Canon-Themed Characters (The Lore and -you-)

City of Heroes is a really interesting game lorewise. On one hand, it's not like World of Warcraft or something where the reason for your characters existence may require a degree in Video Game History to actually understand. A lack of lore knowledge isn't detrimental to your experience. You don't need to know about The Well of the Furies, or Dr. Webb, or the Rikti War to get the basic premise of the game.

On the other hand, the game takes place in an absolutely fascinating world. There are so many interesting story details that the vast majority of my new characters are inspired by interesting tidbits of lore.

Like my Mastermind/Dominator (I tend to reroll toons as multiple ATs), who was inspired by "The Strange Case of Benjamin Decker". A Riktified Human working for Vanguard who leads a band of reformed Lost.

Or my my Corruptors and Defenders, who are both heavily Mu inspired. (One is a Midnighter that specialized in the study of the Origin of Powers, and is Elec/Kin. The other is a detective who is a member of a Mu descended Bloodline of Demon Hunters that defends other descendants of Mu from the wrath of Oranbega. He's Dark Miasma. And he's also -very- loosely inspired by Raidou Kuzunoha. So he might not be the best example...)

Then there's my Troll (Well, I have two trolls, but only one is actually a Dyne Troll. The other's mythological). Trolls tend to be popular. This one is tied into the whole Portal Corp Origin story a bit, with the seeing alternate realities. thing.

Or my Dark/Dark Brute (Soon to be Warshade. YEAH!) Ex-Voidhunter.
...Or rather, a Nictus inhabiting the -corpse- of an ex-voidhunter.

Or my Snake-Hybrid... Or...

...Okay, you get the point. I have a lot of Canon Themed characters.

But I want to know about you! I want to see how the canon has inspired you! Is your Fire/Fire Blaster a Hellion? Do you have a Mortificator Mastermind? Have you been experimented on by Dr. Krylov? Are you a Revenant Hero?

I want to know about you!

My (future) Demon Summoning Mastermind will be a Midnighter who was renowned for his mastery of dark arts. After dabbling in a demon binding tome, his soul was torn from his body and banished to the Ninth Circle of Hell by the demon he was attempting to summon. The demon binding worked in reverse, with the demon using his soulless body as a puppet

Oh I have tons of those.

Elec/Elec Blaster - a Mu refugee
Elec/Elec Brute - a prototype rank of Clockwork
Broadsword/SR Scrapper - a refugee from Battle Maiden's army
Claws/Invuln Scrapper - a Paragon Protector slowly recovering his memories
Rad/Rad Defender - a PPD officer who became addicted to Excelsior
Ninja Blade/Ninjutsu Stalker - a thief who found an axe made of the same technology as Valkyrie's spear
Stone/Stone/Soul Brute - the incarnation of the Defiler (see the Purifier Badge), whose body is constructed from various Devouring Earth critter parts
Energy/Energy Blaster - grandson of Brandon Warfield who derived a powered armor suit of his own from the Vambrace technology
Ice/Ice Blaster - former Crey operative whose Cryo Rifle backfired
Gravity/Energy Dominator - male child ejected from the Cabal who became an evil Knight of the Four Winds
Storm/Elec Defender - a Knight of the Four Winds
Storm/Energy/Psy Defender - an avatar of Rularuu
Dark/Dark Corruptor - stole Ravenstorm's "tech noir" for himself
Super Strength/Invuln Brute - a renegade Council soldier who can become a Warwolf

And that's just the ones I can remember right now.

ETA: D'oh, I can't believe I forgot my most famous canon toon: Count Crey (yes, he's *the* Count Crey), a Dark/Dark Scrapper designed to counter his wife's powers and take her down.

So far, we have;

Ceasar the Troll; A kid who grew up in Eastgate with parents so high on 'dyne that he was born green and a 'troll'. He didn't, however, lose his intellect. If anything, he's a smart Supa Troll in a non-grotesque body. Now runs his own crew in the Rogue Isles, cracking skulls and making big dollars.

Kayla Drake; Daughter of a Nemesis officer who was restricted to base and brought up in what equates to an army base. She ran away recently, but still has the uniform, training and, more importantly, rifle. She's quiet, timid and incerdibly paranoid about being dragged back. She is, however, very good at paperwork. Woo.

Umbral Nightwalker; A Nictus scientist back from near the start of the Kheldian War, now on earth. 'He' seems to have lost all memory of his time before and just after arriving on Earth, and now seems to have joined the Warshades. For now...

