umbralreactor - Tumblr blog

umbralreactor · 3 months ago

Text

I'm gonna do some blorbo posting.

It's for City of Heroes. I will be prioritizing brevity over clarity for explaining any setting stuff. There's a wiki if you want details.

First up is Shannon Daniels, better known to the public as Doctor Mindclaw. Born as a catgirl to a regular family, unraveling what caused that was one of her goals as a scientist. Which, of course, was kind of rough because "orange catgirl in science" can be kind of rough. (At the time I made her, I did not know about "orange cats are mostly male" or "orange cats are generally considered dumb," but hey that all worked out!) She always had a temper issue, and a lifetime of that building up came to a head when she was trying to drown some sorrows about her work getting overlooked again and some pick-up artist asshole was doing lame "gonna make you purr, pretty kitty" shit. And when she angrily told him to fuck off, it had a little more force behind it than she thought it would and the guy dropped, brain dead before he hit the ground.

She spent a lot of the time from then through her arrest, trial, and incarceration kind of numb, because while she killed a man with an ability she didn't even know she had, she did still kill a man. Which lasted until Arachnos (basically "what if GI Joe's Cobra, but spiders") enacted Operation: DESTINY, which is the instigating event of City of Villains, which can crudely be summarized as "here's a list of people with potential Destiny Mojo, but we can't figure out exactly who, so we're just going to spring everybody and let 'em fight it out."

This was the first major time she had a chance to change her path. She could have just stayed in her cell, she could have kept her head down, but she made a break for it like everyone else and got swept up in all of the Arachnos stuff and being a villain. Because an important thing to remember about Shannon Daniels is that, when you get down to it, she is a terrible person. She just didn't really have the means or motive to act on it too much, but as she started accruing fear and respect for her deeds, she began to realize she liked it. Kicking in the door of a bank and having the security shout a warning, not that they were being robbed by a villain, but that it was Doctor Mindclaw? Oh, that was a rush she didn't want to admit to feeling.

Of course, while she willingly walked this path and spurned all of her chances to turn from it, she didn't go it alone.

This is Isabella Maranello, a mercenary who was similarly serving time. She wears power armor to swing that axe, and that axe is incredibly illegal to own because it was used by the alien invaders that attacked Earth a few years ago. (Don't worry about that part; it's not relevant to this cavalcade of criminal catgirls.) She used to be with an outfit, but when she went her own way, keeping her equipment was part of her severance package. Except without their lawyers to cover for her, she got pinched because of her incredibly illegal equipment and thrown in jail. She works with Doctor Mindclaw now as her right hand and bodyguard. She is also the co-leader of the gang. But two people is not a gang!

Every villain needs The Big Dumb Tough Henchman and The Less Dumb Skinny Henchman. That's where these two, Billy (top, real name: Wilma Schmidt) and Boresight (bottom, real name: Julia Goodman) come in. They were just a couple of dumb thugs, but Doctor Mindclaw knew she needed someone more experienced with street level crime when it was time to go knock over a bank, and these two happened to be the ones who answered the call. The reason they continue to stick around as her henchmen is because she actually listened to them, and treated them with respect, and didn't screw them over when the job was done. And that can be hard to find for a street level schmuck, so they decided to stick with this crew and see where things were going. These four were the core of operations for a while, but a new member was added to the crew once Doctor Mindclaw got some rep and recognition.

This is Aurelia Simmons, who operates under the villain name of Fulgur Gold. She stole a power suit originally intended for electrical plant operations that operates with a nanotic gold ion system. She's the descendant of refugees who fled the Rogue Isles back when they were the Etoile Isles, and even if she grew up in Paragon, she did hear a lot of stories about the whole "if you're strong enough you can take what you want" and decided she liked that, and also followed Doctor Mindclaw's career with great interest. When the chance to become a super in her own right presented itself, she seized it with both hands (the cute student studying abroad originally from the Rogue Isles may or may not have played a part in swaying her decision). Once she made her way to the Isles proper, she declared herself Doctor Mindclaw's sidekick. A title she is allowed to keep because she is powerful, competent, and loyal, and these are all things that Doctor Mindclaw values. Even if her "sidekick" is embarrassingly Online, which results in Doctor Mindclaw only understanding about 80% of what Fulgur Gold is saying. But Fulgur Gold had other reasons for declaring herself a sidekick to Doctor Mindclaw, and Doctor Mindclaw had other reasons to accept.

This is Umbral Reactor, one of the few non-catgirls I'll be talking about here. Doctor Mindclaw friggin' hates this guy, for reasons both professional and personal. The professional ones are rather simple: his powers are a pretty direct counter to hers. In mechanical terms, Doctor Mindclaw is a Psionic/Mental Manipulation Blaster, which means her job is "wreck things with Psionic-type damage." Umbral Reactor is a Defender, and his primary set is Dark Miasma, so one of his powers blunts Psionic damage, in addition to all of his "you do less damage now" debuffs. The personal reason is a bit more complicated, in that a cape must be earned, and villains earn theirs by raising hell in Paragon City until a hero shows up, and then you beat them down and take theirs. Umbral Reactor is the hero who showed up to stop her rampage, which went poorly for him. However, beaten as he was, he wasn't ready to give up just yet, and reached out to grab the nefarious villain and keep her from escaping! He was trying to grab her ankle or something, but unfortunately, all that was in reach was her tail. The look she gave him made his life flash before his eyes, and the stomping she gave him left him out of action for a while, but at least he survived. Doctor Mindclaw's direct and personal dislike of him specifically, combined with her infamously volatile temper, are why she is one of the few villains he's faced that scares the hell out of him. But Umbral Reactor himself is only part of why Doctor Mindclaw accepted Fulgur Gold as a sidekick.

