Leandro

Added myself. I expect it'll be the only marker down here.

The beauty of server emulators is that you can grab a copy of the code, edit out the bits you don't like, and host your own. So, if you want a Issue 4 server with no ED and PVP enabled in every zone, well, you can open your own and play with those who share your viewpoint.

But I bet a central community server (possibly hosted by the Titan Network) will be as close to the current COH implementation as possible.

Major, I only have one thing to say:

Star Wars Galaxies has a server emulator in beta stages with both an Stable and an Unstable server being played on.

There's absolutely nothing preventing COH from going the same path. If you don't want to play on a buggy and unstable server with very little content which will take years to refine into the current COH experience... well, more power to you. Alpha testing is not for everybody.

Me, I'll be helping in any way I can. And I hope you'll consider playing on a community server once it reaches a stable stage.

ATTENTION: an old version of the Story Bible (way old, from 2004) was posted by Golden Girl here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BypR...N2M/edit?pli=1

The file is CoHBible.pdf and it has such a crapload of information that I just finished reading it at 7:36am. I should sleep. I still want a most recent version of the story bible to be released, but this old version has so much information on the Rikti and Rularuu that my brain was starting to turn to jelly and come out of my ears. Or maybe I really, really need sleep.

Anyway, take a look at that old bible, and you might find your answer to a lot of questions (for example, what Statesman and BABs found in Boomtown that time).

7.16.6 The First Rikti Invasion
The first Rikti to invade Paragon City came not to Earth, but to the Shadow Shard, albeit, they came in
much smaller numbers. While preparing for their invasion, the Rikti spent a great deal of time surveying
our own dimension. During this time, they picked up the scanning signal sent out from the Shadow Shard.
Without that signal, the Rikti would never have noticed the tiny pocket universe since it was so small that
it was lost in the noise and chaos of the Aether. The Rikti’s own, much more advanced scans determined
that this shadow shard seemed to be attached to and created from the very dimension they planned to
invade.
Imagining that perhaps this was some kind of secret military installation or other target of military
interest, the Rikti sent several drones and scouting teams into Rularuu’s realm to ascertain if the place
was a threat. They quickly determined that, yes indeed, it could be a threat since the ruler possessed godlike
power levels. However, they also determined that the realm had no contact whatsoever with Earth.
They decided to withdraw from the realm without engaging the residents in battle and to keep a watchful
eye on it. If Rularuu’s realm became involved in the war at any stage then the Rikti would act against it,
but until then, they decided to leave it be.

Rularuu and his subjects lived through the Rikti War without ever realizing it was going on just nextdoor.
Indeed, it might have been centuries before the original Earth and the Shadow Shard came into
contact were it not for a captured Rikti database. During and after the war, any data recovered from the
Rikti about inter-dimensional travel immediately got transferred to the Portal Corp for analysis. The
analysts had tons of data to sift through after the war, and it was only recently that they finally decoded
and evaluated some information about the Rikti’s scouting of the Shadow Shard. All the Portal Corp
analysts could determine was that the Rikti had visited the realm shortly before the war and that it seemed
to be connected directly to Paragon City in some way. Obviously, this bore some investigation.
Unlike the Rikti, who were experts at covertly scouting other dimensions, the Portal Corp team that first
went through the barrier into the Shadow Shard did not take enough pains to secure their secrecy. They
had opened a portal into an area of the realm that still looked somewhat like the original Paragon City that
they had expected from a dimension so closely situated to our own. It didn’t take Rularuu long to discover
them, and when he did, he sprang into action. He immediately seized all but two of the ten-person
exploration team. Those last two had been left behind to guard the portal location where a group of
resistance fighters found and captured them. Thus, almost simultaneously, Rularuu and the resistance
both learned about the existence of Portal Corp, our world, and a possible means to escape.
Fortunately for Earth, the Portal Corp techs back home automatically shut down the portal when they
didn’t hear back from the exploration team. But something strange had happened. While the portal was
closed, the connection between the two realities was not entirely severed. Because the Shadow Shard was,
in reality, a part of our own dimension rather than a unique plane unto itself, it yearned to be reconnected
with its “parent.” The Portal Corp could thus not fully close the path between the two worlds. Not only
would it now be much easier for people to travel to and from the Portal Corp facility to the Shadow
Shard, but the possibility of random portals opening up between the two dimensions became very real.
Back in the Shadow Shard, Rularuu easily picked apart his captives through a combination of torture and
mental powers. Within a day he knew a great deal about the true Earth, the Rikti invasion, and Portal
Corp. He had of course immediately investigated the site where the explorers entered the Shadow Shard
and found traces of the connection to Earth. He immediately set his scientists to investigating the area
with all the equipment they had available. Meanwhile, the resistance fighters were also learning from
their “captives.” They told the explorers everything they knew about Rularuu and described what had
happened to them. The Portal Corp explorers agreed to help them escape back to Earth if they could get
back to the portal location and open a doorway home.
The two Earthlings and a group of about forty resistance fighters mounted a lightning raid against
Rularuu’s scientists. Rularuu had never had much need for soldiers, guards, or police of any kind. His
own power had always been more the sufficient to ensure law and order. The attackers quickly
overwhelmed the scientists guarding the location and the explorers sent their emergency retrieval signal.
Rularuu rushed to the scene in time to see several dozen of his subjects rushing through an interdimensional
gateway. He of course followed them. But Portal Corp was ready to repel any such unwanted
guests. Applying a combination of force fields and energy weapons, the quickly drove Rularuu back
through the portal before he even realized what was happening. Even so, his own defenses managed to
kill fifteen people in the Portal Corp facility and cause substantial damage. But the portal was closed once
again, and Rularuu was trapped. Not only was he trapped, he was injured – something that hadn’t
happened to him since he was human.
Rularuu was actually a little bit frightened. He could taste his victory, but he could also taste his death.
On the other side of the barrier he had been much, much weaker than he expected. So much of his power
was wrapped up in creating and maintaining the Shadow Shard reality, that Rularuu at home and Rularuu
anywhere else were two vastly different beings. As long as the Portal Corp continued to effectively guard
their portal facility, he didn’t think he could get back through there without an army. Which obviously
meant it was time to start building just that.

