I have managed to rebuild my leg servos and power units. I can now jump over buildings in a single bound.
Its a little tricky to get the hang of as it requires me to store the energy I need to jump in some capacitors to build up the power before releasing it all at once. If I didn't I would either have a stride length of about 50 feet or I might overload my fusion reactor. Either way is not good.
Means snow!
Though quite how the snow falls indoors I have never worked out. It does make the old place look slightly less desolate and decrepit. It also is very good for absorbing blood.
It seems to be that the residents of our fair city are getting in the xmas spirit as well. It definitely seems like there is less fighting going on in the last couple of days. Perhaps we will all join hands and sing carols next.
Everytime I visit Toxia I see people just hanging around. Unresponsive, dumb like a post. If you just want to hang around at least say hi.
Over the last few days there has been a new vampire in Toxia who has been picking fights with everyone.
Her first move is to feed on the person she attacks in oder to gain some instant advantage. This really annoys the person she attacks as it goes way beyond "sparring". So the chances are they kill her.
She managed to get me when the lag was bad though and I could barely move so it was really good to see Neon kill her in about 5 seconds without her landing a blow on him. How on earth did she think a level 1 vampire with 0 XP was going to beat a level 10 cybernetic with all the weapons in toxia at its disposal?
I guess she will have to learn to behave politely or get banned in the long run.
Several times when I have been wandering in the city I have encountered people with religious views. Not always the sort of people you would expect such as demons and angels who are sort of religious by definition.
I keep getting asked if I have a soul. Well I was born not made so if I believe in the more or less standard definitions of what a soul is I should have one. I haven't really ever concerned myself with religion before or after my accident. One demon did tell me that I had a soul and it tasted "metallic" so I guess thats a fair degree of proof.
Religion seems to be on the rise though. Perhaps it isn't surprising when you live in such a terrible place as Toxia... any slight hope of something better will be enough for some people.
Especially when I have a flamethrower on my back and a Mac10 in my hand. Sorry about the friendly fire Gomi but that flamethrower is a bit indescriminate to say the least.
Apparently I behaved with honour... I was just looking after myself and my family the same as I always do.
The other night I was in the Haven. There was a bunch of humans in there and we fell into a debate as to whether I have a soul. I responded that I was born and then modified rather than made in a factory or lab. They didn't seem to distinguish between a cyborg and a cybernetic though.
Eventually I feel back on Descartes "I think therefore I am" as my only line of defense.
I really should have remembered that some demon once told me my soul tastes "metallic". I guess that would have been proof enough. I did mention that I had heard a theory that we are all just elements of a computer simulation though for some reason they found this very funny.
As an aside is it me or are humans and nekos becoming rare in Toxia?
It was a bit wierd being back home in Toxia at first. There were a lot of people I didn't recognise and I got several comment along the lines of "check out the new cybernetic".
The Halloween ghosts are cool though I don't quite see what you are meant to do with them. Its good how they were filling in on the backstory too.
The big news is that inspired by Gomi Graves I am going to try to stay in character as much as possible. I guess chatting about weapons sort of counts but thats it... Perkin does not have a life outside of Toxia. The city is about Role Play after all.
So by extension this blog will be in character too from now on unless I really really want to moan about something like I did with the spawn camping.
I think toxia could make a good living from the tourist industry. People would love to come to see weird looking avatars role playing and fighting.
I think some people already do this sort of thing. You sometimes see someone wandering around looking very "normal" with no DCS and weapons just looking at places and listening in to whats going on. They don't join in the role playing and but seem to be having fun.
If you look on places like flickr you can find quite a few photos of Toxia but very few of them feature people I see regularly in the city. It looks like people use Toxia for a backdrop when they want to take pics of their new goth / neko / cyberpunk av. If Toxia was real there would be a chamber of commerce or something like that promoting it to tourists and film crews as an interesting place to visit.
Luckily Toxia isn't real so we get to make fun of new comers and shoot them instead.
I actually found some good roleplaying in Toxia over the weekend. People had stopped camping and started interacting again. Trouble is there are loads of level 4 or 5 people around and I am stuck at level 1 for a while at least. I claim a moral victory though.
There were even some interesting people on the streets to. There seems to be a number of new "replicator droids" including one amazing giant mech spider. They don't carry weapons but they seem to be very knowledgeable as to whats going on. Of course the demons etc really didn't like the look of the new comers.
Demons are as usual causing problems. One was found in the base a while ago and had to be forcibly removed. I came across a couple of really snotty demons in the Haven. Typical sort of "we are so scary, we are so cool" snotty nosed demons. If I hadn't been in the Haven I would have been thinking on teaching them a lesson in manners at the point of a gun.
