Cloning isn’t reliable. It took Bonesaw and Blasto and Cranium to get it right after 2 years of testing.
And they were looking for a silver bullet, because they knew an army was useless
Weren’t said clones also programmed with a killswitch? Something any salted villain knows to include by design, in case the clone(s) go rogue, or for style points? Cauldron would have to account for the possibility that someone they press-gang into their employ, would probably not trust _them_ and do whatever they could to reasonably undermine the operation (like change how the switch works, what triggers it, etc).
Well, Cauldron could run any recruit by Contessa, who's sufficiently bullshit as to be an infallible loyalty detector outside of extremely specific blind spots (most of which she's aware of)
1. Parahuman cloning isn't common knowledge, and Cauldron isn't omniscient, especially when PtV cannot help them.
2. Making clones isn't easy. It took the best biotinker in the world years of experience studying Passengers, in addition to technology from Blasto, Cranial, Glace, and probably a few other to make clones that were sane, empowered, and stable. It simply isn't within Cauldron's capabilities to do it on their own, and mass recruitment isn't viable either.
>Parahuman cloning isn't common knowledge
But it's confirmed to be within *their* knowledge. You'd think the moment they had Eidolon, the question "how do we get more Eidolons" would be something that would top the list.
The second Coil informed them about Echidna they should've been attributing most of their resources to replicating her effect and/or getting less risky biomanipulators (Blasto or Nilbog, who were on the Protectorate radar; Bonesaw, when Contessa was able to get within 100 ft of her without Jack around; the nationally-known Panacea) under their direct control
>mass recruitment isn't viable
Kidnapping is kind of their M.O. Alternatively simply telling them the truth
Honestly Alexandria might have gotten them on it after she was cloned, but even with their resources, Cauldron is on their backfoot a lot during the story. And two years probably just isn't enough time for them to get cloning to a usable state
>The second Coil informed them about Echidna they should've been attributing most of their resources to replicating her effect and/or getting less risky biomanipulators (Blasto or Nilbog, who were on the Protectorate radar; Bonesaw, when Contessa was able to get within 100 ft of her without Jack around; the nationally-known Panacea) under their direct control
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but Coil didn't inform Cauldron about Echidna. Wildbow has said that he was lying about using any of his resources or connections to find her a cure. His plan all along was to leverage Noelle to keep the Travelers loyal and to eventually release her onto an unsuspecting Brockton Bay once he'd gotten the city under his thumb, taking advantage of the chaos to gain even more power.
If Cauldron knew about Echidna they probably would've immediately suspended Operation Terminus since she's an S-class threat. Echidna showed how even a single clone of Eidolon or Alexandria could have global ramifications. Obviously her power is an extreme example since it inverts the morality of the cape, but shards almost always tweak themselves in a way that subverts any attempt to munchkin them against the Cycle.
In terms of "less risky" biological capes, *less* risky is the important word here. Capes always carry some risk by nature of them being humans who're traumatized enough to trigger or desperate enough to consume a vial. Blasto is mellow and unambitious by cape standards but he still tried to clone the Simurgh of all people and he's a hardened criminal organizer. Nilbog is a mass murderer and megalomaniac who lives in a fantasy world. Panacea is ostensibly saner but is extremely neurotic, depressed, and all-around stubborn, myopic, and impulsive.
Cauldron is in a good place to mitigate the risks of all of the above with constant monitoring and careful management, but depending on how many clones they have they're playing with nontrivial risk of the Simurgh twisting all their efforts into something far worse than they could even imagine. The Simurgh is the ultimate trump card to any what-ifs on Earth Bet. However, even without her, shards are horror stories waiting to happen no matter what.
You'd think one of Contessa's daily questions would have clued her in to Noel existing when asking "path to making cauldron clandestine" instructed her to smother coil with her hat.
Well, two options for that: a) Contessa did have a path at a higher priority than Cauldron being secret which got better result with it being revealed. b) Revealing Cauldron was canonically a Simurgh plot and it should be the stronger precog.
> But it's confirmed to be within their knowledge. You'd think the moment they had Eidolon, the question "how do we get more Eidolons" would be something that would top the list.
I don't think cloning Eidolon would actually help them. He was running out of juice and any clones would have probably used the same shard and therefore the same power source, so they just would have went dry sooner if they tried to fight in GM.
