Okay, this will be a first for me. I'm on Titan Network not as a user today, but as a reporter. Never thought this would happen, but here we are. Know in advance, I'm not going to revise this. It is pure stream of consciousness, I'm not fact-checking a damn thing, and if I've made mistakes, as stated in your Internet's User Manual, you can rip them apart all you like free of repercussions.
What the hell am I talking about? Grab a drink.
It's been a week after we threw a party (not me, kids, WE. I had a plan, but if none of you showed up it would be a darker timeline and I'd be like Lex Luthor in Smallville). And I have been impressed with the followup afterwards. I've been in a few chat circles on Paragon Chat over the last week in both Atlas Park and Pocket D (sometimes with TheCape DJs as host) sharing "ZOMG" moments, remembering how the city got it's fame, through both genius as well as oversights, and how we feel now we were spoiled by our distant benefactors at Paragon Studios.
And I've been listening in on TheCape Radio's IRC channel where discussions about City of Heroes tapered off far more rapidly, but for understandable reasons. Past the obvious of course, as it's difficult to dwell on what might have been for too long. That wears us down if we fashion it into a hooded sweatshirt and depend on it for privacy whenever life feels unfair... (Just pull the cords. Instant safety.) TheCape Radio is a game-agnostic joint now and with the 4th of May approaching it's time to change the subject.
So imagine my surprise when I got a private chat from Warcabbit.
Now for some pretext, I am nobody worth knowing. I've never met anybody in Titan Network in person, in game when City of Heroes was live, nor was I any kind of a part of the shutdown events past participant. I've sent tells to TonyV during Atlas Park 33, and he was kindly enough to reply, but I don't expect him to know or remember me out of the 1,000s of people he's been talking to that fateful day. Same goes to the other people I shot tells to as well... Positron, Hitstreak, War Witch, eabrace (We both know we're from Triumph, but that's about it... If I teamed with him, it was as a PUG and I remember it as well as anytime I took my niece over to dance recital in the last three months. I'm sure it's the same with him although I could be wrong.)
Get to the point, Murphy. How does Warcabbit know me? A week before the event happened, I was in IRC and someone brings up the Anniversary Celebration on TheCape. I'm not sure of the exact conversation, as I'm not the type to save all of my chats. (Tinfoil belongs in the freezer, not my head. Plus, the sanctity of conversation in an ephemeral mode, same as any hallway talk you'd have with family, deserves some small hint of privacy.) And someone asks why I cancelled the Player Mission. I let them know, it's lack of volunteers. They asked how many were throwing it, and I said three, including myself which was true at the time (...a fourth person came along later after miscommunication on both sides.) Warcabbit was sitting in on the conversation, and tried to rally some troops, but Capesters acknowledged that it's too short of a notice along with unknown results. Something like this hasn't been done before, literally. Not from impossibility, but because Paragon Chat launched in June 2015. Last year's anniversary wasn't possible without asking people to go to another game to find a crowd to join. So nobody knew how it was going to be.
But Warcabbit kept in touch. He showed me his work on a new teaser to show on City of Titan's progress, and while I hoped it would be ready for the event real life got in the way and the video was finished a week later (I just learned of it an hour ago.
You can watch it here.) And it was in receiving this news that brings us to today.
So, once more, Warcabbit and I were on IRC, and he advises me when updating the Epilogue post, "Just don't post the bit where I did a your mom joke to Black Pebble. I did do that, I do not regret it." I was confused... partly because I forgot who Black Pebble was. And partly because I'm social media averse: I do not use Facebook, Twitter, or anything for that matter. Call me a luddite, but social media isn't living up to anything more to me than E-Mail was back in the 1990s: a source of daily chain letters and image macros, most of which I didn't find funny. So I left. And Warcabbit was referring to a joke on Twitter he told earlier, but I did not know that yet.
I calmly told my new friend, "I didn't hear or see it, so nothing to be afraid of." Warc comes back with "Oh, no, nothing to be afraid of oh hell!" ...again, our wires were crossed. He tells me to hold on.
Now I'm worried. Did I offend some sensibility that my admittedly weak social skills on the Internet afforded? Have I touched a nerve? Should I be making a tinfoil hat this very minute? My mind is full of all kinds of permutations of whats to come.
Impostor Syndrome takes a brief grasp: "Tahq, you're a nobody. You shouldn't even be here talking to him. Quit wasting his time, close the damn app and get on with life!" I tell my budding neurosis to can it, it's probably nonsense I'm reading too much into. I press on...
"You have evidence?"
"What, of him being my friend or the your mom joke? No, he told me something today I want permission to repeat."
My permission? Who the hell am I? He continues,
"I now have the full story of AP33. It all starts with a drunken fairy prince..."
And then it strikes me, this isn't a normal conversation. I mute TheCape Radio. I get the hell out of Paragon Chat. I kill all sorts of tabs of Gmail messages I'll never answer, a Storium tale I'm working on, and work messages about the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine with kicking all of that to the curb. But I'm taking too long.
A popup in Windows 10 appears, "He's not responsive."
Crap! Bring the window back! I type quickly "Ok."
Ok? What the hell is wrong with you? Talk back, damn it!
Warcabbit then
shared the link from Twitter. It came back to me that Black Pebble was Hosun Lee from Paragon Studios. In case Twitter is blocked for you for some reason (and yet you're able to read this, which means your worksite has lazy filtering) it goes something like this:
@warcabbitMWM: @ManyThingsDeck Thank you again for the Loregasm. (For those who don't know, @ManyThingsDeck is Matt Miller, who has taken on a Trading Card Game addiction we don't have the heart to cure him of. We wish him well.)
@hosunl: @warcabbitMWM, @ManyThingsDeck That's what she said.
@warcabbitMWM: @hosunl, @ManyThingsDeck Dude, that's your mom!
I tell Warc that I forgot who Black Pebble was briefly, and I found the exchange hilarious. (It works on multiple levels... I'm a Bill and Ted fan, I could see "Shut up, Ted!" as a possible reply from Black Pebble, but I digress.)
He replied "He's a good guy, but there's a good story. Can I share your part in AP33 with someone? Hosun Lee."
I'm not sure if he's talking to me or echoing another's posts, as if Hosun is part of the conversation. Before I reply, I see "Sure, doesn't matter now." I respond in kind "Sure."
And it began.
"So he said sure. Okay, ONCE upon a time, there was this protest. I was there, and you probably were too. I actually have screenshots. And we got up to AP35, maybe higher."
I replied, "Yup, the only time in my life I was on Freedom." A friend of mine talked me into doing an appearance there for a video shoot he did. (It wasn't the famous videographers, like SamuraiKo or Leandro... come to think of it, I don't remember if he ever finished the video.) But Warcabbit was right, I was also on Virtue with the mainstream protest, for I had a desktop AND a laptop on that day, both dialled in to Atlas Park.
"So, how did AP33 stay?"
Good question. Instances, especially from server strain, were supposed to eventually fade as the population dwindled so that lower population hours didn't have to pick from a plethora of zones with only 4 to 6 people each. This especially happened during shard maintenance, when the entire game was down. He continues.
"Well, there were occasional tricks you learned as you played the game. Like how to establish a red/blue coalition channel. Or how to defeat the autologout - pretty simple, start a task force, have everyone else quit. My buddy Tommy, whose character was one of those psychadelic fat dudes with fairy wings and a tutu, you know the type?"
Sure,
Man Faye, except in binary form. Go on.
"Also short." Short does help for faeries.
"Anyhow, he was pretty drunk, so he just started dancing around by the subway line at one point and passed out. He woke up, the game was still on, he was the only dude in 33, and it was the only high numbered one left. Not many people know that. But..."
That in of itself is amazing... Atlas Park 33 has taken on a kind of reverant tone with the City of Heroes community. This revelation definitely puts a spin on that. But it gets better, stay with me people!
"That's only half of the story. Because there was something that had to happen soon. The MAINTENANCE DOOM... Hosun just told me the rest of it. It was him. He'd mapmove to it after every maintenance to bring it back."
He shared with me a string of messages from Hosun Lee at that point.
So the reason AP33 stayed up even after server resets is because I kept spawning it whenever it went away.
True story
I just did a /mapmove to ap33 or whatever
to open it up
we didn't want it to die. 
- Hosun
I tell him, "Okay, I'm a little misty eyed. I'll be honest. That is awesome." And Warcabbit told me, "And now you know... the rest of the story. Share it."
And there you are. Make of it what you will.
