Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Echo of Mercy

Mercy has decided that her old name no longer matters.

In her old life, under her old name, she worked for the Lizard Moll's gang. Nothing flashy - she wasn't a supervillain herself, or even a soldier. She just monitored some of the start-ups around Mercy Island, keeping tabs on potential rivals. It wasn't glamorous work, but she enjoyed it.

Then the Storm came and world started to crack. Mercy Island was torn apart from beneath and sank into the ocean. Swimming desperately for one of the escaping ships, Mercy was caught in a wave of glowing green sludge from some Arachnos experiment and dragged, choking and burning, into the depths.

She awoke under a pier in Millennium City, a strange shore in an alien world. The city was being attacked by insectoid aliens. Some new form of Rikti? Nobody recognized that word. The humans here, who seemed shorter than humans in her world, called them Qularr. One of the creatures came at her and the flailing arm she threw up to fend it off went right through its carapace. At first, she thought they must be incredibly fragile, but soon she realized that the people weren't small and the bugs weren't weak. She was the one who had changed.

She joined in the fight, helping to drive away the bugs, and someone asked her who she was. She meant to say, "I'm the echo of Mercy Island," but all that came out was, "Mercy."

While she had never had any great respect for the law, Mercy was a survivor. She had been accepted as a hero when she helped fight off the Qularr, and she found that this was a comfortable life. No reason to put all that at risk by robbing banks or trying to rule the world. She found that she had a violent temper now. She suspected that some of this came from the chemicals that had transformed her, but she was also angry and frustrated at the loss of her home, her family, and her friends. Taking that frustration out on criminals, however, was enough. She sometimes wonders what it would be like to go farther, but so far has not seen any reason to try it.

On Halloween, the dead rose, and demons clawed their way through the veil of worlds. Millennium City felt like home for the first time.

In the chaos, Mercy stumbled across a thrilling revelation: she was not alone.

Fighting her way through a horde of zombies, she found herself in a group of other heroes who had done the same. Together, they dove into the portal and confronted the demonic entity beyond. One of the heroes was from Paragon City.

Despite her elation, of course, Mercy had to conceal some of the details of her own origins. Still, after a long chat over pumpkin-spiced cocktails, she found out that she and Aleph-Ka weren't the only survivors. Several other heroes, and possibly other not-so-heroic sorts, had washed up on these shores over the past year.

It was good to make a connection with someone from her home world, but it was even better to realize that she could make a connection, period. Maybe this world, this life, could be more than just bearable, after all.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Snow!

And hey, while I was working on that other post, Google noticed that this picture could use a little more snow so... Happy Holidays from Fire of Saturn, I guess.


Lizard Moll Gang Considers New Name

The Lizard Moll (popularly known as Zombie Lizard Moll, but this reporter was sternly notified that "we don't use the 'Z' word here") is considering some changes to her supervillain team, The Bad, The Ugly, and The Mutagenic. Of particular interest is her intent to change the name.

"Nobody wants to chew through 'The Bad, The Ugly, and The Mutagenic' in the middle of a sentence, and I've already had to dissolve three people in acid for calling us 'BUM' so I think it's time to accept that the old name isn't working. A lot of people have already been calling us 'Lizard Moll Family' and similar things, so I thought, with that being the case, and the fact that we have a couple of exiled gods and several post-human members like myself and Apocalizard, why not go with Gods and Monsters? Pretty catchy, don't you think? And just because it's a house run by a 'monster' doesn't mean everybody in it has to be a monster."

Several members, including early recruit Fire of Saturn, support the notion."Oh, definitely! I mean, I'm not any of those things either way, but I'd rather be lumped in with the new ones than the old ones. I was framed or I wouldn't even be in the Rogue Isles, and I'm not ugly or mutagenic either." After a pause, the high-tech villain misunderstood adventurer added, "God, I hope I'm not mutagenic. Living in this place, though-- Do you have a Geiger counter handy, by any chance?"


Co-founder Partying Animal, however, expressed some irritation at the prospect of change. "This group was forged in the fires of our early struggles and triumphs together. It may have been the Lizard Moll's privilege to provide the original name, but I don't think that entitles her to blithely toss it away in favor of some some flashy buzzword."

The third founding member of the villainous enterprise, Firetemple, was away on an extended photo shoot and could not be reached for comment.

Monday, December 02, 2013

Valiance Pre-Alpha

And while you're waiting for City of Titans, here's another potential City of Heroes successor to check out:

http://valiance.shogn.net

They've even got an open pre-alpha running. You can download the client here. So far there's not a lot you can do with it, but it's kind of fun to poke around.

Monday, November 04, 2013

City of Titans Funded!

Congratulations to Missing Worlds Media for their successful (more than double the goal!) Kickstarter run. I can't wait to see what they do with it. I'm taking the status widget out of my sidebar now, but I can't bring myself to completely do away with it, so I'm just gonna let it sit in this post. It's going to be a long two years!

In the meantime, I still have a lot of old City of Heroes screenshots and the stories behind them to post here. I'm also occasionally playing Champions Online, which isn't ideal, but it has its good points and it still helps quell the super-hero addiction shakes. Maybe I'll tell some stories around that too.

It'll be a couple of weeks at least, though. I'm really busy with Qalidar right now.

Thursday, August 08, 2013

After the End - Links and Stuff

Found this tribute to CoH webpage, which is nicely done but so depressing to read:
http://ourcityofheroes.com

Also, if you didn't already know, there's a program called Titan Icon, which gives you a way you can log in and run around in Paragon City and the other places in the game. There's no one to talk to or fight, but you can look around. Also depressing, but it's kind of nice to revisit old haunts sometimes, even if they're deserted.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Titan_Icon

Finally, if you want to see the spirit of the game find a new life, consider supporting Missing Worlds Media's Phoenix Project. I think they've got the best shot at building a viable successor. They're planning to launch a Kickstarter on September 8th of this year.
http://cityoftitans.com/

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Before Its Time

You think it'll last forever - people and cars and concrete - but it won't. One day it's all gone, even the sky. My planet's gone... before its time.
--The Doctor