Coile

I'll be trying something a little bit different. I used the random page facility for quite some time to get 5 heroes and 5 villains to be featured. I will now list them here in the order I got them and intend to use them. This gives a nice heads up to the involved players to update and polish those entries.

Heroes
Crimson Archer
Restora
Keening Banshee
Jessica Raven
Dee Dee Diablo

Villains
Kassie
Iron Alligator
Fionn O'Sullivan
Prophet Mu'Remar
Sitania Matriarch

If the update time should be Saturday night I will start working on each new feature on that week's Thursday morning. Tht way I will have the work completed by the update time, and not have to fret about when the zerglings fall asleep and if I am needed someplace shortly.

This week, again, I'll slip from the Sat schedule. Looking at tomorrow morning, currently.

With the immortal words of Manuel, "I know noothing."

I hope the issue gets sorted out. Changes are fine as long as the general usability of common features are not affected negatively.

If I gathered the plan right, and I may not have, the categories on the bottom of the main page will vanish. They were there only so that we could use them while the dropdown menus did not yet work. They work now.

If I misunderstood the plan, or the question/criticism, I apologize.

Updated features!

* Featured hero is Chaos Augury.
* Featured villain is Josie Ironside.
* Featured newspaper is 32 dead as Tsoo attacks Chiron (Paragon Times).
* Featured magazine is Warrior Seraphim - High Tech Angel (Off/Switch).

I made a layout judgment call that I need to discuss with Pious and Zortel, but of course feedback and opinions from everyone is appreciated. With the news and mag page pictures the text wrapped imho quite awfully around them on the main page so I removed the texts altogether. Then I altered the picture widths until their heights were equal so that featured hero and villain would start at the same vertical position.

This alters the previous concept of the main page slightly but improves the readability. Is this good? Is this bad? Is this somebody else's problem?

On the lists of previously featured heroes and villains I added the player names to make it easier to check who has been featured already. Good thing too, maybe that prevents goofups like I did two weeks back. I noticed that I had selected Joe Hill as featured hero even though MajorHealer had had Deepcut featured as a villain before that. My apologies.

The update arrives this time only on Monday morning largely due to it being a fathers' day in Finland yesterday and much of the day was spent with the zerglings. The target time for updates is still on Saturday evening / Sunday morning.

Now shoo, shoo, go see the new and improved Union Wiki with the newly featured contents and oggle at the spanking shiny Equilibrium skin!

[ QUOTE ]
Probly port the Terror node into another dimension which would annoy Terror but ultimatly not be that useful considering he has quite a few kicking around

[/ QUOTE ]

So, you rest safe with the reasoning that a man like Zero who build an extra-dimensional drinking hole is so stupid that he does not realize that the guy looking like Professor Terror is in fact the same guy? While, just assuming, anyone inside the bar would know?

I would be obliged to give the NPC lord of the place more credit and assume that he would, in fact, prevent Professor Terror entering his establishment after such a totally evil offense.

You have so far not answered my question about what YOU think Dj Zero would do about this. Please, would you kindly?

[ QUOTE ]
And if people want to stop me. Do it IC

[/ QUOTE ]

The basic problem for me personally, setting aside if this is plausible to begin with and how to get people involved, is that I highly doubt that the common NPC Dj Zero would allow this to happen or go on. To the point where I think the reasonable response from Zero would be giving a lifetime ban to Professor Terror to Pocket D premises.

As no one is directly in control of Pocket D's owner we all have to try and find a consensus, however flimsy, what the Main Man would do in cases where his policies are violated. Tell us, what do you think Dj Zero would do when he finds out. Not if, but when.

My personal approach has been to keep PD as much a neutral zone by my characters's actions as possible. If I don't introduce a scenario where someone's immersion and suspension is disbelief gets it in the shorts I probably will be let to enjoy my own thing hassle-free.

Any time that Pocket D's technical systems are used to spy other characters by some other characters, the arena system is rigged to kill someone or psychos take over the barstand and serve disease I am left to wonder why Dj Zero would not first intervene and then ban the offenders. Seeing as in each case that I have witnessed a breach against what I personally think is feasible happening the offenders just keep coming in I am left to conclude that those others do not share my view and the best solution is to pay as little attention to the breaches as I can, to the point where I completely ignore hearing something that just does not fit my view of the in-game universe.

EDIT: [censored] Kelvin! Now I'll (again) be humming that for weeks!

