What's in your head canon?

[FFFF]

I have a couple things that are true only in my head, but obviously isn't in the lore.

 

These two (Janet Kellum and Maxwell Christopher) are totally dating. Janet always considers Maxwell grumpy because he can't ever establish a proper separation between his work and social life. The bartender messing up your Martini is not a Nemesis plot! Meanwhile, Maxwell is both attracted and terrified of Janet because big sis is Valkyrie and she carries a big frickin' spear. The FSBA is both an efficient operation and a scene out of Parks and Recreation.

 

 

 

Also, Azuria secretly moonlights as a hero. She's pretty bad it, and you have to constantly save her in the Rescue the Fortune Teller mission. She always gives a false alias (Lady Rose, Mistress Camille, Mystira, et. al.) because she's embarrassed about her incompetence, and doesn't want folks to know. I think it's leaked because her reputation is somewhat in tatters. I think Montague Castanella, her old friend, knows her secret and hopes that she sticks to her day job.

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by FFFF
missed a word

[Snarky]

I have a number of characters with backstories involving Excelsior, Superadine, and the various other CoH chemicals/elixirs available.  In my view these are all made possible by the Well in one way or another. 

[Greycat]

Head bullets. What else would be in a head cannon?

 

... oh, wait. one n...

 

I tend to think a good number of the masked/faceless villain groups actually are customers of one or more very efficient cloners who can put out mass quantities of cannon fodder. They don't *have* to be perfect or  mingle with the public (other than to point a gun at them,) so underneath those masks they look... uncanny. But it doesn't matter - it keeps the numbers inside these groups up to what we see them in game, and all they need to be able to do is follow orders and shoot somewhat straight. (It's also why they don't react to others running by who have obviously been in a fight. They're not designed to.)

 

It's also why we don't have any sort of legal consequences for shooting, stabbing, burning, freezing, psy-ing, plant-ing, folding and spindling them - someone, somewhere, has set the system up so these clones are seen more as biological machines rather than *people,* and thus don't have things like "rights" or "due process." The worst charge any hero would have to face would be property damage.

 

[cranebump]

Battalion invaded. We were going to lose. We “snipped out” the strip of time where we lost and placed it in its own universe, where the cycle repeats itself, and the (now trapped) entity that actually sent Battalion our way isn’t aware they can never win. This strip of time is the “missing” 7-year time gap.

 

(which is the basis of my Ordinary People-Leviathan-Mobius megastory, below).

[srmalloy]

49 minutes ago, Greycat said:

It's also why we don't have any sort of legal consequences for shooting, stabbing, burning, freezing, psy-ing, plant-ing, folding and spindling them -

"No, Flashburn, we're not accusing you of using excessive force; we're just noting that all the criminals you apprehend are brought in by the police transporters with third- and fourth-degree burns covering more than half their bodies."

[KC4800]

Maria Jenkins is the mother of Leeeeeeroy Jenkins. She is totally embarrassed, but still loves him.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

Head bullets. What else would be in a head cannon?

 

 

Balls!

[Scarlet Shocker]

Mine is the Well of the Furies.

 

I junk that shit. The Menders are just hippies on some trip. The real power is from within the character, not some external thing that "lends" you its power because you're already tough.

 

I truly loathe that episode and it came close to ruining the game for me because it's so poorly told and such a feeble plot line so in my own head it's irrelevant and I do my own thang

[Go0gleplex]

Nova Praetoria cities are all built just above sea level....yet you have tunnels that extend way WAY below sea level with a slew of electrical and communications conduits, transformers, relays, etc. along with the barges and water ways. Storm and Sewage certainly aren't going anywhere without a LOT of pump stations....assuming you ever find the treatment plants. 

 

[Frozen Burn]

10 minutes ago, Go0gleplex said:

Nova Praetoria cities are all built just above sea level....yet you have tunnels that extend way WAY below sea level with a slew of electrical and communications conduits, transformers, relays, etc. along with the barges and water ways. Storm and Sewage certainly aren't going anywhere without a LOT of pump stations....assuming you ever find the treatment plants. 

