Fallen Hero: Rebirth is released - discussion thread! (Book One)

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3019

Oh snap.

Well this theory about regenes being missing children sounds actually more.convincing rereading it all. The big earthquake happened in 1980 and there where food riots, evacuations and all manner of sad shenanigans happening all troughout the 1980s.

According to the timeline Sidestep did have an actual birth (i hadnt read that before). Does this mean he wasn’t grown or designed in some way ?

So sidestep was actually “born” at some point in the late 1980s during an era of strife. Also there were many armed uprisings that where stomped by the military. It could have made sense for the MC to be picked up by the state after something happened to their parents and they ended up in foster care.

Also im thinkig it would make it easier to integrate with the story, what with regenes being weapons sent abroad.
The government is brainwashing children and making them into monsters and telling them they are not human and then sending them to fight again communist menaces is quite shocking so not even Ortega would buy it if Sidestep just told them. It would be even more horrific to find about experimented kids than experimented clones.

The whole GeniTech became a thing 6 years after the quake and moved to Los Diablos right after 92 with the free economic zone thing. Also, The first sighting of regens in combat happens in 2000 so if they started experimenting in 92, then It’s unlikely they’d have a first batch of clones that year, but if they were kidnapped children, then 92’ could be their first group and they’d be exactly 18+ year olds by 2000 .

Also makes the hk guys words about going home make sense. That always bothered me with the regene theory, how could the HK be a regene if he has a home. Well with this theory he can.

Finally, cuckoo might mean he is a clone-regen coming from a tube or an experimented human stolen from the streets, Sidestep just needs to have infiltration skills to get into that category.

Now i like the missing children thing more than the regene thing.

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3020

Even a grown/designed being would still have what they perceive as ‘birth’ and ‘childhood’. And the part about MC’s childhood seemed to suggest it was entirely in the labs; if she was a kidnapped child at least some of it would be out in the world.

(Looks through the timeline)
Late 80s, ‘estimated birth’ of Sidestep.

In 1992 Genitech patented whole body clones. Meaning by this date they have already perfected the technology, so they must have started studying it much earlier.

In 1993 The Regene project is revealed in a magazine article (not by Genitech themselves!), claiming it dates back to the 70s. The author of the article was killed in an accident soon after. Which makes me believe that it was indeed the truth, and the Farm hadn’t wanted the public to know.

But I agree that Heartbreak seems more like a kidnap victim than a regene. Telepathy being a rare talent, maybe the Farm had some difficulty making them reliably.

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3021

personally…I like the ‘made’ rather then ‘Kidnapped’ for MC . Maximum ANGST!!!

ahem…

and it mean you have nothing to go back to…save to a cruel place where it all started .

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3022

Can’t wait to play test the next book.

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3023

Exactly!! I imagine my MC keeping her past so secret because all of the rumors of Re-Genes being AI, or “fakes” as you can call the team sent to fight Psychopathor. She wants to be “real” so badly (or used to, before Heartbreak).

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3024

beside…I think if she was kidnapped and with her skill , she would’ve found out by now who were her familly . Sure she has to hide , but she still would know .

Where she is made , It just feel right with the disconnection she is feeling .

3025

I think you may be reading more into the use of that term then what is there. An example of this is the original names given to the protagonist by the author; Cynthia and Cyrus. Both are names of great historical figures. Cynthia is the name given to a Greek goddess called Artemis, and Cyrus is the name given to Cyrus the Great who foundered the Persian Empire. Are we to take particular meaning from these name choices as well?

Neither can I. So excited! :grin:

As for the protagonist being kidnapped, well, has anyone seen the show called Stranger Things? In that show, one of the characters is a young girl who was stolen away from her family at a very young age and experimented on by crazy scientists researching something about a portal to another world, a world the young girl called ‘the upside down.’ Thinking on it, this young girl seems to emulate our Protagonist, their circumstances parallel. I would not be surprised if something like that happened to the Protagonist, who does feel like a scared little girl hiding away from crazy bad people. The girl in Stranger Things has a mean streak as well, much like the Protagonist.

