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So, while poking about the Virtue wiki, I found a variety of interesting characters(and looked up a few Legendary ones), which led me to this question: what
would be some of your favorite "making of" stories for you characters?

For me, well, everyone knows the story about Silicon Sabre, aka Sylia. Saw the costume part, said "could we?" and the avalanche started.

Sell-Sword, however, was probably more interesting. His motivation is profit, pure and simple, and super-villainy just isn't profitable in his long run
analysis. However, this outlook is something of a mutation from his original concept. A friend and I were discussing DnD and he noted his great distaste for
the concept of Drizz't Du'orden, the first of many, many "good" Drow, which watered down the concept of such a well-designed evil
society/race to the point that more people think of "how can I make a good Drow" than "how can I make an interesting evil one?", thus
hammering the concept into the ground.

Proto-Sell-Sword was born of the desire to balance the two, essentially making him a Drow that was an upstanding member of his own race, but liked by good
characters....he plays the True Neutral card to the hilt, not being unnecessarily cruel or backstabbing because it'd aggravate potential customers/allies
that he could manipulate later. By contrast, he's a "good" Drow, but his actions aren't rooted in morality, but aggressive self-interest. He
plays the "good guy game" because playing that well keeps heroes off his back, not because he wouldn't appreciate torturing a defeated foe for
the heck of it.

However, the lack of a good DnD group to create the character for meant that the concept remained in my head for the foreseeable future, until I got into CoH.
The Drow mentality made Sell-Sword a former mercenary, with few moral scruples, and his pragmatism(and the game's salvage function) meant he became a
rather mercenary character even as a hero. He realizes he won't be a Lord Recluse or a Nemesis, and thus contents himself with living the good life off the
profits of "do-goodery", while his lack of moral fiber means he gets jobs from clients other heroes would soon spit in their face as touch(Crey, the
Family, the Tsoo). He works with Riot Force because it's an up and coming group whose loyalty to their membership will keep him safe if he pisses off the
wrong people(and, to be frank, he doesn't see it as "good and evil", so why not hang out with people he likes for his own reasons?). Betraying
them loses that, so he won't turn turncoat, but if he gets some money to turn a blind eye and not notify the group of something going down,
well...that's not technically violating his contract with Riot Force...they can't prove he knew about it ahead
of time.

Thus, you have the long and twisted mental track that led to the modern Sell-Sword. So what's your story?
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
Wide Receiver was a response to someone's Spur-of-the-moment Football SG on Virtue. I dashed off to chargen to roll one, but when I got out of Outbreak,
the inviter was gone, and I never encountered them again. I tooled around with him and left him in the Hollows, until HLW asked in channel for a Tank. From the
few runs in the Hollows and a few random story posts, Wide Evolved from "Me, Football Player!" to Orenthal Bronko Heisman, with his full backstory,
yadda yadda yadda.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Katy Kaboom is the evolved version of my attempt to recreate a non-CoX hero within the game -- specifically, Santa's Helper, a take-charge toy manufacturer
business tycoon by day, a costumed vigilante by night, using his specially modified toy army to defeat the forces of EEEEVIIILL! He was a favorite of mine in
the Palladium Heroes Unlimited setting, even if we had to house-rule a lot of stuff to make our ideas work. (As is
usual with Palladium, some great concepts, but lousy execution -- but I digress.)

Norman Augustus St. Clair could not come to Paragon City on his own -- for one thing, he'd have to be a mastermind, and he wasn't evil; for another,
he'd have to have given up his beloved hover-sleigh, and that's just not his style -- so instead, after a couple days of fiddling, I decided he'd
be in the backstory and made him Katy's grandfather. Katy grew into her own character from there; originally her concept was a tech hero (toys == tech)
using non-lethal methods (mind control == stun beams or something, storm summoning).

I really need to dust Katy off and get her rolling again. Heh.

-----\

Emerald Blast. I knew starting out that I wanted to create an empathy defender, but what secondary powerset? She was an Army medic, I knew that going in. I
wanted her to be slightly nuts. How to do that? Then it occurred to me that, hey, what if it was the *cat on her shoulder* that was the actual character?
Wouldn't that be cool?

... well, maybe, but not for her, as it turned out.

I fleshed out her character a bit during the early levels, but it wasn't until 15 or so that I really figured out what direction to take her. Some
Legendary members may recognize the retcon, here -- in early play, I figured Mr. Whiskers really WAS a cat, etc, and tried to play it that way. I distinctly
recall Stephnie Jenova having a discussion in cat-language with him at one point. Very strange. Anyway, it just didn't fit what I had in mind for her --
if he really WAS a cat, then she wasn't crazy. And I knew she was really truly crazy. So I scrapped the Mr. Whiskers Is Alive bit and finally figured out
her bio, which usually gets the point across. [Image: smile.gif]

But starting out? Yeah, she was just a healer type with a predilection for the color green and a orange cat on her shoulder. She's also the only
character I've ever created who has won a costume contest, and she didn't even enter it. So there's that, too. (I've played this up
in-character via her 'fashion tips' and whatnot to other characters -- after all, if random heroes come up,
compliment her costume, and hand her money, she's gotta be doing SOMETHING right. [Image: smile.gif])

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Mag was actually created to counterpart a friend of mine's elec/dev blaster, blip flahlight. said friend was lured away by CS, and now by Age of Conan, and
Mag's 50. Pooky is a re-tread, and was originally an archery/ta defender (wat?), until I read the Archery Codex on the official boards..

