The ONE thing you want to know...

Not true. Arachnos showed up in I6, which included a Cape Mission where a villain is contracted by Arachnos to go to Paragon City - on US soil - cause a disturbance by killing people and destroying property, then engage a licensed hero and take her cape (and it's always Ms Shock for me, for some reason). Issue 7 brought us Mayhem missions, where Arachnos contracts villains to go to Paragon City and engage in a massive frenzy of destruction of property and kidnapping, fight an open war with police and violently rob a bank. Arachnos helicopters included. Issue 8 brought us Safeguard missions, where heroes are tasked to defend a bank from being robbed by one of Recluse's four lieutenants. Yes, oftentimes it's a no-name villain, but if your team is large enough, Ghost Widow, Scirocco, Black Scorpion or Mako could show up. Issue 8 also brought us the revamped Faultline, a zone which is clearly and blatantly being invaded by Arachnos forces arriving on submarines through underground waterways.

Since their very inception, Arachnos have been staging international incidents on US soil. At no point have they really had a leg to stand on to explain or justify these actions, unless we live in the bizarro world of Apocalypse 4 - Judgement where the justice system is clearly evil. I don't want to get into politics, but the modern tales of Iraq and Afganistan would suggest to me that the US wouldn't take getting their cities repeatedly invaded and people killed in massive televised terrorist events lying down.

Night Ward spoilers

The Talons of Vengeance, as introduced in First Ward and Dark Astoria are one of the dumbest villain groups we've had in the game, for the simple fact that they're a transparently evil group of card-carrying villains. Their ability to corrupt IS an interesting angle, but aside from Cerulean and Katie Douglass, it's really not explored to any real extent. Until Night Ward. Night Ward is the place that ALMOST gave these women an actual, real, legitimate backstory. Bear with me a bit.

Coo-coo for Coca Puffs Serene frees Lamashtu, "the mother of all monsters," from the Eternal Prison of Night Ward by a series of ridiculous missions. The entire story has, at this point, forgotten that the Talons of Vengeance are even a thing and they're just being used as faceless goons. The story ends with nary a mention of them. But if you actually take time to read Lamashtu's description, which last I checked wasn't even on ParagonWiki, you'll find something actually quite intriguing.

Lamashtu is the mother of all monsters, and as such is also the mother of the Talons of Vengeance. It's revealed that the Talons were never related to the Furies in the first place and the people's legends of the connection were wrong. This makes Percy Winkley's Doom Chronicles wrong, or at the very least makes him right to point out an inconsistency - the Furies frown on men killing other men as it creates blood feuds that last for generations, yet for the Talons to be appeased, blood must be shed. Why would the Furies do this? Answer: They wouldn't because they didn't. The Talons of Vengeance are not some kind of misplaced instrument of divine justice or some kind of guardians of fate. They aren't even all that interested in "Oathbreakers." They are, quite literally, monsters born of a goddess whose very reason to existence was to bring chaos, death and murder to the world, to serve as the counterpart of Bazuzu, the god of life, order and happy thoughts, rainbows and puppies though I may be misremembering some of that.

Basically what this means is the Talons of Vengeance have an entirely different origin story, and for as much simpler as that one is, it's also CONSIDERABLY less stupid. They are, in a sense, no different from the Devouring Earth - basic monsters driven by hatred and bloodlust who infect others with their condition and thus spread their numbers. The Talons of Vengeance are not an "enemy," they are a disease, born to spread throughout the world and destroy all life. As such... They actually make for pretty solid villains.

It's just a shame that none of this is actually part of an actual story! Three times these women show up and the only depth they're given exist in the description of a character who shows up as clickable ONCE? Talk about a missed opportunity.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

In my opinion, leaving these matters to Longbow IS taking it lying down, but that's clearly not a consensus by any means.

At any rate, it seems that I'm going to have to stop wearing my "anything too silly to be real isn't actually happening" blinders. (Yeah, Arachnos invading the Overbrook Dam for no particularly good reason falls into that category for me. Arbiter Sands is the saving grace of that whole mess. )

On our Earth, yes. But on Primal Earth, where mutant creatures roam our public parks and supposedly secret mercenary groups shoot missiles from giant robots in the streets and residential areas still have alien invaders attacking passers-by while sharp-shooters snipe jetpack-wearing low-level fliers and evil sorcerers unleash demons within walking distance of interdimensional portals that tend to open to alternate dimensions full of assassins, killer robots, cosmic invaders, and the undead, I don't think the US military gets out of bed for anything less than an extinction-level event anymore.