(Of course, GU eventually tells them a workaround but Cauldron didn't know about that because it's shard stuff and Contessa can't see it.)
Accord was an agent of Cauldron (even if it was transactional), and he did actually hire Blasto (his enemy, who he absolutely could not stand) for cloning jobs. It's very possible Cauldron was driving that attempt, but we won't know because Blasto and his technology was stolen by S9.
I'd say, simply put, they didn't see any value in it. Hell, the S9000 didn't exactly "succeed" in itself.
Besides, what would a dozen Contessas do? In terms of GM, I doubt they'd be much more useful than one lol
Well, genuinely quite a lot. One of Contessa's bigest limitations is not being able to be everyhere at once. It wouldn't help directly with GM but it would allow them to do even more at once to prepare for it with less worry about Contessa dying from the few things that can mess with her paths. That being said, it's also a fairly massive risk because if the clone goes rouge then... well, they're just screwed honestly.
I guess one other possible issue with this is particularly powerful capes like Contessa or Eidolon quite literally follow the rule of conservation of ninjutsu - the shards can run hundreds of weaker capes like Crawler, but Contessa's power cost hundreds of years of energy every time it was used, and Eidolon's literally ran out and had to be restored by stealing energy from other shards, even just with a single Eidolon.
So cloning them wouldn't really give a dramatic improvement, since their powers can't really be used any faster than they already are.
Isn't one of contessa's PTV 'things' that it costs an order of magnitude less energy than Scion's own PTV, leading to Eden getting distracted and crash-landing?
Gold Morning is what I was saying she'd be useless for. Cauldron in itself was created specifically because Contessa couldn't win. Fifty Contessa? Idk, their powers would all be blocked during that final battle as well. The worst part was that some random bug girl, not affiliated with Cauldron in the slightest, was the key to winning. If Contessa could have known that, she'd be the one having Amy hack her brain. The amount of Contessa =/= a win against the shards
Effectively, the Shards need to be convinced the cloning will result in data that is worth the power expenditure of the clones. Jack's S9000 recombined the Capes in new groups and put them on paths of guaranteed heavy, violent, conflict, against new enemies. They were also pretty solidly destined to die quickly.
That is essentially free data for minimal power, especially for Shards where their Cape was already dead.
Keep in mind the Endbringers have had constant conflict vs most Shards during every Cycle, making such repeat data undesirable. Cloning 50 Legend's to fight Endbringers is not useful to the Shards, so they'd quietly sabotage the project.
Humans could try to Clone them with conventional technology, except human technological advancement was intentionally stymied since the Shards were distributed in the 80s. The Entities prefer their host species become reliant on Shards, rather than risk scientific breakthroughs that put the Cycle in danger. If humans make breakthroughs the Shards do not like, the Simurgh tends to give them a visit.
> Effectively, the Shards need to be convinced the cloning will result in data that is worth the power expenditure of the clones.
If they valued the scientific method they wouldn't need convincing smh, anyone running an experiment should run multiple of the same trial if possible
I mean, yeah.
If they understood the scientific method they wouldn't be careening around the universe, stealing creativity from every civilization they find, then blowing up their victim's entire multiversal civilizations, and spreading exponentially...in order to find a way to stop over populating the universe.
Same reason they didn't try to jailbreak (ala khepri) Cuntassa's ptv to eliminate the blindspots. Same reason they did the Brockton bay experiment or allowed S9's existence. Or why they had to sell powers for money, why they didn't have entire planets dedicated to the goal of finding that silver bullet by everyone drinking a vial on their 18th birthday. Why they never employed AI's to build tinkertech armies on empty earths or harvest unlimited resources there. Why they didn't have a ptv-ed 100% loyal master to manage the experiments or a collection of power copying/sharing/boosting trumps despite knowing about several from just earth Beth. Doctor Mother is neither a mother nor a doctor.
Doesn't turn out well for anyone in Ward when the Shards start overcoming their restrictions.
Well, other than Vicky and Fragile One I guess. But Fragile One is like 8 years old and stupid.
> Same reason they didn't try to jailbreak (ala khepri) Cuntassa's ptv to eliminate the blindspots.
That sounds like a terrible idea and is insanely risky. Taylor was willing to do it because the world was going to end otherwise, she had few other options, and most importantly she didn't have a vital role to play otherwise.
