True, but the S9 under King was a totally different beast as well. If Jack had died in Brockton Bay, I'd expect some of the members to drift off but the core to remain until they picked up another charismatic leader. Someone like Valefor, Pretender or Tattletale would be great at the job, if they turned that way. It's arguable that Tattletale would do a better job at it, at least on the recruitment side of things.

 

Jack has a cheat power and King might have kept the peace by basically having Gray Boy (who was apparently a bit of a social retard?) on the leash because he was immune. Wildbow himself said that. And he also says that King had a much weaker hold. It's possible that he wouldn't have lasted anywhere near as long as Jack.

I can't see them lasting. Jack is the only one that reasoned with Crawler. Siberian only really wants or needs Bonesaw. Shatterbird and Mannequin might kill each other (and then be killed by Crawler or Siberian) and Burnscar is in deep shit and would want to leave.

Sure, Siberian could grab Bonesaw and try to reconstitute the team but she doesn't seem like the type, and Bonesaw wants to play. All of them have their own focus, like children, it's only Jack that keeps them pointed in the same direction.And to do this he needs a parahuman power. The S9 is his dream.

But, put it this way: do you see the events of the series playing out as they did? Because it seems to me that almost everything that happened with the S9 and S9000 happened because Jack was Jack. He was just the sort of person with that personality. Tattletale could never, ever in a million years bring herself to walk that road. If she could she wouldn't be Tattletale (also, she'd die because at least Jack can fight to some degree).

(Come to think of it, Tattletale might suffer more than Jack really, he has a former of minor precog or intuition. I don't think that he'd make the mistake that TT did with outing Cherish, or at least he wouldn't have gotten cut for his trouble)

So that is the thing. You would be changing the organization we saw in canon extraordinarily if you just killed Jack at the same time as King. And Cauldron is even worse, with even less of a benefit since it reaches so far that you can't just have one butterfly for the sake of story.

And all for what? Some silly sense of "balance"? Who cares if things are balanced so long as they are tense? Work around it. If Tolkien could write a tense story with the equivalent of God and his Host looking over the characters' shoulders then maybe Contessa could take a coffee break.

 

You say this like it's a bad thing.

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning. Boiling it down, you seem to be saying: "It would take some worldbuilding to create a believable story out of this, therefore it's a terrible idea and should never be used". This makes very little sense to me.

 

No, my point is that the fandom has an irrational problem with Contessa, probably because it's SB and they have a "versus" mentality and she fucks with the never-ending speculation because every vs. question can be answered with "PtV". And that that is a horrible basis for an AU.

You can totally use it, however, if your decision is based on some antipathy towards Contessa because "haxx" I think that's silly. And I believe that most of the time you will fail to account for the sheer diversion you've created.

The single butterfly AUs work well because things aren't too alien and it's easier for you to keep track of. In a fandom with only a handful of excellent finished fics I'm not betting on a fic that has to completely change the canon and all the problems that come with that.

I simply don't know if the majority of people can pull it off.

 

There is a reason he died in canon and you've nailed it. Then again, the Siberian is basically the same as Gray Boy when it comes to muscle. Until Manton was outed she was one of the main reasons the S9 were feared.

They don't have to last with the same members. If only a couple of people made it out the Slaughterhouse 9 would still continue. They'd attract the kind of person that enjoys killing people and causing havoc no matter who was at the head simply because of their existence. Obviously there'd be less success on the recruitment side, which is why a character like Tattletale would do so well there.

Manton, Bonesaw and Mannequin form a solid enough core that they could reform the S9 even without Jack. Manton wants a surrogate daughter, which Bonesaw provides. Bonesaw seeks entertainment and a chance to practice her 'art', which provides the fear factor that the S9 are known for. Mannequin wants to tear down any Tinker that tries to make the world a better place, providing the impetus to go break shit.

As long as they occasionally sate the various neuroses that the three of them have there's enough reason for them to stick together. Cherish may even be willing to stick around too, which would give the added bonus of just forcing people into joining them.

Why are we sticking to canon rehashes here? No, of course the series wouldn't happen as it did if Jack had died. That's not the point at all.

