TeChameleon

I'll give it a shot later, Rebel- I'm out of time for now. But I won't forget

Wellp, double post, but, lesse... In "Meet the Air Guard":

The Guardsmen were very competent- made for a rather nice change from the likes of Lady Jane. In fact, they were a little too competent- I only saved two of them, and they slaughtered Friendly Fire (the boss)... something... before I got off my second shot. I didn't even have time to read his name!

Why does the clue imply that I don't know what the Raiders have to do with the Air Guard? Captain Rachek told me that the Air Guard are a splinter group, and I'll see who they're a splinter group from. Cue Sky Raiders. Gee, I wonder what they have to do with the Air Guard? Especially with that name? >.>

Other than those minor quibbles, I like- gave a very good 'feel' of working with an elite military unit (I rather liked the dialogue from the female Guardsman- "Yeah, come closer, see what I can do with my knife..."), no major errors that I noticed.

"Working for the Air Guard":

Mission 1
... is "West Libertalia" a reference to something? I could swear it sounded familiar...

Okay, what I said earlier about the Air Guard being scary-competent? Doesn't seem to apply so much here. The standard issue Guard seem to be getting slaughtered (although it probably doesn't help that they're getting spawned in groups of two and the enemies are being spawned in groups of three).

As an aside, I love the subtle glow on the fists of the Brawler Guardsmen. Very cool.

The Sky Skiff hostages... having their captors demand to know 'who sent you' right after they've just announced "By orders of the United Nations, you are commanded to stand down!"... uhm... (as an aside, that should be 'by order of the'- singular 'order')

On the debriefing, Captain Rachek makes reference to my having killed all the enemies. Uhm... yeh, hardened soldier and all, but most of my heroic characters aren't in the habit of slaughtering their opponents wholesale :/

Also, as Rebel mentioned, kill-alls on outdoor maps- even relatively small, simple ones like that one- won't endear you to anyone :/

Mission 2
I'm not sure why, but "Kawanda" sounds vaguely African to me... maybe because it sounds so much like "Rwanda".

The Chief Engineer's clue made me laugh out loud. Wonderfully meta humour.

The mayor has an average ransom? How often does this poor woman get kidnapped? You might want to include the bit about her being the president's cousin somewhere other than her bio though- the dialogue left me kind of confused with the constant references to her cousin, until I read the bio.

Ooooh... Friendly-Fire FLORIO. I didn't even get the chance to see that in the first arc >.< Cool look, though. Animations are running a bit too fast- he looks sorta twitchy, but that's not something you can help much (and it actually kind of suits him >.O) I love his dialogue, though (both arcs).

I think I like Ambassador Alwani. That's one bad mother-[censored] of an Ambassador. Great dialogue all around!

Mission 3:
Hah... N.O.M.A.D. 1.1.4.9.'s death "Delivering package" dialogue came just as it fired a missile at me. Awesome.

The 'rock jiggling when you play with the remote' dialogue comes after you're out of the mission... back in the MA building. Which is a bit weird >.O

Love the battling forces dialogue.

Mission 4:

A Council base? I thought there were some Fifth Column ones you could use...

There's a map point labelled "0". And nothing else

Which turned out to be an EB. Hilarious dialogue, although his running away was kind of annoying.

Mind you, the final clue left me kind of scratching my head... I don't know the character that well, so I don't know if you were writing him in-character or not. It was a bit non-plussing, honestly, although still very well-written and kind of cool.

Ah... okay, Rachek's dialogue clarifies it a bit.

Overall, good stuff! Solidly written, and an interesting group overall. Could maybe use a bit of buffing so I don't find scattered corpses in the second mission before I ever get to them, but...

Also, a plague upon your house for the gimungous maps in the first two missions- it made the missions a bit irritating. Other than that, though, I enjoyed it.

At this stage, Grey, you have to promote your arcs very aggressively- I've whored mine out across every conceivably appropriate forum in every thread related to it over the last few days.

