[Trinity Continuum] Timelines Theories

[Lian]

Without a Nova Age or Aberrant War, most of what humans know of quantum powers comes from stalwarts, whose powers are almost entirely internal, a handful of anomalies with externalized quantum powers, and whatever they can learn about quantum using species from a captured Doyen.

This isn't nearly enough to oppose the Doyen, especially as they'd lack the necessary knowledge to reliably empower or train people as novas. The Doyen have advanced noetic tech and Dr. Bhurano has spent two hundred years mastering her noetic powers, so it makes more sense to identify and empower psions than to try inventing a quantum empowerment chamber, which would likely be a much, much harder for a psiad to create.

And using Psionics to fight the Doyen isn't a good plan either. Yeah she's had 200 years to study it, they have had longer than humans have had tools to master Noetics. The one unique thing she has as psiad that no Doyen has been before is... QK. Which could probably be used to at least get someone to superior levels.

But honestly Aeon requires alot of changing to get to without the NOVA age. The politics of it all make no sense without an appocalyptic event. SInce you'd have to change around so much at that point adding more players on the "Elder race" scale is probably not that big a deal.

Hell maybe that's how you get superiors in the setting? Psions are the Doyen offering. Superiors are the "Shadows" offering with the occasional true erruption.

[Mateus Luz]

Okay, so...
1. Dr. Primoris become terrorist Davis Mal in Aberrnat Age canon?!
2. Doyen are Psiad alien race that want to conquare the Earth?!
Interesting take on...

1 Yes. He is not really a terrorist, he is more like a nova supremacist philosopher that says Novas are superior to humans and should not be bounded by human laws, so they can train and evolve to become living gods. That’s horrible but not actively terrorism, but the real terrorists got this philosophy and read that as “novas don’t need to respect human laws neither human life” and start to kill humans.
2 Doyens are creatures that are made of pure plasma and noetic energy. They are virtually immortal, but quantum can damage and kill them. So they are extremely afraid of creatures capable of quantum manipulation and systematically kill all races that are capable of using quantum. But the novas are too powerful and grew in power too fast, so they could not kill humanity fast enough, and with Novas spreading all over the universe, the Doyen decided to use humans to kill the Novas, creating the Psions.

[LordHeru]

I would not call him a terrorist. He wss more a philosopher who wrote about nova differences from baselines. But he didn't blow up buildings or kill people in shops or any such thing.

In fact at the very end he killed the Secretary-General and then made everyone leave.

Now I'm not saying he is all gumdrops and roses but he isn't evil.

Which is why I hope we don't see him go all Nazi-like. It would be dissapointing.

[glamourweaver]

Okay, so...
1. Dr. Primoris become terrorist Davis Mal in Aberrnat Age canon?!

As of the setting "now" of Aberrant, the only thing Mal is known by the public to have done is issue the Null Manifesto which leads to the formation of Teragen. Teragen does have a militant wing who governments do label as terrorist ("Aberrant" in 2E, was "Nova Vigilance" in 1E), but they are not all of Teragen, nor is Mal giving them orders, he just defined the philosophy of Teras.

That's as of "now" in the setting of course. Mal will be an active leading enemy of baseline humanity if the timeline continues as in the canon past of Aeon, and the UN ends up going to war on Novas. But if you're playing Aberrant, player characters can potentially change that future.

2. Doyen are Psiad alien race that want to conquare the Earth?!

No. Conquest of a single dot in the cosmos does not interest the Doyen. As beings of Psi energy and and plasma, they have no need for a planetary home or natural resources. But as beings of Psi, they can be killed by Quantum energy. They divide into two camps - those who see humanity's Psi potential as a resource to be weaponized against the Aberrants; and those who see humanity (due to their potential for Eruption and for Quantakinesis) as too fundamentally dangerous to be allowed to live.


