Bright

Mine's on Liberty?

It's a little funny, but almost all of mine are red-side, and almost all of them come from the process of leveling Kestrel... I guess it makes sense on some level, since Kes is one of my very few devoted role-play characters, as well as being one of the ones I have the strongest emotional attachment to. I guess when I'm playing her, I'm more involved with how she would see things and react to them than I am with most of the others... The stories seem to have more impact when she's the one I'm running them with.

Anyway, "O Wretched Man" is definitely a favorite. When I was leveling her, I think Kes ended up hitting every single mission red-side that included Paolo as either a rescue or a companion. She's never faced him as an enemy, and after that arc in particular she pretty solidly considers Wretch a friend. She's flat-out fond of the big lug, and knowing his past and why he is the way he is just moved him soundly into "you may be a villain, but you're still just a big, mushy sweetheart" territory as far as she's concerned.

Vernon von Grun and his arc just amused the hell out of her (And me. Vernon always makes me grin...) She considers him a much better Mad Scientist than Aeon.

The one that made the biggest impression, I think, was her Patron arc, though. When Kes got into the 40s and I started looking at Patron pools for her, I knew I wanted to go with Scir's. She'd always seemed to have a bit of an affinity for the Mu guys, so it only made sense to go that route. I'd never run his arc with anyone prior to that, and really had no clue where it was going to go. Imad ended up being another one of those characters that Kestrel got very attached to... Which was problematic, given the conclussion that whole story-line is railroaded into.

As a character, *I* know she'd never have given Daos the time of day. She wouldn't have given up what Scir was planning for anything in the world... But the plot doesn't give you a choice.

Don't get me wrong. She still wouldn't have let him finish that ritual... It was a Very Bad Idea, and she knew it... But her reasons for throwing a wrench in the gears wouldn't have had anything to do with Arbiter Sticking-his-nose-in-everyone-else's-business. It would have been done under the rule of "Friends don't let friends commit kharmic suicide", not because some over-bearing Arachnos chrome-dome told her to.

With the arc ending the way it did, though, and with Scir's reactions being what they were, I didn't have much trouble figuring out how Kestrel would feel about it... I can't think of another arc in the game that could have made one of my characters more unhappy than that one made her. That's why I remember it. Not necessarily as a favorite, but as one of those bits of story that made an impression based on the strength of the character's reaction to it.

Kes did go on to do the rest of Scir's arcs, and these days I do play her as still having a strong association with him. I like to think that they eventually sat down, talked things out like rational adults and sorted out what happened and why... But Kestrel still wants Daos' head on a freaking plate for ever making Im doubt her.

I play mine pretty often (I'm in the process of leveling a new KM Stalker over on Union, so Kestrel, Mei, Ru and Shade haven't been around as much on Liberty as they usually are-), but stalkers just aren't particularly common over-all. Too many players consider them a broken, or at least heavily sub-par, AT I guess.

I enjoy my own a lot, but that "LOLStalkers"-thing seems to work against getting other people to try them.

I'm really fond of 'One Good Spider'... It's a heck of a lot of fun if you're just doing a morality mission for fun instead of rushing to finish and get your merit.

I particularly love running it with Shade in Shadow, who started out as a Responsibility Loyalist in Praetoria. Those three Arbiters? They're the same three chumps she beat the snot out of way-back-when at level 20, when they had the nerve to try to blow up her poor, over-worked friend Raymond's reactors. It's always a very "Oh, hi there. Remember me? No? *crunch* How about now?" sort-of thing.

I chuckled the first time I saw them come up again.
Their situation really hasn't improved since Neutropolis...

I'm not quite willing to read enough into the illustration to start waving around the "-ism" danger-flags about it, but I will say that it took me a minute to figure out exactly who Brawler was supposed to be the first time I saw it. It doesn't look anything like him. I was very much scratching my head and wondering, "Who the heck is that guy?"

