Coyotedancer

I'd love to have my Victoria lady-bot costume back.

Dear Diary- There are some really weird people in Grandville... That discount freight company that Dean talked Tav into hiring misdelivered a whole order of wailers, so I had to go out and find them before somebody opened the box by mistake. (Those guys are a SERIOUS pain to catch again if they get out. >_<) The address turned out to be an abandoned warehouse, and it was full of Arachnos goons. They were giving Flambeaux a hard time, again. (I didn't ask her why, but Flambeaux being Flambeaux? It probably wasn't completely unjustified.) She tried to blame it on her robot, but I don't think the bot was the one who torched that Night Widow's butt-cape, sooooo…. Webmasters are REALLY tall, by the way. I kind-of wonder where Lord Recluse keeps finding guys who'll fit in that armor? He must do a lot of recruiting from the NBA or something. Anyway, while I was talking to Flambeaux, that Mangle guy showed up again... It seems like he *always* shows up whenever I'm talking to one of the other girls... So, I thought "Maybe he's being such a pain because he wants to get our attention, but he's just too shy to ask any of us out for pizza or something?" So, I introduced him to Flambeaux. Mangle says I'm mean now. Because she set his head on fire. -k PS: At least nobody tried to let the wailers out. ============================================================ Diary, some things that have been seen can never be unseen... Today my friend Black Sheep needed some help with a really tough Praetorian and her goons, so Kit, and Slushie, and B and I went with her to this huge warehouse to kick their butts. She had called these guys "gimps" on the broadcast channel, but I'm not sure we really knew what she meant before we got there. It was... really, really weird. Like, waaaaay weirder than the D, weird. They were all wearing these crazy outfits and they seemed to WANT us to beat them up. O_o (It reminded me a lot of that fight I had with Silver Mantis that one time. I'm *still* not sure what all that was about... Tav just told me "not to think too much about it, lest I need the brain bleach".) Slushie covered us all in ice, which was kind-of neat. An extra layer over my Thorn armor meant that those people could NOT touch me. Which was a Good Thing. Because... euwh. And eventually we did find the person Black Sheep was looking for, after we'd beaten up about a million of the pervs. Her name was Praetor Duncan, but she likes to be called Dominatrix. I don't even want to ask what's up with that. 'Pretty sure I'm not old enough to know, legally speaking. Anyway, we arrested her. But the memory of that place and all those goons in leather straps is going to last for awhile. -k PS: I wonder if the Paragon DA will try to charge her for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?

Might be something to suggest as a potential "NPC Object" reskin. Things like the party-goers and lab tecs and animals that can currently be placed in bases don't have to patrol around... They just stay in place doing their particular emote. I'm not sure how something as specific as an alts costume file could be attacked to those objects, but that's probably a little closer to something that could actually be done than having them patrolling around.

This started with Going Rogue back in the retail days... It's nothing new. And as someone who tends to main stalkers, I personally love it. XD

They still can. In my experience, while the MM themselves can walk through their pack of minions without any trouble... Other players may not be so fortunate. I've been blocked into rooms and corners, and kept from moving through sewer doorways repeatedly over the last few weeks by both Desdemona's demons and a friend's Dire Wolf. Sometimes you can shove and worm your way through them, but often you can't. ETA: And heaven help you if that massive Zenith Warcry or Malta mech falls over and dies in a doorway... You won't be able to get out past it, either, until the model fades. *THAT* annoys me more than the MM pet issue, honestly. A defeated critter shouldn't be able to prevent me leaving a room. <_<

Nice!

Dear Diary- Wow. The D is a pretty strange place... When I got there, there was some kind of fashion show going on. Lots and lots and LOTS of people in all kinds of crazy outfits... My favorites were a lady called Sea Hag (Who had snakes for hair!), a big, black werewolf named Black Spiral Dancer and this really sweet extradimensional horror from Beyond. (He didn't have a head at all.) My friend MindWyrm was there, too. I had just dressed in my new black coat and dress, so I didn't enter. Even my armor wouldn't have been fancy enough for a line-up like THAT! None of my pictures came out, though. They were all too dark. 😞 ((Player's Note: Sorry guys. I did try to get some screens of the Friday costume contest, but they ended up too dark to really show off everyone's costumes or to do the winners justice. There were some exceptional ones there, though. I recommend watching the recorded stream if you weren't there in person to check it out.)) B and Aly and Ve showed up after the fashion show was over. There was pizza and we went out to the lodge, because it was quieter than the club. I got a silver medal on the big ski skope, even though I almost ran into a snowbeast. ^_^ I didn't stay there as long as the others did. I had a lot of homework to do and it was crowded and... yeah. I probably should have stuck around, though. It sounds like B had kind-of a hard time and Kit was being a pain. -k =========================================== Dear Diary- Edratarees is cursed. Or maybe the Vault is cursed? I don't know... But there has GOT to be a curse there somewhere. Nobody has luck that bad without the involvement of metaphysical entanglements of some kind. Master Maros taught me all about that. This time he lost an artifact called the Taper of Frozen Flame. A bunch of Longbow goons and some person named Polar Shift snuck in while he and Rob were out getting coffee. (They have to go all the way to Nerva for that. One of Mistress Nomia's hoarfrosts ate their Keurig.) I said I would help them get it back, but I almost got my butt frozen off doing it. <_< -k ==================================================== Diary! I think I know where all the clones come from! I was running another errand for Scirocco, but ended up going through the wrong big, noisy portal-thing. Instead of going to Aeon City I ended up in Praetoria City. (I am *never* going to ask Vernon for directions ever again. >_< ) The clones must all come from Praetoria, because I found a lab full of them. Or... they did all come from there, anyway. That place is pretty messed up now. I don't think they can make any more. And I have *got* to tell Feral about all the gigantic tentacles... SOOOO many giant tentacles. -k

Peacebringers. I had a human-only, a human/nova and a human/dwarf back-in-the-day, and I loved them all. I liked the look of their powers, the sound effects, the shape-shifting... and what was, to me, the added fun of picking out the Quant in the next mob and then going all Killer Space-Squid (or Killer Space-Crab... or Very Angry Fuzzball) on them before they could fry me. XD They never really felt underpowered to me.... But then, I wasn't a serious build engineer/power gamer type, so I probably just didn't go into it EXPECTING them to be All That and an Order of Calamari. They played just fine for what I demanded of them.

Check out "Demons" on the Incarnate powers Lore list. I would prefer having the mages, myself, but our glowing-eyed friends aren't completely left out. XD

Seriously... Learn to Blap. - Doing it *WELL* has never been a super easy skill that just everyone and their sidekick could pick up on Day One, so it has a definite learning curve. There's challenge to it. - If you're any good, you really won't be any extra work for the supports, because you'll be in and back out of melee range before the mobs can hit you with much. A decently tough build will just add to that. - Blaster melee attacks really do hit pretty hard, and once you have your movement and timing down, you'll find more opportunity to use them without becoming cat-food. That adds some useful flexibility. -Most of all? It's just FUN to bounce around some kind of crazy, destruction-raining super-ball. A whole lot more-so than just drifting around throwing fireballs at something from the safety of the ceiling. If you just don't want to try any of that... Build a DarkityDarkDark Defender, equip it ludicrously, and stay on the front line with your tanks and brutes and scraps. Let me post a screen. Because posting screens is sort-of "What I Do". This is from our very last Underground run on Liberty, back-in-the-day... See that guy in the funky, fancy backpiece? The one standing right there with the league's two tanks and the brute, up in the face of the Incarnate-class DE? That was Nemissary. My Dark Defender. He habitually lived on the front line and there was nothing boring in what he did. (It's worth noting that the colorful genie floating right over his head in the thick of things is a friend's fire blaster.)

I want Circle Mages as a counterpoint to the Circle Demons … and Syndicate … and Midnighters (The live kind or the zombies from Nightward) … and, speaking of Night Ward, Black Knights and Living Spells

Hi Diary! I was out picking up some paperwork for Scirocco, and ran into HOT-PANTS CHICK again. (Her name is really Desdemona, but with that outfit it's hard to think of her as anything but Captain Hot-pants.) She was in the same office park, looking for some friend of hers... Her girl-friend, I guess... that had gotten into it with an Arachnos goon-squad. I don't know why I agreed to help her. After she ran off and left me to deal with her mess at the Temple yesterday, I *should * have just told her to go kiss a wailer... But I didn't. I had to be "nice". Pfffft. Anyway, we found her friend (Her name was Overdrive), and had to beat up some guy named Hollowpoint, who just wouldn't shut up about how doomed we all were... And then we had to beat up ANOTHER guy named Mangle (He was nuts. 'Ran right up to the big demon and just about got his face bitten off before we even saw him-)… And as we were leaving Des and Overdrive BOTH told me that I ought to come with them back to Paragon City, because I "would make a pretty good hero". I am NOT moving to Paragon. And I'm not going to be a hero. I like living here. -k PS: Kit didn't believe me when I said Desdemona's butt was too big for that outfit she wears. He wanted proof. So... Proof of Big Buttness, fire-boy! ============================================================== Diary, did you know that Rikti Monkeys smell like boiled cabbage? Because they do... Those freaky aliens tried to invade Pork Oakes last night. I went with Master Theo to help kick their butts. They may be hard for my magic to hit sometimes, but they didn't do well against all those zombies. And ninjas. And robots. I wonder if there were any clones in there? Also, going to meet B for pizza this afternoon. That'll be fun. ^_^ I... might not have told Tav about that. He still thinks heroes are reckless. -k

Dear Diary- Today was pretty busy, too... but I didn't have to help save the world. (Tav says that sometimes it really seems like *somebody* has to go out and do that every single day, but today it wasn't me.) I did a couple more errands for Scirocco instead. I met that polite Mu guy again. (The one who just about got eaten by wailers last week-) At least, I *think* it was the same polite Mu guy. It's really hard to tell with those helmets, and the outfits that are all just alike and them not using their names and all. He helped me kick a genie named Serafina's butt. I had to keep reminding him to watch where he was throwing that red lightening, though. (I don't think he's as good at controlling those spells as he thinks he is. My scarf got a little singed and now it smells like ozone.) After that, I had to go find some stuff that had been stolen by a bunch of guys who looked like they were on their way to marching band practice. Only they had machine guns instead of tubas. And they had a robot clone of me. That was weird. I want to know how they made a robot that could do magic. Or maybe it was fake magic, like their robot was a fake clone? I don't know... -k ============================================================== Dear Diary- So, today I was just going to spend some time in the Temple, looking through the book-chests. Aly found a copy of a really, really, seriously bad translation of the apprentice's codex called The Book of Shadows in her school's library, but I thought it would be better for her to read the original if she wants to learn ANYTHING about proper Dark magic. So, I was going to ask Mistress Amtes if we could borrow the first volume of the Obsidian Librum instead. If I could've found it. (There are WAY too many chests that don't say what's inside them-) I got interrupted by Edratarees and his friend Rob before I could, though. They came running into the Library, complaining about whips and demons and losing some artifact called the Seeds of Destruction and how their boss was going to turn them into earthworms for screwing everything up. Edratarees and Rob are the Guardians of the Vaults Obscura. They're *always* losing things to stray demons, or Longbow incursions or rampaging heroes... So, they kind-of do this A LOT. Mistress Amtes was busy rewriting a summoning ritual, so she asked if I could go help them and "return blessed silence to these halls"... I said okay. It didn't sound like it would be *too* hard to find. That's when I ran into the chick with the hot-pants again. (I think one of her demons must have tried eating the Seeds or something, because they were right there, too.) Of course, she just took off instead of sticking around to help me explain to the Low Chanter why the Vault was a wreck and his stuff was scattered all over the place. She's rude AND a fashion victim. >_< -k

You know I see this bought up a lot and I seriously question how often it actually happened. Quite a bit, based on the stories from Marketeers on the forums and what I observed. But also people tended to conflate the issue because it annoyed them that one time, so it always sounded like an even bigger issue than it probably was. Well, Ad did pretty much completely ignore the part of my post where I mentioned actually knowing a couple of people who did it for fun and profit. That's inconvenient for the narrative, I guess.

