Part 9: Independence Port - Circutron

So I'm sure you've all already seen them on your patrols or on your way to work. All the supers camped out in front of Atlas Plaza with picket signs and torches proclaiming the end of the world's coming at the end of the month. Hey, if the end's coming, what's all the protesting in the world going to do? If you're not going to do something about it, why not actually enjoy the time you have left?



Me? I don't know if our days are numbered, but at least I'm still keeping busy. My name's Circutron 3000, and I choose to spend my hobby time beating on superpowered Nazis, drug-addled green monster men, and rogue CIA paramilitaries while wearing a power suit I stripped off a dead guy during the Rikti Invasion. Things are quiet today. Figure that if the world really is ending, it might be good to stop while I have the chance and check up on some things I've never seen before. You know, some of the little nooks and crannies in Paragon City where superheroes don't usually tread that much anymore.

For example, the south side of Independence Port.




You don't see a lot of heroes pass by this part of IP these days. I don't usually stick too long around here myself, seeing as how I'm more useful elsewhere. Usually when I'm here, it's only for a couple minutes because I need to pass through.

With a lot of content now in game for Heroes ranging from 20 - 30 , and respecs now fairly easy to obtain in the game from the Veteran Rewards program or from the store (if you're on Beta), the southern portion of Independence Port has fallen a bit to the wayside. It's a shame, because there's a couple neat events and architecture in the zone that make it worth a visit at least once in the haul to 50.

It's a bit funny. I wasn't planning on this, but one of the things I wanted to see before I was through here came to visit me right off the bat.



Ladies and gentlemen, Lusca, the terror of Independence Port. It's been a while since I've seen this overgrown octopus face to face, and even with how far I've come, it wouldn't have been wise to tangle with it. It's been said that Lusca's taken dozens of missiles, bursts of energy, gouts of flames, and pulses of radiation right to the face, and yet he (she?) has still been around since... well, since I can remember.

Not counting the Winter Event's Snow Lords, Lusca is one of the first Giant Monsters players can come across on Hero-side in CoX. GMs were explained earlier in this post, but for a quick refresher, they're extremely dangerous and require more than even a full team of eight supers to defeat on average.

My destination laid elsewhere, however. I landed on a ruined bridge that had become strewn with trash and debris. The Tsoo, a criminal group made up of ninjas, annoying teleporting sorcerers, and their ancestral spirits, fought with the Family, Paragon City's last real bastion of Mafioso tradition, before me.



Unwilling to scour an entire bridge due to... laziness, truthfully, I pushed ahead and found a vantage point near the other end of the bridge. Blurred by the chemical fog that hung over it, the box of War Walls that held in a Trial Zone loomed before me.



Terra Volta was built in the 50s, shut down right before the Rikti Invasion, and reopened during the rebuilding process to power the numerous War Walls that keep Paragon City safe from any threat on the level of the Rikti.





It's largely automated now. Freakshow and Sky Rangers inside have pretty much run off everyone that's been willing to work here.

Of course, the majority of them have run off to somewhere more exciting, too. I've heard in the past heroes formed up in teams to protect the heart of the reactor from whatever was crazy enough to want to be at the epicenter of a nuclear meltdown. Not sure I would take the risk of doing that myself. Who knows what all that radiation can do to a person...



The Terra Volta trial used to be the only way characters could earn themselves power respecifications and create another build for their character. When Paragon Studios took over from Cryptic, though, they removed a lot of restrictions when it came to character builds. In addition to making it easier to respec, Paragon Studios eventually also allowed a character three build slots that could be switched out and in at one of the trainers throughout the city. I can't remember the last time I've seen someone broadcast that they're looking for people to do a Terra Volta trial.

So once I had my fun poking around the reactor and got a nice scrub-down in the security checkpoint between IP and Terra Volta, I got ready to fly back home, when all of a sudden I saw this massive green glow appear off in the distance.



A trawler disappeared off the coast of Paragon City in the 1930s. Apparently its crew weren't willing to make peace with their own deaths, so now we've got a Ghost Ship that makes its way across Independence Port and Talos Island every so often, depositing wailing spirits wherever it roams.



Of course, it's a spectral vessel, so nobody said it had to stay on land...



I hung around for a bit, punched ghosts until they died again, and then that was it for me. I'm thinking I might be doing this again soon. May be choosing something a bit more on my level, though...

Next post, we get up close and personal with Devouring Earth in Monster Island, Eden, and The Hive!