Interesting to think about, at least.

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3026

you never know ! all authors get inspired by this or that…hell some even enjoy hiding stuff in plain sight !

And some peoples do it lol I know I did ! one my character was inspired on Medea story :smirk:

speculating and theorizing is alot of fun…until next book come out .

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3027

Sure, if you want to. That’s the fun with literary criticism - once the author puts their work out to the public, it’s not 100% theirs anymore. We can read whatever meaning we want, if we can make an argument for it. Plus, this is interactive fiction. It could be foreshadowing, if you play an MC who wants to overthrow the corporations on the west coast and found an empire :woman_shrugging:

For what it’s worth, Malin did mention it’s a reference to the bird, since someone asked on tumblr if it was a reference to some Marvel comic characters. Exactly how it’s a reference is up to our own head canons until she writes otherwise in the next installment :smiley:

YEAH BOI

I feel like my MC would hate Eleven though. In a “mad jealous, I wish I had telekinesis powers” type of way.

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3028

@malinryden, there is something that I had been wondering about earlier today.

There would be boosted and enhanced people all over the world at this point, right? People with their own special powers and abilities, each ranging along many different levels of power. One thing I have been wondering, how powerful is the protagonist and their erstwhile allies in comparison to all other boosted and enhanced globally?

Would they generally be considered very powerful? Or are there plenty of other heroes and villains that could easily outmatch all of the current cast due to such individuals being so much stronger and more powerful?

3029

Good question. I’m guessing they’re kinda midrange, with Steel and Argent on the higher end.

3030

thats a good question . mind if I try to answer it ?

Summary

Joe use ‘enhancer’ for a reason . So that mean there are peoples with powers .

Also , Boosted is a gamble right ? doesn’t always work and is deadly if it fail .

That’s a very difficult question to answer . From the way the story is setup , anyone will say ‘Well the ranger are the strongest ! Like Doh!’’ . But is that really true ? Working for the city as it’s super hero and having a licence to rampage around doesn’t make you the Strongest . Watch enough super hero (or read enough) that you should know , there is always a strongeer one in the sewer hiding , a stronger one that is locked up for good , a stronger one that is not yet born , a stronger one that is in a coma , a stronger one …well you get the idea .

In the hospital , if Ortega get a beating , our MC mentions others factions that can do what the rangers do .

So me think if one were to take all the rangers down , there are others super heroes who can fill in their position .

Are they very powerful ? probably . Are they the only one that are powerful ? hell no . They are licenced with the backing of the governement and that make them stand out from the rest , they are LEGAL and LEGIT .

Also…not related to the question , but anyone keep thinking ranger from fallout ? It’s nagging meh for some reasons :laughing:

3031

Sure, but mods are expensive and dangerous if you can’t afford to have them maintained. It’s mentioned if you recruit Boris that you help him out with his mods sometimes, and Ortega refers to his situation as indentured servitude.

Most mods are probably either outfitted by the government (military) or criminals. Maybe there are some more mercenary heroes who collect bounties, but I’m not sure there would be many modded heroes who go solo. Unless Malin is hiding any crazy billionaires bent on avenging their dead parents, who knows.

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3032

Or who built their own mods…

…in a cave…

…with a box of scraps.

I mean, considering it’s a world of clones and superheroes, and that Cheng seems capable of at least doing his own maintenance, does anyone else think it’s possible that a sufficiently intelligent character would be capable of making their own mods?
Or am I totally misunderstanding the world and limitations that Malin has built and set?

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3033

Well, Steel has government resources to get a hold of the newest cutting edge shit, probably. I’m not sure how many crazy non-billionaires would be able to get their hands on new stuff without stripping it from the corpse of a hero whoops that got dark

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3034

I always go with ‘Boosted’ hencheman…Rosie was it ?