Portal Corp was all for just sealing off the Shadow Shard and never looking back, but unfortunately they
couldn’t do that. After extensive debriefings with the explorers and the new refugees, they began to get
some idea of what the Shadow Shard really was. Although none of the Midnight Squad who’d fought
Rularuu was still alive, they were able to got through the hero group’s archives and pull out some salient
details about Rularuu. They surmised what had happened, and eventually came to the conclusion that the
realm could not be ignored. At the urging of the refugee resistance fighters they also had to admit that
they owed it to Rularuu’s subjects to try and rescue them from his tyrannical reign. After all, they were
actually citizens of Paragon City too, in a weird way.
And so the battle lines were drawn and the time for a war between the Shadow Shard and Earth had come.
Rularuu was intent on fighting his way through the portal (which his scientists would soon figure out how
to open) and the Portal Corp and its allies needed to overthrow Rularuu and rescue the Shadow Shard’s
human population from slavery. A month after their first incursion into the Shadow Shard, The Portal
Corp started sending in strike teams to secure a foothold in the realm. What they found surprised them
tremendously – Rularuu’s newly minted army had taken the field. The resulting battle was tremendously
bloody and costly, but the humans eventually prevailed. They left the portal permanently open and used
as a conduit to place a force field around the beachhead. Thus far, Rularuu has been unable to break
through, although his power grows daily.
The Portal Corp knows that humanity is on a ticking clock. They must defeat Rularuu before he finds his
own way out of the Shadow Shard. Otherwise he will be free to once again start devouring whole
realities, and there’s little question as to where he will start first. And the next time, it probably won’t be
so easy to trick him.
7.16.7 The Army of Rularuu
Rularuu had never made an army before. Indeed, he’d scarcely ever made anything at all in his long
existence. He’d been so busy destroying things, he’d never had the time or inclination to build anything.
His thirty-five years in Shadow Shard have taught him a lot about creation and modification. He’s
fashioned a funhouse reality from his own imagination and altered his human subjects to make them into
better scientists. When it came time to quickly create an army to fight for the portal, he first turned to the
humans once again. But he also drew upon the fragmented but still extensive database of knowledge in
his head about the scores of universes and billions of inhabited worlds that he’d devoured in his time. He
culled through these memories for the deadliest warriors he could recall and used them as models for his
new soldiers. The result is a mixed bag of styles and influences from across time and space, but which
together have formed a decidedly dangerous and effective fighting force.
Rularuu wants to keep as many humans as possible still working at trying to make their own portals.
Since the battle with Earth began, Rularuu has been using captive soldiers and heroes as raw materials for
his army-building program in addition to his own subjects. Still conscious of the finite resources available
to him in the Shadow Shard, he uses everything at his disposal, from dead enemy soldiers to spent shell
casings and discarded cigarette butts. Any bit of matter or energy that the Earthlings bring into the
Shadow Shard is more fodder for his mills. Even the energy put out by the Portal Corp force fields has
proven a valuable new resource.

7.16.7.1 Field Marshals
The only soldiers not created from humans or spare bits of matter and energy are the few dozen generals
who oversee Rularuu’s growing army – the Field Marshals. Rularuu doesn’t really trust any of his
subjects. He’s smart enough to know that they’d all run given half a chance. Even though he heavily
indoctrinates his soldiers with mind control and memory wiping magic, he still won’t risk putting
command in one of their hands. Therefore, he had no choice but toe lead the armies himself. Of course, he
can’t be everywhere at once, but part of him can. The Field Marshals are just that – parts of Rularuu
himself that he has broken off from his core being and given lives of their own. Each of them is a fully
formed personality from one of the many selves that Rularuu has devoured over the ages. These
personnae are all still loyal to the greater Rularuu whole. They’ve been around long enough to come to
appreciate and enjoy the power that being Rularuu gives. Thus they’re totally loyal to the Ravager. They
do not, however, continue to share thoughts or memories. Each Field Marshal is a complete individual
once again, with a small (but significant) fraction of Rularuu’s power. Under other circumstances the
Ravager would never have made such a sacrifice, but in this instance he felt that he had no choice.
Each Field Marshal resembles Rularuu himself, although their looks vary slightly, as they’re all
individuals and tend to choose colors and accoutrements that best suit their personalities. However, the
overall look is consistent, since it serves as their badge of office and authority. Dressed in deep purple
robes, the Field Marshal stands twelve feet in height. There are no feet visible since, like the Ravager
himself they travel by floating, flying, or teleportation. The robes have intricate designs and patterns in
colors that vary depending on the Marshal’s tastes. Their hands are more claw like than human and are
constantly surrounded by a halo of blue or green flames. Their heads are demonic, almost dragon like
snouts with different arrangements of horns and spikes depending on the individual Field Marshal’s
tastes.
Field Marshals are powerful foes in their own right, but their true terror comes from their ability to lead
Rularuu’s armies. They each have several thousand soldiers assigned to them, which they can instantly
teleport to their side in times of need (effectively summoning more minions). They can also reshape
energy and matter like their master, allowing them to heal themselves and their soldiers during the course
of battle.