 

 

Ever been to New York City which is basically at sea level?  Underneath Manhattan Island is a subway, and under that are 800-1000 feet deep of other tunnels for water, sewage, electrical, and more.  Pump stations are few as they use gravity (sloped pipes to bring in water and expel sewage) and what few pump stations there are, they are masked and mostly hidden.  There is one big sewage pump/treatment plant in Central Park Reservoir that hidden/unknown to most people.  So, Praetoria is completely plausible the way it is.  🙂  

[Go0gleplex]

23 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

 

Ever been to New York City which is basically at sea level?  Underneath Manhattan Island is a subway, and under that are 800-1000 feet deep of other tunnels for water, sewage, electrical, and more.  Pump stations are few as they use gravity (sloped pipes to bring in water and expel sewage) and what few pump stations there are, they are masked and mostly hidden.  There is one big sewage pump/treatment plant in Central Park Reservoir that hidden/unknown to most people.  So, Praetoria is completely plausible the way it is.  🙂  

Didn't say it wasn't...I'm a civil engineer tech and know of several towns here on the west coast that are below the adjacent water level. I doubt the NY tunnels have a barge dock in them though. lol   Just seems to me though, that if the ghouls or rebels are such an issue...simply flood the tunnels. Problem solved. Though it might knock out your power/comm grid as well...;)

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Go0gleplex

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, Snarky said:

I have a number of characters with backstories involving Excelsior, Superadine, and the various other CoH chemicals/elixirs available.

I've got one character that had an idiosyncratic reaction to Superadine and got the physical changes without the mental ones, along with a couple of other effects that formed the basis for his background.

 

I'm not sure that it qualifies as 'head canon', but way back on Live, I saw someone say 'для' in chat — I remember that I was standing near Ghost Falcon in PI at the time — and decided to make a character with a Russian background and use chat binds to say things in Russian, taking advantage of the fact that Paragon City had little history outside the city itself. Over time, I created more characters with Russian backgrounds, building up a collection of Soviet state-sponsored supergroups like Народная Армия, individual heroes and villains, and looked up actual Soviet research institutions to use in backgrounds, creating a loose shared history so that the characters I'd created had a mostly-coherent environment they were from. I've gotten quite a bit of use from Институт эволюционной физиологии и биохимии им. И. М. Сеченова — the 'I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry'; it just seemed like a wonderful place to have Science origins come from.

Edited October 12, 2023 by srmalloy

[A Cat]

4 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Mine is the Well of the Furies.

 

I junk that shit. The Menders are just hippies on some trip. The real power is from within the character, not some external thing that "lends" you its power because you're already tough.

 

I truly loathe that episode and it came close to ruining the game for me because it's so poorly told and such a feeble plot line so in my own head it's irrelevant and I do my own thang

Incarnate stuff in general is kinda bad for taking a bit of control from you as far as background story and such. Everyone is shoehorned into the same incarnate/well thing hole. I wish they kept it more generic, like "Veteran powers" or something you slowly gain with great experience working as a hero/vill. First world problems I know. Incarnate content can just be special missions that only bad enough dudes are invited on. They can keep all the well stuff to the signature incarnate characters. 

[High_Beam]

My Head Canon for CoH encompasses 6 completed books each between 680-730 pages in length plus an 80% complete book 7 and story plotting out to a finale with the tenth.  While I stay close to the acknowledged canon I get into deep dives of certain groups magic, incarnates, the Crey, Hero Corps, tying realistic sensibilities to a lot of superhero shtick, fleshing out the second Rikti War, deep work in the Shadow shard and a bunch of other stuff (including the Coming Storm).  All of it is built around the Munitions Mistress and her evolution/redemption.  Seriously, just the aspect of Federal Law regulating specific power sets that comprise true threats to national security resulting in automatic incarceration and execution on discovery is like a whole chapter.

 

Want a little taste.  Rebecca Foss (founder of Hero Corps) is the brains behind a plot to create a utopian world ruled by metahumans, at the expense of normal human beings .  She partnered with a specific woman who took over a specific corporation who developed artificial metahuman cloning.  This explains why the Freedom Phalanx was so vehemently opposed to their establishment.  There are further ramifications down the line relating to the Battalion.

[FFFF]

2 hours ago, Go0gleplex said:

Didn't say it wasn't...I'm a civil engineer tech and know of several towns here on the west coast that are below the adjacent water level. I doubt the NY tunnels have a barge dock in them though. lol   Just seems to me though, that if the ghouls or rebels are such an issue...simply flood the tunnels. Problem solved. Though it might knock out your power/comm grid as well...;)

 

 

No, that would be too easy. You'll have to retrieve a magical McGuffin from an entire different dimension, talk to some rando reporter who has a lead to turn it into some sort of bomb, and then fight the Praetorian version of the Council (who are good guys) to set the trigger. No common sense stuff like flooding tunnels, cutting power or just nuking from orbit allowed!

[FFFF]

6 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Mine is the Well of the Furies.

 

I junk that shit. The Menders are just hippies on some trip. The real power is from within the character, not some external thing that "lends" you its power because you're already tough.

 

I truly loathe that episode and it came close to ruining the game for me because it's so poorly told and such a feeble plot line so in my own head it's irrelevant and I do my own thang

 

I hadn't been paying attention to all the stuff about the Well, and I had a lore-obsessed SG mate who extolled that everything came from the Well of the Furries. Took 2 seconds from another SG mate to exclaim we would be entering into a new Golden Age of the City of Catgirls. 

 

But yeah, I don't like the whole super powered McGuffin is responsible for all powers thing either. Bleh.

[Scarlet Shocker]

1 hour ago, A Cat said:

Incarnate stuff in general is kinda bad for taking a bit of control from you as far as background story and such. Everyone is shoehorned into the same incarnate/well thing hole. I wish they kept it more generic, like "Veteran powers" or something you slowly gain with great experience working as a hero/vill. First world problems I know. Incarnate content can just be special missions that only bad enough dudes are invited on. They can keep all the well stuff to the signature incarnate characters. 

 

 

Exactly. It would be much better explained as "when the sidekick gets the cape" - you've done the hard yards, you're as good as your mentors (ie the Signature NPCs on whatever side you're on) and they have nothing else to teach you. But now there's an event that needs all your skill and bravery - and a lot of team mates too - to resolve. Now you're as good as you can be it's up to you to develop new skills, learn new moves, create new powers to be the best you can be. Have at it, and go save the City!"

 

 

[laudwic]

I always feel sorry for female members of the Skulls.  I mean, you'll occasionally see Skull Girlfriends but you never see a Skull boyfriend.

[JasperStone]

36 minutes ago, laudwic said:

I always feel sorry for female members of the Skulls.  I mean, you'll occasionally see Skull Girlfriends but you never see a Skull boyfriend.

Had this thought yesterday as I was working Defeat all badge. 

 

Also ... Girlfriend from Hell for the Hellions.

What would a, game-safe, version for a boyfriend be?

[srmalloy]

27 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

What would a, game-safe, version for a boyfriend be?

Himbos don't have any visible characteristics — at least, game-visible ones — that would make them notgame-safe; just clean up the male minion Outcast mobs a bit, take off any chest logos, a wider variety of clothing colors, and give some of them jackets, and you would be good.

[Skyhawke]

Eochi and Jack in Irons are part of a giant monster fight club and we keep interrupting their sessions. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

30 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

Eochi and Jack in Irons are part of a giant monster fight club and we keep interrupting their sessions. 

 

 

you idiot!

 

you mentioned it!

 

Sally's gonna get you

[VeiledOwl]

Maestro prefers lip-reading to sign language, and initially refused to even learn sign because he considered it an admission that he'd never regain his hearing. Even after grudgingly learning to read it (because everyone in the Fifth Column kept their entire face covered and you can't exactly lip read through that, can you), he refuses to sign himself.

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Sally's gonna get you

Ah yes, the GM that makes everyone One Punch Man.

 

Other than the head canon that all my characters are doing their own stories but working to their Avengers moment when they will somehow all appear simultaneously, I don't really have any overarching story going on in the City.  Well, maybe scratch that.  I do have several technological heroes with technological "undersuits" that empower them (thus allowing a costume over top).  Those various undersuits come from the study and retro-engineering of captured Rikti technology.   It's a theme you'll find elsewhere in superhero stories, even the MCU.  It's what made MCU Vulture.

 

One other head canon is on a more personal level.  Jake Montoya, aka Red Tiger (retired) had the perfect description for someone who'd mentor a new generation of heroes after the Rikti War, so several of my characters got their start with him.  Jake uses his contacts to help the newbies get costumes, funding, day jobs, training, their own contacts, etc.  If you don't remember Jake, here's his in-game description:

 

Retired Hero

Jake Montoya was once a well-known hero who fought under the name Red Tiger. After a nearly fatal injury cost him his leg, he chose early retirement and a prosthetic limb over a cybernetic replacement. But retirement from active duty doesn't mean he's turned his back on the city. Now he's one of many retired heroes who acts as a clearing house of information. He uses his experience and contacts to keep tabs on various villain groups, then organizes active heroes to deal with the situation. He's particularly interested in the Clockwork King, largely because he lost his leg while fighting him.

[huang3721]

IMO, this is City of Heroes: