City of Heroes Archives

Dr. Aeon and the Wrath of Achilles (#31899)

The players are summoned by Mender Lazarus, one of the guardians of the time stream, who says the balance of power in the player’s timeline is, was, or will be upset. Dr. Aeon, the chrononaut mad scientist for City of Heroes‘ premier villains, Arachnos, went back in time to the Bronze Age, to interfere in the course of the Trojan War. Why is he siding with the Trojans and assailing the Greeks with his high-tech weaponry? Therein lies the mystery.

What follows is a lot of fighting, because hey, it’s an MMO. You beat up everything from Trojan soldiers and a river god to super-soldiers with mechanical spider legs coming off their back like Doctor Octopus’s tentacles. In an ideal world, I’d post video from City of Heroes to YouTube, but you’re not allowed to make ad revenue on the game for legal reasons. So I’m posting screenshots.

Mission 1: The Strange Case of Dr. Hamilton

Mender Lazarus, one of the guardians of the time-traveling society Ouroboros, has much to explain to the player. But the full details will have to wait. He wants the heroes to look into a break-in at Paragon City University’s Steel Canyon campus. If you’re thinking this sort of thing is below the pay grade of Ouroboros, you’re absolutely right. Except… it’s not.

The superheroes rush over to PCU to find Arachnos have kidnapped… a mythologist?

An Arabian superhero heads down the marble-floored halls of Paragon City University. No enemies are present yet.

In the basement is an Arachnos arbiter, left behind to cover the spidery villains’ tracks. Bonus points if you know the comic book reference of Operative Shanower!

Mission 2: Evening the Odds

Dr. Aeon has gone back in time, using the mythologist Dr. Hamilton as a guide. Mender Lazarus has tracked him to the battlefield outside of Troy (the Troad). It’s at the point in the war where Achilles has abandoned the fight. (I use the spelling closer to the Greek, “Akhilleus.”) The Greeks, or Akhaians, as they were then known, are getting captured by Arachnos and interrogated for what they know.

The heroes drop down into the Troad and fight their way through the Trojan ranks to reach the best fighters amongst the Greeks. It’s an all-star cast that Arachnos has captured: Menelaos, Odysseus, Great Aias (a.k.a. Ajax), and Makhaon, the Greeks’ healer.

(Nothing like a good foot sweep to knock down a Trojan archer.)

(Menelaos, Great Ajax, and Odysseus, as well as our hero in white.)

Mission 3: The Heroes Strive With Gods

The balance of the fighting has shifted. Aeon tries to keep the Greeks hard-pressed, but the gods themselves are influencing this war, and more champions take the field. The heroes rescue Diomedes, who warns the player about the chief enemy on the field today: Aineas, the son of Aphrodite.

The player takes on Aineas! Surely a demigod can’t be too tough.

When he’s low on health, Aineas’ mother attempts to save him. If the team is big enough to fight an archvillain, Aphrodite herself appears.

(Aphrodite, goddess of love, sex, and sea foam. The sparkles animate.)

If the team is smaller, she sends her handmaidens, pictured here.

Amid all the fighting, Dr. Aeon has killed Patroklos, Akhilleus’s cousin, best friend, and in many interpretations, his lover. Akhilleus loses his freakin’ mind and starts on a rampage.

Mission 4: The Clash of Man and River

The rampage is cut short by Dr. Aeon, who has placed temporal disruptors around the battlefield in order to change history. Arachnos captures Akhilleus temporarily, though as the dialogue indicates, he’s about to break free when the heroes rescue him.

It’s time for a team-up. But, as an Arachnos captor points out, what are they going to do, kill the entire Trojan army?

The rampage is the longest mission in the arc, as the players plow through a ton of enemies named in the Trojan epic cycle. Relative shlubs like Asteropaios and Lykaon go down first, and by then the Skamander river is so choked with blood that Xanthos, its river god, attempts its revenge.

(Xanthos, a.k.a. the Scamander River God. The blue slime is water animated to drip.)

