BlueBattler

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  1. For me, I'd like to make Free Character Transfer Permanent because it'd be nice to be able to play my favorite toon on whatever server I wanted. Am I the only one who might have enough friends who'd like to do a TF spread across three or four different servers?

    I would really like to see how things turned out in terms of server population once this month is over.
  2. Have you ever been young and in love?

    Those heady days when I first met Pia and Paolo Marrino were the most glorious and happiest of my life. For the first time in my life, I had someone who cherished me—someone who cared about me, and for whom I could care as well.

    I was greedy for them, faminished for what they gave me. If I could have found some way to accomplish it, I would have run away with them both. I spent hours in their company, talking, touching, laughing …


    Pia was a lovely girl—though it goes without saying she was not as beautiful as I. She was intelligent, ethereal—one could stare straight into her eyes and have a feeling that she did not see you at all … yet somehow could perceive the very depths of your soul.


    Paolo … oh, my Paolo! I wish you could have seen him as I did that first time.

    He was a handsome boy … strong, muscular, with the most perfect body that I have ever seen. He had the mind of a scholar, the soul of a poet, and the kindest heart I have ever known.

    And yet, for all his gentleness, Paolo showed great promise as a soldier. Even as a youth, he was one of the most dangerous men I had ever met. By the time he was fifteen years old, he had already attracted the eye of Arachnos … and it was a foregone conclusion that he would join the Wolf Spiders as soon as he came of age.

    At first, I tried to distrust them—tried to fight the connection that I felt for them. I suspected that Pia was using psychic compulsion to lure me into them that somehow Paolo’s soulful eyes were a trap which would lead to my destruction if I should let myself fall into them as I longed to …

    But I could not resist.

    Pia was the sister that I had never had. She was the first person I had ever known that I would have been willing to risk my life for.

    And Paolo was the first person I ever trusted my life and heart to …

    How do I explain what he meant to me? Even now, when I gaze upon the ruins of the man he was, I still see the young man who bore me away from danger on that lonely, dangerous night …

    In another life, perhaps he would have given me another name than sister …

    Ah, how to explain this delicately …?

    Jezebel had given me a very thorough explanation as to what could happen between a man and a woman, but I was still technically “innocent” and “pure”.

    Father was just old fashioned enough to make sure that I could lay claim to being a maiden on my wedding night if it ever came to pass that my marriage could be to his benefit …

    If Paolo had asked it of me, I would have given him anything. I would have given him everything. All he had to do was ask …

    But he never did.

    I wonder sometimes why he never asked. I know there were times when he looked at me as a man looks at a woman. When he thought I was not looking, I could see him looking at me with more than a brother’s eyes …

    I did not speak of this unspoken thing between Paolo and myself. I do not think that she ever saw it or recognized it for what it was. She was a Seer, but in many ways she was—and is—blind to the world of men and women.

    But perhaps there was a reason, after all Paolo never called me anything but a sister. Pia never knew of the doom that awaited us, but perhaps on some level of his being, Paolo did. It may be that he knew that we would never be separated … and that we would never be together.

    And none of us—not even Pia—knew that our days together would come to an end as quickly as they did …
  3. I've always been a fairly undisciplined writer ... which is one of the reasons I haven't submitted anything for publication for the last twenty plus years. I've never been good at revision.

    COH has such a rich background ... and I see so much potential in the characters that I can't resist writing about them.

    Heck, I wrote a virtual novel about Synapse and Mynx and I didn't even particularly like them when I started!
  4. So I'm thinking about my origin for my dual boxed RP concept, and I suddenly realize that the perfect NPC to interact with him is going to be Aurora Borealis.

    And suddenly I get this idea about Aurora Borealis ...

    Argh!!!

    I have my Ghost Widow story to finish (which I have all plotted out and is actually nearing its conclusion) ...

    My Akarist and the freakin' Mu-COT War story ...

    And Frostfire ... yes, I do intend to finish my long neglected Frostfire story ... someday. Eventually.

    And now Aurora Borealis decides she's got a story to tell ...?!

    Argh! Again, I say argh!
  5. Interesting.

