D.I.S.C.O.R.D./MercBox

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Acolyte Unknown
Unknown
Origin:	Confidential
Archetype:	Confidential
Threat Level:	Confidential
Protected Identity
Real Name:	Confidential
Nationality:	Confidential
Occupation:	Confidential
Place of Birth:	Confidential
Base of Operations:	Confidential
Marital Status:	Confidential
Known Relatives:	Confidential
Physical Data
Species:	Human
Age:	Confidential
Height / Weight :	Confidential / Confidential
Eye / Hair Color:	Confidential / Confidential
Known Powers
Confidential
Known Abilities
Confidential
Equipment
Confidential
Player:

The MercBox is a natural evolution of Eisregen's excellent hero/villain boxes, modified to accomodate the editor's tastes better. It's designed solely to work for members of D.I.S.C.O.R.D., and thus has some extensions over the originals.

Thanks should go to Sekoia, Konoko and Lin Chiao Feng of the Paragon Wiki forums, who helped me go through some difficult parts of making this thing work as it should. So, without further ado, the MercBox:

[[User:BaalusSeth|@Most Definitely Skary]

The MercBox is a template designed to give a overview of a character in a readilly accessible format, with a lot of placeholders for the most basic of data on a character. As it's a potent and sometimes unintuitive tool, some documentation is in order. Eisregen did a good job out of explaining how this works here, so I'll just focus on the specifics.

Contents 1 MercBox 101 1.1 List of Parameters 1.2 A note on categories 2 MercBox Advanced

MercBox 101

The basic incarantion of the MercBox is as follows.

{{:D.I.S.C.O.R.D./MercBox
| image = 
| caption =
| cult =
| rank =
| mercname =
| name =
| archetype =
| origin =
| level =
| realname =
| nationality =
| occupation =
| birthplace =
| hometown =
| marital =
| relatives =
| species =
| age =
| gender =
| height =
| weight =
| eyes =
| hair =
| powers =
| abilities =
| equipment =
| footnotes =
| player = 
|}}

I hope Eisregen will forgive me for stealing most of the following descriptions. Additions unique to this box will be in cursive.

List of Parameters

First comes the image section.

• image - Character image. Should not be wider than 300 pixels. If it's too wide (or too small) it will be automatically shrunken (or expanded) to the appropriate size (but clicking on the image will display the actual image rather than the adjusted version). If you have no image, don't include this parameter and it will default to a placeholder image instead. Do not make this a link.
• caption - Text that goes right beneath the image, if you think the image requires further commentary. If not, don't include this parameter and there will be no blank space between picture and name.

Second is the D.I.S.C.O.R.D. identity section.

• cult - Character's Cult. Defaults to blank.
• rank - Character's rank within D.I.S.C.O.R.D. Defaults to Acolyte.
• mercname - Character's D.I.S.C.O.R.D. callsign. Defaults to Unknown.

Third, the ingame section.

• name - Your character's ingame name. This will appear in big bold letters.
• archetype - Your character's AT (Blaster, Brute, Controller etc.). Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• origin - Your character's Origin (Magic, Mutant, Natural, Science, Technology). Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• level - Your character's Threat Level. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.

Fourth is the civilian identity section. It has been reordered, repositioned, had aliases removed, and status added. This section should be filled in (eventually) but needn't be public, or even protected, knowledge.

• identity - Your character's identity status. Defaults to Protected, other common values are Private and Public. See Identity Protection.
• realname - Your character's non-D.I.S.C.O.R.D. identiy. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• nationality - The country or interstellar empire your character claims citizenship of. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• occupation - This is -not- what your character does for a living. That part is mercenary work. What this is is what your character does officially, as a civilian person. Whether they do it honestly or somebody is bribed to keep them on the books is another matter entirely. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• birthplace - Where your character was born. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• hometown - Your character's current residence and stomping ground. Most likely Paragon City or the Rogue/Etoile Isles. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• marital - Whether your character is single, engaged, married, widowed or whatever other forms of voluntary slavery there are between two people. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• relatives - What kind of (relevant) relatives your character has or had. Most likely you'll want to limit this to any important characters that appear in stories or RP (such as Ascendant's uncle and manager). Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.

Fifth comes the physical section.

• species - Your character's species. This is mostly important for aliens, sentient fungi and the like. Defaults to 'Human' if not further specified.
• age - Your character's age in human (solar) years. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• gender - Your character's gender - male, female, or genderless. This doesn't go on the sheet, but is categorised. Defaults to blank.
• height - Your character's height in feet and inches (I prefer the metric system myself, but since COH/COV defaults to imperial and for the sake of uniformity, feet and inches are preferable). Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• weight - Your character's weight in pounds (see height). Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• eyes - Your character's eye color. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• hair - Your character's hair color. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.

Last are the cream of the crop, the so-called assets section

• powers - A place for a short listing of the powers your character possesses, eg. 'Weather Control'. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• abilities - A place for short notes on your character's non-superhuman abilities, eg. 'Black Belt Karateka'. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• equipment - A place to mention any notable equipment your character carries around, eg. 'Nemesis Staff carried at all times'. Defaults to 'Confidential' if not further specified.
• footnotes - Room for any notes you want available at a glance that aren't covered by the above categories. Unlike HeroBox, it will collapse if left empty

And just to sign...

• player - However you'd like to identify yourself. Ideally, you'll want to make this a link to your user topic (User:Yourname, eg. User:Eisregen).

A note on categories

The MercBox automates categorising by submitting any using it to categories by Character, gender, origin, archetype, side and D.I.S.C.O.R.D. There's no need to apply those categories separately. What it means is that you should be careful what you put in those fields, especially origin and archetype. If for some reason you want a AT-less character, I reccomend putting in Mercenary.

MercBox Advanced

However, the utility of MercBox does not end there. D.I.S.C.O.R.D. members aren't just villains, and as such have special needs. Thus the following options:

• side - defaulting to Villain, it can be changed to Hero for those members who have hero licenses, are sleeper agents, or similar. The box will change to match.
• group - perhaps you are in a super/villaingroup other than D.I.S.C.O.R.D.? This is the parameter to show and categorise it.

And...

The MercBox is capable of supporting multiple ingame incarnations of a character. Getting them to show up is as easy as setting the name# field to anything but blank, for example name2 = Sinatra will enable the second. At the moment, the implemented maximum is three. Each entry is categorised automatically. For example, the second one has the following fields:

• side2
• name2
• origin2
• archetype2
• level2
• group2

Fun fact!

• alt - changes the alt text for the image (shown when you hover over it). Defaults to your cult, rank and name.

This wraps it up for the template. Enjoy. In Strength Salvation.