Ever seen CoH’s Water Blast power set? Now you have!

But that’s not all! Prominent allies take the stage, like the Amazon princess Penthesilea…

(Penthesilea, princess of the Amazons, with double labrys axes. Way to represent, girl!)

…and the son of the dawn goddess Eos! His name is Memnon, prince of Aethiopia.

(Memnon, son of the Dawn and sporter of awesome dreads.)

Each of them call on Dr. Aeon for help, but the villain is gone, leaving them to face their fates alone. Interestingly, the players find Dr. Hamilton amid all the fighting, and Troy’s star quarterback, Prince Hektor, reveals more as the players fight him.

(Hector, prince of Troy. The spear looks more like a naginata, but it’s the closest I could get.)

Hektor says he knows where Aeon has gone, but to preserve his honor and spare the lives of his people, he’s going to throw the fight. The player makes it look good, defeating him as per normal gameplay. When the mission is over, Dr. Hamilton and Hektor let the player in on the Arachnos plan.

So What’s the Plan, Exactly? Enrage the Death Machine?

The reason Aeon interrogated all the Greeks he could find and killed off Patroklos was because he wanted Akhilleus to be visited by his mother the night before the battle, as the story goes. Akhilleus’ mother is Thetis, a sea goddess who is responsible for Akhilleus’s famous powers.

When Akhilleus was an infant, Thetis dipped him in the headwaters of the River Styx, and wherever the water touched, it made him immortal and invulnerable. Because she held him by the heel while she dipped him, that heel is his one weak, mortal part, the proverbial “Achilles heel.”

Dr. Aeon’s plan was to capture and interrogate Thetis for the location of the Styx’s headwaters. And now he’s taken his best commandos and dipped them in the Styx. He’s going to make an army of super-soldiers who cannot die.

Mission 5: The Isle of the Styx

The player goes to the island of Skotados to rescue Thetis. The player battles normal Arachnos enemies, the nymphs of the Styx (the river of death), and the now-invulnerable Arachnos soldiers. It’s a tough fight (the super-soldiers are a mob of all bosses), but Akhilleus and Hektor are there to take their revenge on Aeon, and having them both on the players’ side is a combo that the gods never saw coming.

In the end, the player drops Dr. Aeon off with Mender Lazarus, who will enforce the sanctity of Earth’s timeline. What he does to Aeon is only hinted at, but it’s probably NSFPC: Not Safe For Paragon City.

And that’s our show! Hope you enjoyed this little excursion.

If you’ve made it this far and actually have a City of Heroes (Homecoming) account, the arc is #31899. Just enter that into the search bar at the Architect Entertainment interface, and the arc should be playable.

See you around the city!

Big Trouble in Little Rokugan

The worst job in the samurai fantasy nation of Rokugan belongs to the Crab Clan, who must maintain the Kaiu Wall to keep out the demonic armies of the Shadowlands. One particularly disagreeable duty is to scout out the blasted wastes and spy upon the enemy. When the ronin Seikansha sought this out, he discovered a portal to what he thought was Jigoku — Rokugan’s Hell.

This was not the case. When he followed a strike team of misshapen creatures into this distortion of time and space, he emerged in the laboratories of Paragon City’s Portal Corporation. The oni, goblins, and other servants of evil had no clue where they were — but wasted no time kidnapping the local humans to gain their secrets.

My approximation of the L5R shugenja Seikansha, featuring the Wings of Fire and Katana of Fire spells.

Alone, Seikansha knew he could not face all the enemy at once. But the language of heroes is universal. If the people here — however strangely dressed — seek to defend their home from the Shadowlands, they are no longer strangers, but brothers and sisters. It’s time for a team-up between samurai and superheroes.

“But wait, is this okay copyright-wise?”

Funny thing… yes. According to the guidelines of the current rights-holders of Legend of the Five Rings, Fantasy Flight Games, fans (such as myself) can create content so long as it is not sold for a profit. Since City of Heroes: Homecoming is entirely powered by volunteers and doesn’t charge for its services, no laws have been violated.