Colonel Lyndon; Vanguard Colonel who was transfered from the SAS for the first Rikti War. Pretty much it, really, was the concept I used to finally have a Sword/SHield scrapper I liked.

Jen Kerringer; PPD Inspector, body 60% replaced with cybernetics after an incident with an incerdibly powerful Hellion Damned by the name of 'Le Jean'. Head of the recently formed Special Response Unit (SRU). Dual pistol wielder.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I have those!

Silk Talon: DB/Ninja Stalker, a Tsoo madam. I BS'd that Tsoo madams are so seldom seen because the black ink of their tattoos grants them the ability to make you forget they were ever there.

Sideshow Suzy: Mace/Invuln Brute, a Carnie Strongwoman. The story behind her is that she was too big and dumb to be an Attendant or Harlequin when the Carnival tried to induct her, so they tried to kill her... but then she put a Strongman in a hammerlock, and they were like, "Hey, we can use this!"

Nurse N33dl3z: Petless Crab Spider, a Freakshow Meat Doctor with stolen Arachnos tech. Not much else to say about her.

Lumenvoid: Peacebringer. A Void Hunter and a Peacebringer nearly-mortally wounded each other, and the only way either of them would survive was if the Void Hunter became the Kheldian's new host.

Menders Epoch, Lathrop, and Zeal: Bots/Fire future-heroic MM, Kin/Elec Def, and Dark/Dark Corr respectively. Based not-so-loosely on my three favorite time travelers from other cana (Chrono Trigger and Back to the Future). All of them are oblivious to any Nemesis plots surrounding Ouroboros.


I love - LOVE - coming up with characters with heavy lore base. Designing the costumes alone makes me glee. If the name is still free by the time I'm able to buy more slots on Virtue, I've got my eye on "Frankenstyle" for a Facemaker nurse character. I'd camp it, but I'm busy camping "Argent Provocateur" for when I buy GR and can make her; she'll be either a DP/devices Blaster or a Traps/DP Defender, and she has a PPD theme.

Brand-X (DB/WP -original- & RAD/DP -current- with other builds thrown in], Dark God [soon to be rerolled as Demon Summoning/Dark Miasma - DS/DM is bringing nightmares to life not actual summoning demons from hell], and Jaslyn X [played by a different player currently] are triplets, created by the Longbow to be living weapons in human form. Scientist father, with no other hope to save a dying wife and his three unborn daughters, took up the offer to work with Longbow on their secret project as long they used his subjects.

Daughters and wife saved, things go awry much later.


Mu'Keeva (Mind/Elec Dom) has the blood of the Mu running through her veins.


Justice-Girl (Claws/Regen) is a clone of Ms. Liberty created by the Crey, that while she didn't get any of the memories of Ms. Liberty, she did gain her sense of morality and did find out who she was the clone of before escaping, and is why she got into becoming a hero. She secretly looked to Ms. Liberty as a mother figure and wanted to make her proud.

Justice-Girl was my first 50 (2 1/2 years in), and I think it was actually tying her to CoH lore, that made it fun for me to get her to 50 after always deleting and rerolling.

Not many...

Operative Seven is an autonomous AI belonging to 'Section 19' of the PPD, a unit tasked with finding novel ways of fighting crime.

Nitoichi was created with the express intention of fighting Rikti. Her only reason (initially) for fighting crime was to gain enough experience that Vanguard would allow her into the War Zone where she could off Rikti to her heart's content. She holds no particular rank with Vanguard, but does do 'special operations' for them.

I don't really like embedding characters to heavily into canon organisations because the structures are usually too badly described in lore. Whatever you do, you end up creating something which doesn't quite fit, or later gets made inviable by lore updates. I also tend to have issues around characters ending up with rank in such organisations since you can't actually earn it.

Lady Arete fire/fire blaster - Redeemed Sorceress. She fell in with the Circle of thorns and almost joined them before the Rikti War. It all changed one night after they had tried possessing her (and she fled) that she had to return to a Circle gathering in Perez Park.
It became a battle and she fled Perez, dodging Circle and Heroes alike, until she came to Steel Canyon. There she paused, gave herself up and was sentenced for her crimes.

The Lady is my heaviest based canon char. I got a few other chars, but she is the char most heavily written. One i can mention is:
Cyrene (emp/son Def & son/plant troller) - young mutant that grew up in Kings, recruited and trained by G.I.F.T.

Well, the way I set up my canon themed characters is that they aren't actually "Ranked" in any meaningful way.

