Khellendrosiic

I'll be at work. The injustice of this has not yet ceased to irk me.

Interesting. How exactly would one contribute to this?

All these threads just start looking the same.

"NCsoft sucks"
"Your opinion is invalid, they're allowed"
"They still suck"
"Your opinion is still invalid because you're being illegal"
"It's not illegal"
"Yes it is"
"No it's not, here's why"
"Yeah whatever you're still bad people"

Ugh. Can we go back to discussing lore or something? Maybe talk about the stories we would have gotten in i24?

This looks pretty awesome and I'll definitely be grabbing a copy whenever you guys finish. Any idea if you'll do something for villains? I've always been more of a red then blue guy myself, really.

"Cyrus Thompson was a hero. Called Breakspeed or something. Breakneck, maybe?" Beth contemplated that line of thought for a few more moments, then discarded it to continue her explanation. "He sacrificed himself to stop a ritual the Circle of Thorns was doing. He gave the Freedom Phalanx enough time to put a stop to things."

The agent glanced back up at the towering Rikti, who had shifted his gaze back to the unassuming statue. Standing like he was, facing her but looking to the side so that his face was in profile, he looked exactly as alien as a Rikti should. His armor in its spikiness and colored in various shades of crimson, oddly proportioned limbs and head more reminiscent of a dinosaur than anything warm-blooded, eyes completely black and filled with alien emotion... Beth shivered. A person? What had she been thinking?

"Heroes: Sacrifice," the emotionless translator blurted out after several long moments of silence. "Soldiers: Fight. Doctors: Heal. Engineers: Create. Heroes: Sacrifice. Further explanation: Cyrus Oliver Thompson tribute: Required."

"His tribute? What? This is a /statue/," the girl sounded puzzled and vaguely insulted as she furrowed her brow up at Cher'tak.

Another rasp of static filtered from the translator at his throat as Cher'tak mentally grunted, his brows dipping in a mirror of Beth's annoyance.

"Translation: Imperfect," he tried to explain, his spike of irritation causing an uneasy shifting amongst the Wardens watching the pair. "Reiteration: Cyrus Oliver Thompson sacrifice: Statue. Other: Sacrifices: Lack statues. Why?"

"Because if we put up a statue for every hero that had to die in order to save the day, this whole city would be a graveyard!" Beth snapped back, briefly forgetting the detachment her drill instructors had tried to drill into her along with the fact that the alien she was addressing could probably snap her in half with or without his weaponry.

When Cher'tak raised both gauntlets in a gesture of surrender, her surprise was clear enough that he could both see and feel the emotion crossing her face and mind. The novel experience dredged away a bit of the miasma clouding his own emotions, but soon enough his melancholy was back in force.

"My doing: Many: Hypothetical statues," his translator grated out, spiked shoulders slumping in time with the words. "Duty: Insufficient shield. Apoligies: Birth body Beth. Permission: Departure: Granted."

The alien shifted in place, more squarely facing the statue as he pulled his helmet from the clamp on his belt in preperation to don it again. Beth frowned and turned to face the statue along with him, clearly regretting even broaching the subject of the war. The Rikti were supposed to be faceless, fearless, and /emotionless/, damn it.

"Look... Forget about it," she began tenatively. "Just give me a moment to try and remember what details I can."

She barely noticed the Rikti's nod, being too occupied trying to cast her mind back to half-remembered television broadcasts and the news report her dad insisted he read to her during breakfast. Cher'tak watched her in something akin to amusement, her mind so transparent that he could practically see the gears turning even if he lacked the skill and strength to visualize exactly what was going through them. Despite living on this Earth for almost a decade Cher'tak had had so few interactions with humanity outside of fighting against or with them that this chance to watch one in mental motion was practically unique.

"Okay, alright, ahhh..." Beth hemmed and hawwed for a moment, a little creeped out by the way Cher'tak was staring at her. It was a lot like how the guys would stare at her as she came out of the locker room but with none of the sexuality. It was simply... intent. Alien. Like he hadn't actually seen her before. Out of reflex she waited a moment for him to snap his gaze up to her eyes, only to realize that they were already there and had been the whole time. She really needed to remember he wasn't human.

"Query: Hesitation."

The atonal voice snapped the trooper out of her loop and she quickly refocused on the task at hand.

"Nothing, nothing," she said quickly, then slowed down a little. "Cyrus was a retired hero, not an active one. He was old and had disease or defect, something that would kill him if he ever used his powers again. The Circle snatched him, a couple of models, and a kid because they all fit some special requirement the cultists required."

As Cher'tak turned to face her she unconsciously squared her stance, hands from from her chest to clasp loosely behind her back as if she were giving a report. Something about his focus reminded her of her old drill sergeant.

