Ban_Sidhe

The new Branching dialogue facilitates the "Moral compass" and I, for one, am looking forward to it!

Let's face it, if you're a super-powered being in the rogue isles you have to at least look like a villain. If you don't you last less than 30 seconds. Sure you have to rob the occasional bank here and there, but if it's to pay for your chars sibling's hospital bills so be it. Left overs can be laundered into education and health right under Recluse's snubby nose.

The thought of having a grey area between heroes and villains, and being able to oscillate between the two is something really new for MMO's. Hopefully it'll allow for characters to move between Paragon and the rogue isles a lot easier without getting ganked for no reason other than you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. My only hope is that the branching dialogue is included in the mission generator. That'll allow us players to create some truly memorable story-lines.

Not to mention that a lot of the heroes act more like villains than most of the villains do!

Well, like I said. It doesn't stop anything from working, but with my ex-government test manager's hat on, it's still a bug... Well... A bugette

It's a silly thing, but I logged in, took a character out logged out to desktop then logged back in again a few minutes later and got this:

[image]http://blog.aeonworx.com/image3.jpg[/image]

I know we can do time-travel, but 136 years offline?

These guys do printers that run not only in colour, but quite large sizes:

http://www.thinglab.co.uk/

In fact in one example they took the results of an MRI scan and built a copy of someone's skull. Just imagine having a copy of your own skull on your desk, and being able to say "Yep, that's my skull there." or even get a copy of your own brain.

This is a pie-in-the-sky suggestion. I'd love to be able to export my COX characters to an external model format like 3DS or blender to play with in other imaging software. But what would be really cool, would be the ability to export to a format recognised by the new 3D printing shops that have started to appear like this one:

http://www.shapeways.com/betasuccess

To have your characters sitting there on your shelf would be very, very cool. I know there's a company doing WoW models, but can we have one for COX too?

Darn! And there I was, hoping to have voice added to I13 and you guys were just making sure the infrastructure was in place to do it.

<sigh> Oh well. I'm sure you'll let us know all your dirty little dev secrets in time.

I'd get a job with you guys, but I wouldn't be able to keep any secrets.

I don't suppose this weeks extended maintenance has anything to do with NCNC's deal with Vivox for voice comms would it?

Or the star switches as soon as someone goes AFK. Team leader goes AFK, star moves to next non-AFK player in the team.

That's a lot neater. I like that. It also removes the voting, is fair and can't really be abused.

I agree that it should be TF based only. There's no point in a single mission team, as everyone can just quit the team and reform outside.

I doubt it would be used for harassment as you typically join a TF with the end-goal in mind. If the team leader is that bad, then you can leave the TF. Maybe add the players name e.g.

<Ban-Sidhe> as elected we vote a new team leader. Do you agree? Y/N

If they keep doing it, then the team leader (Who has the option to ignore the vote off remember) can kick the harasser from the team. The majority of players play nice. So it shouldn't be a problem.

It will probably be used rarely. Let's face it, how many times have you used the /stuck command? Yet it's there, just in case you get trapped in the game geometry. So I do think its worth a little bit of Dev time. In the TF, we'd gotten half way in to the LGTF when this happened, and the rest of the team waited quite some time as none of us wanted to quit the TF. This method would have allowed us to continue, albeit we would have had no choice but to kick one member the rest could have gone on. Maybe it should get called Triage

Recently, while on a TF one of the players (Who really shall remain un-named) went off, had something to eat and then got "Distracted" while we were all in a mission taking down the Rikti Riders of the apocalypse (LGTF)

During this, time our team leader had an unfortunate power outage and the team leader star transferred to the next player, our absent, and very "Distracted" friend who was AFK. As a result we had to abandon the TF as we couldn't get the team leader shifted to another player.

So, here's the suggestion. Allow the team to vote to have the system auto-pass the star to the next player in line from the current one. It would require a majority vote between all team players who are not current team leader. I would suggest that when a player right clicks on the team leader and in the context menu is given a "Vote out" option. This pops up a dialog on the other team members asking whether they want to vote for a team leader move (yes/no)
The current team leader would get a timed dialog box where they can accept/reject the team's vote. If the current team leader is away, the box times out and automatically accepts the teams decision to take the leadership from the current leader.

