Heroes currently patrolling the digital streets of Paragon City, heads up - the official Community website of NCsoft's heroic MMORPG, City of Heroes, has recently updated with a double-length edition of the Paragon Times.

The broadsheet talks of a sobering reminder of one of the world's more traumatic catastrophes - namely, the OutBreak pandemic that happened four years ago, taking more than its share of lives from both heroes and civilians alike.

For the unitiated, the OutBreak Plague was discovered four years ago in the Rivera Medical Center. A byproduct of a group of Skulls hijacking a Crey Biotech shipment and consuming an experimental drug stored inside, OutBreak spread through the streets like wildfire, killing off victims by the thousands.

Not even Paragon City's finest, the PPD, the FDPC or the EMTs that responded to the emergency were spared. To date, more than a million lives have been lost to Outbreak.

What's most ironic is that a large percentage of those lost are not quite yet dead - but at the same time, not quite alive. The symptoms of an OutBreak infection is not at all life-threatening to the one infected, but to those around him or her.

These symptoms include a boost in physical strength and a feeling of invincibility, as well as major mental damage that could cause fits of aggression and violence. The most striking of these symptoms is green, glowing eyes - a sure sign of OutBreak infection.

Truly a sad day for Paragon City indeed. You can read the entire newspaper that talks about the plague itself, as well as its impact on the city as a whole, by clicking on the Read link we've supplied below.