It didn't kill it at all, it just changed it. You can still easily make billions of inf marketeering, although the nature of how you make that inf has changed. Crafting is no longer profitable (for most items, there are some exceptions) but crafting and converting is still very profitable. Flipping is also still profitable on at least some items. Honestly the main change is that the relative scale has changed. Prices are, roughly speaking, about 10% of what they were on live so while the profit margin is still there for those who want it the overall prices are more affordable for people who don't want to market. Basic marketeering isn't what falls under "Market PvP" and you know it. I would consider any form of buying items with the intent of reselling to be a form of Market PvP. What definition do you use? Market manipulation was the aspect of it that personally bothered me the most back in the retail days. Someone mentioned Luck Charms upthread, as an example of how easy it was to "corner" a particular piece of the market where supply was an issue, and so artificially drive up the price on that item or component beyond what basic demand might, sometimes to fairly ludicrous levels. I knew people who did that on a regular basis, and while I considered it a really dick move they thought it was both a great way to make INF and a hilarious way to "win" the marketeering game... They're the ones who introduced me the term "Market PvP" in the first place. Me? I'm a crafter and enjoy playing around to find out what sells at a good profit and what doesn't. I have no issue with other crafters or people who like converting to raise returns. Flippers are a little assholeish in my opinion, but that's a carry-over from the way I look at flipping in the real world and I know that with bucketing and market seeding there's only so much they can do to drive up pieces here, so to each their own on that.

It didn't kill it at all, it just changed it. You can still easily make billions of inf marketeering, although the nature of how you make that inf has changed. Crafting is no longer profitable (for most items, there are some exceptions) but crafting and converting is still very profitable. Flipping is also still profitable on at least some items. Honestly the main change is that the relative scale has changed. Prices are, roughly speaking, about 10% of what they were on live so while the profit margin is still there for those who want it the overall prices are more affordable for people who don't want to market. Basic marketeering isn't what falls under "Market PvP" and you know it.

I love looking at all of the flashy and colorful ones, and the modern or city style bases... The kind of places that are pretty much the complete and total opposite of what I'm building for myself. It really shows off the versatility of the base system we have now and the range of creativity and tastes that we as builders all bring into it. That's just a really cool thing.

I *want* to forget that creepy little goon... I so want to... But I haven't. O_o

Converters, salvage bucketing and less ridiculous merit prices effectively kill "Market PvP" dead... and that's a *good thing* for most of the player base. You know, those of us who want to play City of Heroes instead of City of Marketeering.

As a habitual stalker player on one of the smaller servers back in the day, I hated… absolutely hated... being limited to the red side of the City only. I learned to solo. I soloed a lot. Because I pretty much had to. Being able to have a rogue and bounce between the two sides was just a glorious thing to me when it was introduced. Being able to build a natively blue-side Stalker? Also excellent. I FINALLY got to play my favorite archetype *with my friends*. That's not something I'd be willing to give up at this point.