This would at least allow a team to deal with an AFK team leader in a fair way. Especially as the normal timeouts don't appear to work when you're in a TF. The other alternatives are:

1. Allow the game to time out in a TF. We waited at least 15 minutes.

2. Allow GM's to move a team leader star with enough petitions (Probably unpopular and very open for abuse)

Of course, it won't work if the majority of the team is AFK at the time, but if thats happened then the team probably isn't doing much anyway. This is more for TF teams where you cannot continue on to the next mission without your entire team active.

Have you ever suffered from an un-provoked hero attack?

Have you ever been going about YOUR business, doing a minor thing like claiming pillboxes for the boss in Recluse's Victory, only to be hounded by a hero who just keeps on sending you to the hospital?

Have you ever entered a place like Warburg, only to get killed by the noob who's camped behind the flier?

Well. I have (Not the second one though) so I thought it would be truly villainous to hire a contract killer to ride shotgun while I simply go about my business. If anyone else would like to use this thread to get hold of a "Hired Gun" to lay the smackdown on any passing heroes then please be my guest.

Payment is straight-forward. You get to go about your mission, and your assasin gets both the glory, and reputation for removing an annoying twerp of a hero from an area.

Tips are optional

I don't suppose there's an example page we could all look at, or maybe even a screen-shot will do?

I was thinking primarily for soloing PvP in the zones rather than Arena.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm assuming that having Flight and ariel superiority decked out to the max is probably good. Along with having the relevant recipes to max out your damage. But what would make the ultimate PvP corruptor?

The early Sonic attacks aren't particularly powerful, so plenty of damage and a pinch of accuracy and dash of recharge rate.

Screech is particularly useful when combined with TP foe. You can tp a baddy close to you, hit them with screech (Stuns them) and then pile in with the damage at your leisure. This action is also good with Sirens Song. If you have a group, send them to sleep with Sirens Song, then screech them one at a time. Making sure that they stay asleep as you're working your way through the group.

I agree. Sonic corr is best served in a team, where the buffs can be of most use. Plus you can't use a lot of the secondaries on yourself (Bit of a dissapointment, but hey!)

Everyone says sonic's are few and far between. But they are worth it It's always nice to hear though. It does our Sonic ego's good.

Hey! Don't knock it until you try it!

I've managed to get my pure Sonic Attacks/Resonance to lvl 49. I've just picked up my final power, Disruption Field, and of all the secondaries it's probably the most effective one I've seen! So far I've only tried it with by casting it onto an MM's drones. And it rocks! I think this'd be devastating on a Brute as it cuts through the opponents defenses like swiss cheese. The only problem is it is massively expensive to run, just like Sonic Repulsion.

You're right of course, but rage is blind and she's a little upset at the end of that. I'm sure the hospital has had worse, and I'm sure that all medical facilities (Even in the Rogue Isles) adhere to correct building codes and regulations concerning large ground movements.

Family ties
Part 1. History

Family, love them or hate them you have to live with them.
Family; Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and cousins they’ll be hovering there on the outskirts watching how you’re doing.
Sometimes they’re there to pick you up, sometimes they don’t notice and sometimes they just watch on with a faintly amused smile upon their face as you pick yourself up out of the stinking mud.
When it all comes down to it, family is all you have left sometimes. It was all that Alice had left after three thousand years of her punishment...