This is Metaniono, real name Rebecca Simmons. (No relation to Aurelia Simmons.) She also has a fancy high tech suit, but hers is meant to manipulate time via speeding it up or slowing it down for rescue work. The problem is that the suit, officially known as the Kairos Suit, was not up to the task of saving people when Galaxy City got wrecked because of space monsters and super-scale clashes. In the timeline Umbral Reactor is originally from, Rebecca took the name Kairos and vowed to protect Paragon City in the name of her fallen professor, and became Umbral Reactor's sidekick. Who was, unknown to her, a friend of her professor in his old civilian guise. But Umbral Reactor was not available to help in this timeline, so her despair got the better of her, and she named herself the Greek word for "regret" and has taken a more proactive approach to crime fighting. Or at least, that's the Watsonian reason I swapped from time/beam defender to beam/time corruptor. The Doylist reason is because I wanted to be able to skip taking the power Single Shot, which at the time was mandatory for Defenders. It isn't now, but I'm not starting over.

And since I'm talking into the real world logic behind these characters, I figure I may as well get into the whats and whys on that one too.

Doctor Mindclaw was originally an idea I had well before I knew City of Villains was going to be a thing, with the working title "Angry Catgirl." The basic idea of being, well, an angry catgirl who was pissy because she isn't the bouncy nya-nya purr purr type was there, and I knew I wanted her to be psychic, but I wasn't sure how to do that exactly. I was initially looking at the Controller archetype, but that wasn't really grabbing me. And then City of Villains came out and introduced the Dominator archetype, with the primary set Mind Control and the secondary set Psionic Assault, and I knew I had found it. When I made her during the beta test, she was originally white instead of orange, but I changed the color because I wanted it to read clearly as fur, not skin. When Homecoming came out, I decided to reflavor several of my characters rather than recreate them straight, which is why she is now a Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation Blaster, which I think fits her character better. There is also making her as a Psionic/Willpower Sentinel, but at the time I made her, Sentinels were kind of wonky and not very good. This has changed, but as usual, I am not starting over, and it's not like being a glass cannon who hates things to death is a wrong interpretation.

Maranello was originally a design I was going to use in the "make your own mission" system, and she was going to be a Boss-level enemy (enemies come in "Minion, Lieutenant, Boss" for regular stuff, then Elite Boss for serious business, then Archvillain or Hero for heavy hitters). I liked her design enough to wind up repurposing it into an Axe/Invuln Brute.

Billy and Boresight were "minion" grade enemies, but again, I repurposed their designs for stuff. I wound up not using them as-is in the game, but I did recycle the Boresight design for "Longfang Goodman," the story being that she joined Arachnos because she went through the wrong door due to being colorblind. So now she has a mechanical backpack with integrated grenade launchers and laser cannons shaped like spider legs wired to her spine. Not how she would have chosen to play it, but eh, could be worse, and it gets a lot more respect than the gun did. I could have made her as an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster, but I wasn't really feeling it. There was eventually a couple of sets added, Arsenal Control and Arsenal Assault, so I could have made her an Arsenal/Arsenal Dominator who's good at hitting stuff, but I already had Longfang Goodman by then and didn't want to restart. I haven't done Billy yet, but if I do, I will make her as a Bane Spider so she'd trade in her shield for a cloaking device and upgrade her mace to some wacky techno-bullshit, but I'm still waffling on the build for her.

Fulgur Gold happened because I noticed that the Electrical Affinity set and the Electric Blast set were given some synergy with the Homecoming changes, so I wanted an elec/elec defender. She is a catgirl because I have a Bit now. It took me a while to figure out a name for her. Her working title was "Zappy Defender," and my initial name for her was "Goldbolt." That was taken, so after letting it stew for a while, I hit on Fulgur Gold. I don't remember why I decided to make her a villain or Doctor Mindclaw's sidekick, but I guess I was just thinking "hey I need a villain support type since I don't currently have one."

Umbral Reactor was from all the way back on Live. I created him because, at the time, I did not have a Defender, and I wanted at least one of each archetype. I chose Dark Miasma because it seemed the most interesting of the available sets at the time, and also because of the power Fearsome Stare. At launch, "fear" made enemies run away, which is something that has never been desirable and there's a reason that it's not part of the MMO Control Tool Kit anymore. Because this went beyond "useless" and into "actively counterproductive," it was changed to make enemies tremble in fear and not do anything, although they would counterattack if you hit them. But the duration and recharge were still based on when this was a niche power with situational uses, rather than something you'd want to spam, and as a result it was crazy overpowered. They later halved the duration and doubled the recharge, but that's beside the point. The reason I gave him the Radiation Blast secondary is because one of the Dev Types, I'm mostly sure Matt "Positron" Miller but that's beside the point moving on, said that the Radiation Blast's Neutrino Bolt had the best DPS of all the initial Defender blasts. So I worked from there to make what I have.

Kairos was something I put together during the beta that introduced the Time Manipulation and Beam Rifle sets, with the working title "Quantum Intern." The word Kairos was already taken by the time all that went live, so I called her Project Kairos instead. The Metaniono thing was a rework for Homecoming, due to already mentioned "not redoing straight" and "didn't want the first power" reasons, with a side of "I did not have the costume files." (I have since recovered them, and have used them to ensure the characters I have them for look right.)

So yeah, now I have done some infodumping about my catgirls and feel better. Hooray!

1 note · View note