Meet the Cast: Paralaxis

I wanted to write about a City of Heroes character. One of my many toons. I don't have a lot of them (25 of them at the time of this post) but would say I have more characters then maybe the average player. After giving some thought, I decided to go and do a post for each character I had. Now what I'd like to do is give some OOC (out of character) information, some IC (in character) information and maybe my inspiration behind each one. Something a little deeper then the 1025 character count in a characters bio will allow.

So today, I will start with my first hero I really got into.

Meet Paralaxis.

In character information:

Paralaxis is from an alternate dimension. According to Paralaxis, his world is not that much different then ours, except that in his there are no there are no super powered people. In the early 1920's the governments of Paralaxis's earth united to removed any and all super powered people. Then, in the 1980's, a race of unknown aliens attacked the planet in it's conquest of the galaxy. The nations of Earth fell one by one to the aliens' superior technology, and the alien race enslaved man-kind.

Paralaxis was a member of a small group of ex-soldiers, mercenaries and other men-at-arms to join forces to take back Earth for humans who called themselves the Vanguard. Paralxais worked as an inventor, using stolen tech taken from the aliens and creating weapons for the solders on the front lines. Not only strong in mind, Paralaxis proved to be a great solider, and soon commanded his own small strike force. Paralaxis would lead his troops from the front line and attack areas known to hold alien weapons caches.

It was on one such raid did Paralaxis meet the alien warlord, Mal'thor. In hopes of taking Mal'thor down and easing the alien's presence on Earth, Paralaxis fought the alien warlord in single combat in the skies. Seeing the destruction that the human strike force was doing to his troops, and his own condition his fight, Mal'thor opened a portal to another dimension in hopes of retreating and invading another world. But Paralaxis stopped Mal'thor, halting his plans and sending him crashing down to the wreckage of a burning building. In the process though, Paralaxis himself was thrown into the portal, crashing down in the middle of the Hallows.

Seeing humans flying, shooting lasers from their eyes and having green skin came as a shock. He quickly joined the ranks of a super group, know as the Hyperion Force under the leadership of Jon Flag. It is here that Paralaxis learned to be a hero, to accept and to love another and even himself.

While he does still hold a grudge on alien looking creatures, Paralaxis does his best not to attack on sight.

At least, not as often anyway.

Out of Character information:

Paralaxis was my second hero I made for City of Heroes when I first started playing. He started off as a pen and paper character from the game Mutants and Masterminds. His story in MnM was a bit different in that he wasn't from another time, and he relied more on gadgets. His drawback was that his energy blasts were always full powered and with no way to reduce the damage or radius of each blast.

I wanted to make a Batman type of character without really being Batman. When I started playing CoH I fell in love with how closely I could make Paralaxis from the pen and paper game come to life in CoH. Even how I saw his powers in my mind was replicated in the game. (I made this character before you could change the colors of powers) I created a energy and devices blaster and Paralaxis was born.

His name was taken from a club from another MMO, The Matrix Online. I didn't really know a lot about comics when I first started playing and the name just sounded like a hero name.

As for his look, well I had a friend sketch out Paralaxis from my pen and paper game and I based his outfit on that. Actually one of the first days of playing I won a costume contest with the outfit. The only thing that I've changed of the first outfit was adding the cape.

Funny fact: I call myself a costume designer in City of Heroes. I have well over 250 saved outfits for characters, most of them are not even characters I have currently. Just random ideas I save so when I make a new character, I have an idea for an outfit ready to go. But, I can not get a good follow up outfit for Paralaxis. Either it looks to armored, or to hero, or too steam-punk. I just can't get a good look for him.

Paralaxis was my first level 50 toon, and is one of only two of my characters that I have that are level 50. I spent a lot of time role-playing with him, making a lot of good memories with a lot of great friends. I haven't been able to replicate that experience in this game yes.

Lately, I've been putting a lot of thought into remaking Paralaxis into something that I can restart. Do a reboot to his story and find a good SG that will support him. I haven't played him seriously in a few years now, and I log into him only once in a blue moon.

But more on that later. For now, I will leave you with a taste of things to come.

What things may come...