I have a feeling that Cauldron are connected with the other Entity, the smaller one that wounded the counterpart. That would explain how Contessa's shard is living, yet not one of Scion's. It came from the third Entity.

It also seems the dead shards are attached to the Cauldron capes, which implies that the way Cauldron have been giving people powers is by scavenging the shards of the dead counterpart. If so, the fact that they have access to the corpse of the counterpart is interesting in itself. Perhaps they were the ones who actually killed it, working in conjunction with the third Entity? This could be how they 'already saved the world once.'

 

Even taking out Scion wouldn´t do them much good though. Remember, he is just a fragment of the entity. And the entitiy itself is diminished to 1/10000s % of it´s original size and presumably, capacity.

Unless of course the fragment is developing it´s "individuality" seperately from the main body or being. But if not, presumably the entity could just make another scion. or a hundred.

Beings with nearly unlimited capacity and very limited individuality though... a very dangerous mix.

Hyperintelligent in the sense that they can gather, absorb and process information, but completely lacking in understanding that information beyond the rational.

it seems that our history of philosophic thought and discourse failed make an impression on the thing completely.

So after it´s initial purpose was rendered invalid it was completely lost.

I think Jack was right when he said that Scion was unimaginative. It seems like they are original software pirates in the universe.

 

I agree with Jordiefan somewhat. I think Cauldron were somehow responsible for the death of the Counterpart Entity. That saved the world from being consumed and used as a hive/launch platform for a new generation of Entities.

I assume the female is Contessa, and the shard came from the counterpart Entity before it was killed.

 

So...

Pan-dimensional being comes to Earth looking for the answer to life, the universe, and...

Dear God, someone just tell him the answer is 42 and make him go away.

I found the first half of the chapter to be a bit hard to follow and tedious, but I'm not sure it could have been done much better. Maybe shorten it up a bit.

This is really not the outcome I was thinking of for the end of the world. I mean really, what the hell do you do when God decides you have to die? Since Scion is the genesis of powers, I'm thinking nothing any of the capes have is going to do much good against him in a confrontational situation, so what does that leave?

A heart-felt, rousing speech? Forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical.

Seems Lisette bit it in the first attack. Are Dinah and Tattletale going to be taken out in his next attack? Along with Danny? At least Brian will be single again.

Really just not sure where the hell Wildbow goes from here, but I'm looking forward to Extinction.

 

Howdy, it can go several ways, the other gods - the small third solo one or the one that died -, or it will be about piercing the Manton Effect that restricts the powers. After all, Scion is merely a remnant of a remnant of the entity, and the vast majority of the entities powers have been scattered already although on a timeline over hundreds of years.

I'm more interested in how Cauldron stopped the previous end of the world. Did they somehow kill the dying god, preventing the cycle from starting in full? If so how?

 

Time to head for the portals. Except, that probably won't do any good either, because the Entity (it can no longer truly be called Zion, as that name was born from its original intention of creating what it thinks of as a utopia) is multidimensional. Fuck, how do you fight something with nigh-unlimited cosmic power? It's apparent that he's been holding back all along, as his casual annihilation of landmasses proves... Foil's power seems the obvious answer, but she's a natural trigger, and all of its shards have safeguards to prevent them from being used against their makers.

I bet you the way Cauldron prevented the world was by engineering Kevin Norton's creation of Zion; that whole sequence of events is so improbably and unlikely it positively reeks of Contessa.

 

Where was that said? maybe i missed it. after all, Gray Boys power DID work against Scion. It´s just that he/it was able to overcome it easily. but it did perform as intended.

My orginal point still stands though. Even if Foil managed to kill Scion, the endtity could just make another or intervene itself.

Oh and btw, how come noone ever gave Foil a shotgun? or was there something about gun and projectlie? I don´t quite remember.. there might have been a reason. If not though, tinker made high powered shotgun plus Foils power? Best Mr. Shotty ever.

 

The entity wouldn't reform itself because all that's left of the entity is Scion. All the other parts were scattered over the timeline for the potential capes. That's why he's at such an infinitesimal level of his actual power. It's all spread out over the intended timeline, which was closer to 300 years. The counterpart dying though fucked up a lot of what they planned, which is why Scion went off to Earth Beta.

Also calling it now, Endbringers are the misunderstood heroes of the world. They were trying to kill the potential shard recievers before they could get them and add to the problem.

