The Caretaker

When she reappears, I plan to make it count.

You know, for all the plot holes I've tried to fill, this is the one that just needs to exist, or your efforts would just be too effective. You'd have whole gangs dismantled from the inside out by level 20... which was exactly how the original writing was done, levels equalling time, and gangs replacing other gangs as the low ones disappeared, you having done them in effectively. Then Clockwork came back at level 41+ for Tina Macintyre, which was fine as an alternate dimension... but then CWK came back in full force at 35+ for the LGTF and that mantra was given the handwave of a lifetime after that. I have a handful of ideas for making releases from the Zig a little less like a meme, but it's not ideal to involve Chris Jenkins in every story.

I had this issue a long time ago where Ambient Occlusion settings being max'ed were the problem on my 1070.

This was a conscious decision made because in the Marchand arcs in brickstown there's a breakout at the zig and the Petrovich brothers are busted out as a diversion. Because of that, it was decided to put them right back in when it was over.

Occams developer

Flinch reply: "Inscription In March of 1986, with the mystical aid of the Midnight Squad, the Back Alley Brawler managed to track local Superadine distribution to a secret lab beneath this building. Little is known about the lab's contents. It is simply known that the Back Alley Brawler and the Statesman swore their comrades to secrecy after the battle." I would want to explore this unresolved lore as the reason for the attack - Deadlock being an agent of the Family.

At this time, that's an order of magnitude beyond our scope.

Oh, yes. Herr Adelard Ziegler goes on a deep dive in Kallisti.

If you look closely, some HC things are already in motion with Manticore. His reputation is beginning to... tarnish you could say.

I want to, and even did some prelim work, but need more plots to strengthen the push into that revamp.

Recluse knew what he was doing. That "show of force" was an orchestrated feint. The gambit was that Arachnos was in fact robbing Praetoria blind while engaging Tyrant head on as a distraction. I can't say more because seeeekrits. Also: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission:Inside_Information_-_Praetoria's_Hidden_Treasure

No, but I have a long-standing request to make the Library of Souls: Inspired somewhat by something like this.

Arachnos has a pretty clear line drawn on Nictus, if you ask me. One of the very few times you encounter one in the Rogue Isles is when you discover the Warshade named Romulus. (Which, by the way, factored in to Valeria and the future roadmap.) Arachnos might have noticed the report, but it was so beneath them as to not matter at all. Outside of that, however, we have the animosity between Arachnos and the Council, where the Nictus currently reside. Two competing fascist ideologies gunning for similar endgames doesn't ever end well. As such, I don't see Arachnos "gaining" much Nictus power unless the Council were to spectacularly implode and leave their inner workings completely laid bare for others to plunder. Instead, I see an inevitable conflict when these two powers finally come to blows over a resource or event, and even then it'd be hard to measure who'd win. I'd lean towards Arachnos because they 1) Are operating openly with their own nation-state and 2) have their hands in more tech than Council. Council's advantage is their cockroach-like tenacity, with layers and layers of redundancy to keep themselves from ever being truly wiped out. --- Regarding the Zig: Pandora's box was not the end-all-be-all of security, but rather a fantastic extra layer of power siphoning. Even when the Zig's Supermax was broken into, the jail cells for the sixteen had tech and protocols to keep people like Veles, Clockwork King, Vandal and Rollister (etc) in the pokey. So the Zig has (had) more going for it than just the Box. --- SSA3? Oh yeah. It's coming.

I'm looking into the status of his planned replacement.

In Kallisti Wharf, for sure.

I'll probably go back and take a look some time at Valeria. That was my first writing assignment. The synopsis: It closes the temporal loop opened by Requiem being in the past with Shadow Cysts. The Shadow Cysts by their very definition were world-ending threats and Requiem brought at least ten of them back in time. If even one was missed, it would flood the Earth with Nictus at a time when humanity had no chance to fight back. Instead what I tried to do was close the loop by having the player delete every last one of those possible cysts by spiking the newfound 'network' with a sort of vorpal bomb. The only change to the timeline once this was complete is that everything happens exactly as it did before, but the Nictus have been stewing in the knowledge that Cysts are possible (without appropriate resources to make one) until the Council recruits Arakhn. It also attempts to shed light on the question of "What imbued Romulus with Nictus power?" by explaining that the first cyst is a coalescence of the three Nictus Essences from the ITF finale. Where THEY came from is still to be disclosed to the player.

This wall is not sealing away a specific entity. Okay, that's a lie. There's someone in there but you'd be disappointed to know they aren't special. The wall is warding entry to a greater complex beyond it.

Wow, took a look at this today and... Pavel Garnier himself has a small error in his name, but that's all I can confirm. Now, contacts like himself and Ann-Marie Engeles have separate conditions involving level ranges. These ranges exist on the contacts themselves, and in some of the content they offer. The contacts: MinPlayerLevel 15 MaxPlayerLevel 19 CompletePlayerLevel 19 // Start introducing other contacts at this level. FailsafePlayerLevel 24 // Stop offering missions at this level. The content: // TaskPool TaskInclude Contacts\Level_3\tasks\SL3_Vahzilok.taskset Note: Badge mission is in this set ^ 15-20 range (SL3Mission) // TaskPool TaskInclude Contacts\Level_3\tasks\SL3_Outcasts.taskset // TaskPool TaskInclude Contacts\Guided_Play\tasks\SL3_Guided.taskset Talk to the Security Chief! Oh boy. // StoryArc StoryArc StoryArcs\Lvl3_Vahzilok_StoryArc_4.storyarc minplayerlevel 15 maxplayerlevel 19 As far as I know, this data is read in order, and so each item is checked - task task task storyarc. If you don't qualify for something it doesn't lock you out of everything, it just skips the thing you can't do. Some tasks likely must be done before the arc has room to be offered, and then you must be Level 19 or less to be issued the arc. Caretaker recommends: Turn off xp when you're 18 and go to town. Meanwhile, submitting a minor fix to repair Pavel's name.

This is the approach. Battalion has already been observing for years with sleeper agents, and you've been fighting them since forever, though not as much recently.

The Rikti war as you know it would be officially concluded as of Nemesis' big reveal, but Primal Earth is in a bad place globally from the damage. Luckily Hero Corps had established outside of Paragon, globally, and the rebuilding has started in earnest with the help of Vanguard and the Traditionalists too. The Honoree offers limited anecdotal support from behind the scenes because his War Tribunal conditioning was experimental and his temperament is not stable. As for Scirocco, we believe no plans the Live team had were good for him. Their gunning for Arachnos' throat and ripping them apart was narrative and technical blunder. As such, groundwork was already laid in Buzzsaw's arc for what Scirocco could start doing with his conscience: Informant work. It's how Vandal got pinched and ended up in the Zig for you to talk to.

Can't comment about her future, but Cobalt made a grand effort to fix those Valentines arcs for a reason.

There's a phenomenon with all writers in trying to achieve balance. If we say too little, a potential snark-laden commentary about plot holes and careless writing stalks our minds. If we say too much, we're trying too hard to cover every base and justify everything. We're getting better in that respect. I think Valeria, Houston and Stribbling had the balance about right. TBH I find it hard to apologize for making someone read, you can always blow through it and wiki it later.

Piecemeal is getting a story that sets up maaaajor plots in the world plot going forward, and soon. That story will be closing out issue 27. Freaklok will be getting a full suite of stories in Kallisti Wharf and colliding/colluding with a lot of other factions in the process.

I can't guarantee you'll have any less questions than when you arrived, but here I think we can have some (possibly) meaningful discussion about plot going forward, within the limits of my ability, without giving away the farm. I will try to be diligent about checking in on this once a week.

Everyone jokes about the "security" in Azuria's oversight, but did you ever stop to think of what might be in there that never gets out, vs the chaff that gets palmed from time to time by bad actors? Like, it's reasonable to think that the Staff of Itching might get lost after an office prank. But the interdimensional helix fossil found by Portal Corps that's been under study for its faint magical emanations and nigh immunity to being probed by any known methods? That's several layers deeper than anything a surly intern could get to.