Yep, hit Security Level 50 tonight with some folks I know on Triumph. If we have any problems now, we can call in the "Big Guns". It was a wicked fun ride with Ater and he's a champ at soloing and large teams. To be honest though, I'm a little disappointed, as there's not a lot more for him to do other than "go out and have fun", which is fine. Anyway, thought I'd let you guys know.
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Sunday, December 30, 2007
Ater Custos hits 50!
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Speaking of Cadavers: The Origin of Cadabra
Speaking Of Cadavers
“Rent controlled” were the only two words he needed to hear. Sandusky was to become a relic of his past while Paragon City a foothold to the future. An era had begun. It wasn’t that Sandusky didn’t have its charm, but a young man can only take dates to The Rutherford B. Hayes Library and Presidential Center so many times before his limited romantic creativity would show through. Paragon promised performance artists and chocolate baguettes and booze cruises and the never-ending chance to be an accidental extra in the latest Scorsese film. The decision was anything but tough, wartime or no.
At twenty-six years of age, Gus Faustian had only made it as far as Cleveland, round trip, and for that he took his passport, just in case. Now, his grandmother was going into a home and her apartment in The Gish was available at 1954 prices. The excitement of the prospect fell only a hair short of overpowering Gus’ concern for Grammy Weist. Her health was okay for the most part, but she’d come to the states fresh off the boat from Turkey and still had a hard time with complex English sentences. Gus wondered how she would get along when questions about meds and therapies would arise. All the better reason to be close to her.
Most of Gus’ belongings fit into five boxes square, leaving as much room in the trunk of his ’85 Datsun. In true bachelor style he drove hundreds of miles bereft of pots, plates, utensils, vacuum, cash, map, dress shoes or clean underwear. His boxes instead contained little more than random hobbyist trinkets; two Harry Potter books, Clive Barker’s Imajica on DVD, his GenCon busting red deck replete with goblin skirmishers, a couple D&D tomes with dog-eared corners on pages about druids, his Terry Pratchett collection, a poster of Rivendell, the cassette soundtrack to Xanadu, a ceramic Disney Pinocchio, and a framed certificate from the International Poets’ Society for his award winning piece on tiromancy. It wasn’t until all his prized possessions were collected together in one place that Gus noticed a theme to his likes.
Grammy Weist’s place was sort of an oasis. Similar to other residences in The Gish, from the outside one could still see the unmistakable traits of an old meat packing plant once converted into overpriced condos. Now those condos were illegitimate workfare apartments containing city dwellers otherwise mimicking the social decay of greater Kings Row. A simple, uninformed walk to the train could cost a thrill-seeker his life. Yet, on the inside, Grammy’s place looked like something out of a roaring Deco magazine spread, immaculate, tasteful, and high-end in every regard. Ornate white trim bordered every floorboard and doorway bubbling up hand-carved, non-repeating reliefs shaped like flower clusters and winding vines. The mock copper ceiling was stamped out in countless squares each of which encapsulated simple geometric shapes, complimentary to the next square by forty-five degrees, the whole plate covered in a low-gloss, white enamel that spread broken light from each room’s differing chandelier over the bumps in the pattern. There were wall sconces that looked to be burgled from the Chrysler Building, beveled chair rails and imported wainscoting that would make Martha Stewart weep, and even the added bonus of a wrought iron spiral staircase that ascended to a second level. A sitting room and a den each contained Vermont marble fireplaces further warming the vaguely gold interior along with dark red throw rugs and deep cherry wood furniture. Gus had never seen an actual settee or a sideboard until now. The same could be said about the very tall, pull-chain toilet in the bathroom whose tank was about two inches from the ceiling. Foyer, library, dining room, standing wet bar, roll top desk, vaulted archways, solid silver trays and tea settings, fine china in a massive Americana hutch stationed strategically distant from the grand piano across the apartment in the salon, it was as if Gus had stepped into a different dimension. Every classic item in the place had been positioned to draw one’s eye to the next. This wasn’t just an apartment. It had lines, class, and a soupcon of understated glamour. Homier than a museum with delicate design and decorative technique falling mere notches short of clutter, to Gus such a fragile and well-kempt environment could only mean one thing…PARTY!
All the nearby power lines made cell phone reception on Grammy’s street a joke. After checking in on her and the case workers at the assisted living facility, Gus spent the day riding the rail and ringing up every number in his full SIM card. Sure, Sandusky was days away, but for a place this nice and this large at this price to suddenly open up to the hard core party circuit, people would hitch if they had to. Gus would have called it a house warming, but house beering seemed the more accurate notion.
Three nights later the rave was in full swing. Of course, one’s network of like-minded friends when that one travels on the Xanadu soundtrack, more for ONJ than ELO, meant that by “rave” they were really talking about a soiree barely two degrees of separation from an alcoholic spelling bee. It was a night of mixed and low-market Canadian ales and Buds, bottled, not canned. The evening’s conversations, as inebriated ones tend to do, spanned subjects as egghead haut as quantum physics to others as base as the theory of orifices. In place of the tokeables and decent acid your average biker might find at a get-together, Gus’ gathering had at least ten homespun games that required Scrabble tiles, a lightning-round-only Pictionary station and a bughouse version of backgammon being run tournament style in the salon. Impromptu karaoke quartets broke out randomly while competitive attempts to slide the helix railing on the staircase became the night’s greatest challenge. The scene, as was, barley warranted mentioning that the party was devoid of female presence.
A wise-ass man once said that a good buzz is the sudden, jarring awareness that time cannot be measured in seconds or minutes. Long about the part of the evening when the average blood-alcohol content was .23, Gus was way beyond the bell curve. He’d been striking creatively lewd positions on the chaise lounge for high res’ digital posterity when a loud crash came from the upper level. Gus’ reaction was first delayed by the secret Heineken flowing through his veins and then further pushed off by the strung out realization that he had no idea what anything in this apartment cost. Thereafter, he darted up the spiral staircase, though to any onlooker he more meandered over and around invisible groundhogs than he did dart. The top of the spiral let out into the library, a somewhat dark and still chamber, replete with first edition texts and a décor that made even health nuts want to throw on a dressing gown and smoke a big pipe. Three cronies had made their way up around the monstrous oak desk in the library to debate the Dewey Decimal system and to joke about having murdered a fictional butler, Clue-style, a butler whom at least two of them were sure was a monkey. With the bleary-eyed homicide reenactment had come a few too obvious footprints on the desk blotter and the punch drunk “discovery” of a slide away panel in the ceiling. The panel had been punctured by a less than pointy head, crumbling to the ground in pieces and allowing nested stair sections to roll out in a horrendous series of thumps.
Gus tried to muster a clear string of verbal outrage to befit the sight, but took pause given the beer gas bubble seemingly crammed halfway up his chest, mid-belch. Frakes was in a leather armchair laughing hysterically at the irony while William, Sandusky’s Beavis quotes champion, attempted to mitigate. William explained in sentence fragments, each beginning and ending in “dude,” all about the butler monkey and his perilous demise at the hands of brown bottle fiction. Frakes, having finished a seemingly endless guffaw, then interrupted and rolled back in time a single subject to instead explain how they were previously debating etymology, a dangerous, room-wrecking subject by all counts. Gus tried to be responsible, but a few angry steps toward the trio layered adrenaline onto his altered state, again failing to form any actually audible sentence, but succeeding in a mysterious gimp. Meanwhile, Arnold Radich, of fly unzipped fame, jumped back several lines of dialogue in an apparent attempt to make everything okay by explaining from the inebriated beginning.
Arnold had begun with how this library reminded him of his 4th grade library which was all Dewey Decimal and newly offered that Frakes was a Library of Congress man, himself. There had thusly been a lengthy pretzel stick sword fight over said schism before the conversation turned to Admiral Dewey and thereafter to all things named after other things, quite the think tank agenda. Somewhere beyond Martin Luther King Boulevard, all the ships named Enterprise, a random kid named August, Muppets coming from puppets, oranges, Swiss cheese, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, New Jersey, and a near kick boxing match over the fact that everybody had claimed a different word origin for abracadabra, they had soon decided to ask the butler. After all, any such Clue-looking room should have a butler and anybody rich enough to have a butler could afford a monkey. A court stenographer’s head would have imploded.
Having heard Arnold out, Gus realized that a good scolding and the filament of logic he’d be able to graft onto his dismay just weren’t going to play to this audience. His attention instead turned to the unfurled staircase. Gus approached it with wonder. He didn’t know there was an attic. Who had ever heard of an apartment with an attic? Plus, if this had been a meat packing plant, what unsightly atrocities would have been dismal enough to need an attic? The ravers, realizing that they were probably off the hook, under the auspices of Arnold’s liquored reminder, bounced back into the abracadabra debate. William re-upped his claim that it was from the Hebrew, ha-brachah, meaning “The Curse.” Arnold pointed to Aleister Crowley as the originator while Frakes gave a list of possibilities, two of which included lines from Bewitched reruns, original Darren notwithstanding. Gus barely slowed down as he fit his more certain two cents in.
“No, it’s from Turkish, and the Turks take it from Aramaic. Avra kedavra, ‘What I speak is destroyed.’ Even Latin takes its word for corpse from kedavra.”
The library went silent. Real partiers aren’t accustomed to a sudden serious tone or an argument that makes even mediocre sense, especially when that sense comes from the drunkest one of them all. Now the attic stairs and Gus’ ascent were center stage. Gus peeped his head and eyes just above the rim of the opening, his footsteps creaking the whole way. It was dark, very dark, the kind of dark that swallows up light hungrily. The space inside might have once been larger, given the full, interlocking stair sections that had telescoped into a standard flight, but was now penned up into a single, cramped room the size of a modest, walk-in closet. Each corner was within Gus’ arm’s reach and he hadn’t even attempted to pass the fourth step from the top. He’d expected insulation and beams, wood with an exposed galvanized nail head or two, but the room echoed like stone and smelled more like the hollow innards of a mossy stump. As Gus smoothed his full arm length over the floor of the room, it felt clean, surprisingly clean. There was no dust or grit rolling around, not a mouse dropping or stray splinter. Doing the same with his opposite arm drew out a similar pristine slice in the pitch when it, almost startlingly so, touched something. Gus grabbed and drew his elbow back into the library light to reveal a full folio sized book.
The text looked more than ancient, it looked other-worldly. The characters would fade onto and off of the page, sink into the browned creases and rise again as if floating through mud. On the taut, leather spine, calligraphic scrawl, barely legible, scrabbling out only a few cryptic words. The first atop, a conundrum, the word Grenoble. And if that didn’t sound foreign enough, beneath it was twisting the more mysterious word, Felucca.
Of course, most of the dancing glyphs could be explained by the fact that during the last few hours, Gus shared more in common with a pile of hops than he did with any human smart enough to read. Given that and the rather anticlimactic emergence of a book from the secret room into a library otherwise filled with books when guests would have preferred a mummified pigmy or a treasure map to Hallie Berry’s underwear drawer, the find got shelved in the starker reference section for Gus to revisit later. The party lasted two more days.
The following Friday, Gus had reached that triumphant moment when the last beer bottle makes it into the recycle bin. He would have had the cleaning done sooner, but three day party equals two day hangover, both of which he’d spent visiting his grandmother. Today would be his first chance to look in the paper for a job. Gus grabbed the Paragon Times from the floor in the hallway, brought it to the breakfast table where he’d set out cold pizza and grapefruit juice, and began perusing every other slot between the endless gal Friday ads. His eyes settled upon one opening for a grill man at the Green Gables Café when somehow the shape of those letters reminded him of the old attic book from five nights prior. Beer had then quelled any semblance of curiosity, but midway through a semi-stale bite of his double chicken and onion slice, the question mark hanging over his head was too much to live with. Gus ran to the library.
