So Castle stumbles into the office drunk...

one weekend and decides to get some REAL work done since no one's around to bother him with little things like buffing energy transfer or making Stamina inherent....oh. nevermind about that last one.

Anyway, Monday morning rolls around and Posi along with War Witch and BackAlleyBrawler, bleary eyed, coffee in hand and ready to get the week started find our finely bearded dev passed out on the floor. Strewn about are half a dozen cans of Joose, a case of Jolt Gum, and four or five issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine with pages torn out and glued to the wall by an unknown substance. The future planning white board for the powers team has been erased, and the finely laid out plans of future powersets have been replaced by undecipherable scribbles and stick figure drawings resembling ancient caveman rituals.

So it's just another day at the office. Posi dumps a bottle of warm, stagnated water over Castle's face, gives him a good kick to the ribs and yells "Wake up man! Don't you remember that this is exactly how I got demoted!?" War Witch chuckles internally. Castle lets out a long, sickly groan. His limbs crackle like an old tree stressing under the wind as he tries desperately to regain enough balance an composure to stand up, upright his chair, and sit down. The spectacle gives BackAlleyBrawler a wonderful idea for a new animation he's been working on for Noble Savage.

Castle finally makes it to his chair and immediately slumps down onto his desk. The only force keeping him from immediately falling asleep again is the smell of Posi's fresh coffee permeating the air. Castle lurches forward, points at the cup and growls "...me.... giiiive...that!" His cheek manages to shake free the Warhammer 40k Space Marine figure that had been smothering under his face for the last 12 hours.

After taking a few moments to recover, and sipping on the double shot coffee provided by Posi, Castle's eyes suddenly widen. He jumps out of his chair with renewed energy and barrels past the crowd of confused devs that have gathered around to watch the latest episode of senior dev meltdowns. To the surprise of all he streaks straight past the men's room and crashes into the door of the Janitor's closet. He frantically flips open the latch and swings open the door.

A collective gasp from the crew is shared when, inside the closet, they see Castle's entire powers team and two system admins huddled in the corner. They are bound by frayed cat.5e network cable, blindfolded, and bared from the door by a series of mops and brooms. Posi and War Witch along with a few others rush past Castle, pushing him out of the way, and free the captured employees. As soon as they are free, they burst out and make a run for it. Two of them rush to the restrooms, the rest make a bee line for the exit. BackAlleyBrawler manages to catch one of them and implore him to explain what happened.

With tears streaking down her dirty, disheveled face, the victim manages only a few words before slipping out of BaB's grasp and running: "He made us do.... terrible... things..."

The long, awkward silence was broken when Castle suddenly runs into the janitor's closet, grabs a mop bucket, and barfs uncontrollably into it. The hurling seems to go on forever. War Witch whispers her amazement that so much vomit can be expelled from a single human being. Posi responds quietly "Really? I've seen him do this dozens of times."

War Witch makes an executive decision. "Castle... I think you should go home, clean up, and come back when you're feeling better. Everyone else, BACK TO WORK! SHOW'S OVER!"

Hours later Castle returns. As he makes his way to his desk, he finds it difficult to ignore the glares of his co-workers and the sudden change from bustling office chatter to complete silence when he steps into the work area. Only the sounds of quiet whispers and a neglected copy machine spilling papers onto the floor pierce the thick silence. Positron notices the distraction and pulls Castle away. "We need to talk."

He, War Witch, Positron, Avetea, and BackAlleyBrawler all make way for War Witch's office. War Witch closes the door behind them and Positron heads around the desk to sit down, but catches himself half way down. War Witch glares at him as he moves to the other side of the desk looking slightly defeated.

War Witch slowly walks to her chair, softly places herself upon it, puts her elbows on the finely lacquered executive desk, and rests her chin atop the pyramid of superiority that her hands had come together to form. After a long pause to gather her thoughts, she only had one thing to say. She looked at Castle but in a way that made it seem like she was looking straight through him. Like her eyes were not just daggers, stabbing into his heart, but more like chainsaws ripping him to shreds. "...explain yourself..."

"...I well, uh..." Castle struggled to remember the series of events that led to this moment, but he just couldn't muster a single memory of the last two days. "Ma'am, I just don't remember. We must have been attacked and drugged by a crazed fan or something. Maybe EvilGeko finally snapped. Maybe- "

"SHUT UP!" War Witch interrupted. She gathered herself once more. "I already know what happened, you oaf. Your team told me everything. Right before they all quit." Castle's eyes perked up with genuine interest, and fear, about learning of what happened. "So... what did I do this time, boss?"

