Canon Fodder/2009-07-10

What’s the deal with Malaise?

Primal Earth Malaise is a great example of our upcoming Going Rogue game feature. He walks the line between hero and villain and has been both at one time or another. Jean-Pierre Lourdin started out as a villain. His powerful psychic abilities twisted his sense of reality and caused him to perform selfish and evil acts. Sister Psyche was able to heal some of the damage to his mind and monitored him through a mind link during the time he was her sidekick. When Sister P was returned to the body of Shalice Tilman, her link with Jean-Pierre was broken. In the aftermath, Malaise returned to his villainous ways but after Ms. Liberty found him and defeated him in battle she offered him another chance to reform. The Vindicators are all about second chances and although many of Paragon’s heroes are keeping a close eye on him, Malaise has toed the line so far.

Much more will be revealed about the Praetorian Malaise in the Going Rogue expansion but for now I will say that Mother Mayhem encouraged his twisted tendencies instead of discouraging them. This resulted in a much darker path for Mother’s little helper.

How does the Fortunata Mind Link work, from a story perspective? Can they use it to telephatically communicate with each other?

Fortunata’s have a wide range of psychic abilities but they tend to be most powerful in the area of precognition. Their Mind Link is more like a psychic slide show than true telepathy, flashing future images into another mind.

In Arachnos, do the Arbiters (as a position) pre-date Recluse's rise to power? If so, do they consider themselves truly answerable to him (as their duty is to serve Arachnos itself). I mean sure they do as matter of course, but if they felt he was a threat to Arachnos itself...

Although the position of Arbiter existed before the current regime, the Arbiters were empowered by Lord Recluse to prevent the day to day disputes that are inevitable in an organization like Arachnos from becoming completely counterproductive. Lord Recluse and the Arbiters have a symbiotic relationship. They know that their untouchable status is in large part provided by the threat of Lord Recluse. On the other hand, the Arbiters strengthen Recluse’s position by mitigating internal threats. No one in Arachnos would casually choose to oppose Lord Recluse, and indeed he has never given them reason, but if the Arbiters united against him it would certainly be a conflict that would shake the Rogue Isles to their foundation.

How successful were the twenty-six* other Rikti invasion fleets compared to the Paragon City Fleet, and could you name a few locations the Rikti invaded besides Paragon City?

The other Rikti invasion fleets were causing massive damage and loss of life before Dr. Science’s plan (and Omega Team’s sacrifice) caused a full scale retreat. The destruction of the U.N. buildings in New York and Geneva were only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the other fleets activities. Rome, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, Mexico City, Tokyo, Cairo and Sao Paulo were other Rikti targets.

Do Rikti have "families" in the same sense that humans do?

Although many Rikti customs are based on their human ancestry, few of them exactly mirror our own due to their radically different path. However the Rikti definitely have concepts of love, friendship, and family even if they aren’t exactly the same as ours.