This weekend marks the 15-year anniversary of the launching of the closed MMORPG, City of Heroes. We want to honor that anniversary with a newsletter that reveals more of the backstory for one of the signature heroes aboard the FHS Justice.
Meltdown is a half-human hero who was born on the planet Karschk to a human mother and a Vais father; the planet’s population is a 20-80 mix of humans and Vais.
“I never worry about nanites; they have an innate weakness to massive fireballs. Then again, so do most things…”
-Meltdown
In SoH, the bad guys don’t just react to the heroes, they react to each other. It’s a real, immersive, and engaging story. The enemy groups in SoH are all unique; there are no zombies or Nazis here. They look very different, they have different – and competing – goals, and they have different methods of achieving their goals. Their motives are different, and their powers are different. We’re constantly making small changes and additions to these factions to expand and improve the lore of SoH; we’ve defined four already, and you can expect more enemy groups in the future.
While superhero mages tend to fall into a few general categories, there are countless types of magic in the galaxy, including some odd outliers that are difficult to classify. A few theorists even claim that there are as many types of magic as there are mages, because no two mages’ spells are exactly alike. The Justice‘s meritocratic culture has meshed well with these various magical traditions over the centuries, spawning numerous organizations of mages ranging from groups of a few friends to massive institutions.
By the 23rd century, humans had burst out of their home system and were colonizing and exploring. The galaxy was a busy place – many species, many worlds, many technologies – and the incredible and inexplicable became almost routine. One thing that surprised no one was that we had entered a galaxy with hundreds, perhaps thousands of organizations that would, under various circumstances, act as military muscle for hire; mercenaries were everywhere. It did not take even one generation before human mercenary groups joined the fray, and human and mixed human/alien mercenary groups now regularly compete for contracts.