So… let’s rock!

Part 1: Face the Horde

Once the player starts the Architect Entertainment arc, it creates a hologram contact for the first mission.

*“If you would turn back the darkness, come with me. There will be lives and souls to save.”*

Here, the heroes retake the Portal Corporation building from the foot soldiers of the Shadowlands Horde. Since it’s just the first mission, I thought we’d ease into it with familiar enemies from L5R and a simple task: rescue the scientists of the Portal Corporation. The liberated scientists are eye-witnesses to the crime.

Who are we facing? Let’s zoom in on the bad guys with some beauty shots from the character creator!

Bakemono (goblins):

Bakemono Warmongers (goblin shock troops):

A shot of the City of Heroes character editor, showing a goblin with a double-headed staff.

Hyakuhei: intelligent zombies of the Shadowlands that were once samurai. I particularly like the zombie bones in the hands and the rusty katana option.

For bosses, we have Rokugani ogres. Since “ogre” and “demon” both more or less translate as “oni” and they share a number of similarities in traditional Japanese mythology, I gave these brutes the name Yabanjin no Oni. Yabanjin means, roughly, “barbarian” or “savage person.”

A blue-skinned, horned oni (Japanese demon) holding a hammer of molten rock.

A Missing Expert

Back to the action. The heroes rescue two researchers who are able to tell them what’s going on, only to find their supervisor is missing: Tina MacIntyre, Portal Corp’s key expert on alternate dimensions.

Where would they take her? Seikansha says when the Shadowlands needs to grow its power, the first place that maho-tsukai (blood sorcerers) go is to the local graveyard. There, they can animate the dead to fight for them. In Rokugan, this is less of a problem, as they cremate their dead. Surely a worldly civilization like Paragon City does the same?

“Um, yes, bad news…” says the player…

Part 2: Digging the Grave

The heroes head to Peregrine Island’s graveyard to rescue Tina MacIntyre. There, they find Rokugan’s worst nightmare. When Tina is freed, she says the oni and goblins snatched weapons from Portal Corporation’s security teams and the SWAT department of the local police who deal with superpowered beings.

In other words, that sound of approaching feet is going to give way to bursts of assault rifle fire, grenade explosions, and the zapping sounds of beam rifles. The Shadowlands Spec Ops team may not have a lot of experience with these weapons, but thanks to modern technology, they’re pretty much point-and-click.

Even the lowly shlubs have automatic weapons:

And their buddies pack beam rifles that can disintegrate their targets:

The zombies created by maho-tsukai have found themselves some chainsaw swords… and in this close-up, you can see the porcelain masks that let their bodies animate.

When the heroes rescue the Tainted Tina MacIntyre, she confirms their plan… they’ve taken a small army back to Rokugan… with weapons enough to devastate whatever medieval troops are in front of them.

Part 3: The Guns of Yojin

Those troops are in Yojin Province. In case you’re not up on your Rokugani geography, that’s the land immediately outside Otosan Uchi… the Imperial capital.

The good news? All seven Great Clans have soldiers stationed there. The bad news? Six out of the seven are blaming the Crab for failing to contain the Shadowlands threat.

Fight, Grab, and Rescue

The heroes have a threefold mission.

Find and confiscate the stashes of weapons from Paragon City so the Horde can’t use them.
Rescue the Crab scouts who were tracking the Horde and got caught by the Great Clans. There are six different Clans and six different Crab allies to free.
Take the fight to the demon in charge, Hoshasen no Oni.

The weapons use City of Heroes’ “weapon stash” icons, which admittedly look out of place in the hills of pseudo-Japan, but they’re supposed to!

The scouts to rescue are from some of the samurai families of the Crab:

The Hida are known for tough shock troops.
The Hiruma, usually scouts.
The Kuni, often shugenja and witch hunters.
The Kaiu, known for engineers and battle-masters.
The Yasuki, who are mostly courtiers and merchants. They aren’t present here.

