Might be, but... Who are war criminals? Grey Wardens? What would be their crime?
Ignition (MTG/Multicross, Planeswalker PC)
- Thread starter Alivaril
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I don't know that much about the setting, but don't some Grey Wardens become one to avoid execution? IIrc the process to become one is a fairly extensive change, and might be somewhat deadly (though I might be confusing it with Witchers on that last one).
In a number of kingdoms Grey Wardens are legally allowed to draft criminals into their ranks, yes. The criminal is released into their custody, and their criminal record up to that point is dismissed.
The joining ritual consists of drinking a magic potion that creates a mystical similarity between Wardens and darkspawn.
However this doesn't imply war criminals being a majority of darkspawn, and canon lore is suggestive that this is not the case at all.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
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- She/Her
1. Advent
2. I didn't know that bit was about the new plane anyway
3. The only things about XCOM 2 were a chant followed by a joke. I don't know why you put any effort at all into discrediting it
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
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Because some of us have difficulty discerning levels of seriousness on the Internet?
Very much so. Also, because I was genuinely confused.
That would seem strange, because this would be the same as, say, CIA sheltering their agents against Al-Qaeda. I mean yes, on a case by case basis, that could happen, and from general philosophical perspective the organization does provide protection, but the roles are different. X-COM is officially sanctioned. Advent is a terrorist organisation. Unless you lose the game, the government has more power than the terrorists.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
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- She/Her
You're thinking Exalt. Advent is the alien-backed world government in the second game, against which XCOM acts as a terrorist organization.
Yes, sorry about that.
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- A single human dimension
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So in the interests of getting this show back on the road (and appeasing my active muse), would y'all like me to OOC-post the plane preview (which is done) and then go with the vote assumption of not leaving to look at it? We've only gotten 3 votes so far. ^^;
Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
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I'm fine with that, and will vote
[X] Don't leave right now
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Oh, there are quite a few who are sentient. Quite sentient, in the case of Elites. So yeah, there's a reason the community calls Vahlen "War-Crimes-chan". And, in XCOM 2, your head of science is also a former ADVENT member, so he probably qualifies. Plus, there's the Reapers in War of the Chosen, who could definitely count. And, of course, at least some of the ordinance XCom uses is probably suspect, like the phosphorus grenades and rounds. Plus, cutting up the corpses of your foes for materials is probably some sorf of illegal?
And, if the new plane was Warhammer 40k, well...
Can't think of anything off the top of my head, and it really doesn't make sense for Jade to be giving a rundown on a previously available plane.
I certainly wouldn't mind the plane preview being posted. I'm kinda terrible at keeping my mouth shut with stuff like this. Well, more that I have to keep resisting impulses to drop hints than being bad at it, I think.
OOC Plane Preview (Temp Threadmark): XCOM 2
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My muse and I are unusually impatient, so I'll just post this and start the next update operating under the assumption Jade will be staying in Magnostadt. Voting is not locked and can be flipped to "leave." Either way, this is what Jade will see in place of Avatar when she next visits Eternity.
A world of White, and... honestly, it's a weird one. Aliens — and not of the human variety — seem to have conquered this Earth some few decades before, instituting a global government known as the ADVENT Coalition. Despite their rather dubious methods of initially asserting control, they actually seem to have been doing a pretty good job — mostly. The alien spiritual (and effective) leaders, the Elders, seem to be outright dead. The Elders are, of course, refusing to properly acknowledge this fact and are doing everything they can to prevent their proper passage onward. As expected, their continued efforts to cling to (un?)life have rewarded mixed results. Their mastery of soul magic may let them offload the damage of transfer onto the bodies they migrate into rather than doing further damage to their own souls, but dodging said damage leaves their vessels as withered, dying husks.
Unfortunately for the human race, these transfers mean taking human vessels. The Elders do, to their credit, seem to be working on a more permanent solution, but in the meantime, they basically require sacrifices of some two thousand humans every single week. Oh, they hide the disappearances under the guise of permanent military service with invasive adjustments, terrorist attacks, or "leaving the cities on relief missions," but you can see where their victims are actually going. The soldiers allegedly join the faceless masses of genetically modified soldiers and the volunteers are "killed by dissidents."
