A character idea I had yesterday when brooding about creating more characters with history for CI.

############

»Life is too short to do it slowly!«
- Nina, 2020

»I cannot tell you about the data, its an OCP.«
- Nina about her personal computer.

Nina is a Catgirl who joined Catgirl Industries in 2016. The grey-black furred tabby cat is a common sight in CI’s small vehicle labs and was an important part in the Veritech Companion Drone project together with the Roughriders, which later lead to CI’s Space Drones and Space Exocomps.

Nina likes 'fast'... it doesn’t matter if its researching fast vehicles, working on fast vehicles or just flying fast. When not being busy with some vehicle, she can be found on the Exocomp riding track or on a random party she or another catgirl has organized. Her personal Exocomp ‘Dark Lightning’ is always well maintained and one of the fastest Exocomps known.

Nina does rarely talk about her past before joining Catgirl Industries and never when outsiders are present. While some Fen consider this a common wackiness, her friends know the real reason.

History

Russia

Nina Ustinyavna was born in the UdSSR in 1960 during the cold war. Her talents in mechanical and electrical engineering raised the attention of someone in the space program of the UdSSR, which allowed her to study aerospace engineering. But the chaos after the fall of the Warsaw Pact killed her dreams of working on a new generation of hardware, budget cuts and mismanagement downsized the Russian space program step by step until she lost her job early 2000.

Working in a company building traction engines for the next years, she got contacted by a Russian man in 2010 for a job interview. While the man didn’t wanted to disclose his origin, he promised her to work again in the space industry 'for the good of the Russian people'. As a test and to prove his interests, he gave Nina a set of basic plans for a reentry vehicle, asking her to solve a few problems with the heat shield system.

Nina quickly realized from the unrealistic specifications of the available materials that this wasn’t about the normal space industry she knew, but still started working on the problem with great enthusiasm. Three months later, after the man had paid her for a couple of suggestions on the heat shield, she was asked if she was interested to work on more of the same kind, not on Earth but in space itself. Nina agreed instantly.

Working for the bad guys

A week later Nina left Earth in a waved camping bus towards the asteroid belt. After being introduced to Handwavium and a few of the wonders it could supply, she quickly started to work.

Over the next year the slowly growing asteroid base became Nina’s home and 'mad science lab', where she helped with the construction of several waved transport vehicles and some preliminary designs for a space fighter. It didn’t took her long to recognize that her employees were not a ‘completely legal’ organization back in Russia, but she didn’t cared until things became darker.

Finding out that her new 'uplifted cat assistant' has originally been a human being became an eye-opener, just as the increasing stream of strange combat troops on the station. With people talking about a war outside and all visits to Earth canceled, she saw no real chance to get off the station and kept working.

In 2012 the 'management' of the station began openly talking about shutting her research down to concentrate their resources on fighting the Fen. This made Nina fear for her life the first time ever. When she heard that forces of the Fen were massing in the general area of her station, Nina decided to implement a crazy scheme to prevent being sent to the 'frontline'. She wrecked a part of stations computer and in the resulting chaos she ran herself through the catgirling machine in one of the labs and hid among a group of captive catgirls.

Two weeks later the station was liberated by Great Justice forces.

Notable Mundane Attributes:

• Its not rocket science... wait, it is! Former Hardtech Rocket Engineer.
  
• Multilingual. Speaks Russian, English and (since 2018) Japanese.
  
• Bad Memories. Feels uncomfortable being alone anywhere. Wakes up in the night from nightmares about her past, both before and after her 'escape'.
  
• Yes, thats sport. Enthusiastic Exocomp rider (all variants).
  

• Paranoia-Cat! Nina is part of the "Outrageous Contingency Plans" group, a small group of catgirls spending their free time brainstorming about big things that could go wrong and what to do about it.
  
• I am feeling old. While looking as young as all other catgirls out of the CGM, Nina sometimes fears that this only hides her true age.
  
• Where is my cat? She never learned what happened to her catgirl lab assistant which was ‘taken away’ months before the end of the war.
  
• Oh, I know this one. Has a good knowledge of Boskonian spaceship designs up to 2014.
  