Here’s a Kuni, captured by the Unicorn (Ki-Rin) Clan. They have a mix of the samurai families of the Utaku, Shinjo, and Ide. The Utaku Battle Maiden is the armored one on the left, a literal girlboss. The Shinjo is an archer, and the Ide is a courtier who knows how to use a dao (Chinese broadsword). They’re minion-rank. As with all CoH adventures, the more players are in the team, the more enemies they will face. Since there’s only one player here, the mob is only three enemies.

After the Kuni is free, she joins the player and fights on their side.

The Kaiu warrior, a big tanky type in heavy armor with a tetsubo, has been captured by the Lion Clan. The Matsu family form the minion and lieutenant ranks of this mob. The highlighted one is a gunso, or sergeant, who specializes in katana moves. The other two are ashigaru, foot soldier spearmen.

If there were more heroes in this mission, there would be more enemies. In that case, there’d be Kitsu family shugenja (priest/wizard) and a boss, the Akodo family tacticians.

But don’t forget the real enemy! Amid all the beating down of other Clans (Phoenix, Scorpion, Crane and Dragon are not pictured), there’s still plenty of Shadowlands enemies, none more notable than the Hashasen no Oni.

Pictured here in the character creator (because taking screenshots is chaotic while getting your butt kicked), the Hashasen fights using weakening energies. In the parlance of CoH, it’s radiation emission, but the description themes it as debilitating energies of the element of Corruption.

When it falls, the Hashasen no Oni tries to crawl in a specific direction… a tunnel opening leading far underground…

Part 4: Six Shaku Under

Seikansha and the players draw a logical conclusion — there were too many Shadowlands troops compared to the ones he saw in Paragon City. They had reinforcements, and they came from the tunnel beneath Rokugan. Does it go all the way to the Shadowlands? Or is the Horde using some other method than simply carving out a 200-mile tunnel? The player vows to find out.

The Shadowlands have, of course, underestimated their enemy. Samurai are no great spelunkers, but if there’s one thing Paragon City knows, it’s fighting enemies in caves! The heroes set bombs throughout the tunnel system, wiring it to blow. Sure hope they wrote their final haiku before coming down here!

It turns out the enemy are guarding a ritual altar, and that spilling blood on it will create a gate… not between worlds, but to Jigoku itself.

There, the five servants of Fu Leng responsible for this plan are known as the Star of Darkness. They must be destroyed, or the forces of Hell will continue to surface in the caves, and from there, assail Otosan Uchi until it falls.

Part 5: To Shatter a Star

The portal takes the players to Jigoku, a burning hell where the Star of Darkness has retreated to plot their contingency plans.

The heroes will find new enemies to face here, including dozens of minor oni not seen outside of Jigoku.

The stars of the show are the five points of the star. The Hikarabita no Oni lashes a burning whip and summons demons in an attempt to vanquish any foes who refuse to die. Using thermal powers, it sucks the moisture from its victims, leaving dessicated husks.

Genso no Oni mocks samurai by dressing and fighting like them, creating fear and darkness wherever it goes. Because City of Heroes adds on special effects with Dark Armor powers, fighting it is like fighting a cloud of darkness. I got a clearer picture of it in the character creator.

The other bosses include a fallen Moto samurai (a family of the Unicorn Clan largely taken by the Shadowlands).

Topping things off is, of course, the archvillain of this plan, the pale princess of the Shadowlands, Doji Nashiko.

Who’s that, you ask? Right-click on her to find out!

I tried to get a picture of her at rest, but she can see through invisibility, so I got one of her in action. Here she is fighting the 8-ton Longbow battle robot I used to keep her busy to get the screenshot.

With Nashiko’s defeat, the players have driven the last nail into the coffin of this evil scheme. But now that Rokugan and Paragon City know of the other realms’ existence, who is to say what will happen next? Will the Emperor send diplomats or soldiers? Will they still remain isolated from all other lands when an existential potential threat to the Empire is just a portal away?

Create your own Architect Entertainment arc and let me know!