I've had 10 playthroughs >.<

EDIT- Grey, gonna need more info about your arc, having a hard time finding it. The Search function is useless -_-

EDIT 2- Found it, crashed immediately. Will try again >.O

Oh, and that friggin' number thing is something I can't fix. Otherwise my arc bloats up and becomes unpublishable because it assumes that it has to use the first form of that group, along with the new (properly named) one. I spent something like six hours swearing incoherently at my computer as I fought to pare it down to a publishable size after I made that mistake the first time >.<

I finally figured out what was wrong with the final boss... when I port this mission over to live, I'm probably just going to copy it out manually and rewrite it that way (unless by some bizarre fluke it hits Dev's Choice), rather than trying to fight out the switchover.

If you've tried my Smalll Fears arc (#7108) before Friday, it might be worth another look- I've reworked it fairly heavily in the interim, and I think I've banged most of the bugs out.

Arc Name: Small Fears
Arc ID: 7108
Faction: Heroic-slanted
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Wall of Knight (@Experiment DBWP on Test)/TeChameleon
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: A horror-themed arc; something has crawled out of the darkest shadows of childhood, and is looking to feed...
Estimated Time to Play: Medium (3 missions, half an hour with a team, longer solo)
Link to More Details or Feedback: Feel free to critique here.

Okay, I've tweaked my arc a bit (and found that, for me as well, re-opening it made the file size jump. They're going to have to fix that; I wound up cursing incoherently at my computer as I fought to bring the thing down to size, since it did not want to let me delete stuff. It added things just fine, but deleting? Basically told me to screw off, and oh, sorry, you can't publish this 'cos it's too big -_-). In any case, thanks for all the feedback!

However, Mission 7108 ("Small Fears") should... hopefully, because I'm within about half a percent of the limit... be pretty much finalized. Let me know what you think!

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Mission
"The Golden Rule"
Arc ID 7389
Length: Very Long (5 missions long, most missions are stealthable if you wish to do so)
Morality: Villainous
Description: A Council Galaxy Archon hires your villain to execute his revenge against the Gold Brickers

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Hmm... okies...

Minor dialogue bugs in mission 3 ('time to show you whose boss'- should be 'who's', since it's a contraction of 'who is'). Also, the 'well, $name, you're certainly not the help I expected, I've got your back' scans a bit oddly. Maybe toss a but in there- as in 'expected, but I've got...'

In the last mission, the $sirmaam tag isn't working. Also, 'who really rules the Cap' should probably be 'the Cape', since 'Cap au Diable' is just 'the Devil's Cape' in French (well, Cape of the Devil, but...)- it's not likely that an English speaker would use 'the Cap' in a sentence. Maybe 'who really rules Cap', but...

Also, why would control of that particular base make the Goldbrickers unstoppable? If they're curb-stomping that particular batch of Council, what's so special about their base? For that matter, how are the Goldbrickers taking the Council in the first place? A gang of high-tech thieves vs. an elite paramilitary organization sounds like a bit of a mismatch. Maybe the Goldbrickers have some kind of new gizmo that's giving them an edge? And something in the Council base will boost the thing's power tenfold or some such?

Also, the Injured Council Soldier spawns... you've already put a lot of work into this arc; it's kind of a shame that they all say exactly the same thing. I'm pretty sure you can spawn the hostages individually and get them to say something else :/

Overall, it was a solid arc; aside from the minor bugs I mentioned, it was highly polished, very well done, but there was one thing that kind of bugged me; Archon Sicozi, despite his very funky name, had all the personality of pudding.

Canonically, becoming a Galaxy drives you more than a little insane- 'longings for the cold darks of space', and 'wanting to cleanse the Earth with dark fire' or something to that effect, and fascisti tend to be a bit fanatical anyways. Yet Archon Sicozi (... y'know, I really do like that name? >.&gt comes off as... well, bored. "Blah blah, evil, yeah, whatever, blah blah, pay you to kill crap?"

Give him some personality- he sounds more like an office drone than a high-ranking fascist terrorist under the mind control of a madman.

So- short version? Production values are top notch- this could be a dev mission from that end. Writing could use some tightening, though.

