Coyotedancer

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.

Sorry it's been so long since I wrote anything, Diary- Life is still sort-of complicated, but maybe not quite as crazy as it was the last time I was here... Dark Astoria is still a mess. That THING is still out there. My boss still thinks it's all his fault that Irena got eaten, and I haven't really stopped punching Arbiters. B and I seem to have worked things out, though, and no one has been set on fire or turned into a newt yet. We both needed some de-stress time, so we kind-of took the weekend off from hero-stuff. I invited him to come stay at the Sanctum, and we swam in the lake and played around with the boat and stuff. A couple of our friends are being really crude about it, but it wasn't THAT kind of vacation! Sheesh. Minds in gutters much, you guys?! <_< Anyway, as peaceful as the Sanctum is and as much fun as just being there together was, eventually we had to get back to what we do. Which seems to be punching people. XD The Menders had another repair assignment for B, and so he gathered up the gang and we went back in time to Kings Row. Those Skulls had somehow managed to set up their drug lab again. B, Redwinged, Rose, Aly and her ninja friends, Etoile, Broken Blade (aka The Notorious B-Dub) and I started cleaning things up in their warehouses. It seemed harder this time than it was when we originally busted up their operation... Like someone had been monkeying with the time stream to make the goons tougher or something. Not that they really stood much of a chance, no matter how tough they were... There's not much that we can't handle when we hit it together. They did manage to ambush us *but good* in one place, and that kind of hurt. Like, kind of hurt A LOT. (Bone Daddies and Goth Dolls and Night-Whatevers EVERYWHERE!) But it took a whole lot of them, and we did eventually knock every single one of them flat. I was proud of us. ^_^ We rescued a reporter that they had kidnapped and a bunch of warehouse workers that they were going to kill. Eventually we tracked down the big guy in charge (again)... And we kicked his butt, even after he turned and tried to run away like a giant diaper-baby! It was good to get back to doing things like busting up Skulls. I know we're going to have to return to Dark Astoria to finish what we started. We can't avoid that for much longer... But I think doing things like this is good, too. They remind us all why Mot and the Talons and the Banished are right to be worried. -k

People are really DOING that? In *THIS* game?! o_O Okay, that's just being ridiculous. City in no way requires that kind of thing. Unless you're doing Magisterium and want the "REALLY Hard Way" badge or you're starting an Underground full-badge run (You do have to pay a little attention to the teams in those two cases, but even so-), it's just not in any way necessary to 'gear check' characters in this game.

Tavaris insists that I ask... Does the Tiki Burger have chili fries? ;D (Fries aside, that's a Very Cool Thing you've built, Bizi.)

Interesting point… But that's never really seemed to be the case in the City community? A fair few of us have done it with one character or another, even though many of them have been lower-profile than BB. Like I said in another thread, I had a player character verison of Ashton Fletcher myself. No one ever seemed to have an issue with him. Or me, because of him. Maybe that was because he never had an in-game avatar or any particular detailing done by the Paragon devs… but, still. No one ever accused me of "Bad Practice" for playing my sweet, ghostly sailor. And that? That RIGHT THERE? That's an excellent idea.

I always used button #5 on Tray 1 for my Tanks, and button #10 on Tray 1 for my Brutes (Or other ATs that had taken Provoke or such). 'No clue why I put them in different places. It was just a habit.

