Mission Architect

Plans. I has dem.

* Blood Crucible's father as an AV. This is exactly what I've been waiting for to advance BC's story again. It's a bit of a wait, but it'll be worth it.
* Jefallen as an AV. I've wanted to bring back Vagz' arch-enemy for a long time, but have never really managed to make it happen. Now I can. And with whatever random brain-washed minions I want, too.
* Nemesis in Cimerora. Current story element for Will.
* Rikti in Cimerora. ...nah, that'd just be mean. :)
* Styrm as an AV. This'd mostly be just for me since E's story is pretty much at a stand-still. Anyone who wants to pummel the guy would be invited, of course.

Since I Couldn't Sleep...

I've been having some trouble with insomnia again lately. Waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. Since I was awake again last night, I fired up the computer and dove into Test's costume creator.

The Brawler was not exaggerating. There are an enormous number of shield options, and they all look fantastic. I tried really hard not to let them inspire character ideas since I'm already contemplating 2-3 shield characters. The real reason I was in there was to see the options and to pick a shield for Vagabond Knight.

Now, I've been playing the character of the Vagabond since 1990. I have a good idea of what he and his stuff looks like in my head. Often, it's hard to make that come out on paper or in a video game, and I end up settling in one way or another. Sometimes it comes out good anyway. Sometimes, not so much.

The shield options are fantastic. Shapes and sizes, colors and textures, patterns and emblems... even if I13 creates City of Shields, there is so much variety that everyone's will look different. And they had the perfect shield for Vagz. Right size, right shape, coloration... it's not perfect to what I've always pictured in my head, but it's damn close. And it looked fantastic in the creator. I'm betting it'll look good in the game, too.

No screenshot. You'll just have to wait to see what it looks like. :)

I13 Plans

Yes, I already have characters created in my head. These are ranked from "absolutely creating the second I13 drops" down to "will create if I have time/interest".

Vagabond Knight (Shield/Fire tank)
* I already have the name reserved because I worried with shields coming, others might make a grab for it. Fyre and I have spotted other "Vagabond" characters running around... I would've made him shield/broadsword, but two things: they're not proliferating broadsword to tanks (yet), and I've already done broadsword. I contemplated Axe and Mace, but the sword is really Vagz' preferred weapon, and I kinda like that Fire includes a sword (sorta). And this way, I get a tank and two powersets I haven't played yet.

Unnamed E-VAC version (Psionic or Radiation/Pain corrupter)
*Oh, yes. E is coming back. "Pain Domination" is just too perfect for him. I'm having trouble coming up with the right name, though, mostly 'cause I'm not sure he'll go by a variation on "EVAC" with the story I've got cooking. Now what could make him go bad? Hmm...

Unnamed Will version (Shield/Mace tank)
* Yeah, you weren't the only one thinking this, Keen. :) Will's supposed to have been a SWAT officer from way back, so a riot shield and baton? All over this. Srsly. I had my fingers crossed for a riot shield, but was thinking tech mace or Energy Melee (from the power gauntlets) until I heard about the riot baton. We'll see, though. HeroWill hasn't seen a lot of play and the original Will has seen pretty much none. Plus, starting up two tanks when I've had a hard time playing tanks before might not be a good idea. My highest-level tank to date reached 16 before he was deleted.

Unnamed Blood Crucible version (Broadsword or Katana/Dark Armor or Shield or Super Reflexes or Willpower scrapper)
* Just a thought I'm toying with. As you can probably tell, it's not even close to formed yet. I enjoy the character and don't want to stop playing him once he hits 50. :) My only hesitation is playing him as just another flavor of scrapper. Dunno. We'll see.

DefenderVagz

Vagabond Wizard, level 6 Magic Cold Domination/Electrical Blast Defender

Let the I12 madness begin. Some time this week, I'll be rolling up my Blood Widower, too. I'm not committed to a story or character for him yet, but I'll come up with something.

