Category: Consortium of Justice

Office with no view

So, playing stuff on so many servers, we’ve had lots of bases.

But without a doubt the Consortium of Justice base on Champion was the most elaborate.  And my (personal) favorite part was Psi-clone’s office, back in one corner — a desk surrounded by crates and potted plants and stacks of books and gorilla racks, with a lovely view down the hall of an energy unit.

Ah, the glamor of leading a supergroup …

(I used to enjoy going in and adding some small element to the tableau … one more stack of books, or a bottle, or a brain in a jar, or …)

In Memorium – CoH – Champions

The first in a server-by-server retrospective of City of Heroes characters …

Champions was my first, best server.

Well, I’m not sure if it was first. But it was the best. It’s where we got invited to supergroups first, the Freedom Phalanx — and eventually created our own, the mighty Consortium of Justice, part of the Alliance of Champions coalition, which I eventually became an officer in, and which was tons of fun until we got overrun by drama llamas).

But I digress.

Champions eventually became our secondary server, if only because we’d pushed to 50 those who were going to be.  But it still had some of my earliest (and best) alts.

These are their stories …

Psi-clone was, of course, my Mary Sue.  Hell, I even dressed like him (without the little eyeball logo on the breast pocket, of course) — or, rather, he like me (hey, I have tan slacks, red shirts, and tweed sports coats — go figure).  An Illusion/Empathy Controller, he was my first to hit 50, and he was the head (and chief financier) of Consortium.  Graeme Thorne was a venture capitalist who woke up to find himself with these strange powers; his heroic origin was a mystery (to be revealed in a to-be-completed novel, an extrapolation of the various RP tales I wove around him).

He was someone I ran in enough circumstances that he had a wide set of costumes — his suit, his shirt-sleeves (the most common), his “Indiana Jones” gear, and (for Halloween) his Golden Age awfulness.  (There’s a full-blown Silver Age suit that the PR Department worked up for him. You can get a glimpse of it below …).  After the Terra Volta Trial, he started suffering from added mutations (the glowing eyes, for one).

I loved the Illusion Controller set, and actually ran another hero up to 50 in it. It had damage, control, and pets — who could ask for anything more?  Oh, right … Confusion.  Pure comic gold …

I loved the character so much, I created a version of him in Champions Online. Not the same, of course.  Just a mind blaster, really, in that one.

 

PC ran around mostly duoed with Amorpha, Margie’s Dark/Regen Scrapper.  The two of them were pretty much unstoppable forces of nature — A could stand toe-to-toe with pretty much anyone, while PC kept things under control and cleaned up the riff-raff.  She served as second-in-command of the CoJ.

The fellow pictured there is not Psi-clone, but actually a villain — Mister Thorne — a Soldiers/Pain Mastermind, as I recall.  Yes, he looks a lot like PC.  Yes, he ran the Consortium of Injustice on CoV.  Yes, there was story there …

He was teamed (for all we ever ran them, i.e., not much at all) with Undone. We got them to 17 before getting tired of them.

Torchielle was my fire blaster (Fire/Energy, though the latter was used solely for a “go away!” knockback attack and a couple of buffs). She was the daughter of an energy-based heroine and a dragon, and spent her career dealing with both parts of her heritage (her cloak was from Uncle Fred — literally; and, of course, she eventually manifested dragon wings).

She eventually became (after dinging 50) a local college student, but still active in the hero biz.

Torchy was a classic example (to me) of how you could have a female heroine that wasn’t running around in tights or a bikini.

Torchy usually duoed up with Hildegard, a Fire/Mace Tank.  They were truly an awesome team — Hildy would tank a massive number of bad guys into a corner of the room, Torchy would buffity-buff, and BOOM all those great AoE Fire Blaster powers on their butts.  That just plain old never got old.

Lynn Calodo was a solo toon, a Dark Melee/Invuln scrapper, all gothy-goth and whappity-whappity and with an odd origin that involved winery technology and Crey Industries.