Roy was built to make money. I had no clue fire/kin could be so much FUN though, and I think Roy has as much time on the clock 'out and about' as he
does working in the Mask Fields...
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Gamma's probably my favorite, most likely because she's also the best developed. She started out as an experiment after Fren got pounded on by the
Shivans for the nth time in a row, and I didn't have a clue about her backstory until around level 10.

I got the idea when someone in the group teased the scrapper about being on a first name basis with the hospital staff. Things have just snowballed from there.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Syndesis is, for all intents and purposes, my first real CoH character.

And the story is...strange. I draw, you see. That's the background. I'm not a great artist, but I've always done sketches and so on.

Back in 1999, I was just beginning to get into anime. Until then, I'd done mostly funny cartoons, some superhero-type figures, so on. The whole manga style was new to me, and when I first tried to draw it...ugh. My attempts were awful.

Which is why I remember this one sketch.

There I was, randomly doodling, producing exceedingly poor manga-type figures alongside rather better depictions of cartoon animals (done to cheer myself up). Then I suddenly had this idea...and promptly filled the page with a full-body figure.

One straight shot with 2B pencil, no erasing. A way better anime-style sketch than anything else I'd done. I can do better stuff these days, but what I had there, that afternoon, was better than anything I'd done before. It was just right. I'd gotten the proportions and facial features down. I'd nailed it. It was a breakthrough, a real 'eureka' moment.

And it really was random sketching. I had no story for the character, no concept of who she was, nothing. I'd just added detail after detail, letting it flow naturally...until I ended up with this scruffy-haired girl with goggles, a skin-tight suit with stripes down the side, armoured gloves and chunky boots.

Smirking at me. Out of the page.

I sort of looked at this for a while, then scrawled a name at the bottom of the image: "Psycho Girl - Syndesis"

And that was because I'd been looking up obscure cell biology terms for class. I just liked the sound of the word.

It was clear to me then, just looking at the drawing and her grinning visage, that she had to be a crazy hyperkinetic villain, loud, brash, reckless, and highly, highly destructive. Ridiculously oversized boots aside, there was something about the design that screamed speed.

I liked the idea. I did. But I never found anything to use it for, and eventually the picture got put away in my great box of old sketchbooks, shoved under the bed, and forgotten about.

Until some five years later, in 2004.

That's when City of Heroes came out. I actually had to buy a new graphics card and upgrade my machine before I could play the game, but by damn I was going to. Because I'd been waiting for CoH from the first day I heard about it.

So I started playing. And hit a roadblock.

Obviously I made a whole bunch of experimental lowbie characters. Doesn't everyone? But after a week or so...I still hadn't found anything I really liked. Nothing...really clicked. I knew I was gonna RP, but either the personalities didn't fit, or I couldn't find the right powersets.

After dying one too many times as a blaster, I decided to give this scrapper thing a try.

That was all about flipping out and punching people, right? And soloing well. Sounded good.

But I needed a concept. I didn't have one. I moped about this a little, then turned, in desperation, to my old sketchbooks.

You can see where this is going.

I found the Syndesis drawing. And in that instant, it clicked. Again. For the second time, that one sketch has gave me an epiphany.

The visual look was something I could replicate in the costume creator. Hell, it'd be a damn sight better than any of my previous lame attempts at superhero costumes. And while I'd never spent much time fleshing her out as a character, anyone grinning like that had to have a madcap streak. As an RP persona, that would be fun. Devil-may-care attitude, and the sheer irreverance to crack jokes in the middle of combat...

Although...for whatever reason, I'd originally seen her as a villain. You couldn't do villains in City of Heroes (CoV didn't exist then, remember?). That was a problem. So what could I...

...no. Wait. The name. Syndesis. Didn't that sound an awful lot like that Freedom Phalanx NPC?

What was his name...Synapse?

At this point, my mind started to really race. Maybe 'Syndesis' was an ex-villain from his Rogues Gallery. I mean, hey, he's a speedster like the Flash, he HAS to have a Rogues Gallery, right? So a sort of evil female rival, who's somehow gone over to the other side and is working for the good guys now.

And Synapse is Science origin, right? So Syndesis must be too, which certainly fits the fact her name's a biology reference. So someone had to create her - a mad scientist mastermind type, obviously. So a speedster created by a mad scientist, because Syndesis has to be a speedster too. That fits with the motif and her sleek visual design. I'd wanted to try out the Super Speed travel power, anyway. And there was a punching set for scrappers, Dark Melee - including an attack with a massive machine-gun of punches. Perfect.

