Infinity can be a difficult thing to get your head around. Where does it start? Where does it end? Well, that’s the whole point. It doesn’t. This makes telling the story of infinity a little tricky. Wherever you begin, you are actually joining the story halfway through. Try not to think too hard about it, and life will get a whole lot simpler.
There are various things in the world that are, scientists suggest, infinite. Space, being infinite, is just too big for me to get my head around (which is possibly entirely the point). The idea of numbers stretching off to infinity is easy enough to get your head around, as whatever number you think of, infinity is just bigger. Keep adding one. Unfortunately, if infinity were a number, it would be infinitely bigger than any number you could think of. Even if you divided infinity by two, it would still be infinitely bigger than your best effort. What about time? It’s straightforward enough to imagine time like a big line of marching soldiers, right? You are in the line, and the people in front of you are the future and the people behind you are the past. Unfortunately, that would require infinite people. Who goes in front of the one in front? Who is at the back of the line? About the only answer that I can begin to wrap my head around is for the line to actually be a circle of people. Of course, this would mean that everyone was both in front of and behind you in the line. The past would be the future, and vice versa.
There is no order. There is just what there is.
Again, my brain dribbles out of my ears. Don’t focus too hard, and while everything might not make sense, at least life will tick along fairly merrily.
If you ignore infinity, it will go away. In this respect it is wholly unlike most problems. If you don’t ignore it, it will probably become a problem (apart from the fact that if you do ignore it, it will go away).
There is, or was, or might in fact be a crisis in the DC Universe. A crisis involving infinite Earths. I can’t really stretch my brain around infinite Earths. What goes in between the Earths? Surely they would be taking up all the space? This is a problem I choose to ignore in the hope that it will go away. I would like to think that for a crisis of such unbounded proportions, there would be some pretty special heroes involved.
The hero of the day for today rather makes my brain ache. He has powers that are pretty hard to sum up into words, though UDE has done a rather good job of doing just that. He is, in the Mystery Men sense, a character whose power is probably best described as being “very mysterious.” Just to be safe, it would probably be easiest to assume that if he can think of something he wants to do, he can probably do it. He is, as far as the DC Universe is concerned, the very essence of magic.
Now, the version “Lord of Order” is somewhat tricky. It is easy enough to assume that “order” and “chaos” are synonymous with “right” and “wrong.” This isn’t really true, though. Absolute chaos and absolute order have quite a lot in common, and neither of them is particularly conducive to a healthy or happy existence for anyone. Chaos at its core is all about anarchy, which is not a huge amount of fun. Order, when taken to its logical limit, makes me think of lawyers making people’s lives miserable by exploiting the kinks of the letter of the law rather than its intent. Ultimately, what the universe needs is balance. The Lord of Order, in the DC Universe, should be in constant conflict with the Lord of Chaos, making big, big plays in order to keep the score dead level.
Within the context of the Crisis storyline, today’s character has already battled with some of the biggest and is likely not out of the picture just yet, judging by the card we have.
In terms of mysterious powers, my preview card this time is probably the most mysterious card I’ve ever spoiled. I have been looking at it for the last couple of weeks, and I’m still not really sure what it actually does beyond the numbers, which are clearly the least interesting thing about this powerful character. Could it be that Toby Wachter is playing a complicated joke on me? Did he just blindfold himself and throw a dart at the spoiler when picking the card for me to preview? Order or chaos . . . they are very close to one another.
One thing I do understand is card advantage. Playing one card that is pretty substantial on the board and lets you put together three more pieces of your big plan cannot be a bad thing, right? I think it’s reasonable to assume that when a character with as much power as this one has starts bringing a few bits and pieces to the party, they won’t be any of your bargain bin throwaways. (In fact, you can find out about one of the Fate Artifacts in another preview today.) Getting a bit of extra gas at the end of the game will always be good, and given that we know that this is a time of big changes in the DC Universe, I think we can safely assume that whatever mysterious things our 8-drop brings together, they will have an impact on the game. You’ll have to make it to the Sneak Preview tournament to find out.
When I look at my preview card, he generates more questions than he answers. At least for now. Given just who he is in the Universe, that’s probably quite appropriate.
Have fun and be lucky,
Tim “Don’t Ask Me What Fate Artifacts Are—I Honestly Don’t Know” Willoughby
Tomorrow's Preview: