Zortel

((Great Coile, just great, now I can't get Safety Dance stuck out of my head. ))

Things have been quiet, but also not for the Unity Vigil. Kanane has been on a journey of self discovery, Ultimune finishing the school year, and Zortel has been clashing with the FBSA.

Several weeks ago, advanced nanohuman Jessica Kade visited reformed Warshade Tiger Dark, who had been having problems with a spiritual manifestation giving her bad luck. When she arrived, Jessica found that Eloise's apartment had been trashed by a mysterious force. And that force soon came back, manifesting as a tornado in the kitchen. Jessica, being somewhat idealistic, tried to reason with the tornado. When that didn't work, she tried scolding it, finger wagging and all. And when that didn't work, the former Zortel pilot got in a fight with it. The tornado understandably didn't like this much, and soon swelled in size. Eloise, desperate to protect her friend and angry at the spirit, jumped into it and attempted to drain the energy out of it, which she succeeded at doing, though was blasted out of the apartment.

Unfortunately again, the tornado's damage had been done, and the apartment block was starting to collapse. Jessica bravely leapt back into the building to recover what momentos she could, including the basket of produce she had brought over for Eloise before escaping just as it collapsed, and it was a good thing she did, for her pet bunny rabbit Minuh, unbeknownst to her, had snuck in to nibble at one of the carrots Jess had brought from her garden back on Rolando Island.

Quick to arrive on the scenes was the Unity Vigil's PPD liasion officer and boyfriend of Eloise: Storm Sapphire. There was worse news to come for the couple however.

Eloise's feeding crystal, which she used to sustain her human form, had been broken. Without this, she would be unable to stay in her current form and revert to her natural one of a Siberian Tiger. With the crystal taking some time to repair, and Eloise only having a few temporary crystals, the couple's relationship has been put to the test, though Eloise moved in with Mike, and apart from having a rather large cat around the apartment to deal with, things have been okay.

Meanwhile, Zorielle Rolando has been having some governmental trouble, the FBSA asking probing questions and wanting to not only have people examine the Unity Vigil base and her own home of Rolando Island, but that she turn over several high tech blueprints for various things she has created. Tension has begin to build, and after an encounter in the park where several federal agents intercepted Zori as she took her young twins, Kelly and Michael to feed the ducks, there may be trouble ahead.

A few days later, she went to see old friend Doctor Temporis at home, taking the twins to meet him. The two shared light banter, and some talk about more serious matters regarding governments. Zorielle was begining to see the disadvantage of the direction she took the Unity Vigil, and Sebastian was a bit concerned about the worries clearly laying heavy on her mind. The two talked about other matters, including getting a DNA scan done on some samples from a young couple under her protection, before Zori left to take the kids home for lunch.

Zorielle now plots, having already moved the Unity Vigil HQ from Unity Tower, Skyway City, the former home of ZorTel Industries, to under Rolando Island, and lately people have noticed men and women in black and white uniforms bearing the Unity Vigil logo patrolling Unity Tower and working inside there, as well as work crews heading in and out.

There was some more trouble for the Unity Vigil, when last night Storm Sapphire and Warrior Seraphim had to travel to Kings Row, due to an attack on fellow junior member Ultimune. Ambushed by a member of the Tsoo while out of costume, he lashed out in surprise trying to protect himself, and due to unfortuante circumstances, the Tsoo wasn't breathing when Mike and Kanae arrived. Checking, Mike found the man was dead, and took the panicing, scared and shaken Ryan back to one of the bases of a group friendly with the Unity Vigil. It was left for Mike to deal with, Kanae just watching as he had to help Ryan, and after some chatting he decided not to turn himself into the police, and went home to bed, hoping that 'tomorrow would just be another day'. Mike gave Kanae a hug and mentioned how good it was to see her again, before he departed home to worry about the young member of his group.

Fusebox herself has been busy with teenage life and the occasional hero actioning. As well as working on her main source of income, the multi-platform gaming website www.fusewire.com, she has also been working on the website for The Pits of Hell.

Which leads us nicely on to Non-Unity Vigil news.

Isaac Anderson, mutant and general nice-bad boy, has been doing his best for the club he's manager of. What with a new website, a name change to The Pits and aspirations of maybe one day owning a club in Steel Canyon's Bronze District, he's certainly keeping busy, whilst also preparing for the Business Studies course Doctor Temporis insisted he goes on. Plus he has his partners he needs to succeed for too.

Down at The Pits, Number Nine has been in attendance, along with fellow Guardian of Destiny Madame Midknight. Heck, Jane even took her rather older (and somewhat more living) boyfriend Dark Stone there for a drink.

Nene herself has taken to singing there, performing several times alongside the manager Isaac, Isaac's fiancee Sophie Reynalds and the clubs assistant manager (and Nene's 'good friend') and gendermorph Ashley Yves.