Just to prove you will see anything in Toxia if you wait long enough... I saw a very obese human female wearing a bikini and carrying a machine gun the other day.
Toxia never ceases to surprise... One way or another.
I TPed to Toxia more in hope than anticipation last night. Every time I have been there recently all people do is stand around waiting for the Reapers and Swarms to spawn. They don't move and don't speak. Role play it isn't. What it is is grinding up levels for no visible benefit.
As a bit of sarcasm I rezzed a nice comfy sofa and sat down. A couple of the Pack joined me and then people started rezzing beds, chairs etc. I tried to get someone to do anything other than wait for their next dose of 10XP even to speak to me and it was largely pointless. People just sat and waited.
I got fed up and wandered off trying to find someone who would at least talk to me. The only person I could find was some newbie beggar who was really annoying and had met me on a bad day. He wanted me to give him a gun. I pointed out the shop behind him and that I don't like beggars. He wouldn't shut up. I shot him. Serves him right.
While I think on it where have the Coven, KA, Righteous and the Omega institute gone? The only people I see on the streets now as Cyberpunks, Ryders and Shadows. I bumped into someone in the Institute the other day and she was the only person even vaguely role playing in the whole sim.
Perhaps its time to see if I can be accepted elsewhere.
The new level system has ruined RP in Toxia. Everyone stands around waiting for the next Monster to show up, kill the monster and then just wait. Hardly anyone even says a word. I even enabled voice to check if that was how people are communicating. There is Skype I guess but I cant run Skype and SL on my tiny thin connection to the web.
There were two people in the whole sim who were actively Role Playing as far as I could see. If I wanted to play WoW as a gold farmer I would... I want to interact with people not stand around like a shop window dummy.
Bought me a SAW (That's Squad Automatic Weapon) at the weekend. I think it will prove more useful than some of the heavy weapons I have right now. Basically a fast fire rate and lots of ammo.
Ok so a pair of Mac10s will get through the same amount of ammo in half the time but this just looks good. Hopefully each round should inflict a bit more damage too if things are "realistic"
I wonder how things like DCS and weapons in general will pan out with the new physics engine when it goes live?
Most of the groups in Toxia are little more than gangs. There is no real organization. One or two people may be in charge and most people in the group respect their decisions. Other people in the group may have a good deal of respect too.
This is fine for internal matters. Problems get dealt with fairly efficiently. On the streets its a different matter. In a given group there are a wide range of people with different skills and weapons that rarely if ever work well as a team as they lack discipline.
For instance if you were making an attack on another group you would send experienced melee fighters to the front and provide covering fire from a mixture of MGs and hopefully heavy weapons and snipers too. Ideally the covering fire and sniper people barely move to make their fire more accurate. Better yet you would try to set up some sort of ambush, drawing the opposition into a situation where your group would have an overwhelming advantage.
This would mean that more exotic and heavier weapons would become more important. Not many people carry sniper rifles as you can't effectively use them in a typical combat situation. If you knew you had other members of your group were watching your back while you attempted to pick off targets they would become a lot more useful. The same goes for other heavy weapons such as grenade launchers and Harkonnen cannons.
Of course the sticking point is the rules of engagement. Would setting up an ambush be within the rules? I think if you sent some melee fighters to draw in the opposition it might be. There would be a warning from the melee fighters before they initiate combat. They would then withdraw to the prepared position.It is normally considered fair to back up your group so that covers the ambush.
I don't know exactly how it started as I was busy fighting a toxic swarm at the time but Neon got in to a big argument with some of the Shadows. From what I can gather several of them jumped him and opened fire without warning.
The Pack as usual don't like the Shadows and came to Neon and the other cyberpunks aid in escorting Neon to the hospital then guarding the hospital while he recovered.
The call went out to all cyberpunks to come to his aid in sorting the Shadows out. Some of the pack and a group of Werewolves calling themselves the White Wulf Clan joined us.
Basically a massive firefight broke out. I got killed fairly early on and the lag was so bad I could barely move when I recovered. Eventually my SL client gave up the ghost and when I took my headphones off the fans on my machine were going flat out.
I think this is going to drag out for a while... time to get even more guns.
Like beggars.
I was wandering around the streets of Toxia dodging Reapers, Swarms and people "practicing" their sword fighting moves by jumping around swinging swords at hopefully empty air when a person I had never met came up to me and said hello. Being a friendly sort of robot I said hi back. Straight away he asked me for at least $L500 unless he is going to be banned as he cant afford a dcs or weapons. He sort of mentioned Miss Wright but "couldn't remember her name exactly".