City of Heroes: Homecoming

In 2004, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game City of Heroes hit the shelves. A little awkward at first, it had a few laudable strengths. It wasn’t trying to compete in the same space as the innumerable fantasy MMOs. The costume generator kicked butt, assuring that ensured no two heroes looked exactly the same. It had mix-and-match power sets that made you feel like a superhero from the get-go. Who really wants to play a level 1 peasant with “tattered cloth armor” as your starting equipment every time? And, importantly, it continued to constantly improve with every new patch (or, as the game called them, “issues”).

One of these improvements was the capability to design your own player-created content. Using the “Mission Architect” system, players could create up to five missions in an arc. Each could use pregenerated maps, normal or customizable enemies, a selection of mission goals, and NPC dialogue they could enter themselves.

Choose Build Your Own Adventure

Two notable types of adventures resulted. The first type was players designing the missions’ enemies for maximum experience gain. They ground out levels and loot as fast as humanly possible. Useful for condensing the time you spent getting levels, but overall, nothing amazing.

The second type of adventure unleashed the creative energy of thousands of players, as they spent hours polishing their virtual baby until it shone. I saw adventures where you descend into the Paris catacombs to fight the Phantom of the Opera. You could battle archvillains themed to the major arcana of tarot cards. One that I found particularly hilarious had you take the job of the Fashion Police, dueling enemies with the most garish costumes imaginable.

And Then the “Thanos Snap” Happened

Despite the love and money of a sizeable fan base, City of Heroes was shut down in 2012 by its parent company, NCSoft.

Unknown to NCSoft, however, a Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers (names obscured to protect the criminals) absconded with the game’s source code and played in private for the following seven years. In 2019, their secret came out and they opened the servers up to players. Coming home was remarkably like the citizens of Marvel’s Earth-616 after their five-year absence.

A year or two later, NCSoft, who had moved on to other ventures, eventually gave the servers an official blind eye. As long as the private servers didn’t attract attention with bad (read: legally liable) behavior, they could operate and even create their own new content.

Due to differences in philosophy and general drama, several different teams managing their own servers have popped up. I use the Homecoming servers. Homecoming doesn’t try to preserve the game exactly as it was in 2012. Instead, it adds content for a better user experience. Though I haven’t tried to create official content for them, I have made use of their Mission Architect to create stories I think players could love.

So, Get to the Game Already!

So far, I’ve written two Architect arcs, each with five missions:

Dr. Aeon and the Wrath of Achilles (AE #31899)

The player tries to stop Arachnos’ obnoxious super-science expert from going back in time to change the course of the Trojan War. The heroes battle Trojans, Amazons, Aethiopian allies, a river god, and Arachnos soldiers with a certain… mythological edge.

Big Trouble in Little Rokugan: (AE #71669)

The Portal Corporation opens up a wormhole to the land of the samurai RPG Legend of the Five Rings. The oni of the Shadowlands steal weapons from Paragon City and intend to use them to conquer the Emerald Empire. It will take heroes from both worlds to stop them!

August 18, 2020August 21, 2020

In Which Superheroes Punch River Gods in the Face

Those of you who’ve been following my progress over the past few months may know that I’m back to doing freelance writing, which is another way of saying “I’m unemployed… except when I’m not.”

Looking for work is, of course, a full-time job for a writer. My days are spent Googling “narrative designer,” and typing up customized cover letters for submission along with my resume. Every now and then I’ll get a bite and they’ll ask me to do a writing test, which takes anywhere from one to seven days of work. Sometimes, I’m familiar with the game company, and have played all their games. Sometimes, I have to jump in with both feet and learn on the fly. While I like to think I can learn a new franchise in a very short amount of time, the reality of this renaissance of nerd-dom we live in is that there are too many properties to keep up with simultaneously.

For example, like many nerds, I played tabletop Dungeons & Dragons. But if a job opportunity pops up at Wizards of the Coast, the interview questions will be more like “What are your opinions on how to improve the Eberron campaign setting, and where do you see it going in the next five years?” Then I’ll switch gears to mobile games, where the test will be about Stardew Valley or maybe an interactive romance novel like Choices, and the next day it’ll be back to a real-time strategy series, asking me to write in the voice of generals of the Napoleonic Wars.

