Metronome

"This is between me and Raymond Keyes! He's going to pay pay for his treachery! He betrayed me! My work! He stole everything! My life! I will have my justice, and it will be cold and poetic! By the hands of the very machines he stole, his life will end as he ended mine!"

- Metronome (Each sentence delivered from a different Clockwork)

Metronome is the code-name used by Russell Brandt, Praetorian version of "The Clorkwork King" in the M.M.O. City of Heroes. Metronome was once a revolutionary inventor who discovered a perpetual motion method that was used to make clean-burning non-electrical robots he dubbed the Clockwork. Praetoria is an alertnate reality in the game to it's main reality, the Praetorians have dubbed "Primal Earth". Metronome is the alternate reality version of the infamous "Clockwork King" of the main game's reality. While in Primal Earth the Clockwork King uses psychic powers to animate pieces of junk as telekinetic robots, Metronome actually is or was, a true engineering genius yet it turned out he too had an active psychic lope of his brain, one which he did not discover he could use until after a betrayal of the highest level by those he believed were his friends and colleagues. Now the wronged psychic genius has been "hacking" the Clockwork robots of Praetoria, turning what should be emotionless, efficient laborers into enemies of the good people they are supposed to be serving.

Rogue Clockwork
The Clockwork robots are the product of the duel geniuses, Doctor Raymond Keyes and Praetor Steven Berry, code-named Anti-Matter and Neuron. Though Keyes is the famed inventor or the Clockwork, Berry has been able to mass-produce them at such speeds and cheap-costs that both are held responsible for the great Clockwork boom. Clockwork do not need to run on electricity - though some are outfitted with computers for interface preferences. They need no fuel, their innards naught but gears and leavers kept turning as part of a perpetual motion devices with the designs normally applied to robots built around the devices as an operating system. They can not be hacked, use up no power and work for free thus their creation ushered in a golden age of technology for Praetoria. Emperor Cole has seen to it they are only applied to gardening, cleaning, potentially dangerous military work and other jobs undesirable to the common-man so they did not displace more well liked safe professions. However recently, the Clockwork have been going haywire and no one has been sure why. Alex Parson, a scientist will be the Players' first Praetorian contact to try to uncover the truth, though Praetor Berry's personal A.I. IVy and the newly awakened psychic Penelope Yin are also investigating as are Praetor Berry and Anti-Matter themselves.

The Clockwork spontaneously stop working then turn on their masters, sometimes vacating the premises to undertake a major operation, other times returning to normal behavior as if nothing had happened, even with literal blood on their hands. During Alex Parson's quest, he believes it is some sort of elaborate hacker which has found some way to by-pass what should be a hack-proof system and take over the Clockwork. Investigating reveals the affected Clockwork have no records of escapades while gone rogue, indicating their entire memories have been purged. Further investigations show whoever was using them "hacked" one Clockwork, who then spread too and infected the others in their immediate area with Parson concluding it is less a hacker than a virus - yet still as the Clockwork run on gears and leavers none of this should be possible. Encounter with the Alpha Infection Clockwork give a variety of clues but the entity usurping the Clockwork goes by the named "Metronome" and wants to tear down the Praetorian government, in particular Doctor Raymond Keyes, who he claimed stole his life's work and his life. Alex Parson's recruits will put down the infectors and incapacitate or destroy the Clockwork, but who or what Metronome is remains something of a mystery til later arcs.

The Truth
Eventually over the course of the Praetorian story arcs, mostly starting with IVy, but be further defined still later, it is revealed who and what Metronome is. Metronome is Russell Brandt, a former researcher for Raymond Keyes, head of Praetoria's technological research. Brandt invented the Clockwork system, which Keyes stole in an effort to build fame for himself in response to all his legitimate inventions being stolen or over-shadowed by Praetor Berry. Brandt never liked making public appearances and though he was very valuable to Keyes his propensity for self-isolation made covering up his murder very easy for Keyes. After Brandt's death, Keyes claimed the Clockwork as his invention. As shown in Primal Earth, Russell Brandt - there the delusional super-villain "Clockwork King" is psychic - though he does not know he is, his powers activating subconsciously. His Praetorian counterpart has the same sort of brain and like the Primal Russell Brandt, he did not know he had that sort of brain ... until after death.

Due to his unclean death, Brandt lives on as a ghost, though not a traditional ghost - he has no unfinished business to manifest his spirit, instead his psychic powers reach-out to the last thing he was working on - his Clockwork, and telekenetically re-writes them from beyond the grave to act as his avatars in the world of the living. Metronome is on a quest to make the Praetorian government pay for killing him and re-purposing his inventions as their slave-labor force. As all Clockwork are based on Metronome's operating system Metronome can possess any of the countless Clockwork at any time without warning then leave them, the A.I.'s not even aware any time or events have passed during their possession - making any the entire manual labor force of Praetoria a group of kidnappers, murders or thieves in-waiting. Though this could be countered by just giving up the Clockwork and coming up with a new operating system Brandt had nothing to do with and thus could not possess, upon finding out both Berry and Keyes decide against such measures as it would be too much work to create an entirely new operating system and integrating it into the government's labor force. So Brandt keeps haunting the Clockwork, continually seeking to overturn the government of his murderer. Though he has no desire to see innocent parties hurt in the crossfire he will not shy way from violent methods that may result in casualties if it looks like Keyes and Berry will be among them.

Penelope Yin
The psychic Penelope Yin was the one to help Metronome discover how he was able to possess Clockwork and that he had been psychic all along. Yin is also psychic, seemingly one of the stronger ones ever to be born. She was targeted by Praetoria's psychic, Praetor Shalice Tilman A.K.A. "Mother" or as The Resistance call her "Mother Mayhem". Mother scans for newly awakened psychics and has them "re-educated" as Seers - psychics under her mental thrall. Each psychic mind spreads a hypnotic signal that Mother uses to keep the collective under her control, thus each new psychic added to the collective - The "Seer Network", both makes Mother mentally stronger and allows even more room to add yet more psychics to the thralldom. Penelope's father had made an alliance with The Resistance who had their own psychic, the magical Carnival of Light, to shield The Resistance from Mother's gaze. Penelope was hidden from Mother, though for how long remained something of a ticking-clock and during her time feeding the resistance information and hiding just out of the Praetorian government's line of sight Penelope met Metronome. With both seeking to dismantle the Praetorian government and specific Praetors they had grudges against Penelope and Metronome became very close. At times it is hard to say how close as Metronome seems to view Penelope alternatively as a daughter figure, a mentor... or... a crush.

Penelope at one point decides to let Mother Mayhem find her so she can try to dismantle Mother's hive-mind from the inside, but Metronome was too afraid that Penelope would not be able to resist and tries to kidnap her. Metronome even goes as far as to try a psychic technique where he transplanted psychic minds from their original bodies to Clockwork similar to how he operates from beyond the grave, but Penelope is rescued from her zealous attempted guardian by the Players. After his plans to keep Penelope out of trouble are foiled Penelope does get in over-her head with Mother putting her through an intense psychic brainwashing session that turns Penelope into an alternate brain/body for Mother to operate out of. Upon recovering from his former defeat Metronome makes up his mind that vengeance on Keyes and Berry is less worth his time than keeping the one human he loves from becoming a husk like the Clockwork robots that play host to his will. As of the Minds of Mayhem Incinerate trial Metronome no longer has any desires to terrorize the people of Praetoria and just wants Penelope to be safe. Metronome uses his status as a psychic ghost to physically manifest the psychic nodes that Mother's Seer Network operate on, destroying the nodes disrupts parts of the Seer-Net bit-by-bit, and free those enslaved by it, including Penelope and later even Mother Mayhem's long-term substitute body, Aurora Pena.