Coyotedancer

I'm sticking with the Midnighters. Stuff this gang-and-corporate-hell crap. XD

*pokes Dae* I used to be @Brightfires... aka Mrs. @FlyingCodeMonkey FCM's not playing on Homecoming at all, but I've camped out with the crazy roleplayers over on Everlasting. XD

I have to ask, Proto… Do you make a habit of actually reading all of the bios and remembering the details of them for all of the other characters on those RP pick-up teams? That can make a huge difference. I don't think you and I have crossed paths in-game yet, but I'm going to use one of my own characters as an example here anyway, just because I suspect, under particular circumstances, that you'd end up accusing me of being one of those terrible Know-It-All players, too. Imagine I'm on a character named Tavaris, and we were doing Circle missions when some questions or misunderstandings come up.. That particular character of mine would not only be able to answer those questions or correct those assumptions to a very fine level of detail, he would also be more than willing to. (He's a teacher. He'd see it as his job.) And it would become obvious pretty quickly that he knows much more on the subject of Oranbega and its people than would *ever*, in any way, even begin to pass the "common knowledge" sniff-test. If you were just looking at him, standing there in his very ordinary civilian outfit, seeming like nothing so much as a stereotypical History professor, or maybe some random Midnighter... You'd have that "OMG. Another one of THOSE types!" reaction. Unless you'd read his bio and remembered one particular detail it mentions. That being that Tavaris is a Death Mage. That information you think a character "shouldn't possibly know"? It's his day-to-day life. (Afterlife? Unlife? Postlife? XD) OF COURSE he can read those ancient glyphs, or explain how a spirit thorn works, or talk about how the Oranbegans held off the Rikti who wanted to use their halls as a staging point during the war. 'Same for the moonlighting Crey scientist, or the disguised Rikti Mentalist spy, or the semi-reformed former Skulls Death Doll... or whatever... being able to talk about Uncommon knowledge with authority. Some characters really do have every right to know more than Joe Average-Hero. Now, if they're being really silly about it and don't have one of those kind of characters, I might join you in raising an eyebrow... But some degree of cheeseball is to be expected on a public server. That's just the nature of the beast. Just be wary of painting with over-broad brushes, though. Even if they haven't gotten around to writing a detailed biography yet, there may be more going on with that character than just OOC Knowledge infecting IC Play.

All I can say is that I haven't really noticed it happening.. and that if I don't answer your PM or Tell or reply on one of my threads, it's just a matter of my having not seen it. I'm chatty as all hell. Even if you ask me a question I don't know the answer to, you're like to get a response. It'll just be "Beats me!" or "No idea, dude." XD

That's not what One is talking about... If you turn on the option to keep copies of City's chat logs, each day it'll make a text file containing whatever was posted to the channels you're a member of, plus all of the system messages you see in things like the Combat and Rewards tab. If you want to keep in-character conversations that you had in Local or RP or Team chat, for instance, you can get them from there. Unfortunately, since the game's logging saves EVERYTHING, that can be an enormous pain in the rear to clean up into a reasonable form. For instance, here's a clip of what mine looked like in raw form during a conversation between Kai and Blue the other night... ============================= 2019-07-08 00:02:37 [Team] Kaikara: <color #010101>That could also be important. You may need to know someday why *I* do the things I do. 2019-07-08 00:02:42 Kaikara grants you 10.23 points of endurance with his Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:02:42 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 10.23 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:02:52 You are healed by the Panacea effect for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:02:52 Your Panacea effect triggers and heals Kaikara for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:02:52 Kaikara grants you 7.67 points of endurance with their Panacea: Chance for +Hit Points/Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:02:52 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 7.67 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:02:55 [Team] Bio Rogue: <color #010101>"The things you do? Like what?" 2019-07-08 00:02:57 [Looking For Group] Vixon of Agua'Azul: <color #01ffff><bgcolor #019aff>and full ty 2019-07-08 00:03:02 You are healed by the Panacea effect for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:03:02 Your Panacea effect triggers and heals Kaikara for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:03:02 Kaikara grants you 7.67 points of endurance with their Panacea: Chance for +Hit Points/Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:02 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 7.67 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:07 [Looking For Group] Cmdr Mr Everything: <color #010101>ok np 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Kaikara grants you 10.23 points of endurance with his Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 10.23 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Kaikara grants you 10.23 points of endurance with his Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 10.23 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 You are healed by the Panacea effect for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Your Panacea effect triggers and heals Kaikara for 64.58 points of healing. 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Kaikara grants you 7.67 points of endurance with their Panacea: Chance for +Hit Points/Endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 You grant Kaikara an infusion of 7.67 endurance! 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Hasten is recharged. 2019-07-08 00:03:12 You activated the Hasten power. 2019-07-08 00:03:12 Your Hasten has increased your rate of attack. 2019-07-08 00:03:20 [Team] Kaikara: <color #010101>Well, just the latest example? THIS. ============================= That's only a few minutes time span, and there are exactly three lines in that entire mess that are relevant. Once upon a time someone had made a little app that would filter and clean the mess up, making conversations and planning sessions much, much easier to read and keep in a useful form. One wants to know if anyone has come up with a new version, or updated the old one, to work with Homecoming.

Diary, sometimes life throws strange things at you. My friend Feral has... some issues. She isn't always the most rational, most focused person I know. She gets angry really easily, and she kind-of loses control when she does. She's terrified of ANYTHING with tentacles, and she hates those Malta guys, and she once threatened to burn down everything on Primeva just because she didn't like the Devoured that have moved into parts of it. Even though I told her that the Temple was there. She also says my boss is a jerk. (I just said that Scirocco was complicated. Which is true.) But in spite of all that, she *IS* my friend and that means I care about her. A few days ago, she got pulled into Dark Astoria just like I did. She opened a door and she found herself right in the middle of a nightmare. She survived that. That THING didn't take her... But B and Slushie and I had to go and find her, and to talk her into leaving with us. She still seems really shaken up by all of it. She thinks that Mot managed to eat her somehow... even though I keep trying to tell her that he absolutely DID NOT... That she's still here, and that when it comes right down to it, she kicked that monster in the teeth by managing to survive. She just said that she was tired and she wanted to go home. I realized then that I didn't actually know where Feral was from. I mean, I know she has an apartment in Nerva, but she said that's not what she meant. She meant HOME-home. So I asked where that was... and Feral said she's from Iowa. A place made pretty much entirely of cornfields. I've never seen a cornfield, Diary. But that did make me think about something I'd never really considered before. Where *is* home? If someone asked me the same question that I had asked Feral, I wouldn't know how to answer them... I was born in Founder's Falls, in Paragon City. I've lived in the Sanctum since I was seven years old, beyond the Far Horizons of the Midnight Sea. It's anchored to Saint Martial in the Etoile Isles now, and people say they can tell that's where I'm from by the accent I have. I did grow up there, and at the Temple in Primeva. But which one is Home? Am I American? Or am I Etoilean? Or am I Oranbegan? If I found myself in Feral's place, where would *I* want to go? I don't know, Diary. And I'm not sure if that's a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. -k PS: Something weird is going on with my Camera Orb. It stores images remotely to a cloud server, and Grant says it has a "unique identifier" that ought to keep it from crossing signals from anyone else's. My pictures, with my Orb's ID, go to its storage, while other Orbs with their IDs go to their own. Simple enough, right? Maybe not. In the last week or two, I've found a couple of someone else's pictures in my storage folders. I don't know who she is, but her little friend reminds me of one of Desdemona's demons. I think I'm going to ask Des if she knows who this lady is, so we can fix our Orb issues. I have enough pictures of my own to sort through without having somebody else's, too. <_< (OOC: And thus a guest from the future makes her first appearance. More on that later. ^_^)

