Kurrent

I'm still me. Kurrent was my first character ever created, and she remains my avatar.

Electric Blast still works pretty well for me.

The writing in the First Ward arcs was outstanding, successfully giving me the creeps more than once during the whole story. I felt the ending was both abrupt and incomplete, and I believe that the MoM trial is supposed to continue the story of at least one person involved in the First Ward arcs and give us more information on what happens to her.

However, I find the reward of two merits for each arc to be both odd and a bit light. I'd put the arcs as feeling more like four to seven merits for rewards, and I suppose the case could be made for more on some of them. Is the two merit reward for each arc a holdover, like a placeholder for a final merit reward that was never corrected?

Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for letting us place our bets on this! I must say this was quite fun, and I'm definitely in for next year. I don't see me picking a team with Andre Johnson and his hamstring again, though.

No surprise that you come out the big winner, Dechs! I don't begrudge you any of it, because you were indeed the one on the hook had things turned out differently. Lee Trevino once said, "The definition of pressure is standing over a hundred-dollar putt with twenty dollars in your pocket." I appreciate you being the house on this little game, because it was quite fun.

There's actually been a good deal of comments both thoughtful and worth considering in this thread. There has been some complaining, sure, but I really haven't gotten the sense that this was a bawww thread in the least. My input was what led to me not taking badging as seriously as I used to and then suggestions to try and make future "Master of" badges a bit more logical instead of resorting to gimmicks each time, because people are going to get tired of those gimmicks and we'll see participation on trials like Keyes and the Underground drop and participation on badge trials plummet. I think the Incarnate trials are actually pretty good, and I'd like to see them be successful for a long time.

We definitely could use a giant warhammer of some sort. The fusion hammer is neat, but it would be nice to have another hammer option without the rocket trail. Other possible "normal" titan weapon options could include a no-dachi, a claymore, a halberd, even a medium-sized tree. And I have this particularly twisted vision of using a frozen great white shark as a weapon. Yeah, I know I need help.

As many people have posted, spawning Caleb is easy; it's finding him (and keeping him in place while you pound him) that's hard.

You're spawning Caleb correctly. Once spawned, start looking around Thorn Isle first, because he normally spawns there.

You have mentioned that you normally fly high so you can spot him, but he's never visible. Please bear in mind it's fairly easy to fly too high when looking for him. His Stealth requires you to fly fairly close to ground; I normally don't get much higher than 15-20 feet off the ground when looking for him. Having a team hunting him is the single best way to find him, bar none.

When scouting for Caleb after he spawns, look for a large cluster of spectral terrors/ghosts. Caleb is usually going to be in the center of them, and sometimes you have to almost run into him before he becomes visible. When you see a big cluster of ghosties, get close and check it out but be prepared for him to pounce on you. As others have pointed out, having some kind of perception boost can be very helpful here, like Focused Accuracy.

Once you find Caleb, you really want a team to take him, preferably with characters who can mez/hold/immob him. To put it simply, Caleb turns tail and runs from danger like no other giant monster. Think of the way Lady Jane and Fusionette seek out the nearest enemies and charge them to a ridiculous degree. Now reverse that, and you have how aggressively Caleb tries to run away. As far as beating him, he's really not that hard as long as you can keep him in place or have a mobile team that can fight him in the air as he runs. Using -fly powers like Web Grenade lets the melee types join in as well.

While it's certainly possible, the devs have been pretty consistent about saying that developing a full powerset based on whip attacks would be a nightmare in terms of difficulty. From what I can recall from the discussion back then, the three whip attacks we have now took a much larger amount of time to develop and animate than other attack powers, making it impractical to develop an entire set of those attacks even before considering the draw difficulty that would be present with a more ranged melee attack.

It's not unusual to see NPCs with their own special attacks or even mini-powersets. The dockworkers in Sharkhead use Powertools attacks which I've drooled over for years. I think that'd make an amazing powerset for heroes, but there are no plans to release it to us that I am aware of. The Corolax have little sea urchins they throw at us, and as you've already noticed the Carnies have several special attacks, ranging from the rings of energy hold you mention to the dreaded Mask of Vitiation the Dark Ring Mistresses nail us with. I don't expect any of those to be appearing as selectable powersets anytime soon. We can still dream, however.

I'll agree that Freedom stays the most active, with Virtue a close second, but there are other alternatives.

For blueside, Liberty stays relatively active; it's not Freedom or Virtue levels, but it offers an option for players who aren't as comfortable with the roleplaying on Virtue or the collective cognitive challenge that seems to be most prevalent on Freedom (but by no means limited to it).

If you like playing villains, Triumph remains a viable choice, with a pretty active redside most of the time. SFs, trials, even hami raids. It's much like Liberty in terms of activity and general caliber of play.

I think it would be hysterical to have about 1 out of every 100 Sally spawns instead spawn Sa11y, a GM (with an eerie resemblance to Sally from the neck up) who would react to an attack by rising out of the water to reveal a Jurassik-like stance and a gigantic tree trunk for a club before pounding the stuffing out of the poor hero who mistakenly attacked the angry big sister monster who dislikes people picking on sweet, gentle little Sally.

The word that comes to mind when I hear "indestructible"?

Optimistic.

