TVTropes' "No Outbounds" page?  Okay, if there are no outbounds allowed now, how did it link to a page on my site?  I found this looking at the inbound links on my site stats.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://news.yahoo.com/security-experts- ... ector.html

Read carefully.

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

The spinner, a ridiculously technological analogue of the classic cardboard and plastic original, cycled through a spectrum so grim as to make even Mr. Poe smirk. The needle, a maser-compressed sliver of Drakkanite--whatever that was!--flashed by the circular arrangement of four concisely formed crystalline bubbles of exotic, electromagnetically fluoresced gasses to stop at the particularly moody damask gas. Van Loan’s voice, world-weary and desolate to the point of hilarity, sounded from within the super-over-engineered device : “ Left hand, Dead Rose.”
Five left hands, nails lacquered all of the penumbral shades of the loli-goth rainbow, scuttled listlessly for their assigned perches. The gordian goth knot of girls wavered ; Shego, who had been observing, the merest hint of a smile on her lips, lowered her sinister hand with gunfighter delicacy to hover an electron’s width over a beautifully self-explanatory button fashioned out of the miniature lightning storm of a plasma sphere.  “Shocker isn’t just to prevent me from getting into a game of legal Twister (tm) : it’s the game!” That gave the necessary impetus to finally begin the team soldering process.
Dies Irae, the eldest and by far the most gothic of the lot, cast a baleful glance at the sparking button ; snapped the stygian shackles of  self-absorption with her very first attempts at command.
“Umbra, stiffen your spine ; take the load!” The burly black frills in the midst of the tortured tangle looked surprised, affronted and grudgingly compliant all in about three millionths of a second.  Astounding thews were flexed, laughable seams were popped ; the House of Usherettes did not fall.  
Shego felt a sophisticated spate of sentiments : glee at finally awakening an Alpha Goth ; vexation at not being able to convey the conditioning amperage ; surprise that her tactics were actually paying off. During this moment of emotive tension, Irae continued, with a little more verve, to direct her goth gang.
“Pitchy, bring your left hand around behind Nocturne Raven’s posterior. Stygia, Nocturne...go to your happy places.”
The junior member of the nascent team, arched in the manner of an angry kitten, grumbled something unseemly in Japanese as she stretched her digits successfully towards the target colour on the game-mat. With this final effective body part placement the game-board lit-up with a brief victory peal that was an unholy combination of Close Encounters, Chopin’s Funeral March and the latest smash-hit of the all-catgirl pop-band, Sugar Rush. Stygia, the token vampire-goth, mumbled something inarticulate as her face was embedded within Nocturne Raven’s  considerable décolletage. Raven’s comment was a very audible, very put out : “ My moons! “ With solidity reestablished, Dies Irae made her first official leadership mistake.  
“Relax, Umbra, we’re fast.” The goth grrrl unclenched ; Shego’s emotional state simplified abruptly to relish.
“Don’t relax,” She depressed the electrically arcing button ; the structure of girls collapsed under the strain of a relatively mild electrical current. “until you know you’re clear. Clear?”
****
The montage was both impressive and asinine. Five depressingly attired monochromatic cuties worked with ever increasing efficiency and teamwork through a crazed routine of invasive-electrode party games. Van Loan, seated on his real-Nauga-hide couch, (It was like skinning Where the Wild Things Are!), an arm around Wandblume,  watched his girlfriend’s video compilation.
“Honey, you’ve created the most fearsome Dance Dance Commando unit ever assembled!” Indeed, on the giant wall screen in Van Loan’s den, the five members of Goth Action Freedom Force completed a flawless coordinated battle-ballet set at the fearsome Max-Dance-Maven setting. “They’ll own the party-game circuit, but that’s about it.” It really wasn’t a mistake until he rolled his eyes. She bopped him in the face with a tacky macramé throw-cushion bearing the slogan, ‘ "I didn't think; I experimented."— Anthony Burgess.’ “Would you prefer if they goose-stepped?”
Van Loan couldn’t help himself : he channelled his inner Dell Rusk. “Nein!” His German accent was muffled by the pillow.  “But vhat vill they be gut vor ?”
Wandblume,playing along, adopted a fairly decent Marlene Dietrich. “Mein liebchen (darling), the only volk (folk) that my girls are going to resent more than me by the end of their training will be the bastarde (bastards) eagerly awaiting their delivery.”  
Van Loan removed the cushion from his blue mug; threw his other arm around his girl. “What a beautiful Proof of Concept!” He kissed her enthusiastically ; received, from her, ample and energetic proof of the First law of thermodynamics.  
***
Togusa, well into her third tallboy, watched the unfolding couch-olympics with an air of familiarity that was almost not quite at all voyeuristic.  The conversation had been subtle enough that the tipsy, forlorn, and more than slightly horny Intelligence asset had missed Wandblume’s ‘Tora! Tora!Tora!’ moment. Togusa, also known as Jodie Starling, gave a weepy sigh  that covered, once again, any noise caused by the entrance of Batou. Rotating his faux cybernetic eye implants in his right hand as if they were Baoding balls, Batou’s actual eyes assessed the sad scene. He rested the large hand that wasn’t engaged in prop juggling companionably upon the shoulder of the very distracted girl. She startled slightly ; turned to look into the eyes that were in Batou’s head ; turned the waterworks on for real.
Batou found himself saying the usual, stolid nonsense as he cradled the hysterical Starling.
“That’s it : a good cry and we can get back to being...” She surged up and locked a desperate buss on his lips.
***Eleven hours later, Batou, sitting up in bed next to the snoring Starling, finally got to finish his statement : “...professional.” He snapped his eyepieces into place to hide the ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ expression.
***
“How interesting, Mikuru!” There was a slightly breathy quality to the voice.
There was no mistaking the elevated heart rate in the utterance of the other. “Yes, we may not be minions much longer, Yayoi!”

