Lore AMA... coming soon...ish

Everything from this document that someone put together: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...m5fIVs7Z4/edit

What would the last four incarnate slots be? Was I right, was one of them tier 10 powers for your primary and secondary?

How did the rest of SSA2, Pandora's Box, play out? Does Back Alley Brawler end up getting Statesman's powers like I guessed?

What were the Battalion, really, other than an alien invasion force? How would we have ultimately defeated them?

Why did the Shivans of Bloody Bay end up at odds with the Shivans from Galaxy City?

Would Sister Psyche ever get resurrected?

Would Ms. Liberty ever succeed in redeeming Lord Recluse?

How did the events of Dark Astoria ultimately affect Scirocco?

What was the real story behind Nemesis? Did we ever really encounter the real him?

Which Nemesis became Mender Silos, and how did he break his own "carbon tether" law?

What were Ouroboros and the various menders ultimately up to?

What were those long-abandoned construction sites in Port Oakes and Steel Canyon originally planned to become?

1. Can you tell us about all of Nemesis' plots? Or at least the ones regarding him and ouroboros and the Battalion.

2. Who were the first incarnates? Is DJ Zero an ascended? Who is (are?) the ascended we know that Prometheus mentions at one point to us?

3. What is at the very peak of the power hierarchy in the City of universe? Since there are mentions of ascension and steps above it.

4. Finally, who really is Prometheus and what is his agency about? Who leads it and what are their agendas?

5. What were the plans for the player character once the Battalion threat was done with and we would have the Omega slot filled up and the entirety of the incarnate system completed?

Were Wavelength and Flashfire chosen as contacts for SSA2 based solely on the backstory of Wavelength as an ex-Phalanxer or did Flashfire's position as an example of in-game character creation (blaster archetype example) on the early website contribute to the decision? Were there plans to use the other "archetype example" characters?

It seems clear that putting Penelope in the Phalanx is partially fan service and partially a way to show growth of a signature NPC and of the Phalanx. I've had this theory, though, that the death or at least severe endangerment of Penelope could act as a catalyst to trigger the transformation of the Clockwork King into the Psychic Clockwork King. Were there any plans on the table to use her in such a fashion? Would the Psychic Clockwork King be an incarnate-level threat?

Was the Seaview Project a throwaway reference or was that part of a larger plan to eventually include underwater zones? I notice that the extensive Rikti writeup posted by Poison includes a reference to ocean-bottom rikti bases.

Where did Sebastion Frost come into the expanded history of the Skulls?

Jacaranda Vista is the "flooded city" map used as the unique map in "The Freakshow War" story arc. (I think it's in the Architect these days as "Ruined City 2" or something of the sort.) While it obviously has no story purpose other than to be a unique map in a story arc, the zone has a quality to it that I've always enjoyed. Is there any backstory at all beyond "The Rikti did it"? The center of the zone is a vaguely Batman-like statue. Is he anyone in particular?

I'll just put in another vote for "what's the FULL story on Ouroboros and on Prometheus?"

Why was Hero Corp never developed beyond being the incarnation of the difficulty slider? I would have liked to see some hints as to their methods beyond "we'll spread the word that you're really tough". I think in later updates that they lost even the veneer of being PR spin agents and they became pretty much literally just a NPC-based difficulty slider.

Speaking of Hero Corp, I was a little surprised that I-24 had them cast as "vigilante". It seems to me that the storylines in I-24 ought to have been reversed, with Hero Corp being the "rogue" storyline and Wyvern being the "vigilante" wet works storyline. Were there any special considerations that caused you to cast them in the roles they were assigned?

Who really, truly, founded Freedom Corps? When was Freedom Corps founded? Were we ever going to see Freedom Corps stories that did not revolve around Longbow or the FBSA?

Was Salamanca ever going to be rescued?

Were you surprised at all that so many people took a negative view of Longbow or had you intended them to be controversial?

What were the various Incarnet powers going to be?
What was the coming storm?
Has this whole thing bin a nemesis plot?
Who put the bop in the bopshebopshebop?
Was it the same person who put the ram in the ramalamadingdong?
Was there any plans for the other oroboros islands?
Was there any plans for a space or space based zone?
Was there any plans for base upgrades?
Was there any plans for individual bases?
What feature or features did you most want to include but couldn't do to lack of ability or time?