She was supposed to show up with a whole pile of her minions. I think I've fixed that, but I'm not 100% sure >.<

Right... my mission is now #7108, if anybody wants to try the fixed (... I hope? >.&gt version. Pulled it down and put it back up a few times >.O

Right... made a few tweaks, as you suggested, Ninja. Also fixed the apparent bug you ran into Tim- a third kid actually spawns when you save the other two (he has plot-relevant information, so I didn't want him being found first)- made that clear. The Bullies are staying nasty, though

Oh, and the language-quirks are deliberate. You'll see why

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The weapon thing btw, is actually intentional <'x'> though I will look into possibly altering it (because if someone is finding it a detractor, it deserves a look!)- but the idea was that unlike 'real' sentai heroes, who get all kinds of crazy powers and weapons... these folks have stuff thats largely cobbled together - they're like Cosplayers but with more firepower <@_@>b (Hence the baseball bat on Green, which is my absolute favorite >_&lt

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So, what, they can't afford spraypaint?

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Arc:

'A Super Team Is Born'
Arc ID: 4998
Length: Very Long
Missions: 5 (All but one of which is pretty involved)

Description: Ninja Catpeople Turbo is a brand new team of heroes in Paragon City... they don't seem to quite have their footing just yet.

Can you help them find their place, even if that place might actually be the mall foodcourt?

((Comedy/Drama - It's a Sentai (Power Rangers) spoof with a mild level of seriousness tossed in.))

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Lesse... on the downside...

- some minor spelling glitches ('funky allow' rather than 'alloy', 'whiping my people into shape' rather than 'whipping', 'its our only lead' rather than 'it's')

- blue spikey guy was in the wrong 'wait' pose (assuming you wanted him in the 'repair' animation from the dialogue)

- no dialogue in the second-last mission (er, aside from Red's 'rescued' dialogue, which was wonderful)?

- Could maybe use a *bit* more dialogue in the missions- inactive rescue dialogue for Red in the latter missions would be cool, and expand the 'feel' of things.

- the Crey Tanks are too thick on the ground. I've got a pretty good guess as to why you did it (their look fits in nicely overall, no?), but they're tough buggers- makes the mission maybe a bit more tedious than it needs to be. I wound up stealthing past most of them because they're annoying to fight- they just take too long to kill.

- The weapons desperately needs to be brightly primary-coloured to match their user.

- I was bitterly disappointed not to see more of the team; they were great, absolutely made the first mission for me.

- Final boss proceeded to nuke my allies the second they showed up, which was a bit annoying >.<

On the upside:

- Loved the costuming design. Absolutely first class, almost scary how close you could get to classic Super Sentai there (although, like I said, the weapons need to match their wielder's colour ). Beautiful work.

- The dialogue that was there was great; it felt just right, and was really funny, to boot.

- The story was weird- it was a brilliant Sentai spoof... that somehow managed to slot itself neatly into the City of Heroes world in a way that made perfect sense. Excellent work.

Overall? Five stars. I really enjoyed it (although the spelling could use a twitch of polish- everything else was so good that the spelling mistakes stood out like huge, glaring spotlights. Okay, maybe I'm weird, but I notice things like that >.&gt

Ah, right... my turn.

[u]Arc[u]: 'Small Fears'
Arc ID: 6528
Length: Medium
Missions: 3 (nothing major- medium is a fairly accurate description)

Description: No matter how happy your childhood, there are always a few corners of darkness, little pockets of black fear that every child knows. And now those shadows are expanding. Something is clawing out of the lost childhood of Paragon. Are you ready? Ready to confront the forgotten fears of the nursery?

((It's a horror-themed arc; I really have no idea why that popped out of my brain, but it did; feel free to absolutely savage it, since horror is way outside my normal purview, and it's open to question whether or not I have the faintest clue what I'm doing with it :/))

Bleah.

Well, I tried.

Small Fears

and

The Meatgrinder

are mine. Small Fears is my feeble attempt at horror, and The Meatgrinder is... well... Exactly What it Says On the Tin. I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but the Meatgrinder is a fairly solid attempt at killing everything that sets foot in there (er... no AVs, though. Just Lieutenants and Bosses).