As for Tattletale, there are various means by which she could be brought to join/lead the Slaughterhouse 9. Cherish is one, Bonesaw's experiments another. Jack's persuasiveness breaking her down or simple, old fashioned torture until she broke. The Simurgh has done it before and could do it again. Plenty of Master/Stranger powers could do it.

Jack didn't rule the S9 through violence, he did it because he intuitively understood the weaknesses that each of the other members had and exploited them to the fullest. The minor precog power helped him survive as long as he did, but that was in no way his most useful power. Tattletale has Jack's intuition turned up to eleven and a sadistic streak enough to take advantage of any weakness she does see.

If she turned full on, evil villain she could keep them together. She'd probably be killed eventually, but she could keep them going long enough that the S9 could garner the reputation of being an organisation that does not rely on any single cape.

 

It's not just about attracting people; it's about keeping them together. You need a Jack like persona for that.

TT might work, but she needs a partner, and she doesn't have one at the time of the divergence. She needs to have someone on her side. She doesn't.

Of course, Jack's powers also help when you're planning violence against capes. How many times must they have gotten away because of him?

Except these people aren't...ugh, visionaries like Jack. They can't recruit. They're killers without the Jim Jones of killers. All of them are social retards. Bonesaw is the most socially literate is seems.

Sure, they might be able to make a go of it with Siberian's firepower and Bonesaw coercing but it's ultimately not the same. The minute those little disagreements flare up? Explosion. And they can't afford to kill each other.

And you speak as if they'd want to be in a team. Remember, Siberian would just...fuck off for extended periods of time. She enjoys eating people. She doesn't need any of them to make a go of it. She can just grab Bonesaw and leave.

None of these people are truly leaders.

That's because "the point" has reached a fork. The original point was merely that removing integral parts of the universe created effects that would radically change the world or that organization, so radically that, imo, most authors wouldn't be able to sell it.

Sometime along the way we ended up brainstorming about just how necessary Jack was to the S9. So it's relevant to the first issue and not the second.

Jack break her down? She's not...interesting if Jack is there. He does what she does to people and he has the firepower and savvy to get away with it. With Cherish he has a way to gather intel. Not that he would use her to just compel her permanently. It seems like that misses the point of his whole Darwinian game. Besides, I thought the point was to have her replace Jack?

Sure, the Simurgh could do it but note what I said: it wouldn't be Tattletale any more than Mannequin is Sphere. To me that's the sort of thing that doesn't bear discussing: there's nothing to be gained because it's almost magic. So: within the scope of the things we know it seems incredibly unlikely.

The minute a fight starts and Jack/The Leader has to fend for themselves that power becomes more valuable than being able to sit at a desk and think your way through your enemies' lives.

The idea that you can be "mission control" for a bunch of psychopathic warriors is insane. You can know all you want about them, but they'll also know you. If, at the end of the day, you cannot hack it if heroes come for you then you're fucked.

Jack went off and was relatively certain that he could kill both Oni Lee and Purity (and I honestly believe him). Then he sent the rest of his teammates off to do the same.

Well..he didn't. As you say Jack rules more through insinuation than direct fear. He makes sure all their goals align and then he gives them space unless they all need to gather and plan. He can only do that because he can tell them to leave. He can defend himself to some degree so he's not an albatross around the necks of his teammates. If he had to keep one of them from their fun every time something happens like a normal like Tattletale would they'd eat him. If he was forced to be mission control he wouldn't be controlling anything for long.

Psychology is only so useful.

Also: Tattletale is a child that needles people. Again, as long as she's Tatletale that in no way corresponds to the sort of shit that Jack does (see: the shit he did to Riley)

 

I don't really hate Contessa. I just think it would be a fun fic to read. Like if there was no Eidolon, there will be no Endbringers(Eidolon supposedly creating them is still shit though) and instead of that, more superheroes and global conflicts.

 

The thing is, though, isn't that a MUCH larger change than it seems at first glance? IIRC the PRT has this 'understanding' with villains aimed at maximising the numbers available to respond to an Endbringer attack. In the absence of such threats, the very face of the setting would be drastically altered.

