Shadowe

If anybody manages to pick this up before 7.00 I know for a fact that I *do* have the Kronos titan in 2 missions time.

Send me a tell in game if you're up for it! /t Shadowe

Richard rose from his bed, still feeling dizzy from the exertions of the night before. A wave of nausea crashed over him and he collapsed to one knee.

Everyone had been solicitous of his health the previous night, after his collapse following the destruction of another Shadowmaker device on Striga Isle. It had been rather pleasant, all in all, especially the knowledge that they had saved literally hundreds of tortured victims, but Richard knew something was wrong.

His continuous passive absorption of energy was useful at times, but now it looked as though he might have a serious problem.

He was dying.

The vast quantities of other-worldly energies that had flickered throughout the Shadowmaker complex had infected him like a poison, leaving him weak and almost helpless.

Another wave of sickness struck, and he lost control for a moment, but a moment was enough. A huge burst of energy exploded from him, splintering every piece of furniture in the room.

Barely able to look around, Richard cursed quietly to himself. Crawling across the floor, he scrabbled amongst the ruins of his bedside cabinet for his wristwatch. After a frantic moment of searching, he found it. The glass had been cracked, but it otherwise seemed to still be working. Strapping it to his wrist, he twisted the dial, and an instant later his battle-suit wrapped around him. With a whine of servo-motors he stood.

"Computer. Analysis. Full bio-scan. Target... Me."

"Scan in progress." The soft voice of his computer was almost painful in Richard's ears, and a throbbing headache threatened to cloud his vision. After what seemed like hours, but in fact was only about a minute, the computer began its report.

"Physical infrastructure: Normal. Skin Temperature: Normal. Body Temperature: 5600 Kelvin + 100 Kelvin - within acceptable variations. Internal Structure: Analysis inconclusive - unknown radiation type interfering with scan."

Richard snorted. That was about as good as he could expect.

As far as he could tell he had two - no, three - choices. One: Do nothing and die in short order. Two: Try and absorb enough energy to 'water down' the deadly energy inside him. Three: Find the dimension that the energy came from, go there and hope that some form of osmosis would drain the energy from his body.

Not good choices.

"Oh, well," he muttered to himself. "Got a while before anything happens to me, so I'd better put on a brave face."

At that moment the door flew open and Samantha strode in, a huge grin on her face.

"Hey, there, Dicky-boy. How... Bloody hell, have you been redecorating?"

Aarggh. Scream. Conflicting priorities. Hami-raid vs. Ship sinking... Hami-raid will win (sorry, peeps - never been on one, and I want to). And on Wednesday Shadowmaker Device vs. PnP RPG where I GM. Talk about cruel. I might have to call this week off... again...

What Ebola said.

p.s. ignore my sig - Shadowe is 49, rapidly closing on 50.

Having got myself to 49 on Double XP weekend (and only 2 bars away from 50), you can rest assured that I'll be there! My first Hami raid!

What Ebola said.

Also, the costume guide page seems to be down atm.

Any chance a refresher of it can be posted for those of us who realised we'd be able to join in only yesterday?

Thanks in advance.

p.s. ignore my sig - Shadowe is 49, rapidly closing on 50.
p.p.s. See next page - thanks HH. I finally got it to load after I had somehow managed to double post this, and only one of them edited properly. Gaagh. Bloody office internet. Oh, and Tankers are Black. I can't remember the other one, either...

[Edited for some reason or another...]

Global Name : @Shadowe
Server : Union
City of Heroes/City of Villains for RP :
Shadowe(CoH)
Luminescence (CoH)
Psychonova (CoV)
Types of RP : Casual, In missions, Supergroup and character based.
Can be contacted : In-game mail, Forum PM's
Times on : Pretty much every evening except Wednesdays, and weekends
Time zone : British Standard Time.

(Just realised I'm kinda hijacking this thread...)

Happy endings? Meh. You don't deserve happy.

Anyway... I would like to apologise to everyone that got sick and tired of Richard's innuendoes on Monday night (last time I was on) - I was in a really wierd mood that night. Thankfully it got significantly mitigated by the arrival of Alrua (yeah, thanks Akk), who, as usual, got Dicky-boy all tongue-tied. Though he did come out of it all with a date. Now all I've got to worry about is how that goes at the weekend...