"Well... according to your team, at around 3pm on Saturday you called them up and ordered them all to come in to get some 'real' work done on the weekend. When they all got here they were given assignments by you."

"Sounds productive enough." Positron interjected, in an attempt to make Castle appear as though his intentions were sound.

"Oh? Productive? Really?" War Witch paused as if to wait for a response. As soon as Positron took breath to respond she continued.

"You assigned Jeff to lay out plans for a Bats/Tarp mastermind. When he laughed at the suggestion you took a stick, to which you had affixed a brick, and beat him with it. Then you handed it off to Rick and told him to "design that!"

BaB slowly turned his head to the left and looked at Castle with an equal amount of stunned amazement, realization, and fear. He quietly moved his chair a foot or two further away.

She continued; "After that little sideshow you assigned Manny to 'Captain Morgan Blast' and told him to 'get his *** to the liquor store.' After that, Rick reported that you stumbled over to your desk, loaded up the Archetypes and Powers forums and yelled loudly about figuring out more 'stupid numb nut balance fixes' by seeing what those *expletives* were crying about.

She paused to give Castle a chance to say something, anything, in his defense. He said nothing. He sat there with his head low, staring at the carpet pattern, hoping that this story couldn't get worse, even though he knew it would.

"Then what happened?" BaB asked.

"This is the good part." War Witch sarcastically responded.

"THEN, Mr. Weekend Warrior here suddenly erupted into a blind rage. Rick said he heard you screaming 'IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, AND YOU'RE GOING TO CRY ABOUT IT, FINE! LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I TAKE IT AWAY!' You then attacked Rick and the rest of the powers team, tied them up, and threw them into the Janitor's closet. As you dragged Jeff's semi-conscious body, he managed to make out what was on your screen between the flashback memories of you beating him with a brick attached to a stick."

War Witch passed the conversation over to Avetea.

"...Oh, right. Yeah." Avetea appeared nervous and apprehensive about siding against Castle, fearing another outrageous burst of violence.

War Witch urged her. "Get ON with it, Avetea."

"Before the nurses kicked me out of his room, Jeff told me it was a post from a user named Nogebercoolio-something and it had something to do with the Assualt Rifle powerset. I managed to track it down. It was from the user Neogumbercules-

Positron interrupted with a "pff" to indicate both his dislike, and lack of surprise for this user and his post.

-...who posted his concern that, while he likes the set and finds it conceptually cool, he felt the Assualt Rifle powerset was underperforming, outdated, and visually boring. He went on to describe how he feels the set sacrifices performance for drawn out animation and-"

"No one cares what that guy thinks, Avetea. Just tell Castle what he did."

"Oh, um ok. Well... when you read the post, you went insane with rage, locked up the powers team and made a patch that deleted Assualt Rifle from the game. Then you went down to the server admin area, beat down the night crew, threw them in the closet with everyone else and pushed it live."

All Castle could do was facepalm himself.

War Witch added "Castle, one more thing."

She turned her monitor to reveal her computer was in the character creation screen. She showed Castle a new Brute powerset called "Birck ona sTic" Every single power was called "screwwww U, JEFF!" and when she showed the real numbers power effect every attack did 500 damage and had a 100% chance to hit Jeff in his ugly ******* face. She alt-tabbed to her internet browser which had loaded up the most current patch notes:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PATCH NOTES

Date: RRRIGHT F'N NOW, FOOLZ!

Powers:

YOU AUTTA LiStN TO MORE QUEEN CUZ LEIK MAN>>.. WHatz hiS NAME. THE GAY GUY! HE WAS SOSSOOO GOOD> EDDIE MERCERRY! ThAtZ his STTTIpid NAME! HA. SHUDA CAllED NAMED HIM FREEDY KRUGERY pfff man. I haaaate JeFF That GUy IS SUCh a NUMNAUTS!

City of Villians:

NOOOTHING beCUZ EW ALL DEVs HHHHATE VILLAinZ BUT I hhhhate jeef OSOO MUHC MORE Thhan POSI hatex villanss!XX>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before anyone could add anything, BaB spoke up. "Hey, can't we just roll back the servers a couple of days, say we got hacked, and call it done."

"Heeeey, thanks, genius! You must have gone to Brown to be that smart. No, really, NO ONE would have ever thought of that!."

War Witch's sarcasm was obvious but BaB continued.

"So what's the problem?"

Avetea jumped in to save BaB from more harassment from War Witch. "He deleted the backups. Well, not all of them, but our most current version of the game is... from Issue 3."

