Praetorians and the Lost

[CoeruleumBlue]

When I was a newbie to the game I actually made a bunch of dystopian and post-apocalyptic characters and just made them normal heroes and villains since I didn't see what Praetoria was and it told us not to play that. We should probably have an option to go move our characters back there. I mean one of them is at Level 40 and nearly two years old that I just used for fire farming, but I have no idea what that character would be lore-wise other than from Praetoria since I can show you a picture. I have a couple of other ones that should probably also be from there unless they get to be from the Lost, but then, we don't get Lost costume pieces so that doesn't seem to work either. Maybe also give us the costume pieces from the Lost while you're at it so all my characters who don't look like they come from functioning societies at all have somewhere to belong. Thanks! 

[Rudra]

Preatoria doesn't have a version of the Lost. Because Praetoria wasn't invaded by the Rikti.

[CoeruleumBlue]

12 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Preatoria doesn't have a version of the Lost. Because Praetoria wasn't invaded by the Rikti.

 

The title was kind of thrown together, that's not what I mean. I mean when I was a newbie I kept making a bunch of dystopian and post-apocalyptic characters who weren't in Praetoria because it said that's not for new players, and I think it would be nice to possibly be able to send them back there, as well as keep the Praetorian alignment on the one I finished that left Praetoria instead of being forced to just do Paragon/Rogue Isles/what have you content, even though everyone can go back to Praetoria anyway, more like because everyone can go back to Praetoria anyway. And I would also like more of the Lost stuff developed, like Lost costume pieces I can use on some characters and on AE NPCs, because the one post-apocalyptic character I made who I might not want to make Praetorian maybe should be someone who is a former Lost member who got set free but kept the mind powers and the connection to the hivemind or something. But as of now, I am annoyed with how Praetoria seems to be the only thing in the entire game that's story-locked at all, where your character can either be Praetorian or not Praetorian and then once they finish Praetoria you can't really go back even if you want, and the Lost is not developed at all, since I love apocalyptic stuff a lot and made a lot of my character when I fist started the game apocalyptic characters, but there's basically nothing in-game that they can align with because of those two facts. 

[Psyonico]

You can run all praetorian content via flashback.   As for "keeping" your praetorian alignment,  I don't know if the game would be able to do that, alignments are apparently quite messy.  This can be seen by the bug where if a rogue on a hero team visits a co-op zone, they get kicked for being a villain.

 

There are people who go to 50 as loyalists/resistance.   They do this by bypassing the "go to primal earth" mission and speak to a first ward contact instead.

 

I don't know if you'll see lost costume pieces added to players.  The devs have very much leaned into the Prismatic Aether system for looking like various in game factions. 

[CoeruleumBlue]

3 hours ago, Psyonico said:

You can run all praetorian content via flashback.   As for "keeping" your praetorian alignment,  I don't know if the game would be able to do that, alignments are apparently quite messy.  This can be seen by the bug where if a rogue on a hero team visits a co-op zone, they get kicked for being a villain.

 

There are people who go to 50 as loyalists/resistance.   They do this by bypassing the "go to primal earth" mission and speak to a first ward contact instead.

 

I don't know if you'll see lost costume pieces added to players.  The devs have very much leaned into the Prismatic Aether system for looking like various in game factions. 

 

Yes but you can't get Praetorian badges at all. Not just the starting one, you can't get any of them. Plus, I think this is worse than the hero/villain thing, because the game specifically tells you not to start as a Praetorian, so if I made some post-apocalyptic characters right when I first joined the game, then I want an RP faction for them, and I think the best fit is Praetorian, am I just totally locked out of that? I can have literally any other faction, just no Praetorian for a character I specifically envisioned as being part of a wild experiment serving some kind of God-Emperor or another character who is scrounging the wastes after an apocalypse? 

 

I don't want to make characters just look like the Lost, I just want the costume pieces so I can do things with them. We can literally wear Arachnos helmets and the Arachnos spider logos, but no TV helmet or stop sign armor plate, even though I wouldn't associate that as much with any specific faction? I also really want to use the Lost costume pieces on some AE missions that I want to give a nuclear wasteland theme to, so the NPCs can look like they were scavenging their armor and weapons. 

[lemming]

2 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Yes but you can't get Praetorian badges at all. Not just the starting one, you can't get any of them.

There are some badge titles that are not available for non-praetorians and visa versa, but they are the same badges.  (I think it might just be the level 10,20,30,40,50 badges?)