Okay goons, so I herd you like Trekkies? Here's a framework, start hanging stuff off it. If I'm the only one who has Ideas about this I shall be very cross indeed.

I'm going through stuff and finding things that aren't likely to be used soon, if at all.  Some of them are amusing or revealing enough that I'd like to share them, so... have some fragments.

I'll add to this as I continue sorting and organizing my 800+ files of notes and random documents.

---------------------

"I call it Terrencium-239," Katy said proudly, eyes shining, as they watched another wave of deadly radiation blasts hammer at the unyielding surface of her latest creation.

"Terrencium?"  Eva raised an eyebrow, while next to her, Terrence Knight fidgeted uncomfortably.

"It's based off a theoretical model I developed after seeing the latest scans of Terr in action," Katy said.  "Two-three-nine is the revision number.  I'm really proud of this batch.  Two-three-eight was... explosive."

Eva and Terr both took a step back from the observation window.


---------------------

She had to finish the job.  Kill Leon McNichol.

The door slammed back open, and the gleaming form of MACH-II plowed through.  Behind him, the catgirl struggled to get through, spitting mad and trying to squeeze past his immense body, which stood blocking the doorway.

"THIS UNIT IS RESPONDING TO A DISTRESS BEACON!" it thundered.  "DO NOT INTERFERE."

"Override!" Naoko snapped.  "Authorize my voiceprint: 'Prometheus'.  Acknowledge!"

MACH cocked his head, staring at her -- almost thoughtfully, she would have said, if it hadn't been a Crey medic-bot.

"UNDERSTOOD," MACH said at last.


---------------------

"I really do appreciate your help, Sylia," Leon noted as Sylia dropped the bag into a drawer behind the counter.  "Perhaps I could take you to dinner tonight to express my thanks?"

Sylia shook her head, a small smile on her face.  "Thank you, but I'm afraid I already have plans."

"Well, tomorrow night, then."

A quiet throat-clearing got his attention.  He turned his head to see Priss leaning against the frame in the archway leading to the back of the store.  "She's with me, Leon," the singer noted good-naturedly.

Leon winced.  "Oh."

Sylia covered a laugh with her hand.

"Well, Nene said you were with someone," Leon noted as he tried to gather the tattered remnants of his suave image, "but she never told me who."

"Well, now you know."  Priss was grinning.

"I'll, ah, just be on my way, then," Leon said.

"Goodbye, Leon," Sylia said with amusement in her tone.

"Shoo!" Priss added.

Leon fled.




---------------------

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Just got this from the Titan forums: 

Quote:Posting this kind of buried in this thread on purpose, because while I do want it to be seen, I don't want it to be extremely widespread as it could cause a bit of chaos.
If you want your character to revisit some old memories before logging out (or being kicked off for some of us), here's how to get there.
NOTE: This is technically an exploit. It's mostly harmless in the grand scheme of things, though with some creativity you can get anywhere in the game with it, including lots of places you're not "supposed" to be. A few of us have been using it for a couple months to map out some of the "lost" zones, but if you're extremely paranoid, you've been warned.
You'll need to get Long Range Teleport, either with a respec or with an alternate build. If you only have one place to go, you can use a Wentworth's/Black Market Teleporter temp power instead. Base Teleporter does NOT work.
1. Activate Long Range Teleport. When the destination window pops up, do not click anything.
2. Copy and paste one of the following into your chat box and hit enter:
Paragon Dance Party
Code: [/url]
/enter_door_teleport LinkFrom_City_02_01 68
Old Faultline
Code: [url=][Select]
/enter_door_teleport LinkFrom_City_02_02 19
Rikti Crash Site
Code: [/url]
/enter_door_teleport LinkFrom_City_05_01 60
Galaxy City *(the real one, not the Echo)
Code: [url=][Select]
/enter_door_teleport NewPlayer 29
Outbreak
Code: [/url]
/enter_door_teleport NewPlayer 24
Breakout
Code: [url=][Select]
/enter_door_teleport NewPlayer 70
3. Party like it's 2004!

Since it came up in the X-Wing thread...

