Coyotedancer

Cimerora, likewise. It's a perpetual sunny afternoon there. They don't even HAVE a night cycle.

Nope. I *like* the perpetual night thing for Halloween. It's the right and proper state for bashing zombies and banners and giant, angry pumpkin-things. You guys get your "sunny city" the other 11 months of the year... I think you can bear to spare us night-owls one month of dark.

Eh. If they fix the base access vet/p2w power so that it's actually USEFUL? I'm fine with it. I *like* the macro option and have found it really nice to have... And I wish the PvPers and Master Of- badge-runners who were abusing it as an exploit could have just man/woman/othered-up and stopped being exploitative with it, which might have allowed us to keep some version of it active. But I'm realistic enough to know that the odds of their doing that is somewhere between 'slim' and 'none', so here we are. XP

The vendor in the Vanguard base is easy to get to buy SO enhancements. Sure, you can always run to Talos or another higher level zone without much trouble, either, but it's a nice option to have if you happen to hit 22 in Atlas.

My crew typically tend to have their "basic"/signature costume... a "street clothes"/casual outfit... something fancier or formal... and maybe an alternate-color/slightly-different variation on the signature look. It's very, very rare for me to use more than four or five of the costume slots. Kai/White Thorn was one exception, since I also did her motorcycle leathers both with and without the helmet when IC she got her bike, and then I also added that spooky "Void Form" black spectrum look to match her partner's very ethereal "Astral form". Semnai's costumes are also a little unusual for me... I used all ten slots, but she only has five outfits. She just has two very-slightly-different versions of each... One that's equipped with her Thorn Blade, Xhelethe, and one that's carrying some kind of regular. "mundane" sword instead. Because that sword has "opinions". And there are some things that Xhel just DOES NOT want to deal with. XD

You want a Task Force that's difficult for a full team to complete... and your answer to my concern about that kind of content locking out solos is to say "solo it". Right.

I would be okay with that except for one thing... It's a giant proverbial-middle-finger to solos and duo/small-team players. It's silly that I *still* find myself having to remind people that ** NOT EVERYONE WHO PLAYS THIS GAME IS A "TEAMER" **. We have a very solo/small-team friendly way to GET those Incarnate toys in the first place. Given that, it would seem sort-of stupid to lock out any potential changes to those picks behind a "Team or else!" challenge-level Task Force.

I want Syndicate... and a set of Circle Mages as a counterpoint to the Circle Demons we already have.

My Dark/Bio/Dark Sentinel, Tavaris? He makes a pretty respectable off-tank. XD

And then you absolutely wreck the game for solo/small-team players. "Oh no. We can't do Arc X because no one in our trio is AT Y or power-set Z!" No thanks. <_<

*chuckles at this post* Ooooh, yeah. Those Vanguard guys will absolutely eat your proverbial lunch if you're not careful. And the Rangers can see you from the far side of the War Zone.

Honestly? All I would do is give the damage sets a bit of a rationality check... They feel very uneven to me. Fire, Water and DP seem okay damage-wise. I'd leave them alone. Dark is slower on the damage front, but basically unstoppable past a certain point. (As I've said in-game a few times, being in front of my Tavaris (Dark/Bio) or Shonokin (Dark/WP) is a little like being in the path of a glacier. They're not going to roll over anything QUICKLY, but there's not a thing the goons can do to stop them.) So, I'd likely leave that alone as well. Archery, Sonic, Ice and AR need some attention, I think. They feel slower than they ought to. Psi? Oh, great gods of gaming... Psi needs help. I don't know if it's JUST the low damage, or if it's that half of the game is made of robots and zombies (Who basically laugh at Psi damage-) and other things that resist that damage type, or what... But playing a Psi Sentinel is absolutely painful. It's not just glacially slow, it's tedious. <_< So, yeah. I'd suggest going through the damage numbers on the offensive sets and giving a good hard look at helping some of them that can't quite keep up with DP and Fire.

I've had this happen... I suspect it's a spawn-point issue. The spy may have popped up behind you, very close to the door, rather than deeper into the map. That not only lets them escape very quickly, but also means you may never even see them.