Today, while faded and vague, the letters seemed to move around far less. In truth, they didn’t move as much as they did morph in form. Gus blamed his astigmatism and the fact that he’d left his glasses in Sandusky, but even so, that didn’t explain what looked like Cyrillic letters shifting into Egyptian hieroglyphics and then into alephs, kalephs, and spotty daggesh fortes. For a moment, he swore he saw a Greek delta just before it changed to both Roman numerals and what an eighth grade trip to a reservation allowed him to remember were Cherokee notations. Gus actually spent some time musing over whether or not this was angelic script before the forms became more recognizable. English, it had hit and stuck on plain English, every page.
The book read now as a chronicle, the chronicle of two personages named Grenoble and Nacht who’d ventured through a land called Felucca replete with dark magic and monsters. The story spoke of a great black pearl shortage that saw man and beast traveling to the far corner’s of unknown realms, and Felucca seemed to be the riskiest among them. While Gus didn’t understand a great deal of the entries, several spoke of something called a Moongate, which, as best as Gus could ascertain, was a portal to another dimension. It was the only means of entering Felucca and frighteningly, one of the only ways back. Many of the entries were fully chronicled while others were obviously interrupted quite suddenly, further indicating the danger of a Fellucan pilgrimage.
Gus poured over the text for an entire day. There was just something captivating about it, something documentarian about the manner in which magic was described, Ultimata, the author called it. Grenoble, the writer, in amidst the many entries about Nacht coming to his rescue, took tangential time to describe spells and the origins of magic. Most didn’t make sense, much in the way Harry Potter fiction was a free-for-all of amateurish continuity. Yet, throughout the read Gus came out feeling empowered. He was not only absorbed by the passages, but felt as if he’d been gleaning some richness from the words. Barely aware of how much he was skimming, he still came out at the end of each canto feeling the accomplishment of memorization and the pride of a job well done. It was weird.
While most of the spell sections lacked common sense, canto thirty-three was of particular note. It included a description and illustration of a Moongate. Gus realized he had seen something very similar before. The pictures in the paper of Rikti portals looked quite like the Moongate illustration, somewhat round for the sake of balanced energies, but stretched so that hominids might walk through erect. Gus’ eyes dead stopped on this page. He felt rushes of concern and wonder as his blood pulsed boomingly. He momentarily thought this was somehow a hidden solution to the Rikti conflict before allowing sharper thought to drive the train. Surely Rikti portals were in some way technology based. What if this was an instruction booklet to an alternative? What if this book could magically create portals that would allow the U.S. Marines to beam into the war zone and thieve the element of surprise? Rikti advantage over non-supers would be completely eclipsed. Gus had found newer purpose and allowed the waves of endless possibility to roll over him as he studied the entry.
Grammy Weist had made it seventeen weekly bingo sessions before the boredom of suburban golden years took shape. She’d begun insisting that Gus come twice a day as opposed to his normal singular visit. Gus, of course, readily obliged despite his double shifts at Pizza Hut and full nights spent mulling over the Moongate passages. While the treasured visits slowed Gus’ progress in understanding the entry, the truth was he’d been about as successful as a level three gravity controller trying to take on a Peregrine Island Warhulk. English text or no, The Chronicles of Grenoble and Nacht in Felucca left him baffled. It wasn’t as if black pearls and sulfur were lying around the parking lot of the Galaxy City Blockbuster and these were ingredients the alleged Master Mage, Grenoble, had strewn across several pages. Gus had tried to improvise with Circle of Thorns salvage purchased at bargain basement prices from the black market, but to no avail. Moongates, portals, whatever the canto was trying to document, it seemed an exercise in academics only.
Come the first Saturday of double visits to the home, Gus had run out of new things to tell his grandmother. The Hut had no new toppings. Employee of the month was going to have to wait again. The Datsun had become uninteresting conversation two decades prior. He was somewhat doomed to listen to the tales of Ruby and Tallulah, Grammy Weist’s sesqugeneric suitemates. His quality time torture began about six p.m. and visiting hours weren’t over ‘til ten. The conversation started with a story about getting her first set of dishes for free, one at a time, from the Rialto movie theatre watching serials on the silver screen. The next time Gus feigned workable consciousness, the story had moved on to the evils of standard airbags and flame retardant pajamas. An epoch later, Grammy was on to the muscular boatswain’s mate, Bill Haden she’d met on her trans-Atlantic voyage, a man who’d last vied for her affections before she met and fell in love with Gus’ grandfather, Wilbert, at Ellis Island. Fifteen minutes remained before the nurses would kick him out for the night.
Grammy finished on a new track before the evening drew shut. Much out of character for herself, she’d started in on questions to Gus that took him off guard. His mind still pondered the Moongate conundrum, but his face was the perfect poker shape to con Grammy into receiving it as full attention. She asked how he liked Paragon and the apartment. She asked if he’d been dating anyone special and a few less than noteworthy inquiries about Gus’ preferred type. She even briefly took one accidental segue out into the conversational realm of radio shows and Inner Sanctum, before bringing her focus back to her grandson’s distractions. Short only two minutes to lights out, Grammy Weist hit with a stumper that Gus translated as,
“Gussy, I can tell you’re preoccupied. You really should tell me what’s wrong so I can work a grandmother’s magic.”
Gus had no idea how to sum up weeks of decrypting a completely foreign and near nonsense text in a two minute schpiel. For that matter, he didn’t know whether it was something he’d be willing to reveal to his grandmother at all, what with the gaping hole in her ceiling. It was just easier to skirt the issue, and adding guilt onto guilt, that’s just what Gus did.
“Grammy, I’m just worried about how to take care of your place properly. You’ve got such great stuff. It’s nothing really.”
Grammy Weist sensed the deflection, but as sharp grandmothers do, she rolled with what was made available. Gus continued to listen through her thick accent, still hearing her meaning more than her sounds.
“Well, Gussy, it’s simple really. A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Gus gave only one kiss and one hug before running to catch the yellow line.
2 a.m. and sick of all pizza permutations, Gus tried to keep Ben & Jerry’s drippings from splattering the Moongate diagram. All around him at the table were Paragon Times archives, on loan, describing Rikti portals, plus a few too many dictionaries of the Occult. At that point Gus had even resorted to treating D&D accessories as source materials. Logic was a long way off. Frustration was more familiar to him than excitement. All other concerns were not so much as a blip on the radar. Failure was ever-present. About to fall asleep in the chair, Grammy’s advice shone through the mental mess. “A place for everything, and everything in its place!” It was as if the shape of those very words formed a skeleton key that would unlock margins and reveal the pith of the mysterious Chronicle. There was something in that passing pleasantry that simply felt as the missing piece of a puzzle, the last brick in a wall. All his research and numbing attempts at clarity had hopped over one important detail. He never used the book in the attic space.
Carrying the folio two handed, he lumbered hurriedly up both the spiral and extended staircases. He needed no light, as by this time all his Moongate attempts were memorized times over. The attic was still dark and the makeshift apprentice lurched into the blinding pitch surer than ever. Gus placed his hand on the book and intoned a litany of presumed incantations, front to back and back to front. Nothing. He mustered his best guesses at Latin pronunciation and Greek inflection. Still nothing. Confident, Gus looped words piecemeal from different incantations into almost nonsense strings of gibberish. Come 4 a.m., the attic remained a dark, motionless room. Gus slumped into the blackest corner, again dismayed. Odds were, by now, that if there were any reality to this book, he’d have randomly stumbled across a working conjuration by now. Monkeys would be writing Hamlet first, at this rate. He let out a sigh of defeat and almost jokingly quipped aloud, “Abracadabra?”
Gus didn’t know if it was the plain word, or the word spotted on the end of his long verbal mantra like punctuation, but the ensuing quake didn’t give much time dwell on the question. Painted china rumbled in place throughout the apartment as raw power was pulled in electric slivers from every junction box in a one block radius, piercing the attic walls and dancing in space. The chandeliers could be heard rocking in rooms far off and dusty pebbles of brick and mortar violently shook from the building in a pattern that sounded like sudden rain. Shadows ripped up from floors and swirled upward into the boxy room like dark dust devils filled with smoke. Carpets cringed on the floor as the whole structure shifted slightly with a loud crack that was heard for miles around. Gus had to fight the impetus to jump down the stairs and run clear back to Sandusky. And then, an illuminated split in the very air before him blazed fourth in an orangish glow. It had finally worked.
The split was not as round as he’d expected. Surely, Gus had done something wrong. The portal, if that’s what it was, looked more squarish and awkward. The light it emitted looked to be attempting linear shapes, but burped up random bubbles and dark patches that made it read as uneven and in some ways broken. The fibers on Gus’ sweater pulled toward the opening and his hair yanked forward. The air around him whooshed by as it to got sucked into the opening, carrying with it every speck of dust and every remnant of pizza odor left in the home. The sheering drag summoned him closer, pulling at his sneakers’ grip on the floor, underscoring the idea that if this wasn’t a portal, it was indeed some kind of pure vortex. There seemed only one way to find out.
Gus stood. He reassured himself that Grammy would be fine and that an event like this would be nothing in comparison the triumph of trying it out. He had no idea where the shaky portal might lead. If a Moongate, perhaps he too was off to Felucca. If not that, perhaps the Rikti home world where certain death would await. Whatever the cost, the prospect was too attractive to refuse. Gus readied his stance, opting to jump headlong rather than step, and took a moment only to pray. Wind rushing, dust blasting his eyes, Gus’ prayer was just about through when his concentration, dulled as it was, got interrupted by a series of audible beeps.
It was his cell phone. He thought of ignoring it, in fact, he thought hard on that more than once. Yet, it wasn’t a call. His ring tone was set and stuck on the unenviable stylings of Rick James’ Superfreak. This beeping was different, and a vibrant curiosity in the cell phone signal abyss that was King’s Row. Even at that, the undulating faux gold light just one step away should have been enough to ignore the cell, but let’s face it. Cell phones just need to be answered.
Gus yanked the contraption from his pocket and flipped it open in one smooth motion. He cocked his wrist toward the light of the magic portal as if to see better. Loose papers flashed up from the apartment below and got swallowed in the light. Gus leaned back from the urgent pull. The cell phone signal, five bars strong, clearly came from the pillar of light. A few savvy thumb gestures letter, Gus had revealed a bizarre text message. The sender identified himself only as Mantlet. The title of the message came through in all caps as WARNING! Gusts growing, thumbs dancing, Gus responded.
The warning spoke of a band of Super Heroes that called themselves Apotheosis and the danger they tried to fight via something called Ouroboros. The text was a bit fractured and hackneyed, but one thing was certain, Gus had never heard of any hero named Mantlet. Level 50 heroes were in the paper everyday and it was hard for a commoner to escape their notoriety. Though this Mantlet claimed to be from Paragon City, Gus was sure that he was either a trickster or from someplace altogether different. Gus’ return texts scoffed at the sender’s claims and only barley served to push a dialogue forward. Winds swirling around him, it was all Gus could do to analog back, engrossed just as much in the increasing pull of the light as in the mysterious texts from the “other side.” Only the word, WARNING had stayed his feet with reason.
This Mantlet claimed a goodly number of questionable truths. He was supposedly hold up in some secret Apotheosis lair, typing away at a workstation while conducting experiments. He stated that he’d acquired the ability to slapdash together a Rikti portal device from salvage and wildly made the additional claim of being able to time travel with yet another device. His hypothesis, as incomprehensive as it seemed, revolved around opening a time travel portal inside a Rikti portal, and the fear that it could lead to a result he called “paradimensional,” a wartime front for which the U.S. was not ready. He conducted experiments in secret in hopes of relaying warnings to heroes in the honeycomb of polydimensia, rallying them to a cause of a unified Paragon offense. To date, this one signal was the only he could establish. It was all a little too much for Gus to digest, but he couldn’t deny that it was happening. The bottom of the staircase began to lift a little from the floor. The desk blotter had flown up and just missed Gus’ head before getting engulfed. The instability around him was growing, strongly, and now he was faced with trumping these potentially bogus and time-eating texts by signaling back that he was just a man, not a super hero. With said message went explanations as to the book, the portal, Gus’ intent to enter, and what was certainly building to an explosion of some sort if this Mantlet didn’t leave well enough alone.
