Hubris, the New AV

To be fair in most Super hero settings, remaining an ordinary person is down to personal apathy and laziness.

Heck in City of heroes there are shops that sell cybernetic upgrades all over the place.

"Rise before Zod"
*rises*
"Kneel before Zod"
*kneels*
"Rise before Zod"
*rises*
"Kneel before Zod"
No wonder he's so #$&@! unpopular.

EDIT: Also, FPARN

----- Union's finest underachiever -----
Farewell CITY of HEROES
The First, the Last, the One.
Union: @ominousvoice2059

I think the full line must be "Sons of the Well, KNEEL BEFORE COLE!"

----- Union's finest underachiever -----
Farewell CITY of HEROES
The First, the Last, the One.
Union: @ominousvoice2059

There are some daughters too, not just sons

But any showdown with Tyrant totally has to have us standing outside the window of his tower, with the text option of "Emperor, would you care to step outside?"

I know that, but it has the same rhythm as the original.

Not before seeing Cole turn to Marauder and ask "Who is this imbecile?"

----- Union's finest underachiever -----
Farewell CITY of HEROES
The First, the Last, the One.
Union: @ominousvoice2059

Also valid:

"Tyrant! We would have words with thee!"
"We're selling these fine leather jackets."
"Open up or we'll huff, and we'll puff, and we'll blow the tower down!"
"Hey, just between us, Cole, what ARE you compensating for with that tower?"
"Spiderling scout cookies!"
"No seriously, you have a gigantic tower and a statue of yourself outside the door. That just screams 'insecure'."
"Dibs on the helmet!"

I'm getting hints of Zardoz. All very interesting.

It's good to know that if Steelclaw is otherwise occupied saving the world, another hero will come to our assistance!

Can we add in, "We seek the holy grail!"?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

"Can you hear me now?"

And for Sword using scrappers.

"Evil meet my sword, SWORD, MEET EVIL!"

"Well hello Mister Fancypants! I've got news for you pal, you ain't leading but two things right now..."

This guy? You mean the one who got beaten by the equivalent of traffic lights changing colors?



S.

"In the end, the world didn't need a super man...just a brave one." -- C. Kent

"Captain America was wrong. Power doesn't corrupt, it just magnifies what's already there." -- Tigra

....So much win.

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.

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

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Fetch me my fighting trousers.

Quite. You see, the ancient Greeks were on to something I think was lost in America during the Golden Age of Comics, when Americans decided that their heroes "should be" morally unflappable. Positive role models, like most Golden Age superheroes, do serve viable social function: they teach us what sort of people our society would like us to be.

But relentlessly good heroes fall short as a measuring stick in one very critical way. Or I suppose I should say they're too good at what they do to fulfill their societal purpose. Imagine, if you will, growing up in a society with myths not unlike those of the Greeks or Romans. Now imagine that the heroes aren't flawed: Heracles lacks his rage, Odysseus his pride. Now imagine you're told, consciously or unconsciously, that these are people you should try to emulate.

You'd never really succeed. In fact, it'd be downright frustrating to try. Your heroes wouldn't have any room for your humanity, with its vagaries and imperfections.

The vices held by Beowulf and Peter Parker alike teach us more about being human than their virtues ever could, because those vices teach us that we, as consumers of media possessing our own flaws, can be heroes as well. That said, a character dominated by vice instead of virtue stops being a hero and becomes a warning instead: a mythic "what not to be," but that's another discussion.

Newton: I observed Mercury's perihelion moving 43 arc-seconds per century more than it should. Is this WAI? --Einstein

Followed by all the players yelling "GET STUFFED!" and kicking him inna fork.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what has Emperor Cole and the other Praetorians ever done for us?

Or: Arachnos is right. It's not that they actively hate their unexceptional citizens; they're just not important enough to matter, and unlike in Paragon City, they don't bother to pretend otherwise. You can phrase it callously, as Arachnos does - we're not going to help you because it's not important to do so - or you can phrase it diplomatically, as Paragon does - we're not handing out mediporters to everyone, because they're a limited resource, and saving heroes so they can continue to protect citizens saves more lives than using those resources to help citizens directly - but the upshot is more or less the same. All men are not created equal, and that has practical consequences.

Weirdly, the best hope for a fair and civil society may be to empower everyone - and Arachnos is working harder on that than any "good" faction, simply because of their neverending need for foot soldiers and their willingness to rush in where angels fear to tread. Come to think of it, a lot of the antagonist factions are far more liberal in dispensing power to the people than any of the nominally righteous...