"The Phalanx tried to stop everything but they kept getting stonewalled for one reason or another, allowing the Circle to gather all the sacrifices and start their ritual. They were summoning this giant demon, something that would have caused a lot of damage before anyone could stop it. Cyrus... still had something to give, so he gave it in order to interupt the lead mage. He died shortly after."

Bethany closed with a curt nod, returning her gaze to Cher'tak's face instead of a point several inches above and off to the left of his shoulder. She waited in silent expectation, curious to see how this human-like alien would respond. He disappointed her by simply turning back to face the statue, heavy boots clomping on the concrete.

"Clarification: Former status: Cyrus Oliver Thompson: Civilian. Abandoned: Lineage: Hero?"

"He was a civilian, yeah. He might have had a job, but I think he was just collecting social security and... living out the rest of his life."

"Duty: Absent. Honor: Retained."

Beth hesitated a few moments, then nodded. "I guess so. Once a hero, always a hero."


((Four years late, but something is better than nothing, eh? I'm not quite satisfied with how this bit came out but that's probably because there's no way I can recapture my old tone. More will come, I've got a deadline now. Hopefully you all enjoy.))

I laughed a lot harder than I should have. Thanks for that, I needed it.

Chime me in for someone who thinks this is all a really great idea. Making Lord Recluse an actual, credible threat rather than some unfortunate Cobra Commander wanna-be? Hell yes. I've just got one question...

How exactly are the Rogue Arachnos powerful or numerous enough to force Recluse to redistribute his forces so drastically? From what it seems in-game the Rogues are really only able to survive because Recluse just hasn't decided to crush them. Sure they have Warburg's missiles and they've messed with Arachnos a few times on their own initiative, but having the resources to successfully assault Grandville is a whole other story.

No psi resistance, but I bet he has ungodly mez protection. Try dominating someone with /that/.

Trilogy, on the face of it the contact looks like it has an interesting story. Be a character in a story, things are wackily out of order to make you piece the real story together, yadda yadda.

But when I played it, I felt like I was playing a one-star AE arc that just ripped off Star Wars. The most bare-bones of plot, absolutely no connection to the wider canon, no effort put into mission objectives, stale dialogue, and worst of all... NO SOUVENIR AT THE END.

Does anyone understand what the bleeping bleep is up with this 'story' arc? Why does it even exist? Why was time wasted on a product so substandard it makes i0 low level arcs masterpieces of story-telling in comparison?

I actually ran a City of Villains based campaign with Mutants & Masterminds 2e a year or two ago. The ultimate big bad of the campaign even turned out to be the Banished Pantheon, with Mot the most powerful. >_>

Just chiming in to agree with the 'don't erase history' crowd.

Awesome. Thanks.

Do you need to have a slotted Alpha in order for threads to drop off random enemies in the new Dark Astoria?

Oh man oh man oh man why isn't it Tuesday yet?

I chuckled.

Hrm, I'll bite. Never a bad idea to remind myself why my characters do things.

Toy Dispenser: The android mercenary with as many personalities as he has robotic minions, Toy leans from Personal Gain to Kicks and Giggles depending on the given day. Upkeeping a manufactory satellite and designing a slow growing robot army is expensive, but sometimes he does things simply for the experience. Like getting a Hero ID and pretending to be legit when he gets bored. He has something of an obsession with being the only android of his class, but I'm not sure where that would fit in the list.

Archlich: A Megalomanic raised and undead. He tends to temper himself with some Misguided Idealism about being the only one worthy of controlling all magic, but that doesn't stop much. One of the only survivors of Mu and the first lich, Archlich has spent all the centuries since gathering arcane knowledge and unlocking the true secrets of magic. He wields primal forces like we breathe and one day he'll make sure humanity finds out just how much he learned.

Captain Farfield: Daniel Farfield is a Webmaster who's loyalty to Arachnos is absolute. A model soldier and exemplary commander, Farfield's true desire is Revenge. It started off as a desire for revenge against the lone hero who accidently burned down his apartment and killed his fiance, but Arachnos tutelage has broadened his feelings. All heroes will burn and their ashes tramped under steel boots if Farfield gets his wish.

Lord Netharak: A Doom Lord of the Burning Legion cast adrift in Primal Earth, Netharak is Pure Malice personified. Suffering begets power and power brings the coming of the Legion ever closer. And if there's one thing Lord Netharak is good at, it's causing suffering through untold destruction and death. Or he would if those damn heroes would ever get off his back.

I have some other villains, like Brutish Ghoul and Rich the Claw, but they're mostly all mercenaries in the same vein as Toy Dispenser. I tend to enjoy roleplaying Rogues much more than actual Villains.