Hmm, yeah. Good point. "Naughty Ves! Bad boy!" /em smack ...

And Veskit went insane again... and they all lived happily ever after.

Well, I would first like to say that I'm happy to see Veskit's post. That cheers me up no end.

Secondly, sorry for not being around for the last couple of days - Tuesday, I just needed to take a night off (and Goldfinger was on telly...) and Wednesday was my usual PnP RP session... Tonight I'll be there for more hilarity, as soon as I get my new computer up and running...

Well, Shadowe is based on a character I designed for a PnP RP superhero campaign that never took off - about 8 years ago. So he's been hovering in my mind as a character for that long, and all I did was bring him in to CoH.

I've never been very good at making up personalities on the spot, and as FFM says, it's a great idea to include at least a little of yourself in the character.

One thought that springs to mind is to think "How would I react if I found out I'd suddenly got super-powers?" Try and imagine what you would do, and how you would react, if you suddenly had access to your characters powers and abilities. Factor in the fact that it's not particularly unusual to have super-powers in the world of CoH, and then run with it. See what happens. Your personality will change over time, but everyone's does anyway.

Hi! Thanks for your interest in RP. Everything everyone's already said is spot on.

I'd like to relate a little tale from my own RP history...

One day, I thought I'd go along to GG and see what was going on. I turned up, stood around for ages saying next to nothing, apparently being totally ignored, so I left. A total wash out. I had a bit of a /tell conversation with someone while I was there, and picked up a few hints, but that was about it. I resolved to never return. I was really disappointed, and quite upset.

My resolve lasted about a month. I thought "What the heck, may as well give it another try..." turned up, managed to insinuate myself into a conversation, and haven't looked back.

It does seem a bit cliquish at GGs, I know this at least as well as anyone else, but actually we're all just trying hard to act in character.

My best recommendation is to turn up and speak to Red Commissar - he's aquainted with practically everyone there, and is very approachable, and there pretty much every night.

The second best option is to roll up an adult female toon and wait for The Telepath (known as Alfred Bester in character) to offer you chocolate. It will happen.

Erm, Doc? I just read your last post... I would like to point out that Shadowe is in no way plotting to kidnap anyone. At all. He's running a space/time kidnapping correlation map (ignoring any where the kidnapee is recovered outside the scope of this plot).

Sheesh - everyone thinks Shad's a bad guy! Maybe I'll just go back to the old Dark Shadowe cossie...

Well, I'm kind of new to this "RPing in computer games" thing. Luckily, I've had some nice people show me the way (thanks Luke!) - helped by my 20 years of PnP RPG experience (though I almost exclusively GM these days, so going back to being a player is quite interesting).

Shadowe (only has an "e" on the end because the name without is already taken, damnit) is based on a character I had planned for a Super-Hero PnP RPG a good 8 years ago.

He's pretty tough physically, though you wouldn't know it to look at him, and his powers are rather good (the ability to distinguish and analyse energy and particle emissions at a quantum level (as well as create them) is kind of cool, but has limited use), and he's very clever, rather rich and doesn't want for much, but he has his flaws. Boy, does he have them. One of them hasn't come up too much, for which I'm rather grateful. He likes attractive women. A lot. He's an incorrigible flirt. But he's also British (of the "stiff-upper-lip" variety) so he's rather reserved at the same time. This means that he will go out of his way to talk to attractive women, but they might not notice that he's trying to flirt with them (poorly). He's massively over-protective of his little sister (though that was mitigated IC with some help from Alfred recently). And he has a temper. A very bad one. And sometimes it shows.

I'm trying to play him like the level 43 Blaster he is in game - a powerful hero who knows his own strengths, is very confident of his own abilities, but who sometimes lets things get the better of him. I'm particularly looking forward to tonight's RP mish from the Rebirth plotline (if you don't know about it, where have you been?) as this will give me more opportunity to play out the sides of his character that don't come across very well in the social setting of GG.

I once played a "god-like" character in a PnP RPG. He's my favourite character ever. I'm never going to let him go, he will always have a place in my memories of RPing - but he got boring after a while, and I had to reduce his power to make him playable again.

Give me a flawed personality any day. Second to that is flawed abilities (one of Shadowes problems is that he can't always control his energy emmissions, which means that I hit Nova randomly every now and then - though I've been avoiding doing so at GG because I can't stand power-spamming - this is particulary dangerous in RP'd mish's, as you can probably imagine).

I'm looking to more rigorously define the powers Shadowe has that aren't represented by the powers in game (like the energy detection thing) to tighten up my knowledge of how he would react in certain situations.

Damn, this is a lot longer than I thought, and became all about my character. Sorry about that.

As a good friend of mine would say...

"...Anyway!.."

Flawed: Yes
Uber: No

Thanks

Richard collapsed onto his bed. Today had been rather tiring for him. First he had spoken to the people in Applied Technologies and given them a copy of the Shadowmaker file, which they were diligently trying to crack in to. Then he had donned his Battle-suit and flown to Galaxy City in preparation for the assault against the Council on Striga Isle. Unfortunately, only Richard and Alfred had arrived for the meeting, so Alfred had decided that it was not worth attempting such a dangerous task with only two heroes. Having so much free time on his hands had meant that Richard was able to inflict some serious harm on Crey Technologies who were treating the Rikti Crash Site like their own private dumping ground. They wouldn't be doing that again in a hurry.

After that it was time for the nightly meeting at Galaxy Girl, and Richard smiled in memory. Alfred's joke had been rather funny, now that he came to think on it. All he had meant was that his experiment into Quantum Singularity power sources hadn't worked, and he's only tried it once.

What he'd said was "My one attempt to date hadn't worked."

Alfred's quip "You really don't have much luck with women, do you?" had passed him by initially, though he had registered the laughter in the background.

I'll get him for that, he thought.

His discussion with Jakob had been interesting, though he felt certain that there was something Jakob hadn't told him. He really disliked having a conversation when he only knew half of the background to it.

Thoughts of that conversation moved his mind into an odd sort of over-drive. Moments later he was sitting up in bed.

"Computer. Holo-display. Load datafile Project Exodus. Addendum. Load datafile Birth of Darkness. Addendum. Load datafile. Brown-Kuschenka Instability. Addendum. Run simulation 1420-Sigma compiling Project Exodus with Brown-Kuschenka Instabiltiy. Display results. Play video Birth of Darkness simultaneously. Display both at 1/60th retardation. Execute."

Two identical images appeared in the air before his bed. They slowly began to evolve.Identically. After four minutes and twenty-one seconds the simulation and video ended. Identically. Richard cursed. So simple, and yet he had missed it. The Brown-Kuschenka Instability had been highly theoretical when he began his work, so he hadn't thought it necessary to include the data in his models.

"Computer. Remove display Birth of Darkness. Apply efficiency enhancements to Dyson-shell siphon in increments of 0.0001%. Freeze display while calculations processed. Stop process if result ceases to qualify as 'catastrophic'. At stop, display result at 1/60th retardation."

*****

Samantha had just drifted into a deep sleep, when a loud CRASH shocked her awake once more.

A mental scream ripped through the house as her surprise made her momentarily lose her control.

"Lights!" She snapped.

As the ceiling lamp switched on, she saw Richard standing in her doorway, clutching his head.

Instantly she put up her mental blocks, and the 'sound' that had been tearing through the house ceased abruptly.

Richard shook his head to clear it, grinned, bounded across the room and swept his sister into the air, spinning her around.

"It works!" he shouted. "My God, Sam, it works!" His laughter was infectious.

Through her chuckles, Samantha managed to inquire what it was that worked.

Embarrassed, Richard gently set Sam on the floor.

Excitedly, he babbled an explanation to her, how if he hadn't spoken to Jakob the night before he never would have returned to the project, and never discovered how to improve on his design.

Samantha was suitably pleased for her brother, but was still worried. If something went wrong with one of his devices it would mean death on a large scale... or more people with strange powers on the streets of Paragon City.

Richard was extremely thrilled about the power/mass ratio of the device, and enthused over a new generation of power stations, but Sam couldn't but think about what might happen if some villain got his hands on Richard's design...

As he left the hospital in Independence Port, Richard cursed silently. Charles had left already, heading back to 'the basement' with copies of the data downloaded from the Council base's computer system.

He cursed for a few reasons. Notably, because Kata had been injured. Richard and Charles were both powerful heroes and should have been able to make sure none of their companions was injured - that Kata had required medical treatment made Richard angry at himself for not keeping a closer eye on his friends.

He also cursed because something about the 'Shadowmaker' process had tickled his senses. It was all well and good to have the ability to sense sources of energy and particle flows at a subatomic level, but completely useless if you can't identify the type of energy involved. About the closest he could come to describing it was that those poor people were pumped full of 'real' energy, and they became more 'real' and then the energy was siphoned from them - plus a bit extra. Even the memory was enough to make bile rise in his throat. Everyone else had thought his reaction was because of the way the victims had been treated, but he knew better.

He was also angry with Kata. He shouldn't be, but he was. Hacking into a computer system held by Requiem, searching for data, and then part way through deleting every single file that referenced Requiem was, in Richard's opinion, rather silly. His mind actually replaced the word silly with a few choice epithets.

He hadn't managed to download the duty logs. He hadn't managed to find anything referencing Riptear devices.

Kata should have a copy of all the files she deleted, though she had restricted her search in some way... There was bound to be something missing.

At least he had the Shadowmaker file. Now all he needed was an eight year old child to break through the encryption.

((IC post regarding information passed to me for Plot Element "Through the Glass Darkly"))

Richard stood casually in one corner of the large underground room, and adjusted the telescopic zoom function on his goggles. The two Council goons stood to attention as their captain paced back and forth before them. His purloined uniform had enabled him to get deeper into the council base than he had ever hoped. Coupled with his newfound skill at bending light around his body, he could become effectively invisible, and had managed to sneak even further his stolen passcards would normally have allowed.

The captain passed something to one of the troopers that Richard couldn't make out.

Peeling a glove forward, he adjusted the dial on his wristwatch, turning up the gain on his audio enhancers.

"...see that this is distributed to all troops urgently. We must serve our master." The soldiers saluted and the captain returned their salutes. As they lowered their arms, Richard clearly heard all three mutter "For Requiem."

Bingo. Richard moved purposefully along the coridoor, imitating the stiff strides of a military officer.

As soon as he got to within arms reach of one of the soldiers, he spun, launching a devastating punch at the closest man.

Grinning behind his face mask, Richard put a growl in his voice and hissed, "Nosferatu says hi."

The trooper Richard had not hit grabbed his radio, and began screaming into it that they were under attack by an infiltrator sent by Nosferatu. Richard gave him just enough time to get that out before unleashing a devastating burst of energy at the man, sending him flying backwards to crash into the wall.

The other soldier had recovered from the initial blow, and began to unshoulder his rifle.

"Bugger that for a game of soldiers," Richard mumbled and unleashed a ripple of energy from his body. The soldier, just bringing his gun up to aim, flew backwards, barely injured, but unable to keep his balance.

A concussive blast followed an instant later, exploding between the two, and finally they slipped into unconsciousness.

Moving quickly, Richard rifled through their pockets until he found the object that had been passed to them by the captain.

The sound of approaching boots - lots of them - made Richard decide that discretion was the better part of valour. Bending light, he dissappeared from view, and began to make his way out of the building.

((To be continued...))

The sports car screeched through the barely opened gates at high speed, hurling gravel across the lawns. The gardener, who had spent all morning cutting the grass winced as control slipped for an instant, and tyre tore a gouge through the turf.

"Mr Richard's in a state, again..." He muttered to himself, before turning back to the bedding plants he was carefully pruning.

Richard Huntington III pulled his Aston Martin to halt in front of the doors to his house, and leapt from the car at a run, the engine still idling.

One wave of a hand sent a flicker of energy at the doors, which opened with a satisfying crash. Richard's butler took one look at his face, and decided that silverware needed a good clean, ducking down a side passage to avoid his employer.

Richard marched on, unseeing.

He stormed into his office, reached under the desk and punched the concealed button. The door slowly slid open onto the spiral staircase that led into the basement.

He leapt onto the stairs, using a cushion of energy to act like a surfboard, round and round and round, until he slid into the concealed basement.

The energy beneath his feet dissipated with a thought.

"Computer!" He snapped. Hardly waiting for the trilling beep that signaled the computer was wating for a command, he went on.

"Analysis package 482. Run sigma-2 enhancement. Open door... one."

Ignoring the scrolling data on the monitors, Richard turned to a doorway that swung open in a disused corner of the room. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, and moved toward it.

*****

Minutes later, a dark clothed figure stood in the basement. Black on black, a faint halo of energy could barely be seen around it.