 

On the costumes, some models aren't easily separated from the mob design.  (Hawaiian shirts are one, I suspect the TV head is another)

 

Praetoria isn't really a post-apocalyptic landscape when you start there.   I mean elements, but I'm not sure if they mesh with your idea.   As pointed out, the Lost are not part of that either.    Have you played thru Praetoria storyline?  Some of your thoughts would lend themselves to growing up in First Ward, though a background with that, then coming to Paragon during the refugee push might work?  Nothing quite fits.   Of course, there's a bunch of worlds more suitable via Portal Corp's explorations.

[Rudra]

13 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Yes but you can't get Praetorian badges at all. Not just the starting one, you can't get any of them.

There are badges that Praetorians always keep, but I'm pretty sure most of their badges get renamed when they go red or blue.

 

14 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Plus, I think this is worse than the hero/villain thing, because the game specifically tells you not to start as a Praetorian,

The game warns players not to start as Praetorians because Praetoria has a higher difficulty than red side or blue side. And experiencing that higher difficulty can be off-putting for players if experienced before they learn how the game is played.

 

15 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

so if I made some post-apocalyptic characters right when I first joined the game, then I want an RP faction for them, and I think the best fit is Praetorian, am I just totally locked out of that?

Super groups are no longer faction restricted. They haven't been since before the shut down. If you want to make a post-apocalyptic group, then make it. And feel free to throw all your post-apocalyptic characters in it regardless of side.

 

16 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I can have literally any other faction, just no Praetorian for a character I specifically envisioned as being part of a wild experiment serving some kind of God-Emperor or another character who is scrounging the wastes after an apocalypse?

That's not really a Praetoria thing, but you do you. That concept can be applied to any side. They arrived from another dimension to Paragon City, the Rogue Isles, or Praetoria and now have to deal with this new world. Go for it.

[CoeruleumBlue]

24 minutes ago, Rudra said:

There are badges that Praetorians always keep, but I'm pretty sure most of their badges get renamed when they go red or blue.

 

The game warns players not to start as Praetorians because Praetoria has a higher difficulty than red side or blue side. And experiencing that higher difficulty can be off-putting for players if experienced before they learn how the game is played.

 

Super groups are no longer faction restricted. They haven't been since before the shut down. If you want to make a post-apocalyptic group, then make it. And feel free to throw all your post-apocalyptic characters in it regardless of side.

 

That's not really a Praetoria thing, but you do you. That concept can be applied to any side. They arrived from another dimension to Paragon City, the Rogue Isles, or Praetoria and now have to deal with this new world. Go for it.

 

No, my one Praetorian character still has all the badges after going blue. 

 

Why do those characters have to be thrown into the new world of Praetoria? Why can't my post-apocalyptic characters I made within a couple of weeks of joining the game just be Praetorians? "When Bloodsifter was a child, he was selected by Emperor Cole to be a loyal servant..." "When Loosecannon was a teenager, her house got hit by a nuclear attack, but due to her precognitive ability, she avoided the blast underground and now scavenges in the wastes..." I'm just locked out of actually using the in-universe postapocalyptic setting because I didn't use it when I was making some postapocalyptic characters when I first played the game? Basically nothing else is story-locked. People are constantly saying that their Peacebringer and Warshade characters actually aren't a nictus, and just making Brutes who they say are a nictus, but if I made some apocalyptic character when I first joined the game and didn't even really know how to play, they have to be from some totally made up ghetto apocalyptic universe that isn't Praetoria and also isn't Primal Earth. That seems kind of pointless. 

[Rudra]

23 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

"When Bloodsifter was a child, he was selected by Emperor Cole to be a loyal servant..."

Then be that loyal servant.

 

23 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

"When Loosecannon was a teenager, her house got hit by a nuclear attack, but due to her precognitive ability, she avoided the blast underground and now scavenges in the wastes..."

