Sparkly Soldier

New World Daughter:
Homecoming

Part 1

"Female patient, approximately 5' 6", 120 lbs, age might be late teens or early twenties. Pupil dilation normal, blood pressure's stable at 138 over 89. Heart rate's 51," one of the physicians rattled off a litany of vital signs to the group of ER nurses gathering in the waiting room around the pale copper-haired girl dressed in black and lying insensate atop a gurney, "usually I'd call that a little low, but she has a pretty athletic build so that could be normal for her."

"And you said she was unconscious when your truck hit her," the scowling police chief asked a middle-aged, quietly panicking delivery driver waiting by the reception desk.

"I didn't hit her," the driver waved his arms in frantic protest, "she's the one who hit the truck! She came out of nowhere... yeah, I know, everybody says that. But I mean she really came out of nowhere. I was driving back into town from the farm in New Connaught, this white light flashed in the sky overhead and then she just fell out of nowhere and bounced right across the hood of my truck. It was all I could do to slam the brakes and not run her over!"

"Okay, but either way," the attending physician's assistant calmly interrupted them as she scribbled down notes on a clipboard, "was she already unconscious when you found her?"

"No, she was awake for a second," the flannel-shirted man muttered sadly, "she looked up at me and tried to say something, but I couldn't make any sense out of it."

"Like another language?"

"It sounded sort of like she speaking English. But the way she pronounced things, I couldn't understand a word of it. Then she passed out and I called 911."

The PA sighed and nodded wordlessly to both the driver and officer, and then called back over her shoulder to the rest of the staff: "we'll need to prep her for an MRI, stat. The witness said she had signs of confused speech, possibly aphasia before she lost consciousness."


My mother said I was named after the land of my birth, celebrated as the first Christian child of Virginia. I know not of that place, nor the grandfather she so often speaks of my having. It was he who led us to the New World, and it was he who crossed the ocean again to seek food and supplies for our settlement. Perchance the Almighty had a role yet for him to play, and so spared him from our fate - for he'd scarcely left our sight before unfamiliar shapes darkened the hillsides and emerged from the forests. They called themselves the Fir Bolg.

They are among my first memories, people shaped from vines and pumpkins, strange of form but noble of mind. They said they had crossed an ocean of shadows to escape the Red Caps and find their way back to the mortal world. We feared them for a time, but they had been people like us once, bewitched by dark spirits and seeking now only a sanctuary from their oppressors. We soon made peace and welcomed them as our own.

But the Red Caps followed.


"She has a mild head injury," the doctor breathed a sigh of relief as the technician finished sliding the prone girl back out of the sleek white MRI tube, "but there's no sign of brain damage. Frankly, that accident's probably the least of her troubles. The rest of these images show at least a dozen separately healed fractures, most likely scattered all over her lifetime."

"Look at her clothes," the PA murmured curiously as she leaned down over the girl, gingerly lifting up the edge of a black cloak between her fingers and then staring curiously over the young patient's dark tights and ash-gray tunic, "no labels, no synthetic fabrics, it looks like it's all stitched by hand. Where do you even get clothes like this? Maybe she's Amish?"

"Maybe, but then there's the broken bones, the scars all over her..."

"What do you think caused them?"

"It might sound crazy, but my first thought was that she's been through a war."


They were mere rumors at first, whispers of goblins in the treetops and burrowing through the ground. The Fir Bolg knew their portent, and warned us to flee the island, to leave them to their fate and save ourselves. But we had sworn we would protect them. Then one morning we awoke to a sky the color of sulfur, surrounded by forests drenched in shadow and alive with terrible unseen things. We thought at first the world had changed while we slept, but soon we knew the truth. The world was as it had always been; we were no longer part of it.

For a time, though, our lives continued much as they had, despite the amber sky and the wan, sickly crops its uncanny light offered. I know not how much time passed in those days, for our parents aged no more than the years they carried into this unearthly place the Fir Bolg called Croatoa, nor did we beyond the full blossoming of youth. Perhaps it's the nature of Croatoa that none should grow old within it. Or maybe this was another trick of the Red Caps, to turn the gift of eternal life into our prison warden. Later some of us began to seek death in other ways, only to find that it eluded us altogether. Unless, of course, the Red Caps wished it upon us.


"I figured Montague would be sending Percy," the police chief remarked, rubbing his eyes and gulping down another styrofoam cup of coffee as he looked over the young scarlet-haired woman in her matching black skirt and baseball shirt ensemble, tapping her fingers impatiently across the receptionist's desk as she glanced curiously around the waiting room.

"Ashley McKnight," she grabbed and briskly shook the befuddled man's hand before he could think to offer the greeting himself, "Percy's going to be a little late. He's busy being captured by the Banished Pantheon, but I'm sure he'll be right over as soon as he's rescued."

