Curveball

Man, I remember this thread. It pops up like fifty times a month, right? ;-)

I love to play Tankers. I'm a lousy Tanker. I mean, I'm actually not bad at it if I decide to do it, but I don't really like the way MMOs dole out specific jobs to specific ATs... and I figure if I want to load up on offensive attacks that's pretty much my business and no one elses. So I solo and decline group offers.

I like Tank resilience, and I like soloing on higher difficulty levels, so I roll tanks and meander through the game taking in the sights.

But if you're wondering why people do this, it's because a lot of us were attracted to the Superhero theme of the game and want to play variations of Superman, or the Thing, or any other variation of "powerful, indestructible" hero. For me, CoH was my absolute first MMO, and I a) didn't initially understand the division of roles between different classes, and b) when it was actually explained to me I thought it was stupid.

Oh, and when I am actually being a tanker in a group (on those rare occasions) I find myself waiting till the group leader calls for the charge because in pick up groups I find people actually get touchy when the tanker charges ahead to get aggro before everyone else is ready to focus on the next fight. And invariably a scrapper or blaster gets impatient and decides to charge anyway, so I wind up following them.

Of course when I play a brute I don't wait for anyone.

... well, really just one question.

"Curveball" is an old character from pen-and-paper roleplaying games (mostly Champions) that I've never been able to faithfully re-create using the CoH powerset. In the pnp games he was a luck-based character (i.e., hexing enemies, etc) so I generally use the name when I'm playing around with buffing/debuffing characters, and when DP came out I thought I'd try him out as a DP/Rad. This is actually the closest CoH has ever come, concept-wise, to the original character, because now that you can tweak the colors of your primary and secondary powersets it's easy to think of the debuffs in rad as a number of different hex powers, and the pistol-fu visuals in the DP set pretty much define the term "lucky shot."

So concept-wise that's great. Game wise I'm finding DP a difficult set to use. It has a lot of interesting effects, but it doesn't exactly kill things quickly, which was never a problem I had playing a corruptor in the past... I mean it wasn't blaster damage, but it still was pretty decent... DP for corruptors is... not decent. I find that poor old Curveball faceplants a lot, either because the corruptor level rad debuffs aren't great or DP damage doesn't chip away at the enemies fast enough.

Are there any good DP guides yet? Does anyone have any useful mitigating strategies for playing a DP? I'm not talking about the best way to slot your powers, I'm talking about the best way to play the set before you get to 50. Curveball is at 16 now and the combo -- which I thought would actually work really well together -- is getting really frustrating to play...

I know, i'm necroing a thread, but... how did this problem get resolved? Because I'm seeing it now with the release of the new issue... not a problem that came up during beta, btw. Not that I noticed, anyway.

Well, it looks like the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit option worked!

Thanks for that tip, Kitsune...

Necrotron, your suggestion worked perfectly. I can now use all my mouse buttons with a minimum of inconvenience. Sure, I have to fire up the loader to check for updates, THEN close it and fire up the direct executable, but I'm willing to live with that considering the alternative.

Though I'd really prefer Logitech fix the Setpoint drivers.

At this point, though, I'm wondering why the drivers work when they first install, before the reboot. This is my hypothesis:

1. When you run the Setpoint drivers, UAE asks you to confirm the install.

2. When you confirm the install, UAE installs it with Admin rights.

3. The drivers take effect as soon as the install completes, which means they effectively "launch" from the install session, so they are running with Admin rights during the install, so they can affect the game which is running as admin.


If my hypothesis is true, then in order for the Setpoint drivers to work they'd have to run with admin privileges. My question, though, is why DOESN'T a device driver run with admin privileges to begin with?

I take it back.

It worked perfectly until I rebooted. Now it doesn't work any more.

Sigh...

Well, disabling UAE didn't do a darn thing. However, uninstalling my Setpoint drivers (6.15, I think) and re-installing the 4.80 drivers appears to have done the trick. Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But that's OK!

Now if I can convince Windows 7 to stop being "helpful" and prevent 4.80 from being upgraded, I'll be in good shape.

The problem: when I load CoH in Windows 7, none of Logitech Wireless Mice will recognise any mouse button beyond buttons 1 and 2.

Extra information:

Windows 7 - I'm pretty sure this is exclusively a Windows 7 problem. It was never a problem when I was using XP, and when I play on my Linux partition (using Wine, emulating XP) all my extra mouse buttons are recognized.

Logitech Wireless Mouse - I'm pretty sure the problem is specific to wireless mice. I have one Logitech USB wired mouse that recognises all buttons and all button assignments. However, my MX Revolution, my M705, and my Performance MX all suffer from this problem.

City of Heroes - this isn't a general gaming problem. My mouse buttons are recognised in a number of different games, including (but not limited to) Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Civilization IV.

Specifics of the problem:

OK, so let's take, for example, the Performance MX. I have it configured in the following manner:

Button 1 - Mouse Button 1
Button 2 - Mouse Button 2
Button 3 (Middle button) - Mouse Button 3 (Middle button)
Button 4 (1st thumb button) - Left Ctrl
Button 5 (2nd thumb button) - Left Shift
Button 6 (3rd thumb button, under 1st and 2nd) - Left Shift (again)
Button 7 (middle button tilt left) - unassigned
Button 8 (middle button tilt right) - unassigned
Button 9 (base of mouse, thumb button) - Left Alt

In CoH I rely heavily on Button 4 and 5 in order to access powers in the second and third power tray. This works fine in Linux/wine, but in CoH under Windows 7, it only recognizes Button 1 and 2 -- it doesn't even recognise the middle button, which I have bound to "target_nearest."

However, in Windows 7 I can confirm the buttons work. If I press Mouse button 5 and type in notepad, I get capital letters (i.e., it is recognising the shift command). I can press mouse button 9 and tab and get the alt+tab effect. Setpoint is assigning the buttons correctly in Windows 7.

It also assigns the buttons correctly in other games.

But it doesn't find or recognize any buttons beyond the first two in CoH.

Anyone else have this problem? Anyone else fix this problem? Anyone have any ideas?

Playing in Linux is fine, but a bit limited graphics-wise...

It's a neat idea, and I hope it succeeds. It's not for me, though.

The only mild objection I have has nothing to do with the concept, it's just over an off-handed statement that permadeath is "truer to the genre." Huh? No one ever stays dead in comic books. You can have an entire issue where everyone looks at the corpse, looks at the corpse going into the coffin, looks at the coffin going into the crematorium, looks at the ashes going into the urn, and the urn going on a mantle place -- and one year later someone will steal the ashes and cull the life-force residue from the ashes, placing it in a clone of the original pre-incinerated body and it will eventually get all the original character's memories back.

I second Dual Blades. I have a WP/DB tank and it's a lot of fun. The only caveat is that you need almost everything in WP for it to be effective, and a lot of powers in DB for *it* to be effective, so you get what is known as a "tight" build.

This is probably covered in the above calculations, but it's easier for Tankers to increase their regeneration capability with enhancements and sets. This is because you can do it two ways: you can increase the amount of your regeneration per tick (i.e., increase the percentage you regenerate) and you can increase the total amount of your heath (because the amount you regenerate is based off your max hp). Tankers get a lot more health so any percentage increase to health gives you more of an increase than a scrapper.

The offset is that scrappers tear through things much faster than tanks. Still my WP/DB tanker (Sky Commando) does the job fast enough for my tastes.

I am using Logitech 64-bit vista drivers for my mouse with the Windows 7 RC. Technically you're not supposed to do that, but it works for everything BUT CoH, including other games.

In CoH it works mostly, but it's not recognizing certain button mappings. Specifically, I have the shift and control keys bound to side buttons on my mouse, but they don't work in CoH, and in CoH only.

Has anyone else encountered this?

So the last time I took an extended leave of absence they introduced inventions, which in turn introduced the concept of "Perma-Dom" which I never got to but it was fun trying.

Now with I15 they've made some fairly radical changes to Dominators, essentially upping the damage (and recharge times) of attacks while taking out the damage boost of domination. From what I can see, the damage boost Doms got was pretty significant.

So how does this change things? Domination is still pretty useful for recharge times and status protection, but is it worth trying to get a permadom build any more? Is Psychic Shockwave still the crowning achievement of the Psi Dom's arsenal? (Doesn't look like it, since they reduced the damage and increased the recharge, but I could be wrong).

All in all from what I can tell about the changes they seem like a good thing, but they will require a new way of playing. I'm just trying to figure out what that is.

I saw the best AT's of my generation destroyed by the nerf-bat, looking for respecs,

dragging themselves through bump-mapped streets looking for mobs,

horn-headed hipsters with forked tails and shoulder-cats, burning with
auras that cause fear not aggro,

who tired and debt-ridden climbed the tops of Kings Row tenements contemplating powerlevelling,

who dreamed and schemed of the distant, misty image of the optimum build,

who were banned from the forums for calling the devs a pack of ruthless liars,

who lurked in dark corners with the hero builder, or dreamed of toggle-binds,

who got banned from the server for trying to create nude costumes,

who breathed fire at just the wrong time, causing the team to wipe,

who dreamed of p-v-p, and kill-stealing, and training and gaming the game,

in hazard zones and timed missions, darkened streets or twisting forests, deep crevases in the dirt or broken buildings against the sky,

single origin enhancements, only three to max, tankers have an over-nerfed primary and blasters a crappy innate,

the devs screw doms, controllers taste good this month and trenchcoats are coming soon,

the submarines will take you to Paragon City, cars to break and banks to rob in a flat-coke evening behind incandescent monitors, listening to the digital score in 24-bit surround,

who talked continuously on broadcast about mobs in Perez Park and stupid hero names,

forgotten armies of good-natured tankers jumping into the thick, forgetting the devs nerfed herding,

chatterchatter blargle yammer, oop sorry mt,

every mind consumed for days and weeks with missions on invinc, turn down the particle count or crash to desk,

taking minutes to scan all files, team has dropped you when you log back in, alone in Striga and the werewolves catch your scent,

wandering around a town of bricks wondering where you are, should have set "team teleport" to "prompt,"

cigar face detail #2, smoking bad but Nick Fury cool, winter event is curiously lacking snow,

study up on each player guide, from AT to bind to PvP, argue over issue 3 read each opinion on ED,

search the Hollows looking for Defenders, healer plz, kthxbye,

(kinetics ok too,)

tankers lonesome till you fight AVs, doms just lonesome, what's that language, hey they have european servers you know,

disappear into the caves to fight the circle of thorns, or lava-men, trolls, the occasional hellions and skulls,

into the sewers in atlas, out of the sewers in kings row, investigating the devs with big anime eyes sexy in their asian togs and posting incomprehensible rants,

burning the retinas with disturbing avatars,

distributing the latest calculations of damage ratings and aggro measurements, weeping while devs ignore the facts and figures and only say "we think this class is balanced perfectly,"

and I'd like to keep going but hey, Ginsberg wrote his on drugs, I'm sober and I just got off work,

so I'll have to leave it here and say "enough."

I just think it's funny that the OP apparently wanted to start yet another "the only correct way to play your alignment" thread.

In a Superhero Game.

AND TOOK IT SERIOUSLY.

"The" answer.

Heh.

I'm on my break. Call my union rep.

I would sing... Barbara Streisand.

I would turn on you and accuse you of cowardice.

Unfortunately, that would be just the opportunity the hero would need to overpower us and escape.

After that we would both be executed by our superior officer, because failure is not tolerated.

3. Riot

Wednesday was movie night. The movie was Cool Hand Luke, which is a great movie but an odd choice for something to show in a prison, and we were all feeling kind of pumped up afterwards. There's something about seing Paul Newman standing in the church doorway, saying "What we have here is a failure to communicate" just before he gets shot up by the prison guards and driven off to his death that made us feel restless. We were all talking a little louder than the guards would have liked, and we took our time shuffling back to our cells. Everyone was resltess, making jokes, and nobody really wanted lights out at all.

I got back to my cell and saw Charlie sitting in his bunk, reading a book. He didn't always go to the movies -- even if they were mandatory -- and the guards never said anything about it.

"Package for you," he said.

I looked at him funny and he pointed up to my bed. On top of the bed was a box.

"What the hell?" I walked over and pulled it down. It was a little heavy for me -- inhibitor field and all that -- and it fell to the floor with a semi-solid thud. "When did this come by?"

Charlie shrugged.

I knew it must have come during the movie, which meant Charlie probably saw who dropped it off, but he wasn't talking. At any rate, it didn't make any sense: you didn't get packages at night. Mail was at 4 PM every day, an hour before dinner. And you didn't get packages... at least, not unopened ones.

"You gonna stare at it, or are you gonna open it?" Charlie asked.

"Just seems a little weird," I said, but he had a point. I knelt down to get the thing open.

It was a cardboard box wrapped in brown shipping paper. The name JACK BARROW was written in neatly-printed block letters in thick black magic marker. There was no address, no return address, not even any marks for postage.

I tore off the paper and saw that the cardboard box was taped shut with packing tape. This was a little harder to unwrap, because I had the strength of a twelve year old kid and we didn't have anything sharp to work with, but I eventually got it open. As soon I pried open the cardboard flaps, the smell of well-oiled leather filled the room.

I stared at the contents of the box in disbelief.

"Clothes?"

Zig standard-issue prison garb consisted of a cheap orange jumpsuit and even cheaper tennis shoes. That's pretty much all you got, unless you were a convict with certain physical characteristics that made fitting into a cheap orange jumpsuit difficult. None of the convicts were allowed to wear their powered armor or costumes or even street clothes -- the officials probably thought it would encourage us to misbehave, and all in all I guess I'd have to agree with them on that. I was staring at clothes -- my clothes, to be exact, a set of clothes I used to wear when I was bouncing at See No Evil. There was my leather jacket, a pair of leather motorcycle pants, a heavy set of steel-toed engineer's boots, a solid black t-shirt, and my favorite belt, which had a thick leather strap and big, cast-iron buckle that I could use as brass knucks in a pinch.

I looked at Charlie, bewildered. He ignored me and kept reading. I poked my head out the cell door -- it wasn't quite lights out at this point -- and checked to see if anyone was around. No guards in sight. In fact, the entire block was pretty quiet... which was unusual.

In the end I decided to put them on. The guards were going to confiscate them eventually, I figured, so I might as well enjoy them while I had them, right? I changed as quick as I could, aiming to get into them before the guards came by to check the cell for lights out. When I was finished I felt like a new man.

Like a free man.

It'd been years, but I found myself automatically reaching for the inside pocket of my leather jacket... and that old habit was rewarded when I found a couple of good cubans sitting there, nice as you please, along with my lucky zippo lighter. I love cigars, and I hadn't had one in years.

I stared at the cigars in amazement. "Who did this?"

Charlie shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"Yeah," I said. "Either someone is setting me up for some kind of smart-alec practical joke, or I owe somebody a really big --"

"Shhh." Charlie frowned and cocked his head to one side. I rasied an eyebrow and looked at him inquisitively.

Charlie waited another second, then said "do you hear something strange?"

I listened. The cell block seemed unnaturally quiet... like it was waiting for something to happen. "I don't hear anything."

"That's just it," Charlie said. "Shouldn't we at least be hearing a low, ever-present hum?"

Charlie was right. I'd been so used to the noise I hadn't even thought to listen for it.

"Someone turned off the inhibitor fields," I whispered.

At that moment a number of things happened in quick succession.

First, I felt strong -- stronger than I'd ever felt in my life, stronger even than I'd felt when my powers first woke up. It came over me all at once, sort of like when you wake up after sleeping on your arm and all the blood starts pouring into it. My muscles literally ached from being suppressed all those years, and I almost fell over from the shock of it.

Second, the building shook as a low thud and then a series of booms could be heard from a distance. Explosions -- obviously explosions from somewhere within the Zig itself -- but I couldn't tell from where.

Third, all the lights switched to red, and all the cell doors slid shut and locked into place. We were in lockdown.

Charlie glanced up at the red light in annoyance, squinted a bit, and returned to reading his book.

"What the hell is going on?" I shouted. Some of the guys in other cells were shouting pretty much the same question.

"Don't know what's happening now," Charlie said, "but I'll bet I know what's going to happen in about five minutes."

I turned to look at Charlie, still squinting as he continued trying to read his book in the less-than-optimal red light. "What?"

"An opportunity," Charlie said. "And a challenge. For anyone here willing to rise to the occasion and meet it head-on."

I frowned thoughtfully. Charlie was still apparently immersed in his book, but all of a sudden I got the impression he was watching me a lot more carefully than I thought.

Dim shouts, and the faint report of gunfire, could be heard coming from a few cell blocks down. I felt the steady rhythm of adrenaline pulsing through me.

"Sounds like it's interesting out there," I said.

"Interesting," Charlie agreed.

I pulled out one of the cigars, looked at it for a second, and offered it to Charlie. He glanced up, smiled, took the cigar and put it in his shirt pocket.

"I'll smoke it later," he said.

I nodded. I bit off the tip of mine, spit the end out into the hall, lit the the cigar and savored it. The far off shouting grew a little louder, a little more frantic. The floor shook with more explosions.

Our cell block was almost completely silent, and there was a tension and a feeling of anticipation that would have been unbearable if weren't for the cigar. I smoked contentedly for a while, savoring the tension in the air, letting it match the tension in my own body.

Finally I said "Nice knowin' ya, Charlie. See ya 'round."

"Take care, Jack," Charlie said. "Show 'em what you got."

"Right." I took a deep breath, then shouted "I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting the hell out!" Then I kicked the door to my cell.

The cell door cracked, and the front of the cell exploded out as if I'd taken a stick of dynamite to it.

That felt good.

As if on cue the room was filled with the sound of metal tearing, exploding, melting, and shattering. The smell of ozone filled the air, smoke hung over the red strobing lights, and most of the denizens of Block B-17 swarmed out into the aisle. A lot of them weren't dressed in the orange uniforms -- some of them were in street clothes, others were in their prison costumes. One or two were actually in suits of powered armor (how the hell did those get smuggled in here?) and some were actually controlling robots.

There hadn't been any guards in our block when it had locked down, and our first obstacle was trying to get through the blast doors that had sealed us off from the other blocks. It took a few minutes for us to smash and melt and cut our way through, but once we did we emptied out into one of the big hubs that connected multiple blocks together.

It was mayhem.

There were costumes everywhere -- a large portion of the Block B community had, it seemed, received "care packages" similar to my own. It was a freakin' villain parade in the block hub. Convicts were flexing powers that they hadn't been able to touch in years, and were doing so with a vengeance.

For a second I felt sorry for the guards. Then I noticed the Longbow agents fighting their way in, and I decided I had better things to do.

I noticed a few costumed convicts breaking off from the rest and heading into another cell block. More important, I noticed they were being led by a guy wearing armor I didn't recognize... but when I saw the stylized spider insignia, I made a quick guess and ran after them. If they saw me following they didn't seem to care. Their guide led them down the now-empty cell, and at the end there was a gaping hole in the ground. The guide jumped in, they jumped in, and I followed suit.

The hole went down quite a distance, and finally opened up into a sewage system that fed into the Zig's sewage lines. The group was standing there, waiting while their armored guide ran off to meet someone. I recognized one or two of the convicts in the group and asked them where they were going. When one of them said "Mercy Island," I almost choked on my cigar.

The armored man was, as I had suspected, an Arachnos soldier, and he came back with a few others equipped with flashlights. They led us down the sewer system until we came to large grate. Before the grate was opened, one of the soldiers said:

"A few hundred feet from this exit are helicopters. If you can make it to the helicopters in the next five minutes, you'll be evaced to Mercy Island, where you can win your freedom and serve the glory of Arachnos. Remember: five minutes."

Then he opened the grate and we hurried through.

I remember thinking how silly that seemed at the time. Five minutes to travel a few hundred feet? Then I was outside, and all of a sudden it didn't seem so silly. I could see the helicopters a few hundred feet away, but between where I was and where they were was an ocean of orange-clad class C and D inmates.

It was a full-scale riot. Armored Zig guards were on-hand, trying to beat the convicts back with gas and rubber bullets. Longbow Agents were flying in from above to try to help the guards. Off in one corner I could see costumed heroes trying to fight their way in. Suddenly five minutes seemed quite a bit more challenging.

I chewed on the end of my cigar, looking at the sea of madmen stretched out before me, and cracked my knuckles.

"Come on, boys," I said. "I need a vacation."

I jumped into the crowd and started swinging. It came back to me almost all at once; five and a half years since my last fight and I hadn't lost a step. I felt that detachment I always felt when I started swinging, and the more I fought the more detached I became, the more efficiently I swung, the more I was able to focus on my end goal: getting to those helicopters.

One of the other guys in our little group had a completely different approach: he just flipped out. The more he fought, the crazier he got; the crazier he got, the harder he hit. It had pretty much the same effect.

Two minutes in and we were more than halfway through. We beat down anyone who got in our way, whether they were Longbow, guards, or fellow convicts didn't matter. The problem at that point was that the heroes had noticed us, and were trying to head us off at the pass.

"Fight harder!"

I was starting to get a little tired at this point. The C and D class felons weren't really much of a threat one on one, but there didn't seem to be any end to them. For every one I knocked down it seemed like four make stepped in to get in my way. The heroes must have been some sort of regular outfit, because they were coordinating their attacks and were moving through the crowd faster than we were.

We were closer to the helicopters, though. Either way, it was going to be close.

When one of our guys fell, another stopped to help him up -- which immediately cut him off from the rest of us. Two down, which made it that much harder for us to get through, which made it easier for more of us to fall, which in turn made it harder for us to get through... four minutes ticked by and we were about 4/5 of the way there... but out of our original fifteen we were now down to eight.

At this point it was every man for himself. Anyone who fell was going to be left behind, and that's just the way it was.

My arms, legs and chest hurt at this point. Five and half years of being in an inhibitor field had taken its toll, and I was out of shape. I was out of shape with super strength, which is a strange situation to be in, but there it was. I couldn't quit, though... I had to keep fighting.

I was almost there. I was so close that I could actually see the arachnos soldiers getting ready to wade in and help pull me too them. Suddenly I saw one of them point behind me and shout a warning. Couldn't hear what it was, but just then I felt someone grab my shoulder.