RE-EDIT: I note damning a deity is a censored deed on this forum. Duly noted.

There's also the consequence part. Wouldn't Zero be a tad miffed about an attack like this against his clientèle? That's going to hurt the rep and the sales.

Wouldn't someone behind this get perhaps banned from the club? Can't speak for the NPC fella, but as an entrepreneur I'd be inclined to do something like that.

Could be there is an elaborate plan about what will be happening after the plot hits the fan, but judging from what I heard last night I gathered it was more along the lines "thought up something funny and decided to roll with it".

I fell behind from the word go and haven't written a word in several days. Although miracles do happen I also remember how much work writing 50k words is, and honestly I don't think I can make it any more. I can dream about it, but it's delusions.

If you visit Tempest forums you may have seen the article as a stand-alone in Files and articles.

Other than that I'm out of feasible ideas.

I checked the previous entries. Are you sure you're not confusing this with the previous New Inquirer piece about Dee Dee Diablo?

Zeyna piece has been in Nightsparrow's scrapbook, which has been referred to in the "Union banter" thread.

I admit, either piece is not very new, and I seek to replace them with more current article when that becomes possible.

More updates!

The magazine and newspaper sections make a bold return. The articles are not crisp fresh but still make interesting reading.

In the news! (The Informer) Someone gave the spiders the slip and kidnapped Arbiter Coles. Read all about it!

In the magazines! (New Inquirer) A demon working in children's daycare. And she's got a name and a face too.


I have now been schooled in the ancient art of wiki-fu to update these sections. What I need is a link to the picture(s) of the article page(s) and the article in text format. Local PMs work mucho great!

Pious updated the banner to an older one.

More bang for your buck, new content to come when available. Stay tuned to this bat channel.

I updated the new charter into Silent Tempest's wiki entry and retouched the How to join post.

Updates! More characters featured again this week:

* Hero: Vergil
* Villain: Red Sickle

I intended to do this update early in the morning when zergs got up to watch cartoon but bad internetz trolls had eated my DNS. By the time I got it back I was already on the move and just an hour ago family life quieted down enough for me to do some serious updating.

I have material for newspaper/magazine sections lined up but I'd like to get a green light for it from either Pious or Zortel.

Just above 1400 words out of 3400 words I should have hit yesterday, and nothing yet today, and I'll be out the whole evening. Means next week I have to just bash the words in. Since I have the story in my head already.

I think one problem with people will be their prior experience. While a mature and intelligent roleplayer could play a seemingly anti-social jerk character, it is more than likely that an immature roleplayer interested mostly in short-term conflict and immediate response will also choose to play a jerk.

After a while one becomes wary because of the high risk of getting just what it says on the tin. If someone acts like a jerk, there might be an assumption that that is all that there is.

That all stems from that all parties should have fun. If I spend, say, an hour getting to know a character I hope it leads to another worthwhile meeting or something tangible, be it maybe just one interesting conversation. Talking with a jerk who after that hour is still the same jerk runs a risk of not being much fun, or at least more fun to be had elsewhere the next time.

Then there is the IC angle. If some character is very offensive one very sane reaction is to walk away. It works with villains who boast loudly how they eat small babies alive, and it works with heroes who sit in a corner and snap at people telling them to go away. Sooner or later the people will do just that, and seeing the point about fun, as experience crops up it starts to be rather sooner.

That being said I don't know at all what your character is like. Now, frankly, I'm slightly intrigued. Could be we can bump into each other sometime (global is @Coile) but no promises.

My own character can be a right jerk, broody, in some situations anti-social, at times humorless and mostly clueless. He is now very much goody-two-shoes to the point where the team that he leads will get slimmer when he executes his new policies. He has a truck load of angst although he doesn't share it that much these day, he has been married, is engaged again and is a father of a two months old boy which takes up a lot of his time. I've been in the game for a year and a half and so far have managed to find good people to play with, both from IC and OOC point of view.

Meaningful, however each person defines it, RP does exist. You just have to locate it by actively seeking it. I'd say using this forum is one very effective method.

(( I had mucho swell time and for once Coile got to both get out of home and be relaxed instead of being relaxed at home or blasting baddies around the city.

Freddy Mercury was really a laugh riot. ))

I can help updating those sections too, but some little proactivity from others would not go amiss. If you have made an article you'd like to see on that page PM me with a link to the ready graphics and the article in text format so compiling the front page gets a tad easier.

