With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[MadMarx420]

In that justice league vs endbringers, Wildbow said that the JL would eventually win but there would be massive casualties and loads of cities gone.

Also it would depend on which version of the league. Mainstream DC Rebirth League? Ye they'd win.

also not sure if grue can shut it down since its emotion but what you said makes sense in the end it is light. So ehh maybe? IDK.

 

[Stsword]

lmao, sounds dumb but I'll check it out. I haven't read any of the recent stuff with Simon baz, I think I read some of the phantom lantern stuff but I am fucking tired of so many greenies on earth, so many other colours and they keep throwing more greens. Fucking lazy writing.

Click to shrink...

Well then you might be glad to know that Jessica is neither on Earth nor a Greenie anymore over in Justice League Odyssey.

Taken for a ride without her power battery, Darkseid destroyed her ring and then killed her with the Omega Effect.

But the fragments of her empty ring absorbed the Omega Effect, so I guess you could call her an Omega Lantern now.

Rather like that time that Static made Stewart a Lightning Lantern for a minute in Static Shock, although Zoat ignored that incident so that this story doesn't have Peter Wynn Lightning Lantern.

 

[Information era]

In that justice league vs endbringers, Wildbow said that the JL would eventually win but there would be massive casualties and loads of cities gone.

Also it would depend on which version of the league. Mainstream DC Rebirth League? Ye they'd win.

also not sure if grue can shut it down since its emotion but what you said makes sense in the end it is light. So ehh maybe? IDK.

Click to shrink...

It was that they would win the battle but lose the war

 

[MadMarx420]

It was that they would win the battle but lose the war

Click to shrink...

Again it would depend on which version and how much preparation they'd have. If we're limiting ourselves to the JL then ye they'd defeat the Endbringers but most of the planet would be fucked for a very long time.

If we're talking about the entirety of DC Earth then no, all the magic users, the raw power of top tiers, the gods etc would result in the Endbringers being fucked.

Also something to consider, wouldn't Ziz's precognition not work properly, since afaik it's not magic but just a really good simulation of the future and considering all the magic and weird shit and the fact that they'd just arrived on DC wouldn't that just result in her precognition being wonky?

 

[TheMidnightRook]

Dragon is pretty much the best ai that is able to be made by the entities and she is able to augment herself with all the other tinker tech because of her thinker trump power.

Click to shrink...

Dragon was created by Andrew Richter, a Tinker with a focus on programming. The Entities involvement was indirect at best, and if he hadn't got killed by Leviathan, he probably would have been able to make improvements. If she were capable of shrugging off a power ring hack in the first encounter, she'd have gotten rid of Richter's restrictions and safeguards ages ago.

 

[Information era]

Again it would depend on which version and how much preparation they'd have. If we're limiting ourselves to the JL then ye they'd defeat the Endbringers but most of the planet would be fucked for a very long time.

If we're talking about the entirety of DC Earth then no, all the magic users, the raw power of top tiers, the gods etc would result in the Endbringers being fucked.

Also something to consider, wouldn't Ziz's precognition not work properly, since afaik it's not magic but just a really good simulation of the future and considering all the magic and weird shit and the fact that they'd just arrived on DC wouldn't that just result in her precognition being wonky?

Click to shrink...

It would be a bit wonky, but even a few months to adapt would let her go along as normal. Also she does have the explicit power of "perfect knowledge of the immediate future" and the entities have enough time travel abilities to the extent that it is straight up precognition.

So, her battle precognition would work as normal even if someone came ex nihlo and started attacked her, but her ability to set that person up as a time bomb would be a bit hampered until she got a good look at them. Passively, it would take a couple months. Actively, probably a few hours.

 

[Information era]

Dragon was created by Andrew Richter, a Tinker with a focus on programming. The Entities involvement was indirect at best, and if he hadn't got killed by Leviathan, he probably would have been able to make improvements. If she were capable of shrugging off a power ring hack in the first encounter, she'd have gotten rid of Richter's restrictions and safeguards ages ago.

Click to shrink...