Dear Diary- I had to go home and actually attend to my day job this week. Even though he's been busy getting beaten up in Dark Astoria, and I've been busy trying to learn how to be a hero in Paragon City, I *am* still Scirocco's intern, after all. That means that I do have some responsibilities beyond finding missing artifacts for MAGI and the Midnighters, or bankrupting the Council's robotics division. This time, my boss asked me to help GW... One of her bases had been over-run by a particularly ambitious group of Longbow people from Agincourt, and she was afraid that some of her staff hadn't been able to leave before the place was locked down. She wanted me to go and find them. For some reason, I wasn't really surprised to find out that my polite Mystic friend (I do hope that he'll be able to tell me his name some day-) was one of people that Longbow had captured. We just keep crossing paths with each other...Maros says that when that happens, it usually means that you have some point of destiny in common. Or, it could just mean that he's REALLY unlucky. It's hard to tell. Anyway, as soon as I had dealt with the Longbow officers who were threatening him, we went and found the others who hadn't made it out. Together, the four of us took care of the problem. Punching, and tentacles, and smoke bombs and a WHOLE LOT of red lightening were involved. It was really interesting running with a team of Arachnos people after spending so much time around heroes... And even though he is one of the Mu, it was good to talk to my friend again. After that, I went back to Paragon city to chase down some leads on a project of my own. I still want to find a copy of the Book of Lineages for B. (Or, as Azuria insists on calling it "The Codex of Bloodlines"... I tried to tell her that that was just a bad translation of the original Oranbegan title, but she was having none of it. She has it listed as the Codex in MAGI's artifact database, and that's all there is to it as far as she's concerned. Done. Finished. Never going to change. *sigh*) I decided that what I seriously needed was to talk to Akarist about the history of the book, and about the details of the rituals needed to use it properly. I know he's seen it done at least once or twice. Unfortunately, he had gotten himself kidnapped. Again. <_< At least this time it was by our own people... Apparently, the leaders of the cabal in Founder's Falls needed his help to negotiate a contract with a very nasty demon prince called the Envoy of Shadows. When I finally found him (Stashed in the mustiest part of an abandoned section of the old city's suburbs under King's Row, which he actually considered to be one of the LESS unpleasant places he's been kept while abducted-) we both agreed that what the Envoy REALLY needed was to be sent right back to the Abyss where he belonged. I said I would do that, if Akarist helped me track down a copy my book in the meantime. He thought that was an excellent idea. "Let us selfie!," he said, "And then get the hell out of here." Which we did. It wasn't easy dealing with the Envoy. He's a very powerful, very dangerous and very clever being. And I know perfectly well that it'll only be a matter of time before someone like Salizek or Regalion tries to summon him right back up again. But, at least, I do know the creature's True Name now... and I know that I can kick his demonic butt from here to the nearest Hellmouth should the occasion call for it. Maybe next time he'll be a bit more polite about that "I shall rend your flesh and devour your soul, puny mortal!"-business. The next day, Akarist called me back. (It's funny how much more quickly he's taken to phones, and texts and emails than Tav has, Diary. He even posted that selfie to InstaSpam. XD) He said that he had written out a set of instructions for the ritual for me. And not only that! It turned out that there had been a copy of the Book of Lineages right under my nose and I didn't even know it... The Head Librarian had had one in his collection for decades! Unfortunately, that copy had been stolen last winter by some looter, and wasn't just sitting in his library any more. When I asked him about it, he had no idea who had actually taken it. (We just get so MANY people coming through, Diary. Heroes, villains, Longbow, Crey, Arachnos… You name it, they all come smashing through Oranbega like they own the place. And they all wonder why we get so stabby and cursey and "I'll boil your bones!" about it. <_<) He did have a pretty good idea WHEN it vanished, though... And that gave me an idea. I'm going to do a little time travelling, I think. I'm going to go back, borrow that book before it was stolen, use it and then return it. I just have to make sure past-Arcanus doesn't see me. Or past-Tavaris. Or past-Amtes. Or past-me, since... you know... We're talking about the Temple library, here. What could possibly go wrong? -k PS: Did you know that portals to the spirit world can be dispelled with a very solid punch? I had no idea, but it seems the sufficient application of Light and Force magic can disrupt the woven essence of a portal enough to loosen its bond to the primal plane, causing it to become unstable and to fold in on itself. You just have to get rid of whatever horrific thing is guarding it first.

All I'm going to say is LISTEN TO HYPER. Hyper is wise. And a damned fine raid leader. When it comes to kicking copious Rikti butt, he knows what he's talking about.

Dear Diary- I decided the other day that I really, really needed more practice running around and being a hero with strangers. It's fun to do things with B and Red and Black Sheep and our friends, but I need to learn to adapt to other groups' fighting styles, and to NOT rely so much on always having familiar people beside me. So, I answered a call for help with fighting the Council on Peregrine Island, and I met a pair of heroes named Signal Fire and Jordan. They were impressive, Diary. Strong, confident, almost indestructible and coordinated in a way that reminded me a lot of how B and I fight when we're *really* on our game... Focused enough to anticipate each other and almost to read each other's minds. (Which is exactly what I suspect they were doing. Talking a little before we began our sweep, Signal HAD mentioned that he was a psychic-) For them "The Double-cut", as Jordan said, "was A Thing". And it was pretty awesome. XD Toku, one of the others in the group, is a professional Streamer and was live-streaming our missions to their audience and taking chat questions the whole time. (I totally have some Camera Orb envy there, Diary. Mine is cute and all, but theirs had a full-blown AI running it!) I think that's the first time White Thorn had ever been in anyone's live-stream, so I wore my new outfit. Serge should be pleased about that, though I'm not sure what the audience really thought about it. They were too busy asking if Woodwalker, who was a plant person, could grow peaches on her head. Hyacinth, Square Woot (Who had just the cutest blue kitten-bot running targeting on her gun-) and Dreamwrought rounded out the team. After we'd bashed about a million Council goons, Signal's police contact warned him about a couple of kidnappings... Some of the Circle's Peregrine cabal had apparently grabbed a Portal scientist and a writer for some reason... and they wanted to send us in to get them back. I've honestly gotten pretty used to having to punch other magi lately, and since kidnapping is just one of those things that does NOT help improve our public image at all, I stayed with the team to help. That's when one of the others started grumping about magic users being "vermin". <_< I think they were really directing that more towards the guys we were fighting than to me, but it still made me give them the eye a little bit. I guess they'd either forgotten that they had a mage on their team... Or they remembered just fine, but like that Agony guy on the broadcast channel, really didn't care how insulting they sounded. That kind of attitude just gets OLD, Diary. There I was, busting my butt and punching a member of my own order, trying to help someone who needed us, and... "Vermin". Magic is just a tool, like any other. Judge a magician by what they DO, not by what they ARE. So. Anyway. I did enjoy running with the group over-all, and Signal Fire was an excellent leader, so I didn't abandon them over a little bit of biased commentary. That turned out to be a Good Thing. After we'd rescued the kidnapping victims, someone tried to rob Peregrine Island's bank! And stopping that involved smashing a brand new kind of robot. Those Malta guys had brought along a thing called a Zeus Titan... And since he'd seen just how much I liked crunching big robots when we were fighting the Council, Signal Fire let me have one all to myself. ^_^ -k

