Zortel

I crashed out at 1.10am BST, because I had to be up at 7am (I got a promotion at work which means I will now have to be up at 6am for if I need to be called in, so have slowly been building up to it.)

It was an enjoyable way to spend the downtime, and you learn some interesting things (Go Sailor Moon!)

Did anyone get Black Pebble lunch in the end?

I have two Loyalist Pro-Praetorians who are Anti-Cole. They see the invasion as bad for both worlds, and don't want to see it happening. If that means being proactive to prevent it, then proactive they must be. They feel the IDF would be much better put to use in helping to clear the world of the Devouring Earth rather than invading Primal Earth.

Well, I got my first bit of fiction done. Wrote some last night, abandoned it and decided to start over. Worked out better than the stuff before.

Considering the downtime and the forum downtime, I may get more writing done later. Got many more characters to do.

Preparations

"Weather the storm. Harness the chaos." The order was spoken to the mass of Syndicate, at least forty strong, around him. The speaker was tall, and rather broad. The black longcoat he wore, bearing the Syndicate's logo on its shoulders and back concealed considerable muscle mass under it. Behind dark glasses, eyes blazed with a cold, blue fire.

"We wait here. Our target is wily. He will survive the IDF. He will perish against us. Report."

"We have the provisions you requested, Sir." One of his lieutenants spoke, a young woman with blonde hair and a smouldering look in her eyes. "In the quantities you asked for."

"Good."

"Took me working through the night, but we have satellite internet in addition to the line connection we have. We won't be blind." Another Lieutenant spoke, a sleek and compact laptop held under one arm.

"Good."

"Our defences and sleeping arrangements have been seen to. This place is now a bit more fitting for our purpose." The next said, offering their leader a list of improvements they had made.

He nodded over them after a brief glance, and looked to the last lieutenant.

"We're as concealed as we'll ever be here. I doubt anyone will find us, Sir."

"As much as can be asked for. All dismissed. Get rest now. Need you alert for the attack." Jacob Dalmers said, dismissing them. Turning away, he ran his large fingers over his carefully trimmed beard. It was now a matter of waiting.

---

The pair of cats perched by their pet. He was smart enough not to call him their owner, and they respected that. The white cat, Yang, was curled up against the white and black cybernetic legs, the motors within warming the metal. His bright gold eyes peered carefully at Zahir, then looked to Yin.

The black cat was sat by Zahir's head, resting her chin on the man's dark chocolate hair, regarding his opposite cat.

He is alright. Yin indicated with expression and sound. Just exhausted.

He has been up for days. This is to be expected. Yang replied. His ear flicked. He could have slept in his bed. It is more comfortable for us there. Less tools.

Yin glanced around with as minimal head movements as possible, her grey eyes searching. Zahir had passed out near the rear exit of the Rolando Pound Storage Warehouse, having been up working to fit the defences. The modest warehouse had been reinforced several times over the past few days. The noise Zahir and his robots had been making had roused her from sleep several times. She will be home soon. Yin bunched up a little, making herself smaller. That was their way of describing Maxi, the little Praetorian woman who they permitted to share the place with Zahir.

True. She will. Yang replied, before glancing all around. Will it hold?

Against Praetorian? Primal? Yin questioned.

Both. Either. Yang clarified.

I don't know. I'm a cat. The black cat yawned, before sprawling out as comfortably as she could get against the scientist. I want to sleep now.

Fine. Yang sniffed dismissively. I think it will.

Good. Came the muffled reply as Yin buried her nose into Zahir's hair. It always smelled nice.

---

Even as Josie Ironside slept, curled up next to her, BODICIA's mind was not at rest. Usually she would divert free processor cycles to some varied pastime. There was no time for that though. Both Unity Tower and Unity Station had been whisked up into a flurry of activity. Checks, double checks, triple checks had been completed on all things that could be done.

In the vast expanses of her AI's mindspace, she monitored every Vigilant, every maintenance bot, doing their part. All the androids and gynoids that served the tower had been equipped with assault armour and weaponry in case of a tower breach. The subroutines in their semi-autonomous AI had been updated with tactics and commands. Strategic areas of the tower had been reinforced.

Another part of her brainpower went over the best laid plans of the Unity Vigil and the New Vigilants, offering ammendements to their plans where she felt prudent, and mapping out team placements on the maps she had of Skyway City.'

Even with her processor cores busy, she still felt nervous. Until they saw the tactics their enemy would be using, there would be a question mark over everything, and constant re-evaluations on the newest acquisition of data to make sure no grand flaw had been overlooked.

Movement besides her drew her attention away from the worry, as her Welsh corgi Noodles padded up the bed to nestle between the two. Rolling over, BODI slipped an arm around Josie's waist, peering at Noodles as she thought. The little dog turned his head quizzically, before a soft whine escaped his throat.

"I know, Noodles. I am scared, also."

