A story from a story

The title implies a bit of 'nesting', and you suppose correctly here. One thing that does bother me some about City of Heroes, is that once you've gone through their storylines, stepping through them again loses some of the sense of wonder and anticipation that accompanied the first time. The game loses a touch of it's mystique, and the game tends to repeat itself.

One way I've found to help myself with the sense of wonder is to look at the story arcs and try to modify them to fit a derivation of the story as is. For me this means mentally tweaking the clues and the information of the contacts, or finding a potential new connection between villain groups. Thus the story idea in the previous post, which in part was motivated by some in-game role-playing between StarWyng and Red Pulsarion. A good story as such branches readily, but you can always see the core, or trunk if you will, story supporting the branches.

Ideas for stories come from all over. In the above example, Red was slowly building to an explosion, and in the player's mind, Red was going to be transported to the rikti homeworld to detonate and cause as much damage as possible. StarWyng was appalled, and argued against the idea. Masonry, who in this discussion played a great Iago to StarWyng's Othello, suggested she go there and see the enemy truly for what they were.

To everyone's surprise Star did that, and came back with a nemesis stealth robot that had been acting as a block leader (think SS in the 1930's-40's, the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's-80's-90s' in Cambodia under Pol Pot, or Stalinist Russia ). A firefight ensued and Star noticed that the "leader" was steaming. A closer look revealed the truth of the matter, and she took the machine as evidence of what she found. Now Rusty Gears and Equilibria ("Kit" to her friends) are scrambling to develop a radiation suit to protect Red. SapphireKnight is starting to plan on running down something that is bothering him about the group that oversees Red's activities, the FBSA (Federal Bureau of Super-powered Affairs). The story has started growing on its own.

The upshot of everything is that you can breathe new life into the storylines with just a tweak of your own imagination and a willingness to look beyond exactly what is written. And the best part is if you have friends willing to go on the ride with you and share their imaginations. Thanks, guys.

Idea for Storyline

StarWyng had been observing the inhabitants for days, how they lived, their interactions with each other, with their leaders, and how their leaders treated the population. What she had seen upset her to her core. She had never seen the government of China brutalize its population during the cultural revolution, Berlin and the Nazi movement, or observed Cambodia under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. If she had, she would have recognized in the actions of the Rikti leaders, the kinship this government had with them. The constant exhortation to something, the large banners of leaders, and the police who did most of their work at night, taking one member of a family away or ripping a child from its family to be placed in a creche for proper stateist education.


What she did see was the fear of the people of their own kind. Fear of the visits in the dark, the iron hand. She decided to watch one the leaders more closely, and enhanced her stealth to allow for close observation. She chose one of the local leaders, and followed him back to his office to observe how he operated day-to-day. As she approached him, the leader surprised her by looking right at her, and then pulling a weapon and firing, hit her and disrupted her invisibility field. She suddenly became visible to the populace, a white winged creature out of thin air. The leader and his two bodyguards engaged StarWyng, and random shots sliced past her into the street and a coughing scream told her that someone had been hit.

Her instinct took over and she charged the three Rikti leaders, and in the close combat disabled the three in short order. As she stopped to catch her breath, she noticed that the leader was ... steaming? She ripped open his uniform and found metal underneath. She had seen nemesis stealth bots before, and could recognize them. Quickly she grabbed the machine and bolted into the air. She had proof that something was not what it seemed. She only hoped she shared the information with would come to that same conclusion .