Multiversal Characters

[ArgyrosfeniX]

So.

Multiversal Characters....

Go!

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

Let's start with a repost of the latest version of my cross-reality character match-up list.

The list has been produced using information from:
Impulse: A Whole New Day [Infected 8 - Bridget 1]
War Day [Infected 9 - Brian 3]
Shield of Innocence [Alternate Places 4 - Zack 3]
Persist [Discipline 3]
Kindred [Young Ancients 19 - Dareg 3]

I've only included information about people that are explicitly mentioned in the books as being the "same" person. I've not included any guessing that took place on the forum, no matter if confirmed or not by Dale here.

A few people are know to originate in realities other than the main realities of the different book series. In that case I've marked them with a star and a number, same number means the same unnamed reality.

The reality that the Infected reality interacts with, from which Hobbs, Mary, Braid, and so on originate, was often referred to as "Hobbs' World" in the Infected books, so I'll use that label instead of a numbered star.

Here, in no particular order, is the list:

[YA] Torrence "Tor" Baker
[Demonverse] Zack "The Line Walker" Hartley
[Alternate] Zack Hartley
[Infected] Brian "Proxy" Yi
[Gwen Farris] Heather Westmorland
[Discipline] Glenda
[Dead End] Gwen Farris (encountere in Gwen Farris reality sharing the body of Katherine Vernor)
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[YA] Tiera Baker
[Demonverse] Eve "The Snowflake" Benson
[Alternate] Evelyn Hernandez (not active character, just mentioned as an actress)
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[YA] Alice Orange
[Infected] Scott "Prime" Chambers
[Hobbs' World] Zevros Wyrdcraft (encountered in Infected)
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[YA] Gerent Lairdgreen
[*1] Darren "Box" Smalls (encountered in YA)
[Demonverse] Troy Lopez (Vampire)
[Alternate] Troy Lopez
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[YA] Dareg "Dare" Canton
[Demonverse] Ben (no lastname ever given, first LARPer, then clerk at bookstore, refered to as being a vampire by Zack in in Persist, was not a vampire as of the last Demonverse book)
[Alternate] Donald "Don" Karver
[Infected] Doug "Gravity" Tibs
[Infected] Mickey "Sure Shot"
[Gwen Farris] King Ferdinand
[Discipline] Ben Epson
[Dead End] Mickey "Jake" Robson (encountered later in Infected)
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[YA] Patricia "Trice" Baker (born Morgan)
[Demonverse] Kaitlyn "Kate/Lyn" Fargo/Swanson
[Alternate] Kaitlyn "Kate" Swanson
[Infected] Marcia "Cast Iron" Turner
[Gwen Farris] Katherine Vernor
[Discipline] Maggie "Mags" Richards
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[YA] Tamerlane "Terlee" Thomson (born Baker)
[*2] Debbie Smalls (encountered in YA, possibly from *1, that's not completely clear, but I don't think so)
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[YA] Merriland of the Forten
[*3] Merilee "Merry" Merchant (encountered in YA)
[Hobbs' World] Mary Wyrdcraft (encountered in Infected)
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[YA] Doris
[Demonverse] Lisa Weis
[Alternate] Lisa Penbroke
[Discipline] Casandra "Lissa" Banks
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[Infected] Clark Clarkson
[Discipline] Clark
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[YA] Sara Debri
[Infected] Penny "Cellophane" Cooper
[Gwen Farris] Bethany "Beth" Westmorland
[Discipline] Felicia (not her real name)
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[Demonverse] Calley Hale
[Alternate] Libby Patterson
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[Demonverse] Ginger Harris
[Alternate] Christopher "Chris" Karver
[Infected] Sara (the orc girl)
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[Demonverse] Lenore Hawthorn(e) (spelling of last name not consistent)
[Alternate] Claire Hawthorn(e) (spelling of last name not consistent)
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[Demonverse] Wu-Li
[Alternate] Wu-Li
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[Demonverse] Nicole "Nikki" (last name never given, but probably Hawthorn like her sister)
[Alternate] Nicole "Nikki" Bartlet
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[Demonverse] Ridley/Riley the Trickster (first introduced as Ridley, later a few times, wrongly I think, refered to as Riley)
[Alternate] Riley the Trickster
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[Demonverse] Hildegard "Hilda" (no last name given)
[Alternate] Hildgeurde "Hilda" Meorgeansdotter (a single time refered to as Hildegard)
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[Demonverse] Cormack
[Alternate] Keane
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[Demonverse] David/Dave
[Alternate] David (later Denise)
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[Demonverse] Valerie "Val" Frago/Swanson
[Alternate] Valerie "Val" Renner
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[Demonverse] Tyler Gartner
[Alternate] Cavendish
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[Demonverse] unspecified woman in Eve's vampire class
[Alternate] Clarissa (Chris' friend)
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[Demonverse] unspecified woman in Eve's vampire class
[Alternate] Beth (Chris' friend)
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[Demonverse] Darren (Larping gamer geek working at Burgerville, mentioned by Eve in AP4, not actually mentioned in any previous book)
[Alternate] Jamal (Chris' friend)
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[Demonverse] Jennifer "Jelly" Stone
[Alternate] Jennifer "Jelly" Stone
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[Alternate] Mariposa "Merry" of the Dawn
[Infected] Bridget "Impulse" Chambers
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[Demonverse] Vivian "Viv" (no last name ever given)
[Alternate] Vivian "Viv" Hobson
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[Demonverse] Rebekah (misspelled as Rebecca in AP4)
[Alternate] Rebeca Smith
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[YA] Kyle Hardgrove
[Discipline] Kyle Hardgrove

[brainsniffer]

Cool! Good move on the multiverse forum guys - really appreciate that. I was worried about how much I was crossing over on the YA - but at the same time I figured if anyone had hit the 14th(?) book in that series they may have insight to the others.