The Vanguard Op Rikti and Midnighter are members in a slightly more in depth capacity than the typical hero or villain, but membership in those organizations is open to players.

The Troll and Nictus have canon in their origin stories (One took a ton of dyne, and the other sort of grew organically out of improperly implanted N-Fragments) but aren't members of their founding organization.

The Detective is a PPD officer, but that's fairly easy to RP.

The Snake-Hybrid is an anomaly, because he was created as part of a larger arcing plotline that my friend Heronator wrote for his snake hybrid. And that plotline involves S'theno and the Snakes heavily. There is a risk of future characterization invalidating certain plot points, of course. (For example, in the current version of our personal lore, S'theno rewards violence by granting certain children greater access to their Incarnate Powers. If Going Rogue revealed that the Snakes had a peaceful shamanic culture or something, Heronator and I would have to retcon a great deal of our storyline.)

So there's an inherent risk. But it doesn't make it any less fun.

The closest thing I have to a canon character is:

Confusionette, a Mental/Mental blaster. She looks EXACTLY like Fusionette, except her costume is pink. Her entire bio reads, "Fusionette is, like, my favorite superhero, like, ever!"

I have one such character at the moment. I rolled him when they added the bonus damage to Sniper Rifle when Targeting Drone was on. He was, and is, a Wolf Spider Huntsman, who decided that while the ideals of Arachnos are still a good thing, it's current leadership is decidedly not. Once Going Rogue hits, he's going to take a quick trip back to get all of his real Spider Gear, rather than the cheap knock-offs he's been working with all this time.

Let's see.

Col. Blitzkrieger - My main, 5th Column member, was in the Zig during the Council takeover and never stopped being loyal. Elec/Elec Brute with a costume themed around the 5th in appearance, albeit with a light electric powersuit covering his upper torso and arms.

Freddie Femur - Skulls Bone Daddy, Thugs/Dark Mastermind. Rather than physical attacks, his magic specializes in turning shadows into portals, through which he can summon gang members as if out of thin air. He uses the small skulls shoulderpads - one is his own former mask (using the Critix helmet), the other belongs to his dead brother, from which he can conjure his spirit in the form of a Dark Servant. His goal has been to prove two things: that even a Skull can be a force to be reckoned with with enough determination and ambition (he even got Ghost Widow to take him on as an apprentice), and that enough bullets can kill everything.

Archon Blitzkrieger - Council Earth version of my main, costume styled around an Ascendant. Elec Melee/Shield Defense.

The Warshade and two VEATs are a given. I had a Freakshow, but I ended up deleting him and remaking him as a custom enemy in the MA.

I think I've seen Confusionette... Or a similar character.

VEATs and Kheldians are a given most of the time, yes.

I know quite a few Crey Experiment. Crey is the go to for those types, it seems.

Karnac (Stone/SS Tanker) is a scientist who was captured and turned into one of the Devoured Earth for a number of years. When his daughter saved him, a fortunate accident broke the mind link with the Hamidon and he was restored to human shape, if not size. Using an ingenious device to block the call of the Devoureds, he has discovered that he still retains certain earth manipulating abilities but now uses them to fight against them.

Anathema (AR/En Blaster) was a cybernetic surgeon who was tricked into giving her research away to Dr Vahzilok who used it to augment his zombie army. Once she discovered what he had done, she tried to escape but was caught and used as spare parts for his creations. He removed her right arm, left eye, her lower legs and several internal organs, all while she was conscious. Rescued before he could end her life, she was then able to use her own technology to rebuild herself whereupon she swore revenge on the Vahzilok. Unfortunately, the trauma of being used for spare parts had fractured her mind and she now flicks between sane and completely irrational, making it hard to work with her. (Her story is here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ght=Absolution)

Revenant Star is a high up Council member who ran when she had an epiphany and fled Striga Isle with 30 Void Slayers on her tail. Unable to fight them all off, she fell to their hands and was left for dead in Independence Port. A young accountant found her dying body and while trying to save her, allowed the Nictus to pass into him. Waking several weeks later from the ordeal, the two merged and became Revenant Star, vowing to take down the Council or die trying.

We seem to get this thread a lot, yet I, for one, never tire of it.

