Why is Matriarch Tachyon's nemisis

General GTG Sentinel Comics Lore
1

I just recently bought the enhanced edition core, unfortuantely the expansions are too expensive for me at the moment, and I've spent the last few days with my eyes either glued to these forums, catching up, or playing. During this time I noticed a few things in the nemisis section that made little sense to me, possibly due to my lack of expansions to explain them; however, Tachyon and the Matriarch is driving me nuts.

 

I've looked at all the bio information I have access to (the website and the enhanced bio pages mostly) but I can't find a good story reason for these two to be nemisises... (by the way does anyone actually know the plural for nemisis?)

 

Could someone please explain why these two hate each other on a similiar level to Tempest and Voss or Legacy and Blade?

2

Well lets see. The main reason is that Tachyon and Matriarch are both cousins. Tachyon also being the cousin that is refered to in Matriarch's bio. So essentially Matriarch is just really envious of the attention Tachyon recieves and just angry at the fact that people wish she would be more like her cousin, a successful scientist that is also saving the world. That's really all I can think of putting in on it at this time.

3

The plural of nemesis is nemeses.

The Matriarch/Tachyon nemesis relationship is hinted at in The Matriarch's bio on the website:

Tired of hearing about “how a young lady should behave” and “you should behave more like your very successful cousin”, she rebelled.

The very successful cousin is Tachyon.

There might be a more concrete or explicit link between the two around the place somewhere. I'd check the Rook City Kickstarter page first.

4

I've always kinda wondered that myself.

5

Plural of nemesis: nemeses, or at least thats what Merriam-Webster says.

 

As far as why they'e nemeses, I've always been a bit unclear, but for some reason a seventeen year old girl got it into her head to be jealous of her 38 year old cousin.  Blame the matriarchs parents I guess.

 

And I would say their relationship is more complicated than hate, especially on Tachyons end, they're family after all and The Matriarch is being a stupid kid, with super powers...

6

The real villains are The Matriarch's parents.  Who compares their kid who isn't even out of high school to her 38 year-old, cancer-curing, fuel-revolutionizing, superhero-scientist cousin?

On the level of Voss and Blade's relationships with Tempest and Legacy?  I doubt it.  It seems to be nothing more than the scorn of a 17 year-old girl for someone who has her life together.

7

Okay, I had no idea they were cousins, would have never guessed that was Tachyon they were referring to. So Tachyon probably is trying to help out her misguided and very angry cousin... and the Matriarch is still an angsty teen with superpowers... well, at least it's better than no reason :P

 

Thanks for the quick responses everyone

8

And remember we are talking about a comic book, not "real characters" : a "simple" family problem, like an unexpectedly super powered teenager trying to prove her worth by defeating her super heroic cousin, can be the beggining of an unending feud, with the Matriarch always trying, again and again, from comic to comic, to finally get rid of this cousin that keeps putting her down. While Tachyon doesn't know if she should put her in the Block, slap her, or hug her.

Especially because the Matriarch, angsty as she is, is very powerful- if she ever puts her mind to it, in the comics, she could become one of the most dangerous would-be Master of the World with her terrifying armies of birds obeying her every thought and desire... Seeing how "dark" all villains/story lines in Rook City are, I think her stories are probably more horrifying than what we expect, and the fictional "reader" far more impressed by her villainy than we are. After all, she is inspired by a movie where birds kill, maim, and destroy whole villages.

She reminds me of one of the stories in the Grey Mouser/Fafhrd cycle, where a bird priestess used her control of birds to terrorize Lankhmar, and women, fearing to be disfigured,put cages of their head to protect their faces and jewelry.

Finally - the game reflects the "comics", and she is a difficulty 4 villain, as dangerous as the Chairman and his organization. I take this as a clue that she must be a terrifying villain in the comics. The card "Carrion Field " may very well be the results of her actions...

 

Edit : I just had this strange idea - what if, after Vengeance, there was another "villain team" expansion about the mysterious Undead Poets Society ?

Another strange idea : you know who would be a great "guest writer" for a Matriarch mini-serie ? Neil Gaiman !

9

I do find it rather strange that Mister Fixer and Expatriette are often ranked lowest on the power scale by many players, but The Organization and The Matriarch are two of the hardest decks in the game.  Guess those two just have their work cut out for them in cleaning up Rook City.  It's interesting that a Big Business Ra's Al Ghul fellow and an angsty teenager are two of the biggest threats to the whole Multiverse.

10

I think their difficulty is more a measurement of how unstoppable they are, than how dangerous to the world. The Chairman probably has a long term plan including world domination, but is, for now, just controlling Rook City and "perfecting" himself - but he is so incredibly efficient in his planning that heroes can't stop him. Baron Blade and his lunar attraction beam is a threat of greater magnitude, but easier to defeat...

The Matriarch seems to have limited ambitions - for now. But the power of the Mask makes her some kind of Goddess of Birds, with enough power to wipe out whole hero teams. If she ever "grows-up" and begins to use her powers for a greater scale plan, humanity will know fear.

I wonder how much impact these two have on "history" in the comics - could it be that the Matriarch and her Mask were partly responsible for the destruction of humanity, leading to the "Chrono-Ranger" future ?

11

I suppose I just don't really understand why they are any more unstoppable than a self-proclaimed Demon, an alien warlord that has turned entire planets into genetically-enhanced, brainwashed super-soldiers, or a team of nine actual gods.