VEAT

I've been contemplating this, and I don't have a solid character concept yet. Mechanically, I think I want to first play either a Wolf Spider into Bane Spider or a male Blood Widow into Night Widow. Since I'll be duoing with Fyre, if she picks one or the other, I'll just go with the one she doesn't pick. :)

Eventually, I think I'd like to try playing a Fortunata, but unlike many others, I'm not keen on the backpack legs/arms of the Crab Spider. They look like bad-asses, but odds are there isn't one in my future.

I have had a couple of seeds of ideas for concept. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a lockstep, hardcore Arachnos agent. I want a little... wiggle room.

The first stems off of a high-level story arc. Some of the Bane Spiders break free of their conditioning and go a little wild. Not exactly sure where I'd go from there, but that would be the start.

The second idea is based off of a story thread I haven't followed up on yet. One of Cpt. William Piett's mercenary soldiers, Lt. Paul Simon, was nearly killed in an Arachnoid lair and disappeared from an Arachnos hospital. The idea was that Piett and his men could be controlled or coerced by threats to their comrade. Well... what if he was indoctrinated instead? Brainwashed into the legions of Arachnos? Interesting story potential there... maybe.

Since we're still weeks away from "open" beta, I've still got time to come up with a good idea.

Styrm Lives

I've just finished creating two new characters on Triumph. Both are parked in Outbreak and more or less ready to go. I have:

David Styrm, Robotics/Traps Mastermind
EREBOS, Energy Blast/Traps Corruptor

EREBOS will be the "main" or the one I level, only bringing out the "human" Styrm for RP and such.

What is "EREBOS"? Well, it's another acronym character. It stands for "Enhanced Reaction Energy Blast Offensive System". I wanted a "codename" or whatever for the battlesuit version but his original table-top codename has always been (intentionally) a little lame ("The Night Lord") and was already taken anyway. Did some poking around and websearching and discovered "Erebus" (also spelled "Erebos") as a Roman god of darkness.

This makes my fourth character to use an acronym for a name, HEADS (High Energy Amplification and Deployment System), TRAPS-1 (Tactical Response Armored Protection System, version 1), and REDS-27 (Robotic Electrical Discharge System - series 27) being the first three (in order of creation). HEADS (FF/eng defender) and TRAPS (eng/dev blaster) are long since deleted and REDS (elec/elec brute) is still over on Guardian.

Odd... I just realized all four of them end in "System". Huh.

Well, Evil Alt Sunday ought to be interesting.

David Styrm - The Night Lord

Okay, so I've started thinking about making another Styrm character, this time villainside. I blame Mason for setting those creative juices flowing.

First of all, as has been mentioned before, when Styrm goes into battle, he generally does so in a giant robotic battlesuit. That being the case, I would probably want to create two Styrms: one using the "huge" body model with maxed-out height or possibly just the "male" body with a bulked-out physique; the other being a "normal" Styrm, more than likely similar to the "hero" Styrm that I had for RP.

Now obviously I wouldn't be able to level both at the same time and keep up with whatever team we put together (assuming we put one together), so depending on the team, I'd probably level one and use the other strictly for RP. If the one being leveled is the "normal" one, I might not even bother creating the "battlesuit".

So here are my thoughts on potential archetypes and powersets:

David Styrm, "normal"
Assault Rifle/Traps Corruptor
Robotics/Traps Mastermind

The Night Lord, "battlesuit"
(could be just about anything)
Brute (Energy or Super Strength/Electric or Energy or Invuln)
Corruptor (Energy or Fire or Radiation/Radiation or Traps)
Dominator (Gravity or Mind/Energy or Fire)

Mostly, I'd be curious to see what other people would want to play before picking which Styrm to try and play. :)

More Trouble in the Rogue Isles

As Fyre mentions in her blog, Fyre-Hex has gone to the Rogue Isles. The Nathan part of Masonry would probably be unsurprised to find out she has "people" with her. In this case, she hired Cpt. William Piett, a Mercenaries/Force Field mastermind. He is practically a standard-issue mercenary, complete with guns, military training, people under him, and a shady past. In addition, he also has a pair of high-tech gauntlets that allow him to project and manipulate fields of "solid" energy. Naturally, his first thought was to use this as another weapon (force bolt at level 1), but he can also envision a practical application of defensive shields (he just took deflection shield at level 4). To supplement, he's also scrounged up taser darts (origin power), coated the gauntlets with Sands of Mu, and swiped a Nemesis Staff (veteran rewards powers). A connection with DJ Zero also got him a Pocket D teleporter and a jump-pack (it's good to be a V.I.P.).