Dear Diary- I don't *always* go back in time to change things and give MindWyrm grey hair... Sometimes I stick to the present. I've found myself bashing a lot of the Council's things lately. Warcries, Mekmen, Hoverbots… Even a set of what I swear looked like vampire vending machines. o_O That all started when I went to Striga Island to meet Mrs. Peebles. (She's a friend of one of the other Midnighters, who said she could use a hand-) One of the first things she wanted me to do was go to a warehouse in the little port town and clear it out. It was full of nothing but mekman robots, tramping around with those weird metal feet. It didn't stop there, though. The Council, it turns out, is pretty much EVERYWHERE. The ruined parts of the City... Other dimensions... It seems like if you can name a place? It's got Council. I don't think I'll ever be able to punch all of their goons. There are just too many of them. But I figure, at the rate I'm going, I miiiiight just be able to bankrupt their robotics division someday. It can't be cheap replacing all of those machines, and Percy tells me there are some REALLY BIG ONES at their base in Boomtown. I think I'm going to go there next. -k PS: 'Turns out Captain Hot-Pants actually *isn't* the flashiest fashion victim that the villain world has ever seen. One of the guys on Striga had him well and truly beaten. His name was Maestro, and while he had excellent taste in music, that outfit? Yikes, Diary. Just yikes. ======================================== Diary, sometimes being a hero is harder than it sounds... So, I know I'm supposed to do Good Things, right? Helping people, rescuing people, punching bank robbers and that kind of thing... and usually it's pretty easy to figure out what the right answer is. But every once in awhile I come across a situation that just ISN'T quite so simple. Like these big Nemesis things called Warhulks. I know I've talked about robots before. How some of them are People and some of them are Things, and the first you arrest while the latter you smash. Warhulks throw all of those distinctions right out a window. They're machines with human pilots, Diary. Human pilots who are zealots and who tend to prefer being blown up to being arrested. I haven't found a way to prevent them from exploding and killing themselves if they're defeated. No matter how gently I try to subdue them, it's always the same. So, if there's no way to prevent the pilot's death... my choice is either to leave them to do whatever evil they had planned, or to do what I've been told heroes *shouldn't* and, not to put TOO fine a point on it, essentially kill them. If I were still in the Isles, the answer would be simple. I would smash them and call it the pilot's choice to take death over defeat. But does that reasoning still apply in Paragon City? I asked B, and he said that sometimes part of being a hero is accepting that you really CAN'T save everyone. You have to know that sometimes no matter what you do, no matter which choice you make, there are going to be consequences that feel less than completely heroic. He says you have to learn to make peace with that. That this business, like anything else, isn't always completely black and white. I tried to remember that when I met Tyoss. He's a member of my own order. A Death Mage from the old city. One of Paragon's art museums had purchased a collection of Oranbegan artifacts from somewhere... Looted items, I'm sure. As I've found out doing artifact retrieval for the last few weeks, Paragon is absolutely FULL of those. (Seriously. More of our artifacts seem to be in mortal hands than in our own. o_O) He had found out that something personal of his was included in the collection. A pendant that he said meant a lot to him... So he went to the museum's warehouse and he tried to reclaim it. The museum had a problem with that, of course. They were firmly convinced... were absolutely SURE... that the pendant was rightfully theirs. (They'd just paid a small fortune for it after all, and hey, Oranbega's a dead civilization anyway, right? Dead people can't own things! <_<) And they believed that just by trying to get back something of his own, Tyoss was nothing but a common thief. By the time I got there, security had gotten involved, and everything had turned into a real mess. Tyoss thought that I was just another security goon sent to stop him, and we kind-of got into it. As White Thorn, I couldn't just *tell him* who or what I was. I had to knock him half-way into next week to get him to stop and listen to me. And then I had to talk the museum into NOT having him arrested and thrown into that big prison in Brickstown. I said I would help him find a lawyer and then he could take the museum to court, which is how modern people solve this kind of thing. He seemed skeptical, and it's probably going to be a massive pain in the butt, but it's better than the alternative. Most heroes probably wouldn't have bothered, I guess. They'd have just busted him. But Tyoss seems like a decent guy in spite of that "breaking in to a warehouse"-thing, so yeah... Sometimes the morality of this business just isn't so clear cut. That's an important thing to remember. -k