Several nights ago, upon being asked nicely by Nene, Doctor Temporis (in disguise) arrived with his girlfriend Chronopulse/Isobel and his adopted daughter Minako Nishzumi/Hikari-Hime to hear Nene perform. Though there was a surprise at first, as Isaac took to the stage to serenade Mina with song. Doc just rolled his eyes.

Nene took to the stage with her backing musicians and put on a set of several mixed genres, from rocking out to some rather nice piano pieces, but as you might expect from an alternative club, prefered the rocking out.

Thanks for being able to coherently post much of what I was trying to say, Ves. Came out much better than my wordings.

FFM and ShadowGhost have me as their GM for Mutants and Masterminds, they'll be dealing with things not under their control (and delivered in a sarcastic style at times. Really FFM, what did you -expect- from that Danger Sense check? :P ), but as I think was mentioned before here on the boards, it's a little different to putting control in a GM's hands (It's mine, all mine! ) to putting control in a computers hands (Which I gather is going "Rikti go here, Rikti shoot this, Rikti bomb this, resistance is futile, Rikti leave, Rikti go there" ad infinitum up to the end of the invasion.)

I'm perfectly willing to give up control to a person I trust, but never to the game world. That's just me.

And Guinivere/Dark Angel's offline version (It's a bit out of date and can't handle global chat that well, but I find it still works for me.) is hosted by myself at:

http://mysite.orange.co.uk/cohpictures/CoHLogEditor.exe

((Aye, Nene sings and plays acoustic and lead, as well as piano on occasion. She mostly performs at The Pits alternative/BDSM nightclub in Kings Row. Nene'll be about, so if they bump into each other, might be a cool thing to happen.

Could also perhaps arrange The Last Word playing at The Pits too, Isaac is looking for musical acts to play on Livewire Thursdays.))

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By referring to filling in the blanks was metagaming, what I mean is the assumption ooc that things are happening ic that aren't... uh if that makes sense.

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Aaaah, I kinda get ya. Metagaming for me means that if say you're down the chippy with the GM and they let slip about a bit of plot or something, and you use that when your character had no way to know it, that's metagaming.

Filling in the blanks it is, but the problem is that (well, I personally) don't have much to work around to fill in said gaps. Thus everyone is more than likely to have a different interpretation of life in Paragon.

And to Echo!
I believe they're working on something other than Admin messages for when i10 goes live.

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As for the debate on issue 10 ruining Roleplay, unfortunatly the bottom line is its coming, you either adapt or you dont. Ive adapted myself, like i said in a previous post, i'm actually looking forward to it now, but i do understand people who arent looking forward to it, but as said its coming. So instead of whining, maybe try to think of the positive sides and try to see if a fun and satisfying plot can be made from it.

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Aye, I was feeling a bit bleh when I made todays first post, but already my minds going a mile a minute (possibly 2, but that second one is song lyrics in a completely unrelated to Rikti invasion way) with oppertunities and ways to do plots and the like.

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Roleplaying is all about playing the environment and setting and reacting to it, not enforcing your own ideals onto the game and wanting the setting to bend to your will.

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Adaptability is a good trait, true, and while I admit my opening post can easily be misread to seem that I want to enforce 'gritty realism', that was mostly the fault of typing quickly as I was going to be leaving for work, and wanting to get ideas and possible questions down in one place.

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People metagame things all the time, they assume things are going on behind the scenes that are not being played out.

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Some confusion here on my part, seeing as to me, the term 'metagaming' is where you use OOC knowledge IC. I'd describe it more as 'filling in the blanks'. And in my oppinion, there's a lot of blanks.

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Besides I think there might be a lot of assumptions made here.

[/ QUOTE ] I'm of the opinion that without definate information, all we can really make is assumptions, or stay quiet. And I'm not really one to do that at times.

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From what I read the Ritki will be confined to a few zones for the most part, held back by the efforts of heroes and the vanguard. The whole city might suffer the occasional attack but wont be under constant threat.

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The way I've read and heard about it, air raid sirens go off in zones as they come under attack, with the Rikti doing hit and run tactics across the whole city. That's the kind of thing I'd define as constant threat, seeing as even if a zone is not being attacked, there's a damn good chance it -will- be at some point. Reminds me a little of Russian roulette, you never know if you'll get the barrel with the bullet or not.

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As for the idea the roleplayers get no love. Well surely the story progression is primarily a concern of roleplayers. We don't get to control the story or dictate how it runs but anyone playing an mmo should not expect that.

[/ QUOTE ] I refer more to the things like having to wait 3 years for a simple cellphone emote that an NPC in Galaxy City has had for three years, the fact that backstory of zones, places and villain groups on the US site hardly ever gets updated (which could kind of count as story progression.), the lack of indoor locations for RP use (We have the SO/DO shops, but I've only ever seen two groups of people use a store for that, and I was one of those groups., universities, freedom court, city hall, and Pocket D.) and as such. Milages may vary though.