I currently only have four questions, two of which were already asked (That I saw, I kinda got excited and didn't read past the first page, so sorry if all of them were already asked!)
1. What is the Battalion, what do they look like, what do they do, what was gonna happen with them?
2. What would the remaining Incarnate slots have done and when would they be unlocked?
3. I had a hunch (and I can't be the only one!) that Scirocco would've become a good guy and Mu'Drakhan would've taken his place in Arachnos. Am I anywhere close to correct?
4. What, if anything, did you have planned after the Omega slot was unlocked?


Thank you so much for doing this, and thank you so much for everything you have done.

On the subject of creature names:

Most of the monsters in the game have "appropriate" names. The exceptions (that I can think of anyway) are the Hydra, Kraken, and Jurassik. (I guess that if we think of the creature in the sewer trial as "the Hydra" as opposed to "a hydra" then it makes better sense.)

Why were they named after creatures that they appear to have no resemblance to?

According to the comic book, the Praetorians didn't have portal technology, nor the coordinates to Primal Earth, until they got it from us. I asked about this on a livestream, was told that someone from Primal Earth with portal technology attacked Praetorian Earth before they attacked us, but that you couldn't reveal who it was at that time - so who was it? Malta? Rikti Restructurists? The Circle of Thorns? Arachnos?

Closely related question: At level 20, Provost Marchand sends Responsibility Loyalists to Primal Earth in hopes of averting a war. Were there any off-camera attempts to negotiate with Tyrant, to find out why he was attacking us and either correct his mistake or make concessions or offer alternatives? If so, why did they fail? If you, the writers, never considered that idea, why did you? I was never prouder of this game than when we managed to end the Second Rikti War with minimal bloodshed; why did you pick the genocidal solution to the Praetorian War?

Let's see, might be asking a few repeat questions but here's what Iw as curious about:

What did the battalion actually look like?

Prometheus always seemed like a figure that we would eventually come at odds with, were we ever going to reach a point we'd fight him? And why?

Were we ever going to meet any of the other banished pantheon deities?

Were they any other 'big reveals' about Praetorian Counterparts we never got to? Like counterparts of Primal characters we never got to see -or- established Praetorians whose Primal counterpart was never confirmed?

What was going to be the next 'big threat' after the Battalion?

Was there any external reason for Malaise's eventual return to villainy?

Was there more planned for the Night Ward crew? (Katie Douglas, Midnight Master, Ward, Whispering Coyote) And if so, what?

Was Praetoria ever intended to go to 50? What would have been the 'final' Praetorian Zone?

What was intended to be the next Incarnate Zone?

What is the story behind Prometheus' 'organization', aka the angels in Ouroboros, Dark Astoria, and Night Ward. Who are they? What is their agenda?

Were there any more Praetorian and/or Incarnate Taskforces in the works?

Would we have ever seen Primal side Devouring Earth at 'incarnate' level?

What would have been the outcome of Marcus Cole's and Dominatrix's trials?

What happened to Praetorian Infernal?

Would we have seen Scirroco ever defect to become a Hero? Who would have taken his place as a patron?

Were there any other survivors from the Omega team?

Would we have eventually seen the Rikti homeworld?

Who was the embodiment of the Well of the Furies? it has been implied we had met them.

Would Praetoria have ever been liberated from the Hamidon?

Statesman and Recluse were the Incarnates fo Zeus and Tartarus respectively, were there any other incarnates of mythic figures we hadn't been told about?

Is Lady Grey an incarnate?

What other existing characters were incarnates but it had not been revealed about them yet?

What was Darrin Wade's planned fate?

Were we ever going to meet other Cimeroran counterparts, like Marathon? (Assuming that was Synapse's counterpart)

What exactly is the deal with the 'past counterparts'? Reincarnation? Or some other reason?

Would we have ever seen a good Recluse from an alternate dimension?

Were there any future plans for Croatoa or any of it's villain groups?

Did Maelstrom survive the TPN trial? If so, what happened to him?

Was the Last Bastion in Praetoria ever intended to be a zone?

What was the plan to develop the Illuminati? Would they have ever had an in game presence and even taken over areas from Arachnos or at least had in-game contacts outside the SSAs? Who was 'the insider' revealed at the end?

What happened to Marshal Blitz?

Were there any more plans for the Shining Stars? What caused Flambeaux to break from them?

Would we have ever seen Grym's world?

Were you guys really going to firebomb Perez Park with Battalion forces?

Why did Maria Jenkins and Percy Winkley both have prompts to 'return to them at 50'? Were there arcs planned for them?