Pious and Zortel still call the shots tho, I'm just a flunky monkey. If they say differently, it goes.

And it's on.

Saldo so far: 0 words. Half a day gone already.

So, now we have Z's friends gathered around her, then comes a madman spraying around whirling hurl.

...yes, things are back to how they used to be.

You were gone?

Oh, wait. The channel has been slightly sane at times...

Bring back the full madness, Big Z!

As far as I know I have changed only these things:

* The two separate pages about the featured characters.
* Replaced the old names with the new names in the front page code.
* Added the featured characters in their respective listing in the Talk section.

I checked the code and the two parts where I edited the front page code seem to make sense to me.

Even with forced refresh I see a normal first page with both Firefox (2.0.0.8) and Internet Explorer (6.0 and lots of numbers).

(( Takes place in 12.10.2007. ))

(( Featured characters: Darksparrow and Coile. Related paper clippings: Who is Darksparrow?; This salvage is mine! ))

A for Android: License to Salvage

The sun breached the frail veil of clouds and offered promises of warmth if allowed to shine. Andre was standing on the steps of the city hall in Atlas Park and closed his eyes as a personal response to the tantalizing caress of the distant nuclear inferno. A voice spoke from directly behind him. "Here."

Almost jumping out of his skin he swerved around to find a girl with red hair, green goggles lifted to her brow and clad in a familiar red and black body armor. His heart was pounding. "Angie, don't DO that!" The girl's expression did not break into a smile. "What?" Andre raised both of his hands to enhance his words. "Don't give me such scare!" The mouth remained a thin line but a mischievous glint sparkled in her eye briefly. "Your guard was down. An enemy could surprise you. Your own fault. Fright teaches a lesson." Amidst his distress Andre failed to notice how liberal Angelique was with words. She was obviously in a good mood.

There was an attempt to grab the arm but just in time Andre recalled that his granddaughter did not want to be touched and just waved towards the doors into the city hall. "In there. Let me handle the talking." Angelique needed a real hero license to replace her forged one or she would eventually get into deep trouble. The press was already sniffing around so this had to be handled as soon as possible. Conceding to follow the lead of her flimsy grandfather Angelique nodded once. "Yes."

Once inside he lead their way through the almost Minoan maze of concrete corridors with bureaucratic banter until they finally reached the New Heroes' Affairs department and its vice counselor Stepan Formitage. He was a tall man, thin and long-faced. Almost like a man whose legs had for a fraction of a time delved just barely too close to a singularity and had been stretched out of vertical proportions. He leafed through a file in front of him.

"New hero registration." He lifted his gaze and the two eyes that drew their power from that same singularity bore two pinprick holes into the red haired girl on the other side of the desk. "I have seen you in the papers. You are not new."

Before Angelique had the chance to utter her first words and blow everything sky high Andre hurried to answer in her behalf. "She has been operating, yes, but she was unaware of the need to register." Angelique was doing as she had been told which could be condensed into two distinct commands. Sit down and shut up. Formitage looked less than impressed. "According to this she has been around most of this year. Mr. Kraft that is nine months without a legal license to practice as a hero."

Kerry had told him that if he wanted to manage better with people he should try to smile more. People liked smiles. Andre hoped to sky goddess that his wide, apologetically tilted grin counted. "yes, but you see, she did not know she was doing anything wrong, and I thought her license was a genuine one. Now that we know better we're here to correct that and everything is just fine, right?"

On the other hand it was a clear travesty of protocol and law to let someone work without a license for months and then let her walk away with no repercussions. On the other hand it was Friday and the lunch hour was approaching. If this dragged on they could all be there even when the office should have been closed. After a brief battle of internal wills the skinny apparatchik caved in. "Fine. Fine. Let us get started then."

He pulled a crisp form from a meticulously pigeonholed array of stacks and positioned the gold-lined ink pen just above it. "First, your name please." Angelique remained silent. It was not her orders to speak. Again Andre hurried to get a word in. "As I understand, her real name does not matter. Secret identities and all, right? Her given name is Angelique and because of the complex situation regarding her, me and my deceased wife to whom she is related to the family name for the records should be Kraft."

Formitage had been in this very occupation for a long time. He had seen it all. Mundys with no powers and a shredded sheet as a cape. Inexperienced youngsters with delusions of grandeur and glory. Hardened combatants trained to the peak of their natural physique. He had a special name for each of these categorized cases. These kind cases he called 'the nosy besserwisser mentors' or just 'gits'. He drew a deep breath. "Mr. Kraft, should she not be able to answer these questions on her own if I am to issue her with a license that carries a lot of responsibility?" He made a deliberate practiced frown that conveyed the meaning that he was serious. Something in Andre realized this and he withdrew to sit back on his chair. "Sure."

Angelique was staring at the inquisitive man with indifferent intensity. If there was any threat in this room it was him and thus he warranted her almost undivided attention. Almost undivided, as she was still aware of her surrounding to a great detail. Formitage stared back. Neither spoke. Soon the official realized that the girl was not going to speak. This was going to be a long day. "What is your name, please?", he asked finally. Concluding that she had a permission to answer the question Angelique replied, "Angelique Kraft". The gold-lined pen approached the paper to a near touch when Formitage realized that there already read 'Angelique Kraft' in the form. He had automatically written it when the answer had been given the first time. A very long day.

He hesitated over the next item for a moment until he felt composed enough to speak aloud again. "What hero name, code name or a heroic alias would you like to register?" Again he was met with a blank stare. Silence hung in the room until Andre breached it leaning closer to Angie and saying in a quiet but clear voice, "It's one and the same. Just one name needed." This provoked an immediate reply. "Darksparrow." To enhance her stance Angelique tapped with her finger at a clipping on the desk between her and the man. It was about the shadow case in Marvelsdale two weeks ago. Formitage scribbled the name down.

The next few questions were general enough for Angelique to manage on her own guided only by the small reassuring nods or cautioning shakes of head from Andre indicating which questions warranted extra attention. The the topic shifted to more intricate matters. Formitage lifted a paper clipping up for all to see and quoted the headline, "This salvage is mine." He wanted to hear either a confession or a rebuttal to a question that had been a statement. Getting any information out of the girl seemed to be on par with squeezing blood out of a stone. Since Andre did not signal to withhold an answer she gave one. "Yes."

A wonderful thing about Angelique was that she spoke words according to some mystical system where supposedly each syllable uttered detracted hours or even days from the length of her natural life. Even if she said something that could potentially put her into an awkward position she never said enough to incriminate herself beyond a crafty save. Formitage tried again. "What do you mean by this? What salvage?"

While the natural wit within the Kraft family had all but passed Coile by without so much as brushing fleetingly a good training can cover even a huge amount of incompetence. One of the things that Hero Corp intelligence division taught was how to gather information while divulging it as little as possible. One tactic was 'query swap'. It meant rephrasing the question in a manner that the answer to the new question was truthful and seemingly fitting to the original while removing all the condemning parts of a truthful reply. While Angelique was cataloging in her head the full inventory of every little bolt she had taken from somewhere Andre interrupted the process.

"He means all the harmful weapons and other devices that could fall into criminal hands after you defeat the bad guys but before the police arrives. You do make sure that none of those devices ever falls into the hands of the criminals of this city, right?" This flood of words interrupted the careful inventory and Angelique concentrated to her mentor. There was a nod and she replied accordingly. "Yes."

If the world's fate ever was in a peril and it all depended on someone keeping a secret from torturing enemy hordes Formitage dearly wished it was this girl. Primarily because then the Earth would be safe, and secondly because he wished some kind of a plague to fall on both of them. His head was starting to throb. He stole a wary glance at his wrist watch and noticed that right now his colleagues were preparing to file out of their offices and march to the cafeteria to eat their lunches. He longed to be with them, his brethren and kin. He wanted this over and done with. The form was incomplete in places but nothing truly crucial was missing. His hand went for a stamp. It represented his one chance at immediate freedom.

The stamp hit the form with a sturdy thud. "Congratulations, Darksparrow. You are now a fully authorized, licensed hero in Paragon City. Please collect your license badge from the New Heroes' Affairs desk in the front lobby." Formitage braced himself and presented a composed and professional facade. Its destiny was to crumbled to tiny little pieces.

"Why?", asked Angelique. "I already have this." And then she produced a perfect forgery for a license from her pocket laying it on the desk.

Two floors up a secretary let slip of a coffee pot when a surprisingly menacing and agitated voice carried from somewhere deep within the bowels of city hall. "Get out of my office! Now!"

Wiki front page updated:

* This week's featured hero is Joe Hill.
* This week's featured villain is Tina Onders.

In order to bet for the winner in a hypothetical match between Joe and Tina call your bookie!