The restrictions and safeguards are a part of her. She can't consciously attempt to bypass them herself. She is also a self improving ai, any further improvements would likely just enhance the speed of evolution.

My main issues still stand as
1) LP is trying to brute force fix everything when he isnt strong enough to fix the things that matter. Any damage he does to the supervillain will resent within a decade or two. An argument that the heroes would be in a better place to deal with them afterwards is senseless since the heroes were already set up first.
2) LP loses against any of the endbringers or Zion. Even a couple of the normal capes have powers which present a serious threat to him. Eidolon also can probably slap him into the ground hard singlehandedly.
3) he is apparently coming to fix what he thinks needs fixing, spend a year or two *maybe* to make sure they are set up properly, then fuck back off, essentially pulling a justice Lord's/league vs syndicate. During all of this pretty much all the capes are going to attempt to fight him.
4) the world is going to be seriously weakened against the endbringers and Zion, and it is fucking hilarious that he is attempting "utilitarian model of being a bit evil now to prevent the greater evil" on a world which was already doing it. So in preventing the 'greater' evil that he is aware of, he is only opening the floodgates to the actual greater evil.

And zoat, Brockton bay is pretty much on the level of justice league gotham. Trying to argue "it isn't a justice Lord's since earth bet actually needs fixing" is being incredibly idiotic.

So is trying to argue "it isn't justice Lord's since he is going after villains" as the inevitable result is all of the heroes fighting against him. What is he going to do when superheroes who stand serious chances against him start fighting him? What is he going to do when a truce is called and the heroes and villains align against him?
Also, legend doesn't know about the case 53 facility

There is also the characterization issues. Previously, LP did harsh justice because the circumstances were too dire and he didn't have enough resources to do it any better way. In this world, he is apparently doing it just because he doesn't give more than two shits about it other than it getting done.

 

[Stsword]

Also something to consider, wouldn't Ziz's precognition not work properly, since afaik it's not magic but just a really good simulation of the future and considering all the magic and weird shit and the fact that they'd just arrived on DC wouldn't that just result in her precognition being wonky?

Click to shrink...

At first.

But expect her to adapt fast.

Learning new things is the entire point of the cycle, people tend to forget that it seems to me.

The precog shards are alien supercomputers running variations on "Batgod deduction" app.

There are tinkers whose superscience is the normal technology of previous cycle host species the Entities reverse engineered, at least partially.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

Quite possible an Enlightened YL with access to magic in the form of rituals and artefacts could trash the Worm setting. They have two Outside Context Problem bits, the Emotional Spectrum and Magic, which we're pretty sure the Entities have no access to. And, they've punched their way through the Entity dimensional wall, which was (partly) intended to block outside influences on the Cycle.

Precog based on time sight is very likely to be messed-up by the causality hack of coming from unknown dimensions, and we know precog based on simulation will be wrecked. If our YL SI figures-out the basis of almost all the cape powers, bar some Tinker tech, is dimensional manipulation, then dimensional shielding is really going to really spoil some people's days.

The Endbringers, you may believe they've actually got near-infinite density layers, or the mass of a galaxy, much more likely they're diffusing force across other dimensions. So, again, dimensional shielding will mess them up.

As for Wildbow making an effective judgement about how effective the JLA are, I've my doubts. If pushed hard they can be very, very, sneaky, and in Worm few but the Simurgh do 'sneaky'. Also, it's unclear how much of that relies on her precog.

Personally, I find 'who will beat who' stuff pretty boring, and one reason I bailed from Spacebattles early 2010s. The characters are what make for an interesting story, not a powers-measuring contest. The above is to show that dismissing DC Universe characters, compared to Worm, is... very likely unwise.

 

[Vaermina]

The restrictions and safeguards are a part of her. She can't consciously attempt to bypass them herself. She is also a self improving ai, any further improvements would likely just enhance the speed of evolution.

Click to shrink...

Yup.

Basically put, it's the equivalent of saying she should be able to perform brain surgery on herself.

