A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Lost

Paragon City has the same problems as any large city. Drug addiction, financial ruin, and any number of other horrible circumstances have conspired to give the city a large population of the homeless and hopeless, left wandering the streets and trying desperately to survive. But something emerged within the homeless population of the city, something that smells of a familiar evil and a problem that was never appropriately dealt with the first time. If your goal is to defend the system, your enemies will find the people whom the system has failed...

The Lost are among the saddest of all of the villainous groups in City of Heroes because at their core the group is made up of people who in many ways simply had no options. It's not even that they turned to crime out of desperation. These are people who, for better or worse, were blameless of anything more than minor crimes and poor decisions. And then they found themselves knee-deep in a war, moving from one sort of victim to another.

Group background

It wasn't just the regular problems of a city that caused an explosion in the homeless population of Paragon City. The war against the Rikti also led to a huge surge in the disaffected people of the area, and while heroic organizations did their best, it just wasn't possible to help everyone, not to mention the number of shady organizations that cropped up, seeing an opportunity for profit and not particularly caring that it involved taking the last few dollars of people desperate for something to hope for. (These organizations exist in the real world. They're generally called "jerks" in the rare instance you don't want to swear about them.)

But things got worse. Deep underground, the absurdly spacious sewers of Paragon City had always served as a makeshift refuge for homeless persons. In the wake of the war, however, there were still Rikti lining the tunnels, still trying to restart their failed invasion. And once these cross-dimensional humans had finished licking their wounds and swallowing their pride, it became obvious what needed to be done... what could be done.

None of that was evident on the surface, of course. What was evident was that homeless people would vanish and then emerge again, crudely armored and armed, moving with efficiency, and led by people wielding Rikti weaponry. The assumption was that they had somehow found a Rikti cache deep within the sewers, which was far more optimistic than the truth: that the Rikti were using these people. Changing them. Turning the homeless population into their personal army, to start tearing down the world that resisted them the first time around. Even the first heroic attempts to find out what was happening to these poor souls met with failure because while the least of the Lost seem to be nothing more than thugs, the truly powerful members of their number are far stronger than their origin might suggest.

Group activities and powers

In a broad sense, the Lost want to serve the Rikti, whom they see as gods. In practice, this means that they bolster their numbers -- either by recruitment or by abducting and forcibly indoctrinating new members -- and they try to sow chaos within the city. The sewer networks give them access to all of the city, and while they're most present in King's Row, Skyway City, and Faultline, they can be found within sewers almost anywhere. They've also expanded down to the Rogue Isles, chiefly Port Oakes and the Nerva Archipelago.

How closely the Lost actually work with the Rikti is unclear, although they seem to have a high degree of autonomy. Most likely the Rikti regard them as tools to be watched over at best; individual Rikti have been seen with the group, but there are certainly no joint forces fielded.

The least of the organization's ranks seem to still be fundamentally human, albeit a bit healthier than their lifestyle would suggest. All members are introduced to a mutagenic agent, however, one that slowly begins to transform the humans in question into something resembling the Rikti. The transformation apparently has a severely detrimental effect on the ability of the human mind to reason, likely not helped by the fact that homeless people are frequently drug addicts, mentally ill, or both. There are several Lost who are significantly more mutated, producing an oddly violet-to-yellow skin tone, puckered skin, loss of hair, changes to the skeletal structure, and in extreme cases, tentacles substituting for hands. More mutated members frequently possess powerful psionic abilities.

Notable members

None, really. The closest the group comes to having a signature member is a named psionic in a Faultline mission, and even then he's not seen as any sort of leader, just a particularly developed mutant. This is actually not tremendously surprising; the leadership of the group is a bunch of extradimensional aliens, and the members are encouraged to maintain some degree of anonymity. This is not a group that promotes great legends.

Could I be one?

Odds are exceedingly low. Aside from the fact that the two heroes who tried to infiltrate the organization wound up in bad shape (one of them half-insane and the other fully indoctrinated), there's the simple fact that the Lost as an organization are brainwashed to the gills. The few who do manage to escape are left with recognizable mutations.

You could, conceivably, argue that your character had a different string of mutations than others. Aim for either psychic powers, device-oriented powers, or straightforward physical ones. Unfortunately, there's no real way to combine some obvious powers like Beam Rifle with a psychic set...

Parting thoughts

If it hasn't been clear over the past year and a half that I've been doing this column, I'm pretty fond of the Lost. As a villainous group, they've got the note of pathos to make them upsetting combined with a clear and present need to fight against them. Much as it might be nice to make them allies, they're in opposition to players and always will be, which gives some really interesting dynamics to fights against them.

The one thing they're missing, sadly, is much in the way of iconic members. Give us some Lost arcs where they start to develop their own agenda, maybe? Some really breakout guys? It'd be cool.

If you've forgotten, the mail address is eliot@massively.com, or you can just send feedback via the comments below. Next week, I'm going to solicit some feedback and start a new project. Watch this space, yes?

By day a mild-mannered reporter, Eliot Lefebvre unveils his secret identity in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles every Wednesday. Filled with all the news that's fit to analyze and all the muck that's fit to rake, this look at City of Heroes analyzes everything from the game's connection to its four-color roots to the latest changes in the game's mechanics.