Ep 60 of the Letters Page - Tempest (and others -- i.e., Prime Wardens)

I'm excited for this episode, but I'm even MORE excited to see how character creation works in the SCrpg video later on their twitch! :D

I gotta say, I feel like there was a missed opportunity with the Plant Verse letter.

One word: Olive-Aeon.

I like OblivAcorn though that could also be a horse version. 

I'm just glad Trevor chimed in on his birth year, because that would have had me wondering all day.

Don't believe them... it's just more lies!

"It's Jim Brooks" is about the funniest three words I've ever heard. XD Entirely based on context, anyway.

Jim Brooks as a Virtuoso with a harmonica is very definitely officially on my List of Funniest Sentinels-Related Mental Images now.

I also now have a burning need for art of the Xtreme Argent vs Ruin Void-powered electric guitar battle.

The whole Faith-Science-Magic thing did not occur to me before and is awesome now that they point it out.

And it sounds like Argent "leads" sort of like how I secretary: See what everyone else is doing for their thing and figure out a way to coordinate it and otherwise make it work better.

I maybe need to go back and listen again to double-check the details, but timing-wise does the "Death of Anthony Drake" thing happen to be the whole "Shu gets stabby while Argent is trying to break into the Ennead's domain" incident? It just seems like "he gets stabbed through the chest but somehow gets better anyway" thing gets explained pretty well by the whole "the editors realize they did a stupid" thing.

Also, yeesh editors, picking on my poor boy like that. Not cool.

Wait, who's 'Myriad'?  A heroic Proletariat?

Or... 'this portion of the podcast has been redacted'... Redacted?

Is Myriad the real name of [REDACTED]?  Surely not, right..?  That'd be out of alphabetical order... [REDACTED] has to come between Progeny and Sanction...

Maybe Myriad is their name before becoming a Scion and then call themselves "The Quorum"?

None of the Prime Wardens strike me as a science hero, so I had to think on it a little. Fanatic is faith, Captain Cosmic and Argent Adept are both magic (though maybe an Obliveon shard is considered sufficiently advanced technology), Haka is none/all. Must be Tempest and he was a scientist but it doesn't seem like science is his main deal or power source. Though I guess socially there could be that dynamic.

I'm glad to hear that Fanatic is not too preachy, as even though I'm religious I prefer to read comics for entertainment not to be preached at. And my initial impression was that I would not enjoy her comics even though she is one of my favorite heroes in the card game. That may still be the case for her solo book but I would probably love her in the Prime Wardens.

I'm also pleased to hear that they killed off a major hero only to bring them back, as I'm pretty sure if these were Marvel/DC characters they would have all "died" and come back by now.

I think it's definitely Tempest.  It's wierd, because normally you just see him and think "shoots lightening", but they did make a point of describing him as a scientist in his episode.

I think it's possible to write a character who is "preachy" without making the comic/story itself preachy.  But I don't think it's easy... it seems like most of the time the writers either use the character to preach at the audience, or else they don't fully grasp the subject being preached and therefore style the character after the first stereotype they come across.  Somewhere in between those two possibilities, I think there is some room for great story-telling.  (But since C&A are being realistic, a preachy Fanatic probably would've turned out just as good as the brief all religions version, so we can be glad that didn't happen.)

Just remember, "The only people who stay dead in comics are Bucky Barnes, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben."

Over on Reddit people seem to be rallying around thinking that Myriad is Tempest's kidlet.

Honestly I find it interesting insofar that up to this point in the Sentinel Comics backstory, every undone death has been someone coming back to life profoundly changed. So this seems to be the first time there's ever been something resembling a normal "comic book death" incident where there's just a straight up retcon or someone otherwise coming back to life with no consequence.

It makes me kinda suspicious. :P

(Also I find morbid bemusement about how everyone's IC reaction seems to not be any sort of actual grief but "Welp guess we just have to find someone else to do this job." Poor Anthony, sheesh...)

So I was reminded recently how there's someone on Tumblr who likes to joke about the fact that Argent Adept isn't fond of modern pop while conversely Tempest specifically loves modern pop.

Forget Fanatic being preachy, there's your true team-killing discord. :V

http://eddrawsandwrites.tumblr.com/post/171570599093

...Would a Jim Brooks Virtuoso be the Heliotrope Harmonicist?