Reflex kicked in: I grabbed the wrist, twisted hard, turned, and kicked where the knee should be. I felt two snaps, and when I saw the guy I dropped, all I could was laugh.

It was that hero... you know, the one who was being "helpful" in King's Row. The one who got me arrested and sent to jail because I'd embarrassed him. I'd just broken his arm and his knee for the second time.

I don't know if he recognized me. I hope to God he did. I didn't have time to gloat, though. I gave him an extra kick, then turned and fought my way through to the helicopters. A minute later, the five of us who made it through were sitting in the back of an Arachnos transport chopper as it scrambled a little patch of the Paragon City district shields and flew off to our new home. Watching the Zig get smaller and smaller beneath me was one of the happiest moments of my life.

About ten hours later we arrived at Mercy Island.

NEXT: Mercy Island

2. Escape

In the Zig you have two options: either you find a way out, or you grow old and die.

The house wants you to grow old and die... and the game is always stacked in the house's favor. The Zig is a fortress designed to keep people in, and it does that pretty well. No-one has ever broken out of the Zig on their own, from the inside. Not successfully. Any time you hear about a successful prison break in the news, if it involves the Zig you can bet your house that it was an extraction... someone broke in to get someone else out.

The only other option was something we liked to call "work release." A few of the guys were able to make a deal with one of the "good guys" -- usually the feds, but sometimes the military. I don't know what those guys had that the powers that be wanted, but I do know that a few weeks after one of them was transferred out I read out him in the Paragon Times -- only he was being written up as "One of the next wave of Paragon's heroes."

So you either had to have powerful friends on the outside, or you had to have something the government wanted... which meant I was screwed. I was a bouncer from King's Row. I didn't even develop powers till I was in prison. None of my friends could convince the city to fill a friggin' pothole. Which meant my only option was to grow old and die... just like the house wanted.

Some guys tried to break out anyway. Some started taking 'Dyne to try and counter the effects of the inhibitor fields. Trouble is, too much 'Dyne makes you stupid... I mean, look at the trolls, right? And it's way too easy to misjudge the dose you need, and even if you get it right you only have half an hour till enough works its way out of your system that the inhibitors kick in again.

And even if you did get out, what then? You're right in the middle of Bricktown. Paragon City has more heros per capita than any other city in the world, and all of a sudden you're the star of your very own All Points Bulletin.

Still, you keep hoping. Even when you're not actively planning your escape, you keep on your toes just in case something breaks your way... because there were always rumors.

I was creeping up on my fourth month in the Zig. It was lights out, I was lying on my bunk and staring up at the ceiling. The only sound I could hear was the faint hum of the inhibitor fields.

"Charlie."

"Yeah?"

"You asleep?"

"No."

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead, Jack." Charlie never called me "Scrapper."

"You ever hear of a place called 'Mercy Island'?"

Charlie hesitated a moment before answering. "Why?"

"Heard someone mention it at dinner," I said. "Like it was the Shangri-La for metahumans or something."

Charlie laughed. "Did they now?"

"Well?" I shifted in my bunk so that my head was hanging over the side, looking down into his bed. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Charlie said. "I've never been there. I've heard a few things is all."

"So is it?" I pressed. "A Shangri-La for metahumans, that is."

Charlie laughed again. "Well if the stories are true, it's part of a chain of islands just out of U.S. Territorial waters, somewhere in the Carribean. It's supposed to be sort of a haven for... ah... people in our situation. It's run by Arachnos. For all intents and purposes."

I'd heard of Arachnos -- some kind of big-time group bent on world domination, or something like that. "And what? It's an open port for 'villains?'"

"That's what I heard," Charlie said, "Lord Recluse -- he's in charge -- has offered amnesty to any metahuman criminal who comes to the island. Amnesty and a job. Building his own metahuman army, I guess."

I thought about that for a second.

"Why?" Charlie asked. "Looking to volunteer?"

I snorted. "Maybe. If they'd get me out of this box, I'd be willing to consider it."

"Do I bother you that much?" Charlie asked. I could tell he was grinning.

"You're like an open sore," I joked. "But seriously -- how would you like it if you learned about your powers one day and then never got a chance to, you know, use them? When I was in Block X I overheard one of the doctors saying that I could probably lift a bus if I tried hard enough. A bus! I'd sure like to do that at least once."

"You had a bad turn of luck there," Charlie agreed.

"That's one way of looking at it," I said. "Another way would be that some two-bit attorney decided to screw me over just to get ahead. I hope he likes his raise. I wouldn't mind a little payback for that."

"Be careful, Jack," Charlie warned. "I've seen a lot guys go crazy thinking that way. There's not a lot you can do about being here. You've got to be strong enough to keep it from wearing you down."

I just sighed and kept looking at the ceiling. I thought about living on a tropical island and lifting a bus over my head. When I finally drifted off to sleep, it was to the sound of someone playing the radio. Johnny Cash singing Folsom Prison Blues.

After that I always paid close attention whenever the topic of Mercy Island came up. If you believed all the stories, it was a resort island where metahuman convicts were treated like royalty, where they were building a new and glorious future, where beautiful women swooned over your sheer power and where fabulous riches were there for the taking. And then there were rumors that Arachnos used the Zig as a recruiting ground: that they had agents here, in the prison, and that they often staged prison riots which they used as a smokescreen for smuggling potential recruits out into freedom.

It sounded like a lot of wishful thinking and pipe dreams to me. After a few years I stopped paying attention to the stories altogether. It got to the point where it was no different than listening to someone talk about what they'd do when they won the lottery: "when I get to Mercy Island, I'm gonna..."

