I am still a bit confused by how time-travel works in SotM. It seems to me that time travel makes an alternate timeline rather than changing the current one, so what exactly is Con trying to accomplish? Clearly Jim's efforts have not unmade the final wasteland, though he may have prevented it from coming to be in the current timeline... I guess my main question is Con's motivation for all of this. Oh well, I guess we'll find out.

The multiverse. Multiple (possibly countless) different universes (timelines) that run parallel to each other but all have minor differences.

Time travel does not create different timelines. They already exist. The issue is that time travel isn't an exact science. And with whatever is ultimately the cause of the time cataclysm (all of these timelines are no longer running parallel, crashing into each other and forming these random time holes) I'm sure it's near impossible to make an exact jump. 

Visionarys original timeline is actually the IronLegacy timeline (at least that's what's implied. We do not have any knowledge of a freedom 6 outside of its relation to Iron Legacy). 

Cons motives are curious. Could these specific in game targets play a more important role within the narrative then has been let on?

Consider expats deck. All the villains, regardless of who, have shiney red eyes. Ambuscade and Truth can be seen like this who also happen to be bounties. Are they secretly ushering in a greater evil?

I am pretty sure that the glowing eyes thing is just a Sentinels art convention.  It happens all the time, and is not always consistent within the same character.