"Good lord!"

"Kidding," she raised her hands with a quick shake of her head, "I'm kidding! He's in Steel Canyon helping Montague clean up the whole mess with the Malleus Mundi. That's actually kind of what I'm investigating too. The report said the accident happened at 3:14 AM?"

"As far as we can tell."

"Well, that's when Dr. Bierce reported the first thaumaturgical spike. Looks like your suspect's off the hook: that girl probably really did fall out of the sky."

"Then where did she fall from?"

"Good question," Ashley chirped brightly, "and I'd say the first step to answering that one is running a DNA test and seeing if we can give Jane Doe a better name."

"Now hold on," the police chief ran his fingers back through his thin gray hair, "the university Occult Annex might be good with magic, but DNA tests take weeks, sometimes months. We've got cases backed up from last year waiting on the results from Washington."

"Contact SERAPH in Paragon City. They can have it ready in ten minutes."

"It's four in the morning... and besides, they're FBSA, super-powered affairs."

"Who sleeps in Paragon these days? More to the point, I'm pretty sure that this is a super-powered affair, and SERAPH's going to want to find out if this is their turf."

"All right, let's give them a try."


It may be that the Red Caps were busy with their other diversions, and so allowed us to imagine that we could simply continue to live our lives in peace. But eventually they came for us, just as they'd come for the Fir Bolg. At first they claimed that they were punishing us for trying to help the Fir Bolg escape their grasp. They soon forgot that lie, though, and instead gloated that they simply wanted new prey, a new sport to amuse themselves with.

And so they did.

Sometimes they'd drive us mad with rage, clouding our senses to make us rip each other apart, then laughing at us as we awoke to see what we'd done. Such tricks never truly brought death, but the pain and guilt never lessened for that. Imagine looking down to find your child's blood covering your hands, and their body limp and unmoving on the floorboards. Imagine being that child, comforted by the very arms that had torn you to shreds a few hours before.

Yet even that game was one of the more merciful they played. At least it granted the murderers and victims alike a few minutes of peaceful oblivion...


"We've moved her to her own room," the doctor explained to the the police chief and Midnighter pacing separately across the otherwise empty waiting room, "and the sedation should be wearing off soon. We also got the test results back from SERAPH and, well... Professor St. John-Smythe swears they're not a joke and that the only reason he was awake to call me is because the staff woke him up to verify it. You'd better take a look for yourselves."

The police chief happened to be the closest to the doctor, and he carefully took the manila folder from the white-jacketed physician's hands and flipped through the pages. In another moment, he'd furiously flung the loose papers to the gray carpet with a curse.

"Let me guess, some joker in Paragon thinks he can pull one over on us country bumpkins in Salamanca! Well you know what? This isn't just some stupid prank, this is impeding an investigation and I'm going to make damn sure they don't get away with this!"

"What in the world," Ashley just muttered to herself with quietly blinking confusion over the older man's outburst, and started scooping the pages up from the waiting room floor to glance over them herself... and then gave a soft, startled "oh" at the name circled in ink.

"He swore that it's not a prank," the doctor shook his head sympathetically, "they had to match the mitochondrial DNA against John White's wife Tomasyn and then cross-check the rest of it against the lineages referenced in the original manifest. He said they never would have found a match in a million years if they hadn't been using Rikti scanning technology."

"Well," Ashley said slowly and cautiously after a moment's awkward pause, "maybe I should call the professor myself, just to make sure he's the one you talked to..."

At that moment the glass hospital doors swung open to reveal a blonde pony-tailed man in a purple baseball t-shirt and dark blue jeans, his outline silhouetted against the faint scarlet hints of sunrise glowing along the otherwise cloud-swept rim of the eastern forest.

"If that report says what I think it does," he announced, "then it's true. It's really her."

"Gregor Richardson," the Midnighter explained to Salamanca's police chief, who'd welcomed the intruder with one silently raised eyebrow, "he's with MAGI."

"Don't any of you Paragon people," the chief muttered under his breath, "wear suits?"

"Technically I'm from New Haven. And if I'm hearing him right," Ashley shot an accusing frown at the goateed newcomer, "he's saying that... they already knew about this?"

"Well, knew, had a head-splitting premonition. You know how these things go."


In time the men were moved to fulfill their vows as husbands and fathers, to rise up and defend their homes and families from our enemies. We begged them not to do so, that the only comfort they could offer us was that of staying by our sides, but they heeded us not. My father Ananias helped gather and lead them into battle, to fight the Red Caps when they came to play their cruel games once more. They could not win, and our captors, driven into a rage by such impudence, struck down and killed every last one of them. But though Croatoa's power could keep death at bay, it could not bring the dead back to life. The Red Caps quickly came to regret so rashly depriving themselves of victims. So they redoubled our sorrows instead.

A handful of spinsters had lately confessed to us that they possessed a secret knowledge which would have seen them pressed with stones or burnt at the stake in less desperate times, but now might serve as a weapon against our oppressors. The men had hesitated to call upon their aid in battle, and for their pride they paid in blood. It was left to their wives and daughters to defend themselves with one final recourse: witchcraft, magic, sorcery.

We studied their art, and those crones quickly marveled at the speed and power with which some of the younger women learned to command the elements, to summon the wind and lightning to our aid. When the Red Caps returned after a time to renew their sport, it did all that was promised. Our magic sent the them flying like leaves before the wind, cursing our names as they fled into the shadows. And so our eternal torment instead became an eternal war.

A few of the elders said that we had paid a terrible price for such a victory, and that we were now damned. We heeded them not. After all, we'd already been damned.


"That's her," Ashley whispered by the sleeping girl's bedside, motioning for the MAGI liaison and Salamanca's police chief to keep their voices down as they walked into the hospital room to join the Midnighter and ER doctor. The girl's black uniform lay neatly draped over the foot of the bed, leaving her clothed in the white sheets, a blue gown and the electronic heart rate monitor clamped to one of her fingers and trailing back to a beeping readout screen.

"She's actually in pretty good shape, considering," the attending doctor continued with a welcoming nod to the two men before glancing back down at his patient, shoulder-length auburn hair fanned across the pillows as her pale freckled cheeks gradually began to regain a flushed hint of color, "she's a little malnourished and she could use some sunlight, but her vitals are good and her blood tests came back fine. Her body's been through hell, though. It's amazing that, with everything it's gone through, she hasn't suffered any permanent damage."

"New World daughter," Ashley whistled softly and shook her head in amazement as she glanced up to the others, "the first European child born in America, and here she is sleeping in a hospital in Salamanca. Talk about living in interesting times, huh?"

"From what I hear, she's the first missing persons case in America too," Gregor murmured back, "maybe this is the answer. The Banished Pantheon screwed up their ritual, opened up a hole in time and pulled her four hundred years into the future."

"But she was a baby when the Roanoke colony vanished," Ashley answered with a puzzled shake of her head, "she had to have grown up somewhere. And those injuries... I'm sure life was hard in colonial times, but I kind of doubt it was ever that hard."

"You said before," the police chief interrupted them from the foot of the bed, "that she showed up during the first tharmu... thrae... thermal spike that you heard about."

"Thaumaturgical," Ashley chuckled, and then she nodded more seriously, "right."

"So how many have there actually been?"

"At least three on my way here. Probably more since. Gregor?"

"Our mystics had counted five," he replied, "before I got to the hospital."

"So whatever brought her here," the police chief answered as he cast a worried glance out the window at the gabled rooftops of Salamanca, "it's still happening."


As I was born in the mortal world, I hold a place in the earth-born circle that rules our cabal alongside Mary MacComber. But as I was the last born, and so carry no memories of our home, there are some who feel my seat is undeserved. Perhaps it is for that reason that, while they govern through wisdom and guidance, courage in battle is the virtue that I find called upon most often. Sometimes I lead others into the din and throng of our endless war, while at other times I journey alone. I have never before failed to rise to such occasions, and so it was with a glad heart that I heeded Mary's call to seek out a rift in the sky that the Fir Bolg spoke of, to learn what I could of it and return at once with news of what mysteries it might hold.

It twisted through the sky like a serpent made of light and tore at the forest with fingers of howling wind that even my spells could never overcome. It was those fingers that snatched me from the hilltop I'd chosen as a vantage point, that carried me aloft in spite of all my magic and screams of protest, to throw me into the radiance of its maw and swallow me whole. I have known death enough times to recognize it as an old friend, and so when the light and the hills and the sky all gave way to darkness, I felt certain that death had come for me yet again.

But then I saw something else in the darkness. Dried leaves fluttered through the wind against an ebony sky sprinkled with diamond dust, crested by a shining pearl of light drifting silently above the treetops. My mother told me stories about them as a little girl. She called the ebon sky night, and the diamonds she called stars, and that pearl is the Moon. And as wonderful as I'd believed her stories, no words could ever have braced me for such beauty.

Then I fell, and something hit my head, and the world went black once more.

"Ms. Dare, can you hear me? We need you to nod if you can understand what I'm saying. Virginia, you have to wake up. Virginia Dare, can you understand us?"

...I don't think it's that kind of game.

...that is going to completely change the way I play my blaster!

Please, please let that be code for "we can't wait to see your faces when we spring it on you out of nowhere."

Oh, I always just figured it was since it's one of the very first powers available (though not *the* first, now that I look at the chart). Erm, I guess I should really call it a "mez just ended and I gotta get rid of that pesky mob fast" power.

I know exactly who you're thinking, because for a split second when it showed the outline of his head, I thought the same thing. But, given some of the other stuff we saw in the ending, the timeline wouldn't really work for that to be him. I think it's just a random person who's also about to take up the call, though the casting resemblance might have been intentional, just to make the audience wonder for a second.

Anyway, just saw it this weekend and I really liked it! It could stand to be a little longer: Abe's transition from vampire-slaying loner to politician and then president seemed a little abrupt, and the idea of the antebellum South being secretly ruled by a vampire aristocracy is one I'd loved to see explored in more detail. Still, it moved quickly, the fight scenes were great and the story works better than any movie about Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Hunter should (the biggest hurdle I had in convincing friends to see it was explaining that it's not a parody).

You're going to kill one-tenth of us?! ...not it!

Well, true... I love the old Dark Astoria, was all kinds of frustrated by hearing about it being replaced, finally snuck into the new DA with a mid-20's character to get a sneak preview of it (stealth powers and lots and lots of running were involved!)... and the visuals, the ambient sounds, all of it is just jaw-droppingly eerie, beautiful and atmospheric. As long as the foggy old town's still in Ouroboros, it's definitely a trade up.

It'd be great to take all the zones that have had historical changes and move them to Ouroboros, just to let people who came too late for them check out what they missed: the old Faultline, the Rikti Crash Site, the old Atlas Park are all things I'd be curious to see firsthand.

There's one minor change I'd like to see to the Echo system, though. First, an NPC in Ouroboros should really explain what it is: just have them standing beside the crystal and say something like "Paragon City has changed quite a bit over the years. This pillar contains the echoes of city zones that are now part of the past." Then, when you arrive in the zone, a short pop-up message should give the context of that zone, like "Before the reconstruction of Overbrook began, Faultline was a dangerous wasteland filled with jagged canyons and wrecked skyscrapers."

I started in October last year and I love Kings Row, so much so that I made Yuki a Kings Row native and the talk of revamping it (especially as a perma-night zone) now worries me. Really, as much as the thread talks about things existing for "flavor," what else is the game? Most of the missions amount to "run into building, beat up enemies and click stuff." The stuff that makes those missions come to life is the flavor. I just don't see anything gained by removing a zone from the game. The zone's there for people who like it, it's avoidable for people who don't like it, and a bigger game world with more to explore is always better than a smaller one with less exploration and freedom.

I knew it! Praetorian Penny's been the real enemy all along!

Totally agreed on both of these. There's really nothing to be gained from axing a zone, and even if there's nothing new and exciting going on there, just having so many different zones to explore, badge stories to read and events going on adds so much history and atmosphere to Paragon City that it otherwise wouldn't have. Making a choice between a few high-traffic zones or a bunch of quiet zones isn't really necessary: even out of dozens of different zones, a few will naturally emerge as the populated hubs while the rest lie on the outskirts of the game, so nothing would really be changed by removing those empty zones except to reduce the diversity of its setting. And particularly with Skyway City, it makes narrative sense that it's been left behind: it's a failed urban development project that's gradually becoming a slum. I'd love to see more contacts and stories no matter what the zone, but if nothing else, just exploring it and learning about its past makes its existence worthwhile.

That would be the above boss at work again...

"Look, we all know windows let people look outside, and that just hurts morale. You want outside windows, go work for AE! Here we have nice sensible windows that overlook random hallways and atriums, so people can focus on business."

I thought that was actually pretty cool the first time it happened to me. It took a minute to figure out why the hostage kept getting lost every three steps, but when I finally realized it's because I'm invisible and he can't see me, it added a nice bit of immersion to the game.

Now, to just become strong enough to solo Tyrant the "Really Hard Way!"

(Hey, a hero's gotta have goals... )

I'd define it as both not being VIP and not logging into the account. If someone's paying the subscription fee it's not really fair to take away their lesser-used characters' names, and if they're free but logging in, same goes. But if it's been a year and the account's apparently abandoned, the names could go up for grabs again. I'm on the status quo side, but I do agree that unused names shouldn't keep piling up forever.

It's not just a limitation. The advantage is that, when you do come up with a name, the name is uniquely yours on that server. The question that's entirely subjective and at the core of the issue is whether the hassle of having to come up with an unused name is worth having that name, with no modifiers, be yours alone once you do. Personally I think it is, though having names become available again after a year of unpaid inactivity isn't a bad idea (if something like that doesn't happen already).