I have a bunch of characters, and nearly all of them have some overarching goal, personal story, or motivation that they're supposedly pursuing as they level up. I have plenty of characters who have tangential involvement in the game lore, but only a few where the overarching story actually relies on elements of it exclusively. Here are the ones that spring to mind for me:

-Sidereal Knight, rad/energy blaster. His family has a long association with the Legacy Chain, but after watching their fixation on their work shred his parents' marriage and otherwise mess up his life, he rejected magic to become a scientist. He was (naturally, since this is comic-book land) forced to develop his own magical powers when evil, magical forces began targeting the family, including him, for destruction. His powers are colored yellow-white, like the Legacy of Light's. The most enjoyable moment of his career for me was running through my Legacy Chain/Banished Pantheon arc with him, then having him switch to his Radiant of Light costume for the first time at the end of it.

-Agent Walters, AR/traps corruptor. Denton Walters is a Crey Agent. He began as a running gag in some profiles of my characters I wrote for the old creyindustries.com website, but I eventually decided to make him as an actual character. I particularly enjoy playing a sympathetic Crey character; especially since I can use him to play up the ridiculous aspects of the faction. (For my money, Crey, not Nemesis, is the silliest faction in City of Heroes. A corporation where every single employee is evil and every single operation it performs is illegal or underhanded? How do they ever find time to make any money?) Walters eventually spawned a counterpart, one of my very few female characters . . .

-Analyst Rayce, electric/energy blaster. Arianne Rayce is a Field Analyst of Hero Corps (the blue-on-blue "heroes for hire" guys who adjust difficulty, not Longbow and friends [that's Freedom Corps]0. I really wish its logo were available as a chest emblem. Her alternate costumes, by the way, include a Merit Vendor, a Wentworth's Sales Associate, and an Ouroboros Mender. I'm trying to think of another noncombat faction to use for her final costume slot. Rayce was created as Walters's counterpart for the herocorps.com site, and I decided to make the two boyfriend and girlfriend. (According to one of my global friends, this makes me a pervert for being a male player with a female character ... oookay ...)

- the Dampfjaeger ("Steam Hunter"), claws/energy stalker. "Dampfy" is supposed to be an early-model Nemesis automaton, designed as an assassin but with a more advanced intelligence than later models. According to his backstory, his programming requires him to kill thirteen specific heroes and villains as part of some Nemesis plot of which he is otherwise ignorant. Unfortunately, "a prominent Paragon City fortune teller" (a nod to the Spelunker mission, of course) has informed him that killing the thirteen will cause a cataclysm that will destroy both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. (Though he predates i11, I've always felt this dovetails nicely with the presumable involvement of Nemesis in the "Coming Storm" storyline.) The Dampfjaeger cannot resist the directives to kill the thirteen, or, indeed, anyone who comes near him, but he is also programmed with the superficial sense of "honor" and desire to please the masses that characterizes Nemesis. The conflict in his programming has become so painful that he has decided to locate Nemesis himself and seek reprogramming.

- the Rikti Mage, ice/fire dominator. My first villain 50, back when leveling a dominator was agony. His bio explains that he has rejected the Rikti obsession with technology in favor of the study of ancient magic from the Rikti homeworld that predates, and was used in pursuit of, the destruction of the Rikti gods. (This all makes sense if you've followed the Rikti backstory, by the way.) Unlike Rikti Magi, he is a "pure" Rikti from their homeworld, using its lost "native" magic rather than magic learned from Primal Earth folk. However, like science-oriented Rikti, he despises gods, especially any entity that might seek to control a mortal's will, and therefore spent a lot of his career fighting the Circle of Thorns and Mu. In terms of Rikti politics, he would be an extremist Traditionalist, rejecting not just the changes to Rikti society pushed by the Restructurists, but the last several thousand years of Rikti development as well. His main goal was to find a portal back to the Rikti homeworld; using his powers, he has uncovered evidence that the Rikti gods were actually not destroyed at all, but are preparing to take their revenge on the Rikti people. He resulted in two interesting twists I think I added to the lore. First, I created a Rikti term for gods, demons, and other supernatural creatures, "ais," pronounced "ice" (plural "aiis," pronounced "eye-eese"); his battle cry was "Death to the Aiis!" Second and more interestingly, I implied several times through statements in his backstory materials that the Rikti arose from the Oranbegans of their world, defeating their world's Mu by starving their gods of worship rather than by bargaining with demons. After the Rikti Mage beat the goddess Hequat in Scirocco's patron arc and the events of i10, I consider his story more or less finished; he's notable for being one of the few characters about whom I feel that way.

