Voidstrider

Rockin'. You want char pics with these?

Something I didn't know/realize/see in the manual possibly at first but is VERY useful especially for when you're changing your enhancement type (TO to DO, for example) - enhancements can not just be combined with extra enhancements in a tray, slotted enhancements can be combined with OTHER slotted enhancements of the same type within the same power. (Say you have two end reduction TOs in a power. If you have only enough inf for one endred DO, then, rather than overwriting one of the TOs, you can combine them and keep the TO effective a little longer, while opening up an enhancement slot)

((Note: some spoilers for the Slot Machine arcs in here. Turn back now, lest ye be spoiled. They're fun, available at 30 from inside the Golden Giza casion in St. Martial, unlocked with Gangbuster badge. Go get a group together and hunt Marcone Capos today!))

It wasn't a quiet day on the Isles by any means. At any moment someone was being trampled under someone else's boot. Fortunately, if you knew where to look, someone else was busy selling pungi sticks at the same time.

Overstrike, one of the rising tide of chaos after the Breakout, wasn't in either group today, and really wasn't planning to be, instead laying low in a small apartment. The artwork and gold 'liberated' from the Thorns' seized Mu stockpiles were making their happy way down the black market, and the heat was still high enough from the Circle that many of her Broker's usual contacts were laying low for fear of ending up in the middle of a glowing green circle.

It wasn't a problem, beyond Overstrike wishing her Broker luck. The arrangement had been satisfactory, and it had been very rare lately she'd gotten the chance to simply *create*, rather than the mere mechanical aspects of taking a power cell here, some catalysts here, and voila! an acid mortar. Running scams, shake-downs, and the occasional armed robbery was the name of the game, for now, and she'd done well, in currency and respect.

She could more than afford delivery for a while, of anything up to small particle accelerators, without straining her finances. So, instead, she was in oil-smudged jeans and a t-shirt, wielding a soldering iron happily instead of a pulse rifle, and seeing where the circuits took her, room lit only by grimy light and the faint glow coming from her eyes.

She didn't need it to see the *important* aspects. Electronics, mechanics, some physics - they came more than naturally to her. Not as if designs fell into her mind, but with a little fiddling, it was easy to see ways to make them *better* once she had an idea, made or stolen. She wanted to do the same to the world, on a small scale. It was why she'd been put in the Zig. It was why she played the game. She reached out a hand, with a whirr of servos, one of her simple servitor drones passed up the voltemeter without a word.

And she was afraid she had started to peak. There wasn't much more she could do to simply increase the power forced through her robots' weapons, despite increasing access to the most exotic of toys. The simple needs of keeping Arachnos from swatting her robots down, regardless of her status with them, on their way to a deployment limited the size of their generators. There was a limit to how much energy can be put in a small area without it exploding.

At least, so science said. Again her eye was drawn to the simple looking statuettes Kalinda had sent her to empower, to prove whether or not she was still in the running as a Destined One.

There was power there, to allow her to expand her armory. With the capability of walking around with that power within her on tap, beyond simply seeing the paths of power, she could make them flow with it, opening the way to allowing her to pack in innocuous-seeming equipment and then let it draw from her, deploying a half-dozen planned and discarded designs.

But.. was it worth it. She wanted a better running world, but against the heavier opposition that had yet to be cowed would require... crudity. Bluntness. Street-sweeping lasers, heavy napalm rockets. The sort of weapons that were available, but just needed to be refitted to her systems. The sort of power that, when made available to the mundane, invited cruelty and abuse. It wasn't a place she liked her mind to linger.

"Mail drop-off successful." reported another servitor, exotic and alien camera lenses hidden beneath a trenchcoat and a hat for heading out. On the Isles, much as Paragon, it didn't attract heavy comment. Her creations were as intelligent as could be managed. Eventually, she would need sentries and guards if all went well. If she dared let it go well.

"Thank you - " she flipped through "- may already be a winner. Life insurance... odd." There was a handwritten letter in there, with postage from the States. Ploughskeepie, apparently. She started to tear it open, and thought better of it.

