The Night Shift

While Skyway Shocker continues to avoid contact with the media, we have word from an anonymous source identified only as a "fan" that she most likely is, as previously speculated, the displaced Paragon City heroine, Citrus Shocker.

Posing as a variety of rescued civilians and fans, our source was able to occasionally speak with the elusive heroine and put a few things together. While Crey doesn't have anywhere near the power here that they did in Paragon City, Shocker believes that a group of their enhanced agents has been able to entrench itself in several Millennium City organizations, creating a web of conspirators able to access valuable technological and financial resources at will. She also claims to know the name of this alleged conspiracy: The Night Shift.

As Skyway Shocker became more visible to the public, the Night Shift or, more likely, random criminal elements that were simply out of her league, made Millennium City more and more dangerous for her, so she spent some time in the wilds of northern Canada, fighting ice demons and other strange menaces.

We don't have a lot of pictures from the Arctic. Apparently our source didn't like the cold. When Skyway Shocker came back, it was with a new costume and some new inventions. Of special note were a sleeker, more compact jet pack and a pair of hovering drones that vastly improved on her previous models.

She has since been seen fighting crime on several occasions in the city, even helping out with a disturbing outbreak of spontaneous combustion.

There has still been no sign of any of her compatriots in the Scrap Pile, and our source has not been able to get her to comment on the matter at all, except for, on one particularly pleasant afternoon, a smirk, followed by, "Tell your friends they'll be along."

Regarding her undisguised operation in areas where this "Night Shift" can easily strike at her, Shocker's attitude confirmed previous assumptions that she was, in fact, eager to see them try. Asked about her flight to the Arctic, she acknowledged that she "hadn't fully accounted for... some things." On another occasion, she confirmed that she "wasn't ready then, but now I know exactly what I'm facing."

UPDATE: Our source turned out to be a shape-shifting robot. It was found on our front step today, short-circuited, with several components missing. A note was left clipped to its jacket that said, "See?"

Stars, Specters, and Super-Powers

Three of the stories in this book (Mister Blue Sky, The Man Comes Around, and Misfits & Mistakes)  feature The Scrap Pile, The Enigmas, and several other characters that we originally created in City of Heroes. "Mister Blue Sky" has a lot of things that will look familiar if you've ever played the winter event. "A Bad Habit" is also a super-hero story, but it's much older than City of Heroes.

https://books2read.com/b/StarsSS

Skyway Shocker

Fleeing the authorities after a run-in with the Crey Corporation that ended with several warrants for her arrest, Citrus Shocker was last seen heading for the Shadow Shard portal on Peregrine Island.

Over a year later, Skyway Shocker was reported to be working with the Champions in Millennium City. The weaponry seems to be  more exotic and possibly more advanced, but Skyway Shocker bears a remarkable resemblance in both face and attitude to the rarely-masked heroine, wields the same lightning-based powers, and even wears a costume similar to the best known of Citrus Shocker's many outfits.

Skyway Shocker has thus far avoided any interaction with the media. If this is the same person, she almost seems to be daring whatever remains of Crey to come after her. If not, well, that would be even stranger. So far, however, none of her compatriots in the Scrap Pile, even Captain Scrappy, have been spotted.

Happy New Year!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Phoenix Project Steps Up

It's time! Get over there and pledge now! 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans

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/

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

Sarana and Her Amazing Friends

Citrus Shocker at the End of the World

The End

Well, actually, I'll probably post some more pictures here. I've got a bunch that I always meant to post with some kind of article that I never got around to writing. I said, "the end" because I wrote this bit about the end of City of Heroes:

http://www.christinalea.com/2012/11/requiem-for-paragon-city.html

Why post it there instead of here? I don't know. Get outta my face, kid; ye'r botherin' me.

Who is Void Razor?

After a mysterious shadowy figure was seen carving up Longbow in the shadow of Fort Cerberus, everyone is asking, "who is Void Razor?" Sources indicate that she has been seen many times coming and going from Fort Darwin, possibly taking orders from Kalinda. Even more ominously, the shadowy killer's appearance in the Rogue Isles seems to coincide with the disappearance of the former heroine Bright Wing from Ziggursky Penitentiary.

Bright Wing's fall is a tragic story. "She was as good-hearted and inspiring as her name implies," says Paradigm, one of her former comrades. "She was just a little headstrong, and the one serious mistake she finally made just snowballed into... I'm sorry... that's all for now."

After charging into a villain conclave without clearance, Bright Wing seriously injured an undercover Longbow operative. She was, of course, suspended pending a hearing where it was to be decided whether to discipline, fire, or prosecute her. She never made it there. Corrupt elements within the Hero Corps organization tricked her into thinking she was to be escorted under guard. They then kidnapped and sold her to a Council laboratory on Striga Isle, where she was tortured and experimented upon for months. She lost most of her powers during this time, including her ability to fly.

She eventually began to mutate on her own, however, surprising even the mad scientists who caused her transformation. Because they weren't prepared for her new powers, she was able to escape and return to Paragon City. Unfortunately, word had gotten out that she was coming to kill the mayor and perhaps several prominent figures in the Hero Corps bureaucracy. This was not true, but it was enough to put Longbow and the heroes of Atlas Park on alert. Although she probably would have been able to convince them of her innocence at this point, Bright Wing was terrified of being captured again - by anyone - and resisted arrest violently. This time, she was sent to Ziggursky.

There, both her mind and her body grew darker. Her journals indicate that she blamed not only the Council agents, but everyone she felt had failed her, even civilization itself. And then she was gone, vanishing in an Arachnos raid on the prison along with several other super-powered inmates.

Could the shadowy blade-wielder shown here be the fallen Bright Wing? For now, no one is sure.