I moved two of my crew to Excelsior this afternoon... So if you're into Egyptian names? Amun and Anut are up for grabs.

VT's got a point there... Not every character is appropriate for every group or setting. No matter how much *you* may like the idea you've come up with, roleplaying is very much a group activity. That means it's good to have at least some awareness of (and consideration for-) the style and tone of the group you're going to be running that character with, or the people who are likely to be playing around you in a public setting. If you have a high-conflict, high-drama group that likes to hang out in a strip club and talk about their fetishes, that's going to have a very different vibe than walking in on a group that's playing high school heroes worrying about getting their homework done and who's going to ask who to the Homecoming dance. It's not a Bad Thing to keep the potential audience in mind. And yeah. There are PLENTY of characters on Everlasting that are overtly sexual. There are also plenty that are disturbing in some way, from the intentionally psychopathic to the aggressive and obnoxious. (Hello, Semnai. XD) There's no shortage of "edgy" roleplay on the server or people who enjoy it.... You just need to find the group that fits the story you want to tell.

When that set was new, one of my friends back on Liberty dubbed it "Barnyard Rifle"... Apparently the sound effects reminded him of the cattle his family had when he was growing up. XD

My own crew tend to be exclusively Magic origin... It's just a side effect of the type of characters I play... So it's rarely been an issue for me. I can see where others without such a clear-cut bunch might have trouble picking, though. "Fuzzy" seems to be the best call in that case. Go with 'The Rule of Cool'... What feels like the more interesting, more entertaining or more creatively inspirational choice.