Dear Diary- MindWyrm is threatening to kneecap B and I both with her extra-strength Clue Bat today. She says that if we keep going back in time and messing with stuff, one of these days we're going to screw up continuity *so* badly that Baby New Year'll lose his diapers, and NOBODY wants to see that. Or we'll do something that destroys the world. Which may or may not be worse. I don't know. I don't think either of us messed anything up. I think we were both only trying to FIX our mistakes, not make new ones. We just... kind-of forgot to tell each other that we had the same idea. We went back separately instead of doing it together and Mind says that that probably made two "divergent timestreams". Ramiel didn't seem worried about it, but Mind says it's because he's a Mender and thus an absolute idiot. I just wanted not to have killed those cultists in Dark Astoria, Diary. I wanted Irena not to get eaten and my boss not to have nearly gotten himself killed by that ugly THING with all the eyes. And I wanted to know if the idea that Librarian Amtes had about mentally protecting ourselves from Mot's influence would actually work. Going back to that night was the best way to address all of that. So I did. I found Irena and Scirocco pretty easily. I remembered where they were in the big warehouse, and in spite of the angry cultists running all over the place we managed to stay together this time. Those guys couldn't really do anything to stop all three of us. 'Boss is pretty fierce when he has someone to watch his back. I still ended up right back in the guts of that THING afterwards, though. And this time I was there all alone. I didn't have B or Sheep or Red to help me. If I was going to get out, I had to do it myself. That was the real experiment, Diary. That was the test. Amtes has been studying Mot for a long, long time and she believes that the best way to keep it from influencing your thoughts isn't just a passive ward or a barrier. It's to actively counter its influence. Mot feeds on hopelessness, on anger and on despair, so "fight fire with water," she says. Focus on opposing emotions. Center your mind, as cheezie as it may sound, on a memory that makes you happy. A joke that makes you laugh. A dream that inspires you to look forward to the future. Hope, she says, is a literal weapon that we can use against the darkness of that place. I had already picked my memory and my focus, my hope, before I went back in time and I kept it close... And it DID work, Diary. I went through that place and came out the other side without giving up or getting angry. None of the humans died and none of the spirits escaped. What SHOULD have happened last time, DID happen this time. Ramiel had warned me that no matter what I did, I might not be able to save Irena or to keep my boss from getting hurt, though. There are moments in time that are fixed... Maros calls them "touchstones"... that just can't be altered. He felt like that moment was one of them, and he was right. I still didn't get there fast enough to save them, even though I tried. I don't know what the Sentinel really is... It doesn't feel entirely like Mot. It doesn't feel entirely like the cultist's spirits, either. It's something else. It's something broken. But I knew what I had to do to it. I had to make a point, Diary. I had to let Mot know that I could defy it. That I could look it in those hundred ugly eyes and say "No. Enough. No more." If that means making Mind mad at me, I'll accept her anger. Because I had to know. It had to be done. -k

Diary, sometimes I wonder just how many of these "Praetor" people there are, and why every single one of them seems to be a jerk. <_< Free Radical, a friend of B's from the broadcast channel, had to go and find a *former* Praetor named Antimatter the other day, and she asked us to help. Apparently, the guy is an inventor and sort-of a Mad Scientist. He's the one responsible for building a lot of the gadgets and the clockwork robots that the IDF use. (He may even be the person who invented the cute little Camera Orb that I use to take my pictures, since I think Grant said that he found that in a box of spare robot parts that one of the R&D teams had brought back from Praetoria City-) The guy seems to have a real thing for robots... His lab was full of them. I have mixed feelings about robots. They're pretty much immune to some of my Dark magic, not having souls to affect or to knock out of their bodies. On the other hand, my Force magic works really *well* on them. (All too well, according to The Center and his super-expensive-to-replace Mekmen and Warcries. ^_^) The trouble is, I can never decide rather I should think of them mostly as Things, like the Banished Pantheon's tiki-masks and totems, or as People. I've met a few robots who definitely SEEMED to be People. (iVY, for instance, who was a Praetorian lady-bot we met while chasing down Praetor Sinclair. 'Pretty sure she was definitely a Person.) Why does that matter? Because if I'm going to do the Shiny Hero thing, People have to be arrested. Things can just be smashed. So, where does that leave Praetorian clockworks and warworks who aren't iVY? I sort-of defaulted to "smash" with Antimatter's robots. Mostly because they were trying to kill us. Free Radical seemed to agree, which was a Good Thing since we had to punch our way through a fairly ridiculous number of the things. Just to add to the mess we were in, right in the middle of our trying to find Antimatter ANOTHER Praetor (This one's name was Praetor White, but he likes to be called Marauder-) brought a bunch of IDF goons to Primal Earth and tried to invade Steel Canyon! Those Giant Robots of his (Free Radical, who's Praetorian herself, says they're called War Walkers-) were DEFINITELY smash-fodder. B and I have honestly gotten pretty good at wrecking large targets like that. By coordinating our two best stealth attacks, we can take out almost anything in no time flat. Even giant war-bots. ^_^ Once that problem was dealt with (I never even got to see Praetor White. Apparently MindWyrm went and melted his brain while the rest of us were bashing the giant robots...), we *finally* figured out where Antimatter had gone. We had to chase him all the way into space! His lab was set up on a space station, although that was really hard to tell. (For some reason it didn't have any windows? Which seems weird to me. I mean, if *I* was going to set up in orbit, I'd want to be able to look out and see the stars and the Earth and all. The view would be amazing! But... Mad Scientist. Different priorities, I guess.) A couple of Vanguard soldiers had gone on ahead to check the place out, and were waiting for us when we got there. One of them, Lt. Harris, decided to stick with me. He was a brave guy. Maybe a little *too* brave... He kept jumping into the middle of things that he prooobably ought not have. It was a good thing for him that Death Mages also know a little Life magic. I kept having to throw my healing cantrips on him. He did make it all the way through, though. Even when we met yet ANOTHER Praetor. (This one's name was Praetor Berry, and I'm told that he's stupid-) We did eventually track down that big teleporting baby we were after, too... And Free Radical completely nuked him. She's pretty awesome. ^_^ -k PS: All that running around, bashing Praetors and robots, also gave me a good chance to show off the new outfit that Serge made for me. He said my armor was okay for "that semi-archaic retro-mystical thing", but probably wouldn't be as popular with mainstream fans, who want a more modern, sexy-but-not-TOO-sexy look in their young heroes. (I don't really care about any of that, but he seemed to think it was important-) Anyway, I just wanted some new clothes. I think B really liked the outfit, though. He just kept looking at me with this big, cheezie grin.

