@Atlantea from Primarily Virtue server. (though a smattering of alts on Champion, Infinity, and Justice)
Mains: Cyberman 8 - Scrapper - Martial Arts/Super Reflexes/Fighting Pool/Body Mastery
Movement Powers: Superspeed and Superleap
Notes: Cyberman 8 - if you saw him, and had been around in the early 60s or new enough anime history to spot the reference was nearly a straight homage to 8-Man (or to use his American sobriquet - "Tobor The Eighth Man").
He was created almost entirely as a result of the Samurai Costume Set that became available for Veterens in 2006. The "hat" brim sparked an old old memory when I was looking at it on a round helmet, and I evolved the rest of the costume from there and reference to old pics of the show.
He became so much more than that homage though. Something in him resonated with me. I came up with a complete backstory that dovetailed with his original concept and brought it forward in to Paragon City.
I thought about what it would be like to be the "ghost in the machine". A human mind - NOT an AI - residing in a "positronic matrix". I rejected the whole cyberpunk "angst" thing so prevalent in shows like "Ghost in the Shell". Reasoning that this is
a 74 year old man who has gotten over any of that long ago. He's seen almost as much as Statesman. Including magic that reacts to him as a living being. He KNOWS he has a soul. He sees himself as human. If pressed, he'd concede he's using a "prosthetic body and brain".
I lavished concept details on how he worked. I created other costumes for him, but wore the original most often, and was surprised how many times someone would send me a tell complimenting me on the homage
and not report me! In fact just in the last hours before shutdown I received a final compliment along the lines of "Congrats on rocking the 8-Man look for so many years!"
Kara Skye - Controller - Gravity Control / Kinetics / Psionic Mastery and Leadership Pool
Movement Power: Flight (Wings)
Notes: Kara was made because of a friends character from a table-top RPG. The striking thing about how that other character was portrayed was that the player took pains to role-play the downsides of having a 15+foot wingspan as well the advantages. I made Kara's look initially attempting to always keep her back free of clothing that would restrict her wings (later I relaxed that a little bit).
I also took the "realism" a little further. Even with a 15+ wingspan, she shouldn't be able to fly aerodynamically. I came up with the idea of her using some form of TK or Gravity powers to negate her mass and/or directing "pulses" of TK force downwards with her wings.
About the same time, I was playing Mass Effect, and the whole idea of Biotics combined with all of the above intersected. Thus she became a Gravity/Kinetics Controller. Which went completely against my usual tendencies of making melee-based characters. I struggled a bit with her in the early levels, but about the time she hit the mid 20s... WOW.
And when color tinting of powers became available, I re-colored all of her power effects a deep blue - matching the biotic effects from Mass Effect.
And I always took pains to never use any environmental emote that would intersect her wings with a wall or the floor. That 15+ ft wingspan is still as much of an inconvenience as it is a blessing. YOU try stuffing yourself into a compact car with those! Or sit in a normal chair, or go to a movie theater. On the other hand - FLIGHT.
And if she hugged you, she did so with both her arms AND her wings. ^_^
Lily the Diamond - Brute - Super Strength / Willpower / Mu Mastery
Movement power: Superleap
Notes: Lily has the distinction of being the only character I ever took full circle through the alignment process. Started as villain, went hero. Last 3 months I tried doing as much hero side content as I could with her, while taking her vigilante, final week before shutdown I took her back to Villain, and on the very Last Day - Nov 30th - she earned her final Alignment badge and then I nudged her right past and into Rogue status. I never thought of her as a hardened Villain, just someone who refused to adhere to anyone's rules but her own.)
Sassinak - Blaster - Dual Pistols / Energy Manipulation / Electrical Mastery
Movement Power: Technically none (she got around via Ninja Run/leap and temp jet packs and Rocket Board)
Notes: NOT an homage to the character from the Anne McCaffrey novel of the same name. I just liked the name and decided to use it on a character. Sass was my first and main Praetorian. Started as a Responsibility Loyalist and wound up leaning toward helping the saner parts of the resistance (the Wardens) at the end of the 1-20 Praetorian arc. I had a LOT of fun RPing the whole "responsibility versus power" angle. And
mostly kept her consistent with a personal code of honor and service to others. I did allow her to do Mr. G's arc long enough to lay the smack-down on Reese.
And she let Vanessa Devore escape from Mother Mayhem. She never encountered Katie Hannon until First Ward though.
Lora Doubet - Scrapper - Martial Arts / Invulnerability
Movement Power: Superleap
Notes: My very first character in COH ever. I pretty much retired her about the same time that Cyberman 8 was getting my attention, partly because invulnerability for scrapper was so gimped at the time, and I was having more fun with Super reflexes, and partly because of the next character below...
Lora'lai - Kheldian Peacebringer - Luminous Blast / Luminous Aura
(Tri-form Peacebringer - Fully embracing the "shift to what's needed at the moment" versatility)
Movement: Kheldian Flight/Nova Flight/Dwarf Teleport
Notes: Lora'Lai was my first Kheldian, and I conceived her as the merging of Lora, above, with a Peacebringer. Some of my RP hooks I "borrowed" liberally from Jadzia Dax from DS9 in terms of young/old personality/experiences.
Others: Startracker Zero - Energy/Energy/Munitions Mastery
Kamen Rider Blade - Willpower/Dual Blades
The above two were vague homages to Samus Aran and the Kamen Rider series. But only in a general way. There is actually a "Kamen Rider Blade" character and show, but mine wasn't designed to directly reference that character or any other Kamen Rider character. Instead KR Blade was a general riff on the whole genre in terms of his costumes.
Neither Zero or KR Blade were meant as RP characters. They were utility characters mainly useful for helping other people accomplish stuff.
Then there some characters I made specifically as jokes.
There was
"Burning Sensation" the Fire/Fire scrapper who looked like a Power Puff girl in her teens and whose singing idol career was derailed by a trip to Paragon when she got in a series of events that gave her her powers. Her manager pulled an almost "Ascendant's Uncle Saul" level of goof in helping her choose her superhero name. Neither of them were native speakers of the English language, and "Burning Sensation" sounded cool to them (she's from Japan.) Slight cultural oversight there. And the spawn of an INCREDIBLE amount of puns and entendre from my Supergroup whenever I played her - to the point that she died more often because I WAS LAUGHING TOO HARD TO SEE!
[Team] Burning Sensation.: ((STAMINA! FULLY SLOTTED!!! YES!!!)
[Team] CAPTAIN ALTITIS: [Burning Sensation. IT keeps going and going and going...]
[Team] Gamma Emission: [the burning sensation will last forever]
[Team] Burning Sensation.: ((Damn your eyes, I'm getting high on the oxygen debt...))
I also made
"The Stig" from Top Gear. Who made many appearances at DJ Valor's show from The Cape Radio.
And there was
"Dr. Stephan Fayte" - who really was "just a gifted surgeon, and nothing more!"
(And I couldn't BELIEVE that name was actually available on Virtue server and that I thought of snagging it first! I had fun occasionally wandering into the "D" on that character and going around thanking all of the superheroes who had rescued "Me" in that radio mission in Peregrine Island.
)
Those are just the ones that pop to the forefront of my head at this hour after an emotional night and not enough sleep. Overall across the servers I had FIFTY (50) distinct and unique characters (not counting a few duplicates of Cyberman 8 and a couple of others like Lora'Lai rolled on different servers back before server transfers were available). Many of them were little more than a unique costume looking for a character hook before I could really play them. Some of them were created and then never played past level 5 or so.