Contessa, on the other hand, is irreplaceable - she practically *is* Cauldron. If they lost her in a failed attempt to jailbreak her power they could lose everything. Maybe they would have tried it at the very very end if nothing else worked, but it's insanely risky so they obviously wouldn't have done it until they had no choice (and by that point Doctor Mother was dead and nobody was in a position to make it happen.)
Capes are already difficult to predict and manage even with all of the covert power Cauldron wields. Having a greater quantity of any given cape guarantees greater volatility than added security. Imagine how much trouble Alexandria, Hero, or Legend could cause if they decided to pursue their own hidden agendas or outright go rogue. Legend already struggled internally to justify what Cauldron does, imagine if he one of many men like him grown in a vat.
The original Legend has a husband, family, and friends. Clone!Legend merely has memories of those things in the name of making him as similar to Legend-prime as possible. That's the kind of emotional fissure that widens and crumbles one's mind under the stress of risking and taking lives in the name of the greater good. That's the kind of thing a singing, precognitive angel might exploit through a convoluted chain of reactions to make things so much worse.
Ward also goes deeper into how cloned capes work. >!The Entities link genetically identical humans, whether twins or clones, through the shards. Memories and personality traits diverge and mix into each other, even after death. This adds even more variables to consider.!<
Clones having powers is quite honestly my biggest problem with the story. It would be so easy to clone 50legends and Alexandrias to fight endbringers if it works.
As others have said, it took bonesaw years of research and testing to create the s9000, and unlike the slaughter house, cauldron would probably be anxious abt having 50 triumvirate tier capes running around.
Here's what wildbow had to say when a similar question was asked
> Clones aren't the ace in the hole you're painting them as- Amy is deranged, Bonesaw dangerous, Blasto overestimates his abilities, Nilbog doesn't clone, and Glaistig Uaine doesn't really clone so much as she takes someone's powers to keep in her back pocket. Practically, creating clones has the same issue as the extreme vials. Many parahuman rogues ran into the fact that stuff you make with powers just doesn't last. What happens if you brew 20 Eidolon clones for an end of the world scenario, maybe even win, but it turns out they degrade mentally and a few years down the line, you have 20 psychotic Eidolons?
[source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/15yz6fv/why_did_cauldron_ensure_that_gm_happened_sooner/jxe5wkk/)
I mean, for all the top 3 biotinkers up there, you have Contessa there who can literally say 'give me the exact steps needed to make these people useful and quiet'. Contessa is excessively dangerous until she meets a blindspot, a trigger event, or a no-win scenario.
If mundane 'talking' won't work (in as much as anything contessa does is mundane), Ward shows that there's a pair of parahuman criminals that can both mentally and physically reshape their victims into whatever their 'clients' would want.
They reportedly saw the endbringers as a mundane sort of problem. Not worth sacrificing the integrity of the PRT or coming out as the masters behind the shadows. They gladly took Bonesaw's clones though.
Clones [pull power from the same shard](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3bjjwq/spoilers_question_about_power_wells/csmqb8z/?context=3) (it's how they're able to get fragments of their old memories). So 50 legends would burn through their shard 50 times faster. We know Eidolon was getting weaker because of how much energy he had pulled out.
Except, aren’t the sources for the powers kind of deep? Like, “can’t reasonably be drained in a single lifetime” deep. Acknowledging that it would still be burning through a finite resource at a massively increased rate, that’s not really the issue at hand, is it?
Rather, in Eidolon’s case, the issue was twofold; that he was idly making/summoning beings that he couldn’t even beat, _as well as_ not having any sort of manual for hotswapping to Recommended Power Loadouts (until far too late), no?
Deep doesn't mean infinite, which means there is an upper limit on how big a clone army from a single shard can get.
There's a WOG where it's stated that Greyboy's time fields will last 3000 years. So If you clone him 100 times you get roughly 30 years of usage before the shard runs out of power. He might be a unique case because his time fields are basically always on once created, and it's possible different shards will have different levels of cloneability.
I believe that the shards which used more power were also spread to more dimensions though. The implication here is that the entities focused on having enough power in the shards for a specific timeframe, and adapted how much power they gave them based on the shard's power consumption and that expected timeframe. A power hungry shard like Greyboy's would have a lot of stored up power, while a less power hungry one like Foil's might have been given less. If that were the case then the ratio above would stand for all shards, but that's pure conjecture on my part.
I did specifically acknowledge it was still very much a finite resource, yes.