---

Ryan Andrew's apartment was thankfully rather quiet that morning. Cara was still sound asleep, he hoped. An awake and quiet Cara could be a bad portent. The young leader of the New Vigilants rose from his bed and sunk to the floor. Kneeling on the laminated wood flooring he closed his eyes and spoke, his hands flicking away in American sign language as well.

"Hey Mom, Dad, Thomas. Ryan here. Long time no talk, I know. Been hella busy, but you know that no doubt. Just a quick heads up. Things are going to get pretty bad here, and I know... yeah, I'll be okay. I just want you to watch out for Cara for me? And the rest of the students too. They're all really promising, and... I just don't want anything to happen to them now."

Pausing for a moment, Ryan wondered if he had anything else to say. Shrugging to himself, he continued. "Anyway, I'm going to have a shower and get breakfast, because you'd tell me off if I let a little thing like an invading army get in the way of me smelling handsome and not having a rumbly, rumbly tummy. Love you all lots, so take care and have fun up there. Bye!"

Satisfied with his declaration to the heavens, the young man stripped out of his boxer shorts and wandered towards the en suite, ready to liberally soak under hot water and apply his favourite shower gel.

Well, Atlas Park for Heroes/Villain Zone for Villains. I tend to play my heroes mostly, so I come at the game from a hero viewpoint.

I've had a horrible realization.

One of the red names said they hoped people would join them on Freedom for the stress testing, and stated that they wanted to get more instances of Atlas Park than has ever been gotten.

Could this mean that the Praetorian forces will only be attacking Atlas Park tomorrow? And if so, what happens to our best laid plans? Should we just fudge that they attacked the city all over, rather than being stupid enough to try and zerg rush one part of the city? If it happens to be the case.

It mentions this on Freedom, but... if it's a dev run event, usually these things tend to concentrate on 1 zone and it's instances of when they have happened in the past.

As I understand it:

The Omega Team created a magical barrier around the Rikti Earth, cutting them off from their forces on Primal Earth. The Rikti tried to get around this from other dimensions, failing until they used the crashed Rikti Ship in the RWZ to break through the barrier and summon reinforcements. There was a plan to destroy the portal by rogue elements of Vanguard I believe, which would have torn the dimensional barriers asunder, and another plan by the Rikti to widen it that would have done similar.

The act of introducing this element of magic to the dimensional barriers has resulted in the flux, that will soon develop to weaken the barriers. This will make dimensional travel much easier for the period when the barriers are weakest, enabling Cole's IDF to create incursions into Primal Earth on a mass scale, with less power than required for the Rift Generators and Portal Corp's Portals, facilitating a full-scale attack.

This means the following then:

There is no one generator launching forces through to Primal Earth (Because why use one big one when you can use multiple small ones, for less power, tactical advantages and ease of logistics?)

Entering a small portal would likely leave you slap bang in the middle of an IDF facility, like the Lambda sector. They're likely to be on guard during the invasion, with a large amount of troops that side.

Depending on the scale of the invasion, stopping one portal may not even be that useful, a mere drop in the pond. And they could likely just reroute the cut off troops to other portals.

I didn't bring it up, because I know that there isn't much we can do back there to stop or slow it. So I was working from an entirely defence-based, weather the storm view. Also, Zori called for a chair person to nominate themselves because she didn't want to seem in charge, and I didn't want to seem in charge. It worked out rather well, and the whole thing went better than I was expecting.

Looks like we've got a bunch of people who can't make it, and further meetings are going to be a tad difficult, seeing as we're only getting hit with the one raid. Would Monday be better?

That depends on how many wounds we've got to lick.

So, I've been giving it some thought. This ain't gonna be a war, as we've seen. So, this is just a proposal for how we should handle it, and I'm interested to see what people think:

We have the meeting where the groups + individuals are given the info dossiers. We have the RP done, the back and forth, the various views and opinions and plans. We get the fiction thread started for prep fiction in the run up for Wednesday. Maybe with Vanguard covert operatives getting the time for the invasion.

On the day of the invasion, we do our stuff in game, we have fun, get some RP done in little groups, whatever. We enjoy ourselves and see what the invasion is like.

We then put info in this thread for people who couldn't be there so they know what to work with in terms of forces/attack, and begin the fictionalization of the 1st Primal/Praetorian Battle for Paragon City. We get some really good stories, character pieces, collabs and RP out of it using the prior RP/Fiction/game invasion as groundwork.

This leaves us with one little thing, that -could- be waved away with a bit of fudge, which is that it goes on for more than just one day.

Losses. The scale of losses prevents another attack of that magnitude and we go back to the status quo of little skirmishes and so forth.

Thoughts, opinions?

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/new...n_surge_1.html

IDF:

Two options:

Commando - Assault/Resistance Focused Defence (Chainguns, missile launchers, power armour, that sort.)
Ranger - Assault/Defence Focused Defence (Rifle, knife, stealth powers.)

Following the VEAT school of team/self buff design also.