The Charman always bothered me a bit. All of Rook City does, to be honest.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the increased gameplay challenge, and (despite my issues with the new heroes) legitimately like the darker feel of many of the new elements introduced. However, to me, the two never really seemed to fit together - a "street" expansion is a good idea, but should it also be the "difficulty spike" expansion? Why is it that fighting mostly-normal gangsters in a mere crime-ridden city is the most dreaded challenge in a game which also has you battling alien armies in a dinosaur-infested volcano, or demon lords in the literal Realm of Chaos? And who are these terrifying new foes? All the core set villains (except Omnitron, who is scary because he just went berserk about fifteen minutes before the heroes fight him) have some pedigree of past villainy, but the Rook city ones are a pair of monsters out of nowhere, a random grl who lucked nto power, and a shadowy fgure who appears to lack any ambition beyond runnng slghtly-worse-than-normal street crime.
Then, the pieces clicked into place. Rook City isn't just a city with some nasty people in it - it's where The Chairman has been conducting his genetic experiments not just lately, but for almost a century. All of the people there are armed with low-level superpowers and genetically predisposed towards destructive acts (which is why it's so rare to find "pure human specimens" in Rook City anymore) - of course being surrounded by millions of them is at least as dangerous as being trapped on a failing space station. And the Chairman himself isn't doing this for the money, which surely must be outweighed by the cost of far-reaching genetic manipulation of a whole city. But why? What does he want to gain, and who is he to hatch such ambitious schemes?
Well. Nobody has seen Graham Pike in over 40 years. And, as it so happens, it was just over 40 years ago that Paul Parsons the Seventh battled Fyodor Ramonat in a burning factory. The factory exploded, Parsons escaped, and Fyodor Ramonat was never seen again. We have assumed that Ramonat (a brilliant and ruthless mad scientist who, as an aside, is a comic book character) died in that exploson, killed outright by a noted hero without anyone ever finding the body.
His son avenged him, and we all forgot him.
How certain are we that the Chairman is really Pike, Ramonat Sr. is really dead, and that the two are unrelated?
Suddenly I'm much more interested in Rook City lore.
Rook City is my least favorite aspect of Sentinels, but I like a lot of the flavor around it. The difficulty spike/set-in-one-city thing confuses me as well. Also, Spite is super scary because he constantly has a cadre of innocent Rook City Victims he pulls with him wherever he goes. Mars Base? Silver Gulch? Tomb of Anubis? He's always got 'em.
Spite has nothing. I mean, Wagner Base has a civilian crew, and the Tomb of Anubis and Ruins of Atlantis could have explorers for him to grab, so that's not so bad. The Realm of Discord bugged me, until I realized it was silly to gripe about anything "not making sense" in a world of pure will and dark magic. And, heck, imagining the Silver Gulch versions of all those victims sounds like it'll be a hoot. Really, the only one that gets me is Insula Primalis. Is he holding Citizens hostage? Shouldn't that be causing him other problems?
The real question you should be asking is, what the heck is Plague Rat doing in any other environment? Did he stow away on a shuttle to Mars? Do the Rook Cty sewers actually flush into temporal anomalies and/or nether dimensions (which, I will admit, would explain a lot)? Would anyone even notice a mere giant rat when surrounded by dinosaurs? That last point segues nicely into my objections to the Justice League not only teaming up to take down Killer Croc, but also having more trouble than they ever have against Lex Luthor (figuratively speaking), but really, that's secondary to the question of how a sewer rat gets around so much. You know, unless there's more than one, and someone carefully put them all in exotic locations worldwide, which one cannot rule out among supervillains.
Of course, the real point of all this is that Sentinels is too fun of a game to get hung up on things we don't like when there are perfectly insane alternate theories to keep it all cool. This one is a favorite of mine, and I'm excited to see that other people seem to like it, as well.
I imagine storylines that are connected in continuity. Baron Blade needs a distraction so he convinces/coerces/captures plague rat and sends him to Mars. Of course only superheroes can get there fast enough to do anything about it. They battle. They come home tired yet victorious, only to find that Baron Blade has spent the time they were away building his next great world shattering device and is about to press the button!
Let's not forget that Plague Rat was once a man, mutated by drugs and chemicals... Maybe he was "cured" in a story, and then went as human to a new place to "reactivate" his mutation. Maybe this is another Plague Rat - a poor victim of the infection who happened to be a member of Wagner Base's new crew, or of the archeologist team trying to explore Atlantis, or even a Citizen of Dawn's utopia on Insula Primalis...
Finding reasons for a random team of heroes to fight a random villain in a random environment is part of the fun, for me :) I can't wait to fight Blade in Silver Gulch !
Desp ite h is seem ingly-l im ited place in canon, The Cha irman is probably the most powerful and d iff icult v illa in in Sent inels thusfar.
The Cha irman's experiments are apparently extensive enough that it is rare to find "pure human specimens" in Rook City anymore. Three other villains and a number of environment cards show the many fruits of this process.
We may assume the Chairman himself isn't doing this for the money, which surely must be outweighed by the cost of far-reaching genetic manipulation of a whole city.
Graham P ike's pol ic ies of broad and invas ive exper imentat ion were a w ild swerve from h is father's methods.
Nobody has seen Graham Pike in over 40 years.
It was just over 40 years ago that Paul Parsons the Seventh battled and allegedly k illed Fyodor Ramonat in a burning factory.
Ramonat is a com ic book v illa in, unlikely to really die. Parsons is a com ic book hero, unlikely to really kill.
The Cha irman's cards and bio never refer to h im by name - they s imply tell us that he heads P ike Industr ies.
Therefore, some may theor ize that Fyodor Ramonat secretly replaced Graham P ike after h is alleged "death," and has been work ing on some mass ie plan ever s ince.
As an amus ing note, when I begna trying to find a good explanation for The Chairman, I was thinking he might be some sort of vanguard for Voss, who has a similar fixation on genetic modification, and a long enough lifespan to make it feasible that he set up Graham Pike. On second thought, though, there's no indication that Voss cared about Earth before Tempest's group of refugees landed here. Ramonat, on the other hand, is an eerily good fit, given how the timelines add up.
There we go! I put it on the rumors page because its very much speculation at the moment
But if enough other people come forth with evidence (or we get a clandenstine post from Chris ... << >> ) then it will probably end up moved to 'Extracted Information'