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I would argue that people who are strongly opposed to this invasion thing are primarily people who want to sit about and chat about what character is dating who, or similar frivolous things, which is fine but it does not encompass all roleplayers, nor should it be suggestest that it does.

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Perhaps, how best to word this...
I'm not fond of IC/RP missioning. It's a bit too inflexible for my liking, RP missions especially take a while, and you have to deal with the rigidity of missions and events, which is why I prefer the social part of RP more. When I do run an RP mission, I've normally prefered to do it out of game on MSN or IRC, seeing as that offers more flexibilty and adaptability. Personal preference though.

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If you want gritty, you are playing the wrong game, that is obvious from five minutes of playing the game, or trying to type any number of words that get squished and turned into a string of symbols.

[/ QUOTE ] Gotta say I disagree there, considering there's missions where you rescue someone injected full of drugs to be used as a 'fox' during a gang 'fox' hunt, drug deals, murders, and all kinds of other things that could count as 'gritty'. Also, the language filter isn't something I'd consider as to contributing to whether the setting is gritty or not, seeing as it's mostly there for NCSoft to cover their end due to the nature of chat on an internet game, and can easily be turned off.

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Once the thing starts it wont be as bad as some people think,

[/ QUOTE ] Perhaps, but after all, this -is- speculation, things often get slightly pessimistic?

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you will just have to adapt like a good roleplayer should.

[/ QUOTE ] If we do, do we get cookies and milk before nap time?

Certainly some interesting points raised, and as I said in an earlier post, perhaps I was wrong about some things and thoughts, but eh, that's internet.

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Add to that the statement I recall how they "do not want to give too much information and thus limit players in their concepts", makes it rather unlikely.

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Or they're lazy and can't be bothered to write it. After all, the zone and enemy group information on the US site isn't complete 3 years in. There's a difference between too much information and not enough, especially when it comes to in game groups and places. Heck, the fact you need to play through the Peacebringer/Warshade arcs to find out about your characters makes playing one IC very difficult unless you read up on it beforehand (God bless you RedTomax, and your site.)

I think I recall that being said somewhere, but..
Maybe they just like seeing all the arguments from when people disagree on things?

Actually, having had some time to think this over... Issue 10 might be a bad thing for roleplaying as a whole. It can't really be ignored, is massively disruptive to characters lives, but with no foundation from the people in charge of lore about just how ordinary life will be affected (and it'd be a bit silly to presume life would go on as normal when Rikti shocktroops, battleships and bombs are raining death from above), going in for a fair time, with zone invasions being able to be triggered too in the Rikti War Zone...

It's a conundrum to be sure, and has been seen already may cause further playstyle chisms and disagreements.

((Nene certainly enjoyed the brief chat she had with Dee Dee Diablo during the charity ball, and listening to the group perform set her pondering. Damn cool concept, in any case. ))

Light of Truth: So, who did you come as?
Number Nine blushes. "I came as the woman who read the notice too quickly, and didn't notice it said it was a costume ball... "

Still, Nene turned up in a little red and pink dress, and at first spoke with Echo, Diana and Ben about all manner of things. Nene mingled a little, but actually felt a little shy about talking to people she didn't know that well. She tried to start a conversation with Harry Potter, who wandered off to gawk at Ben's lycra clad physique.

Nene did strike up a conversation with the two Nadia's (leading to a slow ooc moment from me later:
@Zortel: I just realised... Nadia is an anagram of Diana...
@Coile: Someone's always gotta come last. ^^
@Zortel: Indeed :P), spoke with Andre later about whether his head/jaw was big (Nene said it was a rather manly jaw. Whether she was just trying to placate young Picard we don't know ), and chatted to the barman, Chi... Chi... aahh dammit, I can't remember how the rest of the name goes. >.< The two seemed to strike it off quite well, in fact. A topic of conversation for the night also seemed to be leather pants, which was mentioned when Nene chatted to Dee Dee Diablo.

After a while of chatting, listening to the band (Being a bit of a musician herself, Nene was most interested in comparing styles), and donating $2,000, Nene bid goodnight to people and wandered off home.

((Last night I took a few screenshots that people can use if needed, they're mostly crowd shots though, so hopefully there's some other screenshots out there too. For those that wish them, I've uploaded them to http://rapidshare.com/files/42075195...yball.rar.html

Was great fun last night, will write things up from Nene's perspective later. ))

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I'm really not sure this setting lends itself to realism all that well anyway,

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Yeah, Paragon City's public transport infastructure sucks, the place is barely disabled accessable (All those steps up to Freedom Court and City Hall, where are the ramps?) and more are just the tip of the iceberg.

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Sorry about my posts for today... it's not been a good day for me.

I do not like the idea of the invasion (and the missery that it involves), so I do not like the idea of making it more 'realistic' (ie: more missery), sorry that today my self cencorship filter had broken down.

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No need to be sorry, mate. Your oppinion is as valid as the rest. You know what I'm like for realism (Heck, I made sure the entire Unity Vigil base had ramps for wheelchair access, recycle bins, and the same goes for The Pits, including lighting on the strips of the stairs so people know where they are.)

I guess that, apart from being a lore-guzzling fiend, I tend to play my characters as people who are heroes, or people who just have metahuman abilities, than heroes who are also people. Hence why I'm worrying about if Isaac'll be able to make the rent on the apartment and those other little essentials.

Because maybe by bringing it up, some kind of majority concensus could be worked out to smooth things along a little?

Then again, when has that ever worked? Ah well. Might as well disregard all of the above and apply fudge/disbelief suspension (front and back)/blackout tape as usual to whatever gets thrown at people.

You mean, pretty much like what happens already in a number of cases? :P And would probably happen anyway?

The only way we'd have concrete information on what happens is if Manticore or someone posted and told us the little backgrounds details us RP'ers like/need to know, and considering previous things to do with lore, the chance of that happening is slim to nil.

Even if this post never came up we'd have the person A/B/C scenario. CoH, like many MMO's, isn't very RP friendly, so the RP'ers have to work around that. And sometimes, it takes a hella loada working round.

Indeed Shadowghost. These are the Rikti who when they first invaded took out power, utilities and military instilations first, and they've learnt their lesson about heroes and magicians.

Well, as we all know OOC, War is coming. Hwuh! Yeah! What is it good for? Well, Exp and absolutely nothing.

Ahem.

What kind of effects will it have on the city however, that would be reflected in RP?

Well, day jobs for one. Some people are gonna find themselves out of work, either from the places not opening up (The Pits will be closed, who wants to go clubbing in a war zone?), or places being destroyed. Moneys gonna be tight.

What about rent and bills? With money scarce, will banks and landlords and the city council freeze repayments?

I doubt trucks are going to be able to get into the city that well, so food prices may go up, rationing may happen, and heroes may find themselves escorting vital supplies and food into the city.

Looting, robbery, those things will probably go up as people get desperate. And the violent/gun crimes associated with them. Martial law declared?

Schools closed, well, it's summer, so they're not open anyway, same with other places of learning. Hospitals working over capacity and over hours, heroes with medical knowledge might be needed there to assist.

Supergroup bases used as refuges, ala the London Underground tunnels in the 2nd World War? Medical facilities in the bases being commandeered by the city's forces?

What about the gangs in Paragon? Are they going to be opportuinistic parasites and revel in the chaos, or will they realise that if they don't do something, they're screwed and lend a hand against the Rikti?

There's probably more considerations and effects that I missed, but its something to think about.

Other than "Oh [Censored]..."? Aye, that's kind of what I was thinking. Especially seeing as a fair few of my roster are civillians mostly, just with metahuman abilities.

Maybe having a 'Rikti War Stories' thread, or can use the exisiting IC stories thread.

Getting back into the swing of playing CoH now, will probablly desub WoW and resub my second account.

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Fusebox. Kinda had to place the icons above, her face was too far below center. Hope you like it Z.

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No worries, that's fine where they are. It was a bit of an awkward photo I got her from (by awkward, read nude :P) and I didn't want her shoulder getting in the way.

Hmm, maybe a little boarder. Ta!

Hey Pious! Whilst doing a search, came across one for my Mutation Blaster, Fusebox. I've already moved it down to 80x80, just needs the icons.

Fusebox

I'm not old guard!

I'm ancient guard!
Still about, a bit more of usual than I have been lately. Mostly RPing though, who plays MMO's for leveling anymore?

After saving the vigilante hero Nevermore from a strain of the Vazhilok virus, Zortel got talking with him and the subject soon turned to romance.

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Zortel: That was rather impressive you know.
Nevermore: Thanks...
Zortel chuckles, eyeing Nevermore up. "If only you were a woman."
Nevermore blinks, then laughs. "If only you were straight."


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There is precious little (read none that I know of) roleplay action on Defiant. Of course that is not to say that it cannot be started - just because Union declared themselves the unofficial RP server does not prevent anyone on Defiant from roleplaying - I try but more often than not (read all the time) I get more response from a wall.

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Technically, Union didnt declare itself the RP server, back close to the end of EU beta in January 2005 a poll was held on the forums for which server would be the 'unoffical' forums, the poll was started by either Bridger or Rockjaw, and the results were that Union would be said server.

Damn, I feel ancient now. :<