Fortunately for your state of mind, the Elders aren't operating unopposed. A rebel (or possibly terrorist if you believe ADVENT) group known as XCOM (Extraterrestrial Combat Unit) is doing their utmost to not only violently oppose the alien threat, but also learn from their technologies and mastery of soul magic. You can't tell if the Elders are leaving XCOM alive simply so they have high-profile scapegoats or if XCOM is genuinely competent enough to avoid destruction. Either way, XCOM honestly doesn't seem to be accomplishing all that much in the way of solid victories. Ones good for morale, sure, but they haven't done real damage since they lost the support of Earth's old governments two decades ago.
You think Mom might actually want you to visit this plane, albeit maybe without all your friends. You wouldn't have technological superiority there, only the results of a separate technological path. Although their path looks like one of the ones that ends in self-destruction, you can steal the stones from their road to improve your own.
However, it doesn't look as though you'll be able to just waltz into an ADVENT city and grab anything shiny. Identity scanners are as common as lightposts and obtaining ID requires, among other things, a brain implant. Or the implant might be the ID. It's hard to tell, honestly. It's a good thing much of the human race still lives outside ADVENT's cities; them, you'll be able to roam freely among. Well, mostly. Some rather unpleasant groups have formed in the absence of governments to stop them. XCOM does support order in some areas, but only in Europe and northern Africa. Their efforts to expand further are ongoing.
There are also six other major resistance factions, albeit ones which aren't as individually powerful as XCOM — which is a bit sad, actually, since XCOM isn't doing too well either. Anyway, the Templar are soul mages willing to embrace madness and other assorted side effects in the name of unlocking further power, EXALT is obsessed with general improvement of human bodies and views the Elders as selfishly interfering, the Skirmishers are those few people who were modified for military service before managing to fight off the accompanying indoctrination, the Pilgrims spread resistance propaganda within ADVENT cities and help extract rebel sympathizers, the Council is a loose network of spies working within ADVENT while feeding information to the other groups, and the Reapers are expert scouts fond of sneaking in and blowing things up.
There's an irritatingly complicated web of who dislikes who, too, which mostly seems caused by their tendency to trip over one another. The fact that ADVENT can tear intelligence from the minds of their captives makes the various factions fear sharing operational details with the others, but in the absence of such? It isn't unheard of for Reapers to assassinate Councillors, Skirmishers to inadvertently draw attention to areas Pilgrims were canvassing, Templar to eliminate alien-modified humans EXALT wanted to study, and so on. You think it'll take you time to puzzle out the full web of likes and dislikes. The various factions are sometimes willing to put aside their differences for sufficiently large operations, but XCOM is usually used as an intermediary and the cooperation is always temporary.
If you want to be absolutely honest, you're not sure who or what you should be helping here, if anyone. The Elders are responsible for some genuinely horrifying atrocities, including ones which filled Earth's old cities with hordes of non-infectious zombies, but ADVENT is, for the most part, a successful post-scarcity society. If you can help the Elders sort out their whole undeath issue, they might create a genuine utopia.
...Well, maybe. The Elders do have a seven-member black ops group comprised of ludicrously enhanced former humans. You don't think their artificial vessels are better than yours, but they might be equal and the effective range of their Soul Obelisks(???) lets them maintain control across the continent they're stationed on. At any rate, this group is known as the Elder's Chosen, or Chosen for short. They're all religious fanatics, sociopaths, psychopaths, megalomaniacs, battle junkies, or some combination of the above, with individual kill counts in the hundreds or even thousands. You're not sure if their insanity is due to the slow soul degradation from their vessel swaps, which they seem to get about a dozen of, or if the Elders decided to upgrade a group of crazy people. Maybe both? Either way, they tend toward being rather territorial and don't team up even when their Obelisk-ranges overlap.
Most importantly, the Chosen have been promised personal rule over large swaths of Earth once the Elders sort out their whole death problem. You think the Hunter would turn his territory into some twisted human hunting reserve, the Missionary would cheerfully twist and rewrite the minds of her victims until they unknowingly reenact various stories, the Warlock would have much worse views on religion and respect than even Mom started with, the Scholar would perform all manner of gruesomely unethical experiments, the Seer would make personal freedom into a... wait, never mind, she died instantly after attacking the Elders or something. So make that six Chosen. Anyway, you have trouble looking at the Assassin and the shapeshifting Sleeper, so you're not sure what they'd do.
