Lore you might not know

This thread would be a good place to put any lore you've learned from someplace "out of the way" that others might not easily run across.

The particular lore I'm going to relate, however, is actually in a place where everyone ought to have seen it, yet I'm betting few actually have. To wit, the City of Villains game manual.

This sounds like a joke, but the fact is that the manual has several pages of lore in the back, none of which I've ever heard of or that I can find referenced in the usual places.

I'm left to conclude that, like myself, most purchasers of City of Villains installed it and tossed the contents of the box without even cracking the game manual. Those newbies who did read it, didn't make it to the end before getting on with playing the game and forgetting about the manual.

In any case, some of this stuff was news to me and I didn't find it in Paragon Wiki or other lore repositories, so I figured I'd post it here and then maybe update the wiki as the urge takes me.

Typos are my own doing unless noted otherwise.

Arachnos

Arachnos was formed from the ashes of an Italian Fascist organization. Born in the fires of World War II, Arachnos's(sic) leader Lord Recluse has taken over the Rogue Isles east of Paragon City and is using it as a staging ground to destroy the City of Heroes.

Arachnos is a multifaceted and deadly group. They are skilled in information control, blackmail, espionage, and assassination (of both mortals ans superbeings). They boast a potent military force and employ -- overtly and covertly -- numerous supers in a wide variety of roles.

The official military and police force is the Spider City Security Force (SCSF). SCSF is further broken down into several specialized departments, each of which serves a particular role.

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Okay, granted that I haven't played red-side all that much, this business of the SCSF is news to me. Does the red-side storyline mention any of this? Can you join the SCSF or run a mission for them? What are these specialized departments?

Freedom Corps: Longbow

Longbow is a division of Freedom Corps dedicated to dealing with superpowered beings. They act as military support for super-heroes and are more than capable of forming independent strike teams.

The operation was named Project Longbow because its founders anticipated many long-range preemptive assaults and arrests. The soldiers who serve in Project Longbow are volunteers from around the world who place themselves under Freedom Corps's(sic) control.

Freedom Corps itself is loosely allied with NATO, which grants the corps its military hardware.

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/em eyebrow_raise

Longbow is affiliated with NATO? They're officially some kind of "peace keeping" force? Granted they're not under the direct control of NATO, but how many of its forces actually are? Longbow is fishier and fishier the more you look into it.

More to the point, what are the implications of this arrangement as far as world peace? Granted that with the Invasion, the timeline of Paragon after 2004 is probably nothing like ours. Still, eventually there's going to be something equivalent to Afghanistan or Iraq. What would Longbow be called up to duty for at that point, given that NATO would be saying "Time to repay those 'favors', Ms. Liberty."? Especially if, as seems likely, a Paragon version of Afghanistan would likely be super-powered and involve Malta or a similarly-styled organization?

Circle of Thorns

The Circle of Thorns continues their practice of demonology and accidentally summons in a powerful succubus. The creature, Lilitu, pretends to work with the Circle to protect Oranbega and root out the Mu; however, she is actually building her own army of cultists, mutants, and unnatural horrors to break her binding spell and be set loose upon the earth.

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Nothing earth-shattering here. More spoileriffic than anything. I assume that this info is eventually related in a higher level story arc some place? The associated picture is of a hordeling, which is actually associated with another supernatural being as far as I know.

Snakes

The Snakes are nagalike creatures that dwelled on Mercy Island long before it was inhabited by Arachnos. They are an ancient race that greatly resent the human "incursion" of their home.

These slithering reptilian beings are a fairly primitive race and dwell in large numbers beneath the surface of Mercy. They rise to the surface to show pesky humans who rightfully owns this place.

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Mooks

The Family is led in the Rogue Isles by Emil Marcone. Avatars for the Family are identical to those in CoH, though with slightly different Info Text.

The Family's challenger for control of the Rogue Isles is Guido "The Mook" Verandi, the former consigliere to Emil Marcone's imprisoned father, Manuel Marcone. Verandi's faction is called the Mooks; members wear a purple band (armband, hatband, or other trivial costume addition) that visually marks their allegiance.

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This is primarily interesting, in that it says there's some sort of "civil war" going on in the Family in the Isles. I have probably just not played enough redside to encounter it yet.At the low levels, there's certainly no indication that there are factions within the Family or that purple bands (and presumably any NPC with Mook in its name) is the way to tell which faction is which.

The only real mention of this is that that Crab Spiders are basically SWAT teams but that's about all I know.

Shivans

The meteors that crashed into Bloody Bare are actually pieces of a massive creature from the depths of space. The shards of the meteorite retain that creature's consciousness and are capable of raising 'servants' from the corpses of the dead via long tendrils snaking through the soil. These new beings are not undead, however. They simply use the bones, memories, and essence of corpses to create a new being made of protoplasmic energy.

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Wow, again!

At the time that the manual was printed, the lore on Shiva was scanty The meteors are pieces of it? That puts a whole new spin on things in Bloody Bay. Maybe even on the Coming Storm.

The official website DOES give some details about Shiva and suggests (rather than baldly stating as this does) that the meteors might be pieces of the creature. Shivans Backgrounder

That's it. None of this is earth-shattering, but some of it is certainly thought-provoking and some of it is stuff that I've just never seen referenced anywhere else.

Lesson - When Going Rogue hits the shelves, if you buy a box (since many of us have already pre-ordered digitally and will never see a manual) then flip to the back of the game manual and make sure that you acquaint yourself with whatever you find there. Then report it to the rest of us so we know. *heh*