People tend to get a little odd about the mind reading thing in my experience... I remember some serious fights and melt-downs about it in the Old Days. No surprise it's still an issue. A couple of friends and I were discussing it the other day in the OOC roleplay channel, trying to suss out how we wanted to handle one of Kaikarra's new "spells". (She's an Incarnate level character, but as anyone who's read her Diary knows, she doesn't in any way think of herself as one. As far as she's concerned, IC she's just a somewhat more talented than average mage, not some semi-deific powerhouse-) She created that new ward specifically to protect herself and her teammates from the mental effects of the factions they're fighting in Dark Astoria, so it has to have a pretty broad range of defense by definition. The issue is that one of those teammates... In fact, the one she initially started designing the ward specifically to protect... is a psychic. (He's a PsiMelee stalker-) Part of their IC fighting style does involve him reading the group's surface thoughts. He and Kai are often the front line when they run together, so still being able to do that is important to them. There are also personal considerations involved. But that "ward" is a Tier 4 Clarion. Not *just* an Incarnate level power, but what is (as far a I know-) one of the single most potent effects of its type in the game. While we were talking it over, trying to decide if the sheer mechanical horsepower of that effect meant it was more likely to mean "blocks EVERYTHING" or "involves enough fine-control not to", one of the other channel regulars expressed the pretty pointed opinion that ANY kind of 'immunity to mind-reading' was BadWrong god-modding. Even a T4 Clarion defined as a "Keep ALL THE THINGS outt'a my head!"-spell. I sort of raised the proverbial eyebrow at that, especially given that were discussing it openly on the channel specifically in order to reach a group consensus that both made some rational sense and WASN'T just god-modish railroading. o_0 So... yeah. It's something people have strong opinions about and that can obviously lead to conflict. (In the end, we settled on saying that the fact that it IS a T4 ability and not one of the lower-tiered versions meant that Kai had enough finesse when casting the spell to block the Talons' brain-games while still allowing BioRogue to do his thing. Other groups may have come to a different conclusion than we did under the circumstances.)

No, but it is an illustration of how common awkward maps are in the game... and a fairly gentle reminder that if we start down the road of "I don't like this. Let's get rid of it!" we may be looking at a hole with no bottom.

"Combat pets" should still be able to see and follow you. Regular old passive hostages and escort civilians will lose you very quickly.

<3 Maui 8)

Another thing you can do to keep them quiet while you're just standing around at the trainer, or the auction house is put them into an emote stance. I used to use a "pets_all" Praetorian Salute bound my L key to tame Amtes' howling horde. I don't remember the keybind syntax to do that anymore... It's been WAY too long since I set it up... But one of our many keybind wizards should be able to tell you how to do that.

Honestly? I have more trouble moving through Council caves than the blue/brown mine caverns. (Those maps tend to be a different color red-side. Same design, though.) All those &*^%$# pipes to get stuck behind? And then there are the hard-to-even-see-where-the-passages-are Arachnoid caves... I've shaken a tiny fist a those many times, too. I'd never ask for any of them to be removed from the game, though. Likewise the Oranbegan maps that so many people hate. (I love those, myself, but I fully admit to being biased there. XD) I just tend to feel like navigation troubles are more about my own lack of coordination and my monitor settings than flaws in the map designs.