Mantlet worked fast. Short texts came in reading only, “No!” and “Wait!” and a quick “Please!” Gus humored them, despite the fact that the oak desk in the library had just shifted. He could hear glass breaking and what sounded like faint pig squeals twisting through the wind. The ceiling began to vibrate. Gus’ skin started to ripple over his muscles. Whatever this Mantlet character was going to do, he had about ten seconds to do it or Gus was going to take his chances stepping through and talking face to face.
Gus was wrong about those ten seconds. In only two, the blast of light slapped closed with a horrendous snap and threw him, bodily, back down into the library, crashing over everything in his path. All the moisture spinning through the air condensed into tiny bits of sleet and dropped on him as if thrown from a bucket. Papers slowed from the breeze and again sought out the assuredness of gravity. Grammy’s place rang its way to eventual quiet again like the after-tone of striking a piano key or tuning fork. Gus sat up in the stillness, nose bloodied, forehead cut in more than one place. About six feet from him was the folio, the whole Chronicle perceivably intact. Gus smiled a bit as he reached for the cuts on his head, sucking blood back with a sniff. At the very least, with the book, he could try again, perhaps with better results. Today though, it looked like he was more meant for Band-Aids, a hot bath, and another two-day round of cleaning Grammy’s apartment. Gus tilted his head back, managed a more relaxed sit, and squeezed his nose shut, grabbing a blank tax form to be used as a tissue. Success was success, no matter what the outcome.
The silence seemed almost unbearable now. It sat and sat and asked nothing of itself but to sit some more. It settled in on Gus to the point where he could hear himself bleed. It was a long quiet stretched over thin air and sudden calm. Nonetheless, silence is only contained in moments, waiting out the next heartbeat or footstep to witness its own destruction. In this case, it gave way to a familiar beep. Gus brushed aside the pile of light trinkets that had come to rest to his left and grabbed his cell phone. It beckoned even as he lifted it. He checked for new text, uncertain as to whether there’d been enough time to zap through any message of gravitas. There was one, new entry. It offered no text in the body, only an attachment. This mysterious Mantlet must have been at the ready to download it at a moment’s notice. That said something about both him and the contents. The “To” field read only “Triumph,” the “From” field, “Freedom,” apparent codenames both. It wasn’t until Gus had fully fiddled with his menu to open the attachment that he realized what it was. He had to scroll to get the full length of the entire title on screen, but there was no mistaking what it said.
The Complete and Unedited Instructions on Becoming a Magic Super Hero
“Rent controlled” were the only two words he needed to hear. Sandusky was to become a relic of his past while Paragon City a foothold to the future. An era had begun. It wasn’t that Sandusky didn’t have its charm, but a young man can only take dates to The Rutherford B. Hayes Library and Presidential Center so many times before his limited romantic creativity would show through. Paragon promised performance artists and chocolate baguettes and booze cruises and the never-ending chance to be an accidental extra in the latest Scorsese film. The decision was anything but tough, wartime or no.
At twenty-six years of age, Gus Faustian had only made it as far as Cleveland, round trip, and for that he took his passport, just in case. Now, his grandmother was going into a home and her apartment in The Gish was available at 1954 prices. The excitement of the prospect fell only a hair short of overpowering Gus’ concern for Grammy Weist. Her health was okay for the most part, but she’d come to the states fresh off the boat from Turkey and still had a hard time with complex English sentences. Gus wondered how she would get along when questions about meds and therapies would arise. All the better reason to be close to her.
Most of Gus’ belongings fit into five boxes square, leaving as much room in the trunk of his ’85 Datsun. In true bachelor style he drove hundreds of miles bereft of pots, plates, utensils, vacuum, cash, map, dress shoes or clean underwear. His boxes instead contained little more than random hobbyist trinkets; two Harry Potter books, Clive Barker’s Imajica on DVD, his GenCon busting red deck replete with goblin skirmishers, a couple D&D tomes with dog-eared corners on pages about druids, his Terry Pratchett collection, a poster of Rivendell, the cassette soundtrack to Xanadu, a ceramic Disney Pinocchio, and a framed certificate from the International Poets’ Society for his award winning piece on tiromancy. It wasn’t until all his prized possessions were collected together in one place that Gus noticed a theme to his likes.
Grammy Weist’s place was sort of an oasis. Similar to other residences in The Gish, from the outside one could still see the unmistakable traits of an old meat packing plant once converted into overpriced condos. Now those condos were illegitimate workfare apartments containing city dwellers otherwise mimicking the social decay of greater Kings Row. A simple, uninformed walk to the train could cost a thrill-seeker his life. Yet, on the inside, Grammy’s place looked like something out of a roaring Deco magazine spread, immaculate, tasteful, and high-end in every regard. Ornate white trim bordered every floorboard and doorway bubbling up hand-carved, non-repeating reliefs shaped like flower clusters and winding vines. The mock copper ceiling was stamped out in countless squares each of which encapsulated simple geometric shapes, complimentary to the next square by forty-five degrees, the whole plate covered in a low-gloss, white enamel that spread broken light from each room’s differing chandelier over the bumps in the pattern. There were wall sconces that looked to be burgled from the Chrysler Building, beveled chair rails and imported wainscoting that would make Martha Stewart weep, and even the added bonus of a wrought iron spiral staircase that ascended to a second level. A sitting room and a den each contained Vermont marble fireplaces further warming the vaguely gold interior along with dark red throw rugs and deep cherry wood furniture. Gus had never seen an actual settee or a sideboard until now. The same could be said about the very tall, pull-chain toilet in the bathroom whose tank was about two inches from the ceiling. Foyer, library, dining room, standing wet bar, roll top desk, vaulted archways, solid silver trays and tea settings, fine china in a massive Americana hutch stationed strategically distant from the grand piano across the apartment in the salon, it was as if Gus had stepped into a different dimension. Every classic item in the place had been positioned to draw one’s eye to the next. This wasn’t just an apartment. It had lines, class, and a soupcon of understated glamour. Homier than a museum with delicate design and decorative technique falling mere notches short of clutter, to Gus such a fragile and well-kempt environment could only mean one thing…PARTY!
All the nearby power lines made cell phone reception on Grammy’s street a joke. After checking in on her and the case workers at the assisted living facility, Gus spent the day riding the rail and ringing up every number in his full SIM card. Sure, Sandusky was days away, but for a place this nice and this large at this price to suddenly open up to the hard core party circuit, people would hitch if they had to. Gus would have called it a house warming, but house beering seemed the more accurate notion.
Three nights later the rave was in full swing. Of course, one’s network of like-minded friends when that one travels on the Xanadu soundtrack, more for ONJ than ELO, meant that by “rave” they were really talking about a soiree barely two degrees of separation from an alcoholic spelling bee. It was a night of mixed and low-market Canadian ales and Buds, bottled, not canned. The evening’s conversations, as inebriated ones tend to do, spanned subjects as egghead haut as quantum physics to others as base as the theory of orifices. In place of the tokeables and decent acid your average biker might find at a get-together, Gus’ gathering had at least ten homespun games that required Scrabble tiles, a lightning-round-only Pictionary station and a bughouse version of backgammon being run tournament style in the salon. Impromptu karaoke quartets broke out randomly while competitive attempts to slide the helix railing on the staircase became the night’s greatest challenge. The scene, as was, barley warranted mentioning that the party was devoid of female presence.
A wise-ass man once said that a good buzz is the sudden, jarring awareness that time cannot be measured in seconds or minutes. Long about the part of the evening when the average blood-alcohol content was .23, Gus was way beyond the bell curve. He’d been striking creatively lewd positions on the chaise lounge for high res’ digital posterity when a loud crash came from the upper level. Gus’ reaction was first delayed by the secret Heineken flowing through his veins and then further pushed off by the strung out realization that he had no idea what anything in this apartment cost. Thereafter, he darted up the spiral staircase, though to any onlooker he more meandered over and around invisible groundhogs than he did dart. The top of the spiral let out into the library, a somewhat dark and still chamber, replete with first edition texts and a décor that made even health nuts want to throw on a dressing gown and smoke a big pipe. Three cronies had made their way up around the monstrous oak desk in the library to debate the Dewey Decimal system and to joke about having murdered a fictional butler, Clue-style, a butler whom at least two of them were sure was a monkey. With the bleary-eyed homicide reenactment had come a few too obvious footprints on the desk blotter and the punch drunk “discovery” of a slide away panel in the ceiling. The panel had been punctured by a less than pointy head, crumbling to the ground in pieces and allowing nested stair sections to roll out in a horrendous series of thumps.
Gus tried to muster a clear string of verbal outrage to befit the sight, but took pause given the beer gas bubble seemingly crammed halfway up his chest, mid-belch. Frakes was in a leather armchair laughing hysterically at the irony while William, Sandusky’s Beavis quotes champion, attempted to mitigate. William explained in sentence fragments, each beginning and ending in “dude,” all about the butler monkey and his perilous demise at the hands of brown bottle fiction. Frakes, having finished a seemingly endless guffaw, then interrupted and rolled back in time a single subject to instead explain how they were previously debating etymology, a dangerous, room-wrecking subject by all counts. Gus tried to be responsible, but a few angry steps toward the trio layered adrenaline onto his altered state, again failing to form any actually audible sentence, but succeeding in a mysterious gimp. Meanwhile, Arnold Radich, of fly unzipped fame, jumped back several lines of dialogue in an apparent attempt to make everything okay by explaining from the inebriated beginning.
Arnold had begun with how this library reminded him of his 4th grade library which was all Dewey Decimal and newly offered that Frakes was a Library of Congress man, himself. There had thusly been a lengthy pretzel stick sword fight over said schism before the conversation turned to Admiral Dewey and thereafter to all things named after other things, quite the think tank agenda. Somewhere beyond Martin Luther King Boulevard, all the ships named Enterprise, a random kid named August, Muppets coming from puppets, oranges, Swiss cheese, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, New Jersey, and a near kick boxing match over the fact that everybody had claimed a different word origin for abracadabra, they had soon decided to ask the butler. After all, any such Clue-looking room should have a butler and anybody rich enough to have a butler could afford a monkey. A court stenographer’s head would have imploded.
Having heard Arnold out, Gus realized that a good scolding and the filament of logic he’d be able to graft onto his dismay just weren’t going to play to this audience. His attention instead turned to the unfurled staircase. Gus approached it with wonder. He didn’t know there was an attic. Who had ever heard of an apartment with an attic? Plus, if this had been a meat packing plant, what unsightly atrocities would have been dismal enough to need an attic? The ravers, realizing that they were probably off the hook, under the auspices of Arnold’s liquored reminder, bounced back into the abracadabra debate. William re-upped his claim that it was from the Hebrew, ha-brachah, meaning “The Curse.” Arnold pointed to Aleister Crowley as the originator while Frakes gave a list of possibilities, two of which included lines from Bewitched reruns, original Darren notwithstanding. Gus barely slowed down as he fit his more certain two cents in.
“No, it’s from Turkish, and the Turks take it from Aramaic. Avra kedavra, ‘What I speak is destroyed.’ Even Latin takes its word for corpse from kedavra.”