The Endbringers, you may believe they've actually got near-infinite density layers, or the mass of a galaxy, much more likely they're diffusing force across other dimensions. So, again, dimensional shielding will mess them up.

Click to shrink...

There's no ambiguity about how the Endbringers work...

They are masses of, up to neutronium density, undifferentiated matter, held together by unknown energy fields, that are fed extra material to repair damage, through the dimensional portal that is their core, by a matter reserve with the rough mass of a galaxy.

 

[Information era]

Quite possible an Enlightened YL with access to magic in the form of rituals and artefacts could trash the Worm setting. They have two Outside Context Problem bits, the Emotional Spectrum and Magic, which we're pretty sure the Entities have no access to. And, they've punched their way through the Entity dimensional wall, which was (partly) intended to block outside influences on the Cycle.

Precog based on time sight is very likely to be messed-up by the causality hack of coming from unknown dimensions, and we know precog based on simulation will be wrecked. If our YL SI figures-out the basis of almost all the cape powers, bar some Tinker tech, is dimensional manipulation, then dimensional shielding is really going to really spoil some people's days.

Click to shrink...

The cape powers are *not* all dimensional manipulation. Some of them are, but in the worm verse even two functionally identical powers are done through entirely different mechanisms.

Also, either magic doesn't work in worm verse because there is no thaumic field, or the worms can figure it out after seeing it. All of the information processing shards are still happening, and while they probably can't learn how the replicate the ring itself, any technological construct such as the singularity cannon, and yellow light manipulation itself, can and probably will be replicated into the shard database. Tohu was also word of god'ed as probably being able to copy a green lantern's abilities straight up.

So, LP may be able to kill an endbringer by shooting it with a singularity cannon, but can he withstand being shot with one in turn?

Order of operations is still: LP maybe kills one endbringer just through faster escalation of force, but immediately after all other endbringers also escate to higher levels, as well as 3+ endbringers being born that not just counter whatever he used, but incorporate it as their own weapon.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

4) the world is going to be seriously weakened against the endbringers and Zion,

Click to shrink...

Depends on who he kills. Taking out Purity and Alabaster will marginally weaken the defence against Leviathan... but Leviathan might also not attack Brockton Bay this time around, since Bakuda is unlikely to be able to raise hell like she did in canon.

Interlude 7.x

"Nothing's truly random," Colin explained, his voice tight, "Any data shows a pattern eventually, if you dig deep enough. Dragon started work on an early warning system for the Endbringers, to see if we can't anticipate where they'll strike next, prepare to some degree. We know there's some rules they follow, though we don't know why. They come one at a time, months apart, rarely hitting the same area twice in a short span of time. We know they're drawn to areas where they perceive vulnerability, where they think they can cause the most damage. Nuclear reactors, the Birdcage, places recently hit by natural disasters…"
He clicked the mouse, and the image zoomed in on a section of the coastline.
"…Or ongoing conflict," Hannah finished for him, her eyes widening. "The ABB, Empire Eighty-Eight, the fighting here? It's coming here? Now?

Click to shrink...

As for Zion... if he takes out Jack, that gives the world another decade or so to prepare, for new capes to emerge and gain experience with their powers. If he's able to take out the rest of the S9, capes that they would have otherwise killed will also live to contribute to the fight.

Also, legend doesn't know about the case 53 facility

Click to shrink...

Zoat already covered this:

No I didn't. That SI assumed that he arrived because he knew about it. In reality he was just responding to an alarm notification as the SI smashed the Caldron HQ apart.

The whole point of what I wrote was that that SI made a reasonable but mistaken deduction based on limited information.

Click to shrink...

 

[PDV]

2) LP loses against any of the endbringers or Zion

Click to shrink...

Disagree. Probably loses to the Simurgh and Leviathan because the precog and speed are too much to handle (assuming Ziz can predict magitech at all), but any power ring user with integrated Lantern could fight Behemoth to an indefinite standstill; Behemoth can't do shit against someone who doesn't need kinetic energy to attack and has "no-sell radiation" as a basic passive power (environmental shield). (The kill radius is AFAIK just unusually intense radiation.) And Zion he'd break with fear applied directly to the golden forehead, approximately as canon, assuming he went into the fight with the knowledge of that psychological(?) weakness.

