'Shipping Your Toons

I am an unusual beast.

For the last nine months or so, I have run two accounts. (I got my second account for two reasons; one, I had filled a number of slots up on my first account and I had some toons that I wanted to level without having to depend on finding or building a team that just could not solo well enough on their own to suit me.)

Here's what makes me unusual: I build concept toons to dual box with.

My first set-- and the only toons I have level pacted to 50-- were a Fire/Kin Controller and a Fire/WP Scrapper. They were sisters who had gotten their powers through a run in with the Hellions who had decided to fight for justice because they had seen that real evil exists. (In turn, they led me to create a Mace/Fire Armor Brute who's their little brother...)


My second set that I have played the most are a Sonic/Sonic Defender who's a robot and a cursed woman who's a Dark Melee/Fire Armor Scrapper. The Scrapper was cursed in that any man who sees her unmasked face is consumed by fear. Sonix Shieldbot, being a robot, does not have that problem, and is able to work well with her.

My most recent set are a Psi/Mental Blaster and an Empath/Psi Defender. The Defender is one of my oldest toons who had been stuck at 8 for the longest time because I already have a 50 Empath/Psi Defender and I hadn't really enjoyed the set that much. On the other hand, with a new look thanks to the Science Pack and newly colored powers thanks to Power Spectrum, I felt ready to play him to 50. To help him with that goal, I created his twin sister as a Psi/Mental Blaster.

The neat thing about this duo is that they are the children of a pair of heroes that I created in high school. Their father is a super human genius with formidable psychic gifts of his own; their mother is a powerful sorceress. Having grown up in the shadow of their parents, the Defender came to Paragon to become a hero on his own terms. His sister recently joined him to help him in his quest.

Having made the Empath a twin, I now find his character far more interesting to me than he was on his own. His sister is the dominant twin-- the proactive one. She's even the namesake of their father. I want to see how their journey through Paragon will shape their relationship with each other, and whether or not he will begin to assert his independence...

How many people who dual box build their characters with the intent of their being some relationship between the two toons?

And for those of you who don't dual box but have inter-related characters-- friends, lovers, family, what have you--tell us about some of your favorite "'Ships" ...

I don't dual-box or anything like that, but I do have an entire family as characters. The DeMarco family consists of:

- Mad Bomber DeMarco (Deanna, daughter) - Ice/Devices Blaster
- Sister Scylla (Adrian, daughter) - BS/Regen Scrapper
- Damien D Blaze (Damien DeMarco, son)) - Fire/Willpower Scrapper
- Bane Spider Minchew (Anna DeMarco, mother) - [take a wild guess]
- Fortunata Hamilton (David DeMarco, father) - [actually he's only level 5 right now]

The two parents are hiding in the ranks of Arachnos with assumed names. (Yes, I'm aware that this doesn't work within canon. I don't care. Both of them will go hero in GR if that's allowed.) Damien hides his family name in his middle initial due to this, and also because he's afraid of getting associated with his older sisters, both of whom actually began their "careers" as baddies before getting forced into hero-dom.

Otherwise:

My namesake had a sister, but she got killed by the CoT. Once GR comes out I plan to have an alternate-universe version of her, and this time the sister will live. I haven't really decided what the specifics of AT or sets will be, waiting to see what exactly GR will bring.

I have two more characters who are sisters as well, Majasusi (Claws/Will Scrapper) and Katili (Night Widow). They are very much on opposite sides of the law and will stay that way.

Ason Svivati (currently a Stone/Elec Brute) and Masrefah (Mind/Fire Dom) were part of the same sex/demonology cult a few centuries ago. They've known each other, if you catch my drift, but got into a power struggle and are now bitter rivals. Long story short.

I do have a friend who dual boxes regularly (and quite well,) and had a pair of characters to work together, stories tied together and such.