 

That's kind of my thinking Lion (see my last post) but the problem is the Endbringers haven't been solely interested in killing Capes. Each time they've set out to kill as many people (normal and otherwise) as possible, by targeting nuclear reactors and hitting cities with earthquakes/tsunamis. They've killed a lot of capes, but they were more in the way than anything targeted.

Plus, a while back the Simurgh intercepted a transmission from the Birdcage of Panacea figuring out what the passengers were, thus preventing Dragon and the Protectorate from knowing. That doesn't seem to fit in with an aim of stopping the entity.

The Endbringers could just be a method for the entity to introduce conflict, but killing of so many of their parts wouldn't be a very good idea. We know Cauldron didn't create them, so I'm thinking maybe it was the third, smaller entity that made them? The powers the Endbringers have fit in with what we know of the entities and apparently the smaller one found a different way of operating so...

 

I don't know about the Endbringers being connected to the entity (at least the Scion-entity anyway). Remember Scion killed behemoth. Afterwards more endbringers were created with powers that were reactionary to behemoth's death. I think something else is going on there.

 

At least now we know why Cauldron telling people what the end of the world is would only make things worse. They go against Scion -> Scion ends the world sooner.

Really hope Dinahs still alive. Seems evacuating and hoping Scion follows now. Cauldron capes might not have the safeguards. Hey, at least Legend can escape into space!

Cauldron might be from one of the worlds a Passenger has targeted before. It was mentioned the first one with civilization forced them out. So not all hope is lost.

 

I don't think capes were their specific targets, but more of general humans who had the potential to become capes. Like Levisthon was aiming at Echidna not to make her the new Endbringer or something like that, but to kill her. They targets thaings that could make a powerful new cape and try to stop it before that can happen. So it's kinda like a fighting fire with fire thing. To stop future conflict they are causing conflict now to stop someone from getting powers, even by potenty killing parents or other ancestors. The Simurgh especially since she can cause people to eventually cause and kill people for her. Maybe Manniquen's expansions would have caused more capes down the line and she was aiming to stop that.

Or something I thought of while typing. The third entity is weakening the other whole simultaneously making sure when it returns takeover of the remaining shards and humans will be easy.

 

A very good chapter - it both makes sense of the whole story and its driving plot-point (powers), and of course things have become really interesting with Scion about to eviscerate the whole world. Long post following:


To clarify the ideas introduced in this chapter - powers come from the passengers, multi-dimensional creatures that are undergoing the basic Darwinian process of growing and evolving. They do this by going world to world, travelling the universe, absorbing both energy (initially) and information (by studying from and observing other species). On earth itself, the passenger and its counterpart seeded the earth with shards of themselves which have individual functions (e.g. the Broadcast shard; the Administrator shard). The passenger likes conflict because conflict produces interesting situations which allows it to learn - about tactics, organization, applications etc.

There are apparently 3 passengers. Firstly, there is passenger-1, that produced Scion as an extension of itself for exploring and interacting with Earth. Then there is passenger-2, passenger-1's partner, which got itself unceremoniously killed. Finally, there is passenger -3, the small one that barged into passenger-2 and doubtlessly contributed to its demise.

Passenger-1 provides most of the world with powers (the "live" shards). Jack (broadcasting shard) and Weaver (administrator shard) have especially mature shards, with the shards thriving on conflict. Weaver's shard has fragmented once, producing a derivative shard that attached to Aidan, giving him weaker, derivative powers (rough control of birds)/

Meanwhile, Passenger-2 also seeded earth, but these shards are "dead", though still functional inasmuch as it still produces powers. The Cauldron capes mentioned in this chapter (Number Man, Manton, Grey Boy) are all mentioned as having "dead" shards, so perhaps Cauldron has been harvesting them. EDIT: Scion is shown to dislike Eidolon during the Brockton Bay Leviathan attack - because Eidolon is basically using the shard of its dead partner. I think someone in the Interlude 26 comments compared it to finding someone driving a car made of your dead wife's ovaries. And on second thoughts, I don't think Eidolon is losing his power because of fragmentation - his shard is dead, after all. It can't grow. He is growing weaker simply because the shard is dying. On a related note, the Case 53s are physically deformed because of the defective shards, and the fact that these shards aren't "designed" by the passenger to work well with the host.

Then there is the enigmatic Passenger-3, which bumps into (bums?) Passenger-2 and absorbs some of its shards. Contessa's power derives from Passenger-3, with Scion (Passenger-1) being confused as to why her shard isn't dead (Passenger-2's) despite also not being its own.