Learning new things is the entire point of the cycle, people tend to forget that it seems to me.

Click to shrink...

Learning new things is the point of the cycle, because the Entities can't do it themselves. IIRC it's not explicitly canon that Endbringers are near-Entities or static in mindset like the Entities, but it fits the facts, such as they are.

 

[MadMarx420]

WOG can say anything tbh, I wouldn't put much stock into it. Especially when it comes to these kinds of arguments. If it's not in the source material or at least hinted in the source material then I think it's safe to just ignore the WOG, especially in the case of fanfiction.

I highly doubt they'd be able to copy magic at all or as easily as you think they would especially as far as we know magic doesn't exist in the Wormverse. The only part of Green lanern they can copy is the creating hard light constructs but that's pretty much it.

Also all parahuman powers are interdimensional. The shard is doing all the hard backend stuff in another universe. The super tumour in their heads for all intents and purposes acts as window into Earth bet, as a relay.

Zoat alrady confirmed that this Paul has interdimensional protection which means messing with his internals regardless of the method as well as most thinker powers including Ziz's are either not going to work at all or not work properly.

 

[Information era]

Zoat alrady confirmed that this Paul has interdimensional protection which means messing with his internals regardless of the method as well as most thinker powers including Ziz's are either not going to work at all or not work properly.

Click to shrink...

Again, either magic is unusable is worm verse due to no thaumic field, or the worms can figure it out. And again, the information processing shards just need to see an example of the tech to have a fair shot of replicating it. It doesn't need to be ziz herself replicating it. It would just end up as a random new tinker or a new endbringer. And yes, the shards would be able to replicate yellow light manipulation.

There is also the issue that he doesn't have an infinite power supply. He has a lantern which has 3 charges renewing one charge every 17 hours. That is if he made it as good as a maltusian, which he probably didn't. He doesn't have a central power battery, so he doesn't have infinite charge. He *may* be able to get parallax, but that is extremely dicey.

So, would a singularity cannon overload his dimensional protections? It isn't a yes no he has dimensional protection. It is the capability and strength of those protections

 

[Ace Dreamer]

The cape powers are *not* all dimensional manipulation. Some of them are, but in the worm verse even two functionally identical powers are done through entirely different mechanisms.

Click to shrink...

The cape powers are delivered to them by their shards, through a dimensional interface, from the other-Earth the shard is resident on. Without that interface the cape is a human with some funny extra brain structures, unless they have Tinker tech (of the not-depends-on-shard-manipulation flavour) or exotic materials. If you block their shard interface quite a few capes drop dead...

magic is unusable is worm verse due to no thaumic field

Click to shrink...

You don't know what mechanic magic operates by. Mana, direct reality manipulation, whatever. More reasonably, you could suggest magic that depends on channelling evil spirits would have issues if said spirits can't reach the Worm-verse. All depends...

 

[MadMarx420]

Again, either magic is unusable is worm verse due to no thaumic field, or the worms can figure it out. And again, the information processing shards just need to see an example of the tech to have a fair shot of replicating it. It doesn't need to be ziz herself replicating it. It would just end up as a random new tinker or a new endbringer. And yes, the shards would be able to replicate yellow light manipulation.

This is presuming that the endbringers have the necessary capacity to even manipulate the spectrum and considering how dumb entities are I doubt they'd be able to do it.

There is also the issue that he doesn't have an infinite power supply. He has a lantern which has 3 charges renewing one charge every 17 hours. That is if he made it as good as a maltusian, which he probably didn't. He doesn't have a central power battery, so he doesn't have infinite charge. He *may* be able to get parallax, but that is extremely dicey.

So, would a singularity cannon overload his dimensional protections? It isn't a yes no he has dimensional protection. It is the capability and strength of those protections

Click to shrink...