You can see that the Sleeper has already made it difficult for you to help XCOM; in Sleeper's early days, it posed as a humanoid (female) envoy from a star-spanning civilization willing to discreetly help XCOM as part of its cold war against the "Ethereals," the alleged true name of the Elders. The damage Sleeper did upon betraying them immediately reduced XCOM from seven bases to five, which soon dropped to four due to supply issues. Sleeper hasn't done anything quite so overtly damaging since then, but it does seem to extract particular delight from attacking XCOM recruitment drives. The various resistance factions may have melee-range (and for XCOM & EXALT, drone-mounted) scanners capable of detecting the nature of Sleeper, but they're exactly that: melee range. If Sleeper spots one of the scanners, it usually just tosses a plasma grenade at the closest group of sympathizers, shoots the scanner-wielder a few times, and runs like hell. At least the Sleeper has died a good seven or eight times so far, the highest out of any of the Chosen. Sadly, the resistance doesn't realize the Sleeper has a limited number of vessel swaps and views it as an undying bogeyman.
It doesn't help that the previously mentioned scanners seem to use the presence of a soul to determine whether a given person is the Sleeper in disguise. You think it could detect your Soul Gem if you were to show it to them, but they'd probably be shooting by then. XCOM and EXALT have even started designing their drones to immediately attack or outright detonate upon detecting someone without a soul. You can't even go to an outpost beyond the Sleeper's range since it is the only Chosen to appear all across the globe. Maybe because the other Chosen view it with scorn and don't view the Sleeper as a real competitor? You're still not sure how its Obelisk is supposed to move, though. It has to be a different design, you're sure of that much.
On a related note, XCOM is now down to two stationary bases, both of which are closer to supply depots (or expendable bait), and a flying command cruiser — the Avenger — stolen from the aliens, which is stealthed and most definitely not expendable. If the Avenger falls, XCOM would be left headless and helpless. This, more than anything else, makes you suspect the Elders are deliberately leaving them alive. XCOM was dismantled with brutal efficiency initially, but the Elders were stopped just short of the death blow? It just smells fishy to you.
Even before they got truly desperate, XCOM fell firmly among those believing the ends justify the means. They're not above using a combination of torture and mental deconstruction on human ADVENT officials in order to obtain information, to say nothing of what they do to captured aliens.
...Which ADVENT apparently does right back to them, or maybe even did first, but... ugh. You don't want to think too hard about this, but you suspect you will anyway. You can at least give them credit for not taking the easy way out and only calling it necessary; they're not above incorporating alien genetic modifications into volunteers with the assistance of nanomachines known as Meld. Not to the experimental extremes EXALT goes to, mind, but you still respect the courage involved there. If EXALT's means weren't even worse than XCOM's, you'd respect them, too; some of their volunteers replace their entire bodies from the neck down with robotic parts just so they can better fight ADVENT.
The mana levels of this third Earth are, for most of the world, rather abysmal, but you think it's worth noting that the Avenger somehow produces somewhere between four and eight motes. You're not sure why you'd be able to bond to it when the same doesn't hold true for your pendant. If it's a mana generator, why can you bond to it? And if it's a land, why can it move?
A world of White, and... honestly, it's a weird one. Aliens — and not of the human variety — seem to have conquered this Earth some few decades before, instituting a global government known as the ADVENT Coalition. Despite their rather dubious methods of initially asserting control, they actually seem to have been doing a pretty good job — mostly. The alien spiritual (and effective) leaders, the Elders, seem to be outright dead. The Elders are, of course, refusing to properly acknowledge this fact and are doing everything they can to prevent their proper passage onward. As expected, their continued efforts to cling to (un?)life have rewarded mixed results. Their mastery of soul magic may let them offload the damage of transfer onto the bodies they migrate into rather than doing further damage to their own souls, but dodging said damage leaves their vessels as withered, dying husks.
Unfortunately for the human race, these transfers mean taking human vessels. The Elders do, to their credit, seem to be working on a more permanent solution, but in the meantime, they basically require sacrifices of some two thousand humans every single week. Oh, they hide the disappearances under the guise of permanent military service with invasive adjustments, terrorist attacks, or "leaving the cities on relief missions," but you can see where their victims are actually going. The soldiers allegedly join the faceless masses of genetically modified soldiers and the volunteers are "killed by dissidents."