The only nuclear detonation in Praetoria's recent history was the nuclear strike against Hamidon that made him stronger than Primal Earth's Hamidon. The Hamidon Wars did not render parts of the world a nuclear wasteland. Hamidon grows nature, not destroys it. That is why he is so set on wiping out humanity in Praetoria. The closest thing you are likely to find to a wasteland in Praetoria is a desert or tundra. (Edit: Or natural badlands.) The regions under Hamidon's control are more akin to forests waiting to devour humans foolish enough to enter. The regions not under Hamidon's control are sonic fenced bastions hoping to not be overrun. (Edit again: And probably some farms hoping that Hamidon won't go after them until the cities finish falling....) You aren't going to find a Mad Max type environment in Praetoria, that wasn't the type of war that was waged. (Edit yet again: The world had already seen that nukes only made Hamidon stronger. So there was no reason to deploy any more of them.) Nothing wrong with making a character like that. Just difficult to fit that character in without that character originating from another dimension. Especially since the parts of Praetoria we have access to is a flourishing city and an abandoned to Hamidon who hasn't bothered taking it yet First Ward.

 

Edited Friday at 03:40 AM by Rudra

[Chris24601]

If you wish to be from/visit a Post-Apocalyptic place, I recommended doing Unai’s missions at Portal Corp.

 

There are countless destroyed dimensions out there and you can visit several select ones like Freakshow or Warrior Earth, or the one where only Nemesis automatons or ghosts remain.

 

Paragon has quite a lot of non-global post-apocalyptic zones; from the Hollows to Boomtown to Faultline all the way up to Eden and Crey’s Folly. Plenty of places you could have survived the destruction of and tried to survive in.

 

I did a hero thugs MM whose crew was survivors of the Galaxy City mess.

 

The point is that being a shell shocked survivor of Doomsday doesn’t even require leaving the walls of Paragon City.

[Greycat]

On 10/9/2025 at 3:55 PM, CoeruleumBlue said:

When I was a newbie to the game I actually made a bunch of dystopian and post-apocalyptic characters and just made them normal heroes and villains since I didn't see what Praetoria was and it told us not to play that. We should probably have an option to go move our characters back there. I mean one of them is at Level 40 and nearly two years old that I just used for fire farming, but I have no idea what that character would be lore-wise other than from Praetoria since I can show you a picture. I have a couple of other ones that should probably also be from there unless they get to be from the Lost, but then, we don't get Lost costume pieces so that doesn't seem to work either. Maybe also give us the costume pieces from the Lost while you're at it so all my characters who don't look like they come from functioning societies at all have somewhere to belong. Thanks! 

 

So, the main question is ... *WHY* should they be from Praetoria?

 

Praetoria has a very specific lore behind it and why it is the way it is. It's not just "post apocalyptic wasteland."  If you "have no idea what that character would be lore-wise other than from Praetoria," then, to be frank, you don't know why they should be from Praetoria, either.  You need to run a character through Praetoria and/or sit down and read the lore behind it before deciding "yes, this fits my character." Heck, before Going Rogue, all we really *had* on Praetoria was "evil mirror moustache-twirling Paragon," pretty much. 

 

I have *several* characters from destroyed worlds - some in this universe, some from alternate dimensions. The ones from Praetoria are *very specifically* chosen to be from that environment and history. The others? Well, it's very freeing to be able to create your own backstory. 

 

And if you see it and still say "This character should have been Praetorian, the Cole dictatorship, Hamidon wars, etc. fit to a T?" Then... you have 1000 slots per shard. Remake the character and start them in Praetoria. Transfer the name, the build, etc. 

[CoeruleumBlue]

9 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

So, the main question is ... *WHY* should they be from Praetoria?

 

Praetoria has a very specific lore behind it and why it is the way it is. It's not just "post apocalyptic wasteland."  If you "have no idea what that character would be lore-wise other than from Praetoria," then, to be frank, you don't know why they should be from Praetoria, either.  You need to run a character through Praetoria and/or sit down and read the lore behind it before deciding "yes, this fits my character." Heck, before Going Rogue, all we really *had* on Praetoria was "evil mirror moustache-twirling Paragon," pretty much. 

 

I have *several* characters from destroyed worlds - some in this universe, some from alternate dimensions. The ones from Praetoria are *very specifically* chosen to be from that environment and history. The others? Well, it's very freeing to be able to create your own backstory. 

 

And if you see it and still say "This character should have been Praetorian, the Cole dictatorship, Hamidon wars, etc. fit to a T?" Then... you have 1000 slots per shard. Remake the character and start them in Praetoria. Transfer the name, the build, etc. 

 

Praetoria is actually kind of obviously copied from some other stuff after I played it, and that other stuff was influencing me, then after I played it there was just too much of a wolf tone effect for me. 