7.16.3 The Ravager Comes
Rularuu perfected his ritual, expanding its scope to include an entire world, and then an entire reality.
Once he completed it, he felt the perfect place to test his new scheme was on his own home world. As he
expected, the gods and priests divined his intent and sallied forth to try and halt their reality’s destruction.
Their combined power should have proven more than sufficient, but Rularuu was prepared for them. He
distracted the divine army with a host of false reflection – each made from a tiny fraction of his own
being. In effect, he was spinning off pieces of himself that he had devoured over the past five centuries.
As these lesser reflections delayed the gods (each was still a powerful magician in its own right), Rularuu
completed his ritual and consumed the entire reality in one fell swoop.
The infinite meal that a universe makes left Rularuu in a kind of intoxicated daze as he struggled to
absorb the knowledge, experience, and power of an entire reality. As it turned out, a lot of knowledge got
lost in the translation – individual thoughts and memories from the untold trillions he’d slain all got lost
in the shuffle, and distinct personalities merged into aggregate wholes. Nevertheless, the amount of data
and power was staggering. Short of God himself, Rularuu had become the most powerful being ever to
exist. And he was just getting started.

Even with all that knowledge and power, Rularuu still could not pinpoint the Origin Point. However, he
did have the ability to distinguish lesser realities from greater, more permanent ones. The varied
dimensions of the multi-verse shown like stars in the sky – and he chose to start devouring the brightest
ones first. Rularuu had truly come into the title Ravager as he cut a swath of destruction through the
Aether. And then, one day in 1968, our reality, and our world, caught his attention.
Earth’s dimension shone particularly bright in the multi-verse at that time. 1968 was a year that saw
sweeping change and discord across the globe. A new breed of hero was developing, society was falling
down and rebuilding itself every month, and the times, they were a changing. Normally even such
sweeping events on a single planet in a whole universe would not have attracted much attention, but there
were two factors in play. One, Rularuu had come to believe that the Origin Point was indeed on a planet
that was analogous to Earth in the multi-verse. Two, Rularuu’s other self on Earth was heavily involved
in the events taking place there.
Here, the other Rularuu was more popularly known as Gerard McNaughton, AKA Gerard the Green ,
famous comedian and stage magician by day, crime-fighting sorcerer by night. Gerard was also secretly a
member of the Midnight Squad, a group of mystic minded heroes in Paragon City who fought to keep the
world safe from supernatural threats. Gerard the Green had been using his notoriety and public fan base to
help promote some of the more controversial causes of the day, including protests against the Vietnam
War and fighting for African-American Civil Rights. He used his nature-based magical powers to great
effect in some of the best known pranks and protests of the era and was even featured on the cover of
Time magazine on one occasion.
For all his affable personality and pointed political humor, Gerard was actually a very powerful magician.
He had become aware of what Rularuu was doing by using his own existential link to the Ravager to
secretly monitor his crimes. Unfortunately, as Rularuu searched the Aether for bright worlds that might be
the Origin Point, he espied the trans-dimensional tether and followed it back to Earth. Thinking it as
likely a place as any for the Origin Point, he decided to devour it and his other self.
Gerard the Green immediately saw what was happening and prepared the Midnight Squad for the
Ravager’s arrival. Although he knew what Rularuu was capable of, he still felt that there must be some
way to stop him before he destroyed the Earth. Rularuu arrived in Paragon City in the form of a hurricane
force storm that covered the entire Eastern seaboard, driving people away from the coasts and into
shelters or their homes. He then materialized a physical avatar and proceeded to begin the three-day ritual
of consumption from the top of a tower located precisely at the storm’s eye. The Midnight Squad and the
city’s other heroes threw everything they had at Rularuu, but he either swatted them aside like flies or
shut them out with impenetrable force fields.
After two days of futile fighting, the Midnight Squad met to discuss one final plan. Gerard the Green had
developed a strategy, all be it a very dangerous one. He suggested using the power locked within an
ancient artifact known as the Dagger of Jocas to trick Rularuu into consuming the wrong world. The
dagger had the ability to actually sever reality, and the Midnight Squad kept it locked in an extradimensional
vault for safe keeping. None of the members felt comfortable using the artifact, but they
realized that they had no choice. With the dagger’s power and their own magic, they would
simultaneously cut away a tiny sliver from the reality of every person, animal, and thing in Paragon City
and then use their magic to weave them together into a shadow version of the great metropolis. If they did
this at the exact moment of Rularuu’s ritual, they could trick him into consuming the shadow shard
instead of the real thing. They theorized that this would cause the ritual to actually backfire, forcing
Rularuu to consume himself instead of Earth’s reality and hopefully destroying him forever.