For mine... hmm. I've got a rather... evolving group. The most extensive?
My first 50, elec/elec blaster. Created a peacebringer to extend her story. Had a friend I played and RP'd with who played her partner, the two had a family. Had them as "kids" (emp/psy for her daughter,) who later underwent a powers change and went undercover in the Isles (ice/cold corr,) then came back to take up the mantle of a hero (defender.) She also had the COT make a doppelganger of her to try to discredit her, but they couldn't copy the powers (dark/therm corruptor.) And a version of her from another dimension, who - instead of having a happy ending, had her would-be husband get killed and took over the world in retaliation - then got banished here by a rather desperate rebellion (elec/elec brute.) And a version whose electrical powers became more storm-oriented, so she started building her army (merc/storm MM.) And, just because she got restarted post-IO, another elec/elec blaster that found her way here. So, overall... nine characters as part of an ongoing and branching storyline.

Not exactly the same thing, I know, but.. yeah

See my Guides and Tutorials

I hardly ever had the ability to dual box because my desktop just can't handle it, and my wireless router rarely worked so lap/desk was a bit difficult.

At one time I had four open accounts, mostly for padding sg's and trading items. However for those supergroups I never made "generic padder 12" or whatnot. I managed to get attached.

Most of mine are existing pre-COH characters that are slipped in here with whatever closeness I can make to their appearance as I know it. However, one supergroup, Spirits of Paragon, is pretty much all unique to Paragon.

Winter's True Spirit, Trickster's Jackalope, Icy Grip of the Bear, Thunderbird's Cry, those are some of the members. All magic origin (except one but she's technically magic, since she IS a mage... immortality has its benefits, you learn magic after a while) and mostly animal/nature spirits in upright form. Spiney Surprise is a hilarious porcupine...

When I think of "Multi-box" concepts, I think of Smurphy and his Nemesis Clone army.

It was at least 6 Thug/Storm MMs, the MMs made to look like the T1 thugs, and everything named "Nemesis Clone" (the MMs using the I/L tricks).

It was interesting being teamed with 6 Thug/Storms.

I do have 6 thugs/storm MMs and they are pretty fun. Also 6 fire/rads that I play much more often, its chaos, you barely know whats going on

2 stationary computers, 1 laptop, 3 mice, 3 keyboards, 2 clients on each computer

Created best friends, Shameless and Pea Elle (short for Penelope), who just made level twenty this week - after two years. Had every intention of dual-box/powerleveling them shamelessly. Unfortunately, I suck at dual-boxing.

The great thing is that other players will play along with their shenanigans. Shameless will berate Pea for not purchasing the right fabric softener to launder their stolen "monies" with.. and others standing at the Black Market truck will scowl and hiss at me for being rude to.. myself.

< Hotdog! I just now found out how to create a clickable thumbnail.

Let's see:

Garcia Vega(Nrg/Rad Corr) is the Brother to Vega Prime(Nrg/Fire Blaster) and Vega Omega(Invuln/EM Tank). Garcia (Kren) Has been hiding here on earth, with the help of his Valet General Jacks(Bots/Traps MM), and The General's creation Tekno(Ice/Kin Corr)

Vega Darkstar(Dark/WP Scrap), and Vega Epsilon(Rad/Dark Def) are Bounty Hunters sent to retrieve the Vega Brothers.

Kevin and Morton Lokhart are 12 year old twins. They were hiding in the sewers of the Rogue Isles during a Rikti attack when a shimmering object fell from above. They picked it up, fought over it and tore it in half. Each became imbued with a strange form of energy that allowed them to summon weapons from hammer space, and manipulate their size. They have adopted the monickers of KaBonk (WM/Shield Brute) and Morrlok (Axe/Shield Brute)respectively.

Flame Sickle(Fire/Cold Corr) and Hella Cold(Ice/Fire Dom) are cousins that happened to have been born on the same day, so they grew up like brothers.

Millie Amp(Elec/Kin Corr) is the younger sister of Terror Watt (Elec/Elec Brute).

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

The closest I would have are Hiberpsych (Ice/MM) and Hyperpsych (Psi/MM), who I believe are on two different accounts and are "sisters", I suppose. I don't dual-box with them though.

I did dual-box on a MUD in college though when I could get away with grabbing two CRTs in the computer lab. My characters would play off of each other, and I think I fooled a few into thinking they were two distinct players.

I only have one account, but I do have some connected characters, two on my own account and one part of a duo with another character.

