TheDeepBlue

Venture likes to talk about ducks here. Personally, I think any conflict or confusion around this point is a symptom of having poor definitions for both magic and the Well.

I believe it's under the 'What is the Well of the Furies?' section that asks about how Wells relate to the Kheldians and Battalion.

As said by Prometheus, The Rikti share the Well of the Furies with Primal Earth.

A) Yes, and B) No idea.

Note that the reasons to fear Ouroboros are all Dream Doctor's opinions. The Doctor also supports his claim by making further claims that during his time traveling, he discovered that all of the Menders were essentially genocidal maniacs, sellouts, or tyrants of some sort in their own native times, and that Silos must be evil for putting them on his team.

FW and the Peregrine Island arcs occur before New Dark Astoria. She made plans to turn against the Empire after her business in Astoria, but was captured by Mot before that. She's hanging out with the Resistance and the Dream Doctor during the events of the Magisterium trial.

Patience.

Patience.

The wizards were already there, except they weren't really wizards, they were more like scholars. Really, they still are. They've gotten a bit more muscle since the latest recruitment drive, though.

They spawn in missions as part of the Resistance group if you've got the right mix of difficulty and team size. I ran into a few the last time I ran Palatine's arc and Maria's arc.

Or, there's tinting.

If the writer hasn't played before, they may end up traveling through zones trying to get in touch with the contacts there. Which should be difficult since contacts are all level-locked.

There's a tunnel linking Atlas Park and Steel Canyon. It's quite possible that the author thinks that's something like a 'next' zone.

What I want to know is who the 33 mongrels are that told the CoH newbie to keep grinding DFB.

'Because I do not like the story' and 'Because red does not feel rewarding' is different from 'Because nobody plays red'. The first and second reasons are not only up to the developers to work on if they feel the need, but are also subjective from player to player. The third reason can be solved by the players giving it on their own.

I'm not saying it's wrong to roll Heroes. I'm saying that rolling one because 'nobody plays villains'/'red is dead' compounds the issue behind the complaint itself and is therefore a ridiculous action to take using that reasoning.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to reach so far for a reason to act indignantly. You've chosen to interpret a note to some players made to attempt to show that they're contributing to the cause of their own complaint as a screed against player freedom. I don't get it, but I'm sorry if you yourself have been one of the people I've mentioned in the original post and are taking this thread too personally.

Again, this thread addresses only one of them, one which should have no business existing in the first place.

Fair enough. My intention was to assert that they were a cause of the problem. Also, thank you for clarifying your last post.

Are you proposing merging sides completely?

Apples and oranges. This thread is talking to people who go with Heroes because they decide the Rogue Isles is too unpopulated, thereby perpetuating the problem. You must have thought I'd said something else.

What you're saying here is that the cause of people having an opinion on the subject is that they actually have an opinion on the subject. The first half of your statement doesn't really say much.

Ex: The cause of tea being is more popular than coffee is because tea is actually more popular.

Popularity is something that individuals assign to a given subject; the subject doesn't actually possess some inherent popularity independent of people's opinions.

The second half of your statement says more; that is, it actually proposes a cause for the popularity...or rather, a technical lack thereof.

What might really throw you for a loop is being asked if that traveler from the future wasn't actually me.

I'm hoping that people will stop using the reasons above to contribute to their own problem...that is, if they really do dislike the idea of half the game being less populated than the other.

No, that's not necessarily true. We do know, by what Dream Doctor says, that other groups have found ways to approach the levels of power that a weaker Incarnate can manage, but that such power is never quite as good as the power granted by the Well.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=285048

It was run by Freitag around a week or so before, I think, on one of his Thank Goodness It's MA Thursdays sessions. I can't help but think that he heard about it by word of mouth from someone who'd played it about another week earlier. EDIT: Or else he looked at my sig.

In any case, they are still taking the time to look at stuff on MA.

I'm sure their nanite-empowered goons will be waiting to give us a hearty "Thanks, suckers! Eat sapper rifle!" just as we've finished mopping up the Battalion.