Fazenda was a stage magician who was aided by a Orion-esque energy harness, that let her fly (originally teleport, but that was the world’s most annoying power) and throw energy bolts.

For quite some time she had some odd costume quirks, including an illegal/obsolete set of fishnet stockings before they were available, and a slit skirt that was slit the wrong way.

She was an Empathy/Energy Defender, and teamed up with Araware, a sentient sand creature (and Spine/Dark Armor Scrapper). I always loved Energy Blast, but it was incredibly annoying to whomever you teamed with, due to the knockback.

They were unique in that they were part of Lorne/Mal’s “Storm Knights” SG.  Two of the last active members, in fact. We kept the rent paid …

Velvet Jones was a reformed villain, actually pulled in from an old tabletop RPG game I had.  She’d been just plain “Velvet” there, but that name was taken, so I added “Jones” (not knowing that there was a Saturday Night Live “Velvet Jones” character of a very different nature).

She was a Super-Strength/Invuln Tank, and she usually teamed up with P-siren, a Bubbles/Mind Blast Defender and former Russian spy, also based on the same tabletop game.  Unfortunately, the two of them ended up with bupkis DPS, which eventually brought them to a grinding, non-entertaining halt in the mid-30s.

For a time, though, they were our mains, part of the Freedom Phalanx SG, and so involved in all sorts of very social activities (ah, those were the days).

We eventually recycled the character concepts in much more recent play (Velvet became a SS/Willpower Brute, much more her style), but they never got out of the teens, level-wise.

Velvet was another toon with a lot of costumes — her garish super-hero one above, but a full-body suit (both in black stealth mode, and in more Christmassy colors), as well as a trailer-trash cowboy boots / jeans / tube top, as I eventually rerolled her in. Margie played around a lot with costumes for P-siren, too.

Mr. and Mrs. Azure were a pair designed around humor.  Based on Mr. and Mrs. Blue in the (vastly underrated) movie Undercover Blues, they were actually time travelers, back in modern days to have fun. They enjoyed witty banter and various supergroup/team channel hints that they knew something about the ultimate fate of anyone that they happened to be around.

He was a Martial Arts/Super-Reflexes Scrapper. She … fought crime. [UPDATE: She was a Grav controller]

Mister Ravenous (Super-Strength/Invuln Brute) was a favorite of mine.  When City of Villains came out, he became one of my lead villains in the CoI (“Strength in Numbers … Profit in Cooperation”), a War Wolf gone rogue.  He was impeccable in speech and dress, and had a deep stack of pre-programmed tells all of which had to do with eating his opponents.

Amusingly enough, his suit was always subject to various clipping gaps — which made it look like he was ripping out the seams, which was excellent.

His duo was with Margie’s Charity at Home. Their relationship was unnatural, but Platonic. They eventually made it to 23 before we got tired of Red-side.

There were multiple Al McGordo characters over the years.  The idea of the cowboy who happened to get too close to the radioactive remains of an H-Bomb test was too good to leave alone. It was always about Radiation in one form or another — Rad/Rad Defenders, Controllers, that sort of thing.  He was generally a solo character, never going too far in levels, but I just plain old love the name …

A version of him ran a bit with Christmas Present, one of the best uses of that particular strappy costume I ever saw (Invuln/Ice Tank).  Margie enjoyed pulling her back out on a regular basis to play, eventually getting her to 19.  (Note the last pic, with a copy of Margie’s UI layout.)

Eliza Dee was a Crey experiment who broke free and went off to the Rogue Isles to be on her own, violent, ownsome.  She was modeled after Galatea (the Power Girl variant) clone of Supergirl in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.  (Galatea was the statue that Pygmalion brought to life; “Pygmalion” was the title of the Shaw play that was adapted as My Fair Lady, with the name of the crude woman brought to civilization of “Eliza Doolittle”).

