Roger's City of Heroes Characters

by Roger Bourke White Jr., Aug 06

The best part of COH: costume designing and character biographies

By far the best part of COH is what you do at the very beginning of playing: the costume designing. The costume design mechanism allows the player to make a lot of interesting costumes. The pictures here show some of what I have made. Along with a costume, you get to write up a "backgrounder" on your character. I've had great fun with this feature, too.

Here are characters I have designed in the on-line games City of Heroes and City of Villians.

Heroes

Villians

Scions of Paragon

These are my characters who have reached 50th level, the highest in the game. Congrats to them!

left to right:

Ion Doctor (radiation/electric), Cyreenik (confuser/healer), Herr Pie (healer/radiation), Zelta (fire blaster/device) and Sweet Summer Rayne (illusion/empathy)

Congratuations to the Infinity Five

My second wave of heroes to make 50 (May 2007), all on Infinity Server

Purple Pizzaz ................Wu Doggie .................. Yomomma ................... Fermiana ................. Glatu Seemee
Scrapper ................... Controller ...................... Scrapper .................. Blaster ........................... Defender
Katana/Regenation ..... Illusion/Empathy ........ Dark Energy/Reflexes ...... Lighting/Device ... Empathy/Dark Energy

Cyreenik

This was the first costume I generated. The easy way to use COH's costume generator is to sort of "go with the flow" of watching various costume choices flow by, until one comes up that strikes your fancy. This is how "Cyreenik", pictured here, was created. I started with an interesting looking random choice, then made a few changes to make it better. (In Cyreenik's case, the random choice came up with the blue-veined outfit, and to that I added the dark skin, bald head, polka dots to the face, the shoulder rings, belt and the antennae. I also made her very short.)

After a costume is assembled, you pick a name that seems appropriate to the costume, and you can add a short biography. The name "Cyreenik" just seemed to fit what I had created here.

Going with the flow is the easy way to use the COH costume designer, and it works well.

Cyreenik's Bio:

0100010100100111010101... [Oh, sorry. In English] I'm from the white noise world of Nassheera.

My turn-ons are switches, toggles and flip-flops. My turn-offs are flip-flop, toggles and switches

I'm told I'm 120 and 240, but frequency is what really counts.

Cyreenik's third costume has a black-and-gold theme and a circuit pattern on the black. Other than that, the changes are minimal.

	Herr Pie Herr Pie was another early design. In this case I took more control of the system. I knew I wanted "a suit", and I knew I wanted a very subdued look because I was going to role play him as a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant to Paragon City. Note that like Cyreenik he is a monochrome with a second color as accent. This is what the basic designer creates when you ask it for a random choice.
	Herr Pie's Bio: I just got off the boat from the Old Country. I'm here for The Dream, but before I can have it, I must deal with The Dream's Dark Side. I guess I first knew I was different when I looked people straight in the eye, like my father told me to do, and they screamed in pain.
	Occaisonally Herr Pie felt the need to get colorful. In his words, "When I'm missioning against Carnival of Evil-types, it's important that I blend in." For those occaisons he would wear this outifit.
	On June 25th, 2006, Herr Pie made 50th level. He was the first of my characters to "win" the game. In honor of that sent him back to Icon (the costume makers) to get a more relaxed style of costume. This is what he came up with.

	Zelta I designed Zelta with comic book beauty in mind, and I think she achieved that well. I was able to pick the face, add the blue eye shadow, and give her some lip gloss of a different color. The most amazing part is that the big mohawk works. I would not have predicted that. Once again, she is essentially a monochrome. To give you an idea what is easy and hard with the designer, finding the "metallic" top she is wearing was easy, but finding bare arms and bare feet to go with it was difficult.
	Zelta's Bio: I'm a powerful mage-warrior. I was teleported to this world unexpectedly. This is my second experience with being teleported unexpectedly to a strange world. Good girl... bad girl... I have the fire!
	Zelta's second costume. The impressive part of this costume is that Zelta looks good in bloomers! I couldn't believe it when I saw it. But the high leather boots set the bloomers off, and they harmonize well with the jacket. The other interesting thing is how well the pastel blue and pink color scheme works to create a soft look.
	For Zelta's third costume, I picked a back-to-nature theme. She is wearing a Roman Toga and her hair is leaves. In this picture she is 45th level, and about to start taking down Praetorian Arch-villians.