Castle still hadn't taken his face from his palm, and had even less reason to do so now.

War Witch took control of the situation immediately. It was obvious she had a plan long before the meeting ever started.

"OK everyone. Here's the plan. Castle, if you want to keep your job you're going to have to redesign an Assualt Rifle based set. I know you haven't looked at or thought about the numbers in like... forever, so you're gonna have to start from scratch. BAB! Your job is to provide backup for Castle. Get your team to stop whatever they're doing and focus on animations for his new Assualt Rifle set. Posi!"

Posi perked up at the ready.

"Shut up!"

Posi slumped back down.

"OK everyone, what are you doing!? Go now!"

As everyone stood up to leave Avetea inquired about what they should do about the powers team and the system admins Castle had assaulted and kidnapped, worried about possible legal action.

"Don't worry" War Witch replied slyly. "I've sent Jlove to handle the situation."

Positron could not remain silent. "Does that mean what I think it means, Witch?!"

"No one really cares what you think, Positron! I'm the boss now. I'm the Witch and you're the *****. I'm in charge, we do things differently around here now."

"Someday someone's gonna come along and stop you. Some hero, who will finally put an end to your tyranny!"

"Heroes only exist in videogames, Positron. You'll never stop me.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Patch Notes 4/19/2011

General:

Security hole which allowed for dbserver attack in March has been closed.

Powers:

Munitions Expert - Blasters, Corrupters, Defenders.

- Burst: You fire a short burst of gunfire into your target, dealing lethal damage and reducing his defense. Burst has an extremely narrow cone, and may hit more than one target if they are standing close to each other. Animation: Same. SFX: Small tracer lines seen flying towards target.

- Armor Piercing Round: Your rifle firing mechanism has been modified to support high density armor piercing ammunition. While incapable of firing in bursts, this round does very high damage, and can shatter your enemies' armor, reducing it's resistance to damage and possible knocking down weaker foes. Animation: Same as Slug. SFX: Large, slightly slower tracer flying towards target.

- Airburst Round: Advances in small arms munitions have resulted in this amazing explosive round. Once the weapon's user dials in the desired range, all he has to do is fire and the weapon does the rest. The rifle's computer stays in constant radio contact with the projectile, and when the round travels the programmed distance, a signal is sent to detonate the powerful explosives inside, causing a good amount of damage to everything in the area. Animation: User holds up gun, hits some buttons on it, then transitions into an aiming down the scope pose and fires. 2-3 seconds long. SFX: Button pushing sound effects, no visible tracer for projectile, very small firey poof at impact site followed by tons of tiny and very bright sparks flying out in all directions.

-M83 Fragmentation Grenade: Standard issue military gear. Acquired through black market means or through possibly legitimate special allowance. Standard is never good enough for a munitions expert like you, though. You've modified the grenade to explode on impact. Just don't drop it. Animation: Pull the pin, lob the grenade. Classic. SFX: Same as M30 explosion.

-M44 Stun Grenade: Stun Grenades are non-lethal weapons designed to neutralize targets without causing serious bodily injury. The extremely bright flash can blind your enemies and reduce their accuracy while the extremely loud concussive blast stuns them momentarily, allowing you to get the jump on them during the confusion. Animation: Pull the pin, then underhand toss the grenade at the target. After the toss user ducks and covers both ears. SFX: New loud and fast BANG sound effect, smoke cloud, bright flash like flash arrow. (Mag 2 stun, -5% tohit, -perception, 6 second stun/tohit duration, AoE standard accuracy)

-Rail Rifle: The Rail Rifle is the most advanced small arms rifle ever developed. Using ultra high levels of electromagnetism, the Rail Rifle can instantly accelerate a conductive metal slug to 11,500 ft/s. The extraordinary amount of energy required to power this weapon comes from a top secret technology that is rumored to be originally developed by DARPA, stolen and improved by Crey, stolen from them and improved by Dr. Aeon, and then finally stolen from him and improved upon by someone who escaped in a mysterious gold colored portal before mysteriously finding it's way back into the DARPA labs, along with instructions on how to make more. Some kind of mass-countering technology has been implemented to all but eliminate the force of the recoil, which would be enough to kill anyone who fired the weapon otherwise. The damage is enough to outright destroy any target short of an Elite Boss from extraordinarily long range. After firing, the power source has to shut down for an extremely long time to recharge.