The Midnight Squad made its preparations while Rularuu finished the last stages of his ritual. All across
the city residents felt a simultaneous tingling in the back of their necks as the Dagger of Jocas cut away a
part of their existence. The shadow city came together just as Rularuu’s incantations ceased and then –
POOF! – it was over. The storm immediately cleared up and Rularuu was gone from his tower. It wasn’t
quite what the Midnight Squad had expected, but they were definitely pleased with the results. Only
Gerard The Green had any reservations. He still had his connection to Rularuu and he knew that
somewhere, out there, the Ravager still existed.
7.16.4 The Shadow Shard
Gerard was right of course. Rularuu did live on, although he was none too happy about his current
situation. The nanosecond before his ritual fired off he realized what the Midnight Squad had done. He
sensed that the shadow Paragon City had been substituted for the real universe, but it was too late to stop
the ritual. Yet if the ritual went off as planned, he would devour nothingness and, as predicted, destroy
himself. In the short sliver of time, the several universes that comprised Rularuu’s mind made a quick
calculation and acted. Rularuu sacrificed a great portion of his own power to immediately infuse the
illusory city with true energy and form. Where the Midnight Squad had originally anticipated that the
false reality would exist for only a moment, Rularuu’s infusion gave the new universe true form. It
swirled up out of the Aether and formed a pocket universe, known as a shard, that was an exact replica of
the Paragon City that Gerald and company had copied using the Dagger of Jocas.
Rularuu realized almost immediately that he was trapped – and the fact that it had taken him more than
just a moment to fully comprehend his situation worried him more than anything. At his full power, such
realizations should have come instantaneously. He had truly become but a shadow of his former self. He
looked around this false city and found it full of very real people, including copies of the very Midnight
Squad that had tricked him. He unleashed his full fury on the assembled – and startled – heroes. They
fought back as best they could, but even in his weakened state Rularuu had more than enough power to
tear them each limb from limb, along with most of the other copied heroes in the false city.
Not satisfied with slaying just the shadows of those who had defeated him, Rularuu’s madness drove him
even further. He had brought his hurricane with him into the Shadow Shard and now he increased its
intensity to the point where it actually started to tear the reality of the place apart. Huge chunks of the city
went flying off into space or shattered into millions of pieces. Hundreds of thousands of shadow people
died – although to call them shadow people is to unfairly diminish them. Rularuu had given them all full
life – they had all the feelings, memories, and emotions of the originals from which the Midnight Squad
had copied them.
Rularuu’s rage lasted for almost a year as he systematically searched ever atom of the Shadow Shard in
his quest to find a way out. But he was literally trapped within himself. He’d given up so much power to
give the realm permanency that he no longer even had the ability to peer out into the Aether or into other
realms. He couldn’t even use his most basic ritual and link with another one of his selves (something he
dearly wanted to do to Gerald the Green). Finally, he resolved himself to his fate, or at least to the fact
that he was going to have to find a long term solution to his problem.
As the Ravager, Rularuu had not spent a whole lot of time building anything. He hadn’t even really had a
home or base of operations for centuries. Although he had the knowledge of several dozen universes
stored away in his brain, the Shadow Shard’s creation had scattered and jumbled his thoughts. It took him
a while to start to piece together a plan for how he would shape his own little personal kingdom. He made
an early, vain attempt to simply rebuild the city as it once was, but soon grew bored with the results. He
let his imagination run wild a little bit, and constructed his new home to more closely suit his own special
needs.

While Rularuu retains just a small fraction of his former power, by Earth standards he’s still amazingly
powerful. His preferred modes of transportation are flight and teleportation (his feet haven’t touched the
ground in years), so he saw no reason to retain the basically two-dimensional arrangement that had once
governed the city’s design. He also found that he could easily bend and reshape such basic elements as
the laws of physics. Thus he could create low or high gravity areas to suit his needs, pipes and rivers that
flowed up instead of down, and his own multi-hued, ever shifting sky in place of a sun and stars (which
didn’t exist in the Shadow Shard as real celestial bodies anyway).
Of course this radical new construction left the hundreds of thousands of surviving humans in a state of
shock and confusion – but nothing worse than what they’d already experienced when Rularuu fist tore the
shard apart. Ninety percent of Paragon City’s shadow residents had died during that time, and many of
those who did survive only did so because they either had super powers or were rescued by someone who
did. All the major heroes had died fighting Rularuu in those first few hours, but hundreds of lesser powers
had survived. They were smart enough to know that they couldn’t do anything against Rularuu’s god-like
puissance and so had hidden themselves from his wrath as best they could.
Rularuu had paid little attention to the survivors. He simply didn’t care what happened to them. Having
devoured whole realities, the fate of a few shadow humans who wouldn’t even exist were it not for his
sacrifice of power didn’t even register on his radar screen. But soon Rularuu began to experience two
emotions he had not felt for quite some time – loneliness and boredom. He’d had no need for
companionship or entertainment when he was busy sucking in other people’s knowledge and experience.
But now he needed some sort of distraction, some kind of companionship. Furthermore, he could use any
help he could get when it came to finding a way to escape his current predicament.
And so Rularuu sought out the survivors and brought them all together in a great, many-tiered public
plaza that he’d constructed out of different pieces of roadway and parking lots. Although he has keen,
supernatural senses and some clairvoyance, Rularuu is not omniscient within the shadow shard. A few
hundred managed to stay hidden away, but the vast majority – about a hundred thousand – gathered
together out of fear or curiosity to see what Rularuu had to say. The Ravager appeared before the
assembled masses as a hundred foot tall floating figure in purple and yellow robes. His head had long ago
left any pretensions to being human and instead appeared utterly demonic. His hands burned with green
fire and he stood atop a column of smoke and multi-hued lightning.
Rularuu spoke for many, many hours. Once he started talking it was like he couldn’t stop or, at the very
least, he didn’t want to stop. He quite frankly and openly told them about his past and how he came to be
a ravager of realities. Naturally he left out the embarrassing bits and focused on his great
accomplishments, his limitless knowledge, and his world shattering power. He didn’t mention how he’d
gotten himself into his current situation at all, but rather implied that he’d chosen to create the Shadow
Shard for his own mysterious purposes. Then he gave them all a choice – serve him or be broken down
into their constituent atoms and rebuilt into something useful. Everyone assembled agreed to do as he
commanded, although really, what else could they say? Of course, in their hearts, most of them pledged
allegiance out of fear, not devotion, and secretly hoped to one day find away back to their home (since of
course, none of them realized that they were copies of the originals and therefore already were home).
7.16.5 Reign of Rularuu
Rularuu the Ravager became Lord Rularuu in 1970. He set up his little kingdom with several important
goals in mind, some short term, and one long term. The overriding goal remained finding a way out of
this prison. He now knew for certain that he couldn’t do that on his own, so he had decided to try and find
some other way. He’d consumed realities where science had created portals for passing through from one
reality to another and he retained a basic knowledge of how such things functioned. He hoped to harness
the creative and intellectual abilities of his new subjects to the task of helping him rediscover the entire
technology – or a magical equivalent – to break through the dimension barrier.