Anyway, she was a SS/Invuln Brute, who ran around a bit with Margie’s Bacchante, but never amounted to much.  She actually got rerolled on another server, a bit more effectively (to be posted about later).

Unchained Path was created after the CoV costume parts became available hero-side.  She was a Kin/Ice Controller, which meant that she basically slowed the entire bad guy group down to zero.  She had some very angsty, tragic, monastic-obsessive story line, but, ultimately, she was so good at locking down bad guys, in so many ways, it almost became boring.  She hung out with Idzuna, a katana scrapper. They got up to 20.

What makes for a successful RP SG?

A few days ago, one of my three faithful readers sent me a note.

I’ve been following your City of Heroes blog for some time, and wanted to pick your brains on the RP SG that I’ve been invited to run on Virtue. The SG in question was once a fairly strong SG with lots of players and a rich RP environment, but attrition in leadership coupled with poor recruiting (and other dramas) has lead to its considerable decline in the last six months. The current status is that the SG is basically dead, but has a ton of prestige and a long history. My goal is to reverse its fortunes in relative short order.

 

The person (who will remain nameless, since it was sent off-list) then proceeded with the brains-picking.

Now, I’m not sure I’m best qualified on the subject. Yes, I’ve done tabletop RP games, and PBeMSs, and, yes, I’ve both played in and run an RP Supergroup in part of an RP Coalition.

On the other hand, the Consortium of Justice was very intentionally an “RP Lite” group (this should be fun, not work), and, of course, the RP Coalition which I was a leader in managed to blow itself up quite nicely over a series of Unfortunate Dramatic Events. So my quals here are a bit sketchy.

That said, I’m a manager in real life, so I’m either qualified to talk about group management, or else am an expert at sounding like I am. So here’s what was asked and what I wrote, just for the record, and to stir up some conversation. I’ve edited it slightly to untangle some of the email thread.

(Ironically, Doyce was just posting about “guild drama,” whence the amusing graphic below. And I suspect a lot of what I write here applies not just to CoX, but to LotRO, WoW, etc.)

Have you ever run an RP SG? Have you ever been in one? What were the qualities that made it successful?

Though I enjoyed doing RP stuff in CoX, I was (and am) too much of an alt-fiend to get tooooo much into the full-time RP character. My goal was to always speak in character, drop some interesting hints about my character in conversation (and follow up with same when someone chose to pull on the threads), and to have a good time. We were one of the “Light RP” groups in the Coalition.

But in the RP groups and the aspects of the Coalition that worked well, hmmmm …

  1. Strong leadership.
  2. Group events/activities (to allow for RPing). A feeling of *community*
  3. A willingness to have *fun*. It can’t be all drama llamas, as much as some folks will try to make it so.
  4. Utter ruthlessness at booting folks who tear down the fabric of the community. Being nice and hoping they’ll be nice too usually meant that problems got worse, not better. If it were to be done, ’twere best done quickly. And be open about what happened and why, and note that it’s not open for argument.
  5. Utter openness and honesty from the leadership. As much as desires for confidentiality and privacy may seem important, nothing can get a group divided against itself than the sense that the Leaders Are Keeping Secrets. Especially if they’re kvetching about the players behind their backs.
  6. A leadership that sets an example (leads) by being around a lot, and offering to play with other SG members when they get on, esp. new ones. Nothing kills an SG faster than it becoming a clique of leaders who simply invite folks in to build a nice base. A part of that is usually having (at least for the leaders) some lower-level alts to be able to shift to.
  7. [Added] People come and people go. Don’t get desperate about forcing the former and avoiding at all costs the latter. It will lead to bad decisions. If it’s a good group, people will join, and stay, If you are too eager to bring folks in, or too eager to appease them from leaving, you’re making compromises that will come back to haunt you.

In short, I think a strong RP SG operates about the same as a strong SG in general, except that some extra care needs to be taken to foster that fragile suspension of disbelief that makes the RP stuff work.

