Bright

No doubt. Doc herself says the weirdo has a crush on her.

I... sort-of love that. It's perfect.

Painfully geeky in the best possible way.

Yep... I ran the villain-side version first with Kestrel, and was pretty much thinking the whole way through about how she'd be a heck of lot more likely to take the whole mess to Scir and GW than to carry on with Hawk's plan.

Kes doesn't know Red and doesn't care that Red's pushing up proverbial daisies. She *does* know Belladonna, and knows that having her back among the living would make a world of difference to both Im and Paolo, two people she cares quite a lot about. So, yeah... If she'd had any choice about it, Recluse would still be spending V-day on his own.

Stabby bird-girl would have had a better use for that ritual than rezing HIS girlfriend.

Girl's night.

Think "getting together to gripe about guys and eat a lot of Häagen-Dazs". Just... the monster version.

All FCM had to do to get it last night was pick the "mumbled random incantation" option when called on to improvise. That's the only mistake he made, and it instantly resulted in the Botched Ritual debuff.

This.

Those toes really are... odd... though.

For what it's worth, I do still create Praetorian characters sometimes and run them through those zones before taking them to Primal. (And just for extra "Are you nuts?!"-points, several of them have been Stalkers. Pretty much everything and its dog in Praetoria is designed to make life suck for Stalkers. <_<)

Why? Honestly, I just like those zones and the content a lot better than Atlas, Mercy, Kings and the other low-level red and blue side offerings. I also don't mind having it to myself.

I almost always do my Praetorian running around solo. Duo at most... The way they stack, Praetoria's lowbie enemies can get VERY nasty, very fast with a larger team. They're simply much more manageable when you're on your own or with no more than one or two others.

Only if I can have a few branches and bits of shrubbery for Hanano's ninja.

Not everybody runs those, though, so it's entirely possible to end up playing an Incarnate who *didn't* end up betraying their Patron...

With my own Chanter, for instance, I stopped after the first arc and never continued with Ghost Widow's missions. Mostly because I knew exactly where they were headed and that the whole business would have been completely counter to the personality and concept of the character I was playing. It just wasn't the kind of thing he'd have done, so I didn't make him do it.

Fast-forward to the present... Chanter is now a +3 full Incarnate who's still on Belladonna's good side. As far as his "actual play" story progression goes, he never had a run in with Doas, he never threw a wrench in the works, GW still trusts him and he's perfectly content with that... Even if he's got bigger things to worry about these days than running minor errands for her like finding the Red Widow's bones, he doesn't consider their association over. If she needed him, he'd be there, simply now as more of an equal and a willing ally than a follower.

I always play Grey Kestrel as having a very similar thing with Scirocco. Sure, she can and has kicked his butt when the occasion called for it ("Daos be damned, friends don't let friends commit karmic suicide," she says-), but purpled-out, full Incarnation and all, she still grins and calls him "Boss". Even though she's not under Arachnos' thumb anymore, she made the choice to stay with him. She's just not willing to abandon the guy in hostile territory. That's another one of those things that friends don't do to friends.

So, yeah. I rather hope for Chanter and Kestrel and other characters like them's sake the devs don't ever get some wild idea to write the Patrons completely out of the picture, or get rid of them as something no longer useful in the post-end game City world. I'm sure it's expected for all of us playing red-side to toe the party line, make a hash of their plans and then move on to thowing Recluse's helmet at him on our way to Ultimate Power... but not all of our villains and rogues do that, and there's a certain charm to having that option, I think.

True, that.

That's a pretty solid estimate, I think. With two of us I suspect it would be iffy, even with BUs... Three could probably do it, but I'd honestly feel more confident with four. That way someone could miss and we still wouldn't have to scramble.

Now, what are the odds of our getting four solid stalkers on one Underground run to test it?