The library went silent. Real partiers aren’t accustomed to a sudden serious tone or an argument that makes even mediocre sense, especially when that sense comes from the drunkest one of them all. Now the attic stairs and Gus’ ascent were center stage. Gus peeped his head and eyes just above the rim of the opening, his footsteps creaking the whole way. It was dark, very dark, the kind of dark that swallows up light hungrily. The space inside might have once been larger, given the full, interlocking stair sections that had telescoped into a standard flight, but was now penned up into a single, cramped room the size of a modest, walk-in closet. Each corner was within Gus’ arm’s reach and he hadn’t even attempted to pass the fourth step from the top. He’d expected insulation and beams, wood with an exposed galvanized nail head or two, but the room echoed like stone and smelled more like the hollow innards of a mossy stump. As Gus smoothed his full arm length over the floor of the room, it felt clean, surprisingly clean. There was no dust or grit rolling around, not a mouse dropping or stray splinter. Doing the same with his opposite arm drew out a similar pristine slice in the pitch when it, almost startlingly so, touched something. Gus grabbed and drew his elbow back into the library light to reveal a full folio sized book.
The text looked more than ancient, it looked other-worldly. The characters would fade onto and off of the page, sink into the browned creases and rise again as if floating through mud. On the taut, leather spine, calligraphic scrawl, barely legible, scrabbling out only a few cryptic words. The first atop, a conundrum, the word Grenoble. And if that didn’t sound foreign enough, beneath it was twisting the more mysterious word, Felucca.
Of course, most of the dancing glyphs could be explained by the fact that during the last few hours, Gus shared more in common with a pile of hops than he did with any human smart enough to read. Given that and the rather anticlimactic emergence of a book from the secret room into a library otherwise filled with books when guests would have preferred a mummified pigmy or a treasure map to Hallie Berry’s underwear drawer, the find got shelved in the starker reference section for Gus to revisit later. The party lasted two more days.
The following Friday, Gus had reached that triumphant moment when the last beer bottle makes it into the recycle bin. He would have had the cleaning done sooner, but three day party equals two day hangover, both of which he’d spent visiting his grandmother. Today would be his first chance to look in the paper for a job. Gus grabbed the Paragon Times from the floor in the hallway, brought it to the breakfast table where he’d set out cold pizza and grapefruit juice, and began perusing every other slot between the endless gal Friday ads. His eyes settled upon one opening for a grill man at the Green Gables Café when somehow the shape of those letters reminded him of the old attic book from five nights prior. Beer had then quelled any semblance of curiosity, but midway through a semi-stale bite of his double chicken and onion slice, the question mark hanging over his head was too much to live with. Gus ran to the library.
Today, while faded and vague, the letters seemed to move around far less. In truth, they didn’t move as much as they did morph in form. Gus blamed his astigmatism and the fact that he’d left his glasses in Sandusky, but even so, that didn’t explain what looked like Cyrillic letters shifting into Egyptian hieroglyphics and then into alephs, kalephs, and spotty daggesh fortes. For a moment, he swore he saw a Greek delta just before it changed to both Roman numerals and what an eighth grade trip to a reservation allowed him to remember were Cherokee notations. Gus actually spent some time musing over whether or not this was angelic script before the forms became more recognizable. English, it had hit and stuck on plain English, every page.
The book read now as a chronicle, the chronicle of two personages named Grenoble and Nacht who’d ventured through a land called Felucca replete with dark magic and monsters. The story spoke of a great black pearl shortage that saw man and beast traveling to the far corner’s of unknown realms, and Felucca seemed to be the riskiest among them. While Gus didn’t understand a great deal of the entries, several spoke of something called a Moongate, which, as best as Gus could ascertain, was a portal to another dimension. It was the only means of entering Felucca and frighteningly, one of the only ways back. Many of the entries were fully chronicled while others were obviously interrupted quite suddenly, further indicating the danger of a Fellucan pilgrimage.
Gus poured over the text for an entire day. There was just something captivating about it, something documentarian about the manner in which magic was described, Ultimata, the author called it. Grenoble, the writer, in amidst the many entries about Nacht coming to his rescue, took tangential time to describe spells and the origins of magic. Most didn’t make sense, much in the way Harry Potter fiction was a free-for-all of amateurish continuity. Yet, throughout the read Gus came out feeling empowered. He was not only absorbed by the passages, but felt as if he’d been gleaning some richness from the words. Barely aware of how much he was skimming, he still came out at the end of each canto feeling the accomplishment of memorization and the pride of a job well done. It was weird.
While most of the spell sections lacked common sense, canto thirty-three was of particular note. It included a description and illustration of a Moongate. Gus realized he had seen something very similar before. The pictures in the paper of Rikti portals looked quite like the Moongate illustration, somewhat round for the sake of balanced energies, but stretched so that hominids might walk through erect. Gus’ eyes dead stopped on this page. He felt rushes of concern and wonder as his blood pulsed boomingly. He momentarily thought this was somehow a hidden solution to the Rikti conflict before allowing sharper thought to drive the train. Surely Rikti portals were in some way technology based. What if this was an instruction booklet to an alternative? What if this book could magically create portals that would allow the U.S. Marines to beam into the war zone and thieve the element of surprise? Rikti advantage over non-supers would be completely eclipsed. Gus had found newer purpose and allowed the waves of endless possibility to roll over him as he studied the entry.
Grammy Weist had made it seventeen weekly bingo sessions before the boredom of suburban golden years took shape. She’d begun insisting that Gus come twice a day as opposed to his normal singular visit. Gus, of course, readily obliged despite his double shifts at Pizza Hut and full nights spent mulling over the Moongate passages. While the treasured visits slowed Gus’ progress in understanding the entry, the truth was he’d been about as successful as a level three gravity controller trying to take on a Peregrine Island Warhulk. English text or no, The Chronicles of Grenoble and Nacht in Felucca left him baffled. It wasn’t as if black pearls and sulfur were lying around the parking lot of the Galaxy City Blockbuster and these were ingredients the alleged Master Mage, Grenoble, had strewn across several pages. Gus had tried to improvise with Circle of Thorns salvage purchased at bargain basement prices from the black market, but to no avail. Moongates, portals, whatever the canto was trying to document, it seemed an exercise in academics only.
Come the first Saturday of double visits to the home, Gus had run out of new things to tell his grandmother. The Hut had no new toppings. Employee of the month was going to have to wait again. The Datsun had become uninteresting conversation two decades prior. He was somewhat doomed to listen to the tales of Ruby and Tallulah, Grammy Weist’s sesqugeneric suitemates. His quality time torture began about six p.m. and visiting hours weren’t over ‘til ten. The conversation started with a story about getting her first set of dishes for free, one at a time, from the Rialto movie theatre watching serials on the silver screen. The next time Gus feigned workable consciousness, the story had moved on to the evils of standard airbags and flame retardant pajamas. An epoch later, Grammy was on to the muscular boatswain’s mate, Bill Haden she’d met on her trans-Atlantic voyage, a man who’d last vied for her affections before she met and fell in love with Gus’ grandfather, Wilbert, at Ellis Island. Fifteen minutes remained before the nurses would kick him out for the night.
Grammy finished on a new track before the evening drew shut. Much out of character for herself, she’d started in on questions to Gus that took him off guard. His mind still pondered the Moongate conundrum, but his face was the perfect poker shape to con Grammy into receiving it as full attention. She asked how he liked Paragon and the apartment. She asked if he’d been dating anyone special and a few less than noteworthy inquiries about Gus’ preferred type. She even briefly took one accidental segue out into the conversational realm of radio shows and Inner Sanctum, before bringing her focus back to her grandson’s distractions. Short only two minutes to lights out, Grammy Weist hit with a stumper that Gus translated as,
“Gussy, I can tell you’re preoccupied. You really should tell me what’s wrong so I can work a grandmother’s magic.”
Gus had no idea how to sum up weeks of decrypting a completely foreign and near nonsense text in a two minute schpiel. For that matter, he didn’t know whether it was something he’d be willing to reveal to his grandmother at all, what with the gaping hole in her ceiling. It was just easier to skirt the issue, and adding guilt onto guilt, that’s just what Gus did.
“Grammy, I’m just worried about how to take care of your place properly. You’ve got such great stuff. It’s nothing really.”
Grammy Weist sensed the deflection, but as sharp grandmothers do, she rolled with what was made available. Gus continued to listen through her thick accent, still hearing her meaning more than her sounds.
“Well, Gussy, it’s simple really. A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Gus gave only one kiss and one hug before running to catch the yellow line.
2 a.m. and sick of all pizza permutations, Gus tried to keep Ben & Jerry’s drippings from splattering the Moongate diagram. All around him at the table were Paragon Times archives, on loan, describing Rikti portals, plus a few too many dictionaries of the Occult. At that point Gus had even resorted to treating D&D accessories as source materials. Logic was a long way off. Frustration was more familiar to him than excitement. All other concerns were not so much as a blip on the radar. Failure was ever-present. About to fall asleep in the chair, Grammy’s advice shone through the mental mess. “A place for everything, and everything in its place!” It was as if the shape of those very words formed a skeleton key that would unlock margins and reveal the pith of the mysterious Chronicle. There was something in that passing pleasantry that simply felt as the missing piece of a puzzle, the last brick in a wall. All his research and numbing attempts at clarity had hopped over one important detail. He never used the book in the attic space.
Carrying the folio two handed, he lumbered hurriedly up both the spiral and extended staircases. He needed no light, as by this time all his Moongate attempts were memorized times over. The attic was still dark and the makeshift apprentice lurched into the blinding pitch surer than ever. Gus placed his hand on the book and intoned a litany of presumed incantations, front to back and back to front. Nothing. He mustered his best guesses at Latin pronunciation and Greek inflection. Still nothing. Confident, Gus looped words piecemeal from different incantations into almost nonsense strings of gibberish. Come 4 a.m., the attic remained a dark, motionless room. Gus slumped into the blackest corner, again dismayed. Odds were, by now, that if there were any reality to this book, he’d have randomly stumbled across a working conjuration by now. Monkeys would be writing Hamlet first, at this rate. He let out a sigh of defeat and almost jokingly quipped aloud, “Abracadabra?”
Gus didn’t know if it was the plain word, or the word spotted on the end of his long verbal mantra like punctuation, but the ensuing quake didn’t give much time dwell on the question. Painted china rumbled in place throughout the apartment as raw power was pulled in electric slivers from every junction box in a one block radius, piercing the attic walls and dancing in space. The chandeliers could be heard rocking in rooms far off and dusty pebbles of brick and mortar violently shook from the building in a pattern that sounded like sudden rain. Shadows ripped up from floors and swirled upward into the boxy room like dark dust devils filled with smoke. Carpets cringed on the floor as the whole structure shifted slightly with a loud crack that was heard for miles around. Gus had to fight the impetus to jump down the stairs and run clear back to Sandusky. And then, an illuminated split in the very air before him blazed fourth in an orangish glow. It had finally worked.
The split was not as round as he’d expected. Surely, Gus had done something wrong. The portal, if that’s what it was, looked more squarish and awkward. The light it emitted looked to be attempting linear shapes, but burped up random bubbles and dark patches that made it read as uneven and in some ways broken. The fibers on Gus’ sweater pulled toward the opening and his hair yanked forward. The air around him whooshed by as it to got sucked into the opening, carrying with it every speck of dust and every remnant of pizza odor left in the home. The sheering drag summoned him closer, pulling at his sneakers’ grip on the floor, underscoring the idea that if this wasn’t a portal, it was indeed some kind of pure vortex. There seemed only one way to find out.
Gus stood. He reassured himself that Grammy would be fine and that an event like this would be nothing in comparison the triumph of trying it out. He had no idea where the shaky portal might lead. If a Moongate, perhaps he too was off to Felucca. If not that, perhaps the Rikti home world where certain death would await. Whatever the cost, the prospect was too attractive to refuse. Gus readied his stance, opting to jump headlong rather than step, and took a moment only to pray. Wind rushing, dust blasting his eyes, Gus’ prayer was just about through when his concentration, dulled as it was, got interrupted by a series of audible beeps.