Fortunately for your state of mind, the Elders aren't operating unopposed. A rebel (or possibly terrorist if you believe ADVENT) group known as XCOM (Extraterrestrial Combat Unit) is doing their utmost to not only violently oppose the alien threat, but also learn from their technologies and mastery of soul magic. You can't tell if the Elders are leaving XCOM alive simply so they have high-profile scapegoats or if XCOM is genuinely competent enough to avoid destruction. Either way, XCOM honestly doesn't seem to be accomplishing all that much in the way of solid victories. Ones good for morale, sure, but they haven't done real damage since they lost the support of Earth's old governments two decades ago.
You think Mom might actually want you to visit this plane, albeit maybe without all your friends. You wouldn't have technological superiority there, only the results of a separate technological path. Although their path looks like one of the ones that ends in self-destruction, you can steal the stones from their road to improve your own.
However, it doesn't look as though you'll be able to just waltz into an ADVENT city and grab anything shiny. Identity scanners are as common as lightposts and obtaining ID requires, among other things, a brain implant. Or the implant might be the ID. It's hard to tell, honestly. It's a good thing much of the human race still lives outside ADVENT's cities; them, you'll be able to roam freely among. Well, mostly. Some rather unpleasant groups have formed in the absence of governments to stop them. XCOM does support order in some areas, but only in Europe and northern Africa. Their efforts to expand further are ongoing.
There are also six other major resistance factions, albeit ones which aren't as individually powerful as XCOM — which is a bit sad, actually, since XCOM isn't doing too well either. Anyway, the Templar are soul mages willing to embrace madness and other assorted side effects in the name of unlocking further power, EXALT is obsessed with general improvement of human bodies and views the Elders as selfishly interfering, the Skirmishers are those few people who were modified for military service before managing to fight off the accompanying indoctrination, the Pilgrims spread resistance propaganda within ADVENT cities and help extract rebel sympathizers, the Council is a loose network of spies working within ADVENT while feeding information to the other groups, and the Reapers are expert scouts fond of sneaking in and blowing things up.
There's an irritatingly complicated web of who dislikes who, too, which mostly seems caused by their tendency to trip over one another. The fact that ADVENT can tear intelligence from the minds of their captives makes the various factions fear sharing operational details with the others, but in the absence of such? It isn't unheard of for Reapers to assassinate Councillors, Skirmishers to inadvertently draw attention to areas Pilgrims were canvassing, Templar to eliminate alien-modified humans EXALT wanted to study, and so on. You think it'll take you time to puzzle out the full web of likes and dislikes. The various factions are sometimes willing to put aside their differences for sufficiently large operations, but XCOM is usually used as an intermediary and the cooperation is always temporary.
If you want to be absolutely honest, you're not sure who or what you should be helping here, if anyone. The Elders are responsible for some genuinely horrifying atrocities, including ones which filled Earth's old cities with hordes of non-infectious zombies, but ADVENT is, for the most part, a successful post-scarcity society. If you can help the Elders sort out their whole undeath issue, they might create a genuine utopia.
...Well, maybe. The Elders do have a seven-member black ops group comprised of ludicrously enhanced former humans. You don't think their artificial vessels are better than yours, but they might be equal and the effective range of their Soul Obelisks(???) lets them maintain control across the continent they're stationed on. At any rate, this group is known as the Elder's Chosen, or Chosen for short. They're all religious fanatics, sociopaths, psychopaths, megalomaniacs, battle junkies, or some combination of the above, with individual kill counts in the hundreds or even thousands. You're not sure if their insanity is due to the slow soul degradation from their vessel swaps, which they seem to get about a dozen of, or if the Elders decided to upgrade a group of crazy people. Maybe both? Either way, they tend toward being rather territorial and don't team up even when their Obelisk-ranges overlap.
Most importantly, the Chosen have been promised personal rule over large swaths of Earth once the Elders sort out their whole death problem. You think the Hunter would turn his territory into some twisted human hunting reserve, the Missionary would cheerfully twist and rewrite the minds of her victims until they unknowingly reenact various stories, the Warlock would have much worse views on religion and respect than even Mom started with, the Scholar would perform all manner of gruesomely unethical experiments, the Seer would make personal freedom into a... wait, never mind, she died instantly after attacking the Elders or something. So make that six Chosen. Anyway, you have trouble looking at the Assassin and the shapeshifting Sleeper, so you're not sure what they'd do.
