SlickRiptide

Official Shivan Backstory

From the outset, the Shivans don't make any sense because they're formed by energy/protoplasm generated by the meteor merging with a human corpse. Unless there's a graveyard under Atlas Plaza, there shouldn't be any Shivans just because a meteor landed.

If we hand-wave around that, then we're left with:

<ul type="square">[*] The Dream Doctor senses Shiva's psychic emanations decades earlier and loses himself while seeking to divine its existence and purpose and a way to defend against it.[*] "Shiva" or one of its cousins/mate is returning to Earth to devour the planet. Most likely explanation is that Team Vishnu did not destroy it, but only succeeded in wounding and disabling it for a time. Alternatively, it died but managed to reproduce beforehand and the offspring is now awakening.[*] Its reawakening disrupts normal gravitational fields in the solar system, causing strange tides and the appearance of odd phenomena in the area of the moon. Whatever physical body Shiva has may be on the moon. [*] The Lost of New Overbrook sense its psychic emanations and welcome it, perhaps worship it.[*] The Heroes of the world are distracted by a concurrent threat from Lord Nemesis^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMender Silos which prevents them from defending against Shiva. Silos more or less admits this, and it explains why the mission to fight the "scouts" in the "near future" is neccesary, given that a meteor landing in Atlas Plaza ought to be drawing the attention of any number of local Heroes already.[*] Terra is consumed by Shiva[*] Mender Silos escapes the destruction of Terra. If Menders from future time streams exist, then clearly other members of humanity also escape and form colonies elsewhere. "Elsewhere" might well mean in other realities rather than on other planets.[*] Mender Silos contrives to somehow live for a million years, long enough to witness Shiva and/or its offspring or siblings consume the entire universe. Rather than having become cynical or pragmatic over the course of a million years, he becomes righteous and founds Ouroboros in the past in an effort to avert the "coming storm" and save the universe. Since he could have just jumped a portal to another universe that didn't have a Shiva, it seems that he's expiating his own guilt though going about it in his typically ruthless fashion.[/list]
Did I leave anything out?



This happens in the "near future" which is sufficiently ambiguous as to be any time at all, given that to a one-million-year-old time traveler, a couple of centuries could be considered the "near future".

Mender Lazarus is from 5000 years in the future, and Mender Tesseract is implied to be a CoH version of Khan Noonian Singh. Whatever the Coming Storm is, it will never occur within the lifetime of our heroes/villains. The only way we'll ever encounter it is if Ouroboros acquires a task force that sends the characters to that time.

For all intents and purposes, the Coming Storm is not actually coming in any way that's relevant to our characters.

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which make is pretty clear to me: nothing you're doing on flashbacks is actually changing anything.


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Huh. Looks like I need to visit Red Tomax for a refresher on Ouroboros dialog. I think that I automatically filed this under "The Coming Storm is inevitable" as opposed to "time travel is pointless".

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The problem is that "Smoke and Mirrors" is a past event. It happened and the CoT lost. It doesn't matter, even from the immersed perspective, whether you run the TF and win or go home and have a sandwich instead.


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Here, I remembered Twilight Son blathering about the "causality field" (terminology I used to hand-wave in my own Ouroboros arc) and I figured it was the explanation. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to give you the nod here: According to Red Tomax, Twilight's Son never bothers to explain WHY there's a "causality field" in the first place. Being more interested in playing it than analyzing it, I chose to not examine it too closely. Either something initiated a change in the past that Twilight's Son is not telling you about or else he's the liar that the Mysterious Letter Writer claims he is. Or maybe the author of the arc forgot to tie up the loose ends.

Oh well. Fair warning that the second arc in your lowbie queue (I don't have the number handy) is an Ouroboros arc that assumes that Ouroboros actually is what they claim to be and that one of their jobs is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

*EDIT* While I'm not interested in derailing the thread into an Ouroboros discussion, I'll note this bit from the last official letter:

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But again, my train of thought wanders. I'm writing you to tell you that, as surprising as it might sound, Mender Silos and his time traveling cohorts are actually succeeding in delaying the coming storm. Note, I didn't say preventing. There is still hope.

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The Letter Writer appears to indicate that the meddling by Silos and his cronies is not entirely ineffective.

Point of order - BaB is one of the "Surviving Eight" (a bit of a misnomer considering that Ms. Liberty and several other heroes also survived the War) but is he really a card carrying member of the Phalanx? I've always assumed he was an independent since the Regulators more or less dissolved and he retired.