In the meantime, the society as a whole needed to be organized and the use of resources tightly
controlled. Rularuu retained tremendous mystic power. He could transform matter at the atomic level
with a fair amount of effort or simply reshape and reform basic materials with ease. His control over
things like gravity and even time and space within his dimension gave him great flexibility in defining
reality. But one thing Rularuu could not escape was the fact that there was a very finite amount of matter
and energy within the Shadow Shard. With no access to even a sun for light and energy for plants to
photosynthesize, the realms resources needed to be very carefully conserved. Just making sure there’s
enough food and power for everyone (including his own needs) takes up much of his time. For more
information on the food chain in the Shadow Shard, see that document.
Rularuu has tinkered with nearly everything in the Shadow Shard to one degree or another, including the
denizens. He has tweaked the way their brains work, expanding their minds and mental capacity to help
him focus on finding a way out of this prison he accidentally created for himself. The vast majority of the
denizens were, for the past thirty years or so, entirely engaged in scientific or magical research of one sort
or another. Those who weren’t were busy working to support those who were. This vast commitment to
research is quite an accomplishment given that none of the individuals involved had any training in the
appropriate fields. Everything they’ve learned they either got from Rularuu’s own fragmentary memories
or from their own discoveries. It has been a slow going process and, even given the access to mutable
laws of physics and whatever equipment they need, not much progress has been made. Up until recently,
they’d managed only to create a device capable of sending out a signal into other, nearby dimensions and
scanning them for basic facts. This turned out to be an achievement whose consequences they couldn’t
have foreseen.
Of course not everyone went along with Rularuu’s game plan. Those initial few hundred survivors who
had hidden themselves from the Ravager remained hidden as best they could. They had the sympathetic
help of many of those who had pledged allegiance to the lord of the Shadow Shard. Many of the realms
remaining super powered beings were among the hidden, and they became the nucleus of a resistance
group. But their form of resistance was very passive. They feared any attempt to directly – or even
indirectly confront Rularuu. Instead they focused on stealing away resources from him and working on
their own efforts to escape the Shadow Shard and return home. Occasionally Rularuu would find one or
more of them and then his anger was terrible to behold. He’d publicly execute the rebels and lash out
against any loyalists who happened to be nearby. Resisting Rularuu proved a deadly vocation, but those
who did so felt they had no choice.

7.16 Rularuu the Ravager
7.16.1 Background: On Cosmology
Before one can understand the threat that Rularuu the Ravager poses to all existence, one must first
understand a bit about cosmology. As the Rikti Invasion so dramatically showed us, ours is not the only
dimension out there. In fact, it is just one of many untold millions of such places. Each of these
dimensions is like a reflection cast off from the original universe – a sort of Platonic Ideal where all
existence began billions of years ago when time began. Ever since that time, the Origin Point has been
casting reflections, each of which have in turn been casting their own reflections, until there is a
seemingly infinite supply of dimensions.
But in truth, the dimensions only seem infinite. In fact, many of the reflections have such slight
differences from one another that they collapse in upon each other and rejoin, or just fade away. While
every moment births or destroys a new dimension, most of existence never notices these subtle shifts.
What defines a dimension, and allows it to maintain its own stability in the multi-verse, is its uniqueness.
The more radically the universe differs from the Origin Point and from the other universes around it, the
more permanency it achieves. While there are potentially an infinite number of such places, in fact only a
few million such places are known to exist. While this is still a staggering number of universes when you
consider that each one is as seemingly limitless as out own, it is not in fact an infinite number.
This multitude of dimensions are all connected to one another through a plane of non-being called the
Aether. One way to picture the geography of the multi-verse is to imagine a lake with thousands of tiny
islands in it. Each island is in turn vibrating just enough to send out a constant flow of ripples from its
shores. The islands are of course the various permanent dimensions, while the ripples are their reflections
– existing for a short while before collapsing back into the Aether or merging with some other reality. In
the common parlance of inter-dimensional cosmologists, these are called Shards. By traveling underneath
the surface of the lake, one can reach any island without having to pass through any other dimensions.
The same is true with inter-dimensional travel – a quick jaunt through the Aether brings you to some
other reality.
Earth is relatively new to inter-dimensional travel, and so is just learning the lay of the land. The Portal
Corp has mapped close to a hundred other dimensions, only about a quarter of which are Permanent
Dimensions, while the others are mostly Shards. Travelers from other realities have been searching the
multi-verse for much longer, and amongst them one dimension has become particularly legendary – the
Origin Point. This is the world that started it all – the universe which has cast all of the other reflections in
existence. No one knows exactly where it is (or even if it really still exists), but many have hunted for it.
The theory goes that events that transpire at the Origin Point have consequences that ripple through the
entire multi-verse. If one were to seize control of the Origin Point, one could theoretically hold all of
existence hostage to his or her whims.
7.16.2 Birth of The Ravager
Ultimately, it was this legend – that whoever controlled the Origin could dominate all the realities – that
inspired Rularuu to begin his campaign of terror and reality destruction, but that is a development that
came later in his mortal life. Before he earned his title Ravager, Rularuu was just another priest in a
temple to The God of Gateways. He came from an alternate reality very different from our own Earth. On
his world, religion and magic had been systematized and spread to all humans very early in the history of
civilization (as opposed to on our world, where the secrets of magic were jealously guarded by a few
priests and sages). The whole world practiced magic in some small way or another.

It is not surprising then that the people of Rularuu’s world had discovered the existence of alternate
realities and had been opening up passages to them for centuries before he was born. With the help of
their gods, they had managed to explore and even colonize several dozen other Earths. Some they
conquered, others they peacefully assimilated into their own inter-dimensional community. The key to
this expansion was the God of Gateways, a deity who held sway over all manner of magical portals. It
was he who allowed Rularuu’s people to use inter-dimensional travel as a means to actually teleport
around on their own world as well as traveling to other realities.
Intra-dimensional teleportation is simple in theory, but very hard to master in practice. Instead of using
the Aether to travel to another dimension, you use it to skitter around the exterior of your own and then
come back in at a different point. Because travel through the Aether is nearly instantaneous, it’s very easy
to miss your mark and end up reappearing in space or on another planet rather than somewhere else
convenient on the surface of your own world. On Rularuu’s world, only the God of Gateways had the
computational power and inclination in his divine being to make the appropriate calculations. Thus he
was a very powerful and important deity, especially once teleportation became the main method of travel
between places and dimensions.
As one of the god’s priests, Rularuu acted as a combination gatekeeper and travel agent. Using the
appropriate prayers and incantations, he would arrange for supplicants (i.e. customers) to reach their final
destinations. Although this duty required significant training and expertise, it was far from the exciting
life that Rularuu wanted for himself. He wanted to explore the multi-verse and unlock its secrets. But
exploring new realities was a dangerous and honorable duty, reserved for only the most experienced and
proven of the God of Gateways’ priests.
On his thirtieth birthday, Rularuu came to the realization that he still had another fifteen years of service
as a “travel agent” to do before he would even get a chance to join the exploration cadre within the church
– and even then his admittance into their elite ranks was by no means assured. The thought of waiting that
long was simply beyond toleration for the ambitious young man. And so he did the unthinkable – he
began to search for a way to travel to new dimensions on his own without the god’s help. He transferred
from his home universe to a frontier church on one of the colony worlds where his experiments would
attract less attention. There he began to develop a series of mystical rituals that would hopefully allow
him complete freedom to travel as he pleased across the multi-verse.
It took close to a decade, but Rularuu finally made the breakthrough he’d been striving so hard for,
although it wasn’t exactly what he had expected. Normally, when a gateway between two realities comes
into being, it connects the origin universe to a similar, or linked, point in the other universe. For example,
traveling to another Earth much like our own, you would arrive in a very similar location on that other
world. Arriving somewhere else requires the kind of calculations only a god or super computer are
capable of (which is what the Portal Corp and Rikti do). Rularuu didn’t have that kind of power at his
disposal. But he found another shortcut – he could link himself to himself – or at least to the soul in
another dimension who most closely approximated his own being. He could then use that link to transfer
himself into another universe, appearing at the exact location of his other “self.”
The only down side to this was if you happened to be on the other end of Rularuu’s linkage, you got
destroyed in the process. In short, to travel to another dimension, Rularuu had to destroy one of his other
selves. He had no idea that this is what would happen when he first tried the spell, but once he did, he
never looked back. In the process of destroying his first alternate self he actually consumed the other
being, and in the process took in all of his knowledge, memories, and life force. He’d never felt better in
his entire life – plus he instantly had all the knowledge he needed to survive in the strange new dimension
he’d teleported himself in to.

Of course, the big problem was, Rularuu had no way of returning to his home dimension. In fact, he had
very little control over where he was going on any given linkage. Unlike the God of Gateways or Portal
Corp, Rularuu had no sensors or divine insight that would allow him to ascertain his destination before he
traveled there. Thus is was impossible for him to effectively direct his travels. And even if he could find
his home dimension, he couldn’t go there because there was not “him” there to link with – he was
traveling the multi-verse. Ultimately though, the inability to return home didn’t bother Rularuu very
much. He’d spent his whole life trying to escape from home, and now he had the freedom he’d so
fervently hoped and worked for.
Rularuu tore across the multi-verse for several centuries. He found that each self that he consumed
revivified him – in effect giving him eternal youth as long as he still had worlds to visit. Most of his other
selves were very much like him – incredibly intelligent, curious about how the universe worked, and
ambitious. Thus Rularuu managed to absorb the combined knowledge of hundreds of geniuses, scientists,
wizards, writers, artists, and politicians in his travels. With their accumulated knowledge, combined with
the data he acquired during his own explorations of the realities he visited, Rularuu came to have a fuller
understanding of the multi-verse and its underlying principals than anyone else in all of existence –
including beings like the God of Gateways in his home dimension.
Eventually Rularuu’s ever expanding knowledge base overcame those original deficiencies in his mode of
travel. His multi-faceted mind became capable of the awareness and computational power necessary to
discern pathways through the Aether to specific dimensions. Likewise, he mastered the magic forces
necessary to directly open a link to other realities, obviating the need for him to link with other selves and
destroy them in order to travel. He could now slip from one reality to another with ease. But of course,
that didn’t stop him from continuing to fold his other selves into the greater-than-human beings known as
Rularuu. He’d become addicted to the power, the knowledge, and of course the fountain of youth aspect.
He kept right on devouring his reflections, becoming more powerful with each new acquisition.
And then, after close to five hundred years of such traveling, Rularuu decided to return to his home
dimension for a little visit. His own Earth had not changed very much during his absence. The empire had
expanded to include a few more dimensions, and the trade federation now spanned close to a hundred
realities. In all his travels, this was one of the few multi-dimensional political entities that Rularuu had
ever seen, so he decided to sit and wait a while. Rather than taking the time to learn all the ins and outs of
this society, he chose to visit a few of the member dimensions and find his selves there. Their knowledge
and life force would see him through for quite a while.
But Rularuu found something unexpected. He had become quite an anomaly in the multi-verse. He was a
being composed of many parts, all joined into one cross-dimensional entity. Such a thing was, if not
unique, then extremely rare. As a result, Rularuu himself had begun to cast reflections through the reality
web. His alternate selves were becoming more powerful and more like him. Some had even discovered
his secret and were busy devouring other selves on their own. Thus, when Rularuu sought out to link with
one of his counterpoints to begin the devouring process, he found that his other self had set up magical
wards that blocked the linkage (which Rularuu immediately recognized since he himself had such wards
protecting him). Finding a self with such power made Rularuu all the hungrier to devour him.

Using less invasive means of interdimensional travel, Rularuu shifted to the other’s world, and confronted
the mage. The fight lasted but a few seconds, since for all his power, the other self was no match for
Rularuu. What took longer was figuring out a way to consume the other’s soul and memories without
using a dimension spanning link. Rularuu held the self imprisoned for several years while he worked on a
solution to the puzzle, and eventually he devised a magic ritual that should have accomplished the same
result. It worked, but it worked far, far better than Rularuu had originally planned. He had spent a lot of
timing formulating the scope of the spell in an effort to ensure that he would get everything from his
prisoner that he would have gotten if he’d devoured him through his normal process. His ritual defined
one of the parameters as “the full contents of his life and experience.” When he cast the spell, Rularuu
consumed not only the other self, but everything and everyone that the other self had ever come into
contact with. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, animals, and even buildings and streets
and forests were torn from reality and condensed down into some form of pure energy and knowledge
that Rularuu could absorb.
This cataclysmic event was disastrous to the reality that he’d torn asunder. The planet began to tear itself
apart now that tremendous sections of it had just vanished. Dazed by the sudden influx of extraordinary
power and new sensations, Rularuu only just had the wherewithal to shift realities before the
disintegrating world caught him up in its death throes. Safely ensconced in a remote location in his home
universe, Rularuu spent some time just absorbing all the new knowledge. He had never really dreamed
that he could actually consume a world, or even just a piece of one. The experience was the most
intoxicating thing he’d ever felt. He knew that his days of taking in just one person at a time were now
behind him. Whole realities would be his fodder.
But his other self had also given him an idea, once his memories had been integrated into Rularuu’s own.
The other had learned what Rularuu had been doing and thus protected himself. But the other new that he
would never be able to match Rularuu’s power unless he found some new way to augment his own. That
was when he conceived of his own brilliant plan. He would find the semi-mythical Origin Point – the
reality from which all other universes were first reflected. If he could find and control that realm, he
would have the power to influence the entire multi-verse and could, in effect, edit Rularuu out of it. Of
course finding a single needle in an infinite haystack was a tall order, but the other saw it as his only
hope. Now the idea belonged to Rularuu and he had a new twist to add to the plan. Sure controlling the
Origin Point would give one tremendous power. But what if one consumed the Origin? Rularuu planned
to do just that – find the Origin reality and devour it. Then he would embody the Origin and would thus
every reality in existence would become a reflection of him.

I love you.

Edit: holy crap, the original intended ending of the Hess TF:

o This will be a slug fest for the players who will have to wade through villains and try to
take out the boss. We will use the Arch villain escape scripting code that Mark K. has
developed for this mission scenario.
o If the players take down the Boss before he reaches the head, they win
o If the boss makes it to the hatch before the players take him down, the hatch will close
and a count down will start- the head of the robot now becomes a villain, which the
players can attack. Should they destroy the head before the timer runs out (Tunable timer,
so we can test and adjust for gameplay balance) the hatch will open and the head model
will get swapped out with a destroyed version. The Villain will come out and fight the
Heroes.
o If the players do not meet any of the above goals, and the timer runs out, the head, or
possibly the entire robot will take off through the roof and the mission will be failed.
o Players are sent to an instanced Destroyed city zone. This could be anyplace Paragon
city; the Giant Robot is marching through the ruins. This is a result of our heroes not
being able to stop the robot in time. Other Mek men are climbing through the rubble and
in the streets while pedestrians run away in terror!
o Players must fight and destroy the giant robot to complete the mission. This mission
completion will give different cool stuff from winning while on the island.

None.

Show me an MMO where I can make a character that looks like anything I want without having to farm for cool-looking loot for weeks.

Where I can play as a plumber hitting things with a pipe while holding a manhole cover OR as a sorcerer who breathes fire OR as a space station captain shooting a ray gun, and yet they all FIT regardless of what crazy origin.

