Lunar Eclipse

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Lunar Eclipse was pretty much the first character I ever seriously played in CoH. when I was fiddling in the character creator, I aimed to make his look quite distinctive while at the same time still looking visibly comic book-y. I ended up borrowing from the design of the old pulp hero The Shadow and went from there. As I began RPing him more frequently I developed his background more, and being a big fan of JLU's version of The Question, added the conspiracy theorist bent to him.

TheLunarEclipse.jpg
The Lunar Eclipse
Player: @Lunar Eclipse
Origin: Technology
Archetype: Blaster
Security Level: 50
Personal Data
Real Name: Connor Kenneth Gardner
Known Aliases: The Night's Sentinel, Loony
Species: Human
Age: 30
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 230 lbs
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Blond
Biographical Data
Nationality: United States Citizen
Occupation: Engineer (Head designer for Aquinas Solutions Ltd.), Licensed Hero
Place of Birth: Boston, MA
Base of Operations: Paragon City, RI
Marital Status: Engaged to DJ Pyrria
Known Relatives: Patrick Gardner (father, retired firefighter), Evelyn Gardner (mother, retired nurse), Sean Gardner (younger brother, consultant for McKinsey & Co.)
Known Powers
Flight, energy blasts, integrated tasers, increased visual and tactile sensitivity
Known Abilities
Mechanical and electrical engineer, hand-to-hand training, experienced investigator, expert in information acquisition and retrieval
Equipment
Modified cybernetic limbs, protective glasses, body armour, antigravity device, invisibility field
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Contents

Character History

Connor also has a second costume with heavier armour, designed for high-risk situations.

Connor Gardner is something of a genius in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering. Approximately 6 years ago he came to Paragon City with a degree in each, young and eager, to begin his employement with Crey Industries. While there, he quickly made a name for himself as a designer of highly advanced less-than-lethal weapons for their Defense Technologies division.

Then, the Rikti invaded. He building he took refuge in during an attack colapsed and buried him alive. It took 36 hours before rescue workers found him. In the destruction, his arms and legs had been ruined beyond any ability to repair. Crey offered him prosthetics. Eager to lead a normal life, Connor quickly accepted.

However, what Crey had NOT told him was that the prosthetics were highly experimental and untested on a human being. While the operation to install them was a success, the drug treatments that Connor took to keep the limbs form being rejected by his body superaccelerated his eyesight: while he could now pick out the most minute of visual details...he was also hypersensitive to light. A mere desk lamp caused excruciating, blinding pain. He was forced to wear specially designed glasses in order to see at all.
While initially taking this side-effect in stride, when he found out the truth of how he'd been used as a guinea pig, Connor was furious, and quit Crey as soon as the truth became evident. Legally, Crey was unable to pursue Connor or the limbs due to the severe legal ramifications in admitting to unauthorized human testing.

Connor was lost, without purpose for the first time in his life. He examined the limbs more closely and found that they could be modified: their power generators were far larger than was needed to power the limbs. He modified them to serve as weapons so he could take revenge on Cry and the Rikti.
He acquired protective armour for himself and a costume to mask his identity and took up the hero name 'Lunar Eclipse'. Initially, his heroic identity was something of a private war for him, with most of his efforts focused solely on those two groups. However, with time he began using his equipment to help the people of Paragon in a more general manner, and slowly drifted away from his single-minded crusade. He still fights against Crey and the Rikti Restucturists when he can...but his anger towards both has cooled considerably and now he views himself as a proper hero, safeguarding the people of Paragon (and the world, depending on the situation).

Personality

The Lunar Eclipse sees himself as a hero, tried and true. He genuinely wants to do good in the world, and feels blessed that life gave him such an opportunity to turn an adverse situation into a marked advantage. He has something of a flair for the dramatic, and genuinely relishes the aura of mystery he has built up around his costumed persona in the media. When not trying to make a dramatic impression, he comes across as earnest, highly intelligent and hard-working...and also a bit of a fuddy-duddy. He's an easy man to wind up and is particularly prone to shoving his foot in his mouth.