Unbeholden Forever

"The Unbeholden? What Unbeholden? Beasty Boy was their heart and soul, and he's gone solo. Mistress Terror or Terrorist or whatever she calls herself, the so-called leader, has gone into hiding. The rest are strictly small time. Trust me, the Unbeholden are just a bad memory. It's groups like the Angry Bees or the Technocratic Dominion that we need to be watching, not those has-beens."

-- Captain Jerry Tooley, November 2007Longbow Senior Staff Briefing,

It seemed, for some time, that Captain Tooley was right. When they were in the news, the Unbeholden were plagued with rumors of internal upheavals, interspersed with recruiting surges and reunions that sounded suspiciously like canned press releases. Even Beasty Boy's rampage in the summer of 2007 seemed unable to stir them into action. Then events began to unfold that suggested the Unbeholden's lethargy had been a smoke screen all along.

It started with a single picture of what appeared to be Sarana, long believed to be Mistress Terror's personal assassin, taking down a mob boss in Port Oakes. Other pictures followed. Sarana battling snakes, fighting her way into Fort Hades, even defeating the Ferocious Flambelle in an Atlas Park bank robbery. Flambelle has, thankfully, recovered and was a key factor in positively identifying the elusive swordswoman. There are rumors that she was seen with Beasty Boy at some point as well, but all our sources seem to have disappeared.

Mistress Terror, meanwhile, was rumored to have been captured while trying to assassinate Ghost Widow. An Arachnos informant even released the following photo:

Then, on January 24th, the big news hit:

Mistress Terror, aided by familiar cronies Hanoi Jane, Nightmare Pixie, Erith, Plague Dog, Exterminus, and Screeching Harpy, made a spectacular strike on Atlas Park, targeting not the bank, but Wentworth's Consignment House. Then, at long last, she spoke to the press. Our Rogue Isles affiliate, possibly but not definitely that guy who puts the secret notes for villains in the newspapers, conducted the interview at night, under a bridge in Port Oakes.

"I hate Wentworth's," Mistress Terror explained. "That, and Plague Dog has been working wonders in the interplanetary contraband industry, and nothing makes him happier than a pile of weird junk."

Asked about the group's long quiescence and what might be next on their agenda, Mistress Terror replied, "For one thing, I wasn't trying to assassinate Ghost Widow. In fact... well... never mind. We've been gathering artifacts, researching the origins of our powers, making new friends, and... do you really expect me to tell you everything?"

Our plucky reporter followed Mistress Terror the next day and snapped one more surprising photo in Aeon City. After a tense pause during which she seemed to be considering teleporting him over the ledge, she offered the reporter a brief statement: "What can I say? The Unbeholden are back in action, and we are everywhere. Don't mess with us."

Sarana Returns

After a spectacular breakout and crime spree with Erith and the Killing Clown back in 2006, the mysterious assassin Sarana seemed to disappear. After years of apparent inactivity, however she seems to have reappeared. While conducting covert surveillance on "Slappy Jack" Pirelli in Port Oakes, an undercover Longbow agent snapped the following picture:

"It was uncanny," the agent said, on condition of anonymity. "One second, Slappy was smoking a cigar. The next, a couple of civilians walked between me and him and then he was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. I didn't get a good look at the girl until I developed the film. She was only there for a second, then she sort of stepped sideways into the shadows and was gone."

If Sarana has returned, can the rest of the Unbeholden be far behind?

Shocker Saves Halloween

Press Release
While other heroes went about their oblivious trick-or-treating, Scrap Pile commander Citrus Shocker saw a danger and took action. It started with a message from some of the team's junior members (see previous article) and a ghostly ship floating through the streets of Talos Isle, where the brilliantly unconventional super-hero was posing as a shopper to lull criminals into a false sense of security.

"Actually," adds the modest hero, "I really was shopping. Then I saw the boat and thought maybe I should check my voicemail, and there were like 800 messages from Freefall Brawler and Ex Astra and some kind of squeaky gremlin thing that talked too fast to understand."

The courageous Citrus Shocker immediately took action. All the evidence gathered by her loyal crew had pointed to something sinister rising out of the fog-bound streets and cemeteries of Dark Astoria and engulfing Paragon City, perhaps the whole world, in eternal night. She even reserved a room there, allowing villains to believe that she was planning to meet Capt. Scrappy there to celebrate her birthday, and went undercover as a trick-or-treater.

Blasting her way through hordes of zombies who apparently saw through her clever ruse, Shocker eventually found that there really was some strange evil afoot.
"Yeah, it was just like last year. Sometimes you open the door and get a treat, sometimes you get a rock, and sometimes you get mobbed by jack-o-lantern men and witches and stuff like that."
The cunning Shocker quickly assembled a team of other brave heroes and tracked the evil to its source deep in the cemetery zone.
"Yeah, those guys were freaks," Shocker adds. "But they found Eochai for me and it was kind of neat assembling up on the war wall like that to plan our attack."
The darkness faded only a few days after the defeat of the avatar in Dark Astoria. "I guess he wasn't really doing anything, but he was still... you know... magic. I hate magic."

Junior Scrap Pilers Go Trick-or-Treating

Junior Scrap Pile members Speed Lightning, Freefall Brawler, and Ex Astra (clockwise from farthest) meet up in King's Row, having noticed that the Sun seems to be gone.


Prince of Scorpions from the allied super-group Eye of Horus joins up. "Hey, was that a zombie with a musket?"


Consulting with HallowJack, who agrees to get some of his impish friends looking into things.


Oktoberfest convenes in Atlas Park: HallowJack, GremlinJack, and Obsidian Wind.


Obsidian Wind and GremlinJack.

To be continued...