Once I figured out he was intended to be Brawler, it was more of a "Since when is he a white dude? That just looks weird."

Psyche's expression and pose, on the other hand, didn't strike me as anything unusual, I'm afraid. It's so standard issue for a female comic book character that I didn't even give her a second glance... "Yeah, yeah. Big boobs. Goofy expression. "Look at these!"-pose. Whatever." Sort-of sad, that. To be so used to that kind of thing that it doesn't even ping as odd.

Eh. That's more or less why I don't do many TFs/SFs... I'm just not a big fan of speed runs, and that's about all anyone seems to want to do anymore. Even when they don't come right out and say "This is a speed run", the habits picked up from that style of play still seem to find their way in.

To each their own, I guess.

I did a tier 4 Cardio Core Alpha on Mist (He's got Dwarf, Nova and Light form, but is a "human primary" build-), along with tier 3 Clarion Destiny, Reactive Interface and Ionic Judgement. Originally he had tier 3 Radial Seers in Lore, but I'm in the process of switching over to tier 4 Radial Polar Lights for almost-purely aesthetic reasons.

I adore the guy...
I really do...

But I've never been under any illusion what so ever that he is, or ever will be, the least bit dangerous. He's a wimp in comparison to almost every other character I have. I still manage to have fun with him (even in the iTrials-) in spite of that, and for what it's worth, he did a fair bit of that journey to 50 solo. You just have to be careful, and take advantage of things like your flash attack, and being able to stay in the air and blast if you're facing goons that are less dangerous at range than they are up-close.

As for Voids and Quants... That's what "bringing the smash" is for.

With my own characters, I don't see it as having anything to do with the Well or with the old gods of Primal Earth. They're not human and not Primal natives, so neither really seems to apply to them.

Given their origin (They're a species of non-canon Rularuu; Faathim's creatures-), to me their gaining Incarnate status simply means tapping into more of the strength and the will of their own creator... That's why so many of them have ended up with Barrier and Rebirth.

It also means that Darrin Wade is making progress.
Just not quite in the way he imagined.

As for what the status implies, it's not only added strength. It's also added responsibility. They've always had the mandate of looking after the humans of the Shard, even when those humans migrated to another universe. Now, they seem about to be given an expanded mission... To look after the Primal and Praetorian humans, too.

Lore pets looking like Shard Reflections was actually a Good Thing for my crew. I explain them as exactly that... Reflections pulled across the divide to aid their cause.

I like them...

I'd have prefered them to be a bit bigger... maybe somewhere half-way between the Vet wisp and the Croatoan version... but they're pretty little things as they are, and I've always liked the PB blasty visuals and sound effects.

(Plus, they "go" very well with my Incarnate peacebringer's look. Double-win! )

Ash and Beans will be keeping their Vikkis. Zhen and Rose are content with their big, stompy clockworks. Keiranen isn't giving up his Seers and Shade is perfectly happy with her IDF Ranger and Suzume is keeping her Commander.... But a few will be switching.

Pally and Ty both need Vanguard guys. Silver is getting Rularuu to push around. Kephren the siren is going for the Romans, Cholula the night widow needs that big, evil Arachnos Tarantula and Mist (my Peacebringer) is getting T4 radial Polar Lights... almost purely for decorative reasons. Blue wisps match him perfectly. Likewise Mei and the Nemesis. The only way they could possibly have suited her any better is if the Boss-pet had been a Fake instead of a Warhulk. XD

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Kestrel... Neither her seers nor her clockwork really suit her, but none of the new ones are really better in the theme-department. If the Arachnos faction had included another Mu or if the storm elementals could be turned bright red instead of being mostly-purple, I'd have been set... But no such luck.

No contest... Pally and Kes (Palrah and Grey Kestrel) are my blue- and red-side mains for a reason. They're my favorites.

I'd miss all the others, but I could still play for quite awhile and be happy with just those two.