I just assumed it was akin to early Doctor Doom and Luthor's Silver Age-esque plans... with time, these plans became more... reasonable and the characters were fleshed out.
Two words: Temporary Amnesia
Progeny hit the Baron in the head. All he knows is the destruction being caused by OblivAeon. He wants to be good... but crazy is crazy and as his memory slowly returns, his nefarious plots begin to brew anew.
Yes, but to be fair, his viewpoint originally was heroic, more or less. He just was operating on bad data, leading to mistakes of judgement.
That said, I think all of the core five "heroes" have plausible reasons to remain heroic after this event except for Luminary, given canon. The Matriarch is outright reformed, Deadline never was malicious in the first place, and La Commodora seems to have learned wisdom from her long years.
Akash'Thriya… okay, here's the thing: if you take the variant as canon, she taps upon the Void. If the Void is what I think it is, this can't help but change her. Note that every other known user of the Void is a hero, save for Oblivaeon and those empowered directly by him. I would not be shocked if the portion of Akash'Bhuta that does this is changed, and no longer able to dismiss the importance of humanity. . . and this is the price the Void exacts on her. Akash'Bhuta loses a portion of herself permanently, and Akash'Thriya can never go back to being part of the larger primordial godbeing she once was.
Baron Blade is the one exception, but only because of Sentinel Tactics establishing a future canon. Otherwise, I'd totally willing to believe that time and events could have mellowed him, at least enough to be within plausible reach of some vague form of redemption. This is not so much because of his own nature, as because of the nature of his adversary, Legacy. "Superman helps Lex Luthor become a better person" is a perfectly appropriate plot.
( As for the mini-expansion heroes? Ambuscade is in the same position as Baron Blade- plausible arc, future canon says otherwise. Of course, his apparent "redemption" isn't a huge deal anyway, since he's just going from being a selfish villain to a selfish 'hero'. Benchmark. . . is entirely dependent on what the hell he actually is, and what is going on with RevoCorp, etc. )
All variants are canon for all characters.
Another version of Akash'Bhuta, named Akash'Dharsha, appears in Tactics. She is a villain there, right?
On one of the art streams I believe Christopher did confirm that Benchmark was genuinely a good guy. So its likely that Revocorp is using his desire to do good and help others to boost their image. I'm pretty sure he's a straight up hero for the most part.
I'm pretty sure that Stuntman is an alternate reality Ambuscade since his action hero promo says that the scars didn't stop his acting career, while in the prime reality, it did, turning him into a villain. Also, we do know that Benchmark the character in the suit has wholly good, heroic intentions, while we don't know if that's the same for Revocorp.
Do we know anything about her story? If not, that could support my scenario: Akash'Dharsha is the name for the larger portion of Akash'Bhuta that is still an amoral goddess of nature and chaos.
That's the case for the variant "action hero" Stuntman. The normal version is Ambuscade, just Ambuscade after he got sick of being beaten up by heroes, and decided to go back to acting. Though I imagine even variant Stuntman is still fairly amoral as heroes go, he just has a lot of positive reinforcement.
My interpretation of those bios was that the action hero promo is from an alternate reality, while the main "Stuntman" deck is from the main Sentinels timeline.
Stuntman is from our timeline and is our Ambuscade. No doubt about it.
Akash:
She doesn't want to wipe out humanity for nefarious reasons, she wants to play with her planet. Humans just don't take kindly to their cities being turned into deserts, lakes and forests while they are eaten by all the really cool new animals and plants she thinks up.
Think a kid building catles in a sandbox that 5 minutes ago was a sprawling ant empire. If Ants had superpowers that kid would be enemy #1, meanwhile the kid is like "Stinking ants, you're ruining my sandbox."
Oblivaeon threatens her world. She isn't changing sides of the coin, she's the same spirit, just has a different enemy, much worse than the little things that keep messing up her fun, and therefore worthy of much more drastic measures.
Baron:
I find Christopher's comment intriguing. I'm getting a Joker+Lex Luther vibe from it. Like Baron sulks around cursing LEgacy, and then suddenly has a brilliant idea that might work, throws it together as fast as he can and throws it at Legacy.
Like the Mars base trap, he gets not Legacy and is not at all prepared to deal with it. An elaborate large scale plan that hasn't been thought through very well, and he loves every minute of the fight.
For Luminary that works. He isn't thinking it through, there is no grand plan, just throwing inventions at Oblivaeon hoping one of them helps. I expect his deck to be amazing and have all kinds of colatoral damage potential. I can see him fighting along side Legacy, just like I can imagine the joker fighting his way through another villain's base to rescue Batman so he can defeat Batman himself.
Stuntman:
Love his progression, and it makes his tactics character make so much more sense. He becomes a hero and can show his face again only then to lose his powers, and thus his ability to be a hero. He can't take being weak again and goes back to villainy to get money to buy more powers.
I love the alternate version as well, Super action hero guy shows up to save the real world. Hopefully they remember his TiVo.
People keep on talking about Ambuscade losing his powers in the future. Hasnt' he lost them already? VotM Ambuscade doesn't do Energy damage...
(In fact, I think it's kinda suspicious how he has two electric allies, a thermal one, and a vaguely-defined "redirect power" one, but no One-Shots evoking any of his classic "energy absorbsion" gimmick. Maybe the Slaughterhouse Six were supposed to help re-jump his powers and failed?)
I imagine the Stuntman deck will provide some further answers. It could just be that his energy powers are marginal enough importance that the Villains deck simply doesn't have room.
I question any interpretation which leads to "his main motivation is of marginal importance."
In Villains Ambuscade is trying a different approach, which may be relying on a team instead of his powers.
His too many guns card could be part of his powers too.
I know I’m doing thread necromancy but I love how this aged.
No worries -- we don't really jump on folks about that (unless they're spammers ;-).
But that's hilarious! :-D
Definitely made re-reading my old threads worth it.
Ha!