OH, man... Diary. This is kind of going to be a long entry. Do you remember when I told you about ending up in Dark Astoria by accident? I've been there again, and it wasn't at all an accident this time. The Temple Council has been really, really worried about Dark Astoria for a long, long time... But it's hard to send anybody to find out what's really going on. So many of the mages and their guides and their thorn wielders who go there end up like Artemian and his group. Devoured by that THING (It's name is Mot and it's an old, old god of death and corruption-) or they get torn apart by the Talons... The same Talons that B and I had to disincorporate in Night Ward. Mot knows what Oranbegans are and it hates them. I'm something different, though. I'm a Death Mage now... but I'm not like the others. I still have my own body. I... feel?... like a Midnighter or a witch or a regular mortal necromancer to Mot. He doesn't recognize what I am... So, I went back to Dark Astoria to find out just how bad things are. I went because I can go where the old ones can't. It's scary, Diary. I still don't feel like anything special. I'm a nobody... I don't have fifteen-thousand years of practice being a Death Mage. I don't even have followers or guardians yet. Just Artemian. And I'm not going to make him go back to that place. Ever. Still, it's not the kind of place you want to go alone... So, I did what everybody does when it comes to that kind of mission. I went with my friends. Black Sheep, Redwinged, Mindwyrm and Scarlet Diamond were all there, along with a couple of people I hadn't met before... and B, of course. (I wouldn't have gone there without him, even though I knew there would be a lot of Talons and I know how much dealing with them upsets him... He told me they sort-of got into his head somehow, so I worked up a new warding spell to keep them out. I'm not sure how well it worked. That place still kind-of got to us all, even through the most potent ward I could build. I've never wished so hard before that Sarhadi had been here to teach me to make better ones. 😞 ) There were just SO MANY of them, Diary. So many. And all of them were horrible. We had to rescue a pair of Midnighters who had gotten in over their heads, along with a grumpy police detective and some crazy-lady named Rose... They were all lucky they didn't get eaten. Things got weird in the middle of all that. Sheep was just trying to help... I really think she must have been reading my mind somehow, because she only did exactly what I kind of wanted to do... but B got mad at her, and she said something about being tired of being "Second best"... I don't know what that meant. She's the toughest person I know. She's not second best to ANYBODY! But anyway... After that, we talked to a Mu guy who had come to Dark Astoria with my boss, Scirocco, to try to find out what was happening... Irena had come too, but they'd gotten separated somehow... I said we had to go find him! It really scared me that he was there. He's shouldn't have been. That place gets into your head, and he didn't have my warding spell. We had to punch a lot of those Banished cultists and their tiki-monsters. First in a warehouse, and then in this huge cave... But we didn't find them in time. Irena got eaten by Mot, and my boss got beaten up by this butt-ugly red monster with about a hundred eyes. Diary, I don't know if it was seeing that monster hurt him so badly, or the strangeness with Sheep, or... the awkwardness that's still happening with Scarlet, or B being upset or what... But I sort of lost my temper in there. That's a Bad Thing. A magus should never do that, especially not a Death Mage. Things... Things get dark when we do that, Diary. Things die. Sometimes a lot of things... Like Every-Single-One of those cultists. That THING took Irena, but it won't have my boss. I won't let it. It all just got worse from there. I decided that the only way to keep things from getting even more awful for B was to just stay away from him and Scarlet as much as I could. I really thought it would help. But it didn't... It just made him think I was mad at him instead of the cultists. We found more of them and those Talon things trying to kill everyone in Founders Falls. There were so many of them... I know we didn't manage to save everybody. Even weirder, we ended up helping some of those MALTA GUYS next. I don't know why Red wanted to break them out, but to get to them I had to punch another Arbiter. I'm probably going to get in trouble for that... Especially if Scirocco isn't there to keep Daos from trying to have me put on some kind of execution list... But by then I really didn't care very much. SOMEBODY needed to get punched and the Arbiter was in the way. I was sort of glad when we found Black Scorpion. I know he can take being hit by a Vanguard tank, so I wasn't even a little bit worried about hurting him if I hit *him* too hard. He's not squishy like an Arbiter. It's going to be kind of embarrassing for him to go back to Grandville all banged up, though. He's going to have to tell Lord Recluse that his armor got wrecked by a group of angry teenagers with relationship issues. I guess it was a good thing we freed at least one of those Malta agents. His name was Gyrefalcon and he came with us to deal with a whole base full of those ninja-ladies who the Talons had turned into monsters. Praetor Duncan also sent her friend Ollie along with us. (He's sort-of a clone, I think. He called himself an Olympian Guard. I was just glad he wasn't one of those creepy pervs...) I was still trying to stay away from B and Scarlet, so I went ahead of the others with him and with Mr. Gyrefalcon. We did pretty well... Those Knives aren't very tough and Ollie punches things like nobody's business. I guess Gyre was okay, too. For a Malta guy. The last thing was the most horrible of all, Diary. Although I don't think the others really felt that way.... We were supposed to go find some of my people who were there, in one of the outlying parts of the Old City. We were told that they might know something that would help us stop the Talons, and while the others are all outsiders, we thought that maybe they might talk to me. But when we got to the entrance, the Talons had already beaten us there. And they had broken all of the crystals. I've never seen one of Archmagus Tya's crystals corrupted like that... I didn't think they could be corrupted like that! The halls were barely holding without the crystals' magic to support them, and those THINGS had disincorporated or devoured everyone who was there. Everyone was just... gone, Diary. I don't how many were lost. Too many. We found a thing called a Keres at the end of everything. B and I killed it. I'm told that really rough days often end in bars. I've never really been to a bar, but I didn't want to be by myself yet, either. So I went with everybody to the D's Tiki Lounge. Everybody talked some more and we laughed at Mind's new scheme for making dragons, and Red and Scarlet drank, and Kit found us. I thought it was just good not to be in Dark Astoria anymore. That place really gets to you, Diary. -k PS: I don't really have a basis for comparison... But I think B's a pretty good kisser. XD