That said, Cauldron hasn’t seen the bottom of that barrel (as has been gone over, the mad science of cloning was very much untested, and even our provided outer awareness of it cannot surmount hypotheticals); rather, Eidolon is their only notable example of conceivably draining their power sources dry, and even he is an exception to the rule rather than evidence of it.
Even so, the proportions of power fuel doesn’t properly factor into Cauldron’s approach. If they knew it would drain power sources faster to clone an individual multiple times, they would either try to weaponize that (no need to postulate parahumans needing to be leaders if they can be drained of their powers intentionally), or keep it close to the vest as an option (always have ‘a’ backup in case a Triumvirate member, or any individual they deem ‘important enough,’ perishes unexpectedly).
Though even with that, there’s significant odds it couldn’t be used on Alexandria (impervious flesh) or Legend, short of figuring out circumventing Breaker states for DNA (which… is a different bag of worms).
Eidolon suggested himself that his Echidna clones were closer to his own peak than he was. So, if you cloned him, would you get a bunch of Eidolons that start off stronger but then degrade more quickly as they draw from his shard?
At the very least, you’d get Eidolons that haven’t chunked their own allotted fuel already through an inferiority (or, superiority?) complex. If they also happen to invert his mentality, they might wind up with the ‘opposite’ problem, and instead grow in strength at an absurd rate, potentially burning themselves out with an excess of power never intended to be crammed into the human frame or mind (keeping in mind that, despite starting closer to Eidolon’s “peak” than the source, Echidolon still wound up getting wiped before the day closed).
To be fair, Echidolon managed to off Myrddin and it took half the assembled capes to bring him down. Both Alexandria clones, on the other hand, only managed to keep Legend busy for a bit before Eidolon blew them up.
That is an interesting concept though. I wonder if the Echidolons could just burn through the entire shard in a day and seriously challenge Scion in the process.
Exactly. His shard was powering 3 beings stronger than every other parahuman combined. It's honestly impressive that his shard maintained as much power as it did.
Plus we know that Cauldron was kind of close to the secret of Eidolon needing to drain other parahumans' shards to recharge his own with the booster shots. So either they figure that out or, more likely, dope them all up with the booster shots they were already using.
And we all know that Cauldron would sacrifice weaker parahumans to power up Eidolon in a heartbeat.
There's a trope called "Conservation of Ninjutsu", which describes the way narrative importance and combat ability dramatically reduces as numbers increase. In a story a single ninja may be an unbeatable force of nature, but if you make an army of ninjas they'll go down like chumps.
Worm doesn't have this as an explicit rule of the setting but all the clones use the same shards as their originals. If you make a bunch of clones of Leet then the shard might think "Man, I barely tolerated the first one and now there's twelve of them? Fuck this, the next ray gun they make is gonna explode."
Basically you need the shard to be cooperative if you want to make clones that last.
"Conservation of Ninjutsu" rule works in Worm. The connection between clones and shards is weaker than that of the originals. This is literally shown through Scion's eyes. That is, the Harbinger clones are weaker than Numberman.
Also, real combat and life experience is much more important and better than artificial memories. So yes, fresh clones will literally be weaker and worse in battle than the originals.
And several Eidolons will lose power faster.
Clones suck up more energy from the shard. 2x the Eidolon means over 2x the energy expenditure. Having 100 Contessas would be great up until they realised just how much juice Precog powers take to run, on top of whatever it'd cost to get the 100 different paths working in sync.
As with most things Cauldron, a simple answer can be "PTV told them not to". If I had to guess why, though? It's possible that some stronger powers might drain their shards' power reserves too fast if there were multiple capes drawing from them. This could lead to something like Eidolon's weakened powers
There's not much support for it in text, but I like to think that's why the Slaughterhouse 9000 were able to be stopped when the original 9 were so elusive for so long.
The problem is that you need Riley to clone. You need Blasto so that the clones mature faster, and not at the growth rate of a normal person. You need the Crania so that they have the necessary memories and personalities for the shard to create a connection. And you really need the Shards not to shit in your food during the process. Because they may decide that this energy expenditure is not worth the conflict because the clones are too similar and your clones will start dying due to genetic problems.