Where if I think "I wish there was a mission where I did this cool thing I thought of" and all I have to do is go to a mission creator terminal and make it.

Where I can spend an afternoon fighting aliens on top of their crashed saucer, the next preventing a city from sinking into the spirit world, and the following one fighting ancient romans.

Where I can lose hours building and decorating a base for my characters to hang out while planning what to do next.

Where teaming is not required, but it's so easy that you do it anyway, because you don't have to coordinate sharing missions or checking that everybody is at the same "step" in a quest chain.

Show me that, then maybe I'll consider it.

*hugs Santorican*

There's no impending collapse. The world is not ending. My characters will go to sleep on November 30th just like they do every day after making the world a better place. They saved the world, and for once, it stayed saved. Strangely, there will be no new crimes, no supervillains, no world ending threat to call them to action for a while. They get to hang out in their favorite spots of the city in their civilian identities, taking a well deserved break.

And maybe, in a few months or a few years, they'll be called to action again. Either by Paragon City, running in an alternate universe thanks to the efforts of server emulator programmers, or in a completely new setting, when someone figures out what made COH great and decides to make something just like it, but different enough to avoid the ultimate evil in the world: lawyers.

It's not the end of the world. It's just a vacation.

Doctor Leo. He started, like all my characters, with no backstory, but he quickly got a backstory of his own through other players. I was level 20 or so and I get an invite to help people in The Hollows. Low level, but I shrug and go help anyway. Later, I was told that one of the people in that team had told the others when they were struggling, "oh, I know just the guy... he's high level, but he'll help ANYONE". One of the players in that Hollows team went on to play with me for years, and she'd always wear the badge "The Doctor's Ally" while doing so. I didn't officially give my character a backstory, ever, but through other players, he became this guy who's always up for helping people and saving the world; the ultimate good guy. It was such an idealistic situation to be, which it made me, in real life, always try to be like Doctor Leo. I want to be the guy who'll help anyone.

I'd push for the story bible to be released. It's the ultimate treasure for anyone who's interested in the lore, and it would give us fodder to continue the legacy for years, via COH videos (they can still be done with demoediting even without a functioning client), fan comics, and who knows what else.

The Q&A section is sadly going to focus too much on newer developments like Praetoria, Incarnates and the Coming Storm (because that's what immediately comes to mind about the future of COH), but the story bible will have plenty of information about Coralax, Rularuu, the Moon Base and more from ALL over the game, not just what's fresh in people's minds.

Story bible. That's the holy grail for COH's lore.

I know that for most people, Fusionette is The Wesley. For me, it's the one character I love the most in City of Heroes.

I started playing in Issue 4, and I really liked the old style missions we had back then; every story arc was a STORY ARC, long, detailed, with missions that maybe seemed like filler but contained a lot of lore bits. Newer missions don't hold my attention as much because they go straight to the point, to avoid boring teams who just want to steamroll through everything. The original core content, I always found to take its time to tell a story, and I really liked it.

But there was a problem: all the NPC characters I interacted with either needed my help (contacts), were already so established and powerful that I felt more like a lackey (trainers, signature TFs) or they were part of the mission and didn't interact with me much, just giving me a clue and disappearing forever.

Enter Fusionette. She's not passively looking for help, even when she gets way over her head for being an impulsive noob. She's not established or powerful. And she sticks around and comes back during the story arc. She interacts with me, and I see her story unfold, while she goes through with her efforts to redeem Faultline, even though she doesn't know that's what's she's doing.

She was the first COH NPC hero that actually felt _living_. She complained about being captured, she got mad at herself for biting more than she could chew, she trained at Ms. Liberty. She was one more of the team. I was rooting for her to improve and succeed every step of the way.

Faultline remains my favorite zone to this day because of that. And then, the devs did one better: when Issue 10 launched, I got to see Fusionette (and Faultline!) continue their stories. It was like playing again with a buddy who'd left the game for a few months. In the last mission of the Rikti War Zone story arc, you're not supposed to meet up with Faultline and Fusionette -- but they're in the mission anyway, and when you find her, she says: "Don't look at me like that! We had to be in this one!" And yes, they had to be. Fusionette is the character that comes the closest to breaking the fourth wall (she "mistells" to Faultline in one mission!) and she trusted you ("Over there is my violent relative Doctor Leo, who is going to beat your creep *** to a pulp if you don't stop staring at my chest"). She was more interesting that the entirety of the Freedom Phalanx combined, at that point in time.

Issue 10 was an excellent update all around, but the fact that Fusionette and Faultline made a return appearance is what makes it my favorite issue of all time. Never mind engine advances, whole new zones, new systems, and power customization. Issue 10 was tied tightly to the lore (Second Rikti Invasion, it doesn't get more tied to the origin of COH than that) and it had Fusionette in it. Best issue ever.

After Fusionette, other NPCs started to become more human too, stopped being passive bystanders, and got better stories. But she was the first, and she's the best. She might not be a "signature" hero, and no developer ever took her name in the forums, but to me, whenever I think City of Heroes, I'll think Fusionette -- the impulsive noob little Blaster who learned to fly, and grew into a great heroine just in time to stop the Rikti when the world needed her most.

Because that sentence describes most of us. We were all noobs once. We were all fascinated with flying around and knocking mobs all over the place, even if it infurated people about scattering aggro. And we learned, we got better, and we saved the world. And so did she.

I'll miss you, 'Nette. May you always have clear skies to fly into, and may the donut shop in Faultline never close.