The Four Powers of the Multiverse

General GTG Sentinel Comics Lore
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In Episode #218 of The Letters Page: La Capitan and the Sliver of Creation, C&A said that there are basically four kinds of superpowers in the Sentinel Comics Multiverse: Science, Magic, Cosmic, and Temporal. This intrigued me. So, I decided to sort the Heroes and Villains of Sentinel Comics into those categories. I also added a fifth category: Martial.

Descriptions of the Powers:

  • Science — These characters gain their abilities by wielding technological devices, or by being physically altered by science.
  • Magic — These characters gain their abilities by being either a magical creature possessing supernatural powers (wether innate or acquired), or a magic-user who draws energy from some mystical realm, entity, or artefact.
  • Cosmic — These characters draw energy from Singular Entities, cosmic relics, or existence itself.
  • Temporal — These characters gain power from the branching timelines and realities of the Multiverse.
  • Martial — These characters possess no abilities beyond what their species is naturally gifted with.

Character Lists:

Science
Absolute Zero
Baron Blade
Benchmark
Bunker
The Chairman
Chokepoint
Chrono-Ranger
Citizen Dawn
Friction
Fright Train
Glamour
The Idealist
Mainstay
Doctor Medico
Omnitron
Plague Rat
Rockstar
Setback
Spite
Tachyon
Terrorform
The Visionary
Writhe

Magic
Akash’Bhuta
Alpha
Anubis
Citizen Anvil
Apex
Apostate
The Argent Adept
Biomancer
The Blood Countess
Bugbear
Darkstrife
The Ennead
Fanatic
The Fey-Court
GloomWeaver
Citizen Hammer
The Harpy
Headlong
Lifeline
Muerto
The Naturalist
NightMist
Painstake
Ra
The Scholar
Unity
Zhu Long

Cosmic
Aeon Girl
Captain Cosmic
Guise
Infinitor
Legacy
OblivAeon
Parse
Progeny
Proletariat
Wager Master

Temporal
La Capitan
Haka
Miss Information
Kismet

Martial
Ermine
Expatriette
Mister Fixer
Greazer Clutch
Kargraa Warfang
K.N.Y.F.E.
The Operative
Sergeant Steel
Sky-Scraper
Stuntman
Tempest
Grand Warlord Voss
The Wraith

I’ve put all the characters in only one category each, but I do acknowledge that many characters could fit in multiple categories. (For example, Chrono-Ranger could be considered Science, Temporal, and Martial.) I did this mainly for simplicity.

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I thought there was some suggestion that Citizen Dawn was Cosmic, and I might have gone Temporal for The Visionary.

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Nice work! If you’re looking to prompt discussion I do have a few questions/suggestions.

I agree with almost everything in the main four groups already. I was going to question Kismet, but looking back it seems she has kind of innate temporal abilities (multiple reality/probability bending) that are just enhanced by the Adhin family talisman (magical relic). So she could be a combo of both, with Setback arguably Magic (luck curse) plus Science (RevoCorp).

C&A also mentioned Martial, and there are definitely some that belong there. Ermine & Expatriette for sure. I guess I question Bunker being in Science and not there. Is it because he and Benchmark have full exo-suits versus just some gadgets for the Wraith?

I just re-listened to the K.N.Y.F.E. episode, and she belongs in Science, IMO. She gets energy powers after the Choke event and later learns to control them.

For Kargraa, I don’t know if you’d count the Bloodsworn Force as Cosmic because I can’t recall if it empowers her or just makes her want to fight more.

Doesn’t Mr. Fixer have some kind of mystical sense? Obviously there’s Zhu Long magic at work animating him in Dark Watch form. The Operative too, once she’s away from the Chairman for that matter. That may be different than a power source, though.

I’m sure others will have opinions and come up with more stuff. Interesting to expound on, though. I think someone did write a letter since asking why they didn’t count Legacy as Cosmic when they were doing that Writer’s Room.

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I thought they had said some kind of vague radiation-related origin for Dawn (well before Isoflux Alpha). May not be remembering correctly, though.

Visionary in the main universe (who comes from another universe) got powers from Project Cocoon, so I’d say Science fits her. However, I’m not sure about the Dreamer/Muse since she just kind of manifested powers. Likewise, the other Vanessas Long get powers but I think it’s unclear the origins for each. Unless you count the Fixed Point itself as something Cosmic/Temporal.

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Muse was taken from her parents and experimented on by Cocoon.
Rescuing baby Vanessa was Visionary’s first mission in this timeline.

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Okay, couldn’t remember if she was rescued before Cocoon could get to her. So she probably got the Compound PSY-200 as well, so science-based powers in the same fashion as Visionary.

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Visionary getting powers is a Fixed Point in every universe, which I think indicates something multiversal going on. And the Visionary that we know in Universe 1 definitely draws something from her trip back through time. Besides Darkmind, I mean…

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Cosmic and Temporal could probably be merged due to the small number of characters in each. Otherwise this looks about right.

Reminds me of my D&D campaign, where sources of mystical power are divided into four categories: Magic (both Arcane and Divine), Psionics, Spiritual, and Physics (which covers any application of the “natural philosophies”, aka science, as well as a few vaguely realistic things such as a monk’s Chi powers). Each one serves a specific purpose and follows different rules; each was effectively invented as a counterbalance for one of the others.

