A place to call our own

Sometimes I think about the "good old days," which of course weren't all that good - but time has a tendency to soften the jagged edges ... well, at least the bleeding stops.
Back before I was transported to the Rogue Isles, I enjoyed the hospitality of The Zig along with numerous other shady characters who shared the misfortune of having run across the "heroes" of Paragon City.

I was kept in a section of The Zig designed to hold those inmates who's powers were mostly physical in nature, what they refer to as "Brutes", meaning that most of us could rip apart a car with our bare hands. During my imprisonment I had formed an alliance with two other Brutes, my fellow Mutant Crock who also came from a gangland background, and the technologically enhanced Stomparr who once was a part of the Crey Tank squads. The three of us stuck together, we respected each other and were very aware of the fact, that he who stands alone have no-one to watch his back, and that is the certain ticket to the morgue.

We stuck together during the jail break from The Zig and it soon became apparent that the jail break had been constructed as a trial - to see who were ruthless enough to secure a place on a flier and a ticket to freedom, when the opposition was hundreds of hardened, super-powered inmates who all had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Landing on Mercy Island, it was soon all to clear that that was only the first trial - now the weeding of the weak from the strong would begin in earnest.

The three of us swore to survive the meat grinder of Mercy Island and made our covenant right there - swearing allegiance to each other and to our successful rise to power.
We battled our way across the hellhole that is Mercy Island and eventually earned our passage to the next stage of the trial, the more civilized Port Oakes - "civilized" meaning that the gangs ran the show and when people were killed it was by design, and not just because some lunatic had been drinking the bio hazardous waste-water of Mercy and gone on a killing spree.

But civilized also meant new opportunities, computer interfaces, access to our old network of contacts who could supply us with the merchandise we needed ... for a cut of the profits, goes without saying. We undertook contracts from shady brokers, sold black market salvage, blueprints, technological spare parts and anything else we could find to finance our work.

Our breakthrough came when Stomparr managed to hack a Crey mainframe during a raid on a Crey station, and discovered a small underground base which could easily be overrun – the location and existence of which was subsequently burned from the Crey Network. A new home was found – a place to stage operations, to gather salvage, to rest and feel relatively secure.

We had to sink a considerable amount of our loot into making the station operational again, as the battle to rid it of its Crey personnel hadn't exactly been peaceful, but it was all worth it.
Maybe it wasn't good days, but they were good enough - and I still remember the feeling of satisfaction when I sat down after our new base had been overhauled and put into a servicable state again. Everything was clean, gleaming and new.
Sitting on the teleporter pad with the weird energies of the teleporter beam crackling behind me and our future in front of me. It felt like victory then and it still does.

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My favourite Nemesis

Ah the neverending demands of the Arachnos group - don't they realise that we have people to maul, riches to rob, plots to plan? Having failed to deliver on the vague promise that was given when I arrived at the Rogue Isles - that I would be a "Chosen One" and inducted into an elite echelon of Lord Recluse's organization - my need for them is on the vane. Granted, the Rogue Isles are an excellent haven for the activities of the Seventh Cabal, but really, there are many small regimes on the face of the Earth who would offer the same terms given the amount of cash we have to pay for the privillege of being here.

But I digress - every now and then we are called upon to do some manner of service for Arachnos - maybe it's some sort of prolonged test, but it reeks of plain manual labour. In my case, I have long since stopped answering to the lower ranks of Arachnos or taken any sort of orders from them. My point of contact these days are Black Scorpion himself, who is functioning as my Patron and ally. A loathsome business it has turned out to be, as Black Scorpion is a narrow-minded, paranoid, insecure little man who wouldn't be so tough without that stolen armour system of his. He strikes out at everyone and always defaults to brute force, even when it is abundantly clear that less is more.

But the other day he needed assistance - I had been unravelling a Nemesis operation for some weeks and it turned out that the Prussian Prince of Automatons was planning a major assault on Grandville and I had uncovered the evidence of this just in the nick of time. Lord Recluse had of course ordered his Lieutenants to deal with the situation - a wise move, since an invasion from Nemesis is hardly the thing you ask the rank and file to handle if you want to come out on top.
But Black Scorpion called for assistance - although I got the impression that it was more a matter of demonstrating to his rival Lieutenants that he had powerful allies of his own.

Having done all the investigative work myself - and pocketed some interesting Nemesis prototypes and parts that sold for a small fortune on the black market in the process - I didn't mind showing up for the final showdown.

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Nemesis, now THERE is an Arch-Villain I wouldn't mind working for. He obviously have the determination, the intellect, the resources and the know-how. He fields an army of disciplined and fiercely loyal soldiers alongside a horde of mechanical constructs, war-machines and replicas of himself - the so-called "Fake Nemesis". The latter are powerful automatons which displays a vast array of the powers Lord Nemesis is said to possess, and of course an enemy of the Prussian Prince never knows if he is facing an automaton or the real deal - it's genius.

The invasion was headed by a series of Mole Machines, the likes of which I haven't seen before anywhere in my frequent clashes with the forces of Nemesis - but I would very much like to lay my hands on the blueprints as I know of a couple of groups who would pay a king's ransom for those.
A huge landing force was pouring from the machines as I landed on the beaches of Grandville and I must say it was no easy fight - indeed it could have gone either way for a long while.
But of course, in the end I and the rest of the Arachnos forces prevailed against the forces of Nemesis.

But the sheer organization and attitude of the man - to attack Grandville itself, and from what I have seen during my prolonged investigation into the Nemesis Army, this wasn't even for real - it was just a fieldtest to see what would happen.

Hard not to speculate if Nemesis might have a need for freelancers ....

Stomparr lives!!!

Johnny Buzz has been doing a bit of poking around the Arachnos Surveilance Systems - it seems it is even bigger and more widespread than we initially thought, and also largely automated; Buzz thinks it's unlikely that there are any human operatives actually monitoring all this data, but suspects that OrbWeaver One may have constructed automatons to handle the information analysis.
At any rate, this means we can continue leaching small amounts of data without having to worry about direct human-controlled counter-measures ... which is a good thing, as these bases are expensive enough without having to shell out for replacements and repairs after a visit from an Arachnos Punishment Details a.k.a. The Pain Squad.

But back to the actual matter of interest: Last night Buzz came across a system that appears to be separated from the rest of the network, and which apparently contains surveillance from mobile units located in the mysterious Shadow Shard dimension. Good work too, as I know now that our old comrade-in-arms Stomparr isn't dead or entirely missing anymore - he is merely working for Arachnos in that strage and remote place, and from the looks of it, I would say he appears to have been attached to some of their elite recon forces.

Stomparr disappeared one night alongside Emergency, another high-ranking member of the Seventh Cabal, on what should have been a routine "aquisition mission" and we have never been able to find out what happened until now.
I'm guessing that the facility they broke into was a classified Arachnos Portal Facility and that they were caught - probably given the choice between joining the ranks of Arachnos or being terminated.
Can't blame ol' Stompy for choosing to live - and he is probably happier anyways, it never sat good with him that the Crey just abandoned him (the good old Crey this-must-be-a-rogue-employeee-we-disawow-all-knowledge routine) when he was caught and sent to The Zig. He always liked being part of their Tank division due to its strict military discipline and organization. It seems he is back in a military-style organization again - and probably loving every minute of it too.

Good for him.


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The Dark of the Year

The season of the Witch, or Halloween, is upon us yet again. Paragon City has declared a holiday of fun and tricks and merriment, and Lord Recluse in his attempt to appear as a benevolent ruler, has likewise declared that there will be merriment.

Not wanting to appear as disloyal inhabitants of this forge of violence and despair we call The Rogue Isles, my old gang-buddy Crock and I took to the streets - hauling a few of the new Cabal recruits along with us. But trick&treat takes on a whole new meaning when evil spirits, vampires, werewolves, witches and zombies lurk in every doorway - ready to assail the unwary pedestrian.

Unfortunately for them we were neither helpless nor unwary, and after having wiped the collected ichor of the so-called "elder races" from our metal-encased fists, we headed for St. Martial where contacts informed us that a giant monster in the shape of a Pumpkin Man was stalking the hillsides of The Hard Way district - surely this could be no coincidence?

We rounded up a few other villanious compadres and searched for the beast - an easy task as it was towering above St Martial and surrounded by a swirling sea of eerie spirits. I recognized him instantly from the Paragon Times articles about the Halloween Horror while I was enjoying the "hospitality" of The Zig - it was Eochai, the Pumpkin King!

Expecting that there might be a bounty for taking down such a threat to the Isles, and at the very least welcoming the prospect of violence and rending of flesh, we threw ourselves upon the strange monstrosity.
Need I say that even though eldritch magick might be strong and fine, it is no match for a relentless brute with superpowers and the very latest in cybernetic assault armour? Unfortunately his remains faded away - probably due to the magick being dispelled or some such thing - I was looking forward to adding it's head to our base trophy room; ah well - you can't have it all even when stealing with both arms and stepping on some poor sods face with your metallic hooves.

Once again Johnny Buzz has been able to access an Arachnos Security Feed for a still-picture of the event - always suspected it was smarter to employ that guy than to stomp him into the ground with the rest of his former Freak Show buddies when we busted their attempt to infiltrate the Cabal network.

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It seems like only yesterday ...

One of the Seventh Cabal's hired hands - a hacker called Johnny Buzz, who once ran with the Freak Shows - entered the Arachnos surveillance system on my behest. More specifically, he entered the system of Fort Darwin, looking for the first recorded image of my presence on the Rogue Isles.

It seems like it was only yesterday - arriving at Fort Darwin in an Arachnos Flier after a very successful escape from The Zig - not only did I manage to escape, but I managed to deal with one of my old enemies Skullkracker (yes you guessed it - there already WAS a Bonedaddy named "Skullcracker") on the way out. He should have known better than to revel in his newfound freedom from the maximum security cells and have kept an eye on his surroundings ....

Mercy Isle - what a strange name for a place that has such a short supply of it - yet another evidence to the evil humour of Lord Recluse.
I remember stepping outside of Fort Darwin after Fortunata Kalinda had tasked me to prove my value to Arachnos by taking out a renegade Arachnos agent - looking at the burned out buildings, the squalor, the human misery - and thinking I would fit right in.

And how right i was .....

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