Dear Diary… I’m not sure who built Pandora’s Box or why, but if I ever meet them? I’m going to punch them in the nose. >_< Awhile back, Positron asked B to help the Phalanx out with a very strange problem… Psychic disturbances and weird power eruptions were happening all over the place, and as a result goons who really should not have been a huge menace (Like Trolls-) were suddenly turning into a serious issue. All of which came to a head when we found Clamor, and her silly pink chicken feet, and her Freakshow friends and a whole bunch of Talons of Vengeance running around in Atlas Park. Reading Clamor’s mind after we’d cleaned up her mess, Penny Yin told us that all of the complications were caused by an artifact called Pandora’s Box. We knew that SOMEBODY was going to have to go and deal with that eventually, but we weren’t sure at the time who would end up stuck with the job. In retrospect, we probably should have started making plans right then… Because, of course, those “someones” did end up being us. This time it didn’t start with psychic disturbances, but with TEMPORAL ones… Chronomancy has sort-of become one of my areas of study, so when Positron called B in on the time distortions, he asked me to tag along, too. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got to the lab… But a horde of those creepy gummy monsters from Bloody Bay was definitely NOT high on the list of things I would have guessed. While they’re not as bad as Hydras (They don’t barf on you as a mode of communication, after all-), Shivans are still sort of gross. They tend to explode into vast waves of gelatinous goo when you punch them. Gelatinous, STICKY goo... Which really made me wish I’d brought along my motorcycle helmet. Because it would have been MUCH easier to get the Shivan goo off of THAT than it was to get it out of my hair... <_< I *also* didn’t expect to find Professor Echo wandering around the place... Granted, no one ever really seems to expect to find Professor Echo ANYWHERE he turns up, but- As mad scientists go, Echo’s not a bad fellow… He’s certainly more polite than his contemporary self, who’s a bit of a jerk, honestly… But he’s still a nut, and he doesn’t always make a lot of sense. In this case, he was ranting a bit about us not finding Pandora's Box, and messing with causality, and being violent, and living in a “savage time” and all that… and grumbling about how we had completely missed the idea of looking for the Box in the past when that idea ought to have been obvious. Which, once he mentioned it, was actually true. We *hadn’t* thought of that... Not until he said something about it, anyway... Which made him even more unhappy once he realized that *he* must have been the one who gave us the idea all along. And had never gotten credit for it. All of which reminded me a lot of my own boggle with Vermis, and the Book of Lineages and it turning out that I'd been a time-travelling book-bandit. After we’d finally figured out what Echo was on about, and cleaned up the rest of his gummy monsters (Ugh! I just do NOT see why he travels with those things... >_> ), we went back to Positron and explained the situation to him. We told him that according to Echo's history, we really were supposed to be the ones who found the Box somehow, and we mentioned his time travel idea. I sort-of expected to get a lecture about how messing with time was BadWrong and how we were going to "destroy the world!" if we kept doing it, but Positron seemed okay the idea. He seemed to think that time travel was a perfectly logical solution. It also turned out that while we were out getting covered in sticky Shivan goo, he had been doing a bit of research himself. He’d found the name of an archaeologist who had made something of a specialty of looking for, and collecting information and stories about, the artifact that we were after. The man's name was James Harvan, and Positron wanted us to go and talk to him at one of his dig sites. Of course, Arachnos got there before we did. Apparently THEY were looking for the Box, too, and had read more or less exactly the same wiki pages that Posi had. Which lead them to exactly the same conclusions about who they should get to help them. Which lead them to the same dig site that we were there to visit. They tried to kidnap Harvan and his students, but we and a few of the Phalanx members who had come with us refused to let them get away with being rude like that. It turned into kind-of a giant brawl, and the students all paniced… But I got to punch Arbiter Sands (again) and we all got to laugh when Synapse knocked Nocturne right on her butt, so it turned out well in the end. The professor agreed to work with us. While he and Positron started putting together all of the information that they had, B and I decided to look into the time travel angle that Echo had inadvertently suggested. Neither Prometheus nor Silos were particularly helpful… Not that we really expected them to be… But at least they let us use their crystal to visit one of the potential time periods Harvan had mentioned. I’ve written about the ancient world before. About Cimerora, and its people and all the times I’ve been there. I think I’ve even mentioned Romulus, who’s kind of a big, overly-opinionated jerk. Well, when we went back to look for Pandora’s Box? We ran right into him. He’d gone out looking for it, too… and I THINK I now know why he *really* wasn’t happy to see us in that valley where we destroyed the Talons’ army. We… sort of kicked his butt. It was a very bad day for Roman generals... And he thought that maybe WE were the ones who had taken the Box, because it sure wasn’t there, where we all expected to find it. At least my magic didn’t get all messed up on that trip, which was a nice for a change… I think I may have been back to Cimerora often enough now to be… I don't know... Maybe acclimated to that time period somehow? It's a mystery. There isn’t much information on Chronomancy in the Temple library, or in our own books in the Sanctum. Studying temporal magic just hasn’t been as simple as picking up a new Force spell or designing a ward… There’s a lot of trial and error involved, and not a whole lot in the way of documentation or proper arcane instruction. Maybe once I have a really good grasp of the Art, I should write a book on the subject myself? Anyway, while we were off embarrassing Romulus (Which he completely deserved-), Positron and the professor had come up with a way for us to possibly track the location of Pandora’s Box in the present time. The thing had a companion artifact that Harvan called the "Antikythera". We asked Azuria about it first (After we had to rescue her. <_< ) but, OF COURSE, she was clueless… and sort of rude. Eventually, it was the professor who figured out that *my* people probably had it. I really, really didn’t like having to invade one of the most used, most solid, best-preserved parts of the old city just to steal one of the very few important artifacts that we Oranbegans had actually managed to hold on to, but to find the Box I didn't have much of a choice. Harvan was completely fascinated by our architecture, though, and seemed content to just stare at the walls while the rest of us went searching. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the “Fabulous and obviously very important, perhaps even sacred!” inscriptions that he was so fascinated with were nothing more than our version of street signs. ‘This way to the Grand Library’… ‘Main Gallery ahead’… ‘Beware of Falling Ceiling Stones’... But he'll probably find out eventually.) Making our way to the Assembly Chamber, we found not only our Antikythera, but a stray Fusionette (Who was glowing like the Trolls back in Skyway-) and that Demon Queen, Lilitu. (She had the artifact, and seemed to want to use it on Fusionette to “absorb her power”? Which I assumed meant the glowy bits.) I really enjoyed sending that one right back to the Abyss... Lilitu is arrogant, Diary, and she made some rather inappropriate comments to B. I don’t care whose queen she is… She doesn’t get to do that. <_< Anyway, we got our artifact... Lilitu got sent packing... and Fusionette got to go home and apologize to Jimmy for being an over-powered nitwit. That was only the beginning of finding and dealing with the Box, though. -k

Only 80 KinMelee Stalkers at 50... Only *11* of those are KM/Bio... … And two of that less-than-a-dozen are Kai! XD It sort of surprises me that they're that rare. KM on a Stalker hits like a sack of bricks.