The Sidhe were ancient, powerful and gone. They watched the strange apes stumble out onto the African plains with their sticks and the spark of intelligence that would drive them on. To the Sidhe evolution was growing up, and they watched the apes as they tottered through the savannah on two legs. Barely able to control their forwards fall as they twisted their four-legged skeletons into one that would support two legs.
The Sidhe could remember their past, as they watched these babes peer out from the safety of the forests. The Gods had built them to stand upright from the beginning. Adamastrian and Everistriniis were the first. Tall, the apes that would be, would eventually build legends around them. They would be called the Fairy folk, elves, the peaceful people of the hills; and that they were not to be trusted. The apes soon learnt that to enter a fairy circle did not necessarily mean that they were ever to leave it, or to leave it soon after they entered.
The spirit Gods of the banished Pantheon tried to take the world for their own, and the Sidhe were there to stop them. Placed there by the deities who had created the Universe itself, the Sidhe fought the children of the ancient gods with the powers of reality itself. Masters of space-time they twisted the Universe itself to push the evil back. The first war left scars in the landscape that never truly healed and would become known as fairy circles, and those mysterious triangles where the apes would disappear. The war had also hurt the Sidhe. Soon, they came to realise that they were not the ones who would carry on the fight, and that the animals that were dragging themselves up out of the mud, the ones that would call themselves human, were their successors.
With understanding came action, and so the Sidhe accelerated the human evolution by attaching themselves to splinter families within the human tribes. They also built cities, the greatest being the one the humans came to call Atlantis; the city that would live on, in human legend, as a testament to the downfall of the Sidhe. The gateway city, the concentric rings had been designed to channel the energies of the Sidhe. Of course the pantheon broke through the wards the Sidhe had built into the walls of reality, but the trap had been set. The second war cost the Sidhe, and the humans, dearly. Atlantis was destroyed as the ancient god Moh’Og tore a hole in the weakest point between the Universes, something the Sidhe had gambled correctly on as they had built Atlantis directly over the very same location.
The destruction was total, and complete, as Atlantis dissolved into the ocean. Its atomic cohesion failing as all of its energy was poured by the Sidhe into the dimension of the pantheon. And yet the pantheon had an alternative plan; to infiltrate the humans, and spread their spirit-seed amongst their population. The future would belong to them eventually; all they had to do was wait...
Aliciatriana was one of the Sidhe that took the situation into her own hands, and she dealt death to those infected by the pantheon. Including those amongst her, human, family. She treated the seeded as an infection to be burnt and sterilised from the earth; something to be despised, and destroyed utterly.
The spirits of the ancient gods were pushed back once more, but now the Sidhe had to deal with the atrocities that had been committed against the humans that had been infected with the spirit seed of the banished. For her crimes against humanity, Aliciatriana was sentenced to have her soul stripped from her, and smashed into a thousand soul-shards to be distributed amongst the humans. As each died of natural causes, the shard the human was carrying could be collected. If the human was to die of anything else, the shard could not be collected and she would never be whole again. Each shard would also break up between the children, and so one shard became two, became seven, became more....
And so Aliciatriana was bound to her family. Her broken soul could only be healed by defending the humans she had originally sworn to shield, and had betrayed in the war. She wept as each of her children passed on into the great unknown. And as she wept for her family, they came to know her as Alice; the fairy that came to take them away after their lives had been spent. She was the Ban-Sidhe that followed them throughout history, protecting their souls from the devil as she escorted them into the next world.
3000 years and four members of the original blood-line remained. One had cancer, two were dying of old age and one placed herself in front of a group of wailer demons. Aliciatriana had no choice, and acted, lest she see one of the last soul-shards destroyed forever and with it her chance for redemption (See Mini-Comic Wail of the Ban-Sidhe: Comic Link )
*****
Jessica O’Brien opened squinted between her eyes and peered at the red L.E.D.’s of the clock next to her bed. Elsewhere in the flat, the insistent ring, ring, of the phone destroyed the quiet gloom. She stuck her feet out into the cold, hearing a disgruntled “Meow” from the foot of the bed where Hicks, the cat, had been sleeping.
“This had better be good. You do know what time it is, don’t you?”
“Miss O’Brien? This is Harper General hospital. I, can you come in please?”
“What? What’s going on? Is Charles Ok?”
“Miss O’Brien, there’s been an... Incident.”
“I’ll be right there, have you notified my Father and Mother?”
“I’m very sorry Miss O’Brien, but this involves both.”
Jessica dropped the phone back into the cradle, and rushed to pull on some clothes. Hicks mewed his annoyance again when she turned on the light in the bedroom. He slunk under the bed, and gave her a malicious look as she pulled on a pair of jeans.
*****
The hospital was crawling with spider soldiers when she got there. She rushed in, through the revolving doors, and up to the desk. Around her cleanup crews were sweeping away dust and debris, while some of the soldiers were helping deal with some of the larger lumps of concrete and twisted steel.
“What happened?” The desk-clerk glowered at her.
“The Circle of Thorns came by and took some of the patients.”
“I was called...” The desk clerk’s angry face softened.
“Are you Miss O’Brien?” Jessica nodded. “Francine! Take Miss O’Brien up to ward 5!” She suddenly shouted. A student nurse appeared at Jessica’s side.
“Come with me please...”
Moments later Jessica found herself in a small white room. Machines quietly hissed and beeped in time with her parents heart beats. Daniel O’Brien’s eye flickered open and squinted at his daughter.
“Jessy? Oh God Jessy, I tried. I tried and they came...”
“Shh... What happened dad?”
“They came *cough* I was trying to save your brother, and your mother tried to stop them at the door.”
“Whoah! Start again dad. Slowly; from the beginning.”
“I found a book. Magic. It can save your brother from the cancer.”
“Ok. Did you steal it?” Jessica’s father looked pained.
“No! I found it in a second-hand bookstore. When I found out what it could do... I brought it here. I tried to save David from the cancer. I tried to save your brother...” He looked at her. “I know what you’ve been doing Jessy. I know how you’ve been getting the money to pay for David’s medical bills. It’s why I’ve kept quiet. I know you love your brother, and that you’ve been doing everything you can to save him.” Jessica looked away, and looked back as her father’s hand wrapped itself around her wrist. “I know what you’ve become Jessy. You’re not evil, and neither is the thing within you. The power you have... If we lived in Paragon it would be so different, but we don’t. I know you understand the fine line between right and wrong that you’re walking... Look at me girl.” Jessica looked her father in the eye, as a tear slowly made its way down her face. “The circle stepped over the line long ago. They took David, and they’re going to sacrifice him.” The strong grip pulled her closer. “Get my son back Jessy. Get your brother back, and don’t let anyone get in your way.” His eyes rolled up as he lost consciousness.
“I’ll get him back dad. If it’s the last thing I do.” She gently kissed him on the forehead, and then did the same to her mother. “I’ll be back soon mum; dad.” She looked back at her father, and walked out of the room.
*****
A spider soldier grabbed her by the shoulder as she tried to leave the foyer.
“Where are you going little girl? We need statements from everyone who leaves the hospital.” Jessica looked at the armoured glove that gripped her shoulder. To anyone else it would have been crushingly painful, but all Jessica could feel right now was rage. Her gaze travelled up the huge soldiers arm.
“Let go.” She whispered.
“Insolent [censored]; you’re coming with me!” Jessica felt the power rise within her. This was different, unbridled, it felt like standing inside a giant wave; right in the tube where there was nothing but the roar... The sound emerged from her throat, her body ringing with it. Around her the concrete floor rippled and bucked like a raging bull throwing everyone in the foyer around like rag dolls. The soldier tried to hit her, but her second reaction was just as devastating as the first. The front of the hospital exploded in a shower of painful glass slivers; through it, the soldier was flung. Across the street, he hit the opposite wall and collapsed in a heap. Blood leaked from between the gaps in the corpse’s armour.
The Ban-Sidhe walked through the wrecked hospital front and leapt into the sky. Today would be a bad day for the cult known as the circle of thorns. Behind her the miniature earthquake continued to shatter windows, and force people to hold onto the flexing ground for dear life.

RedSnake, Sent you a toon in your email. please use at your leisure

Hiya Starscreamer Glad everyone seems to like the comic, the comments coming back are very encouraging. Many thanks all.

I'm trying to sort out a longer storyline so I can move things along.

I'd be quite happy to help out with a suitable villain if you like.

Thanks guys.... Much appreciated

This is probably a little rubbish, but here is a first attempt comic for everyone to look at.

It's not really got much story, and it's really just an experiment using comic book creator (Yes, I bought it. Couldn't resist)

I'm sure I'll get flamed, etc... but for those who were interested, I've posted it up.

Be warned... This link will try and open acrobat reader in your browser.

http://cod.aeonworx.com/Comics/Wail_...0Ban-Sidhe.pdf