    I hooked up a PC instead of my laptop, and I was able to run the game.
  6. I just tried to hook my laptop up to my Widescreen LCD TV to play COH. (Mainly wanted to see how the game looked on it as I am thinking of buying a Game-only PC I was going to hook up to the TV).

    The TV display works fine with the laptop, but when I try to run COH I get a message "Format not supported."

    Last year, I was able to run COH on an old PC I had hooked up to the TV (didn't play because the PC was old and could not really play with today's version) and it was able to boot the game up.

    Now it won't display anything from the laptop at all while I'm running coh there. Anyone have any idea what's going on?
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic View Post
    The Pros seem rather obvious.

    The Cons include - less income for the DEVs to improve the game with, a free-tool to allow inf traders to safely move inf from one server to another (aka adding gold farmers and their customers), server stress during events when players are trying to move characters away from full servers - to name three.

    I'm sure there are plenty more.
    My main concern would be helping the gold farmers.
    I don't think that moving characters back and forth across servers is a good idea, but then the only use I have made of the transfers was to bounce one (the same) of my characters around 3 times in order to get the name I wanted - pretty much because I didn't name them correctly when I moved them to the new server the first time (and there was a naming conflict that didn't show up just moments before I made the transfer! [Always make sure to have plenty of time and don't rush when you get into one of these situations. It always seems that I'm in a rush whenever I am for whatever reason. Go figure.]).
    I was thinking that it would actually make gold farmers' job more difficult.

    After all, why pay someone money to get a toon set up on another server when you could do it yourself as long as you had a high level toon of your own on at least one server?

    I don't think the fee would stop them now as it doesn't cost THAT much.
  8. I only used the free transfer process to move one playable character to a new server, but I DID use it to move influence and infamy to all the servers so now I have enough money to get several toons started on other servers if I feel so inclined.

    I know that it seems like a lot of people I know have moved toons from less busy Servers to Freedom and Virtue. I checked Saturday morning and those two servers had like three times the Villain and Hero numbers that Guardian and Triumph had.

    I wonder how much revenue this gift to the players cost?

    If it's not excessive, perhaps they'd consider making it a permanent feature.


    Certainly seems like a much better idea than a "Merge the Servers" thread.
  9. We tried that. Didn't work. The boat didn't attack her, and she slaughtered the Longbow.

    The guns may have attacked her once while I was rezzing in the hospital room. She destroyed them.

    Did the TF again last night with a more damage heavy team. We did the taunting thing from a distance and she went down like a house of cards.
  10. Now to figure out what color combination screams "I'm stealing time" ... ;-)
  11. Just today I got his origin figured out and one and a half of the possible power sets.

    He was a brilliant young scientist working for Longbow, studying the work of Dr. Aeon. Believing he had discovered how to duplicate Aeon's temporal cloning process, he recklessly experimented on himself.

    Unfortunately for him, he was wrong.

    He wound up with two bodies that could not act independently of each other. In essence, he was one mind trying to operate two bodies. He would have fallen into madness if Aurora Borealis had not taught him how to focus so he could concentrate on operating one body at a time. He finds it very disorienting for the two bodies to be separated for any length of time, so he puts one body on autopilot as he operates with the other.

    Unfortunately for him, he is no longer capable of the intense concentration necessary for his research, so he is not capable of finding a cure for his condition. This left him quite bitter, but he has recently begun to develop metahuman powers as a result of his unique situation.

    With the hook that his condition is a result of time travel, I decided that one of his bodies is going to be a Gravity/Kinetic Controller. Using his ability to influence time, he can slow someone or freeze them in place. He can accelerate his friends or he can steal speed from his enemies. He can steal chronal energy to speed up his friends' health or to restore their endurance. The singularity will essentially be a sort of mobile time warp ...

    As for the other character, I'm thinking that he should be a Super Reflexes Scrapper of some kind. Essentially, he's able to perceive attacks before they happen so he knows the best way to dodge.

    I haven't figured out his primary powers, though. Martial arts could work, but I have had that set on a few other toons and I just don't like it enough to use it again.

    Anyone have any ideas as to a power set that I could use for his primary that could be written as involving time?

    Maybe Dark Melee...
  12. So last night I busted out my Rad/Rad Defender and tried to start a Statesman TF up. Much to my surprise, it wasn't all that hard to get a group together.