I pointed out
A: I don't give money to beggars in rl or sl
B: Anyone can wander around Toxian City without a DCS and weapons. In fact thats the safest way to explore, get yourself an observer tag for free and your are ok.
I couldn't be bothered to argue with him and walked off. To be honest if he had been wearing a DCS I would have shot him he was so annoying. Then I bumped into another person with the same sob story and then another one. Then one of them started shouting his pleas for money so I left Toxia for the day.
I guess it was a scam. It certainly didn't make sense. Now we have demons, nekos, cyborgs, vampires, angels, mutants, werewolves, humans and cheap con artists in Toxian City.
As the grand wipe meant re-building my character I have changed from a human to a cybernetic. It got to be too much trouble having to explain to all and sundry that I was born human etc. Try explaining it to some neko newbies who only really spoke German and you will see what I mean.
Between the two of them I managed to get killed last night. Some little punk newbie shot me without warning when I was so badly lagged I could barely see the scenery.
Then when I tracked him down and pumped 90 rounds of 9mm ammo into him and a full tank of juice for my flamethrower he took it all without a single shred of damage.
Time for someone to get the banhammer out I think.
And wanted to shoot her XD
It was some girl from the local art college with a definite neko look about here and some Alice band in her hair complete with cat ears.
At least she made a change from the chavs, emo kiddies and goths.
Just a thought but newbies and a lot of vanilla types in SL tend to look and dress like like chavs with the jeans, t-shirt, bling and sportswear. We could hunt them down and shoot them.
Its all mouth and no trousers basically.
It looks fantastic with the straps and buckles holding it together, the rust and logos on it are great but when it actually comes to a fight.... its got limitations.
The main one of these is it can only usefully fire horizontally. If an opponent jumps in the air or is a Reaper or Toxic Swarm which both fly after all you can't do anything about them. Its more a weapon for scaring people that shooting them. It would be good in an indoor enclosed space but as most fights in Toxia take place in the open its unlikely to be of much use.
The grenade launcher was limited in many ways but not as badly as the flamethrower. I actually use my Mac10s far more than either of them right now as they are the most flexible.
Next thing on the shopping list is a sniper rifle. Though for every day use I think they might be a bit tricky.
I was invited to join the cyberpunks and accepted.
I am looking forward to seeing exactly what that will entail. Someone described the cyberpunks and "taking up less room than some of the other groups" and I think this is a good description. Many people do not even appreciate that they exist as quite a lot of their members have different group tags such as "street doc" or "cyber mistress" which don't link them directly to the group as a whole.
Importantly to me they do seem to be above some of the petty squabbling that goes on between groups like the Pack, Coven and the KA. Hopefully less goths and emo kids too.
Above all the cyberpunks are pragmatic. We recognise Toxian City is hell on earth and try to do something about it not just pick fights with everyone.
There was a big scary demon wandering around toxia today. Oh so big and scary, really, really scary. Then he got really scared when the people he was bothering decided to to pull large nasty weapons on him and threaten him back. Or offer to show him the difference between a flamethrower and a gun...
Things got so bad some of the other demons decided to take him aside and have a "quiet word" with him. He started bad mouthing them instead of being sensible. I couldn't be bothered with it any more and left at this point.
Lets hope they were gentle with him.... though I doubt it.
I bought a flamethrower...
It falls into the category of cute but not that useful I suspect. Its got a limited range of about 10m but it does quite a lot of damage and the flames are "sticky" for a while to make it more useful. It does seem to be quite laggy too. That could just be my machine though.
The best bit about is the way it looks. It has a great cyberpunk "cobbled together" look with straps and buckles holding things in place and a bandoleer of spare gas canisters to make things look extra cool. The draw and sling animations are cool too and quite sensibly work by pressing f7 to draw and f8 to sling. No laggy listening on /0 and easier than typing "/10 unholster" in a hurry.
The best bit of all was drawing it when someone asked for a light for their cigarette....
I would have to be a 100% cyborg to be Posthuman
Every once in a while I get someone in Toxia wondering why I have a HUMAN tag when quite a large part of me is made of metal. Its normally nekkos that have this problem as they see to really dislike machines.
I was born human lived most of my life as a human and then had a very severe accident where my right arm and right leg were crushed and my spine broken. The broken bits of vertibra were driven into my guts shredding them. I had my spine and limbs rebuilt to avoid being in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. The docs couldnt do anything about my guts so they simply removed them and the remains of my abdomen.
You cant have just two limbs and your back rebuilt as the remaining intact ones look odd so I had the remaining limbs rebuilt to match
So I am still human. I didn't ask to be this way. I hoped to be able to live a normal life after being rebuilt. I was hounded out of "normal life" for looking like a freak and ended up in Toxia as it was the only place I could live without being judged on my appearance every day.