	Purple Pizzazz Purple Pizzazz... what can I say! He was another character, like Cyreenik, who just sprang into existence as I twiddled the Costume Designer. He's been a lot of fun to play.
	Purple Pizzazz's Bio: Recently returned from Altair 6, home of Dr. Morbius and the Krell Mind Enhancer, Purple Pizzazz found his intelligence permanently reduced by 100% after watching reality TV for two weeks.

El Badasso

El Badasso was a name I created in Asheron's Call, and moved to COH. He was created to play with characters my AC friends also moved from AC to COH.

The Basic Black outfit came out well, but it was in designing him that I began to notice what the Costume Designer can't do well: it can't create a preconceived idea well. If, for instance, I decide I want to do an old Chinese monk, the designer doesn't help me do that easily -- I have to work it hard, searching almost at random, to find the right costume pieces to produce what I have in mind. Often, I can't find the right pieces, so I have to abandon a "look". This happened to the name Wu Doggie -- I could never design a character who looked like a "Wu Doggie".

A related problem is that because the name is picked after the costume is designed, one often finds the name has already been picked. In my case, good costumes for the names Doc Feelgood, Jailbait and Morbius (of the movie Forbidden Planet) all ended up in the bit bucket because the names were already being used.

Alstore

Alstore was a serious attempt to design a costume. I wanted to make a costume that was good looking and used more than one or two colors. (Note that Cyreenik, Herr Pie, Zelta and Purple Pizzazz are all one or two color costumes.)

It took quite some time to assemble Alstore. The face, in particular, took time. The yellow and red antenna and the yellow face whiskers are all different choices, and Alstore is three colors... I couldn't get any more to work well together.

The name was, once again, spontaneous. When he was finished, he was "Alstore."

	Glatu Seemee Glatu Seemee started as a name. She came from the famous Mae West saying, "Is that a mouse in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?" I wanted the name, and I wanted the Egyptian headdress. What you see came from those beginning constraints. She is a good healer, so many teams are glad to see her at their side.
	Glatu Seemee's Bio: I am the demi-dieity of Courtesanship (in it's formal meaning). My worshippers have a cult: The Glatu Seemee. The cult greeting is, "Is that something in your pocket or are you Glatu Seemee?)
	This is the side of her that I see the most, so I wanted this view to be long-term pleasing.
	And when she's flying, this is what I see.
	Glatu Seemee has developed a couple of new looks, too. This first one is for cooler weather. She gets to wear a skirt, too.
	This one is back to her magic roots. The goal is something more exotic. In it, I've mixed ram's horn with her Egyptian headress.

	YoMomma YoMomma pushed the costume design envelope in a new direction: I wanted something uniquely hideous. So, I basically pushed all the controls in the direction opposite of beauty. And... this is the result. To my mind she's an overage, twenty dollar whore with absolutely no sense of taste. As one player who saw her put it, "Yomomma looks like she dressed after the lithium kicked in."
	YoMomma's Bio: YoMomma is the loins from which superheroes spring. She has decided that the only way to properly raise a superhero is to be one. Bad boys.. it's shudder time!
	Frankly, I expected to dump YoMomma before she got to third level (about two hours of play), as I have many of my odd experimental creations. But, to my amazement, she became rather popular as a teammate.
	Everyone agrees that she's been, "beaten with the ugly stick" But, when I have her shout out things like, "EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!" and "Have you done your homework!!" and "OK... you can fight evil until dinner time." she is seen by many players as matronly rather than hideous, and she is accepted as a fun team member. It took only three days (real time) to advance her to 12th level.
	Here Yomomma is taking on a Kronos Titan monster -- a rare monster found only after someone completes a specific mission in the Founder's Falls area. Helping to kill him gets a character a badge. Since the Kronos appears rarely, the badge is rare. On my team, only Yomomma and Herr Pie have one.
	This is her newest costume. When she advanced to 40th level (out of a possible 50), I figured it was time to give her some dignity. This is a handsome suit of insectoid armor.

Wu Doggie

Wu Doggie started as a name. It's a play on the common expression "Woo Doggy!!" as said often while computer gaming. After hearing it many times, the expression started sounding like an oriental name to me, and the Wu Doggie concept was born.

The hard part was an appropriate costume. After a lot of searching, I finally came up with a Wu Doggie costume, and here it is.