Dear Diary- I sort-of knew this was going to happen... Maybe studying with Master Maros taught me how to see the into the future just a little bit, too? I don't know. I don't think I *WANT* to be able to do that. But I knew things were about to get really, really complicated. At least I still had time to help out a friend with their police brutality problem. Basirah is from Praetoria, and had to get through this super secure piece of the Underground. She was worried about not being able to handle the guards, so B and I went with her to punch anybody who got in her way. It was an interesting place. I've been in sewers before, but I've never seen ANYTHING like the ones they have in Imperial City! That's got to be the cleanest sewer ever, and there were way less giant tentacles and clone labs than I expected. If that Lost guy had taken my Tome of Hequat down here? I might not have had to ritually sacrifice it to the Gods of Eternal Stench. It was good just to get to go and punch things for a little while, without having to worry about anything else. Especially since I went with B. I guess I should talk about all that, eventually. I just don't even know where to start. It's not like I'm any good at this stuff. Although, "stuff" is really what started it. At least, it's what started where we are now. That probably doesn't make much sense, but it was kind of silly at the time, too, Diary. When B and Scarlet and I were doing all of that running around in the past, in Faultline, somebody (I think it might have been Penny-) called us all 'Heroes'. I said that I really wasn't one. I just had a fake ID from some seagull who hangs around in a bar. B laughed and said "Nope! You saved the world, remember? That totally makes you a hero." I claimed I'd only saved it for later. And because it's where I kept all my stuff. He laughed and came back with "Oh, so I'm stuff now?" It's strange with B. He flirts with everybody... Like, A LOT. All the time, and you can never tell when he's serious and when he isn't. That kind-of gets him into hot water sometimes, but I think it's sort of cute, and I do like him, so I had told myself the next time he started that with me... I was going to flirt back. I'm not very good at that, Diary. I'd never done it before... But that Stuff thing? That seemed like a pretty good time to be brave and see what I could manage. So I said "*MY* stuff" and I laughed. And he super-leaped right into a wall... Scarlet just gave me a really weird look and said something about being a "third wheel". (I kind of get why she did that now, but I didn't at the time. I just hadn't been paying as much attention as I should have, I guess. I probably wouldn't have said anything at all if I'd known...) But anyway, one thing lead to another after that, and now we're-... Becky says we're "Like, *A Thing*". That talk I had with B? That's what it was about. I tried to tell him that he was probably picking the wrong person even though I do really like him. But he doesn't think so, even if it's all gotten really awkward and way, way more complicated than I ever thought it would. And then Tav told me that he, and Mistress Amtes, and Master Maros and Master Vermis had all decided that it was time for me to be more than just an apprentice. That's not going to make anything easier. -k

I'm not a power-gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like to build my crew reasonably well... I just tend to do that within whatever their concept happens to be. Sometimes that means taking an epic I might otherwise not have (Kaikara for instance, a stalker who's supposed to be a very physical spin on a Death Mage, has the Dark epic rather than my standards go-to Body Mastery-) or it'll have me designing their set build to accomplish one very particular thing instead of another. (Grey Kestrel is my poster child for that. I made her into a ridiculous Recharge Monster. In order to perma-summon the patron pet Mu Adept who was roleplayed as her partner, Red Cardinal. Her ending up an absolute terror was a side effect of the roleplay considerations, but it was none the less true that she WAS.) I may not always end up with the most bleeding-edge, "optimal" characters that way but I've gotten reasonably good at both keeping to a concept and making a character who can, at least, hold their own.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Sorry... but hard no. Those of us with very small, mostly casual or solo SGs *never* got to build this way when Prestige was a thing, even if we farmed our proverbial butts off, and we'd be right back in that situation if it came back.

