Masaki Moui

Soji and I are on vacation this month! Just dropping in a note in case we seem scarce.

Thank you for making the past three weeks of tavern-style RP so enjoyable. As ExAtomos says, we're a Public House. It's great to meet a crew who are fast becoming regulars and it's great for the two of us to finally RP in a house that took us about two years to build. When Soji and I heard that our linkshell-mates were considering things like IC runs for some content, or that they just wanted to start RP together with people they've been enjoying dungeons with, we wanted to give you all a common place to meet for that. Since we've opened our doors that has been a really fun endeavor! For the record there are only two of us in the house despite the long list of rooms. From about 2-6pm PT I'm the only one there in an official capacity. We please ask for