An incursion of Primal United States by Arachnos is like an incursion of Bartertown by the Girl Scouts.

I got a good laugh out of that. It does raise the question (hey, suddenly we're back on topic!) as to what shape the American military is in and, by extension, that of the rest of the world?

In real time, it's not quite ten years since the War. If Paragon City is an acceptable model of the world in general, then recovery is mostly complete, although certain threats, like the Praetorian War and the renewed threat of the Lineage of War might be holding things back and consuming whatever new military resources were developed post-War. If Longbow is being given carte-blanche to pursue their little war, it may be that it's because the government wants to pursue a military response but simply is not in a position to mount one.

Here's a question to ponder. If Malta and the Skyraiders subsist on stolen technology, what to you think the guys that pay full price are packing?

Cosmic Hanlon's Razor?


The implication from Drowning in Blood (Spoilers!!)






is that they were a race whose planet and well was consumed by the Battalion, who forced them into being its harbingers.

I suppose, but again, I wouldn't attribute the Well's actions to stupidity.

Also, Venture, I call the Well "Supernatural" because at the moment it has no scientific explanation. I wasn't calling it supernatural as a way to say everyone was "magic".

I'll rephrase it and call it "alien" then.

It's intended origin was supposed to be "Cosmic", if I remember what one of the devs mentioned right. Something that's otherworldly and hard to put a label on.

IMO the way they executed it feels more like it's just ***-magic, though.

I suppose in this case you'd substitute stupidity with an alien conciousness. More an Eldritch Abomination, I suppose.

So from the point of view of the Kheldians, we're all cosmic origin.

City of Heroes tends to use non-standard terminology. For instance, "the power of the divine" is canonically entirely separate from "magic." I'm not sure if it even has an origin, but if it did, I'd suspect it would be Natural.

As such, I don't think the word "cosmic" here parses as "from the cosmos" literally, so much as something closer to the power of the divine - a "higher" power that exists outside the framework of the origins system.

What Venture has been doing for the last, god... Six years? Has been presenting the power of the Well as "magical" based on the fact that it doesn't fit any of the other origins and that it behaves like magic, in the sense that "there are no rules, a wizard did it." That might be magical in the same sense falling into a vat of chemicals and mutating would make the source of your power mutation, but just as in City of Heroes that would instead be Science, so the power of the well may act like magic, but isn't Magic in origin. "Magic" actually has a very narrow meaning in this game, rather than the "anything we can't explain" meaning that it tends to have in colloquial English. I don't think even "the power of the supernatural" is necessarily Magic.

I actually recall a funny exchange between Venture and myself back when I still read his posts. I insisted ghosts were Natural as that's just what naturally happens when a person dies. He responded that "there's nothing natural about ghosts," which he said to mean that they're supernatural so they're magic. What I took out of it is that... No, ghosts AREN'T natural, since souls are supposed to move on into the afterlife, thus if a ghost exists, something UNnatural happened, thus why a different origin is needed. Once that's taken into account, Magic is indeed the only thing that makes sense.

Basically what I'm saying is that just because something looks like magic and acts like magic and we can't explain it, it doesn't mean that it's Magic and thus changing the Origin of your character. Neither the divine nor the supernatural nor souls no the afterlife are strictly Magic because "Magic" isn't just "anything that doesn't fit into any of the others."

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I thought I was the one suggesting the Well was magical for six years.

The point though is that the devs want to have it both ways, and they are not allowed to. They want origins to be vague and basically meaningless so the players can reinterpret them any way they want. And they want to use them in the story in a kind-of-sort-of-specific way.