I really hope that there isn't already a group like this.
Initially formed by Japanese and American Fen who idolized the Super Sentai and Power Rangers franchises, the Super Sentai/Power Rangers sub-faction (they haven't agreed on an official name yet) was created in the post-Boskonian War era. Maintaining membership in both the Justice League Interplanetary and Crystal Millenium, they are seen as the clearest example of the diplomatic bond between the two "Superpowers" faction (pun not intended, but inescapable). Their most heavily promoted goal is to eventually create an actual Super Sentai/Power Rangers team, such as those seen in the two franchises. To this end, they focus on the creation of super-low-profile power armor, and have a heavy presence in the study of using biomods to create superpowers (when they can be dragged away from doing group poses, anyway). Creation of "morphers" to store the armor in a subspace pocket when not in use is a secondary objective. Storage and shipping companies are particularly interested in this secondary objective, which would allow them to drastically increase the amount of space they would have to work with.

Though I hope it isn't a farewell:
http://www.cohtitan.com/f...ex.php/topic,5058.0.html
by tim the enchater
most current version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cae81F4qTuE
to which I thought I could add by providing a shot we couldnt get without risking EULA breach:

Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

While looking up several wiki entries for my next chapters of "The Gas Station", I noticed that the Mimas wiki entry is a little bit empty...

########

The Saturn moon Mimas was discovered by the astronomer William Herschel in 1789. In 1980, nearly two centuries later, a huge crater with nearly ? diameter of the moon was spotted on the surface of Mimas. The Herschel Crater was instantly compared to the Death Star of Star Wars, whichs cinema premier had been just three years earlier.

This made the moon a natural destination for the Warsies.

While the Skywalker Spaceport, the first part of the city of Coruscant, was quickly established, the start of the Boskonian war delayed the plans of the Warsies for their new capital. Flights between the Inner System and Saturn became much more dangerous and most resources were directed to the war effort of the Fenspace Convention.

With the victory at Boskone Prime, long years of planning were finally put into action by the Galactic Republic. In Mid 2014 large groups of Engineers arrived at the Skywalker Spaceport to begin with the construction of a large dome.

Only six month later the first dome was finished and airtight, covering roughly 1% of the craters interior. The Galactic Republic could finally begin working on making Coruscant a proper city and the population of Mimas began to rise quickly.

Work on a complete dome for the Herschel Crater was voted down by the Republics Senate and delayed to 2022, until the Republic had the chance to ‘stored the necessary resources’. Most of these resources have been used for extending Coruscant itself, which will further delay the project.

=== Skywalker Spaceport ===

While Skywalker Spaceport started as a small military base to establish a presence on the Moon, it has been expanded multiple times since 2014. It is the busiest spaceport in the Saturn subsystem, handling all of the intersystem traffic between the growing Coruscant and the rest of Fenspace.