Diary, nothing is safe in Paragon City... NOTHING! Somebody tried to steal Tommy today. <_< Well, they tried to steal Tommy's skull, anyway... Which sort-of means stealing him too, because it's one of his fetters. (Fetters are what ties a ghost to the mortal world. Often they're things like a person's bones or their favorite possession, but they *can* be almost anything. GW says that all of Arachnos is hers, for instance. Tommy's skull is his.) Anyway, Etiole told B and I that there was some kind of disturbance at the Midnighter's Club, so we went to check it out together. THAT's when we found out that Tommy had been skull-napped, apparently by these weirdos in red outfits with eyeballs all over them. They had pretty much sacked the place, captured Percy (Ha! He owes me two rescues now!) and cornered Mr. Castanella, Sigil and Kadabra in the meeting room. For some reason Darrin Wade had showed up, too, and thought that he needed to be in on things. (I just don't like him, Diary. He seriously creeps me out for some reason.) We took care of the red guys pretty quickly once everyone was together, but by then they'd already gotten away with the skull. I was pretty worried about Tommy. I didn't know who those red guys were or why they'd taken him, and that sacred me. He's really important to me, you know? I didn't want to think about them hurting him, or-... Or doing any of the other things that magic can do to ghosts. I guess I should probably talk about him some time. I mean, about Tommy and why he matters... It's just-... He's known me my entire life, Diary. He was friends with my parents. My mom and dad were both Midnighters... Amin and Kingston Stolver. My mom was a necromancer who was really good with ghosts. My dad was a sorcerer; an elemental fire-caster. They did a lot of dangerous things and faced a lot of monsters, and rogue magicians and other horrors together. When I was born, my mom asked Tommy to keep an eye on me if anything ever happened to them, and he said he would. He had already been a ghost for years by then, and so she knew he would probably always be there. And he always has been, even before I started sneaking into the Midnighter's library to read their books and to talk to him. When Regalion wanted to use me as a sacrifice to bind the Breaker of Souls, it was Tommy who found out about it, and who helped my mother's ghost find Tavaris. Without him, I probably wouldn't be here. So... yeah. I really, really wanted to get him back. With some help from the Midnighters, we managed to track the red guys (They called themselves Rulu-shin) back to the Isles, to a place in the Potter's Field in Sharkshead. There was this creepy cavern under one of the old mausoleums, full of them and what LOOKED like storm elementals. They felt strange though, Diary. Like regular elementals that had been altered somehow... Or corrupted? It was freaky. At the end of the cave, we found a sort-of... Guardian, I guess? I'm not sure what kind of creature he was. He felt a little like magic, but it was weird magic. Etoile answered his three questions (At least THAT part was traditional-) and he let us pass. All we found on the other side of the cave was another group of the red guys, and this strange, floating stone artifact with runes carved all over it. I tried to read them, but it wasn't a syllabary I was familiar with. I would have loved to be able to take it with me, back to the Sanctum, but it was much too big and waaay too heavy for me to translocate all the way into the Midnight Sea. So, I had to leave it behind. Still trying to scry out Tommy's location, we ended up in a jewelry shop next that was know for fencing stolen artifacts. B looked at the cases and said I needed some shiny things, but I didn't really have time to shop. We ended up sneaking into the back room, where we found no Tommy, but a pile of the red guys and a strange portal. They took off through it, and we followed them. We ended up in another building, somewhere completely different, with still MORE red guys... and an absolute HORDE of these freaky, blue... bug-things? I don't know *what* they were, but they were sort-of rubbery, and winged, and they didn't have eyes, and they had little crystals sticking out all over the place. And they gibbered, Diary. They gibbered worse than Wailers. The portal they came from was really something, though... I've never seen a portal like that one before. It was huge, and beautiful, and the kind of sheer *power* it was pulling from... I have no idea where, Diary... I really don't. It felt so...alien. It wasn't some little Illusion Gate or a translocation spell. This was something different. I'm not exaggerating when I say it felt like you could move from one side of a universe to the other with that portal. You could move BETWEEN universes. I didn't have time to really unravel how it worked... I'll dream of being able to make one of my own like that someday, though. If I can figure out how to power it. And how to cast the anchoring rituals without killing myself. Whoever made that portal really wasted its potential, though. They could have gone ANYWHERE with that thing... But instead they just pointed it at the Abyss. And not even the *real* Abyss... Just the one in the Isles where part of Hamidon lives. <_< We met the guy who claimed to be the leader of the Rulu-shin, then, and he had the skull. (Tommy was really giving him what-for, too. He was NOT happy to have been swiped by some goon and tossed into a sack. Not that I blame him one bit.) Etiole, B and I did what we're best at, and took Tommy away from that jerk. We knew that Numina (Tommy calls her "Tammy", because she's his daughter-) was looking for the skull to, but she didn't show up in time to punch the thieves. She wanted to take the skull back to the Midnighter's Club herself, though, so we gave it to her. I went back later by myself to talk to Tommy, and to make sure he was okay. Mr. Castanella was there. He looked at me for a few minutes, and then he said that maybe it really was time for me to "Live up to my legacy". He said that I'm a Midnighter, just like they were. Just like my mom and dad. I think I really like that. And it made Tommy smile. ^_^ -k

Dear Diary- B and Feral and I all got texts from our friend Black Sheep today. One of her Longbow contacts had a big problem, she said, and she wanted us to help solve it. We all said we'd do it... but only if she could PROMISE us (Like, swearing on the names of the gods of wool-) that there would *not* be any pervs involved. She said she was pretty sure Dominatrix didn't have anything to do with it, so we agreed. Two people we hadn't met before also came along... Kik (Who is the cutest bug-person EVER!) and Aurora. The Longbow officer told us that a former hero named White Gold had gone rogue, and that he was causing problems around the city. He was a speeder, and could create "after-images" of himself... like echoes... that lingered wherever he had been. That made tracking him down pretty easy, though the echoes were a real pain to get rid of. Of COURSE the first place we tracked him to was right in the middle of the sewers. (I'm going to buy stock in the company that makes Lysol, Diary. I swear I am. <_<) From there, the trail led us to an office building, where we found out White Gold had joined some kind of hard-core protest group that were out to shut down certain research companies in the City for doing some pretty dodgy-sounding experiments. When we got to the company's lab facility, there wasn't just a protest going on... It was a full-blown riot! The protestors had broken into the building and were trashing the place. They even threw bombs at us! We had to break that up before they burned the whole building down. It's just not a Good Thing to throw bombs around in a place with all sorts of volatile chemicals, experimental drugs and who knows what else. I'm not sure if that lab's experiments really counted as Mad Science, exactly, but it was pretty close. <_< That lab is were we met Gerald. The company had been working on sort-of a transmutagenic drug that they had hoped they could use to cure cellular diseases. The protestors didn't really care about that bit, though. They just didn't like the way the scientists were testing it... So they used it on them. They exposed the lab people to their own compound, and it had changed them. We managed to rescue them all, but we couldn't undo what the drug had done to them. Diary, it had turned them all into small, furry animals. Mice, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs, chipmonks... Gerald? He had been turned into a squirrel. He told us that the protestors had claimed to be working with Hamidon and his Devouring Earth, and that there were some even more dangerous things in the lab that they might get into. We figured the protestors had been duped into working with the DE... But after checking the security video and some mind-reading? Nope. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Gerald agreed to help us get into the secured part of the lab. (He's a really brave guy. He navigated the air shafts on his own, scouted rooms for us, got into a fight with an escaped tarantula and everything-) It was a serious mess when we got there. The protestors had let out something REALLY nasty. And huge. And covered with tentacles. It hit hard, too. B had to use one of his armor's abilities that pulls material from targets to reinforce itself in the middle of that fight, to keep from seriously getting hurt. Usually doing that is just more weird than dangerous, but for some things it can really mess with him... That's why he has so much trouble with the Talons. It's not just that they get into his head. It's that when he uses them to strengthen his armor, or to heal, he ends up taking a part of them in as a part of himself. His having to do that with the experimental-drug altered green monster? That was scary. He says he can handle it. That it's just the way his armor works... But after the Talons thing? I'm still going to worry about what it does to him. Anyway, after we got rid of the Green Monster, we found out some interesting things. White Gold had just been using the protestors as a cover. What he was really after was another one of the lab's experimental developments. He wanted it to sell to the Goldbrickers! To King Midas! All of this was about a ROBBERY, Diary. <_< Gerald and his co-workers got turned into little animals, we got bombs thrown at us, a whole lab got destroyed and B had to absorb part of a giant tentacle monster... Because some super-speeding jerk wanted money. So we went to have some pointed words with the Goldbrickers. Some really, really STERN and pointed words. Some of their guys were tougher than the Goldbrickers I remember from back home. One of them even managed to dodge out of the way of my attacks fast enough that I missed him completely and ended up almost knocking poor Kik out of their body. (Sorry Kik. I really, really didn't mean to almost squish the cutest bug ever. 😞 ) Eventually we did corner White Gold, though, aaaand you can probably guess what happened. So, we got the guy... But Gerald and the others are probably stuck the way they are and no one will ever know if that drug might have worked if they'd had time to finish their experiments and refine it. Sort-of a win for the team. Sort-of not. -k ((Player's Note: If you're interested in meeting Gerald the Squirrel and punching White Gold in the nose a few times, this adventure is AE Arc#8856. @Harpsong's "Catch the Rogue Speedster". It's good fun, but there are some tough goons in there. Bring friends, like Sheep did. ^_^))