There seems to be some discontent that some of the factions and places aren't detailed as much as people might want them to be. There are two reasons for this: first, to allow room for writers to expand the setting; and second, because nobody (including the people displaying discontent - and that includes me) have come up with anything.

Do we want particular people to be responsible for shared elements of the setting, coming up with suggestions for the entire Collective to discuss? In the case of the Senshi, that's worked reasonably well with Cobalt and myself at the helm. In the case of the Browncoats, it wasn't necessary - we (mostly Mal) just tossed things into the pot until we got to the current level of detail.

If we do want people to be responsible for detailing factions and places, how do we figure out who gets the jobs? And what happens when people drift away from Fenspace? And how much detail should we expect one person to come up with, especially for something that isn't that person's particular corner of Fenspace? And how long do we want to give people to do this work, remembering that this is supposed to be a hobby? (How long has that list of stub pages been on my talk page, again? How long has it been since the last chapter of LoGG?)

If people like this idea anyway, I can put together a chart and post it somewhere on the FenWiki, then let folks "sign up" for the sections they want to address... but I'm not going to waste the effort if nobody else thinks this is a good idea.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Original thread here: 

Mind you - the original thread makes reference to website bios, which no longer exist. So I stripped out those references when pasting the meat of this article here. I've tested some of the basic formatting myself and confirmed that at least the Paragraph and line spacing works to make Paragraphs instead of wall-of-text bios that other people can read properly. 

Preface
This seems to be a relatively unknown feature of Champions Online: searching the forums provides very little useful information, most character bios are un-formatted or incorrectly formatted with normal line breaks, and I often see players lamenting the lack of formatting options. I wasn't even aware it was possible, either, until I got the idea to try a basic HTML tag (). Afterwards, I found a recent forum post by Lexeme that confirmed that other tags would work, so I decided to do some testing.

This post contains the results of that testing, along with examples of how to use this information. I will be updating this post with additional information on additional markup as (if) it is discovered. Hopefully this information will be useful for the creation of more readable character bios. 

How Formatting Works
The input box used to edit your character bio is a rudimentary text editor, similar to Notepad. It does no formatting of its own and shows every line break, space, and any HTML markup as it was typed. This is useful but misleading, because the bio is parsed as HTML in the in-game bio (via right clicking a player portrait and choosing "Info") which means they ignore the line breaks and spacing the player uses and sees in his or her bio entry area. The character bio has a limit of 2000 characters, and HTML formatting is included in the limit.

Valid Markup
All markup that was tested and verified to be valid in-game. Each is listed with example use and explanations of any unusual behaviour.

Paragraphs: Enclose paragraphs between a and
tag to keep blocks of text separated.
Example: First block of text goes here
Second block of text[/i]

Line Breaks: Use the
tag to force line breaks without the extra spacing that adds.
Example: Line one
Line two
line three

Bold and Italics: Text between and will be italicised, and text between and will be in bold. Underline does not work for some reason.
Example: Text emphasised with italics and text emphasised with bold

Color: Achieved using the tag with the "color" attribute. Color can be described as a valid HTML color name (reference: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp) or an RGB hex value (#FF00FF). Font tag ignores the size attribute.
Example: Text in magenta by name
Example: Same colour by RGB value

Unordered Lists (universal): Unordered lists is one of the most surprising features to work. An unordered list is enclosed in

• and
  

• First Item
  
• Second Item
  
• Third Item
  

Since this will only ever be seen from the Beta Server, and since many of you will never get a chance to see this, here is the ultimate fate of Antimatter.
Personally, among all the Praetorians, I found him the most sympathetic. He was truly a "Responsibility" Loyalist. And I'm glad my Loyalist Sassinak worked with him near the end of the original 1-20 Praetorian arcs.
I like to think that the following account would be related to the rest of the world by Metronome.
While your character is running the events of the final Praetorian arc and saving the "Last Bastion". A toehold in Praetoria against the Hamidon, Antimatter - after the events of the Keyes Reactor Trial, retreats and finds his ultimate fate protecting the people of Praetoria...