 

Without the Endbringers, Earth Bet would promptly become a festering shithole, even moreso than in canon. Pretty much everywhere would be Tagg-era Brockton Bay; there'd be no reason for anyone to be playing soft ball, and parahumans would have carved apart the Old World societies in a matter of a decade or two. I'd expect the world to look a lot like a Fallout game (New Vegas in particular), save for the irradiated... everything.

 

Or the PRT promptly fucks the everloving shit out of the rogue parahumans and stuffs them all in the Birdcage.

You forget the actual story behind Tagg-era Brockton Bay: when the situation is desperate people like Tagg get to call in people like Alexandria to deal with threats. It worked out for Taylor because she was essentially lucky but it won't work out for most people.

The whole feudalism thing is even less likely to take off because hey, the world's superpowers (in the political sense) have no fucks to give if they kill capes. In fact, the whole situation flips. The world doesn't devolve into small feudal enclaves, the state governments simply gain much more power and start taking down the capes that are causing problems.

There is almost no situation where the governments of the world allow cities to fall to parahumans if they have neither a need for said parahumans nor a crushing distraction that forces their best men on to the field to die every few months.

Hell, the only reason Skitter was able to hold the city was because of a series of unfortunate circumstances caused by a variety of things, beginning with the PRT not dropping everyone to take care of Lung, and then (most importantly) Leviathan and the S9. Well...and an invisible friend on her side but they don't know that.

There are only a few parahumans that can go crazy on their own and most of them were outmanoeuvred or contained in canon anyway.

eta: You're making a pretty fundamental error: you're assuming that the government and criminals are both held in check by the same thing. The government is held in check by the Endbringers (and protocol) and the criminals are held in check by the Endbringers AND the government. If any of them could just take over a city willy-nilly they would, Endbringers be damned. They just know for a fact that they will attract the wrong attention.

Criminals do best when the authority of the government breaks down. The main things that can do that are the Endbringers and crazy shit like the S9.

 

True, and then you have the people like the Slaughterhouse 9, or Ash Beast, or Sleeper, or any of a dozen or two examples that run around doing whatever they please to whomever they feel like and the government's helpless to stop them.

You're right, the government can very much enter a crackdown and just start murdering bitches that get uppity, but the problem there is that, unless the government has the most powerful parahumans, it doesn't matter. As soon as they start executing the criminal parahumans, the other criminal parahumans will collectively decide to fuck restraint, cuz they're dead anyway. Then the whole country's dead.

All it would take is, for example, Jack Slash deciding that Washington DC needs a blood makeover and steering Crawler and Siberian into strolling in and killing everything that moves (or even just telling Bonesaw to whip up Black Death 2.0). Or for Eidolon to go evil and drop the Moon on a city. Or String Theory to whip out her latest gun. Or Ash Beast to wind up in the general vicinity. Etcetera, etcetera.

And there's not a damn thing the government can really do to stop it once it starts. The hero capes are hopelessly outnumbered by the villains, and while the capes who can single-handedly destroy a first world nation are rare, they are far from unheard of, and the vast majority have mental issues that make Jeffrey Dahmer look almost sane.

The government is held in check by fear of villain escalation just as much as they are by the need for more capes to throw at Endbringers. It's MAD at its finest, except that only one of the parties' destruction is actually assured.

Now, granted, most villains would want the status quo to remain in place. After all, they're used to it and that's how they get their money/power/status/whatever that drove them to being villains in the first place. The problem is that it doesn't take more than, say, Nilbog having expanionistic ambitions to completely invalidate it. And then things would very quickly spiral out of control until you end up with some form of cape feudalism, even if someone tried to disguise it as something else.

 

At best neutral for your point at worst self-defeating.

None of these people give a fuck about Endbringers so the argument that they'll be let off the leash is totally bunk. They're assholes anyway.Without Endbringers they're less effective assholes because the governments that have to contain them aren't weakened with greater concerns.

Note how the Slaughterhouse Nine came to BB to feed off the misery caused by Leviathan like carrion birds.