(Ha! As I recall, when we ended up off in that tunnel full of Pantheon goons all on our own, Kai *was* actually following him... XD)

I do landscape and botanical photography. I play and GM old-school paper-and-funky-dice tabletop RPGs. ... And I collect Asian ball-joined dolls (Who often end up being my photography models-) and antique books.

Diary, there are some places in the multiverse that are just very hard to deal with. Somewhere out there, there’s a world full of ghosts who all claim that *I* am the one responsible for their deaths. There’s a world where the Banished Pantheon were never banished, and so brought darkness and death to everything in their path. There’s a world where the Council won a great war and imposed their will on the people without mercy… And then, there’s First Ward. Praetoria. I’ve written about the Praetors before, and I’ve mentioned “Mother”… Praetor Tillman… in particular, as a horror beyond the simple evil of the others. She a was very powerful and completely unprincipled psychic. One whose actions made a very deep and very disturbing impression on B. When we faced her on Maria’s behalf, he told me a little about what she had done, but he said that to really understand it I needed to see what he had seen. I needed to experience the results of her madness myself. I can’t say that he didn’t warn me… That he didn’t at least try to tell me what that place was like. He did… But there are no words that can describe some things. There are no explanations that can make sense of what that creature did, or the pain she caused… Or the way that the echoes of her evil and of Hamidon’s wrath and of Calvin Scott’s madness warped everything they touched. Though I keep doing it, time travel is never easy for me, Diary. Sometimes it affects my magic in ways that are unpredictable, and I’m often left more vulnerable than I would like in what are almost always potentially dangerous circumstances. My Abyss armor might not answer my summoning. My spells might not strike with their full force. My strongest wards might become too difficult to cast at all… Our trip back to First Ward was like that. We found ourselves in a place that was hostile in more than just the physical sense, and I had no way to protect us from its influence. First Ward is a place full of cast-offs, Diary. The lost, the exiled, the forgotten and the broken. The thrown away. Some who find themselves there, like the slavers who threatened us, have given in and become monsters. Others, though, are still strong in their humanity in spite of their circumstances. They still care about others… Anna, James, Nadia, Vanessa… Their souls shine like torches, like signal fires, in the darkness that surrounds them. If there’s any hope to be found among the ruins, and the brutality and the brokenness of First Ward, it lives in them. In those bright souls, who have not given up and who have not given in. But where does “Mother” come into all of this? She wasn’t the one who made First Ward a settlement of exiles. She isn’t responsible for the plight of the Forlorn, or the petty atrocities of the DUST soldiers, or the predation of the slave-traders, or the anger of the Resistance. No… The horrors she inflicted on that place were different. The ruins of the Mother of Mercy hospital stand in First Ward, below a swirling storm of unsettled energy that covers the entire sky. It’s where Tillman used to conduct her experiments on living minds. It’s where she made her Seers, and disposed of her “failures”, and ripped apart the psyches of her victims, discarding pieces of them like pieces of trash. She’s responsible for the broken ones… The Burnouts and Mindstorms and pink Psychic Manifestations. And those random butchered bits of discarded minds? The things she cut away from her “children” and cast off to suffer, completely ignored, in silence? Those things that the living thought were furious, unsettled ghosts? They’re called Apparitions, Diary. And they are, every single one, Tillman’s fault. They possess others, and destroy their minds because they think that they have no other choice. They believe that it’s the only way that they can be heard. The only way their anger can be sated or addressed. For a little while, I was a host to one. I felt all of its rage, and all of its sorrow and all of its frustration and fear. From it, I learned that neither they, the Apparitions, nor the living minds that they were removed from, can ever feel whole. They can never be at peace. When Tillman preyed on the psyches of others, when she pulled apart those living minds, she had no idea what she was creating… What she was setting loose to torment First Ward. Or she simply didn’t care… And what she did was monsterous. She created monsters, yes… It’s difficult to think of the Apparitions and the others as anything else… But like B said back when we were facing Malaise and the Seers, they’re not the ones to blame. They didn’t ask to be made into what they are. Like the Forlorn, what became of them ISN’T their fault. Though they may be dangerous to others now, they’re also victims, like so many others in First Ward, and that should never be forgotten. I was very glad at the end that I hadn't gone to First Ward alone... I'm not sure what would have happened if I had... And if I had known then the things that I know now, I'm also not sure that our encounter with Tillman wouldn't have ended in a much, much darker way than it did. There's no way that she can ever atone for what she's done, and I would have felt no guilt feeding her soul to the void. B sees her as a warning... as an example of what any powerful psychic can become if they abandon themselves to inhumanity and the corruption of their mind and soul. To me? She's probably going to be one of those nightmares that I never really find a way to banish. -k