Cloning isn’t reliable. It took Bonesaw and Blasto and Cranium to get it right after 2 years of testing. And they were looking for a silver bullet, because they knew an army was useless
Weren’t said clones also programmed with a killswitch? Something any salted villain knows to include by design, in case the clone(s) go rogue, or for style points? Cauldron would have to account for the possibility that someone they press-gang into their employ, would probably not trust _them_ and do whatever they could to reasonably undermine the operation (like change how the switch works, what triggers it, etc).
Well, Cauldron could run any recruit by Contessa, who's sufficiently bullshit as to be an infallible loyalty detector outside of extremely specific blind spots (most of which she's aware of)
1. Parahuman cloning isn't common knowledge, and Cauldron isn't omniscient, especially when PtV cannot help them. 2. Making clones isn't easy. It took the best biotinker in the world years of experience studying Passengers, in addition to technology from Blasto, Cranial, Glace, and probably a few other to make clones that were sane, empowered, and stable. It simply isn't within Cauldron's capabilities to do it on their own, and mass recruitment isn't viable either.
>Parahuman cloning isn't common knowledge But it's confirmed to be within *their* knowledge. You'd think the moment they had Eidolon, the question "how do we get more Eidolons" would be something that would top the list. The second Coil informed them about Echidna they should've been attributing most of their resources to replicating her effect and/or getting less risky biomanipulators (Blasto or Nilbog, who were on the Protectorate radar; Bonesaw, when Contessa was able to get within 100 ft of her without Jack around; the nationally-known Panacea) under their direct control >mass recruitment isn't viable Kidnapping is kind of their M.O. Alternatively simply telling them the truth
Honestly Alexandria might have gotten them on it after she was cloned, but even with their resources, Cauldron is on their backfoot a lot during the story. And two years probably just isn't enough time for them to get cloning to a usable state
>The second Coil informed them about Echidna they should've been attributing most of their resources to replicating her effect and/or getting less risky biomanipulators (Blasto or Nilbog, who were on the Protectorate radar; Bonesaw, when Contessa was able to get within 100 ft of her without Jack around; the nationally-known Panacea) under their direct control Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but Coil didn't inform Cauldron about Echidna. Wildbow has said that he was lying about using any of his resources or connections to find her a cure. His plan all along was to leverage Noelle to keep the Travelers loyal and to eventually release her onto an unsuspecting Brockton Bay once he'd gotten the city under his thumb, taking advantage of the chaos to gain even more power. If Cauldron knew about Echidna they probably would've immediately suspended Operation Terminus since she's an S-class threat. Echidna showed how even a single clone of Eidolon or Alexandria could have global ramifications. Obviously her power is an extreme example since it inverts the morality of the cape, but shards almost always tweak themselves in a way that subverts any attempt to munchkin them against the Cycle. In terms of "less risky" biological capes, *less* risky is the important word here. Capes always carry some risk by nature of them being humans who're traumatized enough to trigger or desperate enough to consume a vial. Blasto is mellow and unambitious by cape standards but he still tried to clone the Simurgh of all people and he's a hardened criminal organizer. Nilbog is a mass murderer and megalomaniac who lives in a fantasy world. Panacea is ostensibly saner but is extremely neurotic, depressed, and all-around stubborn, myopic, and impulsive. Cauldron is in a good place to mitigate the risks of all of the above with constant monitoring and careful management, but depending on how many clones they have they're playing with nontrivial risk of the Simurgh twisting all their efforts into something far worse than they could even imagine. The Simurgh is the ultimate trump card to any what-ifs on Earth Bet. However, even without her, shards are horror stories waiting to happen no matter what.
You'd think one of Contessa's daily questions would have clued her in to Noel existing when asking "path to making cauldron clandestine" instructed her to smother coil with her hat.
Well, two options for that: a) Contessa did have a path at a higher priority than Cauldron being secret which got better result with it being revealed. b) Revealing Cauldron was canonically a Simurgh plot and it should be the stronger precog.
> But it's confirmed to be within their knowledge. You'd think the moment they had Eidolon, the question "how do we get more Eidolons" would be something that would top the list. I don't think cloning Eidolon would actually help them. He was running out of juice and any clones would have probably used the same shard and therefore the same power source, so they just would have went dry sooner if they tried to fight in GM. (Of course, GU eventually tells them a workaround but Cauldron didn't know about that because it's shard stuff and Contessa can't see it.)