Agent Walters (Denton Walters, AR/Traps corruptor) and Analyst Rayce (Arianne Rayce, electric/energy blaster), who work for Crey and Hero Corps respectively, are boyfriend and girlfriend. I created them back when creyindustries.com and herocorps.com, two expanded bio sites, were being actively maintained. I ended up posting quite a few profiles on there, and all of the Crey ones included notes by an "Agent Walters" complaining about his horrible treatment. Eventually, I decided to make him as a character of his own, and I created a counterpart to write all the reports on my villains once herocorps, the CoV site, went operational. So far as I know, those sites are no longer being maintained, but I still play the characters periodically. Walters, now that he can be recostumed and his powers recolored to make him look like a proper Crey agent, is finally nearing 20, and Rayce is 32 or 33. I just gave her a second outfit, a Merit Vendor costume to go with her Hero Corps one.

Those characters, however, don't actually work together. Two that do are my Reefwarden (ice/mental blaster) and a friend's Guppy Gal (cold/psi defender). Reefwarden was my attempt to make an aquatic hero who wasn't, well, lame. Like many of the classic aquatic heroes, he's some kind of nonhuman creature from beneath the sea. Because I was tired of every ocean-going character out there being some sort of ultra-serious environmental mascot who hates humanity, I made him a very casual, laid-back personality who enjoys hanging out on land because that's where the good cuisine and the drinks are (he wears sunglasses in all his forms). His first costume was a classic "superheroic" look, but his others have been made to resemble different kinds of sea life (a clownfish and a sea slug so far, and I'm working on a way to do a manta ray or a good-looking nautilus). Anyway, a friend of mine, the teenaged daughter of another friend, liked the clownfish look so much that she decided to create Reefie's teen sidekick, Guppy Gal. Unlike Reefwarden, "GG" is a human mutant with powers that mimic Reefwarden's natural reefwarden powers. Like him, her first outfit is a regular hero one, though with a somewhat different color scheme from Reefwarden's (his is blue, hers is sea green and white). Her "alternate" forms are of a red starfish (head made from a Jester hat and one of the horn details) and a purple tropical fish. She's also done an angelfish, although she had to "store" that costume to do the purple one.

They're up to 40 and somewhere in the 30's now. Since I recently figured out how to play Reefwarden without getting him killed every fight, they've become quite an effective duo, although it can be difficult trying to hold aggro with a blaster.

Every server is actually a "team" in my tournament so all the characters on each server are "related" to each other at least in-as-far as they have a common goal/base.

Champion: These are characters inspired or directly taken from the book I wrote. My main D'Shan Steelclaw is one of them. Several love interest relationships. D'Shan Steelclaw/Blackswirl Le Fay and Lore-Master/Mistress Monolith among them.

Freedom: Villains bonding together to further their aims of vengeance. Business arrangement, no emotional entanglements. I dump most of my criminally insane in this one.

Guardian: Blue Collar heroes and young up-and-comers is the theme for this team. The adults are all hard working heroes who ignore the glitz and glam of the super-heroing scene. The younger heroes are all stars-in-their-eyes kids who need the steadying hand of the adults to keep balanced.

Infinity: Black magic reigns in this team. Blood Priestess is the leader. Guile Gravenheart is her paramour and adviser. Shackled Eternity is a demon slave given over to Priestess by the dark gods she worships. And Ensorcelled Stone is basically just a stone golem with no mind of its own who also does Blood's bidding.

Justice: The Bellagothian pantheon. Bellagothians were a people I created in my book and these characters are worshippers of their gods or avatars of the gods themselves. As some of the dieties are opposed, this team has its share of internal combustion.

Liberty: Villains who just want to do what they want, when they want. They don't want to rule the world, don't want to get back at a culture that wronged them. They just want to be left alone by cops, heroes and anyone else who tells them they "can't" do something. Very much a survival of the fittest, might-makes-right team.

Protector: Ultimate Tech. A group of scientists and technologists working together. Think the Stark family reunion. Core Combustion and Pyro Tech NC are a married couple. Dynamic Feedback is in love with Flexible Physics but doesn't have the guts to tell him... yet. Emcee Boombox has a major crush on Chylde Prodigy but she's on a different server entirely and we all know long-distance relationships are hard to maintain.