Yeah. Sure you will. Now put up your lunch tray before the guards get antsy.

I spent five and half years in the Zig, and for most of that time I'd pretty much written off Mercy Island as a fairy tale told by guys who had nothing else to believe in. On Wednesday, 16 November 2005, that changed completely.

Next: Riot

1. Life in the Zig

Dirty little secret about the American legal system: not many metahumans get parole. To get parole you have to convince a parole board that you're no longer a danger to society, and this can be hard to do when you can tear a car in half with your bare hands, or hurl bolts of lightning, or make someone's head explode with the power of your own brain. Truth told, society is pretty solidly stacked against metahumans from the get-go. You're required by law to register with the city you operate in. If you do, you're considered a registered weapon; if you don't, you're considered an unregistered weapon. If your powers aren't obvious -- I mean, if you're not made out of living stone, or you aren't glowing all the time, or your head isn't always on fire -- then you're considered an unregistered concealed weapon.

Me? I was an unregistered concealed weapon that had been smuggled into a state prison. Nevermind that I didn't even know I was a mutie... I was already a convicted criminal, and some pissant prosecutor decided it would be a nice feather in his cap to lock me up and throw away the key. So faster than you can say "but what about my Constitutional rights?" I found myself shackled in inhibitor cuffs, herded into a heavily re-enforced bus with a few other mopes also shackled in inhibitor cuffs, and given one last tour of Brickstown before being dumped off in my new home.

The Zig.

I don't remember a whole lot about my first day there. Inhibitor cuffs take a lot out of you, and while you're wearing them you tend to feel drugged. Mine were specifically trying to counteract my newly discovered strength, so I felt like it was the morning after an all-night bender: my muscles ached, it was hard to move, and the world was spinning and tilting in ways that just weren't natural. I remember they herded us off the bus -- I think there were three or four of us, but I can't say for certain -- and I remember standing in the courtyard for a while, surrounded by guards, while they got their paperwork straightened out. Then I remember being taken away from the rest of the group to be classed and processed.

"Classification and processing" is when they assign a power level to you and then move you to the part of the prison best suited to holding you. There are four basic classes, A to D. Class D is for low level metahumans, the ones just barely breaking above human norms. Most the meta gangs fall into this category -- your average Hellion, Skull, Outcast, or Council soldier fits here. Class C is a step above that -- Hellions who sling fire, Skulls who sling shadow, Council lieutenants, Outcasts who are actually tapping into the elements, Trolls displaying the effects of Superadyne, and most of the Circle of Thorns go in here. Class B is for the big time, where the metahumans who can be serious threats just on their own are stored. Your traditional "supervillain" belongs here, as well as Council, Circle, Hellion, Skull and Outcast leaders. Class A is for the elites: they're the ones that Captain Redcape and his Spandex Avengers take down personally.

Each group has its own section of the prison, labeled blocks A through D accordingly. Strangely enough, each section of the prison is roughly the same size. There are a lot more prisoners in Block D than any of the others, but the other blocks need more equipment to handle the prisoners they have -- more inhibitor fields, more restraings, re-enforced materials, etc., and it seems to roughly even out. I'm not sure if that's true for Block A; I've never been there. I never saw any of the prisoners from Block A.

There's also an additional class X for metas they haven't quite been able to place yet, and a Class H for metas that require "special housing." "Special housing" metas are ones that need to be kept in a special environment to live, like if they only breathe chlorine gas, or they only breathe properly when they're underwater. Never seen Block H, and don't know anything about it. Block X is more like a medical wing than anything else. There are temporary facilities where you stay while they do a complete physical workup, and there are a lot of really fancy gadgets on hand where they try to figure out how your powers work and what the extent of those powers are. I was originally sent to Block X because my abilities were new and they didn't know how extensive they were, but I was eventually labeled a Class B meta and transferred to Block B-17.

My cellmate in B-17-AC was an old mind controller named Charlie Spatz. He'd made something of a name for himself in the late 60s when he went by Psiklopse... I'd heard stories about him, actually, because he and his organization worked out of King's Row quite a bit. Backstreet Brawler finally took him down in the 70s. He'd been in the system ever since.

Charlie was like royalty in B-17. The guards always treated him with respect: they always claimed it was because he'd been there for so long, but I eventually decided it was because they didn't really have a choice in the matter. They'd been drugging his food in order to suppress his powers, but he'd developed a healthy resistance to the drugs years ago was putting the whammy on the guards so they'd believe the drugs were still effective. Most of us believed that he was really a Class A meta and that he'd managed to trick the warden into believing he was a lot less powerful than he really was. We never saw anything to support that theory... it was just... I dunno, sort of a feeling you had when you hung around him for any length of time. Charlie was a nice old guy, though. He never bullied anyone or made any trouble. He actually kept the peace a little, to tell you the truth. A lot of the guys went to him to settle disputes, and no one came away feeling cheated.

Anyway, everyone was surprised when I was put in his cell. He'd had his cell to himself for years and no-one really expected that to change. He didn't seem to mind, and when he found out I was from King's Row he seemed happy to meet someone from the old neighborhood. I spent the first month or two trying to get him caught up on all the changes in the last 30 years... I couldn't help him much with most of the 70s, because I was just a kid then. He was interested to hear about the crime that had moved in after Brawler took out the big crime families that had been operating there -- the Skulls, the Clockwork, the Circle of Thorns, the Vahzilok, the Lost. He was especially curious about the Lost; there weren't many in the Zig, and the few there were kept to their own. It worked out pretty well for me. Charlie had a lot of books, and he didn't mind me thumbing through 'em, which helped to kill time.