That's just wrong. In a game about superheroes, you have to allow for some hand waving and some miracle exceptions, but at some point you have to call foul. Technology isn't Science? Okay. Mutation isn't Science or Natural? I guess. There's an origin that is not magic and not science? Wait a minute. So what's magic then if its not "that which is beyond Science?" That origin is a Well that has supernatural power that is not the supernatural power that magic is? Full stop. This non-magical supernatural force created the five origins? I said Full Stop, now you have to back up because I'm not kidding. This non-magical supernatural force is superceded by another non-magical supernatural force that is a third kind of supernatural non-magical force? Don't take this personally, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to remove you from your vehicle and run you over with it.

You yourself have said that you would rather the game have expansive definitions for things to allow for more freedom with character concepts. But you're saying that what the game calls "magic" involves only a very limited - and not fully specified - subset of the supernatural. Do you honor that when you make magical origin characters? Do you consider whether your characters actually fall within the boundaries of "Magic" or whether they actually fall outside the boundaries of City of Heroes magic? It would be inconsistent to interpret CoH magic as strictly and narrowly as possible for the purposes of canon, but as widely expansive as possible when it comes to character concept.

Skyraiders were an elite military unit that went rogue with all their gear at the time. Replacement equipment may be stolen or black market, and they probably have some small assembly plants that use stolen/bought components.

I would rate their current technology as "high quality mil spec but some years out of date". With all the advances brought by Rikti/Praetorian wars, that "some years" is probably significant.


Malta is a conspiracy within the state structure. They do not "steal" stuff, they "black budget" it. I would rate them as "state of the art, equal to the legit special forces teams". Which is apparently not good enough for the more recent threats and incarnates. But then, Praetorias technological superiority was a plot point and the rise of the incarnates is supposed to be a big deal.

False. Divine power is explicitly Magic origin; it says so right on the label.

Emphasis added. The idea that gods are somehow Natural origin is absurd beyond belief.

What I have been pointing out ever since we were saddled with the Well/Incarnate storyline is that when it comes to whether or not the Well is magical, it fails the duck test. It behaves in every meaningful way like an evil deity offering Faustian bargains. Slapping a Not Magic label on it doesn't make it so.

They are all magical because in every part of the game they are treated as magical. To the point where Apparitions in First Ward surprise everyone including the NPCs by being non-magical in nature. (And because they're not magical your GHOST-SLAYING AXE doesn't work on them.)

The irony here is that the Faustian bargain the writers seem to be making is that they seem unwilling to take the easy way out: to say that conventional magic such as what a player character might wield is simply one kind of magic, and not the most powerful magic in the universe, while the Well is a different kind of magic that is far more powerful. In other fictional universes, there is the notion that there is invocational magic that people can tap by drawing power from some magical source - such as a magical deity or supernatural power - and non-invocational magic that either utilizes some raw magical energy within the universe or is sourced directly from the caster. But they want magic to be this all-encompassing supernatural origin for player concept, but this small oddly-limited thing for the purposes of canon. That's selling the soul of your canonical consistency for the illusion of numinosity.

There can be different kinds of magic from the worship-powered magic of the Discworld gods to the invocational magic Dr. Strange used to wield before wielding the raw magic he wielded as a chaos sorcerer to whatever the heck he's wielding now. And it can be hierarchical. But for some reason they seem to want the Well(s) to go beyond that, but lack the literary dexterity to properly construct it.

In the end though, it's the effect of its actions that matters, not its motives, and the effect of its lack of understanding or caring about our puny human morality is that it picked a megalomaniac as its champion and imbued him with the power to kill a hell of a lot of people, and it will likely do so again. Man-eating tigers aren't acting out of conscious malice either, but they are still put down. You wouldn't cut a deal with Cthulhu for more power, so why are we cutting a deal with the well?

Of course I don't honour it. It's a stupid idea. The Origin of Powers can go die in car fire. I'm not trying to defend the idea of the Well of the Furies, so much as I'm trying to explain what I think the writers are going for, and it comes down to pedantic semantics. What "is" magic cannot be defined, but it's been made very clear to us that what "isn't" magic is the Well of the Furies. This does bring up a good point, however - are there other things which look like magic but really aren't?

As I said, I still see "the power of the divine" to be Natural. We are simply left to accept that these creatures are not human and this type of power is natural to their species, while magic itself is somehow unnatural, something that has to be consciously done, as opposed to something inherent. The can of worms this opens is exactly why I ask for origins to be loose enough as to permit multiple different interpretations.

