Terwyn

Hey Lemur... remember that attack on the Rikti Dropships?

Fun times.

I apologize for the delay - my father has recently been diagnosed with Colon Cancer, so I have had multiple distractions of higher importance. Not to worry, though, they caught it really early, and it's yet to go anywhere.

I now present part Two of World War Rikti.

~~~
After leaving Paragon City, I was contacted by the Empath whom Keith Howard had mentioned. She invited me to her home in an undisclosed location, under the condition that I neither reveal her name nor her location.

It was mentioned to me that you were integral to the successful defense of the Destiny Institute. Something about establishing a mental network?

Not so much a mental network as most believe. I merely have access to the collective human unconsciousness, and as a result am capable of rapidly receiving and interpreting information from willing sources. It also gives me a relative amount of control over less than willing minds. As all of us were banded together in the common hope of survival, that allowed us to think and act with a single common Will.

But if you were united into a single Will, how is it you retained individuality?

Every time one human interacts with another, an echo of that interaction is left behind in the minds of both. The only one in danger of losing individuality was myself, and that is why I have moved myself out here. After the end of the First Rikti War, my powers had developed to the point in which I was mildly aware of all functional minds on the planet, both natural and artificial. It was then that I made a discovery about the Rikti.

A discovery about the Rikti?

Yes, well, I suspect that this discovery is already mostly public knowledge, but if it isn't it more than likely soon will be. The Rikti mind is, while significantly different from that of a human, more intuitively aware of other minds. What I had achieved on a small scale, the Rikti lived. In other words, the Rikti have achieved a wide-scale psychic network, one of which all members of their race has access. It was an accident, but at Destiny, I unknowingly tapped into that network.

Yes, I was aware of that. Having high level Vanguard access does come in handy, after all. You're saying you discovered that during the first Rikti War?

Yes.

Coming into contact with such a network at such a young age.... I can't imagine the relief you felt when help arrived.

"Relief" would have been an understatement. By that time, it was already too late for me - my powers had already over-reached themselves, and as a result, I haven't been able to control them to the same degree since. That's why I tend to avoid people.

I can understand that. I've read many reports suggesting that heroes who are Empaths suffer the highest rate of burnout.

Burnout? Is that what they're calling it now? No, we don't burn out.... we ignite. We lose ourselves to humanity, ceasing to become individuals and instead becoming nodes of our collective unconsciousness. Some of us, I suppose, adjust, but others like myself find a way to preserve some remnant of our individuality.

The Rikti War probably solved as many problems for us as it solved.... for once, we had definitive proof that we weren't alone. And of course, since we knew we were no longer alone, our species finally understood our strong inclinations to prejudice, paranoia, and other social ills. On the other hand... we also came direct to face with our deepest fears.

There are many places in the world where the wounds from the first Rikti War run deep. Destiny was merely one of them.

I'm going to be running one update a week until this is finished, I suspect I'm going to have about 50 or so entries.

If you're interested in having one of your characters appear in this, send me A PM on the forums or a tell to my Global in game (@Xylric). I'll be happy to discuss accomodation.

Having recently finished Max Brook's books, the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, I've come to consider how much fun it would be to take a look at the Rikti War through such a lens. The following is my first attempt at such an interpretation.

~~~

Keith Howard is one of the Nuclear 90. #68, to be precise. While he has the same heart mutation as al the others, he also possesses a vocal mutation. A Dual Canadian-American citizen, I met the Nanotechnology major in Atlas Park.

You're both Canadian and American?

Well, no, actually. I didn't get my American citizenship through normal channels. It was honarary, and I got it at the same time as my parents. I'd helped them save your ambassador in Ottawa after that major power failure in 2003. Some people just hate your country so much, you know. Although, I think they partially gave me the citzenship in recognition of the whole Destiny Institute affair.

The Destiny Institute?

Canada's major centre for Metahuman Affairs. Education, Support, Research, if you can name it, it was responsible for it. Fully funded by the government and the major Hero groups active in the nation. Naturally, of course, it was a key target for the Rikti. Once they learned where we were, of course. Up to that point, they were content to just bomb the hell out of the Golden Horseshoe. You know, the major Urban Nightmare around Lake Ontario?

I'm familiar with it. I did my Doctorate in Toronto. So, how'd the Rikti learn about the Institute?

You have a doctorate? Cool. Anyway, the Rikti learned about the Institute the hard way. They'd already completely destroyed all of our above ground facilities, so we'd lost quite a few good people... some of them could be considered remarkable. It was only natural that they bombed us, since Southern Ontario was the hardest hit area of all of Canada, as it was our major population centre.

They only had the one mothership over us, but they managed to take out a good quarter million people in the first hour and a half. They pretty much destroyed any hope of a traditional counter attack, which left the Heros to take care of things. It was brutal. They managed to trace the origins of our counter-attack and pretty much wiped out entire hero groups.

It was about then that Ashes remembered that linear accelerators and mass drivers are essentially the same thing. That's how they found the Institute... we pretty much made ourselves a prime target.

Consider the effects of a couple nanograms of matter temporarily shielded and accelerated to probably a good .6c slamming into an energy field specifically designed to deflect physical attack. It wouldn't have helped them any. We didn't care that it told them where we were. We were prepared.

My God...

Yeah, pretty much. That was the idea. We took down a mothership with a single shot, unfortunately, the side-effects resulted in an explosion that killed Ashes and most of the remaining faculty.

Who was Ashes?

Ashley Stuart. He was my mentor, the one who originally used the power armour I use. He's the reason I'm here in Paragon, you know. Without his influence, I'd still be bored out of my mind.

Of course, after we took the shot, most of the intelligence the Rikti had made far more sense - they realized that pretty much all of the next generation of Canadian heroes was in the Institute at the time they attacked, so if they wiped it out, they'd break our morale.

Of course, they were wrong.

Why would they have been wrong? That makes a fair amount of tactical sense.

Very simply. In all known life on this planet, what's the most important instinct, but the preservation of the species? Attacking the offspring of Canada's heroes was tactically the worst decision the Rikti could have made. Don't get me wrong, they made it incredibly hard on us. Out of the 1200 or so of us at the Institute, 891 of us didn't make it out. I could give you the names and powers of each of them, if it makes things clearer.

No, that won't be necessary. So, how did you make it out?

My parents taught me to be a leader as well as a follower. I may have been 15, but I was considered to be a genius, a polymath. I was a natural at pretty much everything, so everything came together to get as many people out alive as possible. That's where my mutations came in very handy. You see this device on my neck?

Yeah, I do. What is it?

It's what lets me converse like a normal human being. Otherwise, my voice pretty much screws up molecular bonds. Very useful with nanotechnology, but really annoying at times. Anyways, I collapsed almost all entrances to the Institute except one, bottlenecking the Rikti ground forces.

At this point, I threw on Ashe's armour, which quickly adapted to my neural patterns, and quickly gathered those of my age group. It was nothing short of epic.... eight 15 year-old kids with only moderately developed powers against an entire complenent of Rikti. Drones, Monkeys, Heavies, everything.

I think it was the Empath who helped the most. She established a network between all of us, so it was eight concious minds operating as one. We operated seemlessly. It took us a while, but we managed to hold them off until help arrived.

What kind of Help showed up?

Everyone. And I mean that, everyone showed up. Every single Canadian Hero that was able to get there showed up. At that point it was slightly lopsided. I suppose it goes to show, if you want to get yourself in serious trouble, go after a Super's kid.

Yeah, no kidding. Is there anything else?

Not that you need to know, no. I hope I helped clear up a few of your questions. You should go look up the Empath, she's still around, and she'll be able to add more to the story.

Thanks for your time.

No problem, it was my pleasure.

Thank you so much for putting this up, Wyll.

It made me smile.

It occurs to me.

Could this not be a very elegent and complex practical joke?

I can't believe no one's mentioned the radio mission where you have to rescue the author and occult specialist Clive Loveking, which is an almalgum of Clive Barker, H.P Lovecraft, and Stephen King.

Sure. Here's my attempt:

"I don't know how things happened like this. I mean, I didn't even believe devils existed, until it all took place. I'd been a huge member of the Society for Creative Anachronism for years, and when I finally found the *sword,* I was so happy.

Of course, no one told me that the sword as possessed. The moment I took hold of it and removed it from its sheath, the devil imprisoned inside escaped into my head. He plagued me with nightmares and horrible headaches, until I couldn't take it any more. I told him to shut up, and to stay out of my life.

Little did I know that standing up for myself like that caused a psychic backlash that killed the devil. He still exists, sort of, as an echo. And now I have full access to its powers. I'd always wanted to be a hero. I guess I get to be one now."

[ QUOTE ]
That's ludicrous. Or are you saying micro-chips and nano-technology have always existed on earth?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not saying they always existed on earth. I'm not foolish enough to take ancient proverbs literally. The essential point of the proverb is that all disciplines are inter-connected. Ideas can come from any source. We have airplanes because people looked at birds and wished to fly as they did.

[ QUOTE ]
I did not admit that, I said possibly. Either way, you're still wrong. Inspiration can lead to innovation. A book about aliens and a game where a player is interacting and fighting invading aliens are two completely different things. Adaptation would be watching aliens invade in a game and not interacting with it in any way. The innovation is adding that interactiveness, it's new, not in the book or movie. You are no longer watching or reading about it, but "living" it.

To be fair, Cryptic added the bombs to their invasion. They were inspired by AO, then adapted it to fit CoH, then added a bit of new functionality to it. There is some innovation in that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Look, I don't want to argue. It would be pointless. Unless some of the devs for CoH also worked on AO, there's no reason to believe they have anything to do with each other.

At this point, let's just agree to disagree, otherwise this will get heated and not be a pretty picture.

I wish to believe what was said, that a fair amount of the inspiration for the I10 content came from where the Devs said it came from: the Book of Revelation. What does it matter if AO also drew from the same source?

An ancient Hebrew wise man once said that there is nothing new under the sun. You've admitted that AO draws their inspiration from books and/or movies.

That's not innovation, that's adaptation. Innovation means bringing into existance something that's never been accomplished before.

Yes, but where did the people from AO get their inspiration?

Having a bachelor of religious education, I've become rather... adamant that all religious texts and traditions be treated with respect. It's very nice to see that the biblical source material transferred while still maintaining the proper sense.

*Feral Scrapper here, with slight tendancies of the other types.

Also, Shiny objects are a scrapper's friend, especially if it's right underneath the AV.

I'd argue that there's a forth type of scrapper -> (Scrappicus lazicus), or... the Satiated Scrapper.

With its habitat frequently called a "target rich" environment, such Scrappers don't care about whether or not someone else is trying to take down the same herd of prey or not, they're just happy to have stuff to hunt.

They're generally close friends to tankers, because the tanker can create herds of prey very quickly.

Suggested by: Me
Category: Interactive
Customizable: Yes
Type: Bookshelf
Description: A character Journal. Basically, you'd be able to put in a certain amount of text per page in the book, and thus add some flavour to the RPing.