Children of the Vault – Precursors of Post-Humans?

[People Of The Earth]

It just occurred to me that in many ways the Children of the Vault have echoes of homo novissima: artificially evolved non-mutant superhumans with a grudge against mutants. Could there be a connection?

I think there is, yes.
Hickman already toyed with the concept of super-Evolved sapiens with his Children of Tomorrow back during the Ultimates. The Children of the Vault are the perfect springboard to reexplore that concept in the X-Men.
Now, are they Novissimas or Simply related to them is up in the air for the time being.

[Rev9]

I wish Hickman was reading this post as I think I’ve thought of an interesting tangent that Hickman’s Moira plot can be developed to prove Xavier’s words ‘the children of the vault pose the greatest single threat to mutantdom beyond any doubt. I think Moira’s alternative lives and especially the Shiar Golem husk plot is the entry point into this story. The whole Shiar Golem clone to be executed for Moira’s benefit gives me an avenue into a story of incredible vengeance and hatred by the Golem for all Moira stood for. Perhaps with its cloning it could have some trace memories of her lives or perhaps just learn of them through another sympathetic source say Sinister :-)

My take is while they try to fake her death Sinister helps the Golem escape and creates a clone of a clone to take the fall. The briefly mentioned Ghost boxes of Astonishing Xmen #25 come back in play as the device to cross into a different life one of Moira’s alternate time streams (the most interesting being life 9) , seeing as the golem was not a fan of the X-men and Sinister urged her that in life 9 he was in dire need of her help.-that is where she escapes. We could say Sinister through the ghost box on his own got a distress call from Sinister of life 9 and they hatched a plan to help each other. Sinister’s plot from the beginning was to save his doppelganger in life 9 with Moira’s shiar golem since she is the only one who could make the trip and that was his whole reason for saving her. He tuned the ghost box to make her travel to a point in time in life 9 when his life 9 version is still alive before his execution.. Anyway so as a mutant double to avoid being targeted by the sentinels, she seeks out Sinister of life 9.He tells her her best and only hope is to release the children of the vault as the last best hope in that life to defeat the machines and ensure their survival. She releases the children of the vault who then destroy both the machines, mutants and humans in that life only sparing her and Sinister. Sinister being a scientist himself and obsessed with his own self-importance locks himself in the vault to learn its secrets and perfect himself again perhaps his long con. Leaves the golem and the Children to rule in that lifetime. The Golem out to get her revenge alerts the children that she is a clone of very special mutant , who when the real mutant is killed will leave not only her but all the children able to traverse all the alternate lives for the children of the vault to cross from life nine to others.

The children agree and as per their MO they upgrade, tweak nimrod like the Furies in Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis storyline, again sending him perhaps in a new black form near indestructible to kill Moira in her tenth life and anyone who tries to save her. A real terminator storyline spanning several issues I think this story gives an incredible opportunity to try bring the X-men and children of the vault in life 10 to a truce to try and help them stop this killing machine from the future and whatever follows after. We could also completely tease a completely different story developing, whereby Moira’s shiar golem from time to time gets flashes of a life she’s never had despite traversing other lives from life 9, in flashes of a fortress with constant war , she is having residual echoes of the Age of X storyline, where one of Legion’s persona’s embodied her in true form. So we tease that since she is not human, this residual echo and false memory remains true for her unlike the real Moira who has true memories. Legions’ most powerful personality is trying to permanently escape Legion and senses that there is a vessel out there for it. The Golem unaware simply is trying to solve the mystery of this missing life and keeps seeing Legion in her visions. Leaving us with another saga to unwind : )

[gambitxremy]

https://youtu.be/K-qodqKfPKE

[dkrook]

If only Serafina could finish her storyline with Cannonball... A man can dream..

While we on finishing plots, what happened to Synch and Darwin?

[Jackraow21]

https://youtu.be/K-qodqKfPKE

This was really interesting. I’ve always wanted to see more done with the Children of the Vault. Them being the predecessors to Homo Novissima seems like a no brainer, but I also believe there should be some link between their creation — The Conquistador and its time acceleration-incubator technology — and The World facility that Weapon Plus built which created Fantomex, the Cuckoos, Weapon XV, etc., in much the same way. That also seems like a no brainer in terms of there being some link. Perhaps the technology on The Conquistador which created the CoV was the predecessor to what Weapon Plus eventually stole, and modified, to become The World. Just a thought. And, of course, where did it all come from? I’ve got a cool bit of head canon/a fan theory about that... what if, upon Cable’s return to this era on an early mission for the U.S. government into Central America (think 80s Cold War black ops stuff), he got careless and lost his bionic (techno-organic) arm in an explosion. That arm was recovered and it contained his body slide technology, complete with a slightly damaged chronal regulator that allowed him to jump back and forth in time. He assumed it was destroyed, but this is what some scientists used to create the technology on The Conquistador in the first place.