    Now I had a friend who had another friend who wanted to do it who was bringing a tank along, so I made sure to look for everything BUT a tank since I knew one was coming.

    Nevertheless, I wound up with FOUR tanks on the team.

    (My friend who was going to bring his Empath found out that only his Ice/Fire Tank was high enough to do the TF. The Troller I asked brought along his brother who brought a tank, the Scrapper had a friend who wanted to do it who was a Shield/Elec Tank ...)

    So, final team was a Rad/Rad Defender (me), an Energy/EM Blaster, a Bs/Fire Scrapper (think that was what she was), a Shield/Elec tank, a Shield/WM, and an Ice/Storm Troller.

    I built my Rad/Rad for TFs, so he has the full leadership path as well as Fallout, Mutate, and Emp.

    It's been a while since I did the TF, and to be honest I forgot all about Ghost Widow's Melee Heal until we got to the final mission.

    Because I fought about Ghost Widow's Melee Heal, and with four tanks along I figured that we should do fairly well at not dying, I asked the team if we wanted to try for a Masters, so we did.

    We really did pretty well, all things considered. Our first death happened on the Thorn Tree mission. One of the tanks died before I could TP him to safety. I died in the AeonCorp building as I ran into Ice Mistral and her friends, and we had a team wipe when we stumbled onto Dr. Aeon without preoparation. (Okay, we had a couple of team wipes.) But we eventually managed to take care of him.

    The Four AV fight proved to be a real pain because we kept drawing four, but we managed to take down every but Ghost Widow. (Mako was really surprisingly easy.)

    Ghost Widow was our roadblock. I hit her with LR and EMP everytime they were up, and the Ice/Storm hit her with all his Trollery goodness, but every time we would ALMOST get her killed, she'd break out with her melee heals and be right back to full health.

    After over an hour of wailing on her, we called it quits.

    It wasn't a failure on anyone's part. We all did our best. We just didn't have the damage to seal the deal. Maybe if we hadn't gone for a Masters we could have popped Shivans and/or Nukes and taken her out.

    But that got me to thinking ...

    How many ways are there to defeat Ghost Widow?

    Things I'm wondering about (some serious some not so much):

    1. Is her self-heal auto-hit? If the meleers had managed to pop a bunch of lucks could we have kept her from getting enough of a heal to save herself? Could a Cold Defender or a FF Defender have helped kept her from healing herself through defense?

    2. Just how strong is the AV Mez Protection? Could a full team of Illusion Trollers have been able to deceive the other AVs long enough for them to beat her senseless? (For that matter, could a full team of Controllers manage to just hold her long enough to kill her?)


    Also, can the AVs be slept so that you only pull one at a time?
  13. I wondered if she recognized me … and almost paid for that moment of reflection with my life.

    Nocturne said no word of greeting; made no boast … she simply lashed out with her left handed claws.

    If it had struck, I would have died years earlier.

    I ducked under the blow and lashed out with my own, intending to cut her pretty throat as neatly as she had nearly done mine.

    Her eyes widened in surprise as she missed, but she blocked my blow without effort. “A challenge,” she said in her musical voice. “This may prove interesting after all.”

    “I hope to live up to your expectations,” I replied as I went in with a perfect storm of attacks. No one had yet managed to stand up against this offense since I had mastered it …

    Nocturne did it without even breathing hard.

    She blocked when she could not dodge. She dodged when she could not block. She was poetry in motion—if I hadn’t been trying to kill her, I would have applauded her performance.

    And she did it without even breathing hard.

    “A pity we had to meet tonight,” she told me as she counter attacked. “If I did not kill you tonight, I have a feeling that you could become a very formidable fighter …”

    I did not reply. I could not spare the energy. I was able to hold my own, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do so forever. I was stronger, but she was faster and seemed to have more endurance. Try as I might, I could not break through her defenses.

    All she had to do was out last me.

    Five minutes became ten. Ten became twenty.

    I was drenched in sweat and expected that I was going to die.

    The thought angered me more than words can say.

    Nocturne no longer wasted breath taunting me. She attacked, but rather infrequently. All she had to do now was wait and she would have me …

    Thirty minutes in, I had an idea.

