[Adventure!] How did the adventure era really ended?

[Firanai]

Hello Everyone,

While my topic about the influence of the inspired in the world is all about speculating how the timeline would diverge, this topic is about speculating how the inspired, and their actions, disappeared by the end of World War 2 according to "official" canon (we still need to see the appendix section of adventure). So, what really happened? What follows is just my personal theory, feel free to share yours.

The most common explanation is that the telluric energies of the hammersmith incident faded away to nothing by the end of the 40s and with that the inspired. Although this no doubt played a role, the question remains about the actions and inventions of the inspired. How could they just disappear? Where there no records kept? Did the whole world just decide that none of it was real? Again, something similar to project rewrite could have happened where the governments of the world decided to erase any trace of the inspired. Why did they do it? Well, for the same reason as someone else did it.

You see, for me the one who really ended the adventure era was none other than Max Mercer.

Let's keep in mind that Max is no ordinary Daredevil, he's a time traveler. In one of his jumps he travelled to a future where the inspired were more numerous and active in world affairs, including the second world war. Now imagine hundreds, if not thousands, of inspired in the most devastating conflict humanity ever saw. Max didn't need to imagine it because he saw it, hell he even saw the end of it... and let's just say it wasn't pretty.

Max was left with no other choice, there was only one way to stop it. He had to destroy any source of telluric energy in the world, and so he did in secret for years, without anyone knowing...sadly even a time traveler has blind spots, especially when it comes to friends.

Feeling isolated and with many doubts as the years went by, Max finally confessed to Primoris and Bhurano. Bhurano, although upset, decided to forgive Max and trust his judgement. Primoris...well, we all know how it ended don't we? This is what caused the final breach between Max and Primoris, which lead to what I call the third front.

Even thought Max actions did stop the terrible future he witnessed, he didn't completely eradicate it. While humanity was busy fighting, the Aeon society and other allegiances fought a secret war against the inspired that worked with Primoris (who worked with the Axis to use their resources), till Primoris was finally defeated. Very few records mention this secret front, which has become but another of many myths and stories from the great war.

So there you have it, feel free to share your opinion and speculations. I'm curious to see what you all have imagined.

[Critian Caceorte]

Personally, I go with a more "heat death of the universe" approach. Rather than having the Flux energy disappear, when the Hammersmith Event occurred, a number of places and peoples were focused in on, making them anomalies or Talents or what-have-you. Flux is the most mobile of the three, and the most predominant with the Hammersmith event. As time passed, the flux energy dispersed and spread out, eventually spreading too thin to provide any real benefit to people, causing Talents to lose their powers and Strange Places to lose their other-ness. As for Mesmerists and Stalwarts, well, they just didn't have enough Noetic or Quantum Energy built up in their bodies to retain their abilities, so even though those powers aren't as free-flowing as Flux, they still escaped all the same. The Telluric energy didn't altogether disappear, it's just been rendered impotent at this stage, and any mini-Events which occur until Aberrant only gather enough Telluric energy to do something rather than generate more of it.

[Dataweaver]

Given that Max Mercer started the aeon Society specifically to inspire people and to uncover the mysteries associated with tularoic energy, I find it very much out of character for him to turn around and start suppressing it.

I mean, even if you did see the sort of future that you described, I don't see him deciding that the inspired age needs to be destroyed. Rather, I picture him deciding that that future needs to be overcome. If anything, he would double down on his effort to inspire.

[Dataweaver]

Also note that it is canon that the Doyen erected a protective shell around Earth in response to the Hammersmith event, and that similar events between then and the galatea event were largely suppressed as a result. It would not surprise me if this turned out to be the factor that caused the end of the adventure age. Or at least a contributing factor.

[glamourweaver]

As a Carnivale fan, I like the idea the Trinity blast knocked the dimensions that started overlapping as a result of the Hammersmith Event back out of alignment, resulting in (from a prime timeline pov) the disappearance of all the Martian city states, hollow earth, Atlantean ruins, etc etc.