FWIW, I've always gotten the best results at earning the Gold Ski Slope badges with Super Jump or the Zero-G pack. Speed Boost with them is a plus, but I've done it without the Boost as long as I used the Zero-G pack or SJ.

I'm curious to try the run this year with Afterburner and Fly. I've gotten silver with Fly before, and Afterburner's control might make it doable to earn gold.

I'm throwing my lot in with the contingent of players who think that the overall SSA has been pretty good and that revealing now that Statesman will die in chapter 5 ISN'T going to doom the entire arc to failure. Really, there are far too many ways things can go now, especially factoring States' "death" into things, for me to consider this a deal-breaking spoiler.

First, Hero 1. I've seen at least three posters in this thread bring up Hero 1, whom we have to defeat and return to Vanguard as part of becoming an incarnate. We have to create the Lost cure to become a Midnighter. It wouldn't be that big of a stretch for Vanguard, the Midnighters and Argot Bur'Wot to develop a cure for Hero 1 (heck, his blood WAS part of the cure...). That would let Hero 1 step up to an ongoing role in the CoHverse. I could see him getting a TF spot in Peregrine Island, with both a new tf for him and the option to run the old STF. I think he would also provide a fair match for Recluse, keeping the balance of power in check between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

So who will take over leadership of the Freedom Phalanx? Well, we've already heard several ideas, but the most likely choice would be Posi. It fits in-game, in canon, symbolically and from a meta- perspective. Hero 1 would also be a valid choice, as would Ms. Liberty. I could also see Sister Psyche stepping into the leadership role as well, BUT I think a move like that would be the end of her and Manticore as a couple. Numina would also be a good choice, because she seems to have one of the best grasps on the Big Picture, particularly on the mystic front. Dark Watcher and Lady Grey would both be capable, but they're not going to leave Vanguard.

As for Statesman being the symbolic face of CoH, why does that have to change? If he dies in a heroic, valiant way, shouldn't that make him and what he stood for even more resonant? I say leave his star as the blueside symbol. Our background art doesn't just have him anyway, it has Sis and Posi representing the heroes too.

There are an endless number of ways this story can go with Statesman's death... if Statesman stays dead. After all, the title of i22 is Death Incarnate, correct? We already know States is an incarnate of Zeus, and Recluse is an incarnate of the titan Tartarus. So what if Statesman sacrifices his life and the incarnate power of Zeus, only to gain the incarnate power of Death itself?

And then we get to Darren Wade, whose ultimate goal may just be the most frightening of all the supervillains (or superheroes).

>>SPOILER ALERT<<< (since I haven't seen this mentioned yet in this thread)









Maybe Statesman dies as part of a plan to find the person who stopped Rularuu from destroying our reality the first time: the Dream Doctor. I remain very suspicious that the Dream Doctor, Pontice Doub and Rularuu are all connected in a profound way that just isn't obvious yet. Both the Dream Doctor and Pontice Doub are credited as founding the Midnight Squad, which could be as simple as they were both co-founders. But it might be something more, too. We know the Dream Doctor trapped Rularuu by using the Dagger of Jocas to somehow create the Shadow Shard; we also learn that Black Swan used the Quills of Jocas (the Praetorian version of the dagger) to create her own Shadow Shard/world which she uses to mystically power herself since Cole essentially cut off the magic in Praetoria. The Quills work by slicing away part of a person's shadow, which is then funneled into Black Swan's shadow realm. It only makes sense the Dagger works the same way, and in fact the Doctor himself says he used the blade to "shave off a piece of myself" when he used it to trap Rularuu. Pontice Doub's memoirs show a mental deterioration throughout its pages, and he is credited with CREATING the Dagger of Jocas. It would make eerie sense that he had used it on himself, either to test its effectiveness or to defeat powerful mystical threats. Maybe that's why his mind began to deteriorate so severely, and why he referred to himself at the end as "a husk". Doub is also the one who found the remains of Tielekku beneath the Sahara Desert, as told in one of the tomes you have to read for the Midnight Archivist badge.

So if Wade's ultimate plan is to free Rularuu and bring him back to our dimension to destroy everything, maybe Statesman dies fighting Rularuu or an aspect of it. Maybe Statesman dies to bring the Dream Doctor back, or to gain even more power than he had as an incarnate of Zeus. Heck, maybe in i22 Lady Grey is going to reveal that she herself is the incarnate of Death! It does make sense, given her powerset and the implication that she might be more powerful than Statesman and Recluse.

Whatever comes of all this, it's got all of us battling emotions, thinking crazy ideas and speculating like mad, and THAT, my fellow heroes and villains, is what a good story does. I'm enjoying this arc, looking forward to last chapters of it, and excited about the possibility of future SSAs being just as dynamic.

My horse is out of the race, sadly, so I'll offer my congratulations to those still in the running. Best of luck to everyone, and may the outcome of your games be determined on the playing field and not the trainers' tables. Dechs, thanks for getting this whole thing together, because it was fun. Count me in again for next year!

We only had you for two years, yet you reached heights of storytelling many series will never taste.



Wherever you wind up, Laura, we wish you only the best. You're one of Marvel's most original and compelling characters, and maybe they'll give you your own book again soon. You certainly deserve it.

K