Originally posted October 18, 2010
((Deciding to port Siobhan into Champions Online did not come easily. When a small group of friends decided to try and launch a super-group, I felt I needed a well established character with history. For many of the same reasons I started using her in CoH, I brought Shiv into CO. I could worry more about leading and less about the personality of a new toon. Granted, playing Shiv in her 40's provided a much different experience than playing a younger version.
This short bit was to kick off a SG event based around a new CO adventure pack release.))
The door led to nowhere. Were someone to look at the plans of the building, they would find this closet stuffed away in some corner of a sub-basement surrounded by the bedrock of Millennium City. Specifically, the door led to "null where," a pocket reality tucked into the folds between the real and the imagined, a mystical cleanroom isolated from the prime material plane.
The probability engine occupied much of that null-space. Powered by the forgotten possibilities of university students, the potential of first dates, a trapped spirit of chaos, and watched over by a willing agent of order; the engine predicted the un-predicable, laid odds on the impossible, cast an oracle for the un-seeable, darkened corners of the future.
Siobhan stepped out of the door, casting one glance back into the space before shutting the portal behind her. She secured the lock with an antique key before sliding the piece of brass back into her t-shirt. The archmage exhaled as she slid down a wall of the small closet. She fumbled a bit with her satchel, drawing out a bottle of water. The redhead unscrewed the top and took a long pull.
She remembered the first Demonflame incident. She and Conall watched and waited, ready to run if the forces arrayed against Luther Black failed. They would run. They had discussed it. There were plenty of worlds for them to start anew with their adopted raccoon girl and a wee bairn of their own. Then, they would have run.
The inevitably of Luther Black's return seemed un-questionable. That he would try again, so soon after his failure during the eclipse on Easter Island, puzzled Shiv. The move seemed hasty. Perhaps Easter Island had been a feint, an attempt to gauge superheoric response. Shiv had watched that time, safe in her fortress in Inverness. The Black Swan had already contacted her by then and she wanted to see for herself how the heroes she would work with could handle a major crisis.
Siobhan smiled as she took another pull. They handled themselves well enough to pull the witch from her tower and back into the fight.
Luther Black would have a plan. Shiv sighed at the thought. Forewarned by the Probability Engine, The Black Swan Project would need one, too. The bottle drained, Siobhan rose to her feet to prepare.
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