You fight through the tunnels of Underground Praetoria as Antimatter. (These are the same tunnels from the Underground Trial). All the while the suit is blaring warnings...  45% integrity... Boot jets non-funtional... comm with the satellite non-functional...
Keyes also laments the series of events that brought him here.
(I have a demo-recording of this entire sequence, but haven't replayed it to get the quotes. But even though he's kinda emo about it, he's still determined to get the job done.)
Then you find yourself in the same final underground area as the finale of the Underground Trial. And when you take down the Avatar of Hamidon, the next cutscene plays...

Information on times this event will be run and links for how to get to Beta here. 

Previews written by Arcanaville (Arcana on Titan)

Part One: The Immortal Game



"You're insane.  And coming from me, that's saying something."

The shadowy landscape, if you could call it that, made The Dream Doctor look even more mysterious, but Mender Silos had seen too much to be moved by such trivialities.  But he made a mental note of it anyway, as he always did.  Such theatricality could always be useful one day.  Assuming there would be more days.

"I Must Concur With The Mender, As Much As It Pains Me To Do So.  What You Propose Is Madness."

The voice of Prometheus sounded even more imposing than it normally was - no, not sounded.  It *felt* more imposing.  It didn't so much sound like it was coming from all directions, it sounded like it was always coming from the direction one focused on.  It was always coming *directly at you*.  Whether Prometheus intended to intimidate, this was one audience that would not be cowed.

"It is the only way." 

The Dream Doctor had proposed this meeting, and its location.  They were in Ouroboros, or at least a version of it.  This was actually the piece of Ouroboros that lay within Dreamspace, a place where few could navigate and even fewer could locate this nexus of time, space, and consciousness.  Prometheus would be able to meet here and Silos, The Doctor grudgingly conceded, would also have the means to find this place with only minor assistance.  If his plan were to have any chance to succeed, The Dream Doctor would need help, and unfortunately these two were the best suited.

That did not mean they would be the most cooperative.

"My Guidance Has Led The Incarnates To Defeat Cole, It Will Lead Them To Defeat The Coming Storm."

"Your 'guidance' has brought humanity to the brink of defeat.  I have seen this."

"How?"  Mender Silos, the man once known as Lord Nemesis, the Great Manipulator and Schemer, spoke a little too soon.  In the company of ordinary men, this would have gone unnoticed.

"So you know."  The Dream Doctor was no ordinary man.

"What Do You Believe You Know" Prometheus said, although it did not sound like a question.  It sounded like Prometheus almost challenged them to say something he could not dismiss as trivial.

The Dream Doctor ignored the implication.  "The Battalion has begun preparing for their arrival.  They have set the noose."

Prometheus glared, but did not speak.  Mender Silos sensed Prometheus did not understand, and could not resist lording knowledge over the ordinarily inscrutable being.  "I have tried to see what effect Cole's defeat has had upon the Coming Storm.  However, not even my abilities allow me to see more than a few months ahead in time."

The Dream Doctor continued "They are aware of you, Prometheus.  They are aware of your machinations.  They are not concerned about your attempts to put up any resistance.  They care only your interference could cost them their prize.  They have surrounded Primal Earth in all directions with a barrier."

"Not just in space, but in time as well," Silos added.

"In space, in time, across dimensions.  We are in the center of a bubble that traps us here.  And the bubble is shrinking.  The Battalion are herding us, ensuring we do not escape their grasp, so that all of the potential of the Wellspring is theirs to consume."

"It Matters Not.  The Incarnates Will Prevail, The Battalion Will Be Defeated, And All Will Return To The Path I Have Laid Out."

"No, it won't.  The defeat of Cole has weakened the Wellspring.  The energy he once commanded has been dissipated."

"It Will Be Returned To The Well."

"Eventually, but not soon enough.  When the Battalion arrives, the Incarnates will not have the strength to repel them."

"How do you know this?" Silos had already guessed, but he had to be sure.

"As I said, I have seen it."

"If We Are Corralled As You Claim, How Can You Have Seen Our Fate."

"The Battalion are conquerors, they are seekers and wielders of power, they are ravagers and consumers and destroyers" the Dream Doctor explained.  But they are not dreamers.  They have no power here.  At least not yet.  Dreamspace is still open to me, and through it I have seen the dreams of what is to come.  The Battalion come, and the Incarnates fight, but in the end they are swept away.  They fall heroically, but they fall nonetheless.  In every version of every possible timeline, they fall."

"You're still crazy."  Silos said, although it sounded less like he meant it, and more like he was trying to convince himself.

"We can still save our reality."

"By destroying it?"

"Again, I Must Concur With The Mender.  You Propose Destroying Us To Save Us."

The plan the Dream Doctor had proposed to them was so shocking that at first neither Prometheus nor Silos could comment, probably the first and last time such an event would ever occur in all the multiverse.  After Emperor Cole was defeated, The Dream Doctor set his mind upon a quandary.  Cole was no longer a champion of the Well.  His energy had been released back to the Well, where it could be tapped by the Incarnates who would attempt to defend his world.  But it nagged upon him: what if instead of standing and fighting Cole had tried to escape?  What if he had fled?  Could he have stolen that energy and taken it with him?  Perhaps the Wellspring would not allow him to do that.  But still it puzzled him.  The Wellspring did not control all incarnate power: it wasn't sentient in that respect.  It was a concentration of potential and consciousness, but it wasn't an individual entity in that sense.  It did not Dream.  What if all the Incarnates fled Primal Earth?  Would that deny their power to the Battalion?  Could that be a way to at least slow them down?  And why had none before our world tried that before?

And that's when he discovered it.  Only one such as he could truly find it, although a Mender such as Silos would eventually detect it indirectly.  The Barrier.  The Battalion ensured no amount of potential escaped their rampage by surrounding it, encasing it in an ever contracting container.  The human mind struggled to conceptualize what was happening.  There would be no escape.  Every trajectory would be blocked.  Except one.

Dreamspace was still free of the Battalion's touch.  Wells do not dream.  The Battalion, beings empowered by countless Wellsprings of potential, use their power to make thought into reality.  They hunger, they aspire, but they do not dream.  They were so far removed from what they once were they could not even conceive of dreaming.  And because of that, their power did not extend to Dreamspace.

And that's when The Dream Doctor conceived of The Plan.  The Battalion had done most of the work.  They had created a barrier from which all Incarnate potential could not escape out.  The Dream Doctor would take that, and convert it into a barrier of Dreaming.  It would be an impassable moat of Dreamspace through which nothing from the outside could enter without first entering Dreamspace.  And that was anathema to the Battalion.  His world would be saved.

The problem, of course, was the cost.

"Destroying is a strong word.  I propose ... transformation."

"As grass is transformed within a cow."

"Don't be crude Silos.  We will take the *potential* of the Well and use it to *actualize* our world within a protective shield."

"We'll be destroying reality and spitting it back out again."

"Do you have a better idea, Last Deceiver?"

Silos almost winced.  The Dream Doctor knew more of Lord Nemesis' future and Mender Silos' past than he let on, if he knew of that epithet and the circumstances surrounding it.  And in truth, Silos did not have a better plan.

"And how about you, 'Keeper' of the Flame?"  The Dream Doctor was playing all his cards now, for there would not be another hand to play.  He stressed the first word of that title, to prove he knew that which Prometheus had kept secret for so long.  The Dream Doctor spent months learning all he could about these two "men" and the task ahead.  He knew he could not really threaten either of them, but among such beings as they, knowledge was power.  He needed to prove he was willing to play this out to the end.

"Suppose we agree to this.  I assume you have a way to make it actually happen."

"I have the basics.  But I need two things, which is why you are here.  I will need someone with the ability to control Incarnate power.  That is why you are here, Prometheus."

"And as for me?"

"You, Silos, I wish I could do without.  But I need something only you can provide."

"And that is?"

The Dream Doctor smirked, and for the first time since the meeting began he looked right into the eyes of Silos.  "I need a Nemesis plot."

...

This song would have been useful for the Megatokyo step:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VnPyW9LwxY
Here's the lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arB2XQMru0g
It causes any robot or android to experience the full gaumt of emotions.  There is a good chance that would be a major distraction for any AI and it would probably stick.
Does anyone have any better ideas for the ongs?
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

The deep, incessant rumbling had been getting on her nerves for days, but Rhea forced a smile nonetheless as she drifted up the stairs towards the ledge in the golden dimension of Ouroborous where Mender Silos stood.  She didn't trust him, not at all --

(Smart move,) Whiskers concurred.