However, to reverse-engineer what the Well was supposed to be, I don't think it was intended to HAVE an origin. Let's say I spent the last week banging my head on a cow and I accept the Origin of Powers reasoning that "power" is somehow just an expression of one's true nature. If that were the truth, then the Well of the Furies doesn't offer power of any one origin, so much as it just boosts what's already in our own origin. A smart person becomes smarter, a sorcerer's magic becomes stronger, a mutant's mutations become more and more beneficial. That sort of thing. An Incarnate you is still you, just more powerful in the vein you were already powerful in.

Except the design of the actual Incarnate powers... Doesn't really reflect this. Rather than boost what we already do, Incarnate powers just out-and-out grant us someone else's powers in the same vein as Patron Pools grant us weapons on loan from Arachnos. This is never as blatant as with the Lore power, where we get Well reflections of entities already infused with power from the Well, or at the very least that's how the slot was when it came out. If I'm borrowing the Well's minions, then that's not an extension of my own power, it's outright borrowing someone else's power. And if I'm borrowing someone else's power, then the Origin of that someone starts becoming relevant. You can't claim the Well has no origin, because that only works if the Well has no direct power. Even if it cannot use its power directly, by developing brand new abilities, I am, in essence, using the Well's power, and that demands an origin.

As far as I'm concerned, the Well should never have been a "thing." You're completely right in that you can't make Origins not mean anything and yet still mean something at the same time. Trying to base a story on the meaning of a meaningless thing is an oxymoron. Yes, you can explain it away with ******** circular logic like I did above, but that's not a solution, it's just trading priority between a circle of problems. Any writer worth his salt should have seen the massive can of worms a story like this poses and run for the hills, because this is one of those plot cul-de-sacs that you're just better off not going into.

The entire history of City of Heroes from 2004 onward has been one objective lesson that the LESS you do to explain how and why player characters work, the better off you are. I get that Incarnates were the big selling point and a storyline was needed specifically surrounding that concept. I'd have scrapped the idea from the get go, but let's say we're stuck with it. How do you solve the problem of telling a story about something that is, by its very nature, undefinable? Well... Simply make a story where you try to define it and fail. Let's exercise our brains for a while and hypothesise.

Mender Ramiel has seen the future. He knows I will one day become a "mighty and terrible Incarnate" and have the power to stop the Coming Storm. Ramiel does not know why, since my future self thought it would be funny if he didn't mention that. So Ramiel doesn't know and I don't know, but... Maybe the Statesman (I'm still living in the past) or Recluse would know. They're Incarnates and my future self mentioned something about Incarnates, so... How did they get their powers? From a well that's gone now, so that's a no-go. Huh. OK, what else? Well, Hero One is pretty strong, what's his story? Oh, Excalibur. OK, that's a bust. Well, let's go where Statesman and Recluse found the Well and see if I won't find it. Nope, but... What's this? A note and a... Shard of some kind? Oh, the letter writer knows! And this Shard, it's having an effect! Oh, wait, I can feel it! I know I can do better! Wow, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up to me. Now I have to learn everything all over again.

I also need to find the Letter Writer. He clearly knows how to become my future Incarnate self, right? Well, I meet the Letter Writer and it turns out... He didn't really know, either. I just showed up to him and handed him the Shard and told him some cryptic warnings. Well, that's a bust. But, hey, there's this huge war going on, so I better go participate in it. It'll be good practice, plus the world needs saving, right? What do you mean I'm a villain? Go away, the world needs saving!

So I keep fighting and gaining power, and I keep looking for people who can help me explain these powers. The answer is always the same - nobody knows why I'm developing these powers and they can't help me. So what, ultimately, is the source of my power? Well, turns out my future "mighty and terrible Incarnate didn't know either," he sort of stumbled upon this stuff by accident and thought to speed the process up by shunting it back to the past, hoping the second go-around would help me find out. Ah, well, guess the key was inside me all along.

OK, it's not as "specific" a storyline and it is, ultimately, a waste of time, but isn't that half of what super heroes on a mission go through anyway? Samurai Jack spends all of his time looking for a time machine and he never seems to be able to use one, but that doesn't make his adventures any less interesting. So why not go with that?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It wasn't always like this, though. Way back when the idea was first being bandied about as a possible epic archetype, the idea of incarnation was literal. Statesman literally was a reflection of Zeus and was wielding some of his power. That's the whole point of the first Top Cow story. Recluse was literally the avatar of Tartarus and so his powers reflected those of the titan, in both kind and nature.

An incarnate archetype was someone who was essentially an avatar of one of the gods, and those gods themselves were originally recipients of power from the Well/Pandora's Box so they may well have been avatars of the primal forces of order, chaos, nature, and death.

That's all the story that was required. The obvious problem with this concept is that if you want to make everyone happy then you suddenly have to come up with dozens of powersets, one for each major mythical divinity.

The current, more generic version of incarnate doesn't really embody "incarnation" at all. Granted, it's easier to implement but the downside is that we now have a single mad god as our God and the resulting story that goes with a mad god. HP Lovecraft would probably love it.

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

I miss that angle. I preferred the Well when it wasn't sentient, and it was instead just one mystical source of power among many that someone could gain their abilities from. Now it's apparently insane, chooses who it imbues power to, and is the only power source available. :\

And that's a problem. A big one. I've always had a problem with the concept of "Epic ATs" not because they're "not epic enough" but rather because they fundamentally undermine the reason I play this game - the ability to put my own imagination into a medium that will make it visual. I used to play the game by just making a decent costume and going for it, and as a result I made my only break back in September-December 2004, because I simply burned out and didn't think I wanted anything more to do with the game. That's when I moved to a more story-driven approach to the game and started really making my own characters with my own stories.

That's why I always hoped Incarnates as a "better" AT wouldn't happen - because I didn't want someone else's fiction determining what my character was. That's also why I find our current version, for as flawed as the concept of the sentient Well may be, to be far superior. Even for as specific as it is, it's still FAAAR more generic than being an avatar of some religeon's god. This is tantamount to the game constantly forcing you to be an Arachnos lackey, and it's an approach I'll never get. I have yet to see a game with any sort of customization where tying the player character directly to the story has improved it. Kingdom of Amalur is one of my favourite recent RPGs, and for as much as I love the story, the *** falls off of that one in the last 15 minutes when the major revalations of who my character was before losing her memory start dropping and... They're pretty damn stupid. The guesses I had at the time were ten times more important.

This may be selfish to say, but that's fine by me. I never wanted "incarnation." Far as I'm concerned, they should have scrapped the whole angle when Jack left and let us gain power in some other, non-unimaginative way. Because honestly, I can think of few less imaginative ways to gain power than for it to literally be granted to me by an established god. At least be creative and go with fictional gods like Tielekku, Hequat or Lamashtu or, hell, even Lughebu. But honestly, the LAST thing I want is to be the avatar of Jehovah, not only because that brings real religion into the game, but also because I prefer to use original ideas wherever possible.

Like I said, though - as long as we're stuck with "Incarnation" and we NEED to tie a story to it, let's at least try to make it as inclusive as possible. And what's more inclusive than eventually finding out that there is no answer - your fate are your, the past is irrelevant and you're free to chart your own path. Maybe you're awesome, maybe you found an artefact, maybe it just sort of happened. Nobody knows, so you're free to make up whatever you want. ANY story regarding our characters should end on that note: "We may never know."

I forget who said it, but having backstory for something isn't necessarily superior to having no backstory. Now that we know the backstory of, say, Darth Vader, does that really make him more compelling as a character? Because it didn't to me. My guesses were, again, a lot more dignified. And that's always going to be true - unless you have an idea so great as to blow EVERYONE away, people's guesses and theories will always appeal to them more than the truth. It's human nature.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's why even though it violates canon, I much prefer my version of the Well as the incarnation of human potential. It simultaneously explains everything, and yet locks you into nothing. The limits on the Well would be the absolute limits you believe exist for humanity (or whatever species you happen to be), which could obviously be extended to encompass any player character you can create.

And now that it has, much like the green fuzz in the fridge, it's time to get the bleach.