I can do these things. The sticking point is, can I do them faster, cheaper, or with more panache than whoever else is applying? Can I Skype with the employer at 11:00 at night because they’re on Beijing time? Am I disabled or a veteran? Can I speak Korean?

So that’s my day-to-day now. In between job applications, I play games to try to keep current on them. At night, I polish short stories, because, like I said elsewhere in this blog, I’m trying to sell them to fund a sequel to Civil Blood. I’ve polished the I.T.-expert-to-the-superheroes story (“The Needs of the Client”) and submitted it. The next in line, “Give a Little, Get a Little,” is in the queue for critiques through my writing workshop. Progress is slow, but measurable.

And then… there’s the game I love the most. The one that’s back from the dead.

The thing that really was the cherry on top to the old MMO City of Heroes was the fact that you could write up a biography of your hero and other players would see it. It was totally optional, but if you wanted to say you’re a time-traveling hawk-man wielding Excalibur, teaming up with a sapient crash test dummy, you could do it. And after around four or five years into the game, they came up with the Mission Architect, where players could create their own adventures, and have other players run through them.

I actually never got super into the Mission Architect when the game was live, because it was a rabbit hole you could be inside forever. I was writing for Bioware, getting my kiddo through toilet training, and the other players were cranking out great content already. There was one arc where you battled the Phantom of the Opera in the sewers beneath the Paris opera house. Another had archvillains inspired by the major arcana of tarot cards. And of course there was the “Visit from the Fashion Police” adventure, where you fought the Fashion Victims gang, wearing the ugliest, most clashing clothes that the costume creator could possibly make.

My contribution was a humorous single-episode mission called “Economic Recovery Through Fisticuffs,” in which you find the perpetrators of the 2008 financial crisis as they escape on a cargo liner bound for Antigua, and punch them in the face. The minions had names like “Short Seller” (they were 4′ tall), “Economic Shock Doctor” (electricity powers), and bikini-clad socialites called “Somebody Else’s Wife,” because, in the words of a CIA agent I once met, “who sells out their country and jets off to an island with their OWN wife?”

Now that I’m revisiting the game (it came back in 2019), I decided to put in some time designing a story arc. I figured it’d be good for my game design skills, though honestly, it’s unlikely an employer would ever see it. While a core group of fans love the game, the chance that a particular dev has sought out the new version, downloaded it, has an appropriate-level character, and would play all the way through the 5-mission arc is ridiculously low. But it’s a fun challenge, and I’m happy to share the story.

The arc is called “Dr. Aeon and the Wrath of Achilles.” I created it because there’s a ton of players who make Greek and Roman superheroes now, and there’s a lot of good costume and powerset combos for them. And, of course, as readers of Mythkillers know, I’ve got an obsession with the Trojan War. So I thought a little time travel could be fun.

The players are summoned by Mender Lazarus, one of the guardians of the time stream, who says the balance of power in the player’s timeline is, was, or will be upset. Dr. Aeon, the chrononaut mad scientist for City of Heroes‘ premier villains, Arachnos, has broken into Paragon City University. There, he kidnapped a classics professor, and went back in time to the Bronze Age, to interfere in the course of the Trojan War. Why is he siding with the Trojans and assailing the Greeks with his high-tech weaponry? Therein lies the mystery.

What follows is a lot of fighting, because hey, it’s an MMO. You beat up everything from Trojan soldiers and Amazon princesses to a river god and super-soldiers with mechanical spider legs coming off their back like Doctor Octopus’s tentacles. I’m not actually allowed to post video from COH to YouTube, because you’re not allowed to make ad revenue on the game for legal reasons. But I will post some relatively-spoiler-free screenshots.

This is the university hallway for the first mission:

Enemies in the basement:

The second adventure has you rescue Greek heroes from Arachnos in the plain of the Troad:

And there’s more! I recreated Achilles’ rampage, with you as the star.