- Back when my SG friends were more active, in 2005, I had a group where all the characters were supposed to be from Praetorian Earth. Therefore, they were heroic duplicates of various villain group leaders. For this reason, I greeted the announcement of Going Rogue with mixed feelings. Sure, it looks great, and the new version of Praetoria is more interesting than the original, but the retconning surrounding Praetoria wipes out an entire SG-worth of characters' backstories.

I tend to have more fun going off on my own strange tangents, but I have a couple:

My VEATs, a former Malta Gunslinger, a member of the Legacy Chain/Midnight Squad, and a member of the 5th Column waiting in the wings for his proper debut.

I also used to have a Family (or maybe it was a Mook) thug turned Troll, but that was a long time ago.

My Ill/Rad Controller Magic Minx is a magician who was a member of Omega Team (the team that was to go through the Rikti portal to destroy it and end the first invasion), though she doesn't know it yet. (Future RP story, so keep this a secret from my SG-mates ;P)

Before the invasion she was a stage magician who used real magic, no hidden strings or smoke and mirrors, and at the time went by The Magnificent Meia. She volunteered for Omega team to help make up for not becoming a hero and helping save lives before the war. When the assault began she got caught in a stasis ray like some of the other members before making it to the portal itself. And just as it exploded she cast one last spell that sent her through her own small portal to escape, unfortunately the blast followed her through before it closed and knocked her out, causing her to land a number of years in the future without any memory of who she was then.

I even made up her letter for the time capsule: http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2...meialetter.jpg


I also have an Ouroboros character named Acolyte Naomi whom I made as close to an exact copy of the outfit the Acolytes standing around wear as I could without their unique pieces. I've been told she looks like the Pilgrim's daughter so sometimes when I'm on her I just go to Ouroboros and stand next to him.

I've got just one: a PPD officer code-named Blue Watch

I do have several not tied to canon-groups, but whose origins are tied to canon characters. The various tech-origin fighters from The Flying Circus SG were brought to Paragon City by the Red Tiger, Jake Montoya (you can find him in Skyway City). Jake was a friend of their leader, and being a former tech hero, he helped them organize and get their first tech battlegear.

I've also got a few western heroes whose former SG was brought to Paragon City by Coyote. I recently posted their backstory here

The only one I can think of right now is my Widow, Operative SNAFUBAR. She's something of a cyber-terrorist within the Arachnos organization, "has yet to be caught for trolling on Lord Recluse's blog and will tell you she's the one who rickrolled him; whether or not that's actually true is, like any boasting online, up for debate." Or something like that.

I'm thinking of all my toons, she'd be the best bet to switch sides once GR comes out.

I don't have any canon based creations. But I'm thinking about it.

Sorina 'Tava' Tavarisch is my grav/kin who is a former Vanguard scientist (and one of Gaussian's operatives), and left after the war to join a specialized branch of the Freedom Corps. As it turns out, thanks to an in-game joke... she is now dating Positron (on the Justice shard).

On the other hand, Mender Anomaly, my en/mm blaster, is the future incarnation of my time-travelling heroine, Johanna Sinclair. Ten years in Jo's personal future, but hundreds of years in Earth's future, she's found by Mender Silos and recruited to Ouroboros.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Buck the Troll, a British chap who became addicted to Superadine after his disgrace and exile from England; however, he had a rare mutation for which 'Dyne was the catalyst, triggering an exponential growth in his intellect. He's basically Stephen Fry in the body of a green angry man. After battling his way out of the Trolls gang, he became a hero and has been kicking *** and drinking tea ever since.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha Ceasar the Troll; A kid who grew up in Eastgate with parents so high on 'dyne that he was born green and a 'troll'. He didn't, however, lose his intellect. If anything, he's a smart Supa Troll in a non-grotesque body. Now runs his own crew in the Rogue Isles, cracking skulls and making big dollars.

We should get together sometime.

A few of mine include:
* Technically Pyschic (Psi/Energy Blaster) - He was an cyborg from created by the Crey using their Tank armour technology. The Crey 'volunteered' one of their scientists to be the test subject but he found out and implanted a code that would disrupt their control over him. He is now on the run from them looking for answers, trying to regain his lost memories. This is something I wrote for him:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

I don't play characters that are derivatives of canon groups for the same reason I don't play EATs: I dislike the lack of conceptual freedom, and while Paragon Studios has produced some pretty amazing bits of storytelling, the CoH background as a whole has never struck me as being especially interesting or well-written. As arrogant as it may sound, I prefer my own characters, costumes and concepts, which I consider more original and creative.