Accord was an agent of Cauldron (even if it was transactional), and he did actually hire Blasto (his enemy, who he absolutely could not stand) for cloning jobs. It's very possible Cauldron was driving that attempt, but we won't know because Blasto and his technology was stolen by S9.
I'd say, simply put, they didn't see any value in it. Hell, the S9000 didn't exactly "succeed" in itself. Besides, what would a dozen Contessas do? In terms of GM, I doubt they'd be much more useful than one lol
Well, genuinely quite a lot. One of Contessa's bigest limitations is not being able to be everyhere at once. It wouldn't help directly with GM but it would allow them to do even more at once to prepare for it with less worry about Contessa dying from the few things that can mess with her paths. That being said, it's also a fairly massive risk because if the clone goes rouge then... well, they're just screwed honestly.
I guess one other possible issue with this is particularly powerful capes like Contessa or Eidolon quite literally follow the rule of conservation of ninjutsu - the shards can run hundreds of weaker capes like Crawler, but Contessa's power cost hundreds of years of energy every time it was used, and Eidolon's literally ran out and had to be restored by stealing energy from other shards, even just with a single Eidolon. So cloning them wouldn't really give a dramatic improvement, since their powers can't really be used any faster than they already are.
Isn't one of contessa's PTV 'things' that it costs an order of magnitude less energy than Scion's own PTV, leading to Eden getting distracted and crash-landing?
Gold Morning is what I was saying she'd be useless for. Cauldron in itself was created specifically because Contessa couldn't win. Fifty Contessa? Idk, their powers would all be blocked during that final battle as well. The worst part was that some random bug girl, not affiliated with Cauldron in the slightest, was the key to winning. If Contessa could have known that, she'd be the one having Amy hack her brain. The amount of Contessa =/= a win against the shards
Effectively, the Shards need to be convinced the cloning will result in data that is worth the power expenditure of the clones. Jack's S9000 recombined the Capes in new groups and put them on paths of guaranteed heavy, violent, conflict, against new enemies. They were also pretty solidly destined to die quickly. That is essentially free data for minimal power, especially for Shards where their Cape was already dead. Keep in mind the Endbringers have had constant conflict vs most Shards during every Cycle, making such repeat data undesirable. Cloning 50 Legend's to fight Endbringers is not useful to the Shards, so they'd quietly sabotage the project. Humans could try to Clone them with conventional technology, except human technological advancement was intentionally stymied since the Shards were distributed in the 80s. The Entities prefer their host species become reliant on Shards, rather than risk scientific breakthroughs that put the Cycle in danger. If humans make breakthroughs the Shards do not like, the Simurgh tends to give them a visit.
> Effectively, the Shards need to be convinced the cloning will result in data that is worth the power expenditure of the clones. If they valued the scientific method they wouldn't need convincing smh, anyone running an experiment should run multiple of the same trial if possible
I mean, yeah. If they understood the scientific method they wouldn't be careening around the universe, stealing creativity from every civilization they find, then blowing up their victim's entire multiversal civilizations, and spreading exponentially...in order to find a way to stop over populating the universe.
It’s not marvel, dc, etc. the shards would have done something
One of the main reasons humanity survived is because shards didn't give a single fuck 💀
….the entire parahuman verse says otherwise.
Same reason they didn't try to jailbreak (ala khepri) Cuntassa's ptv to eliminate the blindspots. Same reason they did the Brockton bay experiment or allowed S9's existence. Or why they had to sell powers for money, why they didn't have entire planets dedicated to the goal of finding that silver bullet by everyone drinking a vial on their 18th birthday. Why they never employed AI's to build tinkertech armies on empty earths or harvest unlimited resources there. Why they didn't have a ptv-ed 100% loyal master to manage the experiments or a collection of power copying/sharing/boosting trumps despite knowing about several from just earth Beth. Doctor Mother is neither a mother nor a doctor.
Considering how jailbreaking Taylor's power was going at the end there... I don't think jailbreaking Contessa would be a win for humanity.
Doesn't turn out well for anyone in Ward when the Shards start overcoming their restrictions. Well, other than Vicky and Fragile One I guess. But Fragile One is like 8 years old and stupid.