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A spell checker in a MMO would be worked overtime

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Spell Checker: *PWN u noobz* does not compute.

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This has to be said...

((Oh. Thought the explosion was just one of the massive electrical kablooies going off, considering how I described the death-explosion. As to Hotaka, if he wanted to come with the evac, he came, if he didn't, he didn't.

And Bwerp, this thing was supposed to be a bomb ))

((Okay, I'm going to be mean and just boot this along, because I really am sick of running this goofy magic army thingy. And I just realized that "Raiden Spirit" is a really, really bad name for a CPSR ghost, given that 'Raiden' is the Japenese thunder god. Eh, screw it, it's going to explode in a few seconds anyways.))

Sun Tzu 'watched' as the huge Taijutu spell cast by Yinglong eddied a little, then flowed in to fill the space around Teivos as the tyrant's shield failed, frowning slightly as the Dark Sovereign moved after the Raiden Spirit's attack. He unleashed the blessing, the Enforced Will of the Tao with a flick of his wrist and a sigh, an imperceptible shift as the universe twisted ever-so-slightly around Tevios, probabilities realigning in so tiny a fashion now that no mortal agency could detect it, and likely not most divine ones either. But, given time...

Then the elder tactician sent out the signal to retreat, and the CPSR vanished en masse, Dragon, Sorcerors, and Ghosts, as if they had never been there, a carefully staggered teleport that jumped them out beyond most of the Dark Sovereign's most sophisticated detection nets and then dropped a half-step away from reality to continue their journey through the unknown sub-dimension that had been the CPSR's private playground for decades.

Yinglong turned a bleary eye up at the incoming fusillade of missiles and bombs, and shuddered once, a long ripple running down her long, long body. Then the dragon sneered. "Toys."

She might have been too injured to attempt any complex enchantments, but she had one ready-made close at hand. Or talon, as it were. An instant of concentration, and the bombs simply... fell apart... in midair as non-light gently flared white and black around each one. The planes in turn began to shudder- though further away, the bloom effect of the suddenly-intensified Will of the Tao splashing over them. While they were not affected as strongly as the munitions were, their outer skins were already roughening as they separated into incredibly pure clumps of base metals.

------

The intensified spell washed over the conflict on the ground, as well. The Lightning Blade stiffened, his expression torn between utter agony and beatific rapture as the twisted energies were simply torn from him... along with his life force. His spirit fluttered like a candle in a gale, then winked out.

The half-shredded spirit that Famine had been shooting at and the one that Gryphon had been holding vanished as well, fading from existence. Those attuned to the supernatural might notice the astral plane becoming slightly emptier than before- the third Ancestor Spirit that had come with the Lightning Blade had also vanished.

The Copper Serpent and the Swift Steel who had been coming to aid their now-fallen comrade let out yells of shock and outrage as they too began to fade, their essence streaming downwards to spiral into a tight point above the Lightning Blade's corpse. The yells barely had time to change to laughter before they too were gone.

But the laughter was not. Rich, booming, and oddly hollow sounding, the laughing deepened until it was the bellow of a titan, a mad god unleashed.

Lightning flickered for an instant, and then, less than two seconds after the Lightning Blade had fallen, he was reborn. A phantasm nearly twenty metres tall stood over the assembled soldiers and metas, poison lightning bleeding from the mighty spirit like electric rain, shattering craters in the concrete and spraying superheated stone chips as if the Sovereign's forces were under a waterfall of fragmentation grenades. One whistled past Teivos so closely that he felt as if someone had tugged on his sleeve; even a brief glance would reveal a sizeable chunk of his shirt torn and burned away, and who knows what kind of damage to the armour underneath.

Then, without warning, the huge spirit moved, far faster than anything that size should be able to achieve, blurring forwards at more than six hundred kilometres an hour. The air took on a noticeable chill for dozens of metres in all directions, and all of the Dark Sovereign's forces not protected by an anti-magic field or their own spells felt their limbs grow heavy and unresponsive as kinetic power got drawn en masse into the spirit.

