Spotlight - Midnite Tempest (CoH)/Midight Tempest (CoV)

Hero Name: Midnite Tempest
Villain Name: Midnight Tempest
Name: Raene Barsa
History Thread: http://freedomphalanx.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2529&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Wow. Where to begin. You know, this character concept actually is a lot older than the character for me. I've tried to make her 3 times, and I suppose the third time was the charm in her case. It was a fluke, because after the second Raene (a tank that I couldn't get to level ten, I hated the archetype so much), I had given up. What happened here was that one day during Scorpia's absence (due to kidnapping), I was missing the dark blast set. Seriously. That's it. And, when I thought 'I'll make another defender with dark blast!', I decided I'd liked kinetics on Synoptic so much that I'd take the sets I liked best from my favorite two characters. And, by level 10, she was Raene. The character finally clicked in my head and I knew exactly who she was.

Raene was a wild child in her youth. She broke rules because they were there. She wanted to be free, and in the world of a teenager, she felt completely constrained, of course. So, she ran away at the age of sixteen and didn't look back for ten years. During this time, she did all this soul-searching, yadda yadda, spiritual enlightenment, etc. She lived. She was free. She thought she had all the answers.

And then she came home to find out her family and nearly everyone she grew up around had died in the Rikti war.

Now, it gets complicated, so hang onto your hat...

Raene meets John (Epitaph) and finds a kindred spirit, a friend, and a lover. Head over heels, people, and this is a woman who is certain there's no such thing as "falling in love". He makes her admit to how she feels just before she leaves on a trip to meet with the only person she's found still alive from her childhood.

Her childhood friend betrays her by subjecting her to Crey scientists contracted to create a clone. They use surgical procedures to weaken her physically in hopes to ease the process of extracting her memories for the clone, and then use invasive psychicly-based proceedures to extract said memories. A close friend and fellow hero, Derek (Star Breaker), rescues her, takes her home, and tells her that in her absence, John has become involved with another woman. She flips.

Got all that? Cuz it gets worse...

Raene's clone is running around now too. Except, the process of her creation was mucked up. The methods generally employed to control Crey revenants didn't work. The memories they were able to extract were terribly incomplete. She got enough to work the powers, but when she got to John, she...couldn't complete her assigned task. She liked him. She wanted to be *with* him almost immediately. The problem was that he wasn't hers. He was Raene's...or Ren's...doesn't matter. He wasn't looking at *her* when he looked at her. He was looking at Raene, and she was keenly aware that she wasn't really Raene.

So clone Raene is on the run now too. She has been trying on new names in a pursuit of her own individuality with the hopes of separating herself from Raene. Problem is that the people who contracted her creation are now looking for her...

Game stuff:

I'm still working on making both versions of the character play to my tastes. I love the corruptor archetype for the damage, but the girl is never going to have a decent travel power. :(

The defender needs a respec to make her more solo-able, but she runs decently enough.

While I can solo both, I prefer to run them with other people if only for the chance to delve further into the aspects of both characters.

Note for those easily confused: Raene cut her hair and still tends toward the jeans-and-blue-t-shirt while 'working'. Clone Raene (who is tentatively calling herself Dierdre these days) 'works' in a silvery-grey-ish outfit and still has long hair.


And I apologize if you actually read all that and now have a headache. :P