12

The reason can probably be found in the "tone" of the comics they appear in : Rook City is a darker part of the multiverse line, set in the gritty "dark age" of the publication. Villains are darker, stronger, more ruthless - even if they should be less powerful than most other big villains of the line. In stories of this "age", heroes suffer a lot more at the hand of the ennemy than in other ages. People die. Heroes lose or fail,are wounded, sometime broken. Sometime they die - for good.

Voss is far more powerful than the Organization - but he is more of a "silver age" villain, often defeated, rarely winning... Like Galactus in the Marvelverse, a being so powerful that you wonder how the Four have been able to keep him at bay for so long. A villain meant to be a "faire-valoir" (foil ? a character used to make another look good) for the heroes - while in the "dark age" of comics, heroes often become the foil for the villain...

I think they are the most difficult villains not because of their sheer power, but because the fictional "writers" of the comics they appeared in wrote them as unstoppable frightening villains, while the other villains were "just" your typical "meant to be defeated somehow even if you wonder how it was possible" powerful super-villains.

We would probably have better results discussing everything in the multiverse from a literary point of view than from a simulationist one !

13

I think the problem is that Matriarch is Tachyon's rival. Tachyon herself is pretty cheerful and lighthearted, and even though there could be some interesting contrast between her and the Matriarch, I just don't see Tachyon being the subject of dark, gritty, realistic comics. That kind of tone works great for characters like Wraith and Fixer, but for Tachyon, it seems a little out of place. It would be kind of like if the Joker and Flash were nemeses.

14

I think Unity is cheerful and lighthearted. Tachyon? Not so sure.

15

Where has Tachyon not been lighthearted in any of the published material?  All I can think of is NPH quotes and her constant smile and puns in the FF Annual.

Also, how is Voss silver age?  The flavor text and artwork on the Gene-Bound Shock Infantry is some of the darkest stuff in the published material next to many of Spite's Victim cards.  Applying the argument consistently that Voss is a silver age character, that would mean Tempest is a silver age character.  Tempest's story, from a literary standpoint, is completely tragic and painful.  Voss destroys Tempest's planet, brainwashes and genetically modifies the strongest of his people and kills the rest, leaves him a refugee on a strange planet, and all this forces Tempest to take up arms after his pascifist culture has been destroyed.  That is dark.

The Matriarch, meanwhile, has formed a poetry circle who has a parody name from a Robin Williams flick, has a pun name (Corvus, from the Corvidae family that all the birds in her deck hail from), was born "next to the mall," and has an animal theme.  That screams silver age to me.  The character, from what I can tell, is a joke.  I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just saying that the tone I've seen throughout all of her story has been humorous and tongue-in-cheek from what the creators have presented us with.

16

Voss and Tempest are very similar to Galactica and Silver Surfer right? Very similar stories. And very much Silver Age comic storylines

 

Its not a perfect representation, but even Silver Age villains and heroes had tragic pasts and difficult things happen to them. But the heroes always won. And always won against impossible odds. Thats more what i think Sound was getting at. Silver Age heroes werent perfect they often had gand tragedies that pushed them into heroism or gave them motiviation.  Spiderman (not any of the new stuff, the older stuff) can be considered a Silver age hero, and his backstory is pretty tragic. Hell superman lost his entire planet and people. Thats tragic.

17

Yes, lynkfox, that's what I meant :)

I think the big difference between the "dark age" (or Dork Age, to use the TVTrope designation) and the other ages was who is most often "winning" and how.

Maybe I should not talk about "ages", but just about "sub-genres" : Rook City villains and heroes seem more part of the "urban crime stories" sub-genre of comics, the "Mistery Comics" line of Multiverse publications Wraith appeared in. The stories work on different rules (tropes) and, especially, the villains are not "cosmic level" powerful, but at the same time worst for the heroes. That's like the Joker : he has no cosmic power and, in fact, no power at all, his plans stay at a "city" level, but he is Batman's most feared ennemy.

@Nielzabub

I think you are right : the styles of Tachyon and her cousin, from what we now, seem to clash, they don't feel as a "natural" pairing. Even if, the more I think about them, the more it seems they have a lot in common and work as deformed, mirrored images quite well...

We probably will learn more about these two someday - it feels like we are lacking something, just like we lacked some information about the Plague-Rat/ChronoRanger relationship.

Oh, Reckless, by the way - I agree with you about Voss. He is not my favorite villain, but I think he is the most really terrifying one - you can hardly do worse than a genocidal geneticist controlling a whole galaxy.

18

Honestly, it seems very likely to me that The Matriarch was supposed to be Wraith's nemesis.

 

A Rook City expansion without a foe for the main Rook City hero is odd.  A six-year age gap between people living in the same city would be much more plausible for a pair of cousins than a 21-year gap between people with no apparent correlation.  And, of course, one is angsty in the face of a easy life, while the other projects a bubbly persona despite personal tragedy.  They're a great fit.

 

However, canon is that she's Tachyon's foe instead.  Sure, crazy things happen in comics (see: Wonder Woman, a clay statue animated by Greek magic, often put opposite a vapid socialite who got mutated into a thundercat), so this might have exactly the kind of "it makes sense in context" answers which are so hard to convey in card games, but lacking those, my group and l had been assuming that Matriarch was Tachyon's adopted daughter, until we decided to switch her over to Wraith as a house rule.

19

 

Spite is Wraiths Nemisis, and was in the Rook City Expansion. :slight_smile: (expatriatte and Cit Dawn, Mr Fixer and The Chairman, and Tachyon and Matriarch)

20

Ah, right you are.  I always forget that, since once again, there's no clear connection between them, short of him being a bad dude (in her town, but still).