The spaceport houses two of the Galactic Republic's famous fighter squadron, Red squadron and Blue squadron. Together with the a substantial part of the Peacetime Fleet of the Republic, they keep themselves busy by making their neighborhood a safe place.

=== Trivia ===

* With nearly 150 square kilometers, the Coruscant Dome became one of the largest Domes in Fenspace in 2015.

 
First, let's us refresh what we know about Kalyn:

Open Character

Kalyn needs a writeup...

Of course we do have other data, like she is a warsie living in New Yavin and this:

[img]http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumimportfiles/4d0162740f50ab84fdfaf274bd689800120854a0_r.jpg?r=2">

Er... not much, I am afraid...

Kalyn Telana

History:

Kalyn was born Susan Williams in California. A shy girl, one of her fondest childhood memories is helping her grandfather build his model trains. As she reached her teens and became a bonafide geek, she applied those skills to the construction of miniatures and dioramas of all fandoms, though her favorite was always Star Wars.

She went to college in UCLA, were she studied graphical design and joined Michael Weston gaming group. She eventually got an internship job designing props and models for a studio, and began her career, when Michael proposed creating The Prank in space. Susan had followed the news in space with interest, but she had never dared anything beyond a few daydreams. For once she decided to take the plunge and live a little: Susan Williams left California, but it would be Kalyn Telana who started the design and construction of Kickassia; as one of the original builders, she joined the Hellfire Club as the Black Knight when it was created.

After Kickassia was completed, she joined the Galactic Republic, and put her skills in the design of the touristic part of New Yavin. While some state that the bright and modern set is colder than the older station, she always replies that you do not need to live in some cramped and rusted container to have “character”

In remembrance of her grandfather, at the end of the Bskone War she managed to convince Queen Serenity and Oscar Vykos to build a tourist train from Marduk to the Moon Kingdom Memorial, which would eventually grow to become the Translunar.

In late 2017 she used her share of the Translunar, gathered some Warsie investors, and began the construction of New Bespin, the biggest of the Jupiter gas stations.

Mundane abilities:

Kalyn has become an acceptable engineer since she reached fenspace, but her talent shines in decoration. With just some papier machê, plastic, modeling putty and handwavium she can take any working structure and turn it into the stuff of dreams. She was the one who designed all the interio decorations of Kickassia, changed the simple waved cars into luxury limousines, and turned simple containers in New Yavin into a space opera station.

Wave abilities:

None known, but with her exotic looks many suspect she has been biomoded.

Appearance:

Susan was a mousy girl with brown hair and shapeless clothing. Kalyn is a stunning, self assured woman with purple hair and who wears... well, not much. While some blame this change in a biomod, many of her friends simply think that she dropped all her insecurities after she found her place in fenspace. (and got a dye job)

Quirks:

None known, but given the people she hangs with, they will come soon even is she still lacks then

Trivia:

She got instant celebrity among warsies when she was the first to design something that looked like a working lightsaber. The secret was a normal metal sword, waved for hardness, and then covered in waved optic fiber, which fake the laser effect. Unlike a real lightsaber, though, they are always extended (the saber is still metal). Since then many Warsies have improved the design to have a collapsible blade, but so far have been unable to build a full length lightsaber that can collapse inside the hilt.

Kalyn does not have too much in details, but I actually do not have any real plans for her; this was done to fill the stub in the wiki a little. A couple of mentions here, like the Translunar trains and New Bespin, will have their own entries eventually.

Consistent Technology - 16/Sep/2012
She'd left the pub.  It'd served it's purpose.  And, quite a nice lunch too.  Mako preferred a beer with a bit more bite, but it wasn't bad.
A little trip via the kitchen waste bins proved useful.  She'd another 50kg of high quality organics.  But, she hadn't bothered to taste those, just do a quick analysis.  A quick check for observers in the car park, and a burst from an inhibitor into the surveillance system, which should give her 15secs to leave.
Her motorbike shape seemed best.  She had enough of a database of local models to make it seem credible.  For extra fun, she ran-up a humanoid remote, nearly 100% organic, to sit on the bike, in helmet and leathers.  It'd be fun to experience the ride through that.
Something was... wrong.  She seemed to be functioning OK, but...  Turning the problem over to her strategic analysis and prediction subsystems she rode on, carefully following the local traffic rules.  To her horror, it seemed like most of the vehicles around her were driven manually.  By organics.  How could that be safe?
The lack of safety was proved.  Just around a corner two vehicles had collided. A car was in a ditch, a motor bike was smashed-up, and there was its rider.  And there.  And there.  Messy.  Triage.  Deploy medical sensors on two dragonfly remotes.  Check.  She had the full field medical kit.
The car driver was unconscious, and had elevated alcohol levels.  Not in any immediate danger.  The motor cyclist was technically dead, by local standards, and had lost an arm, which had further lost the hand.
Easily stabilised, the med kit would quickly clone-up some blood, and her organic reserves were quite sufficient to feed it.  The arm would go back on pretty easily, a quick glue and weld, the hand was more messed-up, but looked repairable.  Mostly.  There'd be some nasty scars.
After a little thought she did an analysis of the accident pattern.  Some quick repairs to the bike, a little work on the car, a dose of memory fuzzing drug for the biker, it all looked like it'd fit together.  Neither vehicle had a black box recorder, so she didn't need to mess with those.  Time to call the emergency services.
It was police and ambulance time.  She explained how she'd come on the accident, and how initially it looked a lot worse than it was.  The biker's head injury matched the amount of blood to be found, and she'd salvaged the excess.  Looked like the car driver would be prosecuted.  The biker kept saying, "I thought I was dead", over and over, as they put him in the ambulance.
Mako waited.  No one turned-up to tell her off for interfering with 'destiny' - preventing a death was usually pretty good for raising red flags.  So, not that kind of world.  Maybe it was as Main Line as it looked.  She was slowly figuring out what was wrong - she'd been hacked.
All the check-sums were OK, so they'd done a pretty thorough job.  But, she had a partial record of the check-sums from her last update - thanks to her rider's paranoia.  Too much was different, and there were changes in unexpected areas. Rather than relying on her inorganic data banks, she ran some associative tests on her purely organic memory.  She'd been massively altered.
The Forge was only supposed to work on ceramet systems, it was a limited portable one, after all.  Most of the work took hours.  She'd been building drones, in at most minutes, and with lots of organics in them.  She'd repaired the bike, the car; both do-able, but it should have taken her a lot longer.
Mako recalled a briefing on the limits of technology - the only way to produce living brains was to grow them, which took months.  She'd been doing it without thinking, in minutes for a human-grade mammalian brain.  Impossible.
The weapons were wrong, too.  She didn't used to have a beamed inhibitor, just the grenades.  All the lethal options were locked-out.  The Forge also reported the inability to restore their lethality.  Was someone trying to tell her something?
At least she still had her swords, and knives.  The cross-bow and its bolts seemed OK, too.  So, powered deadly weapons were "against the rules".  She could work with that.
Her jump jets had been messed with, too.  She seemed to be another system wired-in.  She didn't recognise the technology, though all the interfaces seemed standard, and, the Forge said it was maintainable.  Some sort of flight system? That'd make getting around a lot easier.
More careful inspection of the Krem cell also proved interesting.  It wasn't.  A Krem cell, that is.  Something else, impersonating its characteristics.  Weird.
So, here she was.  Without consistent technology.  On a world she didn't recognise.  And no idea how she got here.  Great.
Cue puppet master and dancing mimes?  Or, was she going to be really lucky, and it'd be even weirder than that?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Because I don't see many of you in-game of late. Are you all exclusively playing Champions now? Or trying out other games? I've only seen a few of you (less than 5) online in CoH on any kind of regular basis. 

In regards to Champions, I posted all the info that I did about CO and making it easier to adapt to it not in the expectation that everyone would jump ship immediately, but that you'd be able to adapt when the time came with minimal headaches. 

I'd really rather see you guys still having fun in City of Heroes while we still can. I've gotten my VIP status restored, so I can run all the incarnate stuff, but I'd REALLY like to have all of you there. I'd like to team up on quite a few things really. 

I have friends from other groups in the City, but frankly I'm starting to feel slightly abandoned here. 

Come on back and let's run our favorite characters until they kick us out. THEN we can play Champions more, okay?

Split from: RFC for Tailed ones

H Roggie Wrote:In mid 2020 an unknown pirate group attacked Liberatrix. The Liberatrix Defense Force shot down many of the Pirates craft, the few ‘enter torpedos’ the asteroid was easily repulsed by the catgirls close to their docking point. Two days later an United Belt Alliance craft approached to advertise their new defense organization. But the catgirls were very agitated and not in a mood to discuss the topic and some of them had already asked for help from Jenga.

Rob Kelk][quote='Ace Dreamer']I don't understand the meaning of the few ‘enter torpedos’ the asteroid was".[/quote Wrote:I believe Starcrash called them "boarding torpedoes"...

H Roggie Wrote:Yes, "boarding torpedos" was the right word... already fixed it in my internal document.

Ace Dreamer Wrote:OK, so a small assault vehicle, with probably one to four troops onboard, small cross-section so it is more difficult to spot with sensors or target with weapons, and some (one shot?) method of penetrating any armour or hull so the troops can be inserted into the target.  All Freudian references to be avoided, of course. [grin]
Not the way most people would want to arrive at a tourist destination...
From the point of view of defenders, sound like a really good reason to invest in a force field rather than just depending on physical defences...

H Roggie]Some Fen might also call them drop pods", even if "dropping" on an object with nearly no gravity would be strange. I think of them as one shot (or at least "easy to replace") very fast and small transports... most likely with some good front armor. *G*[/quote Wrote:[quote='Ace Dreamer']I'd expect "drop pods" to be something for inserting troops into somewhere with a significant gravity well, and quite often an atmosphere.  For that you'd probably want heat shields, maybe a parachute, possibly fast decelleration tech just before landing.  No need for a means to penetrate defences, unless you are assaulting a bunker from orbit, and I really wouldn't recommend that.
So, I could argue rather different operational requirements.  Unless, maybe, you think your tech level is a lot better than the people you're attacking, so you can afford to use multi-role vehicles.

Star Ranger Wrote:its a matter of applications.
"The Boarding Torpedo is as much terror weapon as anything else; at least when it was initally introducded by the Boskones. Loaded with 4-6 of their ($$retrieve name) troops, these were used to litterally shoot bording troups into secondary boarding locations. This forced either the defenders to weaken their main defenses to deal with the new threat or leave highly cybered insane thionite addicts rampaging their rear areas. These troops were also considered highly expendable; after insertion they would be expected to link back up with the main force for extraction.
They were also often shot off as a nasty 'parting gift' vs harder targets; with the full expectation that their 'payload' would NOT be recovered, but simply create as much devestation as possible before their termination by either thionite withdrawal or actuall 'friendly' action"

H Rogge Wrote:I would guess that pirate/mercenary used "Boarding Torpedos" are a little bit better armored and can be used to leave the ship again... because they lack the "throw away" troops. *G*

Star Ranger Wrote:*nods* Or that if they are used it because the pirates are expecting to capture the ship and not NEED extraction. Your right that they wouln't consider any of their troops truely expendable. the DELIVERY platform, maybe. I think thats' where I was going with my vision for the boarding torps. they are ment to punch into the interior instead of forcing you to 'cut open' a lock or whatever. but maybe not so good for getting back home.

Ace Dreamer]It depends if anyone has a reliable enough way of mass-waving assault robots" (that you'd hope are sub-sentient). These aren't "throw-away", but they would likely be considered more expendable than human troops.[/quote Wrote:[quote='Rob Kelk']Yes... but waved assault robots can be risky in Fenspace... you never know if they do as told... or if they give you the ship afterwards.

Star Ranger4 Wrote:*nods* Or that if they are used it because the pirates are expecting to capture the ship and not NEED extraction. Your right that they wouln't consider any of their troops truely expendable. the DELIVERY platform, maybe. I think thats' where I was going with my vision for the boarding torps. they are ment to punch into the interior instead of forcing you to 'cut open' a lock or whatever. but maybe not so good for getting back home.

H Rogge Wrote:Yes, might be. Did not wanted to go into details for the story of the company. *G*

Dartz Wrote:I think the true horror of the Berserkers (or even just thionite doped troops) is the "This is what we do to you if you resist/fail/cheat me" aspect, rather than the fact that they're throwaway or expendable. That's what'll happen to you, or your family or your friends if you don't pay up your protection money, run from battle or just plain not do what you're told.
Terror, fear and horror are the Boskone's biggest weapons. And the 'comfy chair'