Hmmmm, what else? Themes are good. Some of the better RP SGs had a strong theme or story behind them, and one that drove their “events.”

I’d add in [I did not in the original of this] an in-person, in-character interview for RP groups. If the person can’t RP an SG interview, they won’t do a good job later on. And it gives the leadership a chance to see if the RP concept will actually work with the SG.

CoX is an interesting game in that it still has a relatively strong user base, based on the fact that it’s a superhero MMO where none existed previously. Do you think that SG declines are occurring in general, or do you think that there is room for another RP SG in the world?

Hard to say. Certainly overall CoX population is down. Virtue is a good server for this simply because it has a large population. I’ve been invited to some SGs, but the populations have never been such that there were ever many people around. And my own interest has, honestly, faded enough that I don’t feel the need or have the time to be dedicated enough to be a good, contributing SG member. Alas.

That said, I think there’s always a place for a good RP SG in any world worth playing in. 🙂

I’ve run many organizations before in many games, so the “business” side is familiar to me. The challenge in this one is to run a heavy RP organization and to revive a dormant brand, as it were.

It might be interesting to advance the “story” around the revival of the “brand” for the characters, new and old. In other words, how is it in Paragon City that the Ultra Corps is suddenly being revitalized, or why is Captain Metallo and his cohorts trying to revive the Ultra Corps to its glory days? In other words, it’s not just a change in management, it’s an adventure! (And if there are some multiple layers to the tale — the one for public consumption, and one that only the “leaders” know but about which hints might be dropped to the troops, or newly initiated leaders are let into the know about (“… Statesman is really a Rikti spy, and we’ve re-formed in order to tackle the Freedom Phalanx when they finally turn on humanity?!”)

I’ve been in heavy RP organizations before, so I understand the atmosphere, but this will be the first time I’ll be administering it.

It’s different — and it makes it harder in some ways to maintain RP for yourself (you always have to be sort of monitoring things on a meta level). Best advice is:

1. Find others to share the burden with. Burn-out is the biggest threat.
2. Behave as you’d want a leader in your previous groups to behave.

 Thoughts? Anything else I should have mentioned?

CoX: Cast of Characters

I’ve had this sitting in my sidebar for some time — but it’s gotten woefully out of date, and, honestly, I’m not playing so much that I feel the need to keep it updated or fully revamped. So … I’m going to turn it into an entry that I’ll link to from the sidebar so that I can edit it and/or reference it as I choose, but it’s not in the way on the main page. Not ever toon is listed here, but the significant (mostly lvl 10+) ones are:

Dave & Margie – Team: (31-Jul-07)

  • 50 – Psi-clone & Amorpha
  • 50 – Torchielle & Hildegard
  • 36 – Rita the Cat & Runt the Dog
  • 32 – Velvet Jones & P-Siren
  • 29 – Ho-Ho & Princess Peep
  • 27 – The Gifted Kid & Special Educator
  • 23 – Fazenda & Araware
  • 22 – Kitsune-chan & Ex-Terra
  • 22 – Mister Ravenous & Charity at Home
  • 19 – Unchained Path & Idzuna
  • 17 – Mister Thorne & Undone
  • 17 – Mr. & Mrs. Azure

Dave – Solo: (31-Jul-07)

Margie – Solo: (11-Apr-07)

Will the last one posting please turn off the lights …?

Since the AoC boards are supposed to “die” some time around the 24th, I took the opportunity to finish saving what material I wanted onto my hard drove — mostly “File / Save Page As” stuff in Firefox for (a) character profiles, (b) TF write-ups and similar bits, and (c) some of the more interesting blocks of chat and discussion.

The “Oh, by the way, we’re closing” forum has actually been deleted, probably because it was gathering swarms of spam. At least one other board did get opened back up, I saw, in case there are any last words. Oddly enough, the title of the forum has changed to “The Tale of Two Cities” (which sounds like a nice way of framing the CoH/CoV worlds, though I suspect that was not intentional — perhaps it’s a “best of times/worst of times” reference).