Also note how Ash Beast is on a totally different continent, one that had far less powerful governments BEFORE the parahumans showed up.

First off: a significant percentage of parahumans are not capable of "fucking restraint" to a useful degree.

And second: the government can prioritize quite easily. Traitors and Warlords like Skitter? Dead. Everyone else? Depends on their actions. If they're selling drugs who cares? If they're actually committing parahuman crime and actually posing a threat to the fabric of society they go.

Instantly the incentive is flipped. Note that it was the villains that took out Lung because they were scared of the government. Any parahuman that wants to make money will not participate in activities that are likely to draw a kill order. And, if they're powerful enough, they'll stop people that draw extra attention from the government.

All of this is actually meaningless because, again, none of these things are being stopped by Endbringers. (and Eidolon is dead/non-existent in the AU) You're turning this into general parahuman vs. Muggles argument when that is not the issue.

And second, it all depends on the level of defense we can infer wrt to the political elite. Sure, they can be killed one at a time; Teacher did it. Who knows what defenses they have though?

Completely irrelevant. The relevant thing is which force has the better discipline, training and tools when it comes to a batle. There is no heroes vs. villains battle. There is villain gangs vs. the PRT, local law enforcement and vigilantes.

This is like claiming that all gangs will gang up on the US and win since they're more of them.

Again, off point.

But yeah, those capes aren't plentiful. Some are forces of nature you have to put aside if you're lucky but almost everyone else is bound by the actual rules of the game.

Not really. Criminal villains have no interest in an escalation that they will personally lose. It's tragedy of the commons. Sure, they can all band together and hurt the government but this is true of any major population bloc in the world; it won't happen because it will take too long, and every time they escalate and lose they'll be picked off. Criminals are criminals for financial reasons mostly, not to serve as the footsoldiers for someone else's war. Why fight when you cannot win?

Now, let's say that Brockton Bay's villains all chose to take advantage of Lung's moves on the city and throw a middle finger to the law. What happens? Capes rush in to defend, PRT teams are bolstered, given more leeway an weapons, and the National Guard is called in and who knows what else the mundane government can throw at the situation. Thinkers and investigators to make your income streams dry up? Clogging the streets and siccing even more Thinkers on your through the surveillance?

Now, the capes there can fight and maybe delay for a while and if it happens in say...ten other cities at the same time they'd win. But it probably won't,because all those other cities see that Brockton Bay's villains are about to get smacked down hard. Why do that if you just want your money? You're just creating a federal problem that you likely can't solve.

There is simply no coherent entity to escalate as you want them to.

You really need to connect the dots between "an insanely powerful parahuman can destroy the government" and "they will be more likely to do so when the Endbringers are gone"


----------

Of course, we could wonder what Cauldron would do here. Given the fact that they shepherd the world and prevent too many meaningless deaths from people like say...Gray Boy in the original timeline I see no reason to assume that they wouldn't do that here.

They were thwarted partially by The Simurgh, that just wrecked things and played her troll game but otherwise? Really, Scion is the mainonly other obstacle to Contessa's power if the Endbringers and Eidolon are gone. Can you imagine?

 

Where do you get that idea? In Worm it is often mentioned that before the Endbringers appeared there was a Golden Age of prosperity. The PRT and similar organizations would still exist and would be able to devote their full resources towards crime fighting/prevention. If you factor in elements like Cauldron who also profit from a intact industry base and huge populations and no need to accept villains for their help with Endbringers the incentive to accept the antics of many of the bad guys is even lower.

Instead of a Fallout environment I would argue for a very utopian one. Colonies on the moon/Mars, no food problems, Infrastructure managed by Dragon like AIs and much more is very possible if Thinkers and Tinkers can focus on building other things then weapons for Endbringer fights.

 

Well, going back to the beginning of this discussion (how would the world be without Cauldron) and if we stipulate this is after Eden is dead, we see what their presence caused.