What was 'beyond' Incarnates? Prometheus told us about becoming 'Ascended', would we have ever been able to reach that state?

Was Sister Psyche as permanently dead as Statesmen or would she have made an eventual return in some form?

During the Oroboros trial they mention that no one has ever actually managed to change time by flashback but they keep trying anyway. Given that the leader of Oroboros is silos/nemesis, what's really going on? And Given that dream doctor mentions Silos personally used time travel to prevent the destruction of Rularuu with the Dagger of Jocas, are the menders lying to the players or did silos lie to them?

Once and for all, is Pendragon the praetorian hero one or hero-1? It really really really seems like it, but I could never find an official "yes" or "no".

Is there a praetorian equivalent to pandora's box?

Is there a primal equivalent to the black prison?

Are the talons of vengeance in both dimensions the same or different? Where was this story arc going, like would we ever actually be facing down the furies themselves? And would they be as weak as most of the other deities presented in City (like the one in Scirocco's patron arc) or way up there like Mot?

Was there any human life on praetorian earth other than praetoria city?

Where was praetoria city physically located? I heard people say New Mexico, Texas, etc. but it never quite looked like that to me.

How were the malta troops level 54 in the Tin Mage taskforce when all the rest of the world were depowered by Tyrant?

We know that Cole had access to at a minimum two additional dimensions besides praetorian earth: Warrior world (battlemaiden's) and Shadow World (black swan's). Why didn't he take more and more alternate worlds or even abandon praetoria all together and migrate people to one of the dimensions without a hamidon? We bumped into several that were totally empty. Or, hell, just send Hamidon on a one-way trip to the world ruled by the psychic clockwork king and call it a day.

I'll give a second vote for the question about origins and add one more specific point to it: Was sister psyche really a mutant because she said that she didn't think she was and many of the other psychics were naturals (like the fortunata's). On a related issue, why have both the hero and villain natural representative in the origin of power arc be "powerless" instead of say a peacebringer or fortunata? What was behind that decision?

Was it true that once magic was the only origin but it had 5 aspects? If so what were the 5?

What's the deal with the unremovable crab/bane backpack and how is it controlled? Fused into the spine, neurological implants, fancy optical controls?

The requiem that nearly destroyed the entire universe by blowing holes into so many dimensions on werewolf world didn't appear to ever become an incarnate. In fact, he seemed to additionally lack any support from the rest of the nictus. What was his story and why did the well reject him but seem to back our primal requiem?

What exactly are television, radio, and HD (possessed machines, interdimensional beings, energy beings, aliens, what)? If HD is the praetorian television, is there a praetorian radio?

The nightward story had a lot of very cool lore about spirits and the afterworld. Was there an overlap with primal earth's afterworld or a primal equivalent?

Lady grey, like everyone else I want to know her real story. But one no one else asked yet, WHY didn't she want us to ask how she knew about the two incarnate paths, and obviously the related question how did she know?

Oddyseus was lately being played as a buffoon. My favorite example: he was surprised that nemesis outsmarted him when invited to an auction of magical items. Was he being written off as essentially the reason the warriors were never able to rise above mid-level? Were there any plans for Achilles to come back into the story, maybe with a redeemed block of warriors?

Where were you going with the super-powered pyriss character?

What's the deal with the clockwork in Cap au diablo? Why do they look the same as the ones from paragon city, how did they get there and why aren't they linked to the clockwork king?

What is the deal with the clockwork's ability to rebuild themselves? Is it the king doing it or are they truly eternally replicating and impossible to permanently destroy? Like are they all a hive mind, much like the praetorian version (metronome), or are they independent entities? Do they have souls in the City of Heroes sense (like could a clockwork prince or duke be sacrified by the circle of thorns and would it empower a demon)? That said, how do you permanently destroy a clockwork given their ability to self-repair and why don't the praetorian clockwork controlled by metronome have this ability (or do they and we just didn't see it)?

Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this!

• Were there ever any plans to add more big-deal past events to the game, like Brass Monday? I'm thinking in the style of the Ouroboros task forces like Trading Places. I would've loved to play through Brass Monday.
  
• How were Sister Psyche and Statesman (and possibly Maiden Justice) going to be memorialized in-game and in the universe?
  
• Were Sister Psyche and Manticore present at Statesman's funeral?
  
• Was there ever a plan to have those who died during SSA1 "come back" as ghosts, hallucinations, clones, or anything like that, to, say, torment their still-living loved ones or something?
  