-- but he was pretty much their only source of information at this point.

With a loud crack, felt more than heard, another fragment of reality shifted and tumbled away.  Rhea -- and she assumed, everyone else -- felt the by-now-common yank deep within that had no physical aspect to it but somehow hurt all the same.  She winced and wobbled momentarily.

'Spacetime destructurization', the Portal Corp. scientists called it.  Also, 'forced dimensional disruption' and 'continuum closure'.  All phrases that basically meant they had no clue, but needed a convenient label.  They were frantically devising ways to counteract whatever it was, but nobody knew what was causing it in the first place or even how it was happening.  For that matter, nobody knew what exactly was happening -- they hung labels on it, but those were meaningless.  And the only people who seemed to be able to perceive it directly were those with powers, with gifts beyond those of normal men.

Which, Rhea reflected ruefully, certainly threw a wrench into the gadgeteers claims that they were just normal folks, it was their toys that were special.

The rumbling continued.

DJ Zero had been one of the first approached, of course -- not by the FBSA, or by Portal Corp., but by his guests, the people directly affected by... whatever was happening.  "It's an attack," he had told them sadly.  "One that even I can't protect against.  All I can promise is that the music will play and the drinks will flow for as long as I am able to keep Pocket D alive in this continuum."

(Don't forget, he offered to take you with when he's forced out,) Whiskers reminded her.

"Shush, fuzzbutt," Rhea whispered fondly.  "He'll be full as it is, we don't need to add to the crush."

(It's a pocket dimension, silly,) the cat pointed out, with a mental bump of his furry head against her cheek.  (He can take as many as he wants.)

Rhea nodded but let it go.  This... was her home.  If it -- what?  Vanished?  Imploded? -- she wasn't sure if she wanted to keep on going without it.

She reached the top of the stairs and stopped.  Mender Silos was there, staring out at the deceptively close horizon of the Ouroborous pocket dimension.  Even with his back turned to her, Rhea could see how tired he was.

"Any news?" she said softly.  He turned, already shaking his head.

"Nothing's changed," he said.  "I..." he trailed off, and cleared his throat.  "I estimate another few days at most before everything is... gone."

The soldier that Rhea had been trained to be stood up and took control, and so she didn't break down into tears.  "I understand," she said.  "Are you going to evacuate?"  How many people can you take with, she didn't add.

"Where to?" Silos replied, gesturing.  "The very timestream I'm here to protect is vanishing.  I know the stories about me, Rheabeth Samuels.  I know they say I can see everyone's past, present, and future all at once."  He nodded sadly.  "I will tell you something: what they say is true."  He leaned forward slightly.  "And I did not see this."

"So you've given up."

Rhea turned at the new voice and smiled at Terrence Knight as he finished the climb.

"This is not something you can punch until it goes away, Terrence," Silos said.  "Believe me, if I knew where to direct your reality-shattering fist, I would tell you."

"Lisa's helping at the hospital," Terrence said to Rhea, visibly ignoring Silos.  "I'm going to meet up with some of the crew in a few, see if we can't do something.  You should come with."  He scratched at his head.  "I guess Cyberman found this old portal-thing, buried down under the city and shielded somehow so nobody ever noticed it, and I guess Sylia and Lora and Valles and some of the others think maybe they can do... something... with it to stop whatever this is."

Another crack, another fragment gone.  Silos visibly twitched, Rhea let out an involuntary gasp, and Terr winced just a little.

"I know the place you speak of, Terrence," Silos said.  "It will not stop what is happening."

"Yeah?  I'll tell 'em you said that," Terrence replied.  "Won't be the first time we've proven you wrong."

Rhea laughed a little at that, despite her bleak mood, and settled on Terr's shoulder for the trek back downstairs.  Sure, she could fly, but this was more fun.

"You can't stop it," Silos repeated.  And then, more quietly, "But you might just be able to get yourselves out.  Good luck, heroes."










--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs