[The Lost and the homeless]

3 hours ago, El D said:

That said, Vanguard does have the Herald as a public relations branch run by Incandescent. I could easily see them operating shelters or programs for the Lost or former-Lost - perhaps partnered with the Midnight Club, given their involvement in crafting the Lost Cure in the first place.

 

Not going to lie, but reading the Paragon Times article about Incandescent scares the hell out of me.

 

“We stand watch to deter hostile alien forces who would disrupt our peace and livelihoods. We know what to look for, even if you don’t..."

 

That's almost sounds like if McCarthy was a part of Vanguard.

[The Lost and the homeless]

4 minutes ago, hurtlesnaps said:

Some of the concepts you're bringing to the fore immediately make me think of The Morlocks from the X-Men. I don't want to presume to know your interest in or knowledge of the superhero genre, so I've provided a link - there's a few decades worth of great stories that cover topics like factionalism, fundamentalism and indigent sovereignty within a community of transient, sewer-dwelling mutants.

 

I'm not familiar with X-Men comics/lore ( I was more of a Darkhorse, Spawn or Moonknight sort of kid ), but from what I read from the article they do have some similarities to what I'm thinking about. However, I do find the idea that the 'Hideous and Deformed' sewer dwelling mutants to use violence to settle differences to be problematic, but I understand that the creators didn't think of that at the time.

 

Yet, I'll look more into this, so thank you for the suggestion.

[The Lost and the homeless]

While I’m going to counter argue some of these points, I’m still glad to hear them. Some of this is clarifications as well, because I’m doing some work and process of moving, so the post is a little muddled.

 

2 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

There are at least a couple late-game Rikti-affiliated villains that saw the process as a general step up in their lives, and while the cult-like tactics and drugs that are used to transform and manipulate the members definitely put the group as "villainous" over all, it's not hard to see where people down on their luck would still prefer it. That said, the Lost are, ultimately, still pretty villainous. 

 

To me, these Rikti-affiliated villains are individuals that view their transformation as a step up but use this new position in their life to become oppressors. Yet, someone else might use this ‘step up’ for good.

 

Perhaps this group would have a different name to label themselves, rather than Lost? ‘Found’ sounds corny but I like corny, personally.

 

2 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Like, if you took away all of Vandal's robot parts, it'd probably still be clearly wrong for him to want to go running back to the 5th Column and getting up to all his nazi antics because he preferred his life as a cyborg, no? 

 

Vandal chose to become a cyborg. The victims of the Lost didn’t. What I’m proposing is that this group of Lost wish to retain their gained power for self-protection and a better life.

 

2 hours ago, biostem said:

I hope that you wouldn't have these homeless as the enemies you fight. 

 

The idea behind the AE storyline would basically be a ‘Choose your own adventure’, where you interact with a blinky that tells you to find a certain mission on AE.

 

Basically it would be this:

> You agree with the Lost and help them fight against their foes.

> You agree with the group that wish for a non-lethal, contained fight against the Lost

> You agree with a group that wish to use violence against the Lost

 

Other groups will present their arguments against this community of Lost, and you can agree with them or not to make one of these choices.

 

2 hours ago, El D said:

I can't imagine that Vanguard would allow a community of peaceful Lost - not because peaceful Lost can't happen, but more because the Lost by their nature isn't so much a community as a movement (Become Rikti) that is taking advantage of a community (Paragon's homeless population). Vanguard's entire purpose of 'stop the Rikti by any means necessary' runs pretty directly counter to that.

 

...

 

Also, for a 'Lost Community' to exist there'd need to be a method of consistently producing the mutagenic drugs that create them. After all they aren't born, so they'd have to replenish their numbers via continued transformations of new members

 

What I mean by community isn’t so much producing new members via drugs, but rather through finding current Lost that are united in this mindset.

 

Perhaps Vanguard might assume that this is just another Lost cult performing the same modus operandi to grow their numbers in the story arc, which would be an interesting angle.

 

With all this said, I think this group of Lost wouldn’t stop someone from getting The Cure from Vanguard if they want it; after all, if they want to return to their normal lives, whatever that may be, who are they to stop them? 

 

-

 

Might ramble on later on what else is on my mind about this, like it's some sort of dumb vlog, but keep it going.

[Freedom Corps and Longbow, terrorist or mercenary organizations.]

 “An unavoidable war is called justice. When brutality is the only option left it is holy.”

- Niccolo` Machiavelli

 

Longbow follows the mindset of 'The Prince'. Do with that as you will.

[The Lost and the homeless]

So, I’ve thought of writing some AE content that was related to the lore of CoX rather than making purely original content, and for whatever reason The Lost came up in my mind.

 

And, well, I guess some backstory about myself is needed to build the foundation of this discussion.

 

For half a year I was homeless, although I was lucky that I had a decent car to live in and a family that wanted me back, keeping my credit card active despite running away. Yet, I still saw and experienced some of what the homeless deal with; gangs, cops and pedestrians that wanted them gone, using force to do so. 

 

The homeless are powerless. Some are mentally ill. Others that aren’t ill seem ‘unstable’ and ‘violent’ due to groups above trying to destroy their existence, so the first thing they do is to defend themselves, whatever they need to or not. 

 

With all those factors, I decided to look into the Lost faction, seeing if they were more than ‘Pre-Rikti’. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Theoden and https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Timothy_Raymond don’t seem to be under some psychic control, but are rather sentient, or become sentient

. So far so good.

 

The Lost Cure, which was introduced by Timothy Raymond, is mass produced and used by the Vanguard to revert Lost back into humans. Namely the homeless. Yet, I ask myself this; where do the homeless go?

 

Homeless shelters seem like a pretty obvious answer to this question, but have you worked at an American homeless shelter? Most are crowded, understaffed, underfunded and potentially dangerous for those staying there and working there. Most leave, going back to the streets.

 

And this is Paragon City. Where the homeless are targets and recruits for the Lost. Makes me wonder how many of the Lost we fight are just the same person being turned over and over again.

 

So what if a group of Lost don’t want the cure, not to cause trouble but to create their own community? That staying the way they are is preferable due to the fact that they can fight back, that they can find somewhere to call home, at least amongst themselves?

 

Would Vanguard find this intolerable? Or the other major ‘blue side’ factions?

 

I haven’t written my complete thoughts on the matter, but I thought I would start a discussion about it, hearing some thoughts.