• Did you have plans for any other characters to switch sides, aside from the ones that everyone's been asking about in this thread?
  
• Was Boomtown ever going to be rebuilt? Same with Galaxy City, would we have ever seen it fixed up and reopened? (Relatedly, how much does FEMA hate Paragon City? )

Hello fellas

1. What was with the construction site in the North Eastern side of Steel Canyon? Was anything ever going to come from that?

2. Were all the zones going to be revamped eventually?

3. I read somewhere that the War Walls were going be taken down. That true? Would you have just made everything one united zone, thing? What would that be like?

I can't even begin to phrase all the questions I have for the lore behind City of Heroes, but there's one thing that's always bugged me:

What's the deal with Primal Infernal and Praetorian Infernal?

We know that they both come from a different dimension (though not necessarily the same dimension), which is where summoned demons are supposed to originate. We know that Primal Infernal's real name is K'Varr D'Shall, and that he was tossed out of his dimension when his best friend/rival T'Keron, who had gone mad with power, botched a summoning spell and fused with its target, the demon Valmaz. Infernal was stranded on Primal Earth, where he assisted the Vindicators as he searched for his friend.

Praetorian Infernal, on the other hand, does not have a listed name, had no qualms about using his demon binding abilities and was encouraged by Diabolique to continue to subjugate demons until he went mad with power.

I have long suspected that Praetorian Infernal was actually T'Keron, sent to a slightly different dimension than K'Varr. Was this in fact the case?

And regardless of the above, what would have been next for Praetorian Infernal, as the only one of the bunch not seen during Going Rogue/Incarnate content?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Was Kallisti Wharf planned to be an actual new zone, or just a setting for instanced missions?

1) Was the Genesis unlock going to require defeating Praet Hami as was speculated by so many?
2) Was Manticore going to go Vigilante or Villain, and were Scirocco, Ice Mistral, or GW going to to Rogue or Hero?
3) Were we finally going to get a moonbase or space station?
4) Were you going to do anything with the Primal Clockwork King now that Penny was part of the Freedom Phalanx? I always hoped she'd sort of rush him into the group as well.

Can we get some data dive info from you guys as well as lore stuff?


How many of each AT were created over the life of the game?

What was the overall most popular origin?

More male or female characters created?

etc., etc.

Didi Nemesis spark the Rikti War to get technology like Mediporters and dimensional portals proliferated in Primal? Was this actually prep for Batallion's arrival?

When did the Woodsman begin his heroic career?

Did the angels (see Michael, Christie, Gabriel, and the ones in Night Ward) bribe Prometheus into working with them with one or more Cole's heads?

How many other inhabited cities were left in Praetorian Earth?

What is the exact relationship between the original Lord Nemesis and Mender Silos?

Were we ever going to see Manticore indulge in his Vig-curious ways?

What about watching Scirocco go Rogue?

What does the door on the underside of Ouroborus do?

Who was Rularuu pre-Ascension?

Were the accusations levied by the Dream Doctor against the assorted Menders true?

Was Vanessa Devore Penelope Yin's mother Primalside as well?

That'll hold me for the moment, I guess. I could probably get in a competition with Sameul Tow to see who could produce tears from you guys first for asking after minutiae.

Rularuu.

That is all.

1. Was there going to be any kind of payoff for the Clockwork King/Penny Yin relationship?

2. Was it always the plan that Penny would grow up to join the Phalanx and who her mother would be?

3. Were there plans for more Rogue/Vigilante story arcs in the future?

Did you ever consider doing something with Ms. Liberty that involved a punishment? For one, she polluted the waters of Port Oakes by sinking the Cairo Queen (Exploration badge). She also is responsible for the resurrection of Red Widow (Valentine's Day Event), one of Arachnos deadliest assassin. Add that to Longbow's invasion of Praetoria (I think I recall an NPC saying that wasn't signed off on?) and it really feels like Ms Liberty was allowed full run of the place. Her heart was in the right place but I can't say I see her any different from FrostFire.

I believe Frostfires backstory involved him -trying- to be helpful but accidentally causing an explosion that killed people. Ms. Liberty's approach to heroism seems to take on the same approach. She means well but she's done some environmental damage (oil tanker in Port Oakes. People, not villains, do require those waters to fish!) along with bringing back some very nasty people. Is the reason why she never got punished because she was Statesman's granddaughter?

So, did you ever consider having a story with her becoming a vigilante? Or at least scolded for her brash behavior?