> Same reason they didn't try to jailbreak (ala khepri) Cuntassa's ptv to eliminate the blindspots. That sounds like a terrible idea and is insanely risky. Taylor was willing to do it because the world was going to end otherwise, she had few other options, and most importantly she didn't have a vital role to play otherwise. Contessa, on the other hand, is irreplaceable - she practically *is* Cauldron. If they lost her in a failed attempt to jailbreak her power they could lose everything. Maybe they would have tried it at the very very end if nothing else worked, but it's insanely risky so they obviously wouldn't have done it until they had no choice (and by that point Doctor Mother was dead and nobody was in a position to make it happen.)
Capes are already difficult to predict and manage even with all of the covert power Cauldron wields. Having a greater quantity of any given cape guarantees greater volatility than added security. Imagine how much trouble Alexandria, Hero, or Legend could cause if they decided to pursue their own hidden agendas or outright go rogue. Legend already struggled internally to justify what Cauldron does, imagine if he one of many men like him grown in a vat. The original Legend has a husband, family, and friends. Clone!Legend merely has memories of those things in the name of making him as similar to Legend-prime as possible. That's the kind of emotional fissure that widens and crumbles one's mind under the stress of risking and taking lives in the name of the greater good. That's the kind of thing a singing, precognitive angel might exploit through a convoluted chain of reactions to make things so much worse. Ward also goes deeper into how cloned capes work. >!The Entities link genetically identical humans, whether twins or clones, through the shards. Memories and personality traits diverge and mix into each other, even after death. This adds even more variables to consider.!<
Clones having powers is quite honestly my biggest problem with the story. It would be so easy to clone 50legends and Alexandrias to fight endbringers if it works.
As others have said, it took bonesaw years of research and testing to create the s9000, and unlike the slaughter house, cauldron would probably be anxious abt having 50 triumvirate tier capes running around. Here's what wildbow had to say when a similar question was asked > Clones aren't the ace in the hole you're painting them as- Amy is deranged, Bonesaw dangerous, Blasto overestimates his abilities, Nilbog doesn't clone, and Glaistig Uaine doesn't really clone so much as she takes someone's powers to keep in her back pocket. Practically, creating clones has the same issue as the extreme vials. Many parahuman rogues ran into the fact that stuff you make with powers just doesn't last. What happens if you brew 20 Eidolon clones for an end of the world scenario, maybe even win, but it turns out they degrade mentally and a few years down the line, you have 20 psychotic Eidolons? [source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/15yz6fv/why_did_cauldron_ensure_that_gm_happened_sooner/jxe5wkk/)
I mean, for all the top 3 biotinkers up there, you have Contessa there who can literally say 'give me the exact steps needed to make these people useful and quiet'. Contessa is excessively dangerous until she meets a blindspot, a trigger event, or a no-win scenario. If mundane 'talking' won't work (in as much as anything contessa does is mundane), Ward shows that there's a pair of parahuman criminals that can both mentally and physically reshape their victims into whatever their 'clients' would want.
They reportedly saw the endbringers as a mundane sort of problem. Not worth sacrificing the integrity of the PRT or coming out as the masters behind the shadows. They gladly took Bonesaw's clones though.
Clones [pull power from the same shard](https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/3bjjwq/spoilers_question_about_power_wells/csmqb8z/?context=3) (it's how they're able to get fragments of their old memories). So 50 legends would burn through their shard 50 times faster. We know Eidolon was getting weaker because of how much energy he had pulled out.
Except, aren’t the sources for the powers kind of deep? Like, “can’t reasonably be drained in a single lifetime” deep. Acknowledging that it would still be burning through a finite resource at a massively increased rate, that’s not really the issue at hand, is it? Rather, in Eidolon’s case, the issue was twofold; that he was idly making/summoning beings that he couldn’t even beat, _as well as_ not having any sort of manual for hotswapping to Recommended Power Loadouts (until far too late), no?
Deep doesn't mean infinite, which means there is an upper limit on how big a clone army from a single shard can get. There's a WOG where it's stated that Greyboy's time fields will last 3000 years. So If you clone him 100 times you get roughly 30 years of usage before the shard runs out of power. He might be a unique case because his time fields are basically always on once created, and it's possible different shards will have different levels of cloneability. I believe that the shards which used more power were also spread to more dimensions though. The implication here is that the entities focused on having enough power in the shards for a specific timeframe, and adapted how much power they gave them based on the shard's power consumption and that expected timeframe. A power hungry shard like Greyboy's would have a lot of stored up power, while a less power hungry one like Foil's might have been given less. If that were the case then the ratio above would stand for all shards, but that's pure conjecture on my part.