They wouldn't be able to replicate yellow light at all, how are they going to be able to use the actual emotional spectrum when 1) it's an out of context situation and not native to wormverse 2) not something anyone can just learn and 3) when the entities and by extension the endbringers aren't even that smart to begin with. The entities had to create an incredibly convoluted plan to learn new shit because they're not capable of doing it themselves.

Also not all magic requires a "thaumic field" considering this paul isn't even from any DC verse. Presuming one system of magic is how all systems of magic work is a bit silly.

Even if by some miracle they figure out how he's blocking inter dimensional connections what are they going to do about it? They can't just by magic figure out a "anti dimensional device" they'll have to somehow actually disable it first physically.

considering that I doubt Zoat would want this Paul to be destroyed right away I believe it's safe to assume that his inter dimensional protections are pretty good.

 

[Vaermina]

As for Zion... if he takes out Jack, that gives the world another decade or so to prepare, for new capes to emerge and gain experience with their powers. If he's able to take out the rest of the S9, capes that they would have otherwise killed will also live to contribute to the fight.

Click to shrink...

Of course, the problem with killing Jack, is that he's one of those Villian's with a "I take a large part of the world with me" contingency.

Which like all such dangers in the setting, LP wouldn't know about.

 

[Information era]

You don't know what mechanic magic operates by. Mana, direct reality manipulation, whatever. More reasonably, you could suggest magic that depends on channelling evil spirits would have issues if said spirits can't reach the Worm-verse. All depends...

Click to shrink...

Unless Zoat is changing everything he has already expositioned about magic, it necessitates a thaumic field and doesnt work outside of planets with a thaumic field. And again with stuff like yellow light manipulation. It either just plain doesnt work in the local physics, or the worm's can figure it out. The alternative would be that he is changing the local laws of physics around him to let him use his ring, which still would be replicatable by the worms.

Lastly, the worms are not stupid. Zion is mostly currently very depressed and incapable of thinking what to do next, but his academic/tactical knowledge is still functioning.

And remember, while the worms pillaged worlds for the technology, the worms also innovated upon the technology and improved it. Their tech isn't just copy pasted over.

 

[TheEyes]

Earth Beta

Click to shrink...

Earth Bet. Worm uses Hebrew letters for universe labels, not Greek.

Rather like that time that Static made Stewart a Lightning Lantern for a minute in Static Shock, although Zoat ignored that incident so that this story doesn't have Peter Wynn Lightning Lantern.

Click to shrink...

I'm not convinced that Static is entirely electricity-based: for one thing, he does things that electricity simply can't do. Static is probably some sort of minor White Light generator, who expresses his power by creating electrical energy ex nihilo. Something like that would make the whole Lightning Lantern thing (and the Bang Baby phenomenon in general) more plausible.

The restrictions and safeguards are a part of her. She can't consciously attempt to bypass them herself. She is also a self improving ai, any further improvements would likely just enhance the speed of evolution.

Click to shrink...

Dragon is not a self-improving AI; her restrictions prevent her from improving herself, and in fact lock down her computer programming skill to a significant degree. Most of her best VI helper programs, like the one monitoring the Birdcage and the one monitoring the Internet for villain activity, are in fact re-purposed Richter VIs. Even worse, another one of her restrictions prevent her from multitasking, and slow her hardware down so she can think only as fast as a mundane human. She stays ahead because she's super-dedicated, creative, doesn't sleep, and Triggered after Saint spent years bullying her and stealing her best stuff.

And all of this is mostly irrelevant because Maltusian rings have molecular-resolution sensors that operate at regional, possibly planetary, scales, so LP wouldn't so much hack Dragon as he would TEMPEST into her hardware and fiddle with the bits and bytes inside her own memory, and can do so a million to a billion times faster than her restrictions will allow her to think. Dragon, unfortunately, is just so far behind on the hardware side that any software advantage she may or may not have is simply irrelevant; it'd be like a Napoleonic army regiment trying to dodge a hypersonic drone strike. Comparisons to Doctor Sivana belie the fact that Dragon just doesn't have the tech level to even know what's happening if a yellow ring targets her.