Hi Diary! So, running around and trying to learn how to be a Hero in Paragon City has been really fun. I've found out all sorts of stuff that I didn't know about the city, because they put these little plaques and monuments *everywhere* that tell you all about people and things that have happened. They also have these MASSIVE cement statues of their favorite heroes all over the place, too. (Those would be toast in the Isles. Someone would blow them up, or turn them into jello, or paint them bright orange five minutes after they were unveiled. Tops.) I also know where ALL of the good bookstores are, now. I spent some time talking to Mr. Castanella (The live one, not the ghost from Night Ward-) about all kinds of things... The Midnighters. Magic. My parents... You know. He wanted me to patch up things with Percy, because Tommy had told him we weren't speaking to each other after the dork ratted me out to the librarian. <_< I said I would, but I couldn't FIND him. 'Turns out he'd been kidnapped by the cabal of Circle people in Steel Canyon. He was super miffed that *I* was the one who came and rescued him. XD We talked about it on the way back to the Midnighter's Club, though, and while I still think he's kind-of a weasel we agreed to keep things civil. At least when Mr. Castanella's around. "White Thorn" has also gotten to meet a few more of the City's heroes. I ran into Des and her friend Overdrive again ('Pretty sure Des recognized me, but she didn't blow my cover. OD was clueless. ^_^), I met a real goofball named Sky Dragon (He seems sweet, but maaaaybe isn't the brightest Light cantrip ever-), and I talked to a guy named Ravenstorm. He's the most interesting one. He felt Dark. I recognized the shadows around him... But he wasn't a mage, or even an adept. He didn't seem to know much about magic at all! I meant to ask him how he could use Dark magic without being magically-trained or even magically-inclined (That trick might come in handy if the idea B's working on falls through-), but I didn't have time. I had to go break ALL of the Council's stuff for Mrs. Peebles, and Toby and his brother. I must have cost The Center a fortune in repair bills, Diary. It was fun. ^_^ I've also spent a lot of time dealing with artifact thieves. I mean, A LOT of time. That seems to be what White Thorn is getting a reputation for doing... Chasing down dangerous artifacts and dealing with the jerks who took them. Jerks like the Banished Patheon's cultists. I had to go get something called the Wheel of Destruction back from them. (An artifact that they didn't even know how to reassemble properly, I should note. They really are numbskulls.) I guess it's a Good Thing that they couldn't figure out what to do with it, because if they had I couldn't have used it myself to kick their butts. I *am* still mad about the thing with them and my boss in Dark Astoria, but I didn't lose my temper, and none of them died this time. Gregor said that I had done a great job when I brought the pieces of the Wheel back to him. He and Azuria remind me just a little too much of Edratarees and Rob, though... and I have a feeling that I'm going to have to go out and find that Wheel all over again someday. That's... sort-of why I disassembled the artifact again before I gave it to them. You don't leave things like that just laying around. I've also tried talking to a few of the other Circle people in Talos. Some of them are okay, but a lot of them have been listening to the Archmagus of Madness for way, way too long. (He thinks we ought to abandon the past, and just take over the modern City and turn it into a new place of our own.) His faction think they'll need a whole lot of host bodies for that, so that everyone can have one. They're out kidnapping new "potentials" all the time, looking for good candidates. I tried to tell them that that REALLY wasn't helping when it came to getting people to maybe not hate us, or run away screaming for a hero every single time they see someone with glowing eyes and spikey armor, but I don't think they listened. The weirdest thing I've done this week was for one of the Midnighters... He *said* it was another artifact retrieval... That the Warriors (They're sort-of a gang of SCA dudebros) had stolen the "Platonic Solids" and he wanted them back. I kind-of gave him the eye about that one. I mean, he wanted me to go out and take back basic Geometry?! But he said no, he was serious. And it was important. So, I agreed to do it. I punched Pythagoras, Diary. My contact had me punch Pythagoras. He was a lot younger than I thought he'd be... (Yes, Safe. I know. The real one's been dead since the 5th century BC. That was supposed to be a joke, you nerd.) Anyway, it turns out the Midnighter is a tabletop gamer and the Warrior dude stole his dice when they were playing Capes & Cowls at the local Merlin's. I'm not sure he really needed a hero to handle that, but... Yeah. Platonic Solids. In an old Crown Royal bag. <_< Sometimes the hero-business is just weird. -k

I'm fond of both, for different reasons... I liked the challenge of being a flier in the old version's fog, and the vanishing ghosts were just very cool to me the first time I saw them. I like the creepy weirdness of the new version's landscape and the sheer variety of things you encounter if you go street-sweeping. I also love the new DA story arcs.

I like blowing up mailboxes... I admit it.