 

This also still doesn't address that the Lost was cancelled too. Like every time we almost have a wasteland or a dystopia or both it just gets cancelled so there's repeatedly the awkward effect of "I could make my character from here but then I can't" on all of them. Like I guess if your character is a green-skinned methane-breathing alien with tentacles from a spaceship on a post-apocalyptic world there's nothing similar but if they're a person from anything vaguely like Earth you're stuck in an awkward area where there are actually a few different things lorewise that already exist they could be from but all of those are either underdeveloped or the only thing you're actually kind of lore-locked out of so it's awkward. Like, why should I have to remake a character just to play it on a character? And yes, Praetorians get different badges even if they go blue/red, which is annoying if those badges don't make a lot of sense on your Praetorian character or they would make sense on a non-Praetorian character, because they basically just seem like intel theme badges as opposed to all the hero ones being like MVP and the villain ones being like dastardy deeds. 

 

I literally did just play Praetoria, and then I was like, dang, this seems like the perfect backstory for a bunch of two-year-old characters I have. Like yes, Praetoria isn't just "wasteland/post-apocalyptic Earth," but Freakshow isn't just "cyborgs" and people who make cyborgs make their characters Freakshow all the time just because it's nice to have a plot instead of having to go back and make everything from scratch. If you want to be from "destroyed Earth," Praetoria would be a pretty nice plot hook, except it seems like the one thing in the entire game you basically are actually locked out of, and I don't know why I should have to totally remake characters because of that. If you want to be from an apocalyptic green skinned methane-breathing alien planet, sure, then it can be freeing to not use Praetoria, but if you just want to chill in the Free-Fire Zone and the Fire-Free Zone in First Ward and whatever picking up supplies and you think that's nice, or you like the idea of making your character work at Cole University or whatever instead of Founder's Falls, then basically SOL it seems. Even something like the Kheldians is not hard-locked like that since lots of people just make a Nightshade or Peacebringer because they like the theme and mechanics, and people who don't like the theme or mechanics say their brute or blaster or defender or really any class is a Kheldian all the time. Yes, people make brutes and say they're Kheldians, I've seen it. It's nice to have plot hooks and kind of annoying that if you don't want to be from the City of Tomorrow basically just a utopia or some other planet where the Green-Skinned Men lives by the Space Star Honor Code and you just met Earthlings for the first time you seem locked out of it. Stuff like Malta and Rikti seems just as underdeveloped along with the Lost. 

Edited yesterday at 05:39 AM by CoeruleumBlue

[Chris24601]

One of my backstories involved “Elysian Earth”; the Earth that would have been next on the list for Rularuu to devour if Primal Earth didn’t stop it and because the Rikti are also from another dimension they didn’t invade Elysian Earth either. They also never got in a slugfest with Praetorian Earth, never had Mot try to consume their world, nor did they have a blip that froze their dimension in stasis for nearly a decade.

 

No Rikti, no war walls, no Riktized Hero-1, no lost Omega Team and all those other dead heroes and all the other destruction. Without Rularu, Darrin never enacts the scheme to kill Statesman, his daughter, and Sister Psyche.

 

Because of their plentiful and peaceful situation, Elysian Earth began an exchange program to send some of their young heroes into a post-apocalyptic dimension to render aid.

 

That dimension? Primal Earth; a dimension hammered by successive extra-dimensional invasions such that they still haven’t rebuilt all the devastated zones, still need massive war walls, and suffered tragic losses of great heroes.

 

The point is; what counts as post-apocalyptic is relative. Don’t let Atlas Park fool you. By most reasonable measures Primal Earth could count as post-apocalyptic.

 

They’ve at the very least been hit so hard that CRTs and late model cars are still used nearly everywhere. 😁

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

They’ve at the very least been hit so hard that CRTs and late model cars are still used nearly everywhere.

I wouldn't judge them based on that. I mean, look at the Fallout series of games. They use old car models and CRTs, but their cars were fusion-powered. (Edit: Besides, the fact Paragon City has the War Walls says something. Those are massive force fields that until they go down, keep the Rikti with all their advanced tech from being able to attack. Not exactly rudimentary tech. Add in that Tin Mage is technically obsolete with Mk. II running around, Citadel and Luminary, the medi-porters, and more; and Paragon City is a City of Tomorrow dream if not for the constant threats it is under.)

 

 

Edited yesterday at 06:44 AM by Rudra
Edited to correct "Numina" to "Luminary".