Hey guys. Welcome to another installment of my Footenotes series where tin foil hats are still considered en vogue.
It's been a while since I've done a Footenote, but recently I stumbled upon a discussion I started in the PT forums way back when WotC was doing its preorder event and I wanted to revisit it here with a little more depth. With VotM set to be the penultimate chapter of the SotM expansion series, we are streaking toward the end and there are some major questions left to be answered. The largest one being - who, or what, is our big bad Cosmic Entity? Lets start to unpack some of the newest information found in WotC and see if we can't get to the bottom of this.
Let's begin!
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I don't think near enough has been said about the bio for Wager Master. Reading it closely there are some major points of interest:
Before time was time, before space was space, there was the wager. The wager that nothing would happen.
That wager was lost. And from that loss came the Wager Master.
As reality formed and matter came into being, all of the losing wagers - all of the impossible possibilities - also formed into being. Into a specific being: the Wager Master.
"The Wager". The Wager, coming before time and space, predates all existance as we know it. Someone bet that nothing would come of this emptiness, that it would be this way forever, that nothing would happen.
Someone won that bet.
Things did happen! Call it the "Big Bang" or "Divine Creation" or whatever, but the results are whats important. Reality, space, time, matter, they all formed from out of the vast nothingness and The Wager was lost. The Wager boils down to two things. Order vs Chaos. And Chaos won.
All of the losing wagers - all of the impossible possibilities - formed into a being known as The Wager Master. That came right from the bio. But thats not important really. What is important is the opposite end of that spectrum.
I think all of the winning wagers - all of the possible possibilities - also formed into its own being. The Multiverse. Where any and all possible possibilities can and do occur in their own little pocket of time and space.
This is the creation story for Sentinels Comics. The very backbone of how all of the things we know came to be. Following the bread crumbs of this idea down the rabbit hole, we find outselves at the bio for Progeny:
From far beyond our galaxy came a spark of creation.
Oh really? A spark of creation? Didn't we just talk about something exactly like this?
It arced through space and drove into the heart of our planet. As cosmic events transpired that spark was called to awaken. Progeny was born. It knew its two directives. Its first command: Destroy. Its second command was less simple but even more important: it must prepare for the arrival of its proginator.
I think it's clear at this point that the Time-Crazed Prisoner (aka Infinitor) alluded to Progeny in his mad wall scribbling. "It sends its servant" is refering to the proginator sending his progeny, and the "child is the center" is Progeny slumbering in the center of the Earth.
We know that the Cosmic Entity is coming. He is the big bad of the whole series and is the one who sent Progeny. And if Progeny came from a "spark of creation", possibly the same spark of creation that created the entire Multiverse itself, then the dots I'm seeing here all point to one conclusion: The Cosmic Entity is the being who won that initial wager. Chaos vs Order my friends. And Chaos won.
Chaos is a two sided coin, and it's best represented by Earths very own spirit of chaos. Akash'Bhuta. On one hand you have creation, and the other you have destruction. It's a never ending cycle. We saw a small scale example of this cycle very early on. After Omnitron was first destroyed it was given new life by a distant cosmic force, created anew so it may continue on its destructive path. Deadline and the Endlings have felt the destructive end of this cycle on a larger scale. They are all that remains of a continuous cycle of extinction events which are caused by our Cosmic Entity. Deadline's entire purpose for coming to cripple Earth is to stop this cycle from happening again.
The Endlings, being the result of these extinction events at the hands of Chaos, present an interesting piece of the puzzle. Jansa VI Dero collects the very last survivors of these species, preserving them outside of time and space in the Enclave. But why does she do this? What purpose does it ultimately serve? Look at it this way: Preservation is the antithesis of both destruction and creation. What is her purpose? Order.
Jansa VI Dero - The Terminarch - represents Order.
The word Terminarch means the last of their species. The last step before extinction or the end. There is another word similar very similar to Terminarch that means an end point in time or space. The final step when the last of its kind meets extinction. That word? Terminus.
Where have I seen the word Terminus before? OH! That's right! Hey Omnitron-X, can you read the flavor text of Defensive Blast for me?
"End times? I have seen many end times.These are merely your end times"
- Omnitron-X, Terminus #3
End times? Extinction events? Could Terminus be our Cosmic Entity? Here is where it gets good folks!
If Jansa VI Dero, The Terminarch, represents Order, than Terminus represents Chaos. Know what I think? I think Jansa was the one who lost The Wager at the begining of time. Terminus? Yeah. He won.
Additional Connecting Thoughts: Apostate, The Host, and Terminus
In my Footenotes series on Apostate, I thought Apostate might have been the "servant" sent by Terminus. That theory seems to be soundly incorect in light of Progeny. However, there was a lot of other interesting points and themes that came out of that discussion. One theme that seems to tie in to both of these discussions though is religious symbolism, noteably Christian themes and symbols.
We previously discussed what "The Host" could be and what its meaning in a religious context could tell us about the story of SotM. The Host, if you recall, is the group affiliated with Apostate in his official bio, though there has been no in-game mention of it as of yet. From a religious standpoint, the Host is the higherarchy of Angels in Heaven.
Given how The Wager produces a story that sort of resembles a creationist perspective of how all things came to be, and the role Terminus played in winning the wager that created the Multiverse, I am inclined to connect Terminus and the Host, where Terminus is serves as a god-like figure to a higherarchy of celestial beings that were amongst the first created by the wager.
An apostate is a person who denounces a religious belief or principle. For those of you who played the Dragon Age games, apostates are rogue mages who fled the chantry (the church) which sought to control them. In this same vein, I believe Apostate fled The Host, or maybe was cast out, analogus to the fallen angel Satan if we are going to stick with the religious themes and inspirations I think are being drawn on here.
What might have been the cause of Apostates fallout with The Host? Could it have been because he was tampering with infernal arts and powers? Could it have been the creation of Fanatic? I mean, have you seen the picture of Fanatic in Tactics? There is something major that goes down with her during the final story arch. Her entire body is full of glowing runes. It is almost the end of SotM and we know very little about Apostate and Fanatic, and I believe the reason behind that is because those answers are tied too closely to the Host and Terminus.