Fulcrum

For decades, the Kingdom of Dalmasca has suffered occupation by the Garlean Empire, who have sought to break their spirits. The Barheim Incident. The Razing of Rabanastre. The Execution of Resistance Leadership. Despite the Empire's myriad attempts to halt the winds of rebellion, the Dalmascan people continue to endure, continue to rebel, and refuse to be broken. As the eyes of the Empire turn elsewhere, as the movement in and out of the kingdom becomes easier, the Resistance prepares for what may well be a final attempt to excise the Imperials and regain their sovereignty. While there have long been Dalmascans scattered across the star, members of the Resistance venture into each of the free territories, seeking allies and assistance while those who remain within the Kingdom seek to unite the currently scattered factions. Utilising the Crossworld Linkshell technology that's been added to the game, we have started an IC, player run version of the Dalmascan Resistance that was introduced during the Return to Ivalice raid series. Needless to say, much of our content contains spoilers for the raid series, as well as the MSQ quests. We host combat-based RP events using a custom-designed system, though the system's write up is still being adjusted. Aside from the in-game Linkshell, we're hosted on the Dark Embers FC Discord and have a Tumblr for the CWLS. Please contact any of our ranked members for an invite. Currently, while the DE-RP website is being updated, there's no application process beyond speaking to one of our ranked members and explaining your character to us. CWLS Master Ashla Manasse (Goblin) CWLS Leaders Relsar Manasse (Goblin) Claire Brea (Balmung) Leo Valera (Mateus) Jurien Ashur (Goblin)

Discovered the changes to the RPC, updated some things. About to have some surgery done, so I won't be in game directly for about a month. Can be contacted here for RP via Discord or RPnow.net and other mediums while recovering.

I don't normally say much here, never really have. From what I've seen of the initial GM raid, and what I've seen from petitions that were sent in, it seems to be any sort of house flipping in general. Here's what we got from a GM when one of my Alliance members asked about things the day of the last round of housing releases, during the initial GM raid while housing flippers were locked in GM Gaol: This makes it sound like any resale of any kind of estate and land is against the TOS, including FC estates/land. I would advise that any sort of resale activity involving estates/lands be considered a huge nope, and not be allowed to be discussed anywhere on the site, and I'd advise people not to solicit such on their personal sites or Tumblrs from now on. Just to be safe.

Dark Embers still exists, however due to a lot of non-game related issues, we went into a hiatus state back in the beginning of April; the company itself is still around, though all of the leadership managed storytelling and social events were put on hold. Several of the members remained with the company, while a few moved on to other FCs while remaining in our small Embers Alliance. There isn't any sort of ETA on when the company leadership will be running events again, however for the moment, we have elected to move to a "Player Driven Narrative" system; while members have always been allowed to tell their own stories, and have their personal plots whenever they like, much of the time these were brought to the storytelling staff - now each individual member handles their own personal plots and events, and it's up to them to drive their stories forward. Leadership will help keep scheduling from conflicting, and advise on lore, but it's up to each player to drive their personal story forward. So, that's what's been going on with us. There are some loose ends from the three nights a week RPs that the leadership was running that will be tied up, and there will still be some storyteller surprises via our Advanced Character Worksheet (because some pieces of personal plots do need to surprise the player of the character), but the majority of RP progression will be drive by the entire company.

We're still around! The holidays were rather quiet, as they usually are. The massive snowstorms were rather quiet too, as one of our members got caught with a ten hour layover in the first one, and the second one caused a couple to have to make alternate arrangements while nature unleashed wintery fury. Storyline wise, we had a nice little row with Good King Moogle Mog, which proved to be comedy as the dice were in neither group's favour for a good half of the fight - there was a moment when Whiskerwall got essentially divebombed by Woolywart, and the impact sent Woolywart vibrating away in the other direction. Critical fails happen even to the Mooglest of us... Our other outing was against a band of Crystal Braves that thought they had a better plan than their leader, and so there may have been a bit of a rather loud tussle near where the Eastern Desert of Thanalan transitions into the Southern Desert of Thanalan that left a lot of blue coats burning in the night... ...don't ask. It involved a Lalafell's favourite orb, an accidental rolling of said orb, and an Aldgoat deciding the orb was a snack...

Do you mean the in game system? We don't have that activated. We do everything through our website application, and right now we're keeping that on a case by case/invite only system. You can take a look at our website and arrange to come to a couple of our social events or Open RP nights (they're typically on the calendar), and once our current list of waiting applicants get a chance to fill out the app, we can see about getting you in.

While August and September were hectic for our membership, October unfortunately saw a lot of medical emergencies for us, which really threw a lot of our plans off track; we had to sideline all of our plot RPs for the month, though we did manage to have a few personal plot progression nights via our Open RP Events. Things are starting to get back on course here as November begins, thankfully. Something we did start at the end of September that we'd like to highlight, as it is going to continue for the length of our Into Ishgard plot arc, is working with the Heaven's Ward NPC group here on Balmung. During our event on September 26th, the Ember Alliance and Dark Embers FC encountered Haurchefant Fortemps and Emmanellain Fortemps as they were trying to help Ser Liainette de Haillenarte's (who has since been picked up by a player, at the time it was just the static NPC in game) forces at the Rosehouse in the Sea of Clouds breach the Vanu Vanu camp after the young Fortemps' prior folly had put the beastmen on high alert. However, what the found there was far more alarming than just nervous owlbear men... Of course, not every story block in the MSQ can be paired with a side-along story, given the nature of the way they're telling the Warrior of Light's story now. Many events in the MSQ will be things that are slipped into other events as news, rumours, or aftermath events. We do look forward to working with the Heaven's Ward when we can, however, as they're a delightful group of people. Just because we're in Ishgard doesn't mean we're leaving behind the core storyline of Dark Embers. November is getting started with our Probably Primals story arc taking its curve ball over into Thornmarch as the group finally deals with Moogle Mog; the RL set backs have made it difficult to do this large scale, out-of-game event, but we started it on November 7th, and it's in the midsts of being finished up. A sneak peak via a document of the in-game pre-meeting is already posted, while the event itself is being done via RPnow.net, a departure from using Google Documents and the Enjin Chatbox as we have in the past for out-of-game events. The Campaign setting was put on hold and is still on hold due to a medical hiatus, so Outbreak will resume once things are squared away for the architect of the system. While we do enjoy the game, and try to keep plot rolling, real life will always come first for our members. We will be having a slow down come the holiday season, as many of our members are in the US, and people do love their tryptophan fix - the weekend of Thanksgiving is an "unscheduled" weekend for the FC/alliance. We also will likely be leaving things a bit fluid right around Christmas and New Years, even though neither holiday falls on our RP event nights.

Thank you. August and September were just hectic as hell. <3

As most of the Heavensward rush subsided, we ran two 2.55 related RP events to begin some transitioning to the 3.0 content as an FC (though some of the Chronicles of a New Era stuff is still behind). We run sidelong or aftermath type storylines to the MSQ and Chronicles of a New Era stories, usually starting about a month and half after a patch, with the conclusion just before a new patch or just after a new patch launches to give everyone time to get through the content and for the Storytellers to disseminate the information into their plotlines and events. The first event was done as a sidelong story to the Steps of Faith events, and started in game (which was copied raw at the start of the document), but mostly was done live via a Google Document for a "chatbox" like setting due to how many monster NPCs were being encountered. This is entitled Before the Fall: The Summons (Dark Embers 2.55 RP Event), and is available to read via the original Google Document right now; it will be copied to our forums soon. The second event was done as a sidelong story to the celebratory events that took place in Ul'dah after the Steps of Faith, and took place in game. A raw copy of the event has been made in a Google Document, and will be cleaned up over the next few days. This is entitled Before the Fall: The Interruption (Dark Embers 2.55 RP Event), and will be copied over to our forums once it's been cleaned up. Our Ember Alliance recruitment will be opening before the end of the month, barring any changes between now and then. We'll post a fresh link to our recruitment information on our website once the site reopens for applications - please look forward to it!

Hallo! Sorry for the very delayed reply - I haven't been on the RPC for a while due to working on a lot of updates for the free company and an explosion of offline stuff. We are closed for recruiting until after Heavensward launch. We're giving our current members some time to get to know each other and get through the new content before we begin recruiting again, as well as having some time to get used to a lot of changes we're starting to roll out. We'll be posting up a notice once recruitment of any sort begins again. We'll be starting with opening the doors for our Ember Alliance shortly after Heavensward launch, and then later we'll open the doors for FC recruitment.

While this FC is still open to anyone who would like to use the tag for their NPCs (just send a tell or a PM to get invited), the core group from Dark Embers who were able to act as NPCs for other people's plots are currently unavailable as we restructure how we're doing the whole NPCs for plot thing. Stay tuned for an update about that.

Wow, that 2.55 patch. We'll be having it all come into our RP on May 9th, 2015! We're giving everyone plenty of time to get through the content, and will be posting a Guide to Common Knowledge for the Main Story about two weeks before so people know what all their characters may find out in the aftermath; it's all based on what the NPCs say after everything is said and done, and wow...just wow. We've been doing some spring sprucing up around the FC/Alliance site, and have an entire sub-sub-forum dedicated to the It's Probably Primals story arc. All the transcripts from our Primal fights are found here, along with any other large scale out-of-game RPs, as well as forum-based RPs. This forum is visible to the public, so people can read over the transcripts of the fights and see the end results of our Primal fights. Our FC/Alliance growth is also visible by looking at them, as the original three fights were about 20 - 25 pages long, while the Leviathan fight was 45 pages with images; Titan took us two event nights to complete (a bit over 8 hours) while Leviathan took us three (a bit over 12). Other storylines will be getting their own forums soon as well! Stay tuned to read events from the darker storyline, Outbreak, and our new storyline, Into Ishgard and Ties That Bind!

Dark Embers is incredibly active - it's actually why I have very little time to do much in the way of promoting elsewhere, actually. *laughs* I try to at least get something on our thread here at least once a month, but sometimes can't even remember to do that because I'm so busy trying to stay caught up with my lovely medical schedule offline, caught up with the game, and caught up with my FC/Alliance. Sometimes I can't leave them alone for an afternoon as they get up into shenanigans (of the good kind, but man, my sides can't take the laughter)~. I agree that looking at FC tags helps. A lot of FCs have gone to having an RP somewhere in their tag if they're RP, and while they may not be actively engaged in RP when you see them - as many RPers in this community also want to experience the game, which is awesome - they do RP and will likely be willing to talk to you about their FC. You can also try to find their FC here on the site and judge activity that way, as chances are I'm not the only one who doesn't get as much of a chance to update here because they're so busy with things in game and with their FC. I also suggest checking an FC's calendar. We try to have our activities visible now, since griefing has gone downhill in recent months (though our settings get bugged out from time to time). Most of our forums are visible to people too, and I think a lot of FCs have some form of open forums on their site you can check for activity. And really, if you see an FC with a concept you like in the Linkshell Hall...ask their leadership about it. It doesn't hurt to ask, as most FCs have initiation periods that are just as much for your sake as they are theirs. Try on an FC for size. If they're not as active as you were expecting, be honest and move on. Most people aren't going to get up in arms if you tell them the FC isn't as good of a fit as you'd hoped during the initiation period, but do say something before leaving. I feel much better when someone tells me why they're leaving rather than just up and leaving. Again, the initiation period in any gaming group is as much for you as it is for the group. Anyroad, that's my 2 gil on the matter. I hope it helps some.

Dark Embers would attend if something were set up and it didn't conflict with our event nights (Sun/Wed/Sat). The question we have is whether you'd want all of our leadership to show up, or just a couple of representatives; we do roundtable leadership, so both leaders and officers are in on everything - that's currently just four people, but we figured we'd ask about it.

Updated to fix formatting, and added Lin Celistine/Hyrist as a point of contact. Please be sure to have both Darkfae and Hyrist in your PMs here - it just makes things much easier for us!

[align=center]http://40.media.tumblr.com/298c7136fff05a96474643cb63f39a1c/tumblr_nl81ukVq091u6tu30o1_1280.png[/img][/align] So, this is a journal entry from Claire's journal that makes allusions to the plot we’re running for 3.0’s release. The plot focuses on the sociopolitical situation in Ishgard, allowing members to introduce Au Ra characters (either new characters, or characters who are reforging into Au Ra through the story - did we mention there was a crazy Garlean scientist involved too? >.> ), and getting to know the various areas of the new lands. It should be noted there’s several ways this can go, based on how things go leading up to and into patch 3.0, but there may seriously be a three front battle between the Ember Alliance, the Dravanians, the heretics, and a contingent of the Holy See. It also mentions the continuation of the It's Probably Primals plot with just crossed over our Outbreak plot. If you’re interested in getting in on this RP plot - or any RP plot - that we’re doing, join the Ember Alliance by applying on the Dark Embers website. You don’t have to participate in all our plots when you’re an ally member, so if you’re not into the whole Primal thing, you don’t have to do those plots, however the Shiva Ex fight will be included in this plot, since she’s in the heretic story. We usually have a brief OOC interview via Mumble, then an IC scene to get a person into the alliance. We have an IC linkpearl and an OOC linkpearl, so you need to LS slots. The website and the mumble are open to all alliance members, and again, you can participate in as little or as many events as you want as an alliance member. This was originally posted on Tumblr via Claire's journal, and re-blogged to my XIV blog there. I figured I may as well post it here as our update for the month.

Smallish update. In order to support the number of plots being released, and for the leadership council to focus on keeping role play the top priority of the free company, organised raiding as an activity of the Free Company itself has been removed as a facet of the FC. Members are still welcome to raid and form their own statics, so long as they are not asking folks to raid during our set RP event times on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The decision to make this change was a heavy one, and not made lightly, however role play has always been the first and foremost facet of Dark Embers. Our Ember Alliance will continue, so that people can join in our plots without having to leave their Free Companies. Members will still receive an IC and an OOC linkpearl, and have access to the Mumble server to support multiple community venue types.

I think this is a little extreme of them. Having worked for Sony Online Entertainment when RMT was being invented, back when EverQuest (the first one) was young, I find this...so incredibly extreme. Artists are not the offenders you are looking for, not by a long shot. I have fought in this war, we were the ones pushing hard for laws to be made to give us the weapons we needed to combat it, we were combatting the trailblazers of the RMT industry - the ones you need to be going after are bots, sneaky little bitches who scam your player bases with promises of power leveling but steal the accounts instead, so they can use the characters to make more gil and move more gil, and sell off items the bots can't obtain. This is definitely an extreme that is not actually combating the RMT industry and its actual demons. I feel terrible for the artists who are being attacked by this horrible decision. You guys are not the bad guys. :evil:

Wow, a lot rolled up for the end of the year for Dark Embers. There were some rough times OOC, as there were the holidays and illnesses to contend with, but we pulled together as family and friends to make it through it and have fun. We had our fourth major event for our main plot arc, It's Possibly Primals, which brought the fourth chapter to the story to a close, and December also marked our first anniversary. This brought about an IC reflection from Claire on her IC Tumblr, an epic funeral a sea we saved it on Google Drive, and an OOC wrap up on my XIV Tumblr. Right now, we're having a nice break from a lot of super high adventure action, with social RP events, and the reinstatement of our Combat Training series, which was designed to get the company to learn to fight as a unit as well as to promote strategic thinking and creative thinking. We've seen a lot of new members to the Company proper and to the Ember Alliance lately, so it's a great way to get people to get to know one another without falling back on just Meet and Greets constantly. We're also working on trying to get two raiding groups settled, instead of having to continue to rely on just the Vanguard Initiative. We're really close, so if you're interested in raiding, consider joining the Ember Alliance or the Company proper. As soon as we have the numbers for two groups, we will set up two statics! That's pretty much our end of 2014, beginning of 2015 news. Everyone's sort of taking a break from huge RPs to do smaller, personal RPs while we play with the new 2.5 content, which they're just heaping on us. There's less than a month to Part II! Holy Bowie!

I'll be sending a PM for the more detailed stuff, but also replying here. We still have a few people using the NPC FC, and can shuffle people around to use it if more NPCs are needed, and still can invite anyone who wants to use the tag to the FC. I completely spaced making a post in December, and personally have spent the first half of January with medical bullshit, so the post was going to be late. People can send tells to anyone they see with the tag, or to Claire Brea, Kym'a Thavma, or Lin Celistine and we can get you set up.

They actually stated that the current classes were not going away, but that there would be no future classes. Yoshida said back during the development of 2.0 that he didn't like the Class to Job transition and if he could he would have removed classes entirely. The reason we have ROG/NIN is probably because they started development on it pretty early on (considering how long ago Yugiri was revealed initially), and the decision to switch to their original idea for classless jobs probably came too late in its development to change it. I can't find a citation for this, but I also recall him stating at one point that ACN was a special case and no other class would get the dual job thing. Personally I would much rather they eliminate classes entirely, because after 30 they are no longer really viable to use except under very rare circumstances. I'd want to see citation on that, because that doesn't match what they said in Vegas. They specifically stated in Vegas that they're doing Classes to have two roles via Jobs like ACN, and it wasn't a special case. Not buying it till there is citation on it, and unless it was post Vegas Fan Fest, that live streamed panel trumps the information, sorry. =/

Greetings, all. I updated my Heavensward Keynote Gallery with info from the Tokyo Fan Fest. That link goes right to where it starts. I skipped getting the repeat panels. Some of the slides I didn't get because they cut away way to fast to get them. As for the whole Classless Job stones, here's my prediction on that, based on one of the panels that was streamed from the Vegas Fan Fest: we are not entirely losing the Class coupled with Jobs system. I believe that how they will run it is that there will be "Limited Edition Jobs" they bring out in this fashion, likely with expansions, that have no classes. These will likely be Jobs that just are too unique to have a base Class and second Job type, or just Jobs they don't really feel like having be dualistic because they want them to be iconic as "Limited Editions". They will continue to release Class coupled Jobs like Rogue in patches, and add in the additional Jobs for current Classes, because they stated that in the panel in Vegas. I don't think they're doing away with the system because of this in depth talk they had at the Fan Fest. It would be rather odd for them to do so. Just my 2 gil on it. Enjoy the slide gallery!

We're very active in game, and on our own site. I haven't been active on here as of late because of how much time it's been taking to manage the free company (I run one company plot, and I am currently writing a plot leading into Heavensward) and my offline stuff. Apologies for the late reply here. :dazed:

So, in an attempt to get around the aforementioned problem, the Leadership Council has rebuilt the application for Dark Embers from the ground up, in hopes that this will help stop the weird blank application filing that's sporadically been happening. The test applications we did went through just fine, with all kinds of crazy browser addons enabled, and the maximum amount of Lorem Ipsum that the fields would allow, so we're really hoping that it's all fixed. In other news, our first story arc, "It's Probably Primals" is moving towards dealing with Leviathan, and has reached out to include another free company as the Embers attempt to become seaworthy. Our second story arc, "Outbreak", has followed a strange series of Voidsent activity through La Noscea, and into the Shroud with a very intense role play session that took the company through something akin to Hauke Manour Hard Mode, where they battled Voidsent that seemed to be at war with one another; now they are investigating the devastation and aftermath to determine what exactly happened. A third story arc, "Ties That Bind", has bits and pieces starting to roll out, now that the final Coil has been released, and the storytelling staff has unfortunately had to spoil themselves to finish writing the arc (though the company will not be spoiled on the official storyline until after they've completed the Final Coil raids). Our raids oddly line up with our RPs right now. The Vanguard, a static raid group that pushes to get through the content so they can help take the rest of the free company through it once they've figured out the strategies and mastered them, are working on Leviathan Extreme and the first part of Second Coil while helping the rest of the free company with prior raids on the days that the various members are available; unfortunately, not everyone is available on the same night to raid, so we've worked out what we feel is the best solution to help them see all of the content. If you have any questions about the free company, feel free to post them here, send a PM to me on this site, or hit up our website and send questions to the leadership there!

This FC is still open to people. We're working on getting a house for it, though it likely won't be an FC house, since it takes a while for a FC to get to rank 8, and they're all alternate characters used just for plots. If we do get one, the house can be remodeled by request for RP scenes, as needed; it may or may not work out for this idea, but we'd like to try it.