Triumph: Japanese Yakuza crime family. Leader is Shadow's Secret who is in love with her protege (also female) Poisoned Lotus. Shadow's sister is Chemical Ambition who is in love with her chemically-induced slave Current-Event. Blood and Honor is the ghost of a family ancestor who is being forced to serve the new crime-oriented direction.

Victory: There was a group of characters I used to run back when I still played Dungeons and Dragons. These are the updated, super-hero versions of those characters. Ranger Lord and FletchingSong are married. Crusader's Honor and Ebon Horizon are in love.

Virtue: The leader is WhisperStealth who is the arch-nemesis of my main D'Shan Steelclaw. He has chosen an elite force of villains for the sole purpose of destroying D'Shan and his allies. So basically, every character here is the nemesis of one of my characters on the Champion server. Since there is no cross-server PvP and since you can't have two characters from the same account on at once anyway.... this looks to be a very long and drawn out war.

Yes, I know I didn't list Pinnacle. My tournament requires an equal number of hero and villain teams. So Pinnacle got left out in the cold.

Oh I totaly feel you BlueBattler.

I LOVE dual boxing and making the story stick.

I've got a hero duo, Dr Intox (Rad/Rad Def) and Barbi-Q (Fire/FF Controller) who are scientist who fell in love after realizing their powers couldn't hurt eachother. I love this duo and realy get into the story. Sometimes I get extra angry when Barbi-Q gets attacked and so I work it out with Dr Intox ...

Villain side I have The Hungry Dragon (Bots/Pain MM) , who I just can't get tired off. His story is that he scouts out new arrivals in the Zig and busts them out as part of a bussines agreement. That way he had some rocking partnerships with BiteBack (EM/Elec Brute), Intox (Rad/Rad Corruptor) and The Insubordinate (SS/Shield Brute) ...

Hero side again I just started a duo who are "New" Ancient Spirits , Neon Dragon (Elec/Elec Scrapper) and Nicotine Night (Fire/Sonic Controller). They 'guard' the night life from Nightclubs to Pachenko halls and strip clubs ...

But my personal favoirte is a team I Triple-box
I have Maman Sans Coeur (Necro/Dark MM) who used her voodoo and the material she found in her junkyard to 'reanimate' those left for dead and hungry for vengeance. That's how she 'gave birth' to L'Abattoir (Claws/Elec Brute) and Vox Finale (Sonic/Sonic Corruptor). And as soon as I have a computer who can handle running 4 accounts at the same time, that family WILL grow

Ps: I know, I need help

THank you all! Now I know Im not the only one. :-)

My two main characters were Captain Sammy (DM/INV scrapper that is a "blue boy scout" type. And Magic Master a illusion character based on a superhero concept of myself stemming around my hobby of magic.

Eventually made several other alts. Eventually made a TA/Arch and she was a descedant of William Tell and performed skilled archery feats. I created a fire/fire blaster who was a fire-eater girl and was the 'target girl' (the girl who gets the arrow shot off her head and such). They were a 'duo'. I then thought, well then they would probably know the magician guy. This started the cascade. I eventually got two accounts (for padding and PLing at first) And created characters for virually every powerset blueside. Then I started piecing them all together. I have 50 characters currently they are 7 teams (or themed groups or relations) of 7 people with Captain Sammy the head of them all. Each team is tied together and also have connections to other groups. Several characters had 'younger siblings' that are a teen team, etc.
Captain Sammy and Magic Master (both characters I personally identify with) are cousins. There are several characters that are part of the 'sideshow' group. I have hundreds of pages of backstory written in my MIND, but i find writing down (typing it out) is hard for me. There are a lot of 'couples' in there.

Several actual cool duos are

Mister Molten and Mrs. Magma - Fire/Fire Scrapper and Earth/Thermal Controller. A pair of anthropologists who are studying a remote tribe on a volcanic island when they are attacked. A tribe shaman infuses them with powers to help defend the tribe. Also the shaman summons stone sentinels to help the tribe, one of which survives (stone/fire tank) and works with the couple.