Some speculation: Contessa's precognition is special because it derives from Passenger-3. Passenger-1 built in innate limitations to the powers it provided (i.e. the Manton Effect), both to protect the fragile human hosts (e.g. so Sundancer won't immolate herself) and to prevent the powers being used against the passenger itself and its shards (e.g. Doormaker's power does not reach into the Passenger's "base" world. Passenger-3, on the other hand, if it did build in limitations, would only have built in limitations in regards to itself. Contessa's power still works against Passengers 1 and 2, and all their hosts. Thus:

1) Contessa's precognition isn't countered by other thinkers. The Manton Effect is designed so "the capabilities [could not be] turned against the entity or the shards" but this wouldn't apply to Contessa's shard, which derives from Passenger-3.
2) Contessa's power does not work against the Endbringers. The best explanation seems to be that the Endbringers are derived from Passenger-3, whose equivalent Manton restrictions apply to Contessa vis-a-vis other Passenger-3 parahumans.
3) What are the Endbringers? They do seem to target capes (i.e. shard holders). I guess that Passenger-3 is in conflict with the Passengers 1&2 team. The Darwinian hypothesis is that they're competing for the same resource (hosts from which to gather information? energy from earth-beta?), so Passenger-3 is working against 1&2. It already "attacked" and diminished 2, leading to its eventual demise and the ending of the 1&2 reproductive cycle.
4) Cauldon claims to already have saved the world once. As argued above, Contessa's power works against 1&2 and all derived shards/parahumans, including Scion. With her precognition, she should be able to identify Scion for what he is, and this would explain why Doctor Mother knows what the passengers truly are (Battery notes that the Doctor lies when asked about the trigger dream and the big orbiting passengers). Perhaps Cauldron killed Passenger-2, averting the possibility of the planet being destroyed by the passengers' reproductive process. Further - Cauldron always had an end of the world timeline because Contessa sees Scion's turn to nihilist extermination. As someone above says, Jack only speeded up the process; Scion would eventually have despaired of the apparent meaninglessness of good deeds, especially after Kevin Norton's death.

TLDR
1) Powers come from passengers, multi-dimensional creatures that travel the universe gathering energy and information.
2) There are 3 passengers and the Manton Limitations do not apply against a parahuman whose power comes from a different passenger (or different passenger duo).
3) Cauldron saved the world from being destroyed by the passengers' reproductive process, and is currently working to stop Passenger-1's annihilation quest.


I am really impressed with the amount of forethought that Wildbow put into the story.

Am seriously considering writing a fanfic for Worm - I've had an idea for some time, with plot points and scenes already sketched, and this most recent chapter gives even more concepts to work with.

 

Well that just punched me in the face. Wildbow threw up some absolutely viscous red herrings so good job there. I guess that based on this interlude we'll have had another time skip by the start of extermination, right? I feel like it would kind of suck to build up to Scion blasting England when we already know it's going to happen.

Did Wildbow say that this was going to get published at some point? I remember talk of an e-book but that's about it.

 

So the Passengers are reality devouring viruses and this is the time where the cycle was cut short. Frankly, the Endbringers seem to be working to kill off the sentient beings rather than just the Shardholders; they're trying to starve out the Passengers. So perhaps they're a remnant of Passenger-3 that was left behind to kill Passenger 1&2 or even the white blood cell style response of this reality?

 

I like the sound of that idea, Mutton. However I don't think we've seen that type of action from realities themselves. I don't think it would work like that, realities conjuring Endbringers to protect themselves from being harvested or whatever.

 

It's just one of the many ways this could go; I'm guessing towards more of this being a proxy war for Passenger vs Passenger between 1&3 though. Reality War Vietnam be you.

 

Edit: Whatever I said was already said much better.

 

Doctor Mother has already stated that the Enderbringers are a puzzle in of themselves, independent of any other major variable. It's not conclusive proof for the Enderbringers not being aspects of the third passenger, but I sort of feel that it may hint towards that direction.

There are a couple of interesting things about the Enderbringers that are not really answered by them being shards of the third passenger: for example, why that variable and dependent periodicity? How are they made of matter that defies the physics of this reality? Who is the 'designer'? And so on.

The white blood cell thing is really interesting, though. Are we sure that the third passenger killed off the second? There could be some other force at play here. Or some variation of existing forces - perhaps a huge amount of 'dead' shards were swallowed by this 'designer', or something? Unlikely, but yeah.

Until this interlude, I had found this arc sort of underwhelming. Now, however...

 

At least the question of why Cauldron capes seem generally more powerful then natural capes has been answered, now.