Wow, Diary. Today has been busy... I was introduced to a person named Scirocco this morning. I like him, even though he spends a lot of time with those Mu guys. He seems nicer than most of the Arachnos people I've met, though also sort of sad for some reason. I'm going to be his intern for the summer. Arbiter Daos wants me to spy on him, but I don't think I will. I *don't* like Arbiter Daos very much. I also went to help B with something that was really worrying him... There was a sorceress beyond the veil, in a place called the Night Ward, who was trying to let something awful out of its prison. Hyperboria (who's a friend of our friend MindWyrm) and I went with him to deal with her and stop the ritual. We went to a thing called the Eternal Prison, where a bunch of ghostly knights were supposed to be standing guard but really weren't doing their jobs. The prison was one of the strangest places I've ever been. It was dark, and covered in warding runes and made completely of binding magic. I really wonder what Tav's friend Sarhadi would have thought about it. She made the wards that seal the Sanctum, so maybe she would have wanted to stay and look at everything. We were too busy disincorporating the knights to really figure out how the prison's magic worked. They'll reform eventually... That's what ghosts do when you disincorporate them on the other side of the veil... But it'll take them awhile and by then maybe the good knight who was with us (I liked him. His name was Bedwyr.) will have fixed the problems with the place and the rest of the knights. I'm glad I wasn't in there alone, though. I think I get why B didn't want to go in there by himself, either. After that, we had to disincorporate a lot of Talons and we went to an auction! Some Warrior guy named after a Greek sailor was trying to sell off a book we needed to stop the sorceress. I was kind of surprised to see Master Vermis there, but I think that maybe that book was one of the ones missing from his library. (He really, really hates it when people take books out of his library...) Things sort of got crazy, so I stayed with him. I'm only an apprentice, after all, so I just kept things from getting close while he covered everybody and their Ancestor Spirits with tentacles... We borrowed the book for awhile, used it to stop the sorceress and sort-of saved the world. Then I returned it to the library. B seemed happy that we won. I gave him my phone number. ^_^ -k

Dear Diary, Things have gotten pretty strange around here... Tav went off to "Do Something About The Wailer Problem Once and For All" yesterday with Mr. Hardcase, leaving me with a list of chores that I finished in about five minutes thanks to the favor those little hellfire sprites owed me after I unbound them from that uptight summoner with the whip and the hot-pants. (Like, seriously. What was with that outfit?! Her butt was WAY too big to get away with that...) Just hanging around the Sanctum was boring, so I decided to go help one of the people I talk to on the broadcast channel. (Her name's Black Sheep, and she really is a sheep-person! Like, with wool and horns and everything.) Kitsunebi came along, too. So did that cute guy I told you about. (His name's Bio Rogue, but Kit calls him Blue.) When we got to the place BlackSheep wanted to check out, it turned out to be full of government agents with guns... Who all shot at us! When we hadn't even done anything! (I don't feel bad about knocking them sideways. They shouldn't have shot at us. >_< ) And then we found the room full of Prison Zombies. There were HORDES of those guys. Dozens of them, all rampaging around, trying to get out. We didn't let them, of course. Everybody knows you can't just let zombies run loose. They bite people, who turn into more zombies, who bite more people and the next thing you know you're in some Resident Evil movie... Sheep wouldn't let Kit burn them, so I'm not sure how well we really did at getting rid of the problem, but at least Paragon probably isn't going to end up looking like Raccoon City. That wasn't the seriously bizarre part though... The seriously bizarre part was what happened to our phones. We ended up getting some kind of virus... or app... or something. It says it's a "personal assistant" called MiL0. I can't delete it. And... it's taking pictures. Of me. And some creepy, shadowy thing. I think I'm going to stay in the Sanctum until Tav gets home. THINGS can't follow me here. -k ===================================================== Dear Diary- Yeah. Okay. I'm spooked. That creepy, shadow-thing from the phone app? It called me. It called B, too, but it seems like it wasn't as creepy to him. He says she's a she, and she says she needs us to help her. She wants to be "real". I think she's maybe a spirit of some kind, like a Dark Servant. Master Theo seems to think so, too. I'm really trying not to be afraid of whatever she is, but something feels kind of weird here. Tav always tells me to trust my instincts about people... Or spirits who want to be thought of as people... But I don't know. I want to be fair, and not jump to any wrong conclusions. But I've read too many necromancy books and listened to too many of Master Tarsis' stories. -k ===================================================== Hello Diary- She's definitely a she, and she looks like a wolf-person with a skull face and a straight-jacket. She showed herself to me and B and some other friends today, when we went to Kings Row to bust up some Skulls and their drug ring.... She says she wants to be good, and to protect, because that's what *we* do. And she apologized for spooking me. And she went home with B. He says he's going to sneak her into his dorm and claim she's a new exchange student. XD She needed a name, so we picked Milo. She seemed to like that. -k