It was his cell phone. He thought of ignoring it, in fact, he thought hard on that more than once. Yet, it wasn’t a call. His ring tone was set and stuck on the unenviable stylings of Rick James’ Superfreak. This beeping was different, and a vibrant curiosity in the cell phone signal abyss that was King’s Row. Even at that, the undulating faux gold light just one step away should have been enough to ignore the cell, but let’s face it. Cell phones just need to be answered.
Gus yanked the contraption from his pocket and flipped it open in one smooth motion. He cocked his wrist toward the light of the magic portal as if to see better. Loose papers flashed up from the apartment below and got swallowed in the light. Gus leaned back from the urgent pull. The cell phone signal, five bars strong, clearly came from the pillar of light. A few savvy thumb gestures letter, Gus had revealed a bizarre text message. The sender identified himself only as Mantlet. The title of the message came through in all caps as WARNING! Gusts growing, thumbs dancing, Gus responded.
The warning spoke of a band of Super Heroes that called themselves Apotheosis and the danger they tried to fight via something called Ouroboros. The text was a bit fractured and hackneyed, but one thing was certain, Gus had never heard of any hero named Mantlet. Level 50 heroes were in the paper everyday and it was hard for a commoner to escape their notoriety. Though this Mantlet claimed to be from Paragon City, Gus was sure that he was either a trickster or from someplace altogether different. Gus’ return texts scoffed at the sender’s claims and only barley served to push a dialogue forward. Winds swirling around him, it was all Gus could do to analog back, engrossed just as much in the increasing pull of the light as in the mysterious texts from the “other side.” Only the word, WARNING had stayed his feet with reason.
This Mantlet claimed a goodly number of questionable truths. He was supposedly hold up in some secret Apotheosis lair, typing away at a workstation while conducting experiments. He stated that he’d acquired the ability to slapdash together a Rikti portal device from salvage and wildly made the additional claim of being able to time travel with yet another device. His hypothesis, as incomprehensive as it seemed, revolved around opening a time travel portal inside a Rikti portal, and the fear that it could lead to a result he called “paradimensional,” a wartime front for which the U.S. was not ready. He conducted experiments in secret in hopes of relaying warnings to heroes in the honeycomb of polydimensia, rallying them to a cause of a unified Paragon offense. To date, this one signal was the only he could establish. It was all a little too much for Gus to digest, but he couldn’t deny that it was happening. The bottom of the staircase began to lift a little from the floor. The desk blotter had flown up and just missed Gus’ head before getting engulfed. The instability around him was growing, strongly, and now he was faced with trumping these potentially bogus and time-eating texts by signaling back that he was just a man, not a super hero. With said message went explanations as to the book, the portal, Gus’ intent to enter, and what was certainly building to an explosion of some sort if this Mantlet didn’t leave well enough alone.
Mantlet worked fast. Short texts came in reading only, “No!” and “Wait!” and a quick “Please!” Gus humored them, despite the fact that the oak desk in the library had just shifted. He could hear glass breaking and what sounded like faint pig squeals twisting through the wind. The ceiling began to vibrate. Gus’ skin started to ripple over his muscles. Whatever this Mantlet character was going to do, he had about ten seconds to do it or Gus was going to take his chances stepping through and talking face to face.
Gus was wrong about those ten seconds. In only two, the blast of light slapped closed with a horrendous snap and threw him, bodily, back down into the library, crashing over everything in his path. All the moisture spinning through the air condensed into tiny bits of sleet and dropped on him as if thrown from a bucket. Papers slowed from the breeze and again sought out the assuredness of gravity. Grammy’s place rang its way to eventual quiet again like the after-tone of striking a piano key or tuning fork. Gus sat up in the stillness, nose bloodied, forehead cut in more than one place. About six feet from him was the folio, the whole Chronicle perceivably intact. Gus smiled a bit as he reached for the cuts on his head, sucking blood back with a sniff. At the very least, with the book, he could try again, perhaps with better results. Today though, it looked like he was more meant for Band-Aids, a hot bath, and another two-day round of cleaning Grammy’s apartment. Gus tilted his head back, managed a more relaxed sit, and squeezed his nose shut, grabbing a blank tax form to be used as a tissue. Success was success, no matter what the outcome.
The silence seemed almost unbearable now. It sat and sat and asked nothing of itself but to sit some more. It settled in on Gus to the point where he could hear himself bleed. It was a long quiet stretched over thin air and sudden calm. Nonetheless, silence is only contained in moments, waiting out the next heartbeat or footstep to witness its own destruction. In this case, it gave way to a familiar beep. Gus brushed aside the pile of light trinkets that had come to rest to his left and grabbed his cell phone. It beckoned even as he lifted it. He checked for new text, uncertain as to whether there’d been enough time to zap through any message of gravitas. There was one, new entry. It offered no text in the body, only an attachment. This mysterious Mantlet must have been at the ready to download it at a moment’s notice. That said something about both him and the contents. The “To” field read only “Triumph,” the “From” field, “Freedom,” apparent codenames both. It wasn’t until Gus had fully fiddled with his menu to open the attachment that he realized what it was. He had to scroll to get the full length of the entire title on screen, but there was no mistaking what it said.
The Complete and Unedited Instructions on Becoming a Magic Super Hero
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Friday, December 28, 2007
Triumph Update
So, a quick update on what's going on with our SG on Triumph. See below for details.
Firstly, our SG base has expanded some. I dropped the startup multipurpose room and added an Arcane Power and an Arcane Control rooms. We now have power a-plenty and a fair amount of control as well for the base. With that extra capacity, I was able to modify the base layout a bit and add a second teleport pad. The second pad goes to Faultline and either Skyway or Galaxy City (I can't remember which right now).
I'm saving prestige now for an Inspiration Storage item and an additional Enhancement Storage table. After that, I'm thinking an additional teleport bay might be in order.
As far as characters go, Ater Custos is about halfway through Level 48 and has access to all the nice Portal contacts for AV missions in Peregrine Island. Also, I've been using him to experiment with playing the market a bit. After a week of leaving stuff up for sale (starting with 5M influence to his name), he's now up to 43M influence. That does include the 15M from the sale of that Purple IO, but crafting/salvage costs were substantial, so the net profit from that was somewhere around 11M. So, bottom line is I think I have a line of sight on some good techniques to work the market if we need influence for anything. Nice thing is that they are not time intensive, maybe a 1/2 hour a day, if that, to check the market and do some quick crafting.
I've also been playing Tankology lately, my Ice/EM Tank. I've been jones'n to get back Tanking since Mantlet and our 50s have been sidelined. He's up to Level 15 now after a couple nights (nobody was online for Tight Night this week, so I pulled him out for some Tank action). Ice plays differently than Invulnerability for sure, but it's entertaining. I've been experimenting with some different IO sets for him, as well. Focus is on aggro control and survivability and not on damage output. When he does his job on teams, the other team members catch little to no aggro and can blast/scrap away to their hearts content. He's gonna be a fun Tank I can tell.
Anyway, happy Kwanzaa and we'll see you guys later.
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First Purple!
So Ater Custos got, I think, our first Purple Recipe drop. Surprisingly it was off a L48 Wisp Overseer in the Storm Palace area of the Shadow Shard.
Crafted the recipe and put it up for auction, sold this morning for 15M influence. Not a bad windfall.
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Saturday, December 22, 2007
PDF chart for IO sets
Found this on the CoH forums, thought I would post it here for you guys...
Invention_Sets.pdf
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Monday, December 17, 2007
Ater Custos hits 46
Yup. With the extra team runs and such this past week, Ater Custos hit Security Level 46 the other night. The end is in sight now, and power selections are locked down. His build now is as highly optimized as I can make it without dumping obscene amounts of influence into the build.
Three 4-slotted sets of Impervium Armor for +6.75% max endurance. With the Atlas Medallion accolade, his Max Endurance is 111.75%. His AoE attacks are a mix of Cleaving Blow, Tempered Readiness, MultiStrikes, and Scirocco's Dervish. All are at ED cap for damage, have in excess of +80% accuracy, and around an 80% endurance reduction with some -Recharge thrown in. Throw Spines also has +40% slow enhanced on it, since it produces the biggest slow effect when it hits. Tough is slotted with 3 Titanium coatings for the +Max Health and also a Steadfast Resistance/Defense for the +3% global defense boost. Weave is 3-slotted with two Gift of the Ancients for the +2% Recovery with an extra L45 Defense IO to hit the ED cap for the power. Lunge is 6-slotted with Touch of Death for the +2.5% global damage boost and the +3.13% Melee defense. Impale is 4-slotted with Thunderstrikes for the + 2% Recovery and +7% global accuracy boost. I respec'd out of Acrobatics and slotted a Karma: Knockback protection into Combat Jumping. It's not quite as good, but I plan on picking up a Steadfast: Knockback protection IO at Level 48. That should give Mag 8 protection, which will cover everything except some AVs and the Ritki Pylons in the war zone.
Overall, I have carefully tweaked the build and set bonuses to add +Max Endurance and +Recovery to offset the extremely high endurance load from the Spines/Dark Armor combination. Additional +Regen was added to the build to help with reducing reliance on Dark Regeneration, and Tough and Weave from the fighting pool have rounded out the Smashing/Lethal resistance and overall defense of the build. Solid defense values (not great, but they are the first layer of damage mitigation), good resistances from my toggles, a great healing power coupled with +Regen, and improved health (through set bonuses and accolades) all add up to a layered threat mitigation strategy that I swear by. It's proving to be damn effective, as I teamed with a random PuG last night on a Banished Pantheon map, and the mobs were all +3 to me but I could solo spawns sized for an 8-man team solo. The masks and shamans were the only real threats, and Ater has very high defense and resistance to Psi damage, which is what they were throwing out. Taking out the shamans with AoE and single target attacks came first, and then pounding on the masks while the husks staggered around me being shredded by my damage toggles. It was fun, to say the least.
Soloing in the Shadow Shard to fund purchases worked well. The spawns of CoT there are ideal for me to shred, as they are not resistant to Lethal or Negative Energy damage and vulnerable to stuns from Oppressive Gloom. Death Mages are still tough customers, but they go down quickly under a focused attack chain.
With Oppressive Gloom running, the only real threats soloing are Brutes, since the Watchers (eyeballs) have debuff ranged effects and the Brutes hit like a freight train. They are immune to the Stun effect from OG, so there's no damage mitigation there, it just comes down to Ater's slows, movement to keep them off balance, and AoEs to shred them down to size. Harder for Ater than for Flambeau, as Flam just pulls them in and hammers them. Ater needs some footwork to keep him in the green. Not hard, but a more active fight than others... Probably why I like them, as they are more of a challenge. : )
Anyway, Ater's teamed up to defeat about half the Praetorian AVs in the Portal missions. Let's see... Siege, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Shadowhunter, Dominatrix, and Chimera. I'm working through my Portal contact missions to get to the remainder. Fighting AVs is tough. Dominatrix was an unbelivable bitch to fight. She's a grav controller and all the damage our team was throwing was nerfed like crazy. Like single digit crazy. It's like my spines were made of rubber or something. One of our team logged their /Rad Controller and managed to debuff her enough to slowly finish her off. Even then it was a 15 minute long marathon battle to put her out of commission. Ugh.
Anyway, see you guys whenever. It's holiday time and Rob's out of Tight Night until next year. Have fun and enjoy the Figgy Pudding. : )
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Winter Event 2007 is now LIVE!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Just A Tank vs. Brute Thought
LOL! While I was always aware of the staunch mathematical difference between Brutes and Tanks in-game, not having a toon of my own that represented either class always left the visual difference up to just a slight sliver of fictional separation in my head. I'd think about The Incredible Hulk differing from Bane. I'd think about Ben Grimm differing from an Urukai or Juggernaut. Those differences in thought, however, were merely ethical differences for the most part.