Commander Chyll (ice/ice blaster) and Icy Lass (cold/ice defender) that are from iceland/greenland.

Mindy and Mandy Mental (Mind/Son controller and Psy/MM blaster) who are twins and part of the "sideshow" gang.

My teams are however going to be 'retconned' a little to incorporate the 21 new characters that will be made with GR that will be villian AT's that I will start in Praetoria and bring them bluside to expand the roster. God im obsessed.

Here is the original 43 character setup (pre-I16). Now its up to 50 and that included a little retcon. And a bigger retcon is coming with the 71 character post GR version. However, if you want to see some of what I had originally its

http://www.virtueverse.com/index.php/User:CaptSammy

most pages were created and the pictures put up, but only a few had alot of information typed in, and most of that is a poor, quickly-written outline of all the stuff in my head.

Good timing for this thread, I just re-read the old stories featuring these characters, so I've already had them in mind.

Mark Noves, AKA The Masked Bolt, and Melissa Noves, AKA Sunless Flame, are siblings living on opposite sides of the law. Their mother Maria is deceased (her death was the fulcrum point for both of their origins), while their father, Gregory Noves, is a looming threat to both of them. Mark and Melissa also have their uncle Victor LeRon, though he's not actually a blood relation.

Mark doesn't have a special someone yet, while Melissa is essentially dating the (Earthen) Devil.

Otherwise, I play one half of another sibling pair, this time of shapeshifters, though we haven't really done anything with them yet. I also have a sister character lying around to a leader of an effectively defunct villain group that I still don't know what to do with. Similarly, the Golden Age's greatest comic book hero, Cold Glory, is estranged from his nemesis Dr. Nefarious!

I do a similar thing with my two accounts.

Most of my main account is one family. Father, mother and numerous children and a couple of ancillaries. The second account contains some relations (like children of children etc.) but some of my favourites aren't part of the family at all.

I have a plant/storm troller called light fairy who duos about with a sonic/something called light fairy pet. I look forward to the time when both accounts have the vet buff pet so I can have 4 light fairies hovering about.

I also have 2 Huntsmen; Rosy Dawn and the Evil Daystar. Each of them are attracted to each other but lack the emotional ability to express this so instead they machinegun hoards of people and laugh together.


One of my favourite memories of dual-boxing was when I somehow managed to get both accounts on to a Cap SF. We were the cave mission with all the CoT and the team suffered an almost complete wipe. All that was left were my two dominators. The cheers of appreciation from the carpet-gazers as I finally mopped up the last of them was very pleasing.

Shipping your own characters between themselves seems sort of... weird.

You'd do better to ship your characters with other people's characters. Plenty of good RP potential there.

I don't really have any interest in building relationships between my characters. However I do have one borderline case. I have an AR/Dev Blaster and a Traps/AR Defender who story wise are the same person in two different suits of power armor.

I have five characters that are related in a way. 3 are the same character at 3 different points in his life (as a hero, then as a villain, then redeemed as a hero again) the others are a Warshade and a Night Widow who are tied to the story.

**Typing it out... MAN this is a convoluted story. I guess that fits right in with the Comic Book world though huh?**


My FF/Psi Oathbound defender was my first 50, and he's the only character that I've really come up with an indepth background for.

At some point in every heroes career they find themselves in the situation where they have no choice but to kill their adversary. Having lived* for nearly 1500 years Oathy's been in that position a number of times. Unfortunately whenever he kills someone he subconsciously 'retains' a part of their psyche and as time goes on more and more of his energy gets diverted inward to maintain his own personality. Eventually these fragments of personality overwhelm his own and he goes rather insane as each personality fragment fights for dominance. At some point he fights a pair of kheldians (Twin brothers, a Peacebringer and a Warshade), during this fight he tears the Peacebringer's Kheldian from it's host (killing the host) and absorbs it.

(I don't currently have a character for this version of him, because I'm waiting for them to get around to adding Dark Control so he can be a Dark/Psi Dominator.)