He has already spent some time on Mercy Island, making connections and getting his reputation established locally. Matthew Burke was a big help in that area. Other than that, I haven't fleshed out the character too much in my head. He's going to be a bit stereotypical to start, but I'll fill him out more as ideas come to me and the RP continues. The way he sees it, his job is to protect Fyre and act as her guide. She may have done the hero schtick in Paragon City, but the Rogue Isles are a whole different ballpark. I envision that Fyre has hired him for other jobs before, so he does know her. However, he doesn't know what this latest "job" is all about. He's hesitant to ask (good mercs keep their mouths shut and do what they're paid to do), but his curiosity will probably get the better of him eventually.

Fyre and I had a lot of fun getting the two new "villains" to level 4 last night. I hated to break it off, but I had to wake up for work this morning.

Team 3.0 Beta

Suicidal Bombardier - AR/Traps corruptor
Kain X - Rad/Rad corruptor
Ryu Tatsu - Ninjas/Poison mastermind
Lunatrix - Mind/Psi dominator

Okay, grant you, Luna & Ryu were starting from level 1 and even Bomb was only level 5 when we started. But we destroyed. Kain & Ryu each have heals & debuffs and boy, with two corruptors and a dom, we were dishing out the damage. If this is the version of T3 we end up sticking with, it'll be interesting to see how we progress through the mid-game. I'm already having doubts about my power choices and slotting, and I'm only level 6!

RP-wise, the team is already shaping up to be an interesting group of oddballs. Bomb is a fun kind of nuts and coule be pretty humorous. I worry Mas will get bored with that, though. Kain is obviously a man with a lot to hide. It'll be fun prying it out of him. I started out Ryu with only a sketchy concept and started forming background ideas as we RPed. Fyre started out Luna with only a costume and powers, but by the end of the night, she was starting to take shape, too. Will the long-term RP turn out as interesting as Team 1.0? Or as angst-ridden as Team 2.0? Way too early to tell.

But it was a fun night, so I'm looking forward to more.

More T3 Thoughts

The most important thing I think we should keep in mind from a tactical/mechanics standpoint is that we will be starting over. We're not just rotating positions and re-using old tactics. Even when we went from our original team to Team Angst, we had new tactics. Frost is not Mason. The two Kheldians were far more flexible than Fyre and Stronghold, and E2 came with a pocket army and piles of debuffs instead of insane healing and buffs. No matter what archetypes and powersets T3 comes packing, we're going to have to spend the first ten levels or so figuring out new tactics, not only for our individual characters, but for the team as a whole.

Personally, I think we're up to the challenge. Like Kit said in her comments, we just have to keep in mind that CoV ATs are not CoH ATs. We will learn completely new characters, completely new tactics, and more than likely try to squeeze a story in there somewhere, too.

Speaking of story, we should start talking about how we're going to get these characters together. Assuming Fyre and I play the characters we've discussed, the two of us are ready to go. Should she and I start our characters and meet the others out on the Isles? Should we meet in Breakout and start together right from scratch? Do our characters already know each other or are forced together by circumstance? Do we want to start with Burke or Kalinda (or both!)? Why is the sad cebu sad?

I look forward to being evil with all of you.

And like Keen, I'm itching to get into the character creator... :)

Another Team 3.0 Idea

First of all, this is still nothing set in stone or even a jumping-up-and-down, I-want-to-play-this-character thing. This is just another concept/idea I've come up with, and since my brain keeps playing with it, I thought I'd put pen to paper (fingers to keys?) and write it down.