The bio, too, took some careful thought.

Wu Doggie Bio:

From the days when Beijing Duck was a Shaoulin Temple fighting technique comes Wu Doggie!

Love child of Librace and Yo Momma, he bites, he kicks, he scratches... and that's just getting him dressed in the morning!

Put your hands together for The Pill... I mean Pearl of Paragon...

WU DOGGIE!!

	Fermiana Fermiana is a pretty face with a powerful electical punch. I play her when I want to relax and not do much with role playing.
	Fermiana Bio: In their never-ending confrontation with the Hadrons and Mesons, the Fermions were going in circles. They needed something to give them a sense of direction. Fermiana is Princess of the Fermions, but she doesn't know it yet.
	Fermiana's travel skill is Super Jump. It gives her a different perspective on the world. So does this jeans-and-pullover outfit.

	Bad Bug Bad Bug is a spine melee character. At first I would have nothing to do with spines because they sounded like such a silly weapon. After I played for a while, I decided to give them a try because the sounds weren't too bad (some COH weapons have really terrible sounds) and they were a melee with a ranged weapon (the spines can shoot to medium distance) which is a rarity -- sword and martial arts melees have to get close to do any attacking. The challenge here was to come up with a character that didn't look silly covered with spines (as we see next). I created Bad Bug, Bad Bug is the Ant With Attitude.
	Bad Bug Bio: As Paragon's Heroes uncovered more and more "dirt" about Countess Crey, her reputation as a patron of science nosedived in the mainstream science community, and many respectable scientists shunned her support offers. This opened the door for more "innovative" scientists to gain her good graces and grant money. One of those innovators was my creator, a lady I heard referred to as Hanna Hardass. Hanna wanted to combine the versatility of humans with the total dedication of insects. I am one of the fruits of her labor. BUT I AIN'T HAPPY ABOUT IT! Meet Bad Bug, the Ant with Attitude.
	OObachacka Also out of the Bad Bug mold comes OObachacka. She is my first tank character. When designing her, I stumbled on to the phenominon that a brownish green color placed next to gray comes out looking gold-like. I had high hopes for her, but her social engineering has been only modestly successful.
	The name comes from a song chorus. OObachacka... oobachacka... Many players have figured this out, and they are delighted when they do.
	In-bred Jed In-bred Jed is a City of Villians Mastermind character. City of Villians is about the bad side of people. There are basically two kinds of bad people: the good-gone-bad people and the people who are bad through-and-through. I decided to start my experiments in villiany with a bad through-and-through type. I wanted something that looked bad, smelled bad... was primordally scarey... I hadn't seen anyone do a bad hill-billy in COV yet, so I decided I would start with that concept... and out came In-bred Jed. Not only does Jed look spooky, he talks "rightly strange, too." The costuming for this concept was hard. There's nothing really "country" available in the COH/COV costume set, so I had to settle for motorcycle leathers... as his first clothes he buys when he gets to the big city. I designed the face for a "wild-eyed-but-still-human" look.
	As a Mastermind villian type, Jed gets henchmen. I wanted his henchmen to look like "kin", so I chose thugs, rather than soldiers or robots, for his henchman type. Here you can see what "the clan" looks like. He tends to slap Jethro and Jaspar around a lot (the smaller boys), telling them things like, "You boys mind now!" ("Small" Johnson he just glares at.)
	In-bred Jed Bio: U ain't frum around here, r u? Shur, me'un me kin 'ur hatched... come from under the same rock, we did! We is family, and proud of it! So when u tred by us, u tred wif respec!

	Hanna Hardass Hanna Hardass is the good-person-gone-extreme kind of villian. She has a heart of gold, but she's obessed with strength and weakness, and she's taken the "ends justifies the means" philosophy to a ruthless extreme. I couldn't resist the small-girl-with-big-gun motif, which we see in the following pictures.
	Hanna Hardass Bio: This was Hanna's nickname at Marine Military Academy. She was the first woman cadet, and got in with a bruising legal battle. She left after a year saying, "This place is too soft." The administration "Tut, Tut"ed, but since she left as class valedictorian and with her three principle hazers spending the summer in the hospital, I tend to believe her. Hanna feels the world is going to hell in a handbasket unless each and everyone of us give 110% towards saving it. She has come to the Rogue Isles to begin her ministry.
	It has produced some interesting graphics.
	This was an another Hanna Hardass motif: the hard-kicking martial arts lady. She is active on a different server from "Big Gun" Hanna.
	Here she is meeting with a trainer on the Rogue Isles. Trainers give you levels once you have gained enough experience (xp).

