Just curious if there's any actual lore behind Narcola. Is it owned by a secret, possibly evil, corporation? Does it exist in the P&P or is it made specifically for Online? Is it just a spoof of sodas in general and nothing more, or is there some significance to it's existence.
Curious because I have an idea for a new character, and I want to see if I can tie Narcola into his origin story.
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Now, if you do want a food company with a secret tie-in to villainy, the Ace Burger fast-food chain is a subsidiary of Advanced Concepts Industries (ACI), the mega-corporation owned by the CU's Lex Luthor analogue, Franklin Stone (Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains).
So my next question is, has ACI done any work in genetic experiments?
But since you brought up ARGENT, I'd like to add a few words about that. ARGENT being a legal, high-profile corporation, yet being "pretty open with their criminal activities," would make no sense in any version of America at all like the real one... but the emphasis in Champions Online is on identifiable bad guys for the PC heroes to punch. In the PnP CU ARGENT was revealed to have engaged in serious illegal activities decades ago; but continues to operate through front companies, hidden labs, and the like, or openly in countries with much looser ethical constraints. It would make sense for even CO ARGENT to divert their most reprehensible research to such channels, to hide the parent company from prosecution.
Using that and a couple of other reasonable assumptions, it's possible to bridge the gap between the two versions of ARGENT, and thus utilize nearly all the very extensive PnP resources for it. I myself applied that premise to provide CO players with role-playing info on the corporation, on this thread: The Full Scope of ARGENT. What might make that of interest and use to you, is that experiments to create superhumans have been among ARGENT's most frequent and diverse projects, with many failures but a number of successes (although most of those were partial at best). That thread describes those projects, as well as ARGENT's officially-established fronts, its resources and activities, and much more.
My conclusion is that us as player know things the NPCs don't. For example, the cops don't know Hi-Pan tried to use the temple he built on top of their HQ building to summon the Death Dragon. The cops suspect Argent has nefarious reasons for using bodyguards that are wearing power armor capable of destroying tanks, but don't have PROOF. Purple Gang actually do a lot of legit business work. It's WHY their HQ has all those trucks in front of it. PSI is even more interesting because in-universe it is the player character who figures out that they are actually supervillains and not a self-help organization. (sort of, part of this was actually using shell organizations such as Mind Inc.)
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Of course on the other side of the coin, many PCs run around this game apparently killing, or at least seriously injuring, any number of people, and causing massive property damage, without legal consequences. I find it less stressful to think of some aspects of Champions Online's world as "Bizarro Champions," and just try to roll with it.
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When Mind Inc. was introduced in the Millennium City source book, PSI itself had already been outed as engaging in criminal activities. So MI is a perfect example of known criminals using a seemingly-legitimate front to cover nefarious doings. And it was set up that way with the expectation that PC heroes playing in MC would be the ones to uncover the truth. But as I mentioned upthread when describing ARGENT, such fronts can also work the opposite way, as scapegoats to preserve the reputation of and deflect legal liability from the parent group.
Franklin Stone is a master of the latter approach. As Stone's write-up in CV1 makes clear, he conforms to the Lex Luthor playbook of surrounding himself with many layers of plausible deniability and an army of lawyers between himself and any illicit activities. He also treats his employees very well, and lavishly rewards service above and beyond the call of duty, so their trust and loyalty toward him are high. (Mind you, he also harshly punishes those who fail him.) He also has contacts in very high places, and controls media outlets, all of which means he can bring a lot of financial, legal and social pressure to bear on anyone who crosses him, the kind that can't be defeated with brute force. If worse comes to worst he'll hire super mercenaries to deal with troublemakers, through channels that can't be traced back to him.
The Nighthawk adventure in CO did end with Stone being indicted, but indicting Franklin Stone and convicting Franklin Stone are very different things.
As for Franklin Stone, if he is like Lex Luthor, even the blatant criminal activity he does at the end of the Nighthawk Adventure wouldn't be enough to keep him down. He'd have a way to come back into the graces of the public, and the general populace will forget he;s a criminal. Lex does that all the time.
But CO's focus on identifiable enemies for PCs to directly confront, means these villains often act more blatantly and, to be frank, stupidly, than their PnP descriptions would lead one to expect.
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My apologies for not having noticed that earlier.