    It was a desperate stratagem, and I would not have tried it in the beginning of our fight. Her reflexes were too good. She would have easily dodged or blocked …

    But now … now, she was tired. Not quite as tired as I was, but she was slower than she had been. She might not be me able to stop me …

    On the other hand, my accuracy and strength weren’t what they were at the beginning, either. I was going to have one shot at this, and if I missed I didn’t think I would have the strength to continue fighting …

    But it was my only chance, and I did not hesitate.

    I somersaulted away from her … not more than two body lengths, but it was enough to allow me to draw forth my throwing dagger and throw it.

    I did not wait to see whether or not it hit. I charged.

    I heard a strangled cry and Nocturne grabbed her face.

    I punched her hard in the stomach, slammed the side of my hand into her throat, and she went down, still screaming. Blood flowing from the ruin of her right eye, she struggled to rise.

    I stepped down hard on her hands so hard that I heard the bones crack.

    She fell again.

    I grabbed her by that long pale hair and bared her throat. I drew back my claws to strike …

    “No.”

    It was the soft voice of Number Five. She had stepped forward and grabbed my arm. “You cannot.”

    “She would have killed me.”

    “I am not saying you should not kill her. I am saying you cannot. Death is not her Destiny this day.”

    The Shadowy Figure stepped forward, followed by a woman carrying medical supplies. “Get away from her!” he hissed. “Red Widow will have all our heads if she dies!”

    I wanted to kill her. I was hungry for the kill. And moreover, I knew that if she lived she would kill me if she ever learned who I was.

    Her, or the Red Widow herself …

    But the eyes of the girl who was called Number Five held me.

    I lowered Nocturne’s head to the ground. I pulled my knife out of her eye socket brutally. “Remember this. Your life was in my hands. Do not forget that you live only because I chose it.”

    “Come with us,” Number Six said, offering his hand to me. “We will get you to safety.”

    In spite of my habitual reluctance to depend on anyone else, I knew that I would not make it home alive without help. Having seen what I could do, there were many men and women here who would like nothing better than to kill me and offer my head to Nocturne and the Red Widow. And I was too tired, too … weak … to fight for my life.

    I nodded my acquiescence, and Number Six swept me up into his arms. “Do not follow us,” he said in a loud voice. “Anyone who comes near this woman tonight will die by my hand!”

    I felt warm and safe in his arms … possibly the first time in my entire life I had ever experienced that emotion. “Who are you?” I asked him. “Why are you doing this?”

    The young man smiled beneath his mask as he carried me off into the darkness. “My name is Paolo Marrino. This is my sister, Pia. We came here for you tonight.”

    “You did?” I laid my head against his chest because I was too weak to do anything else. His heart seemed to beat in time with my own.

    “I saw your coming,” Number Five—no, Pia—said. She smiled at me and touched my cheek. “You are the one who will share our Destiny. Don’t you know who we are, Belladonna?”

    I shook my head dumbly. Her touch held such gentleness … I wanted to weep and I did not know why.

    “We are your family,” Paolo answered. “You will never be alone again, my sister. This I promise you …”

    Oh, my Paolo …! My poor beloved Paolo …
  14. I have to admit that I'm feeling a little burnt out these days.

    Part of it is that almost no one I used to play with does now. (Currently down to one other friend who's probably logged on in the last month.) It's fun when you're on a team that's joking around and enjoying themselves (that's why I like the ITF as well as the Statesman and Lady Grey TFs when I get to do them).

    I've done pretty much all the existing official content to death, and the whole AE Fiasco left a sour taste in my mouth towards MA. (Which is a shame because I really liked it when I first tried it).

    Hopefully Going Rogue will bring a fresh new feel and some additional players to the game. New players tend to make the game feel fresh to me.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by DarkEther View Post
    I'm just hoping, whatever it is, that Snaptooth is an integral part of it...
    You're evil.

    Though I had this sudden image of a Snaptooth Rikti ... an EB Rikti with a Redcap hat and beard ...
  16. There is only so much you can learn from training.

    In Nerva Archipelago, there is a man all dressed in black whose name no one knows. Little more than a Shadowy Figure, he is something of a legend in the Rogue Isles. He is a hard man to find—especially if he knows you are looking for him.