At any rate, that’s done enough to put a fork in it.

Now, I need to get off my ass and start dong some CoJ stuff on the new forum … after this weekend.

“Because it feels so good when I stop”

So, a few days afterwards …

Life goes on. Sing o-bla-di-bla-da.

Actually, for me, it’s been such a perfect storm of … well, multiple storms … that I keep finding myself forgetting who’s miffed at who over what. Some CoX-related, some not, and some spinning off of work-related issues.

For me, the Breaking of the Alliance (let’s make it sound exciting) isn’t nearly as traumatic as the Big January Brouhaha. Part of that is because I am slowly winding down on CoX. Oh, yeah, I still play it, and don’t plan on canceling my subscription any time soon. But it’s not a “I have to rush home and get on and hope the kid doesn’t drown in the bathtub and stay up way too late” 7-day-a-week obsession any more. If I decide to take a break and read, or watch a movie, I can do that
and not feel like I’m “falling behind,” or “missing out,” or “letting people counting on seeing me there down.” It’s a moderately serious hobby, not an obsession.

And, also unlike January, I don’t feel the need to Fix Everything. Some people did some crappy stuff, other people did some sort of crappy stuff, most folks are going somewhere else, and the people left behind are, frankly, mostly the people I’ve been having the most fun with anyway. Heck, if it were just Margie and me, it would still be good.

Or, put another way, most of the folks who have left are people who, while I miss some of them saying howdy on CC, I’m not going to cry into my pillow over. Acquaintances, mostly. And a few I’m more than happy to be quit of.

As for personal rancor … there’s a bit of it. Most of it is impersonal — folks who chatted behind backs about me and mine, mostly revealing more truth about themselves than about us. Some of it is more personal — but, even there, it’s not too difficult to let go. I do resent the people who brought it all crashing down, whether for good reasons or nasty reasons. But not so much that I have to hunt them down, or rant and rave and wail and gnash my teeth over them here, at least right
this moment.

And if I encounter some of those who’ve departed in a train station? Even assuming I can keep straight Who was Which? I’ll probably at least wave. If I get a tell from them, I’ll probably reply. Heck, if I get asked for assistance … I may very well give it. That’s what heroes do, after all, isn’t it?

Life’s too short. And, paradoxically, it does go on.

Loggy Bloggy

So with the impending demise of the Alliance website (mutter mutter mutter) comes the question of what to do with the materials therein.

I’ve already done a “Save As” for all my individual character entries cross-SG. So the most important material (kindasorta) is safe. (Haven’t done that for Margie’s stuff, but that’s thinner on the ground). Question is, what to do with it.

I could post it on the new AoC Lite forum I’ve put together. Problem is … well, I’m not sure that’s ever going to be much of a community, more like a place to hang and post stuff that needs posting in a place that’s not, well, here. To be perfectly honest, while I look forward to continued CoXing with other members of the remaining AoC groups, I don’t see any of the current folks going into a big membership drive mode that would require a forum to support it.

I’m inclined to think, in fact, that we are in the end game, so to speak, of our (individual) CoX gameplay cycles — the remaining Alliance people will play a bit here and there, slowly decreasing, and gradtually wander away, gently, into that good night.

Okay, that was more depressing than I meant it to be.

At any rate, I’m not sure how much effort I want to put into recreating a Little Slice o’ the Alliance if it’s mostly a half-dozen or so people and their casual passtime. Feel free to disabuse me of my interpretation of the sitch.

The alternative, moving to a more personal style, is to post that character material here, on the Blog of Heroes. Put a pointer to it, perhaps, from the forums (in case someone goes looking), but take the individual posts and either do them up in a single block, or else, plug them in, dated appropriately, and have their own categories (“Log / Psi-clone”) here. The material stays at hand, in a probably-more-persistent format.

That’s the direction I’m leaning, at least for the character stuff (which I care most about). Thoughts?