As it came, the Raiden Spirit threw out a titanic wave of lightning, barbs of sickly green roaring out, then another, omnidirectional blast of lightning spines, pentajoules of energy pounding along the Raiden's path, a rolling cloud of destruction carving a direct line to Teivos.

And behind the cloud, the Raiden Spirit came, terrible blades wreathed in lightnings jutting from each hand, poison lightning bleeding still. A practicioner as skilled as the Overmagus could undoubtedly see that this particular construct had traded stability for raw, unbridled power; it would detonate in a blast that would turn this area into a toxic, glassed-over crater in less than a minute. Of course, even the slightest tug on the weave that made it would most likely give an identical result, merely sooner.

------

In the sky, Sun Tzu had turned to watch the ground battle with studied intensity, a thoughtful look on his face as he tossed something intangible up and down on one hand. At the slightest sign of Teivos' shield weakening, a secret, potent, if rather double-edged, blessing would be laid on the tyrant.

-----

Inside Toy Dispenser's detention bubble, the huge Tanker gave no sign that he had heard the android; indeed, given the window into hell that had been opened up inside the bubble, it was doubtful whether or not he even could. If anything, his flame intensified, changing in quality.

A fragment of Yinglong's Taijitu spell had been trapped within the bubble as well, and Flashpoint Zeo's celestial fires reacted with it, absorbing and changing it.

Now, if the bubble opened or gave way, everything unnatural in the area would be subjected to purifying fire- everything unnatural would be burned away, while those living beings present would find their general health improved, and that the natural world responded better to them, while those things that took man out of balance with the natural world would work poorly, if at all.

((Aargh... okay, hopefully that's everything, and we can wrap up this scene with the CPSR, and I can go back to playing... y'know, my actual character... and stop spouting horribly mangled taoist hippy philosophy >.<

Devious, the tug-at-sleeve thing is a gentle poke in the direction of the thing you mentioned- I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not it 'hit'.

Also, Khell, the double-edged blessing thing that Sun Tzu is going to try and drop on Teivos isn't anything that the Overmagus is likely to be able to perceive or interfere with- it falls more in the arena of divine intervention than arcane workings, and it's pretty damn subtle divine intervention, given that 'subtlety' is one of the founding precepts of the workings of the Tao.

Oh, and when I say 'poison lightning', I mean exactly that. The Copper Serpent got fused into this mix, so a lot of what's going on is a blending of Electric Blast and Spines attacks; if it hits, it'll poison the target as well as zapping 'em. It's magic, it doesn't have to conform to realistic physics ))

Eileen stood at the back of the little cluster, giving the glowing orb a brief once-over. Not having any particular knowledge of it, she refrained from comment, although her hand slid into her bag to retrieve her phone; if anything horrible popped out of the glowing thing, Energon X was going to be arriving in a matter of moments.

Of course, by the time that happened, Eileen would have found out whether or not the horrible thing was vulnerable to repeated blunt trauma or not. More than one Vahzilok had found that 'civilian' and 'defenseless' were not synonymous, at least when applied to Eileen Troy. Particularly when she was carrying something heavy.

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I have a question there are A LOT of posts here so apologies if it has already been asked/answered.

Will costume pieces of existing mobs/factions be available for new mobs/factions? for example could I use a Fifth Column helmet with Freak shoulder pads and so on for my new creations?*

* This is an example it would look ridiculous ... although now I think on it.

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If I interpreted it right... no, sorry. Custom mobs are limited strictly to player costume pieces. To the best of my understanding, there's no such thing as a Freakshow costume 'piece'- the whole thing is all one solid bit.

((Yeah, Khell pretty much has it the way I had in mind for the Ying/Yang bomb that Yinglong cast. Don't worry about it too much if you haven't yet- if you managed to avoid the initial effects, you probably won't be bugged too much by the ongoing ones- it needs a certain amount of 'momentum' (for lack of a better term) to do any serious damage))

The Lightning Blade's eyes widened briefly in fear as his imbued power was torn away, then widened still further in disbelief as the lich simply returned it. Pictograms mystically tatooed across his body glowed briefly as he reabsorbed the kinetic energy, once more moving at impossible speeds.