The story might've been passable if any of the most popular guesses other than [why is this a spoiler?] had been the Letter Writer, but the Dark Astoria storyline doesn't exist in a plot bubble, no matter how many people who dislike the Praetorian narrative or even Dark Astoria itself wish it was. If what Dante's been saying is true, the writing regarding Ouroboros and the Battalion has been hashed out for a while, so I think its safe to assume that [spoiler] has been planned to be the L.W. since at least Issue 12; even if he doesn't bring anything relevant to the table [edit]in regards to the Astoria plot[/edit] that any of the other L.W. candidates couldn't have done themselves (except that thing he kills Diabolique with), that may change in the future since they're going to be bringing Rularuu back into the picture.

I'm not sure if this bit of commentary would satisfy the "But why did they bother revealing the L.W. NOW instead of when we got to the Rulaaru part?" question. I'll just speculate that it's just working backwards from a desired plot point (defeating Tyrant) to a solution. Just speculation.

And on the topic of other narratives occurring at the same time, like the bits with Scirocco...I'm sure the story wouldn't have changed too much if Scirocco and company had been left out, but the writers are obligated to keep trying to introduce more potential plot threads leading in and out from whatever they work on if they think it fits. Maybe they all won't start out great or end up great but at least they don't risk the worse situation of flat out running out of material. I'm sure you already understand the concept so I won't mention it further. Frankly, I thought Scirocco and Ice Mistral showing up was an alright fit.

I don't understand. If we didn't know anything about her before, why would it have been a big reveal? I think the only other mentions of her are in Mu'Drakhan's arc and in the Midnighter Club.

I think this is an occasion where you set your expectations way too high. The first time I ran DA, I got the impression that Hazen was pretty stuck in the between-realm where he was. The alternative was to get eaten by Mot. I don't recall reading anything from that encounter that would imply otherwise. In any case, I never expected him to show up again except in clues and such.

Now see, what you considered 'padding' and 'sidequests' is what I considered 'believable floundering'. Funny, right? But again, my first impressions were different from your own. My Blaster plummets into Dark Astoria, where Death Incarnate has abruptly reappeared yesterday after several strange eons, the city is swarming with mystics and monsters, former residents are flooding back in like lemmings, the world is about to end and I'm supposed to do...what, exactly? Waltz into Moth Cemetery and cast Life 2? My Blaster has Clarion Core, not Barrier Radial.

My Blaster doesn't know what to do right off the bat. In fact, Mot's reappearance has taken nearly everyone by surprise; nobody really knows what to do and the typical last resort of 'trying killing it to death until it dies' isn't an option. All my Blaster knows is that the opposition has a head start.

Okay, okay. I guess that doesn't really offer up a reason, we don't have to say excuse, for the X's of Vengeance to be there. You want a solo storyline pointed at Incarnates, though? That IS what you asked for, right? And you want something a bit more meaningful than 'fight some huge Bad?' Consider your opponents. On one hand, you have the X's of Vengeance, who believe that a person's past is something that can never be overlooked or overcome to any degree, regardless of who they may have become; any dissent on this is considered blasphemous. On the other, you have Mot who, judging by its comments to you and Praetor Duncan, despises others for trying to rise above (or otherwise escape) their present circumstances instead of just accepting them...which is classic bad guy irony considering what it's trying to do.

Both positions conflict directly with the philosophy of becoming an Incarnate.

Could you have removed the bits with the X's of Vengeance without altering the written plot significantly? Probably. I wouldn't go as far to say that the fight against the X's was meaningless in any sense.

Pretty rudimentary lit analysis? Sure. I'd encourage you to take the above into consideration, though, when you ask such questions in the future.

They do? Where's that at?

The CoT is still around, even though I'm sure a bunch died to death as a result of Mot. Maybe I just misunderstood what you meant, though.

This might've been nice if it had been able to fit in a way that made sense for us to find out. Maybe we still will one day around the time when we fight the rest of the Pantheon.

Would you elaborate on your definition of this?