Apologies if I take liberties with other characters. :)

Captain William Piett (name subject to change)
Mercenaries/(I thought "Traps" at first, but I wouldn't want to double up on Mas if he goes AR/Traps or Thugs/Traps; so more than likely, it'd be Force Field) Mastermind

Fyre (and Masonry) end up in the Zig on charges of (murder, kidnapping, arson, trumped-up charges from Styrm, whatever). Who's going to get them out? Naturally, it's Fyre's "people" to the rescue. Taking advantage of yet another Arachnos breakout at the Zig, Fyre's people slip into the prison to free her (and Mason), escorting (her/them) out of the prison and taking command of one of the Arachnos fliers. Having little choice in safe havens thanks in no small part to Styrm, the small band escapes to the Rogue Isles and meets up with a contact there, a mercenary by the name of Burke.

The captain seems to have a number of contacts around the Rogue Isles and makes it his job to make Fyre (and Masonry) appear to fit in (but do they need the help?), in the meantime acting as bodyguard and trying to make sure Fyre (and Masonry and whoever else) are as comfortable as possible. Although he is dependable and has always been able to help out with "less-than-legal" things for Fyre in the past, he is not a nice guy and his connections around the Isles might be a bit disturbing. It also becomes apparent that he is receiving aid, information, and possibly orders from someone other than Fyre.

One of my thoughts behind this loose description is that this would be a character that could act as a gateway to the Isles, allow us to take some of the less-savory missions, and still allow the ex-heroes a lot of room to wrestle with their consciences. Does he further taint the former heroes? Or do they prod his own dying conscience back to life?

Team 3.0 - Early Thoughts

Well, I've already been discussing some of this with Fyre, but not all of it. Here are some of the thoughts and ideas I've had as well as suggestions Fyre gave me.

VILLAINS
The advantage of going "villainside" for T3 is that we haven't done the content to death. New archetypes, new powersets, new missions, new ways of teaming. Also, in my opinion, Mason and Fyre are sort of headed that way anyway. In my mind, though, E is not. And that's okay because I don't think I want to try and "re-roll" him again anyway. I've done his powers, and I think I want to do something different. So here are the potential villains:

1. E-VAC III
I know. I just said I don't want to "re-roll" E. But I'm not talking about Jason here. I'm talking about Jen. It would give excellent RP/story opportunity, and I could do her up as an AR/Thermal or Rad/Therm corrupter. Difficulty here is playing a young girl (10 or 11).

2. Doppleganger
This was an idea Fyre had: bringing E's ghostly companion to life as a character in his own right. The reason would vary based on how the current story pans out, but he would have to be some sort of dominator with the energy blast secondary, I think. Difficulty here is entirely new (and potentially weird) plotline.

3. Jefallen the Warlock
I've tried a number of times to work up the vagabond's arch-nemesis as a character. Trouble here is the character doesn't play well with others and as a mind control/energy dominator, it's a lot of powers I've done before, and frankly, I've found playing him to be fairly boring. Maybe a team would change that. Maybe not.

4. 'Ware Wolf
My first CoV character (MA/EA stalker) is a blast to play, and I love his RP. Like the first CoH E, he's stalled, and I'd love to flush some life back into him. Difficulty here is that I don't particularly want to "re-roll" him, so he'd be exemplaring (malefactoring?) for a long time. Which could be good 'cause infamy is a lot harder to come by than influence. Also, coming up with an RP reason to team him up might be tricky.

HEROES
Personally, I prefer RPing heroes. I can do villains as NPCs (and have to a lot), but it's something I sometimes have trouble with long-term. Reluctant or misunderstood villains, I can do, but heroes are so much easier for me. Also, from a pure mechanical standpoint, there's a lot more lag and graphics problems in CoV. CoH runs much smoother. If we do another hero team, though, here are the possibilities:

1. E-VAC III
Yeah, Jen could be a hero, too. Not sure what AT/PS I would choose, but something appropriate to her parentage. See above.

2. Doppleganger
Again, see above. More than likely an energy/energy blaster.

3. Vagabond Magus
I love Vagz, and I really like this newest version of him (Fire/FF controller) and would like to play him more. New team, new life.