(this is a new type of attack I will call a single target nuke. Ludicrous damage, very very long recharge, interruptable, long animation time, consumes almost all of your endurance.) Animation: You don't use your chosen rifle for this attack. It's a custom weapon that looks like a big, super high tech rifle. You aim down the big high-tech scope, the power source is glowing a bright blue, you can see parts swirling around inside of the weapon, a small electrical charge travels around from the top and bottom parts of the barrel, circling somewhat slowly until it speeds up to the point where it looks like a bright blue streak, then there's a blast of electricity in the center of the weapon. Even with the anti-mass generator, the force still pushes the gun up and your character is blown back by the force of the blast. SFX: A giant electrical blast from your rifle leads to an ultra bright blue streak that travels like a laser towards your target leaving a burning plume of plasma in it's wake. The targeted enemy is consumed by an extremely bright blue and orange plasma explosion and is hit with a massive KB effect (exploding generator style). If the target is defeated by the attack, he instantly despawns inside the explosion to give the effect that he just got completely eradicated.

-Flamethrower: You've applied a few illegal modifications to your rifle, enabling it to fire a quick and powerful blast of flames into a group of enemies. Enemies hit by the fire take a large amount of damage upfront and continue to burn for a short while. Animation: Like current flamethrower. SFX: The flame itself shoots out really fast and leaves a ton of black smoke, just like a real flamethrower. Enemies are set burning.

-M66 Incendiary Grenade: Incendiary grenades contain a powerful combination of white phosphorus and sticky napalm, creating an incredibly brutal and insidious weapon. The weapon explodes when it comes into contact with the target, engulfing it in white-hot flames. The napalm-like effect ensures that anyone that comes into contact with the initial target will also become engulfed. Animation: It's an elongated tube shaped grenade with the "flammable" warning picture on it. You hold it around the center and pull a fuse from the bottom, which causes white hot sparks to shower out from the bottom like a welding tool. You underhand toss it at your target and as it's flying through the air it's raining sparks down. It blows up on contact and englufs the initial target. Mechanics. The power works like the chaining effects in other powers. The initial target is engulfed in flames and starts to flail and run around wildly. Anyone he "bumps into" is also engulfed and begins to flail, so on and so forth, up to 10 targets. SFX. Fire, and lots of it.

-Dragon's Fury: A few more modifications of your weapon has allowed you to combine firing mechanisms to create a dual purpose weapon of immense destructive force. Bypassing the firing computer has allowed a single pull of the trigger to activate the flamethrower and the fully automatic standard rounds simultaneously. You hold down the trigger until you deplete both your flamethrower fuel and your standard ammunition. Both Flamethrower and Dragon's Fury must be fully recharged in order to activate this power. Animation: Same as Full Auto. SFX: New Flamethrower from ^ up there only it shoots for a longer period of time plus thousands of tracer rounds being seen flying out all over the place in a huge cone of bullets. Mechanics: This power requires flamethrower to be recharged in order to use, and after use, both the cool down of flamethrower and dragon's fury are started. Using this power doubles the cooldown on flamethrower, so it's normally 20 seconds, but if used in conjuction with Dragon's Fury, it increases to 40 seconds (unenhanced). Dragon Fury itself is 120 seconds unenhanced.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brick on a Stick melee

- New powers have been added to improve variety

- Brick on a Stick Melee spelling errors have been corrected in power descriptions.

- Brick on a Stick Melee has been proliferated to Stalkers.

Lol, any time Gavin. Glad someone got a laugh out of it.

Damnit I have to wait until next April for brick on a stick?

Post of the year

I've seen some pretty amazing posts on this forum requesting changes, powersets etc but this one tops them all. Thanks for the laugh and the powerset looks fun.

Epic stuff.




I so want Brick ona Stick Melee now...

The strangest thing about that story is that I couldn't help imagining that this was how Antimatter lost his post as Praetor. Now I can't play GR with a straight face.

"i'm the witch and you're the *****!"

XD

Dude, that was AWESOME, i can't stop laughing XD

And they took rep away...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

For the record, I'm still chuckling to myself about this post.

Hilarious, I spit out some of my morning tea as I read this.

*obligatory 'posting in an epic thread' comment.

Well done sir. Well done.

I was giggling like a school girl for the whole post, but I truly lost it at "I'm the Witch and you're the *****!" Excellent post!

+1 FakeRep for that.

You, Sir/Madam, are made of win.

Meh. Story that depicts devs as cartoony clichés that happens to be a fake out opening to the Ovaltine ad at the end, with some self deprecation mixed in to make the author appeal more to the "everyman". Where's all the good stuff?

Dammit, another dev tease. Where's my Cap'n Morgan Blast and Cuervo Control sets?