    You do not find him. He finds you.

    From snippets of conversation with my fellow students, careless whispers among my father’s bodyguards, I knew that the Shadowy Figure hosted a rather special event for promising young fighters. It was a chance to apply your skills against your rivals, to see just how good you were outside of a classroom.

    A chance to draw real blood.

    Officially, Arachnos frowned on these contests. Officially.

    But it was well known that a young fighter who did well in the Shadow Figure’s spectacles was marked for special consideration when openings arose in the lower ranks of Arachnos. For that reason, the Shadowy Figure had no lack of volunteers. Too many, in fact.

    To get in, therefore, you must have an invitation.

    The proudest day of my life was when one of my teachers offered me a black velvet card embossed with gold lettering.

    It gave a date, and a time, and the phrase: “Be there.”

    It took place in a warehouse. No, I will not give its location. There are some promises that even the Dead keep, and this is one of them.

    There were perhaps twenty fighters, evenly divided between males and females. The combat ring was brightly lit—so brightly lit that we could not see the audience.

    But we knew they were there.

    Most of us wore masks, and we were identified only by the numbers painted on the garments that we were given. We were allowed to supply our own weapons, but not our garments. Body armor and fire arms were not allowed.

    My number was seven. My colors were black and white. I had brought my own claws and a small throwing dagger.

    My blood was singing with anticipation.

    A young girl a few years younger than I was number five. Number six was a tall young man who stood beside Number Five. He looked about constantly as though he were trying to assess any threat that might come—not for himself, but for the girl.

    “Are you sure you must be here, my sister?”

    The beauty of his voice stunned me. I had never heard such a musical voice just speak. It was deep as befits someone of that size, but it sounded far too kind to be the kind of hardened warrior that I expected.

    “Have no fear, Paolo. I will come out of this unscathed. It is here that we will meet her. And then we will be complete.”

    “How will you know her, Pia?”

    “The same way that I know everything, my brother. I just do.”

    The first man on our side was a strange young man who made no attempt to conceal his identity. He kept introducing himself to everyone that he met—“Jenkins. The future right hand man of Lord Recluse, Jenkins!”

    By some miracle, he was not killed in his match.

    We were all amazed. He did not land one punch, but his opponent was not able to kill him. Thrash him soundly, yes, but not land that final blow that would have ended his yammering forever.

    “Perhaps there is a reason he was invited,” Number Six murmured.

    “His time has not yet come,” Number Five replied. “Destiny has other plans for him.”

    The next three fights were of no particular interest. The combatants were adequate, but that is all that could be said of them.

    And then it was time for Number Five to battle.

    Number Six was like a drawn bowstring. I could see the muscles bulge in his arms as though he had to forcibly restrain himself form leaping to her aid. Without quite knowing why I did it, I laid a hand on his hand and said, “She would not be allowed to compete if she had no chance.”

    Number Six said nothing, but he glanced at me gratefully.

    Number Five was clearly no fighter, though. I saw that as soon as I saw her walk across the floor. She had a dancer’s grace, but she did not move like someone who knew how to use the dagger she carried in her hands.

    Her opponent was everything she was not. He had violence in every gesture, murder in every look. He was a killer.

    And it was not enough.

    Number Five did not fight him. She did not try to block his attacks. She just managed to be where he was not. Sometimes by just the barest of margins, but every time he tried to hit her she was not there.

    “How does she do that?” I whispered.

    “She knows,” Number Six replied. “She knows where to be.”

    And then Number Five held her knife out in front of her. It was an awkward gesture. I could see right away that it would not take any force at all for her enemy to snatch it from her …

    He glared at her and took a step forward …

    And stumbled over a fallen brick.

    He had time for a strangled cry before he impaled himself on her dagger.

    “I am sorry,” she told him as she pulled the knife out. I could sense real regret in her voice. “It was your time.”

    The crowd was absolutely silent as she walked back to us.

    Number Six stepped forward for his battle.

    It took three movements. A feint. A block. And an attack.

    And then he walked back to us, the blood still on his mace.

    “A waste,” was the only thing he said.

    And then it was my turn.

    A woman—a girl—was waiting for me. She wore a mask as I did, but I recognized her pale hair, her slender build. She was humming one of the pieces she had played the night I had met her.

    Nocturne …
  17. More than once, I thought of killing Father.

    While he lived, he was a threat to me, to my plans. He had planned my birth and the course of my life—and he would brook no disobedience. The moment that he realized that I had no intention of being his tool, he would decide that my usefulness was at an end.

    One of us would have to die, I told myself over and over.

    And yet, I could not quite bring myself to kill him.

    If I had been a man, it would have been much simpler. If I killed him then, his organization would fall into line behind me. The son can replace the father, but the daughter—no matter how capable—is not given such courtesy.

    The Family is rather an old fashioned organization.

    So I could not kill him directly. If I did, then his organization would be subsumed by another branch of the Family, and I would be declared persona non grata … and I would become a target. I was good, but not even I believed that I could survive being the target of every hit man in the Rogue Isles.

    My self education had include an extensive study of poisons—with a name like Belladonna how could I not be interested in poison?—but my father’s wariness regarding what he ate and drank bordered on prescience. After a few futile attempts, I discarded that possibility as being impractical.

    And to be honest, I rather admired him.

    He was not the strongest or bravest. He was not a great tactician or strategist. In a one on one fight with the least of his henchmen he would have been easily defeated.

    But he was brilliant. He was a master of betrayal. He had not risen to his position by being an easy target, and I stood in admiration of his ability to survive no matter what came his way.

    I did not love him, though.

    I never loved him.

    And he never loved me.

    And yet, somehow I did not want to him to die. I knew that I would be safer if he were gone. My life would be my own. But a world without my Father in it somehow seemed … empty.

    He did not love me, but he needed me—if only to serve his plans.

    It may not have been love, but it was the closest thing to it that I had ever known, and I was loathe to give that up.

    I did not then think that love existed. I had listened to Jezebel’s explanations of it—but I no more understood it than a blind man can comprehend the color red. You cannot understand what you have never had, what you have never seen.

    But there was to come a time when I would learn what love is. I did not seek it. I did not want it. I would have refused it if it had been offered to me.

    But it came to me all the same.
  18. Is there an in-game explanation for why it can't be removed once you have it installed?
  19. My game, my rebellion, had grown more dangerous—as had my ambition. I was no longer content with the thought of just freedom—I wanted more.

    I wanted power.

    I pushed myself ever harder. Beauty wasn’t enough. Skill wasn’t sufficient. To be who I wanted to be, I would have to be strong.

    The strong thrive. The weak perish. That is as it should be.

    And I did not intend to be weak.

    For the first time in my life, I began to take pride in my body.

    My beauty had never felt like it belonged to me. I knew that I was lovely, but I knew where that beauty had come from—and I knew that it had not been my choice. My mind—my intellect, my skills—those I had earned, and I valued them far more than what I saw in the mirror.

    But as my strength grew, my agility increased—I began to feel for the first time that my body was my own—that it was my own possession.

    Perhaps that is why I miss it so dearly …

    I could not forget the eyes of Lord Recluse as he looked upon me. He saw me. Father never saw me.

    He looked at me, but he did not see me. Not once.

    I wanted to be worthy of Lord Recluse’s regard. In that brief moment of our meeting, he had done more to shape me than anyone else ever had. I grew up wanting to escape Father—but I was running towards Lord Recluse.

    Was it nothing but a girl’s fancy that led me to this obsession or was it something more?

    Lord Recluse is not a charming man … if man he can truly be called. He is reckless, impudent, and prone to wild actions and deliberate cruelties that would cause anyone else to face untold opposition. No one sane trusts him …

    And yet … I have seen men and women throw themselves into impossible battles at his command. I have seen them throw their lives away because he deemed it necessary. I have seen them die shouting his name …

    That terrible charisma … even now, I can still feel it.

    If I had not met Lord Recluse, what direction would the course of my life have taken? I have no doubt that I would have still sought to escape my father … I believe that I would have still become a Night Widow … Perhaps I even would have died …

    But would I still be here now? Would I feel myself so bound to Arachnos that not even death could sever my connection?

    I do not know.

    But all my life I had wanted freedom, and now I spend eternity bound to someone else’s dream.

    Who says that fate has no sense of humor?
  20. Well, the one mind in two bodies thing should help me keep from totally going nuts trying to run two separate characters. ;-)

    I am starting to get into the concept. Still need to figure out what I want the powersets of the two toons to be ...
  21. I wonder if I outleveled his actual arc. I think he only gave me like two missions: a mission where I was ambushed and the "get second costume slot to pretend to be a hero" mission.
  22. And unlock all female costume pieces for male characters and all male character costume pieces (if there are any) for female characters.

    See. Going Rouge before Going Rogue. It's a joke.

    Kinda.

  23. Okay, I've got a lil Soldier and I want to do all the individual story arcs that relate to the Soldiers ... I've done Brick Johnson and I'm starting Fortunata Hamilton.

    I didn't get a souvenir from Brick. Don't we get souvenirs for the VEAT arcs?
  24. It didn’t take me long to realize that the musician’s repertoire did not extend to very many styles of music. She may have limited her selections in order to please Lord Recluse, but there are only so many variations on a theme that one can listen to before you start to grow bored.

    Of course, as this was a command performance at the request of Recluse himself, everyone was sure to applaud when the girl finished.

    After the performance, Father and I were taken backstage where Lord Recluse was speaking with the pianist and a woman that could only be Red Widow.

    Lord Recluse wore his usual outfit. I did not know if that meant he was unable to change his clothing or he simply felt that he had no need to defer to the common expectations of society. (Or he may have felt that he would have looked ridiculous in a tuxedo with those arms of his …)

    Red Widow was a striking woman. She was not young—she had helped Lord Recluse’s rise to power almost twenty years beforehand—but she had the trim body of an athlete in her prime. She wore a sensible outfit that did not hamper her movements, but the only indication that she was more than a matron of the arts was the ruby spider pendant she wore.

    There was something almost possessive about the way she hung onto Lord Recluse’s arm. Her grip tightened when Father and I were introduced.

    “My Lord Recluse,” Father said smoothly. “May I have the honor of introducing Belladonna, my daughter?”

    “I am pleased to meet you, Belladonna,” Lord Recluse said in his deep voice as he focused those strange red eyes upon me.

    I shivered. “Pleased to meet you, My Lord.”

    “The pleasure is mine,” he said as he brought my hand up to his lips. “You have a lovely daughter,” he told my Father.

    “Thank you, My Lord.”

    He kept staring at me. Another man would have been embarrassed to stare so intently at a girl my age, but I am sure that the thought never entered his head. He was Lord Recluse; his actions were beyond reproach.

    And there was something about that intensity that disturbed me.

    I had been seeing desire in the eyes of men when they looked upon me ever since I was twelve years of age. Lust was nothing new to me. In spite of my father’s words and my own doubts, I would have fully understood it if Recluse had desired me.

    But this … this was not desire.

    It was something else. It was … recognition.

    In some strange way, I felt as though Recluse had been waiting for me … waiting for a very long time …

    We stared at each other, the two of us, the monster and the maiden, oblivious to everyone and everything around us.

    And then the Red Widow cleared her throat and the spell was broken.

    “My Lord, our pianist has joined us. Would you not offer her your opinion of her performance?”

    Recluse turned from me—he did not blink; in all the years I have known him I have never seen those blood eyes blink—and gazed upon the Red Widow and the young girl who stood beside her.

    The girl was no older than I was. She was a pale, thin girl-child, but my practiced eye could see that she was stronger than she appeared. She gazed at me, and her thin lips tightened in disapproval.

    “As always, your daughter performed impeccably,” Lord Recluse told the Red Widow. “You named her well.” He turned to the girl. “Well done, Nocturne. Well done.”

    “Thank you, My Lord,” the girl said, bowing her head. “I live to serve you.”

    I felt a stab of jealousy at her words.

    Nocturne turned to me and offered her hand to me. Her fingers were long and beautiful, and pale as the ivory keys of her piano. “I am please to meet you, Miss Vetrano. I hope that we shall become great friends.”

    I took her hand in my own and smiled. “I am quite sure that we shall see much of each other in the future, Nocturne …”

    Her fingers were as cold as death.