(if the impression you get from that reveal is that the Doyen, and not Aberrants, are the real big bads of the Aeon setting, and the various species and factions of humanity fighting each other should unify against the Doyen - congratulations you solved Aeon)

[Reighnhell]

RE: Aberrant

I will play the devil's advocate and say don't shut the door on the Nova Era quite yet. In 1st edition (a bit less so in 2nd), Aberrant was strongly deconstructionist - the directly looked at and challenged the idea that people with these amazing powers would be compelled to be saviors. Most the time, they were regular folks granted unbelievable power by essentially luck of the draw. In Scion there is a mythic element, an idea that your character is special, and has a special destiny. In Aberrant,those godlike powers are given to people with all the hopes, dreams, flaws, and biases of any other person, and their only destiny is what they can carve out. You speak of people with that kind of power ruling the world, and that is exactly what many of the big geopolitical powers are afraid of!

If you can, get a actually copy of one of the editions and give it a solid read, there is way more going on than traditional 4-color super hero tropes.

And if you still can't make it work, at least cherry pick it for cool ideas.

[wyrdhamster]

(if the impression you get from that reveal is that the Doyen, and not Aberrants, are the real big bads of the Aeon setting, and the various species and factions of humanity fighting each other should unify against the Doyen - congratulations you solved Aeon)

Okay, with that reveal/spoiler to me - Can we make Continuum with Doyen, but withouts Aberrant era as canon? What IS interesting for me in Aeon is trying to make coherent, idealistic World Government - but they STILL cannot make it. ( So, like a early setting of Star Trek, before true First Contact in 2063 year of Trek. ) I was hoping for the Climate Crisis to be this push for Aeon, but seeing how it works in the Real Life, yes, I can imagine it still would not be enough for humanity to unite. Dying planet in lllllooonnnggg death is not enough for us to rethink society...

More thinking to that - Even Star Trek become United Earth AFTER First Contact with Volcans. So First Contact maybe needed shake for humanity to throw down ideas of nation states... However First Contact can be...

[Mateus Luz]

Aexpansion (Aeon Companion) has many suggestions on how to bring the psions to modern world, from “psions are the new humans” to “psions were created by alien machines abandoned on earth long ago”.

We can use some of those ideas to make it, but it change a lot the dynamics in Aeon, from the reason psions become public to the reason psions exist and the general public opinion about them.

The doyen also change function, from the behind the scene benefactor that has second intentions, to the behind the scene reason for aliens coming to attack Earth or even the behind the scene reason for being so hard to find aliens around (all these are the doyen in Aeon, with different levels of importance).

I will bring the question back to you @wyrdhammster , make your narrative to get Aeon without Aberrants and maybe we can give some ideas on how it could work.
Where the psions come from? Are they natural or engineered? Who engineered them? Why? If natural, why the different altitudes? Are they regional? Ethnic? Trained by the orders? Maybe it’s just marginally engineered with the orders grabbing psiads and adding hormones/genetic therapy to turn them into psions, I don’t know.

[Dataweaver]

RE: Aberrant

I will play the devil's advocate and say don't shut the door on the Nova Era quite yet. In 1st edition (a bit less so in 2nd), Aberrant was strongly deconstructionist - the directly looked at and challenged the idea that people with these amazing powers would be compelled to be saviors. Most the time, they were regular folks granted unbelievable power by essentially luck of the draw. In Scion there is a mythic element, an idea that your character is special, and has a special destiny. In Aberrant,those godlike powers are given to people with all the hopes, dreams, flaws, and biases of any other person, and their only destiny is what they can carve out. You speak of people with that kind of power ruling the world, and that is exactly what many of the big geopolitical powers are afraid of!

If you can, get a actually copy of one of the editions and give it a solid read, there is way more going on than traditional 4-color super hero tropes.

And if you still can't make it work, at least cherry pick it for cool ideas.

Also, you don't actually need the aberrant era in order to get to the aeon era. All you need is the aberrant war. That is, you can skip over the hero worship stage where novas are adored and idolized, and go straight to the stage where baselines are at war with the superhumans.

Now, if your goal is to take superhumans out of the timeline entirely, that makes things a lot harder.