[Ronald Dukarski]

First of all, please change Mickey " Jack" Robson to Mickey " Jake " Robson. No Jack, Always Jake. For confirmation, read Dead End. Especially the compilation, Dead End- Stories from the end of the World. (Its only .99¢) The last part, the short stories, gives some insight into how some characters know of, and move to alternate realities. Skolu, Tipper, the Val has a machine that allows JAKE to travel to the infected reality, though its never identified as such, but its clearly explained.

But since we've agreed to make this non-speculation, I guess I'll quit here. Anything I have is not verifiable, only inferable.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

After the events in Kindred, characters from other realities should in principle be able to get access to a wide range of YA type magic.

I would guess that for story purposes actual access will be pretty limited (even though it really doesn't make much sense to me, each reality has at least one character by now who should be able to travel to Mars or Harmony in the YA reality pretty much at-will, and who wouldn't get kicked out of the magic "shops" there just for picking up a few dozen of each available magical devices).

The advantages to having access to the latest shields and armor should be obvious for almost everyone (though probably less useful for Bridget than for almost everyone else).

But there are some characters that would benefit from some YA style magic a lot more than others.

I'll start with Penny "Cellophane" Cooper as an example.

First the current situation:

Her power is to not be seen and/or remembered. Her physical body is invisible (to anyone but Brian). And if she is wearing or holding things, people can't see them too, or hear noises she makes. But carried objects and noises produced are visible/audible on recordings when played with a time delay. Also, noises like gunshots are become more audible in real-time with increasing distance. So while her body is truly invisible, the rest is probably a mental effect on possible observers.

That means if she wants to be truly invisible and non-recordable, she needs to be naked and not carrying anything. This exposes her to the elements (heat, cold, sharp objects on the floor) and potential stray bullets, as well as prevents her from carrying a weapon.

If she relaxes enough, she can become audible, and worn or carried objects can become visible. But her body remains invisible and she requires the use of body paint and hair dye to make her body visible and appear close to normal. Putting "her body" on or taking it off is a lengthy process, and while she can still disappear from peoples current awareness at-will, she can't easily become unrecordable.

Obviously, a shield would greatly help with the problem of exposure while being naked. The current generation space-shields must include the functional equivalent of the "temperature equalizer", but it appears from recent books that this is not active when the shield is just in standby mode, so the shield should either be enhanced to allow that to be active while the shield itself is not, or a "temperature equalizer" can be added as a separate device.

By using a clothing device instead of real clothes, her ability to instantly go from generally visible to unrecordable and back would be greatly improved.

By using a disguise device instead of the body paint and hair dye, her ability to instantly go from generally visible to unrecordable and back would be pretty much complete. An issue mentioned in recent books is that the disguise "material" does not seem to transmit sensations and doesn't seem to react changes in expression fully naturally. That seems to be because they are still just copies of the original device Tor build, which predates his discovery of true mental interfaces. With all the advances in the decade or two since then, especially Tor's work on magical prosthesis, it should be possible to build a much improved version with two-way mental interface that looks much more natural and provides the user with full sensations, even while wearing a full-body disguise.

A modified version of the silence device, with an area of effect that surrounds the users body at a meter distance, instead of a larger sphere, would solve all issue noises caused by her showing up in recordings.

These 4 things together would put Penny into a whole new power class.

At this point, someone is probably going to point out that the amulets themselves are going to still be visible in recordings, which makes the whole approach somewhat useless. Fortunately, that's not the case at all. I purposefully used the term "device" (short for field device) above instead of amulet, as Burks Green and Tiera have demonstrated very well, not just in theory but in practical application, that it is possible to produce fully implantable field devices. Which, being inside and part of Penny's body, would then be completely invisible (just like food she eats). Somehow, that whole idea of implanted field devices, despite being a pretty big deal when introduced in the 3rd YA Tiera book, seems to have been completely forgotten since.

Finally, if we are already implanting field devices, the addition of one in each hand, like was done to Tiera, would nicely solve the problem of taking weapons along while being completely unrecordable.

With all the advances since then, instead of being the simple fixed length cutters Tiera had implanted, these could be mentally controlled multi-purpose devices like what Tiera later developed (variable length cutter, spread and power controllable force lance, both of which are essentially silent.

When Tiera developed her push-to-talk "short"-range broadcast communication devices, Kolb gave her a whole list of possible improvements, which included a mental interface so that you could send without speaking out loud (and receive directly without the need to make a sounds that the ear has to hear), and told her she had 3 weeks to get that done. It's not clear if that ever happened, as non if it has ever been mentioned again, but with the demonstrated advancements in field devices, it should certainly be doable. Given that a telepath is actually able to communicate with Penny in realtime, even if she is totally, high-stress, hidden, such a communication device with mental interface might work and allow non-delayed communication without the need for any audible sounds.

We haven't actually seen any "Adversaries" show up in the Infected yet (though they may be around and just haven't attracted any attention yet), though one of Braid's arguments for her chosen future was to "be strong enough, when the darkness comes", so I would guess we'll get to see some form of Adversary in that reality in the future. In that case, an obvious addition would be an implanted armor, healing device, and extend the implanted multi-weapons with Dareg's magical machine gun.

Except for Brian simply not wanting her to have any of this (a possibility, given her behavioral issues), I can't see any good reason why Penny couldn't be "upgraded" this way.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

[David]

I don't think it's verified, but I think Hobbs is another Tyler/Cavendish.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

It definitely hasn't been confirmed in one of the books yet, but I agree, Hobbs as Cavendish feels right. I also think that Kolb was the version in YA. The whole thing about "Kolb [...], and was, or had been, probably the best human fighter left on any world."