4. Some other pre-existing alt
Sorta gathering dust on Virtue right now because of my fascination with T2, I have Jack Royale (grav/storm controller), Speed Trial (kin/rad defender), and Derick Darklight (WS), all of whom I would enjoy getting a chance to play more often.

Naturally, this is all just brain-storming. I don't have my mind or heart set on anything in particular, and we've still got time to think and talk about it. Most interesting to me at this point, though, would probably be a CoV T3 with Fyre, Mas, and E3 from a pure story point of view.

Origin of the Character - City of Heroes 3

So the team was nearing the end of its 50-level run, and we all decided we didn't want the story to stop at 50. We toyed with teaming up other alts (Eve Moran, Suicidal Wombat, and Vagabond Magus were supposed to be a team), but we were all really enjoying the RP between E-VAC, Fyre Hex, Keen Stronghold, and Masonry. So we started talking about "re-rolling" them as new alts. I'm not going to delve into what the others did. I'll leave that for them.

So what to do with E? Well, his big schtick is the empathy and mind powers, so I started looking at controllers. Originally, it was a debate between Mind Control and Illusion Control. Empathy was the obvious choice for a secondary. I was leaning toward Illusion because it was a powerset I hadn't played with yet. On top of that, Mind repeated a lot of powers E already had. Boring. So I was going to be Ill/Emp.

But talking to Fyre and contemplating, I thought more and more that even with Illusion to keep me amused, I'd be going back over old ground with Empathy. Not only that, but I'd have to come up with an excuse for why he had the same powers but weaker all of a sudden. Just for fun, I started looking at the other controller secondaries. And that's when I noticed Radiation Emission. It gave me the heal to start with, but then there were all these other fun toys. And there's a lot of call for "rads", especially against AVs and GMs.

So I thought about it. And if you glance back over E's origin, you'll notice: he'd already been bombarded by radiation once in his life. What would happen if it happened again? Well, it'd interfere with his powers, forcing him to relearn them. And it might overload him, making it so he was actually pumping the stuff out. Nifty! So where's he going to get more radiation? Well, logically, it wouldn't be voluntary, so let's go back to the origin story again and make Styrm do it.

Now, in all honesty, looking back on it, I think this was my biggest mistake. We were having a blast with E, Fyre, and Mason. They were coming to grips with what had happened to them, relationships were established, trust had been made. We were putting together Team 2.0 to carry on the fun we were having.

And I broke E.

I sent him back to L.A. He was captured by his villainous former comrades, and subjected to torturous experiments. Not to boost his powers this time, but just to be cruel. To break E down and prepare him for what Styrm intended to do next. To force him to start over and set him up for a fall.

So E returned to Paragon City, rescued from days of torture, not by his brother and the woman he loved, but by Longbow. His empathic powers dulled by the pain, the damage to his mind, and the radiation, he had to learn to control them all over again, along with the mutagenic radiation now coursing through his body.

Mutagenic... ah, crap. Suddenly it made sense for Jen to be taken away from him, furthering the Styrm Agenda and adding to why he would've done what he did.

So after a long weekend, this is how E2 appeared in Paragon City. Broken. Hurting physically, emotionally, and mentally. Leaking radiation everywhere. Desperate for comfort. Wanting to know why the people he loved hadn't come for him, hadn't rescued him. Feeling guilty over having broken under the torture.

And the first thing he was confronted with was that his two dearest friends had died while he was gone.

Origin of the Character - City of Heroes 2

All this backstory finally brings us to what, I'm sure, most of you have been waiting for: the version of E most of you are most familiar with. We've refered to him as "E1" or "version 1.0", but as you can see, it's probably more correct to consider him as either version 2 or 3. Let me back up half a step.

Fyre and I have been duoing for a while now. We've put some duos together out of characters we had: Cassandra Noir (MA/Inv scrapper) and The Vagabond Blade (BS/Regen scrapper), Jack Royale (Grav/Storm controller) and Skylar Blaze (PB). We've also created quite a few duos, some on servers other than Virtue: Scarlette Blade (Katana/Regen scrapper) and Speed Trial (Kin/Rad defender), Derick Darklight (WS) and Lorelei Laughlin (Ill/Rad controller). Fyre and I play together very well, and I really enjoy her company.