As much as I normally love the color name "heliotrope", Jim does not strike me as the type of man to feel comfortable in bright pinkish purple. Unless this is a universe where he somehow is convinced to get fashion advice from Unity.

The Hazel Harmonicist, then?

...Hazel is a brown right

Yeah, it's a kind of greenish-brown, which I do agree could work well for Jim.

(Aside: Which is why I am eternally confused by Argent's bio claiming he has hazel eyes when even when they're not glowing they're pretty solidly green, versus Miss Info's claim to the same color eyes making more sense. But I digress.)

I like the Hazel Harmonicist.  (Also, I seem to remember that the "heliotrope" has already been claimed by those jazzy New Zealand virtuosos, the "Heliotrope Hakas", from one of the settings episodes).

Important question! How do you all pronounce "X-TREME?"

I had been going up into high pitch on the "TREME" and drawing it out like it's a hair metal guitar solo. But Christopher and Adam went down into a low monster truck register instead.

I pronounce it the same way, mainly because I grew up in the same era C&A did, and whole thing with "X-TREME" as a term pretty much came out of "extreme" sports and the related sports announcing in the 90s, where the announcers would say that everything was "X-TREME!" in that exact monster truck sort of voice.

Like I find it notable that the XTRemiverse doesn't seem to actually really specifically parody the "Dark Age of Comics" gritty grimdark edgy stuff that much, it instead just parodies how everything had to be over the top and crazy and super-macho in the 90s which matches the extreme sports origin side of things more closely instead.

Admittedly part of it too is that I'm primarily a folk music and oldies and 80s pop aficionado; not genres where wailing guitars show up terribly often. (Wailing violins and fiddles maybe...)

I think XPW Argent would definitely say XTreme your way!

So, if we missed the character creation video, how do we get a hold of that?

EDIT: Nvm, found it. Character creation goodness!

And normally, I say X-Treme as just a regular word with heavy emphasis on treme, but now I like going up for a electric guitar trill that comes down into a racecar rushing by sound.

Is it just me or did they heavily imply that Tempest already has at least one fully grown child on earth? Something along the lines of

1. They go into egg bearing phases when the species is in trouble.

2. When the arrived on earth the species was in trouble.

3. After birth they take about 10 years to reach maturity.

4. Tempest has been in comics a long time.

I'm guessing you haven't finished listening to the Prime Wardens episode yet?  They clarified this later in the episode.  He didn't start bearing an egg when they landed on Earth (for some reason), but he did when Plavu'Col was founded, and yeah, by the time the RPG starts he should have a fully mature offspring.

Now, they didn't say what's up with him in the Tactics timeline.  He's the last Maerynian there, so he should probably be bearing an egg even as things are coming to a head.  The universe will probably end before he lays it, though.

Regarding Tempest in the Mist timeline, I think it's a possible the other Maerynians may have left the planet since so many things were going south, compared to just being killed off.

Though usually I must admit things in the Tactics universe sucks balls most of the time, so I'm probably wrong.

Ir just occurred to me that the bio we have for Prime Wardens Fanatic (in the video game and the wiki) is confirmed to be incorrect--it refers to her sword already being broken when she joins up to fight Akash'Bhuta.

Also, I seem to recall that we were once given the order in which the Prime Wardens joined the team--I think we were given that when unlocking them in the video game--and Fanatic was last.  According to this podcast, Haka was last.

At this point I think a majority of the bios have some level of inaccuracy in them.

Granted some like Idealist's are clearly meant to be deliberate misdirection, but there's a not insignificant number that are just straight up wrong somehow.

And if I'm not mistaken, wasin't it said somewhere that Captain Cosmic was the first to join AA? By the sound of the episode I think he's tied with Tempest on being #3.

Excuse my dumb question, but I'm french so I didn't understand everytime during the letters page. During the list of the vilain's who participated to the fall of the Prime Wardens, I d'dnt catch the secondname at 34:11 (between Blood Comtess and Galactra). I understand something like "Amburg the Butcher" and it remain nothing to me. Could someone help a little lost stranger ?

Borr the Butcher.   He is seen on Flash Flood in Tempest’s deck

Thank you !