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I’m going to say upfront that I’m now realizing that my limitation of only one power per character is, well, somewhat unnecessarily restrictive, and several characters really belong in multiple categories. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll remake the lists to accommodate multiple powers per character.

Oh yes, of course. I completely encourage discussion and debate of my lists.

Regarding Citizen Dawn, I found this question from the transcript of Episode #70 of The Letters Page: Sunrise:

  • It’s not really explained in her episode of the podcast, but what is the actual source of Citizen Dawn’s powers? Is she an Omega or just special? Not an Omega. It was frequent for comics writers to introduce a character with ill-defined origins and only have a later writer come back to fill it in. Also the early podcast episodes were much less in-depth about this stuff. Citizen Dawn’s intro in the mid-60s gives her story - there’s general concern about all these new nuclear power plants going up and that’s chosen as the explanation for her powers, just environmental exposure to nuclear radiation. It’s very surface level, but it was never seen as something that needed to be redone.

Yes, both Vanessas Long in Universe 1 were experimented on by Project Cocoon, thus Science. The Fixed Point is why Cocoon did what they did to the Longs, but both Vanessas’ powers still come from the psychic supersoldier DNA serum thingy.

However, Muse’s Power Source in the RPG is listed as “The Multiverse,” rather than something like Experimentation. So my question is, could a Vanessa Long just spontaneously manifest psychic powers without any reason other than “ the Fixed Point says you have to,” or must there be some other catalyst?

If my memory serves, C&A have actually never said why Kismet has powers. Unusual . . . But I believe they have said that the talisman is really just a powerless piece of jewelry, and that it only enhances Kismet’s powers because she thinks it should. A Magic Feather, if you will.

And I completely agree that Setback should not just be Science, because his Luckurse needs to be accounted for, but I would probably put him in Science + Temporal. Because, well, what Kismet does is simply timeline manipulation. It never really seemed like Magic to me.

My main reasoning was that, without her gadgets, the Wraith is still an incredibly competent detective, markswoman, and hand-to-hand fighter. But without his suit, Tyler Vance is basically just a soldier. Yes, a very skilled soldier, but not one even near superheroic levels. And Benchmark is just some guy (albeit a Mary Sue) without his suit.

Really? I could’ve sworn that KNYFE got her energy powers from all the weirdness in The Block, not Choke.
From KNYFE’s Wiki bio:

However, spending over a decade around the The Block’s occupants and its temporal containment systems irrevocably altered her physiology, which took more of a toll on Huntly than it did most. She spent weeks in the neo-superhuman development wing of the infirmary as energy spikes erupted all over her body. Her recovery time was impressive, yet the power fluctuations managed to deal millions of dollars of damage to the surrounding sick bay, medical equipment, and a few unfortunate members of the medical staff.

However, after reading her episode’s transcript, I do see that you are correct; C&A did say that Paige’s powers came from the Choke event. So it seems that what they said on the podcast was simply a clarification of her original bio.

I originally put her in Martial so I could ignore the energy powers, because I had no idea what category “Block weirdness” belonged in. I guess the closest would be Cosmic?

Me neither. I believe that what they said is that usually the BloodForce picks one champion to empower and go fight everyone, but when it picked Kaargra, she forfeited the power in exchange for creating the Coliseum.

The way I remember them describing it, Slim is just 150% good at kung fu. He’s just so good at kung fu that he can turn his punches into light or fire or pure energy and use qi to sense everything around him. But it’s just a superhuman level of martial arts, not magic. I know that it’s silly, but I love it.

True, but I wanted to stay within the framework that they made in Episode #218.

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It makes sense to me that not only do Kismet’s powers essentially work through time manipulation, but they actually aren’t really powers at all; they’re more like a pattern woven into the spacetime continuum around her, so that she effectively bends probability the way a star’s gravity bends light. If Setback needs to slip on a banana peel while chasing her so that she gets away, then she is not in any way responsible for the banana peel being there; it was simply the natural outcome of thousands of coincidences that some person happened to discard a banana peel at exactly the right/wrong moment and location, and the Rube Goldberg clockwork of the universe maneuvered Setback and Kismet and the banana peel to all be at the particular positions at the particular times that would result in the predestined outcome. Only Gabrielle’s arrogance causes her to assume she’s doing something to cause these seemingly improbable outcomes.

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I agree with what you’re saying, but with one caveat — I think that Adhin does have powers, because her luck manipulation is active. She has to intentionally pull on the strings of fate for her luck to do anything. It doesn’t passively grant her benefits. That’s Setback.

Of course, this is just how I interpreted the Word of C&A.

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She chooses to take a step, but the resulting vibrations in the ground are not something she does, she simply generates more force upon probability through such actions than a normal person would. That’s my interpretation.

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More precisely, they came from block weirdness during the choke event. Unlike my theory on Kismet, which I made up, this is actually canon as best I remember it.

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Your Kismet theory is actually closely related to one of the hypotheses put forward to resolve the Grandfather Paradox in a physically plausible way. I like it.

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