In the future I might not be so patient in explaining my situation....
The other evening I was hanging around in the Haven talking to a few people when the most obvious newbie I have seen outside of The Shelter and the Guardians SecondFest walked in the door (at their third attempt). She was wearing the bog standard t-shirt and jeans outfit plus bad hair and looked so out of place it was amazing. In the bar there were the usual mix of more or less humans, vampires, werewolves, nekos and the odd cyborg like me. There might have been a demon or two as well.
I decided to check her profile and she was born yesterday in second life terms at least. No one who was a regular in Toxia would create an alt and bring them to Toxia looking so bad surely so it had to be a real newbie.
In the spirit of Tateru Nino's interviews with newbies which I always find interesting I decided to strike up a conversation with her and see what she thought of the place.
It turns out she was a fellow brit which is good to see in Toxia anyway. She had read a few articles about SL and was a big cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk fan so when she finally decided to sign up she got through the welcome areas and a few other newbie places and then put cyberpunk in the search and ended up on the pier in Toxia.
I think her first impressions of toxia could be summed up as "mind boggling".
"The architecture and the whole feel of the place is creepy... and everyone looks so bizarre." Were more or less her description. Another question was "Why is everyone carrying guns and swords". I was just launching into a lengthy explanation of the culture of toxia when a gunfight broke out just outside the Haven. That sort of settled that issue. I had to explain that Toxia can be fatal but not permanently at least.
I think we have a convert away from the sex and shopping side of SL to the guns, gangs, violence and occasional sex side of SL that is the Toxian City we know and love so well....
One of them challenged me to a duel. I pointed out that it would hardly be a fair fight as he only had a sword. Eventually I had to show him that the thing on my back was a 40mm fully automatic grenade launcher and not a jet back or something. For some reason they backed away from me then.
It just goes to illustrate two of the problems of toxia and sl in general. The first is the restriction on active groups in toxia (all these people had the same group tag) and the language barrier in SL.
I had to leave toxia for the real world so I didnt see if any of this came to shooting or swordplay... though I can guess it did.
Nekos fight machines, vampires fight humans, demons fight angels, mutants fight anyone. Thats all before the various groups come into play. Its one big war zone.
There never seems to be any end to it. Why fight at all? Its not like Toxian City has any real resources to fight over in the first place.
At least if you do fight try and be a bit more organized. Most "wars" in Toxian City are more like playground fights in school. Someone calls someone else a name, they rise to the bait, lots more name calling ensues which draws a crowd, They egg the participants on until one of the finally physically attacks the other in some way.
Even RL gang turf wars are better organized. Either go down the silent assassin route and take out your foes quickly and privately or go down the military route and set up a proper ambush with backup and stuff. Call your target out in the Haven or somewhere and then take him outside where you friends are on the rooftops with sniper rifles and or heavy weapons ready to blow them to smithereens. No quarter asked or given. Then if their friends join the fight your are in a good tactical position rather than just a melee in the street.
If any one of the various factions tried either of these tactics they would be running the place withing 2 weeks.
Thats why the rules of Toxian City try to prevent such things. Technically you cant just open fire on someone without warning. So assassination is against the rules. Ambushes would fall into a grey area as far as I can see.
The other limit is getting enough people on line at once to back you up.A proper battle would require a lot of people with different skills, abilities and weapons. Most of the time that good mix wont be available to a group leader. Of course if it was the odds are there would be no one else to attack in the city, unless things were highly preplanned. But who wants to plan being killed and your group being killed too.
So the petty arguements rage, people bully one another and life continues.... ah Toxian City, were the sound of gunfire is always in the distance, if your lucky.
A place thats abandoned by all sensible people, falling down, covered in pollution and toxic waste. And yet people call it home.
Well... not all of them are people. Vampires, werewolves, nekos, cyborgs, demons, angels and more can be found on its streets. Outcasts who have to live in toxia because they can't live anywhere else.
And even despite all this, perhaps because of it a society of sorts has risen up. Admittedly its not a very civil society. Gang culture might be a better way to describe it. Warring groups jostle for supremacy. Some of the groups are species based others less so. Some groups are very overt and violent, others prefer more subtle means but they can be just as effective.
On the whole the disputes between factions are forgotten when one of the frequent disasters strike. Everyone bands together to fight off a zombie attack. (another depressingly regular occurrence). Even bigger problems such as the discovery of toxic high explosives buried beneath the city being ignited by underground lava are dealt with by everyone in the city working together.
Visit Toxia. You might like it.... on the other hand come well prepared. Preferreably well armed. You have been warned.