That could be a really cool way to tie it all together IMO.

[Veitha]

While we on finishing plots, what happened to Synch and Darwin?

I want to see what happened to them so so bad. I hope Marvel gets back on its feet with publishing, there's too much stuff going on.

[gambitxremy]

https://youtu.be/K-qodqKfPKE
This is a really good podcast

[dkrook]

I want to see what happened to them so so bad. I hope Marvel gets back on its feet with publishing, there's too much stuff going on.

I know, while others have expressed Doom for the duo I think the opposite. If The Children of the Vault are the greatest threat to mutants, then those two would be the greatest weapons against them. Synch and Darwin essentially do naturally the process they are forced to undergo. Once Synch taps into Darwin's powers he will become even more efficient at it.

[marhawkman]

It may not be exactly Serafina, but I think it's one of her sisters for sure!

Yeah, how many of them were there really? I mean, the "Angelfire Project" needed THIRTY people with enormous ability to generate energy to work. when they turned it on Serafina thought they had 29 Children of the Vault and one Mutant as a power source. It then exploded because Luz had swapped appearances with a normal Human and the non-powered person was in the machine. But.... who were the other 28 Children of the Vault?

[Rev9]

Yeah, how many of them were there really? I mean, the "Angelfire Project" needed THIRTY people with enormous ability to generate energy to work. when they turned it on Serafina thought they had 29 Children of the Vault and one Mutant as a power source. It then exploded because Luz had swapped appearances with a normal Human and the non-powered person was in the machine. But.... who were the other 28 Children of the Vault?

No all the children of the vault are unique, maybe one of them has the power to clone himself, but they are unique each with his/her own identity.Sangre said so in XML referring to only 5 of them being a minute fraction of their entire kind.

[Rev9]

She sounded a lil out of character but the design was very similar + the invisibility cloak thing she tried to do on Storm was a Serafina move from her first appearance. As happy as I am she showed up its a little lame Hickman is using ger to prop up his frankly underwhelming antagonists.

It wasn't a cloak it was a time port(she teleported instead of space in time it is the ability she used to get her and Sangre from the black hole blast that would go off in picoseconds ,time jump not space jump was key).In fact just by going on Serafina alone the CoV are more powerful than regular X-Men.She is like a Swiss army knife of capabilities, mind control,invisibility cloaking,hardware hacking, invulnerability cloacking to anyone she chooses(the little girl she saved from the black hole bomb to misdirect the cause to the Xmen) having allotropes to weaken Wolverine ,powering up JP and Aurora. AND don't forget the vault upgraded her to level 2 which is above her level 1 capabilities we were shown.Scary

[ChronoRogue]

I hope to see the CotV explored and defined as a major threat to mutants. They have a lot of potential to flesh out as characters while retaining the mechanical theme Dawn of X has been emphasizing (mutant vs machine).

[Rev9]

I hope to see the CotV explored and defined as a major threat to mutants. They have a lot of potential to flesh out as characters while retaining the mechanical theme Dawn of X has been emphasizing (mutant vs machine).

Agree! They are my favourite X-Men villains. They are incredibly powerful,and just to think their city upgrades them to be more powerful.Just the conquistador group was a handful.Corrigidora and Cadena wiped the floor with the Xmen when they came looking for Luz.I shudder to think of their 'Omega' versions,they must have Omega level children probably in the 'Empire' pod. So excited to have them back and yes feed directly into the Homo Novissima plot because they indeed are the vanguard of Homo novissima

[marhawkman]

No all the children of the vault are unique, maybe one of them has the power to clone himself, but they are unique each with his/her own identity.Sangre said so in XML referring to only 5 of them being a minute fraction of their entire kind.

Which suggests that those 28 unnamed characters were all equally unique.

[Rev9]

Yeah, how many of them were there really? I mean, the "Angelfire Project" needed THIRTY people with enormous ability to generate energy to work. when they turned it on Serafina thought they had 29 Children of the Vault and one Mutant as a power source. It then exploded because Luz had swapped appearances with a normal Human and the non-powered person was in the machine. But.... who were the other 28 Children of the Vault?

There are 3000 children of the Vault in total both as per X-Men #5 with 600 pods with 5 children per pod and also the last book of the Supernova arc of their introduction.Cadena says they put 3000 animal carcases on conquistador to fake their destruction.So the Corrigidora ship in XML was it #240...had a small fraction of their 3000 total.They are many not much less than mutants on Krakoa right now who must number about 5000 just an estimate(on account of Genoshans being resurrected)