Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here.

Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here.

Despite the ruthlessness of the Sekiseigumi, Kugane seems to have a busy underworld. Whispers stir the shadows from the seediest alleys to the backs of the nicest sonmus dens: there is a game of chance set to be played soon, with more on the line than just coin… Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here.

Even with the Dragonsong War ended, the cold of Coerthas afflicts the hearts of men as well as the lands around the Holy See. Hungry and starving, a small gaggle of brume rats has it in their heads to steal something from a lesser noble house, figuring that the profits from fencing it off elsewhere will provide them with enough gil to keep their bellies full for moons… Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here.

The Ebonguard Scenario officially resumed on August 11! There was a long pause between events due to outside matters, but a crack team has been assembled and several other members of the linkshell have been given more creative "ins" to the plotline! Read More about The Jackal's Spite Job

The forest has ears, or so they say, but an alchemist soliciting the darker corners of the Black Shroud to take care of a certain task for them hasn’t seemed to take heed to that. They seem rather candid in their request for you to slip a deadly poison into the drink of someone who’s crossed them… ----- Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in to our Tumblr.

There are whisperings being shared among sailors when they think they are alone on the docks: much ado about some antique weapons passing through from Thavnair, intended for some wealthy buyers in Ishgard. It’s likely that they would fetch a high price on the black market if they were to be stolen en route… Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here. If you use this prompt, feel free to reply to this thread with an account of your shenanigans, or tag us on Tumblr!

Posted on a notice board somewhere is a note in clear, concise handwriting: “Help Wanted: Sellswords to Guard a Shipment.” A contact name, time, and location is given, the location being in a secluded corner of Thanalan or Ul’dah… Crimes of Opportunity are crime-themed RP prompts. They are kept purposefully vague and are free for anyone, regardless of Ebonguard membership, to use however they wish. If you have a suggestion for Crime of Opportunity, send it in here. If you use this prompt, feel free to reply to this thread with an account of your shenanigans, or tag us on Tumblr!

This post crossposted from the Ebonguard tumblr. Hey~o; your neighborhood friendly bird here with lots of news! As it may have been noticed, both inside and outside the linkshell, things have been pretty quiet. But we’re working hard to change that, and this is the first step! In a way, this is a sort of ‘relaunch’ of the LS, and by ‘relaunch’ I actually mean ‘we have stuff in order and we know what we want to do and how we want to do it, so we’re going to go forward and do our best to bring out the best in this cool thing we already have.’ There are no big changes in the strictest sense of the word ‘changes,’ but in an effort to get things moving a bit more, we have decided to take some ideas for a spin! THE APPLICATION PROCESS For a long time when the linkshell was started, we didn’t have anything beyond our Google Form application. As much as we like the concept of interviews, which we implemented later, we don’t really have the manpower or motivation to do a sit-down chat for every single person who wants to join, so we’re going back to just having the application. This should make things much faster and remove the possibility of meaning to do things and then forgetting because life came up (because now we just need to look over what we’re given and give a yes/no.) CRIMES OF OPPORTUNITY Crimes of Opportunity are a new thing that Ebonguard is going to do going forward. These are basically crime-themed RP prompts! They are kept intentionally vague and are meant for anyone (regardless of whether they’re a member of the LS or not) to be able to take and use however they see fit. The prompts can entail formal jobs or they can simply suggest a scenario or situation that could be used as a backdrop for something else. The first Crime of Opportunity will be posted on Thursday, July 19, and from there will be scheduled to post every two weeks! We welcome community suggestions and input for these prompts, so, if you have an idea you want to throw out there then by all means contact us @ebonguardls! LONG-TERM PLOTLINES (EBONGUARD SCENARIO) The Scenario was put on hold due to a combination of life (summer classes are a pain!) and low activity, but it will resume sometime early August! The first event in the current arc (and the last one that was played) can be read up on here! While long-term plotlines are intended for the members of Ebonguard, people who want to take things for a spin are more than welcome to get in touch!

In light of slowness getting back on applications I’d like to offer an apology (again)! These past few weeks, the semester has been eating my life. I am (was) a first-year college student, so figuring out finals-season has been somewhat of a learning curve considering that I go to school on the east coast and class schedules had to be adjusted a few times due to inclement weather so, uh... Knowing what was going on at any given point in time has been a little difficult! Additionally, a lot of our officers have been similarly busy, and between life, academics, and work, there are a good number of applications that have slipped through the cracks. I’m going to be doing my absolute best over the course of this upcoming week to get through applications, in order of their submission date. I will also encourage the other officers to do the same as much as they’re able, so if you get a random poke on Discord and you have applied to the LS since the start of the new year, then chances are pretty good it’s one of us!! So so so sorry again! Crow P.S. After outstanding applications are taken care of, keep an eye out for a huge recruitment update!

The Jackals on the Sapphire Avenue Exchange As of April 22, the Ebonguard Scenario has resumed! After a long period of humming, hawing, and (of course) planning, Crow’s placed a task before the network. Of course, he doesn’t expect work for free… The next Scenario event is tentatively scheduled for May 27 (subject to change). (Key Image Reads: “The elusive leader of the Ebonguard has ound a job worthy of the network’s attention: a job that would land those who would take it upon themselves not only in his good graces, but potentially position themselves as a major player in the network at large… Setting his sights upon a racketeering ring known as the Jackal’s Spite, Crow’s intentions going in was simply to crush their capabilities and toy with what remained in order to open avenues for the Ebonguard to expand. But although Crow himself refuses to pay for blood, others quickly hatched other plans…”)

Recently, I made a fresh Google Calendar for Ebonguard to keep track of events, located here! And to go along with that, I did a few things. Obviously, the days that The Cloak & Dagger will be open are on the calendar (they are scheduled out until August). I also have some OOC things planned on the Saturdays preceding The Cloak & Dagger's open nights: April 7 will be maps, for example, and on May 19 I'm going to stream a movie for whoever wants to come along and watch! In addition, however, I picked out some days to run events relating to Ebonguard's story! The last time we had a scenario event planned was all the way back last year, and it was just a heist. But now that I've stretched my storytelling/DM legs with my FC's scenario (and the current arc is also drawing to a close; the next arc is already somewhat planned and won't be as intense), I've shifted my focus to Ebonguard. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but I wanted to get The Cloak & Dagger up and running first so that Ebonguard would have a sort of "headquarters" to operate out of. (Dingy back-alleys or dusty refugee camps totally cramp Crow's style.) The first Scenario event is on Sunday, April 22! It's entitled "The Wolf on the Sapphire Avenue Exchange." Whether the movie that this title references is relevant or not is yet to be decided, and even if it is... No spoilers! It's going to be the beginning of a con-style plotline a la Leverage, though I plan on it evolving into criminal intrigue. While I have some NPCs lined up and my NPC-writing capabilities are generally pretty strong (especially if I manage to grab a co-DM for later events!), players who want to get in on the action of supporting an opposing faction to Ebonguard are more than welcome to do so, and I think it would be really interesting. That said, the primary drive of the plot will likely be handled by me and, if I'm lucky, another DM who can help out from time to time. Hopefully attending members enjoy themselves and come out for future events! Writing stories is something that I enjoy doing, and I always envisioned Ebonguard as a more story-driven IC linkshell, hence why I wrote lore for it. As an aside: a little-known and littler-utilized fact about Ebonguard is that it's been my personal policy from the beginning to encourage people to use Ebonguard as a vehicle to further their character/group plots or even as a way to experiment with their own style of telling stories, either organically or from a pre-planned standpoint. So if any member of the LS wants to run something of their own or use the LS as a vehicle to advance their personal plots: they're 100% free to do so! Hell, if I'm asked, then I'd probably even lend a hand assuming I'm not bogged down in something else. The more you know! Until next time! The Great and Illustrious Crow

Last night, February 25, The Cloak & Dagger opened its doors to the public for the first time. It was an event that was a long while in the making, beginning with me getting a house pre-Stormblood (for a price that was practically theft, natch). I kind of had an idea of what I wanted it to be from the outset: from where I was standing, it felt like there were a lot of kind of "trashy" sorts of establishments, the kind that are holes in the wall. So I wanted to take a different approach. A few weeks after I came to Balmung (almost a year and a half ago now!), there was an open event that, while I was too overwhelmed to participate in even with the small group I attended with, I came to love the concept of: the Sinner's Sanctuary. Unfortunately, I wasn't an experienced roleplayer and the venue was small, operating out of a private chamber. The text scroll overwhelmed me and I quickly backed out of the event, going off to level my character instead. Still, the vibe was great, and it stuck with me. After apartments were released, I even obtained permission from the owner to use the new Sinner's Sanctuary location for some Ebonguard meetups! While it doesn't seem like the venue's tumblr is up anymore, I still have the event flyers from that time along with a screencap from the meetup itself! (Came for the crime, stayed for the Duskwights.) I've always been attracted to classier joints, because I play a character who fancies himself to be a man of class. Leonnaux, who spends most of his time on the Ebonguard network playing up the image of his actually-nonexistent-employer, Crow (they're the same person, though he does his best to obscure this fact), dresses nice. He tends to stay away from rougher elements, as he's an information broker, not a fighter. In fact, prior to relatively recently, he looked down on mercenaries, and he still looks down on people who will jump to bloodshed as a first solution rather than the last one. This holds true even as he's ascended the ranks through his Free Company, the Artifice of Reason, which is a research institute... Though having people of loose morals and tight lips has always been a bit of a trend at the (IC) higher rungs of the organization. Within the first year of Ebonguard's run, we were lucky enough to have one of our members (then-officer, though all of our officers are, in a similar manner to The Cloak & Dagger Staff, volunteers; when real life starts kicking in, I'm not about to hold it against anyone for stepping down into a role that they are more comfortable with), Itara designate their FC room as a space for Ebonguard use. Although a little bit spookier than the Sinner's Sanctuary, it still gave off the kind of vibe I liked: it was classy, it was exclusive. There were zones sectioned off so that groups looking to do business could have a bit of privacy to their negotiations. Unfortunately, the Lucky #7 didn't last much longer past its grand opening, either; Itara's only one person and running a full-on venue on a regular basis is more than I think one person could begin to handle. That said, it was decorated nicely, and the overall 'feel' of the Lucky #7 was one that I attempted, unsuccessfully, to emulate in the first iteration of the Cloak & Dagger's basement. (This cooler-colored, barless basement is what the Cloak & Dagger could have been, but two redecorations later and I found something that I liked a more. After some trial and error with personal RP and figuring out that having people's backs in the wall is a really bad idea for camera angles, the current iteration, pictured below, was born. Even so... I might revisit this particular concept. This was designed before they added blank partitions, so matching the wall was a huge pain in the ass and it was really cramping my style, hence why I changed it.) (Unfortunately, blank partitions have an ugly border and can't be backed into the corner at an angle to hide it, so white partitions kind of continue to cramp my style.) Fast forward to November, and I'm gathering up volunteers for a soft-opening, which surprisingly goes pretty quickly. Lots of people were interested, though only a few people stuck around. I schedule it for January, and it goes well enough with only a few staff members on hand. And then, a few weeks later... The grand opening. Last night! I'll be completely honest, I was not expecting nearly as many people as showed up. if I'd known we'd get such a large group, I would have recruited a few more volunteer staff beforehand (or tried to, at least). Still, it was fun! It was fun to learn how these things are done, and I didn't freak out nearly as much as I thought I would. It was interesting forcing myself in the sort of position where I had to do a little bit of walk-up, although I left that mainly to the rest of the staff and have Leonnaux just help out where needed with taking orders and the like. At one point, every table except the ones at the veeery front had at least one person at them! It was wild! But again, a good learning experience, and now that we have a proof of concept, The Cloak & Dagger's staff and I are looking at ways to incorporate more of a criminal element into the events themselves. While I thought, at first, about doing the "order this drink for Crime RP," I know that another group used that gimmick in the past and, while I enjoyed it, I didn't want to 'rip-off' that group. (I have since been notified that this is actually a relatively common trope, so in the future we will look at including this venue feature.) Meanwhile, the idea of a password was also appealing since it would open up the crime RP to people outside of the Ebonguard, where the usual schtick at past meet-ups was to show off the black linkpearl for a free drink. Unfortunately, the idea of a password is also a bit... Unwieldy, all things considered; the only character who would then be in a position to take said password would be my character, and although I consider myself an experienced DM at this point, I also still just one person, and also would like to not hog all the criminal RP action. In the future, I'd also like to see some performers, although I'm not exactly sure about how one goes about attracting those in general, let alone the sorts of performers who would be likely to play on the stage of The Cloak & Dagger rather than, say, a pub or dive bar, for example. That, though, is a bridge to cross later; performances are a tertiary interest at best, since the main focus of the venue is and always will be on the criminal aspect! Unless people just really, really want to get drunk, in which case I'll gladly provide the recipe for the cocktail that a menu item is based on: the Gold Court! In real life, it's actually a pretty specific cocktail from a pretty specific restaurant. It's called The Great Gatsby, and it's actually delicious. The Lillet Blanc is a little bit expensive, but I don't hate it even on its own and I mean, I doubt that kind of thing expires? The other menu parallels I think are obvious: the Cloak & Dagger is a Black Russian with vanilla vodka, the martini is a martini (I actually considered making it specifically the Vesper Martini, you know, the one from James Bond? But then I decided against it. I don't remember why. The Bond reference remained in the menu description though and earned an amusing reaction from Itara.) A Dark n Stormy is a Dark n Stormy and was included on the menu mostly for want of a better item to include. I've never had most of these cocktails, but I tried to spread their flavor profiles out dramatically, and technically the bar can make any cocktail your imagination can think up as long as you communicate with the barkeeps as to what it is. Food items were variously adapted from the CUL recipe list and just made up on the spot by making lore inferences; i.e. since fried popotoes are mentioned in the Battered Fish item description and Salt Cod Puffs are basically deep-fried, I decided that chicken tenders were probably alright to include. The next opening of The Cloak & Dagger will be on March 11 at the same time: 8PM EST! We're looking for more volunteers for staff, mostly people who are willing to act as hosts/greeters and security (both to confiscate weapons AT THE DOOR THIS TIME! I'M A FOOL! and to make sure no fights break out... Rowdiness might be entertaining, but bar fights aren't in the spirit of the venue IC or OOC.) We hope to see you there!