In Memorium – CoH – Various and Sundry

Continuing my series of City of Heroes characters …

Over the years, Margie did a lot of solo play in City of Heroes, on a variety of servers. She actually got four solo toons to 50 (including one the day before last of the game), and many others into their 30s and 40s.

One advantage of this is that it encouraged us to create SGs on all those servers, which served her purposes (base!), but also let us play new toons there as needed.

Here’s a collection of some of her major solo toons, followed by some other miscellaneous characters I wanted to write about.

Blue Point was a Broadsword scrapper that Margie soloed to 50. She played around with costumes with her quite a bit.

Day Old Shelf was one of Margie’s characters from the Devil’s Food SG on Freedom, a Zombie/Force Field Mastermind.  She actually pushed him to 50, too. Grats!

Old Star, on Pinnacle, was a Fire/Rad Controller. She one of the ones Margie got up to 50. While controllers are not high DPS, normally, this particular combo had striking Tanking abilities, and lots of AoE fire and rad control, both with damage. It was a methodical destruction of everything she encountered, but it worked.

Fantasy Enforcer was a Broadsword/Willpower Scrapper on Infinity. Margie dinged her to 50 the day before CoH went down.

Fallen Twice was another toon that Margie kept coming back to. A Defender, Kinetics/Electric, he was slow to advance, but apparently fun to play (he got up to at least 20).

Margie did a couple of versions of him. The last pic shows Second Fallen, with one of my favorite (conceptually) early toons, (“They Call Me …”) Mr. Thebes.

We never had much luck playing Kheldians, either teamed up or in mixed pairs. Which is a shame, because they were a really neat concept, just compromised in too many ways.  Above is Margie’s Cetus, who got to 22.  No idea about the pirate motif …

The Last Ice Dragon was … well, a Dragon (or, as I recall the backstory, a survivor from a primordial race of reptilians). And an Ice/Ice Blaster. She never dinged 50, but Margie played her a lot to get her to 37. Soloing with a blaster is not at all easy, but Ice, with its speed debuffs, is not a bad way to go with it.

Another Margie character, Blue Isles (Dual Pistols / Energy Manip Blaster 26).

A few miscellaneous characters, just because:  My Thyme (Scrapper 23); Darke Hope (Scrapper 24), Deep Charge (Energy Brute 21). Margie liked her High-DPS Melee Characters.

Jack a Lope made it to 29 (in her highest level version), but Margie wanted to take some Shadow Shard pictures, so here’s this mid-level Martial Arts/Invuln Scrapper … in ANOTHER DIMENSION!

Honorable mention to Margie’s toons Copper Mountain (several iterations), Ultra-Violet, Ultra-Violette, Exquisite Flame, Divine Retribution, Blue Tangerine, Crownless King, Eluwen, Lonely Angel, Lufwage, Midnight Death, Sa’Kage, Secret, Trixie J., Victorian Pride (Scrapper 12), Bad-Tough, Big Orange (Scrapper 20).

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And a few last bits and bobs …

Sister Chinook was one of my original toons, an Ice Controller. I had mixed experiences with that set — lots of control, but also a lot of visual clutter.  I rolled several of them over the years.  She had a fun backstory as an Inuit student at University of Paragon who discovered she’d been gifted with powers from the Spirits of the North, etc. I liked the idea that she was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt for her costume.

She ran briefly with Kay, a Kim Possible scrapper that Margie rolled up.

I always liked the design here for Spangle (or Spangled, in different incarnations). I was much more into the “Civilian Costumes with a Bit of Decor” for the most part, rather than full-body Spandex.  I think I rolled her up as both a Magic-based Tank and as a Dual-Swords Scrapper. Neither went far.

Next to her is Old Saucy Jack, my Jack the Ripper reincarnated-to-make-up-for-his-sins.  Yeah, the broadsword was maybe a bit much, but I liked the red gradient on his white gloves.

Big Lungs was a Sonic/Sonic Defender. I found the power sets boring, but enjoyed the, um, character design.

OFFICER (yes, it actually stood for something) was law enforcement robot piloted by Paragon City’s Police.  Energy Blaster, as I recall. Soloed him for a while, but eventually scrapped him (so to speak) to get the slot back on whatever server it was on.

Snipehunter was another very early solo toon, another Energy Blaster, kind of my answer to Deadshot.

Suzy Atom and Star Protector were an early duo Margie and I ran, very four-color. She was an Energy Scrapper, as I recall, one of the few of those I ever ran. He was a Defender of some sort.

Cetus and Lunulata were Kheldians we rolled up. Never went anywhere, but, for the record …

For a good chunk of time, I ran with one of the on-screen add-ons that someone put together for CoH.  It tracked both buffs/debuff timing (this was before the buff markers flashed), as well as tracking experience and time to level.  This was Psi-clone (looking at the buffs and accolades), about 10 minutes from leveling to 50.

Eventually, the on-screen info provided by the game, plus the lag in this particular tool keeping track of changes between issues, and a general diminution of compulsion to know how long to level, caused me to drop this particular tool.

When you finally hit 14, you got your travel power (for many, many years). Since that was usually while running around in Steel Canyon, you usually celebrated by going to the top of the big statue in the middle of Steel Canyon, right where you leveled up.  Here’s Amorpha and Psi-clone.

Katherine ended up playing more over time, but never enough to warrent her own account. Early days, she’d play around a bit on Margie’s account (later on, on Test, since you could be signed into both).  This was her first character, Kitty Shoulder, a Defender on Guardian whom she got up to Level 6.

I think Protector (under Margie’s account) was one of the servers Kay generated a lot of test characters on …

One time when my folks were visiting, my mom asked what all the fuss was.  I walked her through building a character, Carey, a Fire Blaster. She never played it, but I kept the toon around, just because.

Kheldiel was another concept character, the idea of a Kheldian merging with an Angel, all glowy and hovering and all of that.  It would have worked beautifully, if Kheldians hadn’t been such a PitA to play.

And so, fittingly, we end on an angel …

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And that’s it, a good percentage of the characters I (or Margie) cared about during our several years playing City of Heroes.  Where might they have gone on to?  Who else might have been created?

We’ll never know.

Thanks for your patience … we’ll resume regular blogging here about other games … soon …