Two minutes later, when the drone returned from outside with the opened envelope intact, she flippd on a light, squinting, and read the letter. And then she was quiet for a long time, frowning, iron forgotten. She glanced at the artifacts again. High Roller's career had missed her, the first time. On the Isles, she was busy scrounging, and then in the Zig, people didn't talk much about their felonies, let alone the ones committed by those who hadn't been apprehended.

But this... *this*. The Zig, simple enough. You weren't smart enough or fast enough, but it gave you plenty of time to think. What the Phalanx had done... this wasn't thinking. This was losing the one thing no one, she had thought, could take away With a slightly differently spun off-balance personality, she could have planned the same, been the same, reduced to running a lathe rather than seeing the rivers electric.

She looked at the apartment one last time.. "Better to linger than be locked."

She closed her eyes, and then closed her fist on the statuette. She did not scream. After the first second, the thought did not occur to her. Even freely bargained and rightly exchanged, the Powers could leave their traces on a soul. When the eternity ended after a minute... she opened them. Things were... brighter. A glance down the street showed the people as faint smudges, a hundred thousand synapses skittering into thought, but the city's heartbeat pulsed on its vessels of iron.

She turned back, and picked up the iron, voice calling out stridently, barking orders instead of requests. This *was* a war, not a dream to obtain, but a life to simply *have* at the end.

And she intended to win.

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I was thinking of starting a thread on that topic. Just more evidence that the Freedom Phalanx think they're gods and little things like laws and Constitutional rights don't apply to them.

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Oh I'm sure they think they apply to *them* just not their enemies. Well, my robotics mastermind (who's backstory gives her a mutant aptitude towards tech) now has every justification she needs for kitting her robots out with napalm rockets. This is about *survival* now.

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Yeah, after begging in this thread to get info to actually get the CONTACT, I finished all the slot machine missions last night and had the same bug(?) as you. Reset it twice and in all three instances, the hostage was put in the watery chasm where he couldn't exit.

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Weird, I didn't have any trouble with the hostage going through the portal when I finished these missions on Sunday. (And the souvenier from the second story arc in question amuses me.)

Marcone boss hunting's not terrible - best bet is to look through the northern alleys in downtown Port Oakes, you'll often have multiple Marcone Capos hanging out plotting protection rackets in them, and they're pretty easy to annihilate if you go back and finish the badge in your twenties. Three people in my VG cleared the badge in maybe thirty minutes of work by spreaidng out through the zone and doing some havok, without infringing on anyone else's work who happened to be in the area.

Now what's really needed are progress bars to this sort of badge.

Edit: Side note on this contact sequence. When you read through the hostage's clues and history against the Phalanx... are we SURE that they're the good guys, people? Or is it a weird semi-Identity Crisis homage?

Ladies and gentlemen, this will be our finest hour. All our plans have come together for this, a team of tightly meshed cogs for one ultimate goal.

Now, remember: Mako, drinks. Tarantula entrees, Ghost Widow, music.

And I vow, this will be the best company picnic EVER!

To: Flora Fairchild
From: Overstrike

Mongoose couldn't stop laughing about someone who, apparently desires to prove and display their intelligence rather than powers through unusual solutions to the hurdles to more and better things, and I have followed up with minor research with other brokers. I can understand a desire to keep your long-term goals to yourself - though your continued and insistent reiteration of a return to Paragon and their 'blinders' on the status of the rule of law is admirable in its depth, if not my particular choice of deception. I may have use for a courier who proved so exceptional in another's rise, and was hoping to obtain a price sheet or, failing that, a recommendation for another similar to your level of expertise.

You know, if I'd gotten that toy pony for my fifth birthday, the world would probably be a much safer place.

Whee, it rises from the beta lockdown to LIVE AGAIN!

Side note, we need a frazzled white hair cross-eyed scientist smiley.

Parole Transcript, Ziggursky Prison. Prisoner 12561/C (metahuman and unusual crimes block) - Tara codename 'Overstrike' following an incident where one of the prison's gangs were doped in paralytic fluid for three hours, of which no evidence of her involvement remains - Three months before Arachnos 'Outbreak' operation.