For some time he continues along his path of esclating madness and violence, though deep within the recesses of his mind the Kheldian personality finds Oathy's original psyche, as well as the fragment of his past host (which he absorbed when he killed him) and they join into a sort of amalgamate consciousness. Shortly after this Oathbound is confronted again by the Warshade (Twilight Rampart) who's been grudgingly working with a Night Widow (Twilight Widower*) who has come to capture Oathbound (more accurately he's come to find out why he was specifically forbidden to do so, the answer to that being because the Fortunata forsaw that he would fall in love with a heroine and leave Arachnos and the Rogue Isles for her).

During the battle the Joined consciousness took advantage of the distraction to eradicate as many of the fragments as possible before finally taking total control and purging his mind of any wayward personalities.

This new entity took to calling itself Hadi (a Peacebringer), which was Oathbound's name centuries ago before he became Oathbound.

**Wow yeah, Soap Opera.**

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

I don't dual box or anything, but I've connected a few of my characters.

The brothers Agonus and Ultonis. (Shhhh! It's a sekrit!) Aggie started as a powerful telepath with limited telekinesis. I wanted a similar setup with Ultonis, with telekinesis with limited energy manipulation. I started retconning it to Agonus being a pure telepath and Ultonis being a pure telekinetic, to make them sort of a psychic yin and yang. Agonus is my main now, but I got bored with Ultonis, and the whole thing has been collecting dust for a while.

And Ahreman and Bombshell Girl are connected, as Ahreman's "Billy Batson" Tim Tetherson and BG's alter ego Michelle Tetherson are cousins. The armor that BG acquired was designed to battle the family secret of Ahreman, but in the story, things didn't work out as planned.

good luck D.B.B.

Well, all of my characters are a family of sorts. I don't often 2box (though I easily can) though I did a bit of it during the AE craze to get some characters to 22.

Heroside, all of my heroes are on distinct teams all owned and run by one person (who hasn't been created ingame but does have a 'code name'). I have several sets of siblings including quadruplets (fire/fire, energy/energy, ice/devices, elec/elec blasters), two sets of twins (mace/inv and axe/inv tankers and fire/EM and ice/ice tankers). But they're all sisters, by choice if not by blood, and often have the same issues with each other as birth siblings do.

Villain side, it's the same, except with more edge. Only two sets of birth sisters (DM/WP brute and dark/dark corr, Arachnos Soldier & Widow) but they're all thick as the proverbial thieves. Not a single snitch among them (each of them would rather die than rat on their "sisters"), this builds a trust that is uncommon among the shady types. Plus, I don't consider them villains per se. They're tools to accomplish goals that the hero teams can't, for PR reasons. Likewise, the resources of the hero parent corporation allows the teams in the Isles to operate without a need for supplemental income (so they rob banks/fence loot/marketeer because they want to, not because they have to). Of course, investment in the Isles teams is untraceable (there's only one commonality and it is, to the casual or even motivated observer, purely coincidental). Hedge funds with access to a precognitive tend to do very well, after all.

My main, Eva Destruction, currently has five clones, two evil counterparts from other dimensions (with another coming in Going Rogue) an extradimensional counterpart of a clone, and an android based on her. I also have Eva's future husband, my very first male toon.

I made all the clones mostly because I dislike most of the available faces, and before they added all the new hairstyles I didn't have many of those to choose from either.

My husband and I have a lot of characters with interconnected backstories, but none that are actually romantically involved. We do have a lot of characters who hate each other and make each other's lives miserable though

Most of my characters on Champion and Virtue, across both accounts, are related:

My heroes are almost all members of the same grove of northern California dryads, and refer to each other as 'sisters'. They founded the group N.Y.M.P.H. (Nine Young Magically Powerful Heroines) when they moved into openly opposing the Circle of Thorns and other nefarious abusers of magic. Given that I have way more than seven heroes, they are considering changing the name to "Numerous...."

The founding members all had one-word tree/bush/flower/shrub names -- Nutmeg, Mulberry, Althea, Linden, Chestnut, Myrtle, Sycamore, Redwood, Cedar. All have elven ears, the youthful head morph, generally slim build, and a magic origin.

Even my Peacebringer was worked into the family backstory -- poor Isabelle just didn't have the family aptitude for magic. Once the kheldians revealed their presence on Earth, she volunteered to merge with one of the aliens so she could fight crime.