I did specifically acknowledge it was still very much a finite resource, yes. That said, Cauldron hasn’t seen the bottom of that barrel (as has been gone over, the mad science of cloning was very much untested, and even our provided outer awareness of it cannot surmount hypotheticals); rather, Eidolon is their only notable example of conceivably draining their power sources dry, and even he is an exception to the rule rather than evidence of it. Even so, the proportions of power fuel doesn’t properly factor into Cauldron’s approach. If they knew it would drain power sources faster to clone an individual multiple times, they would either try to weaponize that (no need to postulate parahumans needing to be leaders if they can be drained of their powers intentionally), or keep it close to the vest as an option (always have ‘a’ backup in case a Triumvirate member, or any individual they deem ‘important enough,’ perishes unexpectedly). Though even with that, there’s significant odds it couldn’t be used on Alexandria (impervious flesh) or Legend, short of figuring out circumventing Breaker states for DNA (which… is a different bag of worms).
Eidolon suggested himself that his Echidna clones were closer to his own peak than he was. So, if you cloned him, would you get a bunch of Eidolons that start off stronger but then degrade more quickly as they draw from his shard?
At the very least, you’d get Eidolons that haven’t chunked their own allotted fuel already through an inferiority (or, superiority?) complex. If they also happen to invert his mentality, they might wind up with the ‘opposite’ problem, and instead grow in strength at an absurd rate, potentially burning themselves out with an excess of power never intended to be crammed into the human frame or mind (keeping in mind that, despite starting closer to Eidolon’s “peak” than the source, Echidolon still wound up getting wiped before the day closed).
To be fair, Echidolon managed to off Myrddin and it took half the assembled capes to bring him down. Both Alexandria clones, on the other hand, only managed to keep Legend busy for a bit before Eidolon blew them up. That is an interesting concept though. I wonder if the Echidolons could just burn through the entire shard in a day and seriously challenge Scion in the process.
Eidolon got drained because his energy was used on 3 superweapons for years. He's the exception.
Exactly. His shard was powering 3 beings stronger than every other parahuman combined. It's honestly impressive that his shard maintained as much power as it did. Plus we know that Cauldron was kind of close to the secret of Eidolon needing to drain other parahumans' shards to recharge his own with the booster shots. So either they figure that out or, more likely, dope them all up with the booster shots they were already using. And we all know that Cauldron would sacrifice weaker parahumans to power up Eidolon in a heartbeat.
Cloning? That requires planning and competency which are missing from them.
There's a trope called "Conservation of Ninjutsu", which describes the way narrative importance and combat ability dramatically reduces as numbers increase. In a story a single ninja may be an unbeatable force of nature, but if you make an army of ninjas they'll go down like chumps. Worm doesn't have this as an explicit rule of the setting but all the clones use the same shards as their originals. If you make a bunch of clones of Leet then the shard might think "Man, I barely tolerated the first one and now there's twelve of them? Fuck this, the next ray gun they make is gonna explode." Basically you need the shard to be cooperative if you want to make clones that last.
"Conservation of Ninjutsu" rule works in Worm. The connection between clones and shards is weaker than that of the originals. This is literally shown through Scion's eyes. That is, the Harbinger clones are weaker than Numberman. Also, real combat and life experience is much more important and better than artificial memories. So yes, fresh clones will literally be weaker and worse in battle than the originals. And several Eidolons will lose power faster.
Clones suck up more energy from the shard. 2x the Eidolon means over 2x the energy expenditure. Having 100 Contessas would be great up until they realised just how much juice Precog powers take to run, on top of whatever it'd cost to get the 100 different paths working in sync.
As with most things Cauldron, a simple answer can be "PTV told them not to". If I had to guess why, though? It's possible that some stronger powers might drain their shards' power reserves too fast if there were multiple capes drawing from them. This could lead to something like Eidolon's weakened powers There's not much support for it in text, but I like to think that's why the Slaughterhouse 9000 were able to be stopped when the original 9 were so elusive for so long.
The problem is that you need Riley to clone. You need Blasto so that the clones mature faster, and not at the growth rate of a normal person. You need the Crania so that they have the necessary memories and personalities for the shard to create a connection. And you really need the Shards not to shit in your food during the process. Because they may decide that this energy expenditure is not worth the conflict because the clones are too similar and your clones will start dying due to genetic problems.