For a secondary, well...Super Reflexes seemed like it could work. But the biology-themed name seemed to suggest...Regeneration.

A character with hyper-fast movement should have an accelerated metabolism, right? Which meant she could heal fast too. Well, at least according to comic book science.

That was great. That was perfect. But why was she a hero?

Wait, what was all that stuff in the game's backstory, about some alien invasion? That whole Rikti War thing? Wasn't it the explanation why the city is in turmoil, but a new generation of heroes is emerging, yadda yadda yadda?

Logically, it can't have only been heroes who fought in the Rikti War. There must have been villains too. And it stands to reason that some supervillains who came out and fought the invaders would, in a post-War world, be given at least some amnesty for their crimes...

Perfect.

So that's the story behind Syndesis. That's why she's a wild and vaguely psychotic speedster, yet with a certain affiable charm. She gets along with heroes and villains equally, because, far as she's concerned, it's all the same thing really.

She claims it's just inertia that keeps her on the side of the law, and possibly Paragon City's better dental plan. Though, if pushed, she will admit to losing some sort of bet to Synapse at the post-Rikti War celebrations.

Alcohol was involved.

("Hey, 'sis, you should totally apply for a Hero License once all this is over. It'll be awesome, whadda ya say?" "...yer out of yer freakin' skull." "Oh, you're only saying that. Another round?" "...sure.")
-- Acyl
Quite a few of my characters are either references or homages to something. Some more subtle than others.

Eri Silverwing (the first character I really played seriously, and still my highest level one) started out with a very simple concept - she's
"Rachel's daughter".

I don't expect anyone to ever guess without being told that the "Rachel" in question is Rachel Shiori Guardian from the h-manga Ragnarock City.
(Which has the distinction of being one of the first things I ever bought at an anime convention.) I haven't been able to make up my mind as to whether
she's a dimension traveller or not... '.'

Anire is the character I made during the CoV beta. I sort of designed her to be opposite Eri in as many ways as possible. Name is "Erina" spelled
backwords. Eri uses dark energy to attack and weird shiny energy for defense. Anire uses weird shiny energy to attack and dark energy for defense. Oh, and
she's Eri's adopted sister. They actually get along pretty well - since almost everything around to fight at low levels is also some kind of villain, I
gave Anire the long-term goal of getting pretty much all the groups operating in the RI to destroy each other. (This same issue ends up making most of my
"villains" not-particularly-villainous.)

Now, at this point, almost all the faces in the costume creator I thought were really ugly, so I ended up using the "eyes closed" one because it was
the only one that *wasn't*. This lead to my decision that she could actually see without her eyes open (though not quite in the same way as ordinary
sight). And if she opens her eyes to look at someone, it generally means she really likes them. And I decided she sometimes really likes people for odd reasons
- things like writing news stories that say bad things about her. (That last based partly in how the "kidnapping" missions seemed more like rescues.)

Mirami started out purely from a costume design impulse - wanting to make something that looked like the school uniforms in Operation Sanctuary. The funny
thing is, the element that gave me the idea is usually something that *annoys* me designing costumes - that the bottom of shirts is a little ways above the top
of the skirt, so you get an annoying gap that for most of what I'm trying to do doesn't belong. But this actually allows making something that looks
more like the summer uniforms from OS. Later I remade her on a different server after giving her a backstory tying her with Alexis.

Shia Arisa Plenilune and Lovriel are both fundamentally inspired by snark. Specifically, the desire to poke at the attitudes towards farming and fire/kinetics
controllers. (Oh, and yes - they're a lot of fun.)

Lovriel is (as I think EML guessed) named after the character from the h-anime Devil Angel Jiburiru. Mostly because I wondered how many people would recognize
the name. That and because I wanted to use the line "Love-chan never did anything to you!" in her bio.

Shia Arisa Plenilune is probably the most reference-filled character I've ever made. Conceptually, she's a reyvateil. (From the game Ar tonelico:
Melody of Elemia, which you need to acquire and play if you didn't already know that. ^_- ) Her name is structured similarly to one of the characters from
that game, Misha Arsellic Lune. Shia is one of the main characters from Pita-Ten. (Who happens to share an apartment with one named Misha...) Arisa is after
Arisa Glennorth from Stellvia.

Hmmm... I think that's most of them that have interesting design stories. '.'

-Morgan.
A lot of my characters come out of the names.

Evangelia came from a goofy Evangelion fanfic -- one about an alternate world where Evangelion was a classic magical girls series. "Magical Princess Evangelia" was the name of the "series", and pretty much defined the earliest version of Eva on Virtue, who came out as sort of a cross between Minako Aino and an Evangelion.

Some Random Schmuck exists solely for the lulz I get reading the pedestrian comments: "They say the trolls are afraid of Some Random Schmuck." "I heard Some Random Schmuck took down a gang of Hellions." and so on.

X-Ray Ted is a one-joke hero whose name suggested everything in his design -- ex-porn star with radiation powers.

And that's just three from Vritue. I've got stuff like that all over.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.