“What I mean is that I can see the paths to victory. I can carry them out without fail.”

I'm assuming that includes anything and everything the opponent could do? Or maybe it's just most things the opponent could do? If it is the first, then I doubt Skitter could have any change against her.

Also, has interesting implications for free will.

 

Contessa's "path to victory" included either being able to disable Dragon/others or knowing precisely when they would all otherwise be disabled (when she got to Pretender). I would guess that it's more than just a physical thing but I also don't imagine she would necessarily understand everything she feels she has to do.

 

@yak
None of which has any relevance to what I said.

My point was that either her power is absolute and thus she is only a puppet(which I doubt is true and if it was it would be horrible) or it is limited and then I am wondering how it is limited.

From what is shown I believe we know at least a few of those limits attributed to it. There are those outright immune to it(and thus everything they affect is at doubt) and that her power is either self-focused or limited in time span of a problem(possibly both).

And then what victory itself means in terms of her power. For the most ridiculous example I can think of: If her goal is human survival does that mean the power shows how to accomplish that? It is an open-ended goal so the power would have to look upon an infinity of infinities to give an answer... By that point calling her omniscient wouldn't be wrong.

 

Right, the key is "defining" victory. Does her passenger decide what is victory? Can she control her power to set a victory condition? We don't know how it works, so we can't say for sure why it wouldn't work on an Endbringer, even if there are no 'victorious situations' there must be one where she alone survives, that should be victory according to the passenger...?

 

Hmm...

I'm going to say that Contessa's power is strictly limited in its scope. If she could think through to a "victory" scenario for any contingency, there would be no need for the Number Men, the Coils, the Tattletales, the Accords, and the Alexandrias of the world. Contessa would be the "man with the plan" so to speak and not some high-end hitman for the people calling the shots in Cauldron.

I think her power is very limited to combat scenarios - specifically scenarios that are in the moment. For instance, if she had the power to avoid confrontation with Lung's gang, why not tell Mother to reschedule? Why not bring more people into Cauldron willingly through persuasive power? Certainly such scenarios would be more productive than the one Cauldron is pursuing, yet they don't happen.

In other words, Contessa is a combat cape and has no specific talents otherwise.

 

I think it has something to do with whatever doesn't physically harm her

 

I'll take the way she disposed of Lung's crew without shedding blood to mean that she can decide what constitutes victory (she decides the hypothetical victory condition). Either that or she sees many paths to many different victories (she can switch between being non-lethal and lethal, for example) and can pick which kind of victory she wants. This range of kinds of victories might be large but it is probably still limited in scope, if not quantity.

 

Given that every other precog we've seen has seen multiple possibilities for achieving a single goal (from Dinah's probabilities to Accord's increasingly complex machinations), I would doubt that Contessa is limited to one form of action. The Wormverse doesn't seem to follow a pre-determined path, though the possibilities seem to be various measures of bad and worse.

As for the chapter, I liked it. The view of the 'cold' capes was interesting, though I'm disappointed we didn't get to see any of them try to fight Behemoth. On that note, either everything is going to go very wrong soon (as in rocks fall, everybody dies) or Weaver is going to pull something out of her hat that will blow our minds.

 

Okay, first off, Accord isn't a precog. And neither, most likely, is Contessa. Though the fact that you drew a parallel here is excellent, because I believe that their powers are similar. Their powers give them the ability to see the most effective route to reach their desired outcomes. In Accords case, these outcomes are on the macro scale - ending world hunger, taking over and ruling Brockton Bay, or marshaling the most effective defensive line against Behemoth. In Contessa's they're on a micro scale, each action being the optimum one in the circumstance that will lead her on the path to defeating the enemy before her. They start with desired outcomes, and their Thinker powers give them the steps needed to reach these outcomes.

Precognition is the ability to see the future, and Dinah certainly falls into that category. But she can't see perfectly, she can only see possibilities and probabilities. Her power doesn't do a damn thing when it comes to leading her to desired outcomes, outside of that she can ask herself questions (presumably) and based on the actions she would take, can sort of figure out how they change her probabilities.

Also, anyone else feeling bad for Legend right about now? Poor guy seems to get KO'd in every S-class fight. Endbringers took him out, S9 mindfucked him, and bizzaro-Alexandria ran him off. I'm starting to get the feeling nice guys finish last.

 

Well, the name of this arc is Crushed, so I certainly expect the tunnel they're in to cave-in at any moment, unless the arc title is more about morale than being buried under bedrock.

 

Yeah...

They're not in a tunnel anymore.

 

What I find interesting about Legend being taken out of commission in all the Endbringer fights so far is that he doesn't get killed. In Endbringer fights, it seems strange to me that someone can be injured so that they can't fight, but aren't completely obliterated.

If you aren't indestructible or close to it (Kaiser, Alexandria, etc.) how in the world do you manage to not get killed if you're even so much as grazed by Behemoth or Leviathan?

I mean, Legend gets tougher as he gets faster, but I didn't get the impression that he was that tough.

 

Well, Kaiser got ripped in two by Leviathan because he didn't have any intrinsic Brute power. I'll assume that Legend's Breaker power also translates into some level of Brute power that can allow him to take a heavy hit and be taken out of the fight but not killed.

 

There's really no good dividing line between being super Laplacian and actual precoggery based on the capes we've seen so far, so I really wouldn't be calling her either way. Dinah and The Number Man both fall heavily on the former side of the line, yet we call one a precog and the other a thinker

 

Not sure why you've listed Kaiser as close to indestructible. He was squishy, and Leviathan tore him in two.

And Behemoth and Leviathan do smear a lot of people- if not outright killing them (we've seen Behemoth casually kill loads of people), then permanently crippling them (Leviathan: one hit crushed/removed Armsmaster's arm, one tail swipe broke Skitter's arm and back).

Anyways, the capes plan their battles to try and make sure those that can take hits are on the front lines and those that cannot are far away.

Edit: and Legend is close to indestructible. It's mentioned in his interlude- he briefly transforms into something else whenever he gets hit (similar to Shadow Stalker). He only gets hurt by things that hit hard enough that they can injure him in his transformed state.

 

Well, true "precoggery" would seem to be the Simurgh's domain, and no one else's. It's pretty much stated that all of the precogs in-universe have an element of uncertainty otherwise.

On top of that, precognition as Contessa's power doesn't jive with what Legend was able to see of her disposition during her interlude. She appeared to be very high-strung, which makes me think her power was either telling her she couldn't squeeze out a win, or that it would be a very near thing. There's no need to show uncertainty when the outcome is certain, for better or for worse.

 

What I meant in giving Kaiser as an example was to show someone who survived a direct hit from an Endbringer. That list is pretty short and generally includes durable people. I had forgotten Legend wasn't just a glass cannon.
I didn't remember Legend's ability to reduce damage given to him in a manner similar to Shadow Stalker, I must have skimmed that interlude.
Thanks for reminding me

 

I label it precognition because she sees possible futures, which is pretty much the definition of a precog. Her scope is a lot narrower than Dinah's, or even Accord's, but she still gets a view of the possible futures that may or may not come about.

And yes, I too made the comparison between Contessa and Accord while I was reading. His power seems to be more broad than hers, working on the macro scale while hers works on the micro. This is probably the reason why the Number Man is so important to Cauldron; Contessa's power might not be able to be used to see beyond her own, personal future.

 

She says her power is a form of precognition, but I don't see it that way. She doesn't see possible outcomes, her power shows her the path to the outcome she wants. Just like Accord's does. There is a difference.