AoC Lite

I’ve created forum space (titled “Alliance of Champions Lite“) for use of those who are — left behind? opted out from? left to stew in their own cliquish juices? — from the Final Alliance Implosion.

Anyway, I’ve created space for the CoJ, the SK, and the BS. If you create an account there (assuming you want something different from your CoI account), and you want moderation rights over your subgroup, let me know.

I’m in there, btw, as Three-Star Dave. Life’s too short right now to create Multiple Alt IDs>

I’m going to be doing some digging about converting from phpBB to SMF. If I can work that, I can pull over the group stuff en masse (I hope).

City of Junior High Cliques (Part II)

So …

Well, I still don’t know the whole story, but clearly a second Katrina hurled into the Alliance, sending what rather remarkable rebuilding had been done flying into the air like Dorothy’s twister.

Casualties this time, beyond the immediate body count, appear to be the AoC forum, freedomphalanx.com, and the core Alliance, most/many of whom seem to be hieing off to the CoC forum and so on and so forth. The AoC forum evaporates along about 10/24, along with anything written there. And any further discussion there is currently moot, given that Stateswoman has locked the forums.

Joy. Another project (backing up that material).

So far as the Alliance goes, according to Captain Atomyc, “As of today the Freedom Phalanx, Crusaders, Noctem, and Virtue are leaving the organization. Any remaining members of those teams are welcome to continue on as such if they wish.” Which is rather remarkable — I guess, while I was sleeping somewhere, the FP became one of … well, saying “them” makes it sound awfully factional, but …

For the record, that “leaves” the Consortium of Justice, the Prelude to Justice (though I think they’re leaving, too — at least Cap mentions that Halorin’s trying to organize some sort of all-Champions RP alliance), and the Storm Knights. And the Boomtown Saints, so far as that goes.

(It does make me wonder if it would be easier for the CoJ and the Storm Knights to simply get somehow kicked out, instead of everyone else leaving, but …)

Where/what next? Questions.

Assuming we’re basically talking about the CoJ and SK …

  1. I will probably pull Velvet out of the Phalanx. I’m not sure who’s left there that I’ve a big interest in playing with, anyway, and she’s not a very active toon, and so forth.
  2. Do we need or want forum space somewhere? I can set up space where I have had have the CoI. I don’t know nuthin’ about transferring over old material. And it’s an SMF forum, not a phpBB. And it may be moot, anyway. My own interest in maintaining ties can be (and has been, of late) handled in non-forum fashion, via e-mail, IM, this blog, or others’. And so long as I keep CoXing,
    this blog will stay up, and so (from a Dave-centric view), that’s most of the forum that I need.     Folks feel free to chime in on the subject.
  3. Assuming the CoJ gets dropped from coalition with the others, I plan to maintain CC with the Storm Knights (some fine folks over there, including a couple of my own). Anyone of my “little circle of friends” (as SB so delicately put it) is welcome to a slot in the CoJ, as a place to hang their SG hat. Don’t worry about IC reasons — we can work something out, and, frankly, that’s right now the least of my worries. Indeed, I’ve spent about, oh,
    all the time I’ve spent on it this morning more time than I really had to spend on it. But it seemed worthwhile doing so.
  4. Again, I don’t know all the skinny of what happened, save what I’ve been told by friends. That said, I’ve not seen anything in the forums that makes me doubt anything they’ve said, which makes the whole episode appallingly sad (and angering) and a lesson to be learned by us all on something or another about human nature, maturity, the Internet, social systems, politics, or whatever.

  5. I plan to continue to play CoX as opportunity presents and inclination inclines. I will continue to play mostly with Margie, just because that’s the most convenient and the most fun. I’ll welcome the opportunity to play with any of those who I’m interested in playing with (and who are interested in playing with me).

See you all in the funny papers, heroes.

City of Junior High Cliques

I actually had a life over the Labor Day weekend — aside from the Shadow Shard on Saturday afternoon.

Sometime thereafter — Sunday night? — evidently there was some sort of Great Januaryesque Brouhaha in the Alliance. I was unaware of this since, well, I wasn’t on when it happened. And when I did sign on later Sunday evening, the CC and Alliance OOC were quiet.

When BD came over for dinner this evening, he mentioned that there had been some complaints, public posting of private stuff, people making threats, folks getting booted, and general brouhaha. And when I got on later tonight, I learned that some folks I know quite well had been booted from SG groups they were long-time members of.

So … what the …?

I really dislike this kind of finger-pointing name-calling faction-forming “Give in to my demands or else I’ll take my ball and go home” kind of crap. And were it not that there are quite a few folks I enjoy playing with on occasoin, my inclination would be to simply withdraw from all of it and simply continue to do solo and duo stuff with Margie.

I mean, really, folks — this is supposed to be City of Heroes. and, frankly, for all the drama I sometimes see with the Avenges and X-teams and Justice League, none of it seems to hold a camel to the immaturity I keep seeing around here.

(And, for what it’s worth, if various associates who find themselves homeless would care to apply to the CoJ, give a holler. And, heck, if folks need new forum space … let me know.)

Munchie Musings

Perhaps I am overarchitecting this, but it occurs to me that the Monday Munchies are missing some sort of communication mechanism. Some of us are kinda-sorta connected via blog and e-mail and IM, but there’s a fair amount of “sign in and see what’s going on.” That’s not bad in and of itself, but it actually limits our flexibility and capacity to plan and manage expectations.

Would there be some value in establishing some sort of simple communication forum for the group, to pass on suggestions (or schedules) for things like:

  1. TF plans.
  2. Hostess Heroes vs. Devil’s Food
  3. Newbie nights
  4. Scheduling something outside of Mondays

Again, I’m thinking something really simple, along the lines of:

  1. An e-mail list.
  2. A Google calendar
  3. A forum

One of the above (or something similarly straightforward). Nothing huge and elaborate, but a way to “spread the word” about something. So …

  • Is this actually a problem that needs solving?
  • Is one of these the right solution?

If only I wanted to create a new SG

The origin story aside (and I find this 1888 encyclopedia entry about it very droll), I think it would rock to have a group named, “The Thundering Legion.” I mean, is that a name or is that a name?
Heck, now that I think of it, that whole Victorian Era sensibiliity about the name (rubbed off from the encyclopedia itself) might be the best thing about it. A displaced band of late 19th Century science heroes, sort of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen bit (Lady Photon, bless’er, writ large) …
Hmmmm ….

Ding party

I’ve posted something on the Alliance boards, and created a Google Calendar notice, and changed the MOTD for the CoJ, and bugged folks about it on Alliance OOC, but just in case anyone has missed it and reads here …
Planning the 50-ding for Psi-clone and Amorpha on Monday at 6:30p MDT. Figure it will be a quick single-mission, take some pix, kinda affair. Anyway, it should be a short enough soiree to not interfere overly much with Monday Munchies.
I’m tempted to make some major announcement re Psi-clone and the CoJ while everyone’s gathered, just for dramatic effect, but can’t think of one I actually would want to follow through with. Certainly the norm for these sorts of things (“Psi-clone and Amorpha are getting married!”) wouldn’t work, character-wise. 🙂

Report to me in the transporter room

Thanks to a big wave of salvage downloads (it took about 45 minutes for Zazi to accept all the crap Psi-clone had in his pockets), the CoJ now has a couple of teleport pads.
One pad goes to Perez Park and the Hollows.
The other pad goes to Dark Astoria and Boomtown. (I’m somewhat certain of the latter — I was relying on Margie’s recollection when she came upstairs.)
As part of the Alliance, our pads are open to any other coalition group (only fair, since we use the Phalanx pads to Crey and Striga on occasoin.)
Once I confirm the second pad locations, I’ll post something up on the boards.