Dear Diary- I think I learned how to be a Super Spy today! One of the other interns (He works in the Intelligence Division, for someone named Viridian-), introduced me to this lady with a really cool code-name... Shadow Spider. She had found out that someone was spying on one of Arachnos' bases and needed somebody to sneak in and find out what was going on. I'm pretty sneaky, so I said I'd help, because people spying on Arachnos bases uuuuusually turns into people blowing up Arachnos bases, and since I have friends who work in Arachnos bases, that's not a Good Thing. She sent me all over the place, and I ended up having to punch some people. Including some people who sort-of reminded me a lot of me. They were all ladies, and they had these little gadgets that worked a *lot* like my concealment spells. I'm pretty sure they were ninjas. It turns out it's really HARD to punch someone you can't see... Which is probably why I don't get punched very often, now that I think about it. The spies turned out to be a couple of people working with Longbow, named Indigo and Crimson. (I wonder if they know Mr. Viridian?) Shadow Spider said they were pretty notorious in the espionage business for being ruthless, and that sometimes they ended up working with Malta, too. (She said the lady-ninjas were Malta's "Knives of Artemis"-) Since nothing good EVER comes from working with those Malta guys, I don't feel at all bad about beating them up and covering them in tentacles. I got back all of the information they tried to steal, too. They'd better not try that again. >_< -k PS: Next time I do something for Shadow Spider, I'm totally going to put the James Bond music on my phone... Or the music from those Jason Bourne movies. Because Matt Damon is *way* cuter than Daniel Craig. ======================================= Dear Diary- I got to meet somebody really, really special today. Somebody who I've read all about in the Midnighter's records and heard stories about for ages and who I've always *wanted* to meet. Yeah, he tried to melt my brain... but that WASN'T his fault. I'm not mad at him or anything. I'm just... still kind-of like "Wow. That was REALLY HIM." And he was awesome. O_O I should probably start at the beginning, though... I was translating some old scrolls for Scirocco this morning when one of the mailroom spiderlings brought me a pretty strange note from someone named "Mender Ramiel". It said he had something that he needed to show me, and that it was pretty important. I told Scirocco about it, and he said that I'd better go and check it out. He's a good boss. ^_^ I have an Illusion Gate spell of my own now, so getting to Ouroboros was easy. I stopped to say Hi to Lazarus (I like Lazarus, even though he keeps forgetting that he knows me. ^_^) and I found the Ramiel person waiting for me. He said he had a crystal to give me, and that it had a memory in it... I didn't know you could catch memories like that, but Menders can do all sorts of weird tricks with Chronomancy that Circle mages can't. Maybe I can get him to teach me how to do it? Anyway, it was a really strange memory and I'm not sure I liked it. I saw the Ouroboros platform all broken and sinking into the sea. There were these... reflection things... everywhere. They weren't really ghosts. They were something else... Lord Recluse and that red, white and blue guy from Paragon City. A big Rikti, and- All sorts of people. And there was this HUGE red guy. He scared me. Something about him felt really, really angry. And really, really wrong. In the memory, I had to sneak past everyone to find Ramiel. And that-me was who told him to show me-me the memory. It had something to do with what he called Incarnates. I think... that he thinks I am one? I'm not so sure he's right about that. I don't feel like I'm some really super-powerful thing. I'm just a Death Mage, so maybe he's got the wrong person? Anyway, he wanted me to go talk to Lord Recluse about it and to a guy named Trapdoor, who had this wicked-cool duplication power (It was really neat! He could make copies of himself all over the room, just like that guy from the comics!), and then to Lady Grey. I'd never met her before, either, so I have to say that that was pretty awesome, too. She's the one who sent me to meet HIM. Those Rikti guys were trying to do things to him again, she said, and if Ramiel was right, I ought to be able to go and get him back. And... I did, Diary. I found him. I had to knock him out of his body