You can see that the Sleeper has already made it difficult for you to help XCOM; in Sleeper's early days, it posed as a humanoid (female) envoy from a star-spanning civilization willing to discreetly help XCOM as part of its cold war against the "Ethereals," the alleged true name of the Elders. The damage Sleeper did upon betraying them immediately reduced XCOM from seven bases to five, which soon dropped to four due to supply issues. Sleeper hasn't done anything quite so overtly damaging since then, but it does seem to extract particular delight from attacking XCOM recruitment drives. The various resistance factions may have melee-range (and for XCOM & EXALT, drone-mounted) scanners capable of detecting the nature of Sleeper, but they're exactly that: melee range. If Sleeper spots one of the scanners, it usually just tosses a plasma grenade at the closest group of sympathizers, shoots the scanner-wielder a few times, and runs like hell. At least the Sleeper has died a good seven or eight times so far, the highest out of any of the Chosen. Sadly, the resistance doesn't realize the Sleeper has a limited number of vessel swaps and views it as an undying bogeyman.
It doesn't help that the previously mentioned scanners seem to use the presence of a soul to determine whether a given person is the Sleeper in disguise. You think it could detect your Soul Gem if you were to show it to them, but they'd probably be shooting by then. XCOM and EXALT have even started designing their drones to immediately attack or outright detonate upon detecting someone without a soul. You can't even go to an outpost beyond the Sleeper's range since it is the only Chosen to appear all across the globe. Maybe because the other Chosen view it with scorn and don't view the Sleeper as a real competitor? You're still not sure how its Obelisk is supposed to move, though. It has to be a different design, you're sure of that much.
On a related note, XCOM is now down to two stationary bases, both of which are closer to supply depots (or expendable bait), and a flying command cruiser — the Avenger — stolen from the aliens, which is stealthed and most definitely not expendable. If the Avenger falls, XCOM would be left headless and helpless. This, more than anything else, makes you suspect the Elders are deliberately leaving them alive. XCOM was dismantled with brutal efficiency initially, but the Elders were stopped just short of the death blow? It just smells fishy to you.
Even before they got truly desperate, XCOM fell firmly among those believing the ends justify the means. They're not above using a combination of torture and mental deconstruction on human ADVENT officials in order to obtain information, to say nothing of what they do to captured aliens.
...Which ADVENT apparently does right back to them, or maybe even did first, but... ugh. You don't want to think too hard about this, but you suspect you will anyway. You can at least give them credit for not taking the easy way out and only calling it necessary; they're not above incorporating alien genetic modifications into volunteers with the assistance of nanomachines known as Meld. Not to the experimental extremes EXALT goes to, mind, but you still respect the courage involved there. If EXALT's means weren't even worse than XCOM's, you'd respect them, too; some of their volunteers replace their entire bodies from the neck down with robotic parts just so they can better fight ADVENT.
The mana levels of this third Earth are, for most of the world, rather abysmal, but you think it's worth noting that the Avenger somehow produces somewhere between four and eight motes. You're not sure why you'd be able to bond to it when the same doesn't hold true for your pendant. If it's a mana generator, why can you bond to it? And if it's a land, why can it move?
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- A single human dimension
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- She/Her
I've actually never heard that one. "Mama War Crimes" is far more common.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
That is... a lot of detail.
So we just need some kind of an unbreakable oath spell. Sounds like a job for Sidhe!
- Location
- A Table Near You
Oh, so it is XCOM 2. A setting I have no prior experience with, so I honestly can't tell how AU it is here.
It certainly sounds like a sociopolitical clusterfuck of the Nth degree, going by the planar description. Seems like a good time.
It certainly sounds like a sociopolitical clusterfuck of the Nth degree, going by the planar description. Seems like a good time.
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Jade will be much better at scanning than she used to be. Also, most of the plane was / will be quite easy for Jade to look at, possibly mostly since the aliens have done so much to make a single culture and government dominate the globe. There's so much White that the other colors starkly stand out.
Setting Knowledge Not Required. ^__^
TL;DR: You don't need to know this. AU n all that.
To save some people the trouble of vainly trying to Google this stuff: The canon Chosen are the Hunter, Assassin, and Warlock. I won't go into the reasons the others were introduced (IC spoilers!).