Positron - _She Blinded Me With Science!_, Thomas Dolby

Justin Sinclair - _South City Midnight Lady_, The Doobie Brothers

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One last time...the whole OP was directed AT THE DEVS. That includes the PS. Since when can players invoke dev tricks? And by dev tricks I was referring to auto-leveling, extra powers, free influence, etc. All the stuff they do to test random things but fails to give an accurate portrayal of the actual gameplay.



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What's your basis for believing that "Dev Tricks" is the only way the devs play the game?

Around the Town

License Plates

• 2SUPR4U
• UPNAWAY
• IMACAPE

License Frames

• My other car is a raptor pack
• I brake for catgirls

Bumper Stickers

• That light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming fire tank
• You can have my frankengun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers
• Blasters give the best build up

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That actually got said, though. I was a bit puzzled by it myself, but these days I am harder and harder to surprise in-game. [sigh]

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I assumed it was sarcasm. Either that or the player of the fire blaster was deliberately being annoying for the fun of it.

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If the Mender interventions really are completely ineffective, why bother with the whole setup at all? Do you regard the whole arc-set surrounding Issue 11 to be one big shaggy dog story?

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From a story perspective, the Mender interventions are NOT ineffective. _Smoke and Mirrors_, for instance, is all about the idea that if you are ineffective then the CoT will win and the world will end (or be ruled by a demon). Twilight's Son specifically tells you that he's sending you to modify the time stream, and the he will be then jumping forward to judge whether the desired future state was achieved. Likewise, you have the situation where Silos and his cronies are playing both ends against the middle by sending the heroes and villains to undermine each other, ostensibly to discover which one of their outcomes is ultimately the one that will lead to the over-arching goal (avoiding the Coming Storm).

Now, from a strictly mechanical standpoint, it's correct that the state of the world is static and all of the time traveling in the world won't change the state of the world one whit. Ouroboros would actually make a lot more sense if the world was changing dynamically (like when the Calvin Scott task force resolved and disappeared) and its purpose was to let you go "back in time" and experience content that was otherwise no longer available.

As it stands the best you can do is roll with it and work with it as it exists.

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The official word on this from the devs is, I believe............roll another toon. And when that one gets done, roll another. Do the same old content, over, and over, and over, and over..........well you get the idea.

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The amusing thing about this kind of criticism is that the critic invariably points to WoW or Everquest or some such and says "See, they have an end game." It's amusing because the "end game" in those games involves running the same 2-3 high level dungeons over and over and over and over with the SAME character. The measure of status of a guild is "we have end-game dungeons X, Y, and Z on farm".

Apparently, running through the mid levels ten times is repetitive where killing Onyxia for the twenty-fifth time is not...

I'm often curious about the origins of stories that involve the writer's in-game teams.

What was the inspiration and how much did Six-Four's "owner" have to do with it? What does s/he think of the story? How closely does the outcome of the story reflect the outcome envisioned by "Six-Four"?

A different take on Statesman - Justin Hayward's _Forever Autumn_ (Album: Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds) U-Toob

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Six didn't fabricate anything. He convinced the DA to arrest them based off of existing circumstantial evidence. Possible embezzlement, fraud, aiding and abetting (all of which are most likely a weak link to Bonnie/Ebony Rose). And to top it off, someone died, they benefitted from the death (a promotion).

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You base this opinion on what evidence?

Maybe Sooner is right and she didn't provide enough details, but in the story as presented, there is no evidence that Daniel Rose was anything other than a respected pillar of the community.

DA's don't arrest a man for murder on the say-so of some hero just because he "benefitted" from somebody's death. They run an autopsy and determine if foul play was involved. They gather evidence. Embezzlement? Fraud? Aiding and abetting? These things require piles of evidence. If it's not an outright sting, then it's something caught by the firm itself. It's an embarassment and an admission of poor governance. These charges are not brought based on "circumstantial" evidence. I don't care if the city is crawling with mind-readers: you don't arrest someone purely on the say-so of someone else. You sure as HELL don't arrest the person's spouse as an accomplice without some SERIOUS evidence.

To say that Six-Four walked into the DA's office, said "These people look suspicious. You'd better arrest them before they can run away and make a public spectacle of the arrest while you're at it." and the DA or one of his assistants said "Dang, you're right! Take care of this for me, Six-Four!" is stretching credulity beyond belief.

There was nothing "quasi-legal" about it. Six-Four framed them, and he did it well enough that they both lost their jobs and had their reputations destroyed. Circumstantial evidence? Pshaw!

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but most likely not enough to convict, it is way too circumstantial.