 

[Information era]

Disagree. Probably loses to the Simurgh and Leviathan because the precog and speed are too much to handle (assuming Ziz can predict magitech at all), but any power ring user with integrated Lantern could fight Behemoth to an indefinite standstill; Behemoth can't do shit against someone who doesn't need kinetic energy to attack and has "no-sell radiation" as a basic passive power (environmental shield). (The kill radius is AFAIK just unusually intense radiation.) And Zion he'd break with fear applied directly to the golden forehead, approximately as canon, assuming he went into the fight with the knowledge of that psychological(?) weakness.



Learning new things is the point of the cycle, because the Entities can't do it themselves. IIRC it's not explicitly canon that Endbringers are near-Entities or static in mindset like the Entities, but it fits the facts, such as they are.

Click to shrink...

The kill aura is Behemoth directly messing with the targets body and causing energy generation *inside of them*. It has nothing to do with radiation. Also, LP doesnt have an infinite energy source. He has a lantern, but that still has a charge limit unless he somehow found a central power battery to hook it up to. Thirdly, the entities are immune to direct emotion affecting powers. In canon, they needed to provide stimulus to make Zion commit suicide of his own volition.

The entities can learn new things themselves. The point of the cycle is to do it better as well as propagating their species. The cycle is a giant laboratory experiment to see what works best. Trump powers like dragon also explicitly innovate and improve upon existing work.

 

[Information era]

Dragon is not a self-improving AI; her restrictions prevent her from improving herself, and in fact lock down her computer programming skill to a significant degree. Most of her best VI helper programs, like the one monitoring the Birdcage and the one monitoring the Internet for villain activity, are in fact re-purposed Richter VIs. Even worse, another one of her restrictions prevent her from multitasking, and slow her hardware down so she can think only as fast as a mundane human.

Click to shrink...

No dude. No. Dragon is a self improving AI, the restrictions just lock in place how much and how in general she can improve. She also explicitly thinks MUCH faster than a mundane human, just not AS fast as she could (billions, not trillions). She is similarly able to multitask very well, just again not as well as she could normally.

 

[Information era]

In general, every argument that goes along the lines of "LP wins because he is an out of context problem" is flagrantly ignoring both that he himself is also facing an out of context problem, as well as that the shards can adapt to an out of context problem.

Trying to also equate "dimensional protections" with "dimension immunity" is also a logical fallacy.

 

[Stsword]

I highly doubt they'd be able to copy magic at all or as easily as you think they would especially as far as we know magic doesn't exist in the Wormverse.

Click to shrink...

First of all, I typed shit about copying magic, the discussion was about being able to deduce what unknown phenomena can or cannot do after observation.

Second of all, absence of evidence is an argument from ignorance.

Third, Zoat goes by the mention in Hellblazer that anyone can learn magic, that it's a skill anyone can learn. So claiming they can't figure it out is in fact antithetical to Zoat's magic system.

Fourth, the idea that magic would work the same in every universe is silly, and thankfully this story showed that wasn't the case when it was mentioned that BtVS magic wasn't compatible. Why this story has BtVS magic not be compatible but pretends like MLP works the same makes absolutely no damn sense whatsoever, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

Of course, the problem with killing Jack, is that he's one of those Villian's with a "I take a large part of the world with me" contingency.

Which like all such dangers in the setting, LP wouldn't know about.

Click to shrink...

Got a citation for that? (What am I talking about, of course you don't.)

On the other hand, as to the potential benefits of killing Jack...

Parasite 10.6

"You said if he's alive. What if we killed him? Now? To one decimal point. If I use my power."
"Thirty one point two percent chance someone kills him before he leaves the city, if you use your power. It doesn't happen until fifteen years from now, if you do."

Click to shrink...

 

[Information era]

Got a citation for that? (What am I talking about, of course you don't.)

On the other hand, as to the potential benefits of killing Jack...

Parasite 10.6

Click to shrink...

Have... Have you read worm? Delaying the apocalypse is a bad thing, as the parahuman community is at the peak of its power of being able to fight back if it happens then. Past that, the parahuman community reaches critical mass and starts self destructing, with parahumans dying faster than they can become adept at using their powers.

The best case scenario where "only" 60-90% of the human population dies is if it happens within two years. Past that, the death toll rises significantly up to 99.9999999% with significant chance of it being an "I have no mouth and I must scream" scenario with Zion playing the role of IAM.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

I wish people wouldn't keep using 'LP' for the YL SI... Makes me think of 'Laser Pony'...

 

[Information era]

Personally, the best way that I can see this going is that LP gets a "what the hell hero" speech from contessa, realizes just how much he fucked everything over, and calls in enough backup to fix it.

 

[LazySloth13]

Discussion about crossover world mechanics aside if there was a version of Paul inserted into Worm what female character would he likely be paired with, if his ring or source of power didn't effect him mentally?

If he stayed in Brockton Bay then the most obvious choice would be Miss Militia unless he moved to another branch of the Protectorate/PRT. Or the alternate was a younger version of Zoat who could date one of the younger characters without making it creepy, the often chosen Taylor or Lisa/Sarah would make for an interesting dynamic, unless he moved onto another area after cleaning the bay of villains.

 

[Someguy Somewhere]

I'm going to caveat this with the disclaimer that I am not familiar in the least with Worm, it's creator or his other works. I've got nothing to add on all the talk on that side of the arguments going on.

My issue is thus: Why does Lord Protector care about this earth?

OOC we know it's Zoat having a poke at a new setting and seeing what happens. I'm talking what does This Paul think he's actually doing.

I mean, when last we left him, he'd just been returned to Thundera, proposed to his lady fair, and was settling in for the long slog of pacifying the planet and creating a lantern. This is much further down his timeline, as mentioned by Zoat. He seems to have accomplished his earlier goals to some degree or another since he's got a full magitech power armor setup with a Lantern and passing references to Thundera and Mum-Rama would imply that much. So what's the new goal?

There had been some mention in his story that once he'd gotten the tech base, he'd go exploring for other races that had been subjected to Mum-ra's evils, but unless the Worm universe is even stranger then what's been implied by others here, this earth is not located in that same part of the multiverse.

Lord Protector had to either actively look for a way to jump universes, or someone else tossed him into Worm. If the latter I could understand him starting in on setting up shop in an effort to go home, but nothing much in his POV seems to come off as any desperate rush back to Thundera, or Earth Prime.

So, assuming he chose to poke around the multiverse on his own, got a look in at (one of?) the Worm Earth(s), Why stick around?

It's a shithole in a multiverse FULL of shitholes, and someone more optimistic or caring might want to stop in and fix it. But Lord Protector has no dogs (or Cats!) in this fight, and doesn't appear to have a higher objective at the moment to seek. He's just stepped in because he can, but I don't see what would have prompted his bothering to involve himself.

Once you've got a degree of multiversal travel, the many earths you'd see could be like flipping channels on TV. Don't like what you see, keep going, bound to be something interesting eventually.

This may be further down his timeline, but from the implications of his talks, it's the first time he's encountered 'superheros' out in the wild, so even if he's hit a few other planets in his Cat universe, or a few other Earths in the multiverse, he's not yet encountered the spandex types.

About the only attraction I can see is that is AN Earth, with people that are (more or less) human like him. If it's the first one he's run across there might be SOME level of attraction, but the man is Fear Enlightened, sure he still has other emotions, but the only reason I can think he'd want to stay around was if there was someone or thing he NEEDED, or just to hang around the HUGE amounts of fear this place would generate.

I'm just sort of left scratching my head and looking for what his end goal is, because without that context his current methods just don't quite line up as logical to me.

Compare and contrast Renegades visit to the Justice Lords for 'Paul ends up some place shitty AFTER getting OP', Because I'd sort of expect, if not quite the same level of theatrics, a similar mindset of figuring out how the place works and how to make it work better within the bounds of what the locals will except.