Editing Watchers in the Dark (section)

==Caliban: The Predestination Paradox==
{{Topquote|Perhaps, but I fear that the destruction of Caliban is our last hope for the future now. It will be the final blow that will sunder them. Is even the Lion willing to commit such an act?|One of the Watchers in the Dark, viewing the end of the Siege of Terra}}

When the [[Chaos Gods|Primordial Annihilator]] was defeated on Terra, a group of Watchers lamented that Chaos would run rampant and merely arise again on Caliban. After examining the potential futures in the mosaic of time, their collective plan to save the galaxy was to engineer the destruction of the planet, creating the only outcome they believed would work, although how this plan affects the future in any positive way has yet to be explained.

However, the plan to destroy the planet would not actually come to fruition until ten thousand years later when [[Cypher]] visited [[the Rock]], got [[Azrael]] to agree to travel to the ruins of Caliban where the three elements: [[Ouroboros]], [[Tuchulcha]] and the "Plagueheart" held by [[Typhus]] would meet and create a portal back to the time of [[Luther]]'s insurrection.

Azrael would then destroy the time portal before the Death Guard made their way back and/or the [[Fallen Angels]] made their way forward through the time stream to influence events and royally screw up the "normal" sequence of events, though destroying the portal seemed to have the inadvertent affect of also destroying the planet in the past.

This creates a predestination paradox: as the period from the 31st Millennium though to the 41st Millennium would have likely first existed in a time-stream where Caliban was <u>not</u> destroyed up until a traveler from the future could initiate events to destroy the planet of the past, making one wonder what that initial outcome would have been like for the galaxy... The Watchers response indicates the survival of Caliban is probably the worst-case scenario, while [[Ezekiel]] reassures Azrael that it is probably for the best not to think too hard about it.

The ''Lion: Son of the Forest'' novel and ''Arks of Omen: the Lion'' books adds a brand-new wrinkle in this with the revelation that Caliban itself was an [[Old Ones]] artifact created to construct and ''expand'' the [[Webway]]. So perhaps its destruction ''was'' the better option after all.

But it does demonstrate the potential for [[Retcon|changing history]] within the setting itself.