((OOC: I've found myself concentrating more and more on Kaikara as a character lately, and as a result the majority of the images I've captured seem to be focused on her as well. While I'm still going to keep my City Scrapbook thread in General Discussion for other screens, I thought it might be fun to have a specific IC picture thread here, in the Roleplay section, specifically for Kai. A place where she could post her "selfies" and talk about her friends and their adventures. Kai is the young, mortal apprentice of a "semi-reformed" Oranbegan Death Mage named Tavaris. She's the orphaned daughter of a pair of former Midnighters. She loves dance music, pizza and Nick's ChiliWeenies. She's an expert at getting into trouble... and though she's good-natured and good-hearted, she has a strong attachment to both her teacher and his people. She has no problem helping a heroic friend save the world from marauding demons in in the morning, and then going home to study necromancy with the ancient, body-snatching ghosts who created the rituals for summoning those monsters the same afternoon. In spite of her magic, and her history and her guardian, and the general weirdness of her life she is... for the most part, anyway...like any other teenager.)) =================================================== Dear Diary, Okay. So, I've never really tried to keep a diary before, but Tav says I've been spending too much time on my phone and not enough time with my books and that I need to start "keeping a record of my reflections". I think he thinks that I'm going to write about my necromancy lessons with him, and my homework from Master Maros and all the ancient history that Mistress Mesanes has been telling me about. I really don't NEED to put that in a diary, though. I took notes on all of it already and if I forget anything, I can always sneak back into Master Arcanus' library or the Midnighters' and find a book about it. (Okay. Yeah. Percy ratted me out about sneaking in to read the Midnighters' books. But Tommy told them who my mom was, and the librarian just gave me a lecture about "appropriate subjects" and "responsible magic" and "asking permission before I copied dangerous spells". It's not like they can really stop me from getting in or anything. <_<) I think I'd rather write about fun stuff... Like going back to the city to borrow some ritual components for Psimon. He's an interesting person, and a lot less creepy than that Darrin Wade guy. (I didn't like him at all when we met. I told Master Theo about him, and he laughed and said I was "a good judge of character". I guess he didn't like Wade either.) Some of the people I met in the city didn't know me, and thought I was an escaped sacrifice or something. I... might have had to knock them out of their bodies for a little while. I don't think I really hurt them, but I'm NOT going to be some demon's lunch. >_< I do kind-of wonder what Psimon's going to do with six pounds of frog wort and a fire drake's tongue, though. I've never seen a headache curative that used either one of those smelly things. Yuck! -k =================================================== Hi Diary! It's been a really, really, really busy week... I had one of my books stolen yesterday by a big guy with a television on his head, and I had to chase him down into the sewers to get it back. (EUWH!) My Tome of Hequat smells awful now. The cleaning cantrip hasn't helped at all, so I'm going to try Lysol next. Where magic fails, maybe chemistry can succeed. Then Master Maros sent me to find this weird fish-guy in this HUGE cave and I found something sort of strange. The cave had teeth. I've never seen a cave with teeth before, so I stopped to take a picture. That was right before some big guys made mostly of metal showed up and tried to kill me. I told Master Maros that he should have warned me about the metal guys before I left, but he just shook his head and told me that I wasn't supposed to know about them, and knowing would have ruined... something. I don't know. I'm supposed to be learning about causality and the fluid nature of time from him, but sometimes I just don't get what he's talking about. Tav says that's okay. Sometimes he doesn't get it, either. -k =================================================== Diary, I am in *such* trouble... Tried to prank some Luddites. Almost got the binding wards around Bat'zhul broken. Dr. Aeon was really, really sore about it. I'm grounded. This SUCKS. PS: I did meet a really cute guy, though. I wonder if he likes pizza? -k

(It wouldn't suit Tavaris, I don't think... But I can imagine Kai dragging Kit and B there for some dancing. Or a pizza if it's any good. XD)

Sure... Wander in when-ever you like. Just keep in mind that it's only about half done and lacks a lot of the detail work it'll eventually have. XD Also, it's actually a "traditional" style base, not a raised one. It's just hard to tell that from looking because I do abuse our new room clipping ability pretty profoundly.