[Mateus Luz]

Agree with Dataweaver. Max Mercer is hardly involved in the end of Adventure Era and the Doyen Barrier is probably the one responsible.

Critian Caceorte has a more abrupt vision of the end than I, but I think he is right in the way it decayed to nothing. I think the number of new Talents, Stalwarts and Mesmerists fall to the more “normal” level over the years, and the old ones retired and died over the years, not losing their powers, but keeping it and slowly hiding it to avoid other people to try to study them or just to have a normal life with their families.

The largest strange places start to fading away, letting some strange artifacts or minor strange places. You may not find the sapient gorilla city in Congo, but maybe you find some artifacts built by them, or even a part of the ancient city as a weird part of a cavern, or the last of their kind lost and aging as a relic of what once was a entire civilization.

I would keep the weird places around, I think people just stop caring and left they alone. Worse than that, they were not explored by that many people, what happened is that it were a more adventurous aspect, and when the explorers left and the scientists come it was not fun anymore to be published, and you have the History Channel shows about strange places as discredited as the shows about aliens in the history.

it’s possible that Aeon society Babel Dossier or another allegiance start working as the Sanctuary, from the Sanctuary, or as SCP Fundation. Just hiding everything they can and avoiding people to run into places they should not.

[wyrdhamster]

Now I want to run a Trinity game with various eras in it, where PCs are from, for example, Modern TC, start to uncover Lost City - and then action takes back to 1930's where their grandparents uncovered this place in the first place. Add to me some Aeon era hack to that location - and we have multi timeline truly Continuum game.

[thedonnie]

I have thought of doing something akin to that. Except I would start in AEon. That way I can flashback to "X" era to reveal something they need to know to deal with the issue in AEon.

OR....play characters in Adventure! and then let the player's choices actually affect the timeline. What they do causes the Aberrant era. And their actions in Aberrant force the AEon era.

[Astromancer]

Given that Max Mercer started the aeon Society specifically to inspire people and to uncover the mysteries associated with tularoic energy, I find it very much out of character for him to turn around and start suppressing it.

I mean, even if you did see the sort of future that you described, I don't see him deciding that the inspired age needs to be destroyed. Rather, I picture him deciding that that future needs to be overcome. If anything, he would double down on his effort to inspire.

It's like a gardener. Roses are profoundly desired, but not in the lilly beds. The inspired are desired, having them destroy civilization and devolve into warlords wasn't.

[Florin]

I always figured Max was playing the long game to get humanity past the Aeon age. He knew the Aberrant War needed to happen, and probably knows about the threats of the time. Once/If Humanity can get past those, they can walk the path to transcendence the Doyen tried to leapfrog.

[FallenEco]

The "Telluric energy" (quantum flux) fades almost back to pre-Hammersmith event levels, sealing away the connections to "Strange Places" (other universes/timelines) and greatly reducing the number of new Inspired. Stalwarts and Mesmercists find their abilities shifting into Nova's (possibly) and Psiads (definitely) as the amount of "Telluric energy" decreases.

While this is not nessicarily enough to end the era on it's own, I do feel it does pkay a substantial role.

[Mateus Luz]

Telluric Energy is not only Quantum, but also Noetic energy and Flux. Any of the 3 is considered Telluric, including any mix of the 3, like the one relieved in the Hammersmith incident.

It was suggested that Stalwarts are Novas of low quantum, and Mesmerists are Psiads of low Psi, and the way Inspiration works is more a system mechanic than a in world mechanic. Basically, if a Stalwart train enough they will eventually reach Q2 or more, and you (as player) would need to change systems to be capable of describing their powers, but from his point of view it’s only an evolution.

Until we have a proper read in the Gifts session, we can’t guess where is the Nova going to start when they finish the Adventure campaign, or what means in psi terms having a certain Inspiration, but I think once we have enough information we will be able to pick an stalwart sheet and translate it into a nova sheet easily, and the same for Mesmerists into Psiads.

[Dataweaver]

The "Telluric energy" (quantum flux) fades almost back to pre-Hammersmith event levels, sealing away the connections to "Strange Places" (other universes/timelines) and greatly reducing the number of new Inspired. Stalwarts and Mesmercists find their abilities shifting into Nova's (possibly) and Psiads (definitely) as the amount of "Telluric energy" decreases.

While this is not nessicarily enough to end the era on it's own, I do feel it does pkay a substantial role.

IMHO, the shift from stalwart to nova and mesmerist to psiad, if it happens at all, isn't the result of a drop in Telluric Energies, but of a resurgence of them. For example, the Galatea event.

I say “if it happens at all” because stalwarts and mesmerists are types of Inspired: like Talents, they have Inspiration and Facets; like Talents (and explicitly unlike novas and psiads), they have access to Dramatic Editing, which in the Trinity Continuum is explicitly about manipulating Flux. They differ from Talents only in terms of what Gifts they have available to them.

In short, it might be better to think of them being to novas and psiads as quantakinetics are to aberrants: broadly speaking, daredevils, stalwarts, and mesmerists are all essentially the same thing, manipulators of Flux; but the latter two use their ability to manipulate Flux to indirectly manipulate Quantum and Psi, respectively.

I could see the possibility that as the Telluric Energies from the Hammersmith Event subside, the stalwarts and mesmerists lose access to those energies and have nothing to manipulate; and their Gifts effectively go dormant until a resurgence of the appropriate type of energies. They still retain their ability to engage in Dramatic Editing; so they don't quite go back to being baselines. But, for instance, a stalwart or mesmerist in the core book's setting would mostly look like a Talent who lacks Gifts. Without ambient Quantum or Noetic energies to manipulate, they'd come across as inferior to those Talents whose Gifts don't hinge on ambient energies to function.

This would mean that you could incorporate stalwarts and mesmerists into TC:Ab and TC:Æ if you wish. In both subsequent eras, the mesmerists would probably be mistaken for psiads; in TC:Ab, stalwarts would tend to be mistaken for “dark stars”/“stealth novas”, while in TC:Æ, they'd be mistaken for Superiors. But they wouldn't quite be the same thing: as mentioned above, the single biggest difference would be that they'd retain their access to Dramatic Editing.

That said, I'd probably also allow them to transition: as a subconscious choice, an existing mesmerist encountering the flood of energies released by the Galatea Event might subconsciously choose to attune herself fully to the Noetic energies, replacing her Inspiration with a boost in Psi and trading out her Gifts for Aptitudes; or an existing stalwart might choose to Erupt as a nova, replacing his Inspiration with Quantum and his Gifts with Mega-Attributes, Mega-Edges, and Quantum Powers. Doing so would cost them their access to Dramatic Editing, however.

[MythAdvocate]

IMHO, the shift from stalwart to nova and mesmerist to psiad, if it happens at all, isn't the result of a drop in Telluric Energies, but of a resurgence of them. For example, the Galatea event.

This would mean that you could incorporate stalwarts and mesmerists into TC:Ab and TC:Æ if you wish. In both subsequent eras, the mesmerists would probably be mistaken for psiads; in TC:Ab, stalwarts would tend to be mistaken for “dark stars”/“stealth novas”, while in TC:Æ, they'd be mistaken for Superiors. But they wouldn't quite be the same thing: as mentioned above, the single biggest difference would be that they'd retain their access to Dramatic Editing.

I like this angle. From the Adventure material presented so-far, Stalwarts already look to have the superbeing power level that I prefer in a game, and in comics.

For my druthers, I would say that any transition between "eras" would be a result of the Doyen barrier, and subsequent attempts to punch through it. As Flux is both Quantum and Subquantum energy, an imperfect attempt to punch through the barrier might only let one type of energy to come through, creating an imbalance.

[Mateus Luz]

Ian said Dramatic Editing works different for Stalwarts and Mesmerists, tomorrow we may have a better idea, but I think it’s more related to extending their powers beyond the gifts they already have and less with bending reality as Talents do.

Also Ian said Stalwarts and Mesmerists are Novas and Psiads, so I don’t think they are really different, just described different by the rules.