Mr_Morbid

I'm in favor of having a leash power that lets you tie the escorted npc to you so they have to keep up. Either that or a Little Red Wagon that they can sit in while you pull them out. Or if you're a strong enough character throw them over your shoulder.

I demand a video of dev karaoke.

If you have a single person supergroup buying this second account is a good way to be able to invite your own characters (from the primary account) to the SG in the future. Just create one character (or two if you need groups on both sides) and (with two sessions running) invite that character to the SG and promote him to the second highest rank. Once you lapse back to premium that character will still have the ability to invite and promote new members. It's what I did when they had the same sale for Freedom's Pre-Launch.

The Rikti became Rikti at a vaguely defined point in the past (thousands of years) due to the intervention of an unnamed alien race. The world wide psychic network they have leads to a society where individuals rarely become seen as outstanding individually. Hro'Dtohz is an important exception, having characteristics such as personal ambition that most Rikti don't really understand.

The conflict with the Battalion occured approximately 100 years ago causing the Rikti to increase the size of the military, which normally had only small ceremonial roles in their society. After defeating the Battalion the Lineage of War again became a small part of the population and remained that way until shortly before the invasion of Primal Earth. The Rikti war machine was put in full force for that meaning most Rikti soldiers were not part of the Lineage of War prior to the conflict. Hro'Dtohz, for example, had been a historian before showing his military leadership potential in the current conflict.

We had some in game discussion on the timing of the SSA rewards and debate over how it's supposed to work. Here is Positron's answer:

Atlas Park isn't crowded because it's the starting zone. It's crowded because that's where people hang out looking for DFB groups.

Here's a follow up that I can't find on that timeline: When was the first contact with Rikti Earth? I know when Portal Corp first established contact they were not considered to be a threat. Of course they really weren't a threat until <Redacted: Omega Level Clearance Required>

This is hardly the first arc where you're stuck with doing things in a way that make you think, "I wouldn't do it that way." The engine just isn't flexible enough for you to have more than a very few limited options. It isn't like a pen-and-paper game where a real live human game master is sitting there to hear your idea of an alternate approach and rule on how well it would work.

As far as this particular arc it's explicit (even on the hero side it you bother reading the debriefing) that Miss L was dead before you started fighting Blitz, so bypassing him wouldn't save her. Red side it's made clear that Malaise makes her appear to die just as the heros get there solely to make Manticore (and the blue player) feel that they could have saved her if they'd only been faster.

Since this arc is not a fully story by itself, Alexis' death must occur to drive the plot. And even though we know that one of the Surviving Eight will die, we don't know that that will mean a victory for the baddies in the end. We still don't know what they REALLY want. At this point it looks like they want to steal Statesman's powers, but that may be a red herring. And they may not get him anyway. We know someone is going to die, but we don't know that it will be the target the villains are after. Maybe someone else steps in to make the heroic sacrifice that ruins the baddies' plans once and for all.