Well, the other night, as Charlynn had kicked my snoring ass out of the room in hopes of getting Isabelle to sleep in the silence, I saw The Hills Have Eyes (1) for the first time. Okay, first, ick! Second, they might as well have called the movie "What it takes to make a Democrat a Republican." Fun. Yet, my God! That scene where the "miner" in the wheelchair says, "It's breakfast time!" followed by that brute coming through all the walls after the protagonist. It just wouldn't give up. The relentlessness of it! The unstoppable, blood lusting fever of it! Sure, I guess it's still a matter of ethic in my head, but the difference is no longer slight. Maybe I was tired, but the scene actually rattled me. I kept thinking about what the hell I would do in that situation (because coming up against nuclear mutant miners happens frequently in Queens). The answer inevitably came out as, "I would die."
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Saturday, December 1, 2007
Need help with Mantlet Respec
OK guys, I need some help here. We have a Freespec coming on December 7th. I already have one on Mantlet, so it makes sense to use it before then (since you can have only 1 per character at any time). The help is I need to know what direction to go with for Mantlet.
When we get together with our "Big 3" characters, he plays two roles. First and primary role is aggro management for the team. This usually means trying to keep the heat on him so Orleans and Cacaphony don't get more than they can handle. Lately I've been a bit out of practice Tanking, which isn't such a big deal since Orleans and Cacaphony are much more durable in their old age then they were as young heroes. However, the second role Mantlet fills in our trio is that of laying down the damage and "soft control" with the knockback/knockdowns. Orleans pushes out great damage, Cacaphony does as well (but is somewhat hindered by the scaled damage for Defenders), but it seems like the damage Mantlet dishes out is a key element as well.
So, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Looking at a respec'd Mantlet that can perform at Exemplared levels, I'm faced with a tough choice. First route is to focus on the "Tank" aspect of the character. Aggro control, defenses/resistances, and (perhaps most importantly) adding Psi defense/resistance with IO's and set bonuses. I have a draft build that drops Punch, Combat Jumping, and Resist Physical Damage and swaps in Boxing/Tough/Weave. This means one less attack in his attack chain, but with IO sets generating substantial Recharge bonuses over SO's, this may not be an issue (i.e. the chain will tighten up so the extra attack is not needed to fill it out). By 4-slotting Impervium Armors in Mantlet's Resist Damage powers, he gains up to 9.4% Psi defense. Since Unyielding has a -5% defense to all, this would mean his Psi defense would start at 4.4%. The Steadfast Unique adds +3% defense to all, bringing it up to 7.4%. Weave adds 5% unenhanced, around 7.4% slotted up. This brings Psi defense up to about 14.8% Scirocco's Dervish 6-slotted in Footstomp gives an extra 3.13% Psi defense, bringing it up to 17.93%. Problem is that this gets expensive and Mantlet only has 8M in the bank with probably 3M tied up in enhancements slotted (can be sold during the respec). Since Psi is the single biggest hole in the Invulnerability set, this would make him essentially able to viably Tank anything in the game for the team.
The other route to take is to focus on combat capabilities. IO set selection would be focused on +damage set bonuses, +Recharge, and endurance recovery/regen to offset the lower resistance/defense values in the build (compared to a more "Tank" build). Attacks would be six-slotted early to maximize exemplared performance. While I could probably squeeze in some Psi defense/resists, it would not be as robust a build.
Question for you guys is would you rather have more Tank, less damage or more of a Scranker build leading the charge? I could probably find some middle ground as well, but wanted to see what input you all had first...
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Friday, November 30, 2007
Ouroboros Possibilities
OK, last night was a blast. Even with Rob's random disconnection issues, I had a great time. Honestly, it's the most fun I've had with those characters since we hit Level 50 with them. The Ouroboros missions were entertaining and the commentary from the Menders was hilarious. Like "Just like old times, eh?" the first time you meet him in-mission. Great stuff. I had some ideas about the possibilities that Ouroboros opens up now...
Firstly, we have the chance to go back and hit some content we missed the first time around. Stuff bypassed for other missions, because we didn't know about them, or because the content wasn't released yet (i.e. Faultline). I'd be happy going back and revisiting some of those older mission arcs, since hey, we're not missing out on any XP anyway. We really ought to think about what missions/story arcs we should go back and do (Envoy of Shadow springs to mind, that was a blast).
Secondly, it's a good opportunity to go back and do the Storyteller mission with some of our characters that don't have the Spelunker badge. That's a key one that opens up the Atlas Medallion accolade and has a nice perk associated with it.
There's a great guide out there by InfamousBrad on the forums that answers a lot of Ouroboros questions. Link is here.
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Thursday, November 29, 2007
DB/SR Scrapper: Naga Teot
Just like every other damned person online last night, I went in and created a dual-blade Scrapper. Rather than trying the Willpower set though, I went with Super-Reflexes, as it fit the character concept. Overall, the animations for the new set are exceptionally smooth and well-choreographed. The power selections I picked are also QUICK. The starting attack, unenhanced, recharges slightly slower than Brawl. That's fast. The new chained attack power combos look interesting as well, although since I'm only Level 2, I don't have the full 3-set combo yet. Very nice overall.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Cacaphony Rename Question
Okay, for the first time since I created the character years ago, the correct spelling of Cacaphony (Cacophony) was available today. Who thinks I should get it changed?
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Issue 11 Live Nov. 28th
Per moderator LightHouse on the CoH Forums:
We are pleased to announce that Issue 11: A Stitch In Time will be made available on the Live City of Heroes servers on Wednesday, November 28th. All servers will be coming down for extended maintenance starting at 7 AM Eastern (4 AM Pacific) and we estimate they will be back up by 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific).
Free Costume TokenGiven the debut of Weapon Customization in Issue 11, a free costume token will be granted to all characters on Wednesday, November 28th with the launch of the Issue.
Free RespecAdditionally, with the many changes to powers included in Issue 11, we will be making a Free Respec available to all characters on Friday, December 7th. Read the full announcement of that here.If you are not familiar with the many features included in the 11th free expansion to City of Heroes, click here to read the highlights!
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Lighthouse Community Relations Manager If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.
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POLL: What's fun in CoH?
So… Put simply, what do you like about City of Heroes?
° What keeps the "fun" factor up for you?
° What elements of the game/experience are the most rewarding for you?
° What activities are the most enjoyable?
° What character types and/or power selections have been the most fun?
° What are you still looking forward to that looks exciting?
Inquiring minds want to know...
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Ater in the Abandoned Sewers
Great news. I took Ater Custos into the Abandoned Sewer system last night again, and surprise surprise, he's doing OK against the CoT spawns there. The only spawns that give me trouble are the ones with four +0 (even-con) Death Mages. Their stacking debuffs and -Acc effects wreak havok with my attack chain. Plus, they AoE heal each other, which is frustrating when trying to whittle them down. Now that some of my attacks are running over 70% Accuracy, their accuracy debuffs hurt a lot less. (expanded text below)
The other spawns that con Green to Yellow are quick now, though. Oppressive Gloom keeps the minions staggering while I focus on taking out the bosses in the groups. I filled up on arcane salvage (no Rares, dammit) prior to leaving the sewer complex. Now I know where the CoT hang out, so I can see going back in the future to plumb those depths. Salvage/recipe drop rates are high in those spawns due to the high concentrations of bosses and lieutenants in the spawns. IIRC, drop rates are: minions 8% chance, lieutenants and snipers 10.64% chance, bosses and elite bosses 25.00% chance. So, for a spawn of 4 minions, 2 lieutenants, and 4 bosses, odds are VERY high you'll get at least on salvage drop, likely 2 or maybe 3 per spawn.
Now, salvage prices on the market, for better or worse, are much lower for arcane salvage now. Several of the common Tier 3 Arcane salvage (Ruby, Regenerating Flesh, etc.) are selling for 250 influence or so. Not a lot of profit there, but the Rare Arcanes (for the most part) are still running decent cash for the desirable items (see below for last salvage market status, blue side):
"Code" below is a 3 letter identifier:
Rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare)
Level (Low, Mid, High)
Origin (Arcane, Tech).
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Code..Name.....................Avg Price Change
CMA...Alchemical Silver............4,227 -31%
CLA...Ancient Artifact.............7,588 -3%
RMA...Black Blood of the Earth...141,405 -1%
CLA...Clockwork Winder.............5,636 -30%
RMA...Deific Weapon............2,178,078 +14%
RHA...Diamond.....................88,225 +11%
RMA...Empowered Sigil..........1,333,434 +5%
RMA...Enchanted Impervium......1,848,088 +22%
RHA...Essence of the Furies......748,505 +16%
RHA...Hamidon Goo..............1,147,593 -6%
RMT...Impervium...................21,589 +15%
RLA...Lament Box..................10,902 +21%
CLA...Luck Charm..................30,874 +19%
RHA...Magical Conspiracy.........684,944 +25%
CMA...Masterwork Weapon............6,385 +94%
RMT...Military Cybernetic.........16,201 -9%
RMA...Mu Vestment............... 830,343 -1%
RLA...Page from the Malleus Mundi..5,955 -12%
RHA...Pangean Soil.............2,778,108 -1%
RHT...Platinum.....................5,426 -71%
RHA...Prophecy.................3,398,058 +21%
RLA...Psionicly Charged Brass.....12,071 +57%
CLA...Runebound Armor..............6,676 -3%
RMA...Soul Trapped Gem.........1,354,609 +13%
CLA...Spell Scroll................10,679 +101%
CLA...Spiritual Essence...........10,485 +30%
RLA...Strand of Fate..............10,159 -47%
Good recipe drops are still the money makers in the market now. That's good, though, as recipes drop in missions and from spawns on teams pretty regularly.
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Monday, November 26, 2007
Thoughts on Spines/Dark
So, I've been regularly playing Ater Custos on Triumph (my Spines/Dark Armor Scrapper) and I figured I'd relate some observations that I have collected. See below for more info.
Firstly, the combination of Spines/Dark Armor is often reputed to be one of the "Kings of AoE". Most people (myself included) look at the set and say "A-Ha. That's because it's the only combo with an AoE damage toggle in both the Primary and the Secondary powersets..." Well, that's true, but only half the story.
Starting at a relatively low level, it's a hard choice between single-target attacks and AoE attacks. I went with a decidedly heavy AoE slotting, leaving the single-target attacks unslotted and picking up Impale later than most do. The trade off was the extra slotting in Spine Burst and Death Shroud, the two early AoEs that you have access to. In teams, this was fine, since I was using the AoEs to good effect and the single target attacks (Lunge, Sands of Mu, Brawl) as fillers. Soloing anything higher than even-level spawns with any numbers to them was VERY tough. Other Scrapper sets with a stronger single-target focus (Broadsword, Katana, Claws, etc.) are easier this way, particularly Kat/BS since Parry is a monster buff to your melee defense that can self-stack. You also pick up your nice Mez/Status effect protection (which doubles as your Psi resist) with Obsidian Shield.
In the late teens and early 20's, life improves quite a bit. You pick up your big self-heal (Dark Regeneration), which is huge in terms of surviving big spawns. You also get access to Quills, which slows and puts out almost twice the damage that Death Shroud does. It's awesome. And lastly, you get Stamina, which means you finally can stop puffing after every fight like a chain-smoking asthmatic super-hero. Stamina makes a huge difference. Also at this point you're dabbling in IO sets, mostly for the enhancement bonuses, and partially for the set bonuses. Sets like Tempered Readiness are great since they give +Recovery bonuses for 2-slotting them.
In the mid-20's to early 30's, life gets better. You pick up Ripper and Throw Spines, both awesome AoE cones… One melee (Ripper) and one ranged (Throw Spines). Throw Spines also slows the crap out of whatever it hits, everything moves in slow motion and their attack rate is GREATLY reduced. This is where you begin to turn into an AoE Monster in groups. Spawn diving and lighting off AoEs becomes a non-stop love affair on the right teams. You also NEED knockback protection by now, either in terms of -KB IOs or by picking up Acrobatics.