a little bit... He told me to... It was the only way to get those stupid aliens back out of his head. But that didn't matter. Not really. Because I got to meet him. My favorite hero. I got to meet Hero 1. AND. THAT. RULED. -k PS: There was also a really funky cave... I found guys dressed like gladiators and a HUGE brown ghost-cow with an ax! The last room was really pretty. All that dust made me sneeze, though. ((Player note: This was a fun entry to write and a fun arc to play through with Kai. Given her life and her circumstances, she's grown up without a lot of illusions about humanity. At the same time, all of her life she's also listened to stories about Hero 1 and his Omega Team; magic-using individuals who, like her own parents, were willing to give everything to save the world. Sneaking into the Midnighter's archives, she read everything she could find about them. And about him, both in the past and present. Finally getting to meet him, even under less than ideal circumstance, was a Pretty Big Deal to her. So, no matter what the rest of the world may call him now... no matter how altered, or tattered or haunted by his experiences The Honoree may be... In this kid's eyes, he's still every bit the hero he was when he first stepped through that portal to the Rikti homeworld. To Kai he is, and will always be, the first, the last... the one. ^_^ )) ==================================================== Diary... I'm not exactly sure *what* happened today. o_0 I know that sounds weird. And it kind-of WAS weird. But I don't think I can put together all of the pieces yet to figure out what any of it actually means. Or if it means anything at all. I was making a delivery of wailers to an independent consulting sorcerer in Nerva this morning (Tav ditched 5up3rFr31ght after that screw-up with the Malta guys in Port Oakes, so we're having to do our own deliveries until he can find a new contractor-), and while I was looking for the right address I... kind of ended up taking a wrong turn. The door *looked* normal. It really did... It might have felt a little strange, but a lot of things in Nerva are like that. It's because the town is so close to the Temple and Thorn Island... So, I really didn't expect it to lead to a forest. There was a ghost there with sad eyes. I don't think he remembers who he used to be or where he's supposed to go... He just kept talking about some things that didn't make a whole lot of sense. I couldn't get him to come with me, to leave that place, so I had to go on without him. I guess I should have known that a place like that was going to end in tentacles. So much of my life does... Anyway, the weirdest part was where I ended up AFTER the tentacle part. I was in Dark Astoria... That place that Tav and the others are so worried about. The place he told me never, never, ever to go. And there I was... I mean, I didn't MEAN to go there. I didn't want to. It wasn't my fault. But I was there anyway. I looked around and I found a couple of the magi there. One of them was a guy named Maharaj, who sort-of creeped me out. (Seriously. Nobody has laughed and looked at me like THAT since Master Regalion thought he was going to get to sacrifice me to that Blade Prince! o_0) And the other one was just really, really scared... I finally got him to tell me his name (He's Artemian) and to talk about what happened. He was with a group that was supposed to be testing the wards. He was the only one of them that didn't get devoured by... By it. By the thing that's there. I told him that we needed to get out of that place, and that I wasn't just going to leave him. So I brought him back to the Sanctum with me. I don't think he realized I was just an apprentice. He kept calling me "Magus Kaikara". ^_^ And then I sort-of had a talk with B. About... stuff. 'Still kind-of need to get my head around THAT, too. And Tav keeps starting to say something, and then stopping before he does. I think... things are about to get really Complicated, Diary. I don't have to be Master Maros to feel that... -k ((Player's Note: I felt so sorry for that poor, lost, terrified mage that red-siders meet in their first outing to Dark Astoria... and I knew that there was just NO WAY someone as kind-hearted as Kai could abandon him to a horrible fate as Talon-bait or a midnight snack for Mot. So I named him and I'm "adopting" him. Expect to see the unlucky fellow as a player character one of these days... Death Mage Kaikara's very first follower. XD ))