I forget the exact circumstances, but we were having another fit of altitis, and I decided I really wanted to revisit the Empathy set again. E-VAC (the female one) had languished too long, and I knew that with Fyre, I stood a really good chance of not getting stuck again. So I decided I'd "re-roll" E and she came up with a Fire/Fire blaster. I'd say "the rest is history", but the point of this blog is to tell that history. :)

Now, I decided from the outset to learn from my mistakes with the first CoH E-VAC. First of all, I decided I was going to make the character better-equipped to solo. More "blasts" and all E's attack powers are slotted at least with 1 ACC/3 DMG. Since I had been uncomfortable long-term role-playing her as a female, she underwent gender re-assignment. No, the character has not had a sex-change operation. I'm talking pure game mechanics. I re-wrote the backstory so E had always been a guy.

Which is where I hit my first hitch. I fully intended to make use of the original character's rich backstory, but some elements just didn't work with the new gender. The name was the easiest part. "Jennifer Pace" became "Jason Pace". But the relationship between E and Styrm? I mean, comics are weird, but even I'm not going to have a male character give birth.

So I took David Styrm, the original EVAC, and the first CoH E, added some extra ingredients, and dumped it all into a blender set for "frappé". Then I poured what came out into three cups: a revised Styrm, a revised E... and a new character, E's ex-wife. As usual, I figured a lot of backstory would come out slowly, keeping interest without seeming tedious. I'd borrow heavily from the original material. I'd also leave plenty of room to make things up as I went along, although again, I'd be taking elements of what had already been written and combining them with all I now knew about the City of Heroes world.

I also ended up re-designing the costume a bit. While the all-white, red cross body-suit looked good on the female form, on the male form it made him look... blank. Generic. That just didn't work. I started by changing to actual boots and the strapped gloves. Still not there. So I added the red stripe, tweaked with it a bit, and came to the costume E wore all through "E1" and at the start of "E2".

Funny thing is, the first element of E's backstory to get discarded was an entire universe.

Origin of the Character - City of Heroes

In 2004, a friend of a friend introduced me to this great new game: an MMORPG called "City of Heroes".

Now, I'd been burned by my previous MMORPG experience, so I was leery. See, I'm a huge fan of the "Ultima" series. I've played every game, know the story of the world in and out, and it's a universe I love. Ultima Online destroyed that. I came to the game wanting to immerse myself in that world. In the six months I played it, I met exactly one person who'd heard of Ultima before UO and had exactly one RP experience. The rest of the game was fleeing in terror from city to city to avoid the "Player Killers", cutting trees for firewood, earning a few gold for a nice suit of armor and a sword to go avenge myself... and getting killed and having to start over. I hated MMOs.

But here was this shiny new interface... superheroes fighting crime... super-powers from day one... no crafting... no PvP... it was... *sniffle* beautiful...

It wasn't long after the game came out that I started playing. And of course, my first thoughts were of my DC Heroes game. We could all get together, re-create our heroes, and go play together! It'd be great! Just one tiny little hitch: all the heroes I got to play were canon DC comics characters. I didn't want to steal a character from one of my players, and I couldn't break copyright, so that left... the villains.

Okay. I had two friends playing the game: one on Pinnacle, the other on Virtue. I'd take my two least "evil" villains and fire them up. Torak, the enslaved warrior bodyguard of one of my mystical villains is still languishing on Pinnacle. SL8 Broadsword/Invulnerability Scrapper. EVAC was my other obvious choice.

Let me explain just a bit here: my first RPG was Dungeons & Dragons. My first and longest love has been playing clerics, special emphasis on their ability to heal and fight. I figured E was a lock 'cause after playing all those clerics, it'd be a natural for me. Everyone appreciates a healer, right? Right?

Yeah, I'll give you a minute to stop laughing.