(( The dialogue and 'mistells' between Faultline and Fusionette in that mission always make me grin. When we ended up outpacing *both* of them in the caverns on our way to punch H'Dude in the nose, it only seemed fair to blame "distraction" for their trouble keeping up. XD ))

I've never actually taken part in any sort of formal, long-term, planned RP arc in an MMO setting... As a long-time tabletop roleplayer and GM, I've been all about that off-line, but it's just never come up for me in on-line games. That said, the thing with Kai and Blue may count in some ways... While not really a fully-plotted, intricately planned-out arc for the two characters, we do know where they started, where they are now and what they'll be up to twenty-some years in the future. Mostly because we have both the "current" versions AND their time-travelling "future selves" as active characters in the game. That has required at least a little pondering and planning ("Wait. Protean and Ivory have kids... Oh heck. That means we have to come up with their NAMES?! Eeek. o_O ") and at various times there have been conversations about how to resolve particular issues, or what arcs to run to answer certain questions. It's definitely been a very interactive process, and it is an evolving, on-going story... Though there's no over-all plot per se, beyond just a couple of young hero-types living their (often complicated and occasionally hilarious-) lives. So, it sort-of fits what the OP's asking about and it sort-of doesn't. Call it 50% of an answer.

Dear Diary- It may seem like a silly question, but I really do have to ask myself sometimes… Where do all of these Rikti goons keep coming from? Are they born and raised like human people? Or are they like clones that are grown in rows of pods? I wonder, because it seems like there are an absolutely ENDLESS number of them, and almost all of them seem remarkably determined to make a mess. o_O I’ve already written a little about the time that they tried to invade Port Oakes, and about how Theo and his zombies and I went to help push them back. I think I mentioned that the Rikti monkeys all smelled just like boiled cabbage, too… But I have to admit that aside from that? I just don’t know a lot ABOUT the Rikti. Like all of us in the Hero business (and most of us in the Rogue business, too, honestly-), I’ve found myself punching hordes of them for being destructive jerks and for trying to invade the world, but I can’t say that I really understand them as individuals or as a civilization. That’s why I was a little curious and a little excited about maybe… finally… getting some real answers to all of my questions about them when B and I ended up working with Vanguard for a little while. A fellow named Serpent Drummer had asked us to help him with something in the War Zone, along with Penny’s friends Faultline and Fusionette. It wasn’t supposed to involve punching anyone… We were only supposed to be there as some extra “just in case” “no big deal” “mostly for the photo-ops” additional security for a peace conference. It seems that the RIkti, like we Oranbegans, have factions and that one of them… They call themselves the Traditionalists… had gotten very tired of the war and wanted to end hostilities. The conference had been called to sign a peace treaty with them. A simple thing, right? We should have known better. Nothing is EVER simple when we’re involved, Diary. Nothing! Not even going to a meeting and signing a symbolic piece of paper… It started out peacefully enough, of course. Everyone was hopeful, and the Traditionalist Rikti at least appeared to be in earnest about the whole cease-fire business. The meeting seemed to be going well… Right up until Nemesis showed up… A whole horde of his soldiers and little tank-bots ported right into the middle of the base, and made absolute menaces of themselves. One of the big, mechanical clone-bots even tried to capture Lady Grey! (He *also* tried to be a completely patronizing jerk to her, which did not end at all well for him. He really ought to have known that she just was not going to put up with that kind of out-dated male chauvinism from some overgrown brass pocket watch with delusions of grandeur.) It's probably a good thing that we were there, though, because it took a while to chase down all of Nemesis' goons. He'd brought a LOT of them, and those little tank-bots are surprisingly sneaky. Unfortunately, they had had a bit of success with the raid. Not only did they disrupt the meeting, but in all of the chaos, they'd managed to make off with a few of the negotiators and other attendees. We had to go and rescue them. Most were very understanding about their ordeal, and C’Kelkah (Who was sort-of the spokesbeing for the Rikti Traditionalists-), was reasonable, and even wanted to help. I wish I could say the same for General Aarons. I’m pretty sure he has a death wish, Diary. He has absolutely NO sense of self-preservation. >_> While we were doing that, the OTHER Rikti faction… They call themselves Restructurists… decided to disrupt any chance of continuing the negotiations by attacking the main Vanguard base. We got back just in time to jump into the middle of THAT battle. And then they attacked Portal, on Peregrine Island, with some kind of new “Assault Portals” and we had to deal with that, too. And someone named Hro’Dtohz got involved, which really seemed to unnerve negotiator C’Kelkah and our new friend Lk’Onik. Lk’Onik is an interesting one, Diary. He’s a Rikti psychic, something they call a “Psi Scout”, and someone we met while defending the Vanguard base. Of all of the Rikti I’ve met so far, he’s the one who’s the easiest to talk to. Maybe because, like B, he’s always reading people’s surface thoughts and that makes communication easier? I don’t know… It’s a little weird to say that there’s a Rikti who I’d like to have as a friend, but it’s true. He seems like a decent guy. After that, we had to chase the Restructurists all over the place. They attacked the power station back in Cap, and the Overbrook Dam in Paragon City. Aeon had an absolute fit about the first, of course, and Longbow got involved with the second. I can’t say that I’ll ever be fond of Longbow, exactly… I’ve seen too much of how they operate in the Isles… But at least I can say now that I’ve met one Ballista who isn’t TOO obnoxious. He said his name was Sefu. Eventually, we made our way back to the War Zone to deal with the issue head-on. That Hro’Dtohz guy… The one Lk’Onik called “the Wargod”… Who is, I think, maybe the Restructurist’s leader? Anyway, whatever he is, he had established some kind of limited portal link back to the Rikti’s home world, and had very big plans for a new invasion, and so had to be stopped. Fusionette and Faultline came along with us to help, but honestly? They seemed a little distracted… I think they had some kind of hot date planned, or something, because they were so busy flirting around with each other that they ended up getting lost in the tunnels long before we found what we were looking for. I mean, people may think B and I are bad about that kind of thing, but WE’VE never gotten lost on our way to the objective. Well, almost never… Okay, just that ONE time with the wrong tunnel in Dark Astoria… But ONLY THAT ONCE! >_< Luckily, we were able to handle the “Wargod” on our own, leaving Jimmy and Annette to oogle each other in peace. Mister Captain General Restructurist had brought a small army with him, and THAT took us much longer to clean up than Hro’Dtohz himself… But in the end, we did it. We kicked the invasion force’s proverbial collective butts. And I got to smash a whole NEW kind of... I *think* it was a robot? (Serpent Drummer just called it a "Heavy" when I described it to him. But he didn't say a heavy WHAT, so for now I'm just going to keep thinking of it as some kind of big Rikti warbot-) Facing that invasion force is pretty much when I started to wonder WHERE all of these the Rikti come from. Between our punching them by the score, and people punching them by the hundred when they try to invade the city, and people punching them by the thousand onboard that giant spaceship on a regular basis, you would think they MIGHT eventually start to run out of soldiers, or to have major staffing issues… And yet, they don’t. I really do want to know how they manage that. -k