The canon major Resistance factions are XCOM (which you play as), the Reapers, the Skirmishers, and the Templar. There were also a bunch of randomly-generated throwaway mini-factions you'd encounter during Retaliation missions. In the game, each faction was assigned a Chosen, which they did bonus damage to and (lore-wise) had fought for years.
EXALT was an antagonistic faction from the expansion of the first game, Enemy Within. The Council Spokesman was, in the second game, one guy who almost certainly had his own intelligence network going and who feeds XCOM important info/missions throughout the game. The Pilgrims are new.
I didn't make XCOM any more morally questionable than they already were—seriously, XCOM EU's "(Allegedly) Traitorous Politician" escort mission was just messed up—but considering what ADVENT and the aliens get up to, they're still undeniably the good guys in canon.
To save some people the trouble of vainly trying to Google this stuff: The canon Chosen are the Hunter, Assassin, and Warlock. I won't go into the reasons the others were introduced (IC spoilers!).
The canon major Resistance factions are XCOM (which you play as), the Reapers, the Skirmishers, and the Templar. There were also a bunch of randomly-generated throwaway mini-factions you'd encounter during Retaliation missions. In the game, each faction was assigned a Chosen, which they did bonus damage to and (lore-wise) had fought for years.
EXALT was an antagonistic faction from the expansion of the first game, Enemy Within. The Council Spokesman was, in the second game, one guy who almost certainly had his own intelligence network going and who feeds XCOM important info/missions throughout the game. The Pilgrims are new.
I didn't make XCOM any more morally questionable than they already were—seriously, XCOM EU's "(Allegedly) Traitorous Politician" escort mission was just messed up—but considering what ADVENT and the aliens get up to, they're still undeniably the good guys in canon.
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Was Sleeper's infiltration of XCOM and/or their subsequent loss of bases based on canon as well?
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Can't recall exact where I heard it, sorry.
@Torgamous Yeah, you have no idea how hard I had to resist being a smart-ass and saying it wasn't XCOM 2...because it's War of the Chosen, crossed with Enemy Within. Which is just...glorious. The things Astra might be able to do with Meld are genuinely mind-boggling. And throwing in EXALT as a rebel faction is pretty sweet, too.
As for it being out-of-place, that was actually my initial reaction. Like...as a plane in this setting, it feels weird. Even Girl Genius has magic, even if some, possibly most of it, is sufficiently advanced science. But the Psionics of XCOM just...doesn't feel much like mana magic, to me. I guess I can see it being made more like mana magic, but it would require major changes. Honestly, I'm kinda surprised it's not a seperate magic system (unless I'm wrong, and it actually is one).
So. Possibilities. I'm of the opinion that we could probably do quite well by helping XCOM unite the rebel factions and drive off the aliens, maybe with us providing them some tech and backing. Unless, of course, the Chosen have been amped up into genuine threats to us, which, given their low death rates, I could certainly see. In which case, we should take them on ourselves.
Of course, the Sleeper won't have made that easy. I suspect they'll be distrustful of space-princesses bearing gifts. So, I'm thinking we either start our faction, or take over/ally with an existing one. EXALT is a pretty good choice for the former option, being kinda...amoral-to-evil, and thus good to conquer, and the Templars for the second, because they're enlightened psions, and would probably be able to verify we want to help.
It is a sociopolitical clusterf*ck, yes. I love it.
Additionally, the Chosen now actually have limits on respawns, but seem to die less. Either because the Commander is still running the opposition (or just not doing that, and is dead), or they're much tougher.
To expand on that Commander point, he's the faceless and voiceless player character, in both the first and second games. In XCOM 2, he got captured by the aliens, hooked up into their Psionic network, and has been having his expertise at command beamed into the heads of ADVENT's troops, while also being run through tons of tactical simulations at the same time, for the last twenty years. It's unclear if the sims corresponded to the various engagements the aliens and their ADVENT lackies got into, or were just to refine the Commander's skills, but the sheer amount of data he was processing would have killed pretty much anyone or anything else. Which reinforces the fanon hypothesis that, based on the bad new XCom game no one likes, he's actually possessed by/partnered with a completely psionic entity that is what the Ethereals once were, before they got stuck in physical bodies by some unknown group, probably also of their own kind.
