Creeping upwards

Amorpha dinged to 29 last night — which is, suddenly, astonishingly (to me, at least) close to the golden level of 30.
Good Lord. I remember when Level 30s were like demi-gods. And here we are, just about there. Psi-clone is about two pips from 29. Velvet and P-siren are down at 27.
Next thing you know, we’ll be taking casual saunters about Peregrine Island or something.
Also inducted one of my first “outsiders” into the Consortium last night. Went well, and it’s kind of nice to see it taking on people beyond just our circle of friends and the occasional Alliance alt.
In the course of last night’s adventures — which went way too late, largely due to our inability to say no to a timed mish — PC picked up the Sands of Ur, or something like that, which basically gives him Shadow Maul for four (calendar) days. Which was, frankly way too much freakin’ fun (PC’s inability to do more than Brawl feebly being an ongoing sore point for me — yes, I know, I’m not meant to be a damage-dealing crunchy, but being able to do a bit more than I can now would be awfully nice).
And, my, haven’t those Circle of Thorns types suddenly grown? Yikes.
That also opened up a third power tray for me. I now have five temporary powers lurking about — wedding ring, wolf whistle, cryo armor, electromagnetic grenades, and now the sands for a few days — since I tend to hoard the things (I tend to forget them in combat, and when I remember them, I tend to not want to use them in case I “really” need them next encounter).
We finished up the Striga Council arc, which would have been far more impressive had we not already (with both pairs of mains) run the Hess TF. But it was still nice to clear it, and move on.
I was a bit shocked to see on Margie’s contact/origin/level cheat sheet that we actually are beginning to outlevel the contacts in IP, and already have the ones in Talos. Which is a shame, because Talos is a great place to hang — between the close proximity of the shops to each other and the train station, and the trainer just down the stairs from the station as well, it’s sort of the people-watching Picadilly Circus of Paragon, and if I park a character there, I almost certainly will run into an Alliance member in the following fifteen minutes.
But we continue to improve. And, with the temp power burning a hole in my pocket (“only three days left!”), we’ll probably be doing a lot of focus on PC and A over the next few evenings.