Subject upon achieving majority was subject to early parole hearing consistent with Vanguard metaterrorism regulations. Four minor possessions of technology in violation of prison regulations were considered inconsequential, as technology in question could not defeat prison restraint systems. Subject was certified of sound body/mind by Defender-class Freedom Corps operative. Subject gave testimony in the form of prepared statement.

"Thank you for hearing me. and I apologize in advance for my accent. I am, legally, ha-ha, a citizen of the Rogue Isles and polyglot is a severe underestimation of the language of the docks. I have had much time in prison to learn and express myself better.

And I have learned why I am given this opportunity. My arrest was foolish on the part of Freedom Corps. The Arachnos symbols on the drone-suit were from the material I had scavenged to assemble it and arrange passage as something more than a lost waif. Perhaps if I did not see those Hellions after entry, the purse-snatching incident would not have occurred until I could be better educated in the ways of the mainland. I am slightly mutagenic, your doctors tell me. I see energy flows, how to connect them. Circuits speak to me, even on you and your recording devices and it is a language of odds, but a clean language. And so when is say 'could have' I know fully well if the dice had fallen otherwise, I would have had a different set of choices.

But it did happen, and I thank you for that, though you look on me at scorn. Lord Recluse had little place for children in Mercy. Strength of some form he understands as much as you do in Paragon with your dependency and regulation of your bands of costumed thugs. But in these solid walls. Yes, there is little to work on. I think, and I think, and I get help in thinking. Your library is wonderful. I could make designs that would make your heroes unnecessary, turn anyone into an army if needed - but you fear such crude and 'democratic' power as technology in anyone's hands. So rest assured, the blueprints you found were mere ideas, like the rest of my 'unfortunate associates'. What fear is there in such comfort? A small chunk of land refined. A place to build, and build and /build/ and grow... I apologize if I startled you.

Yes, those associates are mad. But they are scientists. They know how to think. They can see how things can branch from an origin point, and work to harness it. You have the same philosophy with your Freedom Corps. The man who stopped me and the simple disguise suit had strength to tear through steel. And yet, he works for the simple word of mouth to expand his powers. Pah.

Yes, I could cheapen my designs, ugly them, make them a suit to wear like your heroes. Leave, get good quarters. Why? Home is what you make, and I can envision plenty in here. Especially in here. Leave me locked up - you would not understand what I would build. You would fear it, and the thought that those simple lines of power could branch in and choke your towers... well, one day you will understand. Or someone will make you. I can wait until then."

Couple of the main chars.

Maindrain - simply, "Power Up!" Shortly before sucking them dry and using the bleed-off to choke them with ashes.

Sapphire Shard - (an ice blaster) is a bit more RP oriented. "Zig? Ready the defroster..."

Ooh, concept thread.

Renowned archeologist discovers strange golden arrow in ancient Atlantean site. It pointed towards Paragon once released, and so, though having limited knowledge of the bow yet at the start, the character's started mincing the way through Paragon's criminals in hopes of getting the pull needed to, er, follow the arrow's pull to the Find of the Century.

I'm going to second the comments here. A nice reminder how the Rikti War affected everyone, in and out of the mask.

It also makes me think a little more about what things are like past Paragon's towers... and suddenly the citizenry sticking around doesn't seem so crazy.

Logan more than the Punisher than. Skull-boy's kinda dark. Logan's caught between a lot of stress, amnesia, and a berzerker rage in comparison.

Well, easiest place to begin is the beginning, to vaguely quote from the hundred acre wood. Origins anyway - just a couple thoughts to get you thinking. He's energy/energy, so a mutant showing they're not ALL like the Outcasts (or a former Outcast?), an alien trapped or come to Earth (trapped probably works better where you're going), someone who's fed up and taking a stand against Paragon's best attempts to destroy itself with the new Crey/Council/modified arm off a Tesla Knight - or someone who suffered an unlikely incident involving a fight in the midst of the Devouring Earth, a vat of toxic waste, and a lightning bolt?

Ooh... grim and interesting. I like. Very nice!

Hey Manticore - love what you've done with the place.

Question's this - I don't think I've seen it, but has there been a case of an active superhero trying the elected position thing without it being an evil masterminded plan?

How's THAT for getting rid of Statesman? Bury him in paperwork. Sure, it lacks a certain flair...