3035

well the nano are as close as ‘self aware’ sort of as we get…

still need confirmation about the Regen and the Ai theory though…

3036

This…

Summary

Scramblers like that always leave you with a headache that will plague you for days—not to mention the fact that Joes has telepathic dampeners and those remove your best weapon. Most of these bars don’t have them, but the places that do are where the smart people go. The ones who need to keep their secrets. The ones you need to talk to.

Make me wonder . do scramblers work for others powers as well ?

3037

More wild speculation!
Beware spoilers.

Hollow Ground

Ortega’s behavior implied that prior to consulting Sidestep, the Rangers had no clue who possessed Argent.

After Sidestep’s ‘help’, the Rangers obtained the following clues: a glimpse of Locus’ face, and that the perpetrator was supposed to be on their side and regretted what they did.

And from these clues somehow led Ortega to suspect Hollow Ground.
Implying that: Hollow Ground is ‘supposed to be on their side and regrets what she did’.

Also, for her to be a suspect in the first place, she would have to be a telepath.
Since Ortega suspects her even with Argent’s ‘memory’ of Locus’ face, Ortega might have evidence to believe that Hollow Ground is capable of manipulating memories.

From the timeline, Ortega was a Ranger when Hollow Ground murdered the first Marshal, so he would have to have had direct contact with Hollow Ground, and therefore very possibly would know these things whereas the newer Argent wouldn’t.
Plus he is immune to telepathy, so Hollow Ground couldn’t make him un-know this info.

In summary. A reluctant villain (even though she killed a Ranger), who is also a telepath powerful enough to modify memories. Sounds familiar?
In addition, Hollow Ground has the same gender, race, and approximate age as Sidestep.
This is too much to be a coincidence.

Conclusion: Hollow Ground is the same strain of infiltration-Regene (aka ‘cuckoo’) as Sidestep, and might also be an escapee like her.

The cuckoos

In the epilogue, two Farm agents have the following exchange:

A: I think we might have a sighting. One of the cuckoos.
B: Confirmed?
A: No, but I would like to get permission to escalate the issue.
B: Not yet. Make sure to confirm before we bother notifying the director. We had enough wild goose chases last year.

From the famous habit of cuckoos (the birds), combined with the situation of Sidestep, ‘Cuckoo’ is probably the Farm’s nickname for infiltration-Regenes.
Clearly Sidestep is not the only cuckoo the Farm made.

The dialogue above implies that even the Farm doesn’t know where its ‘cuckoos’ are, and are trying to track them down. If Sidestep was the only one they lost track of, the Farm agents would more likely refer to her as ‘the one that escaped’, instead of ‘one of the group’.

Possibility 1: the Farm intentionally cuts ties with its ‘cuckoos’ after releasing them on a mission, to preserve their cover. Its… not very in character for the Farm, unless they had some sort of recall mechanism. In which case they wouldn’t have so much trouble finding them.

Possibility 2: at some point there was a mass escape event, where a lot of the ‘cuckoos’ got out and are still in hiding.

Incoherent Rambling

Hollow Ground was active at 1999, and killed Marshal Hood in 2007.
Sidestep first became a vigilante in 2008.
So, if this escape event happened, when would it be?
Had Hollow Ground gone rogue in 1999? If she was still a Farm agent when she chose this name, then the Farm would have known where to find her even in present day. So:

Either HG went rogue before 1999, and chose the name after escaping. In which case the Farm may or may not know she is a cuckoo;
or HG was and still is a Farm agent.

Regardless, there might be other rogue regenes somewhere out there.
If there are, Sidestep doesn’t seem to know. Maybe the escape event was before/after her time?
Does HG know what Sidestep is?

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3038

Best Mortum quote.

“Oh, nobody can hate a cape once they’ve tried one on in front of the mirror.” Dr. Mortum looks too pleased with himself.

“Really?” You cross your arms and raise an eyebrow. “Where is yours?”

“That’s not how it works, mon chéri. Scientists wear coats. Capes are for heroes and villains.” He nods sagely.

Truly Mortum is the only almost-healthy relationship MC can have in this book because even if you’r an evil spirit posessing the puppet situation, he already knows you’r a villain so crazy is to be expected.

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