Okay, so Damage Transference became Empathy, Projectile Weapons became Psionic Blast, and Warp became Teleportation. Why Psi? They get their snipe the earliest, and the other blast sets just didn't work for my mental image of E. So, minor re-write of the powers, slight tweak to the history, and I was ready to rock. Her costume got some adjustments for aesthetics. I let her hair out and uncovered her mouth. I had a blast with her for quite a while. She was fun on teams, she got flirted with (never seriously), and even was given gifts by those she helped and "admirers".

And then I entered the high 20s in level.

It seems that after a certain point, people either start to realize they don't need a healer, or they learn to compensate for not having one all the time, or they give up on the characters that "need" a healer around. That point (and trust me on this one) is in the upper 20s. The first CoH E hit a wall at 28. I couldn't get teams for her, and she couldn't solo for squat since she only had two attacks and I'd focused on her healing/teaming powers. She stayed at level 28 for over a year. I'd re-visit her by taking her to the Hollows and doing the TP/rez/heal thing for the newbies, but that only amuses for so long. I brought her into the Dauntless Reverie as a member of the Dauntless Consortium (associated non-magical heroes), but had a hard time role-playing a female character with people.

So she sat on Virtue while I played my main (The Vagabond Mage) all the way up to 50 and indulged in altitis. I enjoyed the game, and never really had the heart to delete the first character I made on Virtue.

Until someone lit a Fyre.

Origin of the Character - DC Heroes

To fully understand the character and what he's been through, I feel like I should step all the way back. If you only want to know E's in-character backstory, then you might want to skip this post and any others with similar titles, but I feel like this is important to understanding the complexity of the backstory, so I include it for completeness.

As a few of you know, the character pre-dates City of Heroes. She (yes, "she", stay with me here) was first created for my DC Heroes RPG (Mayfair, 2nd ed.). A table-top, pen-and-paper game. The game was first started with a few friends back in 1992.

The first "big bad" I created for that game was David Styrm aka "The Night Lord". Cheesy name, I know, but trust me, it was appropriate cheese. :) He was a legitimate business man by day (CEO of Styrm Enterprises) with a secret identity as the leader of an underground criminal organization he called "The Nights". Any business problems he couldn't solve in the boardroom were taken care of in the back room. I based much of the character on David Xanatos ("Gargoyles"), Lex Luthor ("Superman"), and just a little bit of Doctor Octopus ("Spider-Man") and Frankenstein (the scientist, not the monster). As the Night Lord, Styrm appeared only on T.V. and such, wearing a black fedora, dark wrap-around goggles, and a mask across his lower face that featured a voice-changer. His grunts did all the face-to-face work with Styrm pulling the strings, supplying the funding, and creating the gadgets the Nights used to pull off their schemes. The hero group (back then called "The Shadow Squadron") quickly got the Nights' number and defeated Styrm's schemes handily. Okay. So Styrm needs powered flunkies. But Styrm's a creator and a manipulator, schemes within schemes, so what does he do?

Clones.

Well... sorta. See, the heroes were given quite a beating by Styrm's men, enough that they left blood and what have you. So Styrm collected DNA samples. But he needed flunkies *now*. So he looked for people that already had similar powers to the heroes, but at levels too low to make them heroes or villains in their own right. He sought out these people and made them an offer: join me, and I'll give you real powers.

Mutagenic radiation, gene-splicing, plastic surgery, genetic manipulation, and other torturous experiments produced copies of the heroes, each with similar enough powers to pass for the heroes, but each having some "freak" power that made them different. These became the "Night Captains", leaders of the rank-and-file Nights, answering directly to Styrm.

One of these, as you may have already guessed (or known) came to bear the code-name EVAC. She had Damage Transference (a "healing" power that takes damage from someone else and transfers it to the power-wielder), Warp (a form of teleportation where one opens a tunnel from one point to another and then steps through for instantaneous transportation), and Projectile Weapons (she could fling pieces of herself at targets to cause physical damage). At first blush, the heroes took her to be the weakest of the lot, but she became and has remained a huge thorn in their side.