And killing time was what you did in the Zig. You couldn't do much else. The Zig is all about the routine: lights on a 7AM, shuffle out to the showers. From the showers to the caffeteria, then back to the cells. Guards come by to collect laundry Monday mornings, and drop off clean laundry Monday evenings. Lunch in the caffeteria at 12, dinner at 5, lights out and lock-down at 10PM. Every day we'd have an hour outdoors, but the time changed every week. Wednesday nights they usually showed a movie, and attendance was mandatory. The rest of the time was spent in your wing, and there wasn't much to do but talk, smoke, play cards. A lot of the inmates spent an awful lot of time bragging about the things they did when they were outside, or daydreaming about what they'd do if they could ever get outside again. Some of the more entertaining moments were when two inmates discovered they had pretty much the same name... I remember when Dr. Evil, Doctor Evil, and Doc Evil all wound up at the same lunch table. That was pretty funny.

It's ironic. In the state pen I was always pissed that they put us to work all the time... but in the Zig I found myself wishing I could do something -- laundry detail, making license plates, anything. They didn't do anything but keep us penned in. I guess they had a hard time figuring out how to keep metahumans from doing what they do while putting them to work at the same time. Can you imagine letting one of those hyperintelligent mad scientist types run loose in a machine shop? Or even putting them in the laundry room, where they might steal parts from the washers and dryers? For my part, the inhibitor fields were suppressing my strength so much that a twelve year old could have beat me in an arm wrestling match, so I couldn't do any manual labor. If it weren't for those books I would have gone out of my mind.

I did go a little crazy, though. Everyone did, a little... when you've got abilities you can't use, and you're cooped up in a little cell, and there's a big world outside you know you're never going to see again... well, it wears you down. Most of the old timers were shadows of their former selves, and most of the young guys were afraid of becoming just like that. And they had good reason to be afraid... because eventually it was going to happen to them, too. It happened to everyone.

Everyone but Charlie. Zig never got to him at all. Funny thing about that.

NEXT: Escape

(( Thanks! Next chapter might go up tonight. Or I might be too busy playing tonight... hard to say ))

0. Introduction

The two questions I get most often are "Hey Jack, what's the story behind your handle?" and "Hey Jack, what the hell happened to your face?"

The handle is easy enough: I fight. I fight a lot. When I was a bouncer working the See No Evil in King's Row I wound up getting into fights at least three or four nights in a row, and I usually came out on top. This was before I discovered I was a mutie, too: no invulnerability, no super strength, just a lot of weightlifting, a cool head when the fists started swinging, and a willingness to do what it took to be the last man standing. We never had any metas who came by with any kind of frequency, so my winning a fight against a bunch of surly drunks isn't really the world's biggest accomplishment, but I did take down a Skull flunky once. Anyway, the regulars started calling me "Scrapper Jack" because when trouble started I was right there, willing to wade in and get it all sorted out. The nickname followed me into the pen and then into the Zig, and after I got out I didn't see any reason to stop using it. "Jack Barrow" is a fine name if you're an accountant or a cop, but when you're trying to build a reputation as a guy who can run in the big leagues you need something a little more memorable, you know? "Scrapper Jack" -- people remember that.

The face requires a little more explanation. It seems counter-intuitive at first... I am, after all, mostly invulnerable, and any kind of hurt I can't shrug off I heal eventually. I'm pretty sure that even without those med porters I'd wind up getting up again if I had enough time. So those three gashes running over my left eye down into the left side of my face, well, yeah -- I can see how people would be curious.

But like I said before, I wasn't always this strong and tough. I officially classified as a mutant, but unlike most muties, who find their powers kicking in around puberty or so, mine never showed up. They were lying low, sleeping, waiting for the right moment to pop up and say hi.

So once upon a time I could get just as scraped up as anyone. And when I was bouncing you can bet I did: cracked ribs, broken bones, black eyes, concussions... I got shot twice and stabbed three times -- I'm talking properly stabbed, by guys who knew what they were doing, which doesn't count the drunk morons who were waving something sharp in the air seconds before they passed out.

And when I was in the pen -- not the Zig, not at first, just a run-of-the-mill correctional facility in the great state of Rhode Island -- my mutations were still sleeping.

I was in there on a really lousy assault charge. It wasn't my fault: I was doing what I always did, being a bouncer. I was trying to keep two bikers from tearing each other to pieces when all of a sudden I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I figured it was one of the biker's friends deciding to jump in, so I didn't hesitate -- I grabbed the hand, twisted hard till heard a snap, turned and kicked his kneecap. Heard a snap there, too.

Turned out to be friggin' hero.

He'd been tracking down a Skull drug ring, or something like that... heard the commotion, and came in to "help." How was I supposed to know? He never said anything, he just grabbed my shoulder. I apologized, but he wasn't too happy about being shown up by a civilian -- it was a lucky shot, but it chafed his shorts something fierce -- so the next thing I know I'm up on charges and being arraigned for assaulting a duly appointed law enforcement official of Paragon City. My boss and the regulars at the bar all came forward as character witnesses in my defense. I appreciated the thought, but I'm not sure it helped my case any... at any rate, a hero has a lot more stroke than a civilian Paragon City, especially if that civilian is a working stiff from King's Row, you know what I mean? So I was sent off to the pen for five years, with a chance for parole in two.

I'm getting to the scars. Hold your horses.

Life in the state penn was interesting. All I really wanted to do was serve my time, get out on parole for good behavior, and go back to bouncing. I was a little worried that the warden and the guards would be a problem, but that wasn't really an issue as long as you did what you were told. No, the problem wasn't with the guards.

The problem was with the inmates.

You get a bunch of guys crammed into really small cages for long periods of time and eventually you get a pecking order. Everybody has a place, and if you stay in that place then everything goes pretty smooth -- unless you wind up being the designated victim, in which case it's a long haul.

Thing is, though, you don't really get to choose your place. It's not like the pecking order is established the moment you arrive... you're thrown into something that's already there, see? So the people at the top of the heap, they're the ones who decide where you fit in... and everyone else has to figure out whether that means they get bumped up a notch, or taken down.

Some guys come in and they're automatically at the bottom of the food chain -- let's call 'em "easy marks," the ones who can't really defend themselves that well. Some of them, if they're really smart and good at thinking fast on their feet, can turn it around and find a way to make themselves useful -- if so, they do OK. If not, they become an unending source of "entertainment," which can mean all kinds of things, from bullying to beatings to worse.

Me, well... like I said, I fight, and I don't intimidate much. I also had the "advantage" of being sent in because I broke a hero's wrist and kneecap -- nevermind that it was a one in a million thing, it impressed a few people on the inside. It also threatened more than a few people -- people who thought I might be new competition for their spot in the pecking order. Finally, there were some who saw me as an opportunity -- a chance to improve their position in the pecking order at my expense.

My first few days inside, a lot people decided to introduce themselves to me. There were a few of the big names who wanted to keep an eye on me, to see if they could use me... a few of their lieutenants who wanted to make sure I never got enough of a rep to threaten their action... a few hungry guys who wanted to beat down the guy who "took down a cape..." and finally, a few "victims" who thought maybe an alliance with me would buy 'em a little breathing room.

Each of these groups had their uses. If I'd gone after the lieutenants who wanted to beat me down, I might have been able to get one of their spots, or at least a spot in one of the big gangs. That can make your time inside a hell of a lot easier. Unfortunately, it's sort of like enlisting in an army with a very active stop-loss program: once in, you don't really get out, even when you get outside... also, when you join one of the gangs you wind up making the others angry.

If I'd stuck to the lower-tier thugs who wanted to build up their own rep by taking me down, that would have been a pretty safe way to build my own reputation while staying neutral. Problem is, when you go that way, you're pretty much agreeing to take on all comers, any day or night.

Making an alliance with one of the resident victims sounds like a pretty stupid proposition, and in a lot of ways it is... but they tend to know a lot about prison politics, and if they think their safety depends on you being around to protect them, they'll give you a lot of useful information that other people won't. That said, if you do that, their battles become your battles, and you wind up making enemies with people who probably wouldn't have bothered you otherwise. Also, it's not unknown for the resident victim to turn on you if he thinks he has a better deal coming down the line.

The problem with even trying to choose a course of action is that in the first few days you don't know who anyone is, so you can't tell if you're talking to a bigwig, a lieutenant, a young turk, or a victim. Well, you can usually tell who the victims are, but not the others. So my bad luck was getting into a fight on my second day with a guy who I thought was a young turk but was actually a lieutenant, and then turning down an offer from the lieutenant's boss to join his gang.

See, I beat up one of his boys and then turned down his offer. That's sort of an insult. If I'd known the guy was one of his, I would have joined the gang... who needs a war, right? But I didn't make the connection until after I'd already pissed off one of the higher ups in the pecking order.

We're getting closer to the scars. Hang on.

After the snub I was declared persona non grata by that group, and it was open season on me from there on out. I spent a lot of time in solitary -- I'd fight, get thrown in solitary, get out of solitary, fight again, get thrown in solitary again, get out of solitary again... rinse, wash, repeat. And the frustrating thing (for them) was that even then I was good in a fight -- I sort of slip into a zone when the fists start flying, and when I get into that zone I can put the hurt on a body pretty thoroughly. So I was holding my own in this "open season," and the bigwig was starting to look bad.

His position in the pecking order was slipping. He needed to do something to rectify it. So he decided to make an example out of little old me.

So one day I'm let out of solitary and for some reason no-one goes after me. This makes me a little jumpy at first, but weeks stretch on and nothing happens, no-one gets in my face... so I start to relax a little, thinking they've had enough and have decided to move on to an easier mark.

Next month the Warden tells me there's a spot open in the machine shop if I want in. This should have made me suspicious from the start, but the machine shop is a pretty good prison job so I ignored that little nagging voice in my head that was saying "Barrow, this is a trap."

So I spend a week in the machine shop. Everything's great. I relax a little more.

Second week in I'm minding my own business when someone clubs me in the back of the head. I wake up just in time to notice that three of my very special friends are shoving my face into a live table saw.

This did two things.

First, it hurt like hell. I don't know if you've ever had anyone try to saw you in half face-first, but I don't recommend it. When that blade hit my cheek bone I thought I wasn't ever going to stop screaming.

Second, it triggered my mutation. I don't know if it was the pain, or the adrenaline going through my body, or my pituitary gland screaming at whatever mutated organ controls these things to get off its [censored] and do something productive, but just as the blade hit my cheekbone it shattered, scattering bits across the room. Then -- I don't remember this part, but I heard the story from a bunch of guys who were there at the time -- I ripped the tablesaw off of the table it was bolted to and proceeded to beat my very special friends with it.

I really don't remember anything past the blade cutting into my head. Apparently I passed out from the pain shortly after, but not before I beaten my attckers within inches of their lives. I guess I'm lucky I didn't kill any of them.

Anyway, that's how I got the scars. The mutation was newly-triggered, see, and the wound proved difficult to treat. My body didn't heal as completely then as it does now, but my skin was already too tough to actually sew the wound shut, so the scars never healed over. Those were last the scars I ever got, though.

'Course, that's what got me sent to the Zig.

NEXT: Life in the Zig

---
Scrapper Jack can be found on the Virtue server.

LR: What would Boss Hogg do?