Dear Diary- Did you know that not every single inch of Night Ward is covered in Talons? B and Scarlet and I went there to look into a problem with a guy named Pendragon, and we didn't have to punch a single one. Since I didn't have to worry about those things getting into B's head again, I decided to try out my other new ward instead of the psychic clarion. It's a physical barrier instead of a mental one, and I needed some practice casting it quickly. We went to Praetoria City first, to find some information on one of the Praetors; a man named Sinclair. There were apparently demonstrations and protests going on all around his office building, but still none of the giant tentacles or flying monsters I saw the first time I was there. I brought my panther, Spooky, along just for fun and Scarlet brought her hound, Titan, too. They seemed to get along pretty well for a cat and a dog. I think they bonded over a mutual affection for biting IDF goons. ^_^ We also went back to the place with the big, grey hounds and the full-grown spirit panthers to find Shadowhunter again. I'd already forgotten just how big spirit panthers get (Spooky is still just a kitten-) and B was a liiiittle worried about being turned into a spikey blue chew toy, but I think my barrier spell kept him from getting gnawed on TOO much. We also had to keep some IDF guys from ransacking the Midnighter's mansion. They had the biggest robots I've ever seen... They were HUGE! I'm not sure exactly how those guys ended up in Night Ward... They didn't look like they were ghosts, but Praetorian magic is weird and they may have found some way to cross the Veil that I haven't seen yet. Being around the mansion again made me a little nervous, though. When we met the Praetorian Midnighters the first time, I wondered if my parents... Or, at least, the Praetorian *versions* of my parents... were there with them. And I wondered if there was a Praetorian version of me somewhere, too. I wasn't sure I really wanted to know at the time. Too many other things were happening and we were trying to save the world, so I didn't ask. It's a seriously freaky thing to think about, Diary. But eventually I did work up the nerve to go back and ask Mr. Castanella about it… And yeah. They were there. But they didn't know me. My Praetorian parents never had me... So I don't exist at all in their world. I never did. I'm not sure what to feel about that. Happy that there wasn't a version of me for their Percy to kill? (Why is Percy ALWAYS such a fink? <_<) Sad that the people who could have been my parents weren't? I don't know. It's too hard to sort out anymore. Anyway, we found Shadowhunter again inside, and he was giving Pendragon and our friend Bedwyr a hard time... So we kicked his butt. I was glad to see Bedwyr again. There's something very steady and very solid about him, even though he's just a ghost. Something that feels... really safe. Like if you were under his protection, you know that he would never let anything happen to you. If the problems in Night Ward ever get fixed and the rest of the knights stop being jerks, I wonder if I could talk him into coming back to the Sanctum with me? Thorn Wielders are a Death Mage's traditional guardians, but I think it would be a lot more fun for mine to be a knight. ^_^ We had to go deal with a bunch of black knights (I do NOT want one of those guys guarding me-) once the mansion was cleared, and they tried to kill us. Just like last time. One of them even covered me in tentacles... *Sigh, Diary. So much sigh.* I may have thrown a Light cantrip in with my Force spell and punched that one EXTRA hard. Just on general principles. <_< Scarlet seemed to have fun setting them all on fire. I'm a little surprised that ghostly knights are flammable...But I guess with hellfire, anything's possible. It turned out that we were doing all of that running around because Pendragon, who B said was Praetoria's version of Hero 1 (though I didn't see much of a resemblance-), was looking for Excalibur. Yeah... There's a Praetorian version of that, too! When he marched over and tried to pick it up, it didn't go well. Someone named Black Swan had messed with it. (No, he didn't let me look at it first to see if it had any weird enchantments that needed dispelling. I doubt he even remembered that he'd BROUGHT a mage!) So, he just grabbed the thing, the enchantment kicked his armored butt, and he ended up turning into even more of a jerk than he'd started out. To get him back to being a stuffy blow-hard instead of a full-on menace, we had to find Des and her Carnival of Light friends, but before we could do that, we had to punch a lot more of Sinclair's IDF goons. I got to try out another of my new spells... A big burst of Force magic that was designed to send everything flying. It was great, Diary. I felt so MIGHTY. ^_^ The jerks just wouldn't shut up about how they wanted to kill B, though. I'm honestly getting a little tired of hearing that from everyone we meet. Why can't they just... I don't know... want to arrest him, or something? Why do they always go straight to the death threats? 'Just part of the Shiny Hero-thing, I guess. But it is starting to annoy me that half the world seems to want to murder my boyfriend. Lucky for him, he's got some Seriously Dangerous Women watching his back. Three of us, counting Antigone. XD As usual, when we finally caught up to the guy in charge of the whole mess (That Praetor Sinclair guy-), he thought he was going to get away with everything by threatening us and acting like a jerk. I could have told him that his little metal ninja-sword wasn't going to do ANYTHING to block a psi-blade... But I don't think he would have listened. Des and her friends fixed Pendragon and Excalibur, and we went back to Night Ward and just talked for awhile. It was nice. It really was... But Scarlet told us about this REALLY inappropriate demon that her friend summoned this one time, and I ended up WAY embarrassed, because I could just... you know... picture it. And I did. And then I remembered that B was standing RIGHT THERE and that he could READ MY MIND and... oh, Mother of Magic, I think my face was redder than Seph's. Scarlet thought it was funny, and B thought it was about him and... yeah. Some things that have been Seen cannot be Unseen, Diary. Armies of pervs and now, flying... demons. That's what I have to live with. In my head. Every day. And she said something about B's tail that he got super weird and flustered about. I have no idea what was up with that, Diary. o_O -k PS: I did get one really cool picture of B that didn't seem to fit in anywhere else, so I'm going to put it here. I kind of love the intensity he has when he's focusing on something. It's almost... mage-like. I really do think I could teach him magic one of these days. Maybe we should check the Book of Lineages... But if I did that and he turned out to have the same kind of ancestors I do, that might make even MORE people want to kill him. Or body-snatch him. Or use him as a sacrifice. So... I don't know. Either way, I don't have access to the book, and it takes blood to work. I'd have to hurt B to get his blood, and I promised him that I wouldn't ever do that, so-... probably a non-starter anyway.