"You are arrogant, abomination. Or did you think me so poor a magus as to succumb to such a simple trick?" the blademaster sneered.

His hand traced a brief sigil, and a pair of the huge Infiltrator Spirits materialized, decloaking or simply teleporting, it was impossible to tell, and went after War and Famine, blades jutting from every opening on their armour.

The Lightning Blade himself lashed at the Overmagus with electric whips, a hurricane of blue-white fire whirling around the undead mage. The Dark Sovereign would have to wait for the moment, until the greater threat was contained, or at least deflected momentarily. The blademaster drew deep on Yinglong's power, his abilities reinforced by the bottomless well of magic he had on tap, and renewed his assault, a flickering blur wreathed in lightnings.

------

Some distance from the main battle, a quintet of sorcerors appeared around the re-merged Yinglong, attending her wounds, green light bathing her in a healing glow. The jets that had peeled off to follow the airborne CPSR wizards had found themselves stymied when all five simply vanished in a flare of silvery teleportational energies.

-----

Above, nearly two dozen of the CPSR forces vanished in the Burning Brawler's fireball before the last surviving Far Fire managed to divert the searing flames away from the Chinese magi. Sun Tzu frowned, and began directing his troops in a more defensive battle, dispatching a Swift Steel and the Copper Serpent who hadn't been vapourized by Brawler to join the Lightning Blade at ground level. They would arrive at their comrade's side in less than twenty seconds.

------

The ice surrounding Flashpoint Zeo vanished in a brief flash that flickered once, then increased geometrically in intensity. Within a matter of seconds, the detention field was a miniature sun, a whirling inferno of white-hot flame as the giant tanker burned off some excess energy, pulling deep on the endless celestial flames of the dragon within.

If there was even the slightest weakness in this field, he would find it. If there was not, transferring him anywhere would prove difficult, as dropping the field would have roughly the same effect as detonating a nuke. Isabel had already been marked 'safe', and would thus be exempt from the mystic flames. All others, though, would have a quite literal baptism of fire as superheated plasma erupted outwards.

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So I guess being forced to play as limited a pool of characters as possible if you want anything more expensive than a random roll is Working As Intended?

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... I may be misremembering/misunderstanding, but don't you typically get Merits only from situations where previously the only option was random rolls..?

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That's true, but entirely irrelevant to my point.

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Uhm, actually it's fairly relevant. It is player choice that has made the market distintegrate; there are just as many opportunities for random rolls as before (actually more, if you consider the merits for mission arc completion). If people are not choosing to take that opportunity, it's hardly the dev's responsibility, now is it?

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Merits are supposed to streamline the reward process for that character, and that's not going to be changing any time soon.

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So I guess being forced to play as limited a pool of characters as possible if you want anything more expensive than a random roll is Working As Intended?

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... I may be misremembering/misunderstanding, but don't you typically get Merits only from situations where previously the only option was random rolls..?

((... argh. Devious, I really wish you'd warn me about some of this stuff, instead of just going 'nope, that didn't actually happen' long past the point where I can edit my old post -_-

And you appear to have completely forgotten about the ghosts waiting invisibly to phase through your planes and behead all your pilots >.&gt)

"Nothing worthwhile is easy." the Lightning Blade spat, jaw injury and thick accent combining to make him borderline unintelligible as he leapt to his feet. "Your death, tyrant, is of such worth as to make this a battle for the songs of ages."

With that rather melodramatic statement, the blademaster darted forwards again, trailing electric fire. Dazzling light roared around him, blinding any incautious enough to stare too long as he gathered the lightning to him to strike again.

If the Sovereign's eyes cleared in time, he would see a blade stabbing with impossible speed straight at his face.

------

In the sky, Burning Brawler found himself attracting the attention of several of the airborne CPSR; terrible winds roared towards him as many of the more melee-oriented CPSR magi bore down on him, claws bared, iron-hard fists clenched, and razor-sharp thorns protruding.

A pair of Bronze Leopards were the first to reach the fireslinger, claws flashing as they closed, one on each flank. Behind the Brawler, a Copper Serpent waited silently to gather him into his lethal embrace, ready to pierce him through with dozens of spines the instant an opening was found. And finally, an Iron Hands closed rapidly, ready to dart forwards as soon as there was room between his comrades.

------

Aboard the transport, Flashpoint Zeo breathed out, a narrow line of invisibly superheated plasma slicing through the ice around him to test the limitations of the detention bubble he found himself in.

((actually, I've just been too tired to post. It's been one of those weeks >.<

As always, if I screw up on people-placement, let me know. Oh, speaking of which, I'm pretty sure that the Archlich teleported out, Devious))

As the battle raged in the sky, Sun Tzu seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, the phenomenal speed granted by his Interceptor overarmour granting him an excellent view of the battle as a whole. He barked out a series of rapid commands, and the weather began to shift, black clouds swirling down into the sky like ink being dribbled into a bowl of water. A pair of jets tumbled out of the sky almost straight down as their kinetic energy was torn from them, rendering them incapable of flight.

At the weather control stations, couplings sparked and overloaded as the technicians found that their weather manipulation abilities had been badly blunted within the area of Yinglong's spell; weather manipulation via technology was, after all, unnatural.

Ying and Long, the black dragon's component parts had rounded on Teivos the instant the Archlich was dispatched.

"No!" came a sharp mental command from Sun Tzu.

A wordless protest from the dragon, cut short by the elder tactician. "You are injured, and badly. We cannot restore the balance if it has been pushed still further out of order by the death of another guardian. I am dispatching a team of under-Sorcerors to stabilize you and assist you on your retreat."

A grumbling acquiescence from the dragon; she did not like it, but she understood the old sorceror's reasoning. A gentle glow arose as her two parts softened in outline, beginning to blend back together.

A single Lightning Blade appeared before Sun Tzu in a flicker of speed as he dealt with Yinglong, and saluted briefly. Sun Tzu returned the salute, and asked "Are you ready?"

"I am ready to die for our people!" the blademaster responded, practically vibrating with the kinetic energy stolen from the jets by a quartet of Swift Steels.

"Good. Your sacrifice will be remembered. Now go."

The Lightning Blade nodded, and gestured. A trio of Spirits materialized, attending him, and the blademaster screamed an electric scream.

Lightning stabbed out of the sky from all points of the compass, gathered on his blade for an instant, then roared down in a cascade of raw blue-white energy thicker than some of the surrounding buildings. In the heart of the electric inferno, the Chinese magician rode the lightning, racing the bolt to the ground.

Flickering into existence at ground level between one heartbeat and the next, his katana traced a pictogram in the air, a single rune that gathered the energy as lightning roared out of the sky, shaped it, focused it...

Windows three blocks away exploded into flying shards as the thunder from a lightning bolt that filled nearly the entire street that the Dark Sovereign stood upon screamed out. On the buildings closest to the point of impact, walls burst into flinders at the unleashed sonic boom.

When the air cleared, the Lightning Blade had been driven to one knee by the sheer force, blood trickling from his ears. Nevertheless, he staggered to his feet and blurred forwards, terrible blade at the ready, his eyes fixed on his target.

((EDIT- Oh, bugger... I just realized that I totally forgot about your guy, Brawler. Will edit that in later on- have to leave in twenty minutes))

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That's pretty much the reaction I had, especially after some of the "planning" chat I have heard on VU2009 about making the ugliest, nastiest, pwnunoobs AVs/EBs possible with the intent of ganking players.

I'll be using "1-star" for "pwnunoobs lolstory" content, believe me.

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Eh. I dunno... personally, I think that making horrible, horrible missions for the sole purpose of mauling players is a good stress-test for the system (assuming you're up-front about it, of course... my first mission set is going to be called 'The Meat Grinder', assuming I can snag the name first).

Easier to learn what the MA can do by pushing its limits until you find out what it can't do.

Honestly, if you're having fun, why not?

... and for the record, once I've figured out what my limits are with the mechanics, then I'll start figuring out what sort of stories I can tell (and yes, I've got a few).