Mid-30s to late 30s are a joy. While squishy, the sheer amount of pain you deal out in teams is staggering. While other scrappers are taking out one or two opponents, you've leveled the entire spawn and the Tank is moving on. Oppressive Gloom is the other game-changer here. Once you pick that up you have a rediculously inexpensive PbAoE Stun toggle that makes minions around you stagger aimlessly while they get mowed down by your attacks. It's gorgeous. You start to fall into a role where you are wiping the minions out and other ATs are free to take down the Lieutenants and Bosses. Even in Arch-Villain fights, your slow effects make all the difference, as their attack rate drops wayyyy down, giving the team more time to hammer them.
All-in-all, an enjoyable but very different experience from the other Scrappers I have played.
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Plan for 11/29/07 Tight Night...?
OK, so what's the plan for this coming Thursday? I'm jones'n to get back to our Silver Age heroes on Triumph.
Oh, and what's the Scoop with Matt? Is he still out of the loop here (i.e. we should count him out)?
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Triumph Remodeling - UPDATE
The Triumph SG base is "done" for now, within the current power and control limitations for the base. I may do some cosmetic touch-ups, but it's pretty solid now. More info below.
The base of operations for the Incredible Squad now has:
- Entryway
- Multi-purpose room housing combo control/power generator
- Med bay with medical teleport pad
- Workshop with salvage rack, enhancement table, IO salvage vault, IO crafting station, and basic arcane workbench
- Teleport bay with single arcane teleport pad, beacons to King's Row and Steel Canyon
With all that stuff, we are at both the Power and Control limit (maxed on both) for what the "startup" combo generator can put out. To expand the base further will require separate Power and Control rooms with a Generator and Mainframe, respectively. In essence, the base is not expandable further without more Prestige (LOTS of prestige). Ater Custos is still chewing away at that, as he's L39 right now and is approaching 500K of earned prestige for our new fledgling SG.
Oh, and I selected King's Row and Steel Canyon for their accessibility. King's has access to Pocket D and a Wentworth's right next to the Trainer within spitting distance of the train. Steel has access to both Yellow and Green train lines and has a Wentworths and University right next to each other. Also, both are zones in the level range (for the near future) for Galvanic/Cadabara/Eclipse/(Troy's PB) to aid in traveling to missions and zoning. We can open up more beacons and swap them out as needed for flexibility in the mean time.
Things are looking up. It's no Bat-Cave, but then again, it's got better lighting.
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Monday, November 19, 2007
Let's PVP Pre-Debt Wipe
It's interesting that the debt wipe, while a great reward to launch yet another issue, is one not fundamentally functional for guys like us who play so often we are always working off our own debt anyway, not to mention the fact that we work so well together that we get so much less debt to begin with.
Anybody up for taking our level 50 toons out en masse and hitting some appropriately leveled PVP zones for a while, since we have the debt wipe coming anyway? Or, since debt doesn't quite matter to lvl 50s, perhaps our middling Freedom toons? I know we won't be on Thanksgiving, but let's look at what such time we have to play with.
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Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Maybe we should hold off...
Apparently Character Transfer is live and shaking up some servers.
According to Blog of Heroes:
Now, what is kind of interesting is the speculation about whether certain servers will see a major drop or rise in population, based on reputations as PvP or RP or whatever servers -- or, alternately, if those reputations will become self-fulfilling prophecies. It will be interesting to see if any stats come out of this.
So the Triumph of yesterday may not be the Triumph of tomorrow. I haven't gone crawling all over the boards to check on any of this, but Greg's better at that anyway.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Mr. Eclipse Costumes
UPDATED 9-18: This is what I'm going with. It's M from below, but a deep purple. I kept the blank eyes, but changed the mask so they don't look so weird. Be as critical as you want. I'm looking for perfection. Well, 60s/70s perfection in all it's pure cheesy goodness.
A plethora of ideas here. Check them all out and imagine a mix and match. There are elements that I like in every one. I'm just having trouble putting them together.
Clicking the pictures should bring you to the whole album.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Ideal Concept Dual Blade/Willpower Scrapper
I had a brilliant burst of insight on the way into work today.
One of my favorite fantasy characters from the book Teot's War is a perfect shoe-in for the new powersets. Link to the book is here, perhaps one of you read it...
Naga Teot (or Tokori Effressa if that's taken) is the NEXT Scrapper I'm making. Man, I cannot WAIT for that next issue to come out now.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Ah, the long road...
Well, my little Claws/SR Scrapper is kicking on Triumph and so far so good. He's not leveling that fast, since most missions with groups are spent chatting and making bad jokes. It's remarkable that people are so patient compared to Freedom. Folks will sit around outside missions chewing the fat waiting for someone to level or get another character. Wow.
Anyway, Windup Hero's up to Level 12 now and I'm working Perez Park for salvage to build my L15 IO's. According to the word on the street, once you slot in L15 IO's you're set until you get to Level 22 and can slot L25 IOs. Since the IOs don't degrade over time, the L15's are better than DOs for the duration. Problem is there just aren't pre-made IOs made on the market right now in that level range. So... That means taking down Hellions to get that Arcane salvage to make the recipes.
At Level 12, his defense boosts are starting to get more appreciable. This means better survivability and enhanced success rates taking on larger spawns. Lack of any healing/resistance abilities is somewhat of a pain, and I can see how the pool power Aid Self is a popular pick for /SR Scrappers.
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Thursday, September 6, 2007
Greg's out next week
No Tight Night for me next week (Sept. 13th). I'm in transit to my brother's wedding that weekend. Y'all will have to battle evil without me for an evening... : )
Cheers!
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Wednesday, September 5, 2007
More Silver Age...
The Silver Age Marvel Comic Covers Index
A little confusing at first, but a lot of neat stuff. Too bad he hasn't updated in a few years.
Be sure to check out Th Four Phases of Silver Age Marvel. Alas, also incomplete. A good read, but set aside some time, as it's long.
Update 1:32AM...
It's late and I've gone off on web tangents, but the winner is YOU.
Superman and Batman's Night Together
Found this...
Found this while I was looking around for Silver Age inspiration:
Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels
Enjoy!
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Saturday, September 1, 2007
Scrapper Summary for Rob
Ideas/Feedback for Rob's Scrapper:
Firstly, character concept is the big driver here. Pick something you like and work the powersets around it. That being said, I'll try to give you my perspective on the Scrapper Primaries/Secondaries to give you a little more info to work with.
PRIMARIES:
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Broad Sword - One of the heaviest hitters of the Scrapper primaries. Pretty much whipping around a big hunk of steel that packs a whollop. Slow-ish recharge on attacks, but high damage puts the DPS (damage per second) almost exactly the same as the Katana primary. However, at later levels with recharge IOs and set bonuses, the set deals out some sick damage. It has the Parry attack which is a stackable defense buff for melee, a staple for any Broadsword attack chain. It deals primarily smashing/lethal damage, the most resisted damage types in the late game. Downside is the set is a bit of an endurance pig until you get SO's/IO's. Some knockback/down in the set.
Greg's Take: Great concept set and good at all levels. Early attack chains are solid with excellent take-down potential. I like this one a lot.
Katana - Very similar set to Broadsword power-wise. More stylish animations and faster recharges, but less powerful attacks. Almost exactly the same DPS as Broadsword.
Greg's Take: One of my favorites, bar none. However, not a good choice for a Silver-Age hero. Steel Blossom has this set.
Claws - Great set for a beginner Scrapper. Fast attacks, low endurance usage, fast-firing "Build-up" attack that buffs accuracy/damage, solid attack chain with some nice cones/AoEs. This set's got everything in an easy-to-use package. This is a great set for non-stop Scrapping regardless of the secondary you pick. Deals primarily Lethal damage, which is highly resisted in late game. Some knockback/down in the set.
Greg's Take: If I were going to recommend a starting Scrapper set for a new person, this is it. Easy and forgiving with fast, low-endurance attacks. Also the set could easily lend itself to a Silver-Age character concept (cat man, panther, etc)
Dark Melee - Interesting utility set. Not a raw-damage set, as it has control elements, a built-in accuracy debuff, self-heal attack, single-target Fear, etc. The Shadow Maul cone attack is the identical animation to Sands of Mu, including the rooting effect. Deals primarily negative energy/smashing damage, which is pretty unresisted throughout the game. Damage output is middle of the road with several DoT (Damage over Time) attacks smoothing out the damage curve. Somewhat endurance intensive.
Greg's Take: The utility knife of the Scrapper sets. Also a great concept set with the smoky attacks. Problem is, IMHO, this is a difficult set for beginners. It has some quirks and needs some careful slotting/power selections to make the most out of the set. Take it for the concept and you'll grow into it. Given we have vet reward respecs, there's room for tweaking if you're not happy with how it's progressing.
Spines - The AoE set for Scrappers. Many single-target attacks with some nice AoEs and a built in -rech effect in the attacks. Fast-firing similar to claws, but somewhat endurance intensive. AoE damage is where the set shines.
Greg's Take: Good set, but difficult to get rolling. True AoE capability blooms somewhat late in the build, as you need Stamina to run Quills. Some interesting Silver-Age potential here, but despite my love of AoEs, not one I get excited about.
Martial Arts - Kicks, kicks, and more kicks. All smashing/lethal damage with fairly fast animations and some stuns/slows/knockback effects mixed in. Some of the attacks have some spectacular animations. Less popular than other Scrapper sets.
Greg's Take: Cool set, decent attacks with a few questionable ones mixed in. The mixed bag of status effects (stuns, slows, knockback) is less appealing than a set that's consistent. Decent set for a Silver-Age Natural origin character, but the lack of any punches/hand attacks makes pool power attack selections a must to round out the visuals.
SECONDARIES:
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Regeneration - A quick pick for many Scrappers and a popular choice. No damage mitigation, but tons of heals/regeneration/recovery to make up for it. Integration provides a 100% base regen boost and all the status protection you need at an early level. Dull Pain and Reconstruction are the heals, with Instant Healing coming in later if needed.
Greg's Take: Solid set that lives up to it's popularity. +Recovery bonuses = non-stop Scrapping with no breaks. Set is sensitive to burst damage though, alpha strikes from a spawn can floor you before you can hit the heal powers. Fun and forgiving set, but Tough and Weave pool powers really round it out.
Invulnerability - Same as the Tank set (i.e. Mantlet) with lower resistances. Resistance based set with a nice heal that adds a 40% boost to HP for a while. Very strong set against Smashing/Lethal damage, less so against other types, big hole against psi damage. The only Scrapper set with a Taunt aura.
Greg's Take: Even as a gimped version of the Tank set, it still performs well. This is by far the LEAST popular of all Secondaries though. The Taunt aura (Invincibility) can be a killer drawing excessive aggro without Tank HP or Resistances to take the heat. Still, makes for a tough combo. Passive resist powers are next to useless
Dark Armor - The second most unpopular set, except for AoE builds. Resistance based set with a couple nice utility auras (fear/neg energy damage) and some interesting heal/resurrect powers. Kind of an odd set in that the theme is mixed, somewhat like the Dark Melee primary. No real focus for the set, but a lot of interesting powers. End usage is really high for a lot of the powers though, forcing some early choices to be viable only after Stamina.
Greg's Take: Similar to Dark Melee, this is not really a good set for beginners. The lack of ANY knockback protection in the set also pretty much guarantees needing to take the Leaping pool to pick up Acrobatics. Despite that, the set has some real play-style advantages (stealth/fear etc.) for those that can build some synergy with the Primary they pick. Great pick for a Silver-Age hero with all the dark smoky effects.
Super Reflexes - Probably after Regen in terms of popularity. Defense based set with Toggles and Passive powers against positional damage types. No self-heal in the set and the myriad of good power choices often forces a very tight build. Practiced Brawler gives great status protection and Quickness gives a run speed boost and essentially a +Rech DO level boost to all powers.