So, I really don't know how to be a hero, Diary- B keeps saying that I *am* one... Mostly because of sheer bias and that "saving the world"-thing, I guess... But I'm just not. Apparently to do the hero-thing properly requires a mind-set that's pretty different from just, you know, NOT trying to rule the world, or blow up somebody's city, or rob all of their banks, or turn their dogs into radioactive giant monsters. There are some standards involved that I'm not sure I can live up to. But I sort-of want to try. Both for B's sake and my own. If we keep running around like we have been, I don't know which is going to happen first... Me getting put on an Arachnos execution list for punching half-a-dozen Arbiters (so far-), or his reputation as Mr. Shiny Boy Scout getting ripped to shreds in the tabloids for dating a Death Mage. Honestly, neither would be a Good Thing. o_O So... I decided to sort-of create an "Alter Ego". A disguise, I guess, for when I'm running around Being Good. Diary, I have *imagine a DRAMATIC PAUSE here and some super cheezie sound effect* a Secret Identity! That's White Thorn, and she's officially registered in Paragon City and everything. ^_^ Edratarees and Persephone (Seph's my new bodyguard. Being a Death Mage, I'm apparently expected to have staff and guards and things now. She's a succubus, and was part of Librarian Amtes' cabal for ages, so she really knows more about how all this works than I do-) helped me put together a new set of armor, from pieces we found in the Vault's back closets. They're a little mismatched, but when I'm dressed like that and weaving Cantrips of Light into all of my spells, I really don't look at all like ME. Which was kind-of the whole point. White Thorn is just some regular magic-using hero. She *isn't* a Death Mage from Saint Martial, or Scirocco's intern. Nobody's going to freak out over seeing her beating up Arbiters or going out for pizza with another hero. 'Figures one of the first hero-things I had to do was go and punch a perv, though. Juuuust tentacular. <_< I've mostly been doing hero stuff on my own just to help build up some recognition, and I've met some interesting people... An undercover policeman, a friendly troll named Julius (I like him. He's a good guy.) and Foreshadow, who's that SUPER-CUTE trainer-guy that Des was telling me about. I'd totally oogle him, except... you know... B. (Just because he still flirts with everybody doesn't mean I'm going to.) Anyway, I did try doing some hero stuff with other people today. Mostly because Kit and B went, too. It felt a little safer to try that for the first time with both of them there... We helped a military officer and a person with really gorgeous tech-armor (I forgot to tell them just how much I liked their armor, but it was super stylish!) rescue a person who'd been kidnapped by the Skulls. These Skulls weren't as tough as the last batch the Menders sent us after, so maybe the time line will STAY fixed this time. I kind of doubt it, but... Optimism! (That's supposed to be a hero-thing, right?) After that, the police radio said that there was a bank robbery, so we went to check it out. It was a bunch of Circle people. Which was kind-of weird, Diary. Because we're not usually into money so much. Kit thought they might have been after something else that was kept in the safe... Someone's artifacts or something... and that made more sense, but I didn't pick up on anything strongly magical in there. Maybe a Luck Charm or two, a couple of ghostly fetters, but nothing interesting... We found out afterwards that what they had REALLY been after wasn't money or an artifact, but a particular PERSON. That's also when the military lady finally pieced together that I... uhm… that White Thorn proooobably wasn't just using that name because it sounded cool. She didn't take it well. She got kind of snarky. And B almost blew the whole "Kai's Secret Identity"-thing trying to defend me... Which was really, really sweet of him, but would have kind of defeated the point of White Thorn existing if The General had really been paying attention. Anyway, we chased the Circle guys (I didn't know any of them. They're from the old city, and I mostly know people from the Temple in Primeva and Thorn Island-) into the sewers. I'm going to have to clean that armor again, but at least after the zombies I know which rituals work and which ones don't... and Lysol, Diary. Lots and LOTS of Lysol. So, even though the military lady acted like she hated me once she figured out that I might have something to do with the guys we were fighting, we did find and rescue the kidnapped person from the bank. (She looked like the kind of person who would have ended up a potential sacrifice, so that was a Good Thing-) The group kind of broke up after that. It was okay as a first try at doing things with other heroes, I guess. But I'm going to have to work on my routine a little, I think. And the guys are going to have to remember not to blow my cover. ^_^ -k

Guys... Seriously. Stop trying to nerf the crap out of everything you don't like. I get where you're coming from. I do. I remember when there was still the very real possibility of actually failing to finish an STF. I was on more than a few teams that did... Yes, that rarely happens anymore, largely thanks to Incarnates, and some of you seem to hate that. But it really *is* a pretty simple problem to get around if you want to. It starts with ACTUALLY TALKING TO YOUR TEAM. Put up a recruiting post that says "Hey! Let's live dangerously! No iPowers challenge STF/ITF/Whatever LFM! Come die with us!" Gather like-minded individuals who all agree that debt is only another badge. Get everyone to open that Incarnate Powers interface. Click exactly six times each to unslot those iToys… … and let slip the Old School non-Incarnates of War. That's really all it takes. Some communication and co-operation among us, as players. You can have the whole game back the way it was pre-Incarnates *right now* if you put together a team with that goal in mind. Of course, that takes some effort, and I also get that it's easier to shake a fist at the proverbial heavens and demand that Judgement be turned into just-another-wiffy-attack and that Destiny be torn out by the roots so that no one has to do the actual work of putting together a challenge team... But, you know, the option is there. <_<

I know that's pretty much how it is for Kai... Wake up in the morning Feed the cat and the fish Run some errands for the family business Go to work (She's an intern-) Study and practice … and once all that's done, she gets to hang with her friends. XD It's just that her cat is a giant, glowing panther spirit, the "family business" involves mail-order Wailers, her boss is Scirocco, she's studying Oranbegan dark magic and her friends are a bunch of teen-and-twenty-something super-powered nutballs. XD

((OOC: There's a reason the channel motto is "Pizza! And Tentacles!" XD I love our little band of nutballs, though. I really do... 'First group of roleplayers I've ever found in-game that I actually fit in with, and that has been a tremendous amount of fun. Back on Liberty I had a character that friends actually called my "tentacle blaster". Pamina was Dark/Dark/Soul, I think? It got to be pretty ridiculous how many different effects of the type she had. And you know that character is going to absolutely terrify Kai and Kit and Blue, right? Total. Terror. ))

'Still love my Stalkers dearly... I've become pretty fond of my Sentinels, too, though.

((Player Note: Dammit. Now I can't unhear it, either. XD))

Hi Diary- I don't think I'm ever going to get used to time travel, exactly... Temporal distortions really mess with my magic sometimes... But it's good for teaching us how to adapt to situations where we might not have all the advantages that we're used to. B's last assignment from the Menders was like that. They sent us after a bunch of those barfing, exploding Dead Guys... For some reason that jump really screwed up my defensive spells. I couldn't even summon my Abyssal armor at all, and that made dealing with the zombies really hard. Rose is a good healer, though, and Aly's shadows helped, too. I'd have been toast without them. My dress boots got absolutely ruined though. I was paying more attention to helping B and staying alive than I was to where I was walking and... euuuuwh. Zombie. Guts. Are. Gross. XP And then things turned weird. (Things *always* turn weird for us, Diary. It's just some kind of Universal Law. If group=us then situation.weird=true. Or something like that. I'm learning to speak spiderling, but I'm still pretty sketchy at it.) We started to run into pervs. So, on top of outfit-destroying zombie barf and body parts, we had these guys who looked like the goth-kid cousins of those weirdos we found when we helped Black Sheep find Dominatrix. And there were kind of a LOT of them. So, SO many of them... I guess it's a good thing we've had so much practice punching these guys. They were a whole lot easier to deal with than the barfing zombies. They didn't smell any better, but at least they didn't blow up scattering chunks everywhere, either. o_0 The worst part was that the Office Zombies were only the start. The other zombies? The ones trying to poison Paragon City's water supply? They were SEWER ZOMBIES. Diary, nothing smells worse than a Sewer Zombie. NOTHING. O_O If we thought we were going to have to take a million showers, and dip ourselves in bleach, and have sacrificial bonfires and full-on ritual cleansings for our clothes before... That just made it Even. Worse. We eventually tracked down the guy who was leading all those awful zombies... And, of course, he was another perv. He really was, though. He oogled Rose (She was down to adventuring in her underwear by then. Her outfit was a total goner.) And he tried to cover B in tentacles. *I'M* the only one who's allowed to do that! >_< -k PS: I am NEVER going to get my white armor clean. B says he has it so, so much worse, though. His zombified armor is actually part of HIM.