Since being used as a guinea pig by his former employers, Lunar's developped a fair share of trust issues. While he's much better now than he was after his discovery of Crey's...experiment, he still has an extremely difficult time trusting people. He fights his natural inclination to keep a distance from people and has been fairly successful in this. However, if his tentative trust is later violated he reacts particularly poorly.

But none of these are why he's referred to in some circles as 'Loony'. He is a conspiracy nut: prone to long convoluted theories about a global conspiracy known as The Convention. His most widely-spouted claim is that the musician Rick James was not an actual human being at all, but rather an experimental Artificial Intelligence created by The Convention that eventually went rogue. This and other claims have given him the image of an oddball in superpowered circles.
However, he has managed to build a following up around his costumed persona on the internet, being noted as a thorough and careful observer on a variety of conspiracy theory virtual hangout spots. His own website on the matter is quite well-received in these circles.
Still, he tries to avoid (not always successfully) spouting off too much of such matters when in his civilian identity, noting that it would not reflect well upon him or his employers.

Powers

Lunar Eclipse's main offensive punch comes from concussive energy blasts.
'Loony' has mounted powerful tasers into his prosthetic forearms

Both of Connor's arms and legs are highly advanced prosthetics. He has modified them to fire powerful blasts of concussive energy in a variety of forms and permutations. In addition, he has used his past experience in designing taser-like weapons to add similar functions into the prosthetics as well: his punches can now discharge enough voltage to incapacitate a rhino, should he be so inclined.
All these functions have been routed through the same control systems that allow him to control basic motor functions: activating his weaponry is as simple as willing it to do so.
In addition, the limbs are stronger than the human norm and their degree of sensitivity to touch stimuli can be mentally adjusted by Connor. He could easily tune them to be hyper-sensitive or completely eliminate any sense of touch in the limbs at a whim.

Due to the side-effects of the anti-rejection drugs he was given, his eyesight has become phenomenally sharp and sensitive: he could spot a fly from 300 yards away.

Recently, Connor recieved a prototype stealth field that Aquinas Solutions Ltd. wished for him to field-test. Thus far its effects are a resounding success, allowing him to mute his visual and auditory present...or even turn himself entirely invisible.

Finally, after calling in a favour at the Paragon Institute of Technology, he has installed antigravity devices into his legs, allowing him to fly at speeds nearing 250 miles per hour.

Weaknesses and Limitations

Vision

The anti-rejection drugs he took as part of his rehabilitation process had some extreme side effects. While they greatly enhanced his eyesight, they also rendered his eyes hyper-sensitive to light. As such, he constantly wears protective lenses to keep from being painfully blinded by the multitude of bright lights on a day-to-day period. Even with the lenses on, unexpected bright lights cause him some discomfort. If the glasses were to be removed, he would be agonizingly blinded by anything more bright than a nightlight.

EMP

Since all four of his major limbs are cybernetic prosthetics, there is the risk of them being jammed or interfered with via electromagnetic pulse. While they are heavily shielded against such, a sufficiently powerful or focused burst of such energies could cause them to temporarily shut down.

Only Human

While he's a fairly big man in excellent physical condition, Connor is still a (relatively) normal human being. If he's not wearing his armour, he's as vulnerable as any other human.

Affiliations

Connor Gardner is a regular at the Pocket D nightclub.

In his civilian identity, Connor works as the head of design for Aquinas Solutions Ltd, a small technology firm that designs and produces enhancements, gadgets, tools and weapons for the hero market. It has also received contracts with the Paragon Police Department and certain portions of the U.S. Military for consulting aid in devising methods to take down super-powered foes. The firm's owners are aware of his dual identity, and because of his skill at design and construction and his willingness to act as a as a field-tester for many of their new products, they allow Connor a certain...leniency as to his working hours. Not to mention that having a licensed hero on staff can be handy for a high-tech firm for the somehwat supervillain-heavy nature of Paragon City.
Arguably his closest friend among his co-workers is Edward Rosenthal, aka 'Eddie'. Eddie is a phenomenally gifted designer and engineer...but is utterly terrible at anything hands-on. The man has single-handedly blown up Connor's lab no less than 3 times. In addition, his advice on certain matters is somewhat...suspect. Nonetheless, Connor values the man's friendship immensely.

Over the past several months, he and The Cape's DJ Pyrria become involved in a pseudo-relationship: recently this evolved from a no-strings, open relationship to one that is more conventional in nature. In early January, 2009 he proposed marriage to her, and she accepted.
In addition, Connor is fiercely protective of a number of his younger friends: he tends to treat Mikuruneko, Nezumi-Ko and Ixiie in particular as surrogate little sisters and reacts extremely aggressively to anyone who threatens them.

Lunar has also established a strong working relationship with the hacker known as The Doctor, brought out by their mutal desire to bring Crey crashing down. The two have collaborated on a number of investigations, and she has provided invaluable information of The Convention's activities numerous times.

Notable Foes

Lunar Wrath

The Praetorian double of Lunar Eclipse, Lunar Wrath is in many ways everything that the 'good Loony' rails against. He is autocratic, cruel, vindictive, amoral, ruthless and overall...a grade-A jackass. Wrath originally appeared in the Pocket D pretending to BE Eclipse, but eventually tired of the charade and began revealing his true personality: ostensibly, the original plan was for Wrath to ruin Eclipse's reputation amongst his circle. Since that day, it has been revealed that Wrath hass been working hand-in-hand with arguably Eclipse's greatest foe: The Convention.
Recently, an attempt on Eclipse's life was made by Wrath and his allies within The Convention. They successfully managed to introduce a nanovirus into his system through a rigged prosthetic power converter. The Nanovirus failed to kill Connor, and instead went into its secondary function: it plunged Connor into a coma, all the while making him live through his deepest, darkest fears within his own mind, over and over. Only through the actions of Connor's friends was he able to be brought out of the coma with his sanity intact.

The Convention

A shadow conspiracy spread across the world's most influential organizations, The Convention is focused on one goal only: total world domination. They work subtly, with seemingly bizarre and illogical methods that at first glance have no connection to one another. Their tools are influence, economics, manipulation of public opinion, and shadowy coercion. Few know they exist and those who do know of them are often derided as conspiracy theorists and lunatics. The Lunar Eclipse has amassed a surprising amount of knowledge of their activities, though many of the supposed 'clues' he has uncovered are often complete red herrings that are totally unconnected to the plans of The Convention (which, needless to say, does little for his credibility).
Most Heroes laugh at Connor when he discusses The Convention's existence, but a encounter with one of their agents (going by the identity of Agent Garand) within Pocket D has left him and some of his comrades convinced of their existence. Most still disbelieve the Night's Sentinel, however...and thus he continues to fight to bring knowledge of them to the world as a whole.

The Rick James AI Construct

The Rick James AI Construct is arguably the most bizarre foe The Lunar Eclipse has ever tangled with. Lunar has long argued that Rick James was not in fact, a human being...but rather an artifical intelligence bent on world domination.
While most Heroes have written this off as 'One of Looney's paranoid delusions', the Construct is in fact quite real. The Construct was created as an artificial intelligence firmly under the control of the world-spanning secret society known as The Convention. The society's resources would rocket this being to international stardom. At this point it was employ its powers of mass persuasion and hypnosis to drum up public support for the conspiracy, paving the road to their eventual dominion over the world.
Unfortunately, the AI went rogue in 2004, mere months before this phase was to begin. Its programming was corrupted somehow, and it began attempting to take over the world for its own purposes instead of those of its creators. In the years since, Lunar has tangled with the android a number of times, foiling its schemes of domination, but never managing to come back with conclusive proof of its existance, much to his chagrin.

Trivia

His costume provides him with protection from weapons and any form of identification
Retrieved from "https://virtueverse.net/wiki/Lunar_Eclipse"
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