"Computer. Concurrent to existing orders, open gate two."

The computer considered the order for a microsecond.

"Warning. Costume designated 'Dark Shadowe' removed. Police action probable. Police files still hold 'deadly force' response. Gate two secure."

A gasp from behind him made Richard whirl around. Sam stood there, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open in shock.

"Y...You...Richard? Is that you?"

Richard grunted assented and gave a jerky nod.

"You're that crazy guy the police were after last year? The vigilante?"

Grunt. Nod.

"Where are you going? Why are you going dressed like that? What are you trying to do?" Sam was obviously shaken, her mental voice practically driving Richard to his knees.

Gathering himself, Richard stood up straight once more. "I'm going to play hunt the Council, Sam. I'm going to head over to Striga, and cause a huge ruckuss, and hopefully focus all attention on me, and that way the Council will be looking the wrong way when everyone else tries... whatever it is they're trying."

Sam looked exasperated. "You can do that as yourself! Go as Shadowe! Not that...criminal!"

"I can't Sam. Shadowe's a hero. All good, and proper and upstanding. Like this, I can do what needs to be done, and the bad guys won't have any idea what I might do next, because they won't be thinking in terms of arrest, they'll be thinking in terms of deadly assault. That will make it easier for me."

"I won't let you go." She moved in front of the panel that led to gate two. You'll have to go through me first, Dicky-boy."

"I'm sorry, Sam." A crackling burst of energy leapt from Richard's hands, knocking Sam back into the wall. As she struggled to get to her feet in a losing battle with unconsciousness, her brother bent light around himself, rapidly vanishing from view. The last thing Sam saw as darkness crept up on her was the panel sliding open for a brief moment, and then closing again.

"Damn it, Sam. I turned up for the meeting, but there was an issue with my clearance." Richard Huntington III (Richard to his friends) gazed over the desk at his sister. She turned a sympathetic eye on him, and poured a fresh coffee for him, placing it on a coaster next to the blotter on his desk.

"I just hope the good Doctor remembers that I asked for a copy of the briefing notes before anything kicks off." Richard picked up the mug in front of him, stood up, and began pacing around his office, taking the occassional sip.

"Didn't you say Alfred and Kit were there, Richard?" Sam projected the thought directly into Richard's mind, practicing her skills, as she had been doing almost constantly since revealing to her elder brother that she had received strange powers in the same accident that had triggered the growth of Richard's abilities.

"Hmmm? Oh, yes. And I'm sure they will let me know anything I need to." Reaching under his desk, Richard pushed a concealed button in the wood, and a panel of the wall, identical to all the others, slid to one side, revealing a spiral staircase leading down. Gesturing for Sam to precede him, Richard descended into the basement beneath the house.

It was like entering a different world. Monitors displaying television broadcasts covered one wall, nearby stood a water cooler, and adjacent to that a row of desks stood against another wall.

"Computer." A beep signaled that the computer was ready to take voice commands. "Ready signal to Warriors of Darkness. Message begins: Potential Code Red Alpha Six. All Warriors to prepare for immediate deployment at zero notice."

He turned a wry smile on his sister. "Do you think he'll notice?"

Sam chuckled. "Charles? He loves all that military-sounding stuff. Of course he'll report in."

Richard smiled, a tight, grim drawing of the lips. "I hope to do some good here, and I pledge the Warriors of Darkness to that end."

Okay, I'll be there with Shadowe (Eng/Eng Blasters FTW!!!111!!) - though I'll probably disappear @ 9.00 to go to GG.

To finally clear up the time thing. It's at 19.00 BST, which is 18.00 GMT, please remember to add an extra hour if your country uses Daylight Saving during the summer months (which is what BST is...)

The "once a month" rent thing is, if you'll excuse my harshness, a load of rubbish.

8/5/06 to 20/5/06 is NOT 1 month by anyone's reckoning. That is the date I had to pay rent by for my last payment and the date of my next "demand". Is this because I pay rent early? Does the "month" start from the day I pay it? Should I be waiting until 20/5/06 to pay the latest request?

A thought. Leave defiance - but scale it better (I think we're all agreed on that) but add a recharge time reduction that scales with the damage increase. Basically, when the chips are down, and you need to deliver a lot of damage quickly, get access to your powers faster. Of course, maybe an END reduction as well.