Greg's Take: Great set. Matures somewhat late due to the Defense boosts, but a killer set once it hits its stride. Lots of toggles means it's a good match for the Claws primary, there's a lot of synergy there. Quickness + Fast Claws attacks negates the need to pick up Hasten out of the power pool. Good set for beginners, as the set requires little "click" management to be effective. Great Silver-Age powerset (think Flash or Spiderman).
SLOTTING:
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As far as slotting goes for all these different Primaries/Secondaries, there is a great thread here that goes into some detail about slotting recommendations from a TO/DO/SO (primarily SO) perspective. Naturally Issue 9 and the IO enhancements make this even better, but the original post is still solid.
FORUMS:
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I also started a thread on the Scrapper forums here to get some input/recommendations from the Scrapper community on what a good starting Scrapper Primary/Secondary combination would be. Take a look if you get a chance.
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Friday, August 31, 2007
Interesting Stuff
A program and instructions to customize the log in screen:
Description, photo and comments - via GameAmp
More time-wasting stuff!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Comparing Mantlet and Flambeau Noir
Reference discussion below. Previously sent out via e-mail on 8/31.
OK,
While I had some nice fun last night, I had some observations I thought I'd share…
Firstly, playing Mantlet and then playing Flambeau Noir was an interesting comparison. In the future, Mantlet's gonna hang with Orleans and Cacaphony. Flam's just not a good fit. Granted there's no downside to being defeated now that none of our 50's are earning XP, but both Caca and Orleans were defeated wayyy more with Flam than with Mantlet. Eric and I chatted a bit about it before logging off last night, but there are a couple things that stick out in my mind…
1.) Mantlet is mostly single-target, Flam is mostly multi-target. That means Mantlet generally doesn't seek out big groups, which limits aggro and spill-over onto the rest of the team. Flam's main mode of attack is the opposite, looking for big spawns and jumping in. Which is great when they stay put, but Orleans and Cacaphony's attacks have a ton of knockback, which scatters the clump and results in aggro management problems due to the size of the spawn. Not good. Mantlet's slower approach at the OUTSIDE edge of the spawn allows for better control.
2.) Flam is acres tougher than Mantlet in a fight. He had a sea of purple beating on him in several of those missions and he didn't go down. That's a problem, because even with Mantlet's somewhat less tough demeanor, his situation is often mirrored by Caca and Orleans. He takes more damage, but he's got more HP to make up for it. That linear scaling means I have a better idea when we are getting in trouble. For me, that helps quite a bit.
3.) The most critical difference is that Flambeau has no soft control in any of his attacks. Mantlet has knockback/knockup galore in his attack chain. As such, when someone is at-risk I can bounce their opponents around like superballs and then slam them to the pavement with Footstomp. That control element makes Mantlet a far superior Alpha Tank for a small team. Flam can work wonders as a Beta Tank on a team, but he just cannot control the opponents with aggro control/knockback the way Mantlet can. That's probably the biggest contributor to the team defeats last night.
4.) Flambeau is most effective facing +3 or lower foes, as his high-damage attack chain and AoEs can drop them quickly. I was whiffing like hell with him last night against +5's, which is fracking scary considering his attacks have roughly a +46% accuracy bonus with an added +36% accuracy (global) bonus from the IO sets. Flam should have been smacking stuff left and right with those bonuses. Granted a lot of the Ritki were bubbled (damn Guardians) and those Drones are freaking impossible to hit anyway. Mantlet does best when facing +5's and purple foes. The to-hit bonus from Rage coupled with his L50 Accuracy IO's and enhanced by the to-hit bonus from Invincibility means he can lay the smack down on just about anything he fights… Reliably. Quite simply, Flam shines with large volumes of mid-range foes. Mantlet shines when fighting fewer, tougher opponents.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to either Task Force or Mothership Raids. I want to see us hand those damn Ritki their come-uppance… : ) Mantlet will be there for those. Flam's gonna go back in the stable for a while.
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Trying to make things easier
I'm working on a way to post links to the most recent comments at the top of the page so it's easier to see when there are new comments to read in posts that me be a ways down the page. It's difficult, especially for someone who has very little practical knowledge about the Intarweb. Any help would be appreciated.
Remember the link to consolidated link to the post-50 posts so you don't have to scroll all the way down to see it. I'm doing my best to keep this updated.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
New Melee Power sets in Issue 11
On the boards: 2 New powersets for Scrappers, Tankers, Brutes and Stalkers: Willpower and Dual Swords. Take a look below...
Castle expounds a bit.Willpower has 'decent' resists against Smashing/Lethal/Toxic/Psi damage. It has 'poor' resists but 'decent' defense against Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative Energy.
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned Taunt Auras. Brutes, Scrappers and Tankers all have a 'Taunt Aura' power called "Rise to the Challenge" that works similarly to Invincibility, but increases Regeneration rate rather than Defense.
As for the Dual Blades discussion:
1) Primarily Lethal damage (and, yes, I am very aware of the arguments against that.)
2) The animations are pretty darn cool looking. BAB has outdone himself here, I think.
3) As Posi said, the set is FAST. Not quick 'claws' speed, but fast nonetheless. For Tankers and Brutes, I imagine that'll be a nice change!
Thanks to Blog of Heroes for the heads up.
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Monday, August 27, 2007
The Charged Crusader vs The Galvanic Guardian
UPDATED: Please take a look, I'm trying to narrow down character names/costumes for the proposed Electric/Electric Blaster.
The Charged Crusader
The Galvanic Guardian
Updated version of the Galvanic Guardian
:
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Sunday, August 26, 2007
Orleans the villain?
Update 8-28-07:
It has been brought to my attention that the villain Orleans concept is "just a cheap rip-off of Grimwarden," whom you may remember from his (very) brief stint with the members of what is now Triplicate. I have removed the pictures until such time as I can show that claim to be blatantly false.
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Saturday, August 25, 2007
Post 50 consolidated list
To keep everything easily accessible, I'm including the links to all the post 50 ideas here. This post will be available from the link on the side.
8-14 Idea for post 50 - Orleans
8-22 Bulding on post 50 ideas - Garthamatic
8-24 Yet more post 50 suggestions - Garthamatic
8-27 The Charged Crusader vs The Galvanic Guardian - Garthamatic
9-1 Scrapper Summaries for Rob - Garthamatic
9-05 More Silver Age... - Orleans
9-15 Mr. Eclipse Costumes - Orleans
9-19 Maybe we should hold off - Orleans
We can put all of our new comments in this thread. If you need an entire post to go over another idea, just put a link to it in this one.
I've also included the full text of the first three posts in the comments section. If this makes everything too big and unwieldy, let me know and we can take them out.
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Friday, August 24, 2007
Yet more post-50 suggestions...
First of all, congratulations to everyone for hitting Level 50 (finally). Only took us about 2 years… : )
See the full post below for the new ideas I'm floating out.
It's been a long, fun road and I had a great time. That's not to say that there isn't more to do, but now there's no pressure to level, etc. We can just indulge in whatever we desire with those characters.
Some ideas:
* All the Task Forces/Trials we missed (no XP = No impact for being defeated)
* Badge hunting in earnest (nice way to tour the zones)
* Pylon/Mothership raids in the RWZ
* Finish the mission arcs in the RWZ to see that end-game content
* Giant Monsters
* PvP zones
* Statesman's Task Force (really freaking hard from what I hear, AVs everywhere)
In other related information, I logged onto Triumph and started a couple Blasters (potential throw-aways) to try and get a feel for the AT. I discovered that going to a less populated server means that a whole bunch of Character names are available. More so than Freedom. One was a Fire/Energy Blaster named Incineratus (I think) and a Fire/Fire Blaster called Pyre8. He's the gem. A Tech origin robotic pirate scavenged from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney and given self-determination and fire powers by the mysterious Toy Man. Get it? Pyre-8? (I know, it's low even for me).
Anyway, sever appears less busy than Freedom, but not vacant. Should be fine for our needs.
So, new SG: Themes!
Some ideas:
* Gold/Silver age heroes. Tights, classic costume elements, themed names.
* Scottish themed. Kilts, rough-and ready costumes, beards, etc.
* Nordic themed, Norse mythology maybe. Ice powered characters, axes, broadswords, etc. Helmets with horns
* All-Monster SG. I saw one of these once on Freedom and it was a riot. Names like "Blue Monster", "Red Monster", "Yellow Monster", all monstrous costume elements with color combos echoing the name of the character
* An all-reformed villain SG. Some great costume options and RP elements here. Ex-Brute Tanks, Ex-Stalker Scrappers, etc.
* Sci-Fi themed SG: Robots, space costumes, etc. No magic origin characters.
* Clown SG: Crazy costumes, crazy hair, etc. Good RP elements here, but may wear thin over time.
* Alternate Universe Apotheosis: Alternate dimension versions of our existing heroes. Such as Cacaphony as a Scrapper, Mantlet as a Defender, etc. Have to work out some back-story for this one. Think the original Star Trek mirror universe episode.
Whatever is fine. My creative juices are pumping so I figured I'd send a note while they were fresh (I've been trapped with my laptop in an absurdly boring meeting).
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Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Building on the post-50 ideas...
Eric has some great ideas in his previous post on the topic. Kudos for the suggestions. I had a few other refinements/thoughts (see below)...
I was thinking about it, and I believe there is a possibility that we can choose a flexible option for the "new character/new supergroup" concept. If our characters stay on the Freedom server, we can create new characters, make a new supergroup and proceed as planned/suggested. BUT, we could also form a coalition with Apotheosis. That would allow us to have access to it as needed (and only if we choose to) but would still allow the challenge of building the new base from the ground up (so to speak). A coalition would also allow cross-SG chat between all characters. This might be an exciting option for Boots or Matt to get sucked back in.
If we wanted to pursue a different server, they are beginning Cross Server Transfers to spread out the population and allow people to play with their friends. That may be an option to keep an eye on, as if we ever have need to shunt characters back and forth, that would be the way to do it (potentially to keep little-used ALTs without deleting them, such as Villains). Since the Consignment Markets are all cross-server, there would be little impact that way and it would offer a method (if cleverly used) to transfer influence cross-server.
Picking a theme might be another option (Greek myth, sci-fi, pop culture, catholic school girls gone bad... well... maybe not that last one). We could name our characters and have costumes that echo the theme and carry it over into the super-group base, as well.
I'm on the fence about picking ATs. Since we are going to be playing together, they should complement each other (i.e. 3 Defenders might be bad). But with a Tank to hold aggo, almost any mix will work (or at least a Tank makes things easier). I'd like some suggestions from you two on this, as I'm really open to whatever makes you happy/interested. A fresh start should be fun for everyone.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Flambeau Noir hits Level 47
As obnoxious as it may sound... Yup.
I logged Flambeau to surf around the Chantry a bit in the Shadow Shard. The herding to the aggro cap is great fun, especially when I pull the trigger on his AoE chain. Such pretty orange floating numbers. No spectacular drops though, a couple Red Fortune recipes and a Pangean Soil. Partway through I saw the big yellow LEVEL UP! flash on the screen. Now most things are conning white/blue to me. Damn.
So now I'm incrementally upgrading his IOs (both set and basic) where reasonable to L50ish ones. Powers like Hasten and Fiery Aura are getting straight L50 recharge IOs. I also upgraded the Titanium Coating (resist damage) IOs to level 50ish as well to hit the ED cap on those resistance powers. The more expensive rare IO sets (Scirocco's Dervish, Touch of Death, Mako's Bite, etc.) are staying as-is.
Oh, and I picked up Rise of the Pheonix as a self-Rez power at Level 47. My choices were Burn, Build-Up, Char (out of the Pyre Epic pool), or Rise of the Pheonix. Since it's reportedly one of the coolest animations in the game and since a self-Rez power would be VERY nice in sticky situations, I figured I would pick it up. Opens up more room in my Inspiration tray, too. I guess I'll have to bite it to see what it looks like... : )
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