Did we ever learn what started off the Shattered Timelines event? Was it just some kind of quantum fluke? Super Scientific Tachyon's experiment gone wrong? Team Leader Tachyon's experiment gone right? Iron Legacy punching the walls of reality until they buckled?
We don't exactly know for sure. What we do know is that the growing unstablness of the Timelines is partly what cause Deadline to come to Earth in the first place because he knew what that ment the coming of OblivAeon (and why he tried to stop it).
It could be that OblivAeon started the shattering to begin the proccess of merging all realities into 1 single universe he could rule and dominate. Unfortunatly we know nothing about his motives so its hard to say.
It could be that Visionary's initial timejump was so violently extraordinary that it not only gave her than brain tumor thing, but that it also caused a tear in the time/space fabric that has been slowly getting worse as time went on. Knowing someone was powerful enough to do such a thing, OblivAeon is coming to set things in order.
It could be that Wager Master did it as a prank of sorts.
Lots of theories. No solid answers.
My guess has been that Visionary's power is itself the source of all this instability.
Do you remember the Justice League Unlimited Episode in season 2, Epilogue? Amanda Waller is describing a battle between the JL and the Royal Flush Gang. Batman has to go kill the current Ace, whose reality-warping powers are out of control and threatening to destroy everything.
I'm thinking something like that.
Not saying you’re completely wrong, but we know Visionary survives, as she’s in Tactics. Here’s part of the write-up:
[quote=Visionary's Bio]
Years have passed, and The Visionary continues to work with the heroes of this time - not her time, but a time she helped make and helped preserve. She has found her access to the timelines cut off by recent events, and has little issue with that. But her body is failing as her mind becomes less and less connected to the physical world. She has taken to keeping an object of focus, psionically manipulating it constantly to keep her connected to reality. [/quote]
I sort of assumed there had always been multiple timelines, and the "shattering" was referring to snarls and paradoxes that formed when so many heroes and villains started messing with it, hence the Time Cataclysm environment. But now that we know the end of the card game marks the end of the multiverse as we know it... hmm. Do alternate planes of existence, like the Realm of Dischord, count as additional universes in the multiverse, or is the multiverse simply the sum total of every variant timeline? Or is the Realm of Dischord an alternate timeline, too, just one where things developed differently way, WAY earlier in the multiverse's formation, such that it bears no resemblence to our world?
I think it might have been us given how quickly the stretch goals got shattered.
I think we've linked it heavily to OblivAeon creating his singularity to destroy everything.
I remember hearing that Visionary did not create the shattering, merely used the cracks caused by it to time travel. MY Forum-foo is too weak to find where that was said though
I think the opening story in the KS makes it sound pretty clear that OblivAeon itself was the source of the shattering timelines. In order to achieve his goal of condencing all of the multiverse down into a single whole to destroy it, creating those cracks in time was a key first step it seems.
Did anyone have a different reading of it?
Not going to search for the link, but it was confirmed awhile ago that Visionary was not the cause.
Christopher did it.
I knew those smoke bombs were dangerous
The kickstarter implies that Oblivaeon is the cause:
OblivAeon itself has manifested on Earth in this timeline to put an end to the pitiful resistance. If it succeeds, everything will be destroyed. However, if the heroes are able to stop OblivAeon, the cracks which run through all realities will be repaired as the cosmic power that created them is destroyed, effectively cutting the timelines and realities off from each other.