In any case, XCOM 2 begins with rescuing the Commander. Who the aliens really want back, and thus they sic their Chosen on XCom, in the expansion War of the Chosen. That may, or may not, have happened yet, but I'm guessing not, since XCom aren't doing so hot. If he has been, it's still really early-game.
Additional points of data: Aliens have plasma guns, their human lackies have magnetic weaponry, and the rebels mostly seem to have standard firearms. However, it seems like both the aliens and rebel factions have access to Meld, a weird kind of alien nano tech that opens up vast possibilities for gene modification and integrating cybernetics. Assumably, the rebels have stolen Meld from the aliens. It was noticeable absent from XCOM 2, so take that for what you will.
There also seems to be a lack of the stuff from the XCOM 2 Alien Hunters and and Shen's Last Gift DLC, but I can't say for sure. If Vahlen is still with XCom, that explains the former, and the latter being absent could just be because there are cyborgs in XCom already, and thus no real need for robots.
Nope. The Sleeper is new. Then again, it does explain why XCom fell so quickly, despite having the superhuman tactician on their side. That was always a point of XCOM 2's plot that bugged me. Why plug the enemy commander into your network to run your sh*t if he got his ass-kicked? Even if it was because, instead of things playing out like the games, they rushed all the powerful stuff in the early game, that still doesn't make sense. The Sleeper may explain that: the aliens had an infilitrator who gained respect for the Commander's skills and talents.
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Soooort of. See, in XCOM 1, you only get one base, one dropship, squads have an arbitrary headcount limit of six, and you probably won't get up to even fifty engineers and scientists by the end of the game. Despite, well, basically having the Earth's various nations (or at least influential parts of them) collaboratively funding the project. This is one of those things you can overlook in the name of an enjoyable game—suspension of disbelief n all that—but which stands out when being used as an open-world setting.
So when you instead adjust the setting to get more real support and multiple XCOM bases scattered across the globe (and thus closer to most member nations, who'd definitely complain about favoritism otherwise), alien use of overwhelming brute force starts being less cost-effective and infiltration becomes more attractive to them, even if only as a side project.
So when you instead adjust the setting to get more real support and multiple XCOM bases scattered across the globe (and thus closer to most member nations, who'd definitely complain about favoritism otherwise), alien use of overwhelming brute force starts being less cost-effective and infiltration becomes more attractive to them, even if only as a side project.
Possibly because Jade thinks it's mostly, or maybe exclusively, soul magic.
- Location
- Bowling Green
Im interested in going to XCOM because it's something that will actually challenge Jade and Agne, especially since both side will mistake her for an enemy, XCOM because of Sleeper and ADVENT because they know she's not one of theirs. Also I want Jade to learn Psychic powers.
Fun Fact: If you lose to many countries in XCOM you find out that the guy who runs the Council is being mind controlled.
Its less that the commander lost and more that he was actively betrayed then captured which pretty much wiped out the resistance while giving the Advent his combat abilities.
Fun Fact: If you lose to many countries in XCOM you find out that the guy who runs the Council is being mind controlled.
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Yes. Definitely. You'd be weird to play a single save that long...
*hides EW save file with ridiculous numbers of both*
That certainly makes more sense. I had wondered, but it seemed like it might have been mana-based in some way.Possibly because Jade thinks it's mostly, or maybe exclusively, soul magic.
I think there are solutions to that. But yeah, people are going to be suspicious of us, especially if we show up with lots of tech for them. The aliens are also going to be wanting to capture us, once we display our talents. And we really don't want the aliens capturing and analyzing us. They're insanely good at genetic engineering. We'd probably manage to escape, but even bleeding could have bad results.
Except he either escaped their control, or was never actually mind-controlled in XCOM 2, because he actually helped you out a lot. The canonicity of the first game's Bad Endings is questionable, especially to XCOM 2, which could be seen to imply that the first game was a simulation. Or, alternatively, the mind-control only started once thing went far enough south. So, yeah, that's nowhere near that clear-cut in the source material.
In this, though, he's the head of, or at least a major member of, a rebel faction, so yeah, not mind-controlled, nor the traitor.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So it's just like MGLN, Remnant, PMMM, and Avatar.
I think it's quite a nice addition. It doesn't take much to give the aliens relative parity with the Agni, and doing so doesn't push anything else above the threshold where we just want to hide from the plane until we're able to
And this should be amusing, at least in the one encounter it'll take before they switch to something else.
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