1-No Hero, Alexandria, Eidolon, Legend, Grey Boy, Siberian, Shatterbird, Coil, Battery, Triumph, etc.
2-No Protectorate or at least not until much later. In Interlude 15 it is said that, while a lot of hero teams around, none of them wanted government control.
3- Greater number of Villains. According to Number Man's calculations and even with Cauldron producing more heroes than villains the villain-hero ratio by the start of the 21st century would be between 3-1 and 10-1. One of the reason they made the Protectorate was to reduce that number and it seems it succeeded since in canon it was 3-1. The reason it had so much success was that it was formed under the four strongest heroes of the country and that a lot of Cauldron heroes went there.
4- No Endbringers if you abide by that theory. No having whole cities razed to the ground on a yearly basis.
5-Which might improve the economy if you follow the idea that it was their fault the crisis happened.
6-No economical crisis means that Brocton Bay does not become a Cape city as there is no cheap workforce and easy money for the gangs.
7-Endbringers do not mess with those that try to benefit man kind. So there would be Sphere space colonies. Also, Newfoundland would not have been targeted so while there might be some AI running around, Dragon would not be a hero.
8-No Dragon means no Birdcage or at least not one so effective.
9-Lung would not have triggered.

So, a lot more teams, a lot more villains, no safe way to contain them, the strongest capes in the country don't exist. But the world does not seem to be slowly nearing it's end and they have that going for them which is nice.

 

The problem with spiraling away Cauldron, imo, is that any random cape with a possibly apocalyptic power can just blow up a continent. Tinker bomb. Portal to the bottom of the ocean. Nilbog, Sleeper, Moord Nag. They could die to a random shut in that jacks of twelve times a day to the nastiest parahumans he can find.

The goverment, should one exist, would be strong enough for general crime fighting and order keeping, but they'd be to slow or just wrong for a lot of stuff and collateral damage can be ludicrously high.

If you just don't want Endbringers, you could just say "Eidolon doesn't exist. He never took that formula." Or something like that. Personally, I favor a full fusion with One Punch Man, replacing Endbringers with Mysterious Being as threats against humanity that Eidolon and capes in general can fight, but eh. Many possibilities.

 

I just read Carnage. Damnit I should have waited another few months because now I have to wait for updates.

Minor gripe. She isn't using her bugs. Undersiders are against her.

Question, wha tis Butcher 7's power? from her interlude it seemed to be similar to canary's.

Anything else of a similar quality other than Cenotaph that isn't necessarily a crossover?

 

I think the problem is... Capes are fucking scary. They have ridiculous powers, and the world would be fucked if it came down to all out war. Can you imagine Lung going balls out in a world war? Can you imagine dozens of Brute type capes saying fuck it YOLO and just brazenly attacking civilians? Tinkers deciding to nuke cities or cause city wide blackouts? Thinkers collapsing the economy?

Africa is a disaster zone due to the numerous capes inhabiting it.

TLDR if the status quo didn't exist, the planet would probably be fucked anyway.

 

Just imagine our world suddenly having superpowers that push people to conflict show up at random to the people who get the worst personal experiences. Anyone here thinks our society not collapsing is likely?

 

I said it before, and I'll say it again: DANGEROUS CAPES EXIST.THIS IS TRUE REGARDLESS OF THE ENDBRINGERS' EXISTENCE. ALL THE CAPES MENTIONED DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ENDBRINGERS.

And once more:MOST CAPES HAVE NO INCENTIVE TO GO BALLS OUT.

Lung was around for years and only did it for a relatively small percentage of the time. If you want to figure out why: look at what happened to Lung.

Seriously, this has already been covered. Can people stop with the wizards vs. Muggles debate? There will not be any genocidal war. There will be police actions against criminals, police actions being helped along by the closest thing to Laplace's Demon in the Wormverse.

 

Yeah me. I think you people focus to hard on the combat centric abilities and underestimate the more passive abilities of the various Thinkers and Tinkers.

Capes on the level of Pancea, Mannequin or even Armsmaster have the potential to improve the whole world. (and would like have done so if Smirguh wouldn´t have intervened).
Special designed crops, "free" energy, vaccines for various illnesses are all possible. And since the villains(ala Accord) most likely to affect those global things are also does with enough knowledge to foresee the negative consequences for them self I think that overall the situation would improve.