	Ali Mo-nee In honor of the trying times we live in, I came up with this character: Ali Mo-nee. He's a terrorist in training. His costuming is a simple theme because he's a humble man -- shirt, lab coat, cap and beard. Ali Mo-nee Bio: The Mo-nee family comes from the Land of Sand and Oil where, Allah is merciful, their good fortune came in helping others account for their good fortune. Ali was a dutiful son, and the family married well. Sadly, Allah's Plan for Ali seems to have been inspired by Job, not Midas. In 2002 Ali praised Enron accounting as, "Inspired by Allah." Then in 2005 his wife left him, saying to her friends, "I left him because he wasn't man enough." Ali countered, "What? Not man enough? You have two sons by me, ex-wife!" To which she replied, "Umm... You haven't noticed that your two sons have red hair, and your best friend is a very likeable Irishman? No, I married you for your money, and your money is all I have taken from you." Ali is in the Rogue Isles studying for a career change.
	Long Dari Long Dari should have been a hero. I developed her to see if I could come up with a nice costume using the "blend" look.
	She came out looking well enough, but I learned an important lesson: don't make a good looking character using the stalker villian type. The stalkers have to be sneaky characters, so they spend 90% of their time invisible, and you never get to see them!
	Che Osama X Lee Che Osama X Lee was inspired by the 60's iconic poster of Che Guiverra. I decided to bundle a collection of "almost made it" revolutionaries who had great ideals, with a helping of Hong Kong-style martial arts (that would keep them from being "losers"). Out of this came Che Osama X Lee: Che for Che Guiverra, the '60's buddy of Fidel Castro who died being a revolutionary in Bolivia. Osama for Osama X for Malcom X, black radical contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr. who was assasinated. Lee for Bruce Lee, father of Hong Kong action movies. I would have added Trotsky, too, but I couldn't figure any way to get his name in... it's too long.
	Che is no loser, physically or mentally. He's a "brute" arch villian type, so he fights with his fists and he takes a lot of damage before he goes down. I also made him tower -- he's the tallest character I have built. Normally I don't build tall charaters because they are hard to see over and around during game play, but Che needed this presence. Che Osama X Lee Bio: I am the Revolutionary's Revolutionary I am the Terrorist's Terrorist I am the Radical's Radical Unlike those intellectual losers, I am also the Martial Artist's Martial Artist! Yea though I walk through the Valley of Death, I will fear no evil... or good, for that matter, 'cause I'm the meanest mofo in the valley!
	Sweet Summer Rayne It was time to start a clan on a new server. Getting the first character on a new server "leveled" (up to a high level quickly) is helpful because that character will then have "influence" (game money) to give other characters. Characters who work well in teams level the most quickly. Sweet Summer Rayne was designed to do that. She has a nice name, she looks good, and she can help other characters fight. The name was inspired by a scene in the movie Oh Brother, Where art thou? The costume by trying to come up with something attractive, but different from the school-girl, gymnast or hooker looks which are conventional ways to build a good looking character.
	Sweet Summer Rayne Bio: In the 1700's the first Rayne to America named Serpente Noire Parish. Tobacco and slaves were kind to the Rayne family, and it looked as if the governor's mansion would be named Rayne House when statehood came. But darkness lurks in the family. Madness spreads through Rayne women like Spanish Moss through one of the plantation Live Oaks. Summer is in Paragon to find the answer.
	My experiments in social engineering seem to be working. Sweet Summer Rayne has come along very well on Freedom server. In this picture she's 40th, and with a new costume. Behind her is her Phantasm and a Decoy. These are "pets" that help her fight.
	Here is a shot of Sweet Summer Rayne playing "wicked witch of the East." She died in the presence of "Grav Trollers" who fight by tossing large objects. These objects then clutter up a battlefield. She happened to fall under one such spent object, a refrigerator, I think.