That's not my perception. I'm emphasizing 'the oaths' because that's the term the Talons use as if it were a reference to an actual list in their possession, such as when they're screaming at Max when you find him in Mu'Vorkhan's arc. We don't actually know what such a possible list contains yet.

You make it sound like they couldn't stop any time they wanted.

You're mistaken.

No, you're missing the point: to the Furies and the Talons, the upholding of 'the oaths' is the essence of morality and virtue. Their sense of morality prompted the rest of mankind to create laws that governed how their societies operated with the purpose of avoiding the Wrath of the Furies. Our sense of morality, what we call morals, may have diverged from the Furies' sense since then.

I'm not sure what wasted opportunity you're looking for in antiquity's version of The Terminator.

We've yet to actually meet them. I don't know if you like the novels or not, and I don't know how closely the writers are going to decide to adhere to what was in the novels, but when the Furies roughed up a mafia-bought police chief and told Statesman that he needed to be punished then and there to begin fixing the corruption in Paragon City, he replied that their style of justice wasn't acceptable in the world any more and that they needed to let him fix Paragon in his way.

If I recall correctly, they were actually interested in testing Statesman's quality versus Recluse's, and they seemed pleased by the precedents he set. Of course, we can't be sure what would've happened if Statesman hadn't succeeded.

Between the legends, Prometheus and whatever else we hear, who the Furies are right now really is something we don't know quite yet. Based on how the locals on the mainland in Greece seemed to know (and be apprehensive when talking about) where the Furies were hanging out, they've been keeping an eye on Primal Earth for a while, so why the Talons of Vengeance are acting up now on Primal Earth after all this time is another mystery: are the Furies really at the top of the chain of command of the Talons these days, or has something changed now that Statesman's died?

I believe the relevant section of timeline is currently going to be Going Rogue, First Ward, Sutter TF, Night Ward, [40-50 gap], Apex TF, Tin Mage MkII TF, BAF, Lambda, Keyes, Underground, TPN, Minds of Mayhem, and finally the Dark Astoria arcs, then Dilemmia Diabolique, and then Magisterium. If you feel like you missed a big chunk of what's going on, it happened in the Incarnate Trials between Tin Mage and Dark Astoria.

If you ran First Ward, Duncan will mention your encounter with her there. So will Diabolique. Other than that, her reference to her place of power crumbling and people missing or dead is a result of our successes at the TPN campus and against Mother Mayhem.

She's not. She's one of the classical Gorgons, I believe.

That's an encounter I looked up on PW when I was checking. I interpreted the conversation as the latter possibility.

Here's the entire conversation from Master Midnight in Vanessa DeVore's arc.

The rest of the conversation is about the plan to get Diabolique's talisman out of the Magisterium.

'THE oaths', not just 'oaths', are what the Furies and/or the Talons believe exist as the basis of morality independent of the laws human civilization creates for itself. If the Furies and/or the Talons believe humanity is behaving indecently, there's hell to pay. The Talons are willing to let Mot devour the entire planet, so they likely believe that civilization itself is to blame for allowing everything in Dark Astoria to happen. If you're not part of their solution, you're part of their problem.

Not really sure why they picked the Knives as conscripts; all we hear from Heather Townshend is the part where the Talons/KoV hunt down the KoA that didn't want to be a part of the solution.

Duncan doesn't know snot. Diabolique seems to have gotten the information from Mot.

No, it's not. The Furies are. The Well doesn't care so much any more.

As a word of warning, Prometheus' complete dialogue tree is not only incomplete, but what's there is redundant and badly in need of organization. Most of what you're seeing is a repetition of explanations of BAF, Lambda, and Keyes.

All the backstory says is that Mother Mayhem and Tyrant initially didn't know where Maelstrom and Melee were from.

...but after Maria Jenkins' pre-GR arcs. You'll also note that the creation of Cole's invasion plans had to occur before the Warwork army was being built, which occurred at about the same time Arachnos and Longbow show up.

Then why question the actions of Primal Earth?