While I won’t reveal the end, I can show off the neatest part of the game, the character creator. There’s about six good power sets for the rank and file soldiers: single sword, single axe, single mace, archery, staff fighting with a two-handed spear, and double blades (either swords or axes). Only the single weapons can be used with a shield, or they can be left alone and paired with more supernatural powers, like flames, regeneration, or Achilles-style invulnerability. So while I can’t get a spear-and-shield combo, I can get a lot of others.

(Memnon, son of the Dawn, king of Aethiopia)

(Penthesilea, princess of the Amazons, with double labrys axes.)

Now I think I’ll get back to the prose writing, since I’m all burned out on Greeks for the moment. Take care, and let’s save the world this year!

August 23, 2019August 23, 2019

In Which I Come Back from Faraway Lands

Those of you just joining me may look at my last blog post and say, “Egads! It’s been three months since the last update! Where has Chris been?” And the answer, of course, lies in the text of the last update — I’ve been doing my day job, which has, like most hazardous gases, expanded to fill the size of its container.

The good news is, the job is pretty cool. When we last left our intrepid hero, I was Kickstarting Mythkillers. In short, Mythkillers is an urban fantasy that is sort of like if you took the ancient bloody-minded gods from Sandman and gave them to the goofy motherf***ers writing Guardians of the Galaxy.

We were successfully funded on Kickstarter, hit two stretch goals, and have been busily making the comics ever since. Since my last post on this blog, I added somewhere around 37 articles on the Seasun Comics news page, which explains a part of my conspicuous absence. If you’re looking to check out Mythkillers, we’re currently using Indiegogo’s InDemand as our online store. I posted a general FAQ for people new to the comic here.

But like any good act of magic, the reasons for my disappearing act here comes in threes.

The second reason I’ve been absent is more related to an old, long-held vice. From 2005 to 2012 or so, I played a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game called City of Heroes. The game shut down in 2012… officially. In May or so, it was revealed that a secret cabal of reverse engineers had actually managed to illegally keep the game’s source code and played it on a private server for the last six or seven years. And then they reopened it for public play, free of charge, with the game company tacitly agreeing not to prosecute anyone for literally saving Paragon City.

It is difficult for me to express how much I loved City of Heroes… okay, it’s not difficult, but most of you wouldn’t understand me if I said “I got the Isolator badge the hard way in Recluse’s Victory and Disruptor on my empathy defender.” I’ve toned my fanaticism down a bit this time around, but I can now play it with my son, who enjoys creating characters just as much or more than he actually likes playing the game. So the game is a factor as well — it sucks up time I would have spent writing.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t stuck with my plan to write short stories and sell them to try and finance a Civil Blood sequel. Far from it, in fact. The third thing I’ve been doing in the evenings rather than post updates to the blog is the actual writing of short stories. I finished two recently and sent them off to a writer’s workshop.

The first, “The 10:40 Appointment at the NYC Office of Superhero Registration,” humorously imagines what the superhero equivalent of the DMV is like. It highlights the down side of being a regenerating hero, which is that to register your superheroic abilities, you have to demonstrate them, i.e. get the mess beaten out of you by a big dude in power armor who doesn’t know what a safe word is.

The second story is from the Civil Blood universe and is, of course, much darker and more serious. It deals with Infinity returning to Los Angeles after the events of the novel and meeting up with Katie, the martial arts instructor who was like a mother to her. Infinity chooses to “come out” to Katie as a vampire, but she can’t go home again the way she’d like to. The story’s title, “Infection in Everything,” refers to the vampire virus VIHPS as well as a passage in Musashi’s famous martial arts manual The Book of Five Rings.

So hopefully, both these stories will see the light of day sometime. I suspect “The 10:40” will be an easier sell, since SF magazines perpetually say they’re starved for humorous content. I think it hits a good mix of slapstick and poignancy, and it’s high time someone wrote a story about the super-saturation point of comic book crime-fighters.

They do say, “write what you know,” right?