	Cosmic Ray Cosmic Ray is a "server founder" like Sweet Summer Rayne. (they are, in fact, competing) Ray is a full-time healer, which seems to be just as popular as good looks in when it comes to getting on teams. Cosmic Ray is a name that has been kicking around among my gaming circle friends for a long time. It was fun to put a full character together to link up with the name.
	Cosmic Ray Bio: Hey, yeah... cosmic, man!! Like... we're all connected. Good... bad... live... dead... all connected!! I'm here to connect with you... and life... and... EVERYTHING!
	Eddy Current Eddy Current was another name too good not to use. The hard part was coming up with an electrical-engineer-next-door look and a suitable bio. Eddy current is electrical engineering jargon describing electrical forces, so Eddy's weapon is lightning bolts. After some thought, I came up with a brilliant bio idea! See for yourself... Eddy Current Bio: Hey, it's just Eddy. I come from an alternate dimension. One where mankind has discovered an alien space ship! But it's been abandoned... dead actually, for millions of years. We that live on Saturn's moon of Titan have been collecting bits and pieces of what we call HX technology... after the HX alien. I collected some bits and pieces, and made some neat lightning devices. This isn't something I can mess around with on Titan, so I'm here in Paragon to find out just what I can make from this HX stuff. If I get this right, I think I'll end up with a super pacemaker! (If you want to find out more about this HX world, check out the "technofiction section" at whiteworld. com/ technofiction.) This bio is based on my HX technology science fiction stories.
	Liberty Valence Liberty Valence was inspired by the 50's or 60's song (and movie), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Liberty Valence was the outlaw's outlaw in that song. My recreation of him in COV is a mastermind villian type, so he gets henchmen. Like In-bred Jed, I gave him thugs for henchmen. In Liberty's case they are named Jesse James, Frank James, Cole Younger, William Quantrill and Bob Anderson -- outlaw/terrorists from the Old West/Civil War era. His look came out... magnificent! Handlebar moustache, lean face, duster hat, ... tuxedo?? Yes, in the COV costume maker his coat is called a tuxedo. Liberty Valence Bio: Jimmy Stewart is a whiney Eastern City Slicker. John Wayne is a knee jerk liberal. Dirty Harry has the right idea, but he talks too much. Mao Tse-tung talks too much, too, but he says the right thing: "Law comes from the point of a gun." I don't talk much... but I have come to town. (and it won't do no good ta hide your womenfolk, either.)
	Good Time Charley Like Liberty Valence, Good Time Charley was inspired by a song. In fact, I use the song as his bio. Good Time Charley Bio: Everybody's going away, say they're moving to LA. There's not a soul I know around, everybody's leaving town. Some caught a freight, some caught a plane. Find the sunshine, leave the rain. They said this town's a waste of time. I guess they're right, it's wasting mine. Some gotta win, some gotta lose. Good Time Charley's got the blues. You know my heart keeps telling me. You're not a kid at 33. You play around, you lose your wife. You play too long, you lose your life. I got my pills to ease the pain. Can't find a thing to ease the rain. I'd love to try and settle down, but everybody's leaving town. (Danny O'Keefe, 1972) This is an example of how versatile this combination of character editor and biography can be.

	Newer members of my team include Asrok, here. He's my first experiment with a robot-style character. He came out pretty spooky!!
	More fun to play is my second robot creation: Windows RC 99. He is a villian Mastermind. His robot sidekicks are SP 1 and SP 2. (RC stands for Release Candidate, a technical term used by Microsoft in it's Windows development projects. SP stands for Service Pack, a collection of bug fixes released after the product becomes commercial.)
	Another new villian is Father Milktoast. He is a mastermind who summons zombies.
	And on the hero is a Father Milktoast who fights using the illusion power.
	Tipon, here, is an attempt at cooperative social engineering using a man instead of a woman.
	The surprise social engineer of one month was Urulu. It took some serious research, but I finally got a wide-eyed "waif" look out of the costume designer. It wasn't easy. The face is in the "mask" section under Matey (sailor) look, and I picked a very neutral colored open lab coat and tucked in pants. But the result is quite striking. Urulu has no trouble getting picked into teams.
	The name, Urulu, is the aboriginal name for Ayre's Rock in central Australia. Very few other players, perhaps none, have picked up on that.
	Once I discovered the "Urulu look", I started spreading it around. This is Ion Doctor. She has proved to be a very popular character on Virtue server, so she has advanced rapidly.

	... and Shillara. She wears a torn lab coat, and she is now chasing "The Devil who Stole her Prada!" (In her bio she explains that she got mugged in Atlas Park as she first came to Paragon City.)