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A pillar of the community. Someone with ties to the community. Someone with money and, therefore, power. Someone who has a good lawyer(s) and would certainly sue and win if a mistake was made.

"Way too circumstantial" isn't going to fly in that situation.

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Since it is public knowledge, it is clear that the Ghosts are aware of that much. What they are not aware of is Six's motivation and his goal.

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If that's true then the Ghosts are fools. I submit that anyone who knew about his vendetta with Ebony Rose would have to be stupid to not draw the connections when Six-Four blatantly humiliated her parents and then it turns out that all of the evidence was actually "way to circumstantial" to have justified the arrest in the first place. Waving your hands and saying "they fled" (when they actually did no such thing, but let's assume the authorities don't realize it) is not going to stop the investigations.

Daniel's firm undergoes an audit to find the missing money, and they announce to their shareholders that it was all an accounting error: there never was any embezzlement. It just LOOKED like the money was missing (how this could be, I can't imagine). What an unfortunate error, we apologize to Daniel Rose wherever he might be, and our new accounting practices to avoid this in the future will be blah, blah, blah.

The police investigate the rest of the Rose family to ascertain if THEY were involved in any "aiding and abetting" and lo, their lawyers discover that the police don't really have any solid evidence that the parents ever did any "aiding and abetting".

I won't even get into the idea that someone would be charged with murder just because they got a promotion when someone else died.

The only way this works at all is that Six-Four planted false evidence and framed them completely.

As for the Ghosts, if they let Six-Four join without doing a thorough background check and discovering his origin story, then they really are fools.


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At the end of the story, all Ahren knows is that Six-Four went to St. Martial to recover suspects that have fled the country, and was soundly beaten before returning to the base. What Ahren is not aware of is that Six went there to confront and murder Ebony Rose.


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O Rly?

"When a man goes seeking vengeance, he should begin by digging two graves"

Ahren knows. I'll allow that he hasn't put all of the pieces together yet. When he does, he's going to have a decision to make.

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the way he went about it was at worst border-line legal.

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"At worst". I like that. In my opinion, it was so far across the line that Six-Four couldn't even see "legal" from where he was standing.

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Further, considering that the Rose's fled the country, it implies their guilt, and it is unlikely that there would be any sanctioned investigation into the 'legality' or 'appropriateness' of the Rose's arrest.

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This is just plain wrong, as I've already demonstrated. Investigations don't end with the "flight" of the wrong-doers. Especially when money and murder are involved.

Maybe I'm being too demanding and I should just wave my hands and say "It's a comic book world. Don't examine this too closely." like Donald Belissario used to do when the _Quantum Leap_ fans caught the writers contradicting themselves. Ostensibly, though, Paragon City is a "real" place and it should be consistent with the world we live in when it comes to situations like this.

If you disagree, then I'd ask you to remove the super powers and imagine the protagonists as members of U.N.C.L.E. and S.M.E.R.S.H. or Six-Four as a Double-Oh and Rose as the Mastermind of the Month. The super powers are just window dressing. If you remove them and the premise becomes ridiculous, then it ought to be considered ridiculous when the super powers are included in the equation.

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highlights a glaring error in the city's "Do what you want" attitude with its vigilante protectors.

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I don't think the city has such an attitude. I'd say it's implicit in accepting a license that the hero is committing himself or herself (or itself) to at least the same code of conduct that the police operate under and preferably a more stringent one from a moral perspective. They DO depend on the hero community to police itself to a great extent and the quality of that self-policing is probably pretty questionable most of the time.

The problem here is that Six-Four dropped any semblance of heroism. While the anti-heroes, lord darkity darks, amoral demons and what-have-you are going to push the line to the breaking point, there's still the ultimate question of intent. The dark hero breaks the law but s/he does it for the greater good.

Six-Four's intent was personal revenge, plain and simple. It had nothing to do with justice. He behaved despicably from beginning to end, lowering himself to murder, torture, and even a blood-feud. He used innocent civilians as bait and as MrGrey's quote above shows, he took pride and joy in just how effectively he inflicted pain on Rose's "clan".

Most monstrous of all, he did it knowing that it had a high probability of failure. He had no clue about how Rose felt about her family or whether she would risk her neck to walk into the jaws of an obvious trap. He did it anyway and while there are indications that he knew his planted evidence wouldn't hold up in the long term, there's no indication that he would have taken any action to undo his work if it somehow DID hold up and Daniel Rose was sent to the electric chair. Quite to the contrary, the impression I have from this story is that Six-Four would have raised a shot of bourbon when the switch was thrown and said "I guess she's even a greater *itch than I thought if she let that happen."

Maybe Ahren isn't really cognizant of just how far Six-Four has fallen. He's awfully concerned about Six-Four striking out on his own and seeking vengeance instead of operating within the "family unit" of the Ghosts, while he's not visibly concerned about any of his actions. The reader is left to infer the meaning of "We need to talk", but the one thing it does not imply to me is "you've become as bad as the people we fight and I'm placing you under arrest". My only problem with that is that even if Ahren doesn't learn about the torture and attempted murder, there's simply no way that he or the rest of the Ghosts can be ignorant of what Six-Four did to Daniel and Elizabeth Rose once they start putting two and two together.

Yeah, I know it's a comic book world and comics gloss over this kind of thing much of the time. Still, I have to wonder if the Ghosts are going to let this slide and then eventually end up wringing their hands and crying "How could this have happened?" when Six-Four gets pissed off one day and brutally murders Catherine and David Rose just because they're easy targets and it'll make Rose feel the way he felt when she killed his "brother"?

This conclusion has given me an inspiration for a MA storyarc focussing on a character in Ahrens' position - becoming aware of a fellow SG member who is behaving criminally and having to decide whether and how he's worth salvaging, and maybe facing the legal/moral implications of the decision.

The ends justify the means? Destroying the lives of two innocent bystanders is justifiable action in order to carry out the murder of another person as long as the hunter has a license and the prey has a sufficently bad reputation? You consider framing someone for murder and putting them in jeopardy of their life as "discomfort" that amounts to acceptable collateral damage? I wonder how the Rhode Island court system would feel about that?

Apparently, the Ghosts are chock full of criminals who condone that sort of behavior. Otherwise, Six-Four would have awakened in The Zig.

Don't get me wrong. It's a satisfying ending and the bit with the Kipling quote was very appropriate for the story. As a reaction of a superior in a super group to a subordinate, though, it was wildly inappropriate unless the group is, in fact a villain group in all but name. Whatever their goal is, it doesn't seem to be justice, unless they have some kind of ideal or agenda that they're touting as their own justification for placing themselves above the law.

It's one thing to pursue a vendetta. It's another to become worse than your enemy in the process. Assuming that there are more Ghosts Reborn stories in the offing, I'd say that my feelings about them would be highly influenced by the fallout from this one or, conversely, the lack of it.

I've said this so many times that I should just make a cut and paste for it: A rising tide lifts all boats.

Back in the day when Everquest ruled the waves, new games were coming online every year and the same people were always crying "This new game is where it's at. EQ is dead. Anybody who disagrees is just a blind fanboi."

Lo, all these years later, EQ is still around. Ultima Online is even still around.

The EQ devs just smiled and welcomed each new game. The truth of the matter was that every new game brought new people into the market. While some people left EQ for those new games, many more were encouraged to try EQ, either because it looked interesting or because the new game turned out to be a poor fit for them.

People who cry "Dooom!" for City of Heroes are essentially being short-sighted and imagining that the audience for CoH is the only audience there is for ANY superhero game. This just isn't true. There are many, many gamers out there who would consider a superhero game, and many who would be open to trying an MMO for the first time, but they want a licensed IP instead of one that they're unfamiliar with.

If Cryptic and SOE do their jobs right, they're not going to cannibalize the City of Heroes playerbase. In fact, they're not going to draw much at all upon our players. Anybody with some sense will realize that basing a business plan on stealing another game's customers is a foolish plan to start with. That game would never be launched in the first place.

Champions and DC Universe are going to establish NEW markets and bring in new players. City of Heroes will experience a dip, probably temporary, and some of those new players of those other games will be dissatisfied but instead of quitting entirely, they'll look for another game to play and they'll decide to give CoH a shot.

People who imagine that everyone playing CoH is just champing at the bit to move to "the next big thing" are the same as those doom-criers who thought that everyone playing Everquest was a sheep waiting to jump to the next shiny thing.

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What's a 'High Powered' programmer?

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One who keeps a mini-fridge under his desk stocked with Jolt.

The problem with publishing a serial is that every chapter has to come with a climax of some kind. I'm not sure why anyone would call this a cliff-hanger, though. Seemed pretty cut and dried to me.

Where's Hida Yakamo when you need him?

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Do you want to see the actual battle between Hro'Dtohz and Av'Adn, or should I gloss over that while the heroes enact their desperate plan?

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Av'Adn is clearly suffering from the final stages of Super Villain Syndrome, so we pretty much know that Hrody is going to win, as long as he believes himself to be a true hero and behaves accordingly.

The Rikti combatants have already dismissed the Terrans as unimportant to their own story. (Someone needs to send Av'Adn the Evil Overlord list. He's obviously new at it.) The fight is a distraction at this point, unless watching it is going to advance the plot of the Terrans' story in some fashion that isn't immediately obvious. Post a sentry, maybe Sorina if a main character needs to bear witness, and move on.

More practically - Do it both ways. Write the fight in detail, and write the Vanguard story with no references to the fight at all. Lay them "side-by-side" and then overlay the Rikti battle onto the story of the Terrans in any of the places where the action lags a bit and/or the two stories would logically impact each other. Think of it as a "point of view" thing. You need to know the action for the sake of consistency, but all that the reader needs to know is which bits affect the story of Raymond and Sorina.

I'm in the middle of re-reading Chesapeake, currently. At one point in the story, the current main character (it's a historical novel) is forced to stand by in his ship and witness an important battle between France and England, not unlike what is happening here with the Rikti.

It works in Chesapeake for two reasons. On the one hand, it's a device for providing a lens for viewing a battle that otherwise would have had no easy way to tell it without shifting the point of view of the story. On the other, the Americans were bystanders in their own war just then. The actions of England and France really determined the outcome of the Revolution at that point in time. The American witnesses were gnats watching a contest of giants who were fighting each other for honor and prominence and, almost as a side effect, the end result was that the French landed and the Revolution succeeded in the long run.

Here, the situation is different in many respects, but the most important is that the Terrans WON until Av'Adn decided to show up and tip the balance. He's not a rescuer of the Terrans, he's a predator challenging another predator for its meal. The only real problem with this whole scenario is that Hrody is already beaten. There's not much honor here to be gained by Av'Adn and Hrody ought to go down very fast.

Unless, of course, Av'Adn is suffering from Super Villain Syndrome and he doesn't yet realize that when the hero is beaten, that's when he pulls out the last stops and snatches victory from the jaws of doom. Preferably while the villain is monologuing.

Bad joke. Brain hurt.

The main character is certainly appropriately named.

Um... have many of the respondents here gone back to read the customer service response to Heraclea?

The arc was banned because the reviewer felt that the point of the arc was to defeat lesbians BECAUSE they were lesbian. Whether that was or was not an appropriate reading of the arc's intent, it's how it came across to someone who wasn't in on the joke. It had nothing to do with banning any arc that mentioned GLBT in any way, shape or form. From the customer sevice reviewer's standpoint, the arc was promoting anti-lesbian hate.

I'm sorry about Heraclea's arc, but I'm in full support of CS banning something for the reason stated. The appropriate response might be to follow-up with CS with some pointers to the forum joke to provide background, but I'd bet that it won't help much. People who aren't in on it before they hit the Play button are people who just aren't going to "get it" and there'll just be more complaints.

Having your character show up in some capacity is not, in and of itself, a Mary Sue.

Having your character show up and take the spotlight away from the player is a Mary Sue.

Spending the story telling the player how wonderful, powerful, and fearsome your character is and how he could just do the whole arc himself except that he needs a player to actually play the arc, is a Mary Sue. (Nothing quite like playing a mission and listening to the enemies ramble on about just how scary the NPC ally is.)

Having your character do all of the important work while the player does all of the grunt work is a Mary Sue.

There are other variations. The primary things to ask yourself:

What purpose does this self-insertion serve?

Who is this story really about?

Would the story suffer or be substantially different if a nameless NPC replaced your character, or if your character's role was deleted entirely?

Who has the spotlight?

If you're making your character the star or a co-star, then you're probably making a Mary Sue story.

Having your character act as a mission contact alone is PROBABLY NOT a Mary Sue situation but it depends on the writing. Just make sure you know who the star of the story is.

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Unfortunately, farming missions don't have interesting or fun battles. The very things that make an opponent interesting or challenging or fun go against the very nature of farming.... quick easy fights for fast exp.

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This. If it's an "interesting" farm then it's probably not a real farm, or at least it's not an optimized one.

I'll take story, thanks. My level fifty doesn't need anything rewards that might come from farming and my other characters are more interested in doing something other than repetitive drudge work.

The lore is purposely vague. From the outside, it LOOKS like a virtual reality. According to Dr. Aeon's personal journals, however, it appears that they are "virtual" in the sense that Recluse's Victory is "virtual". Whether Crey Corp realizes it or not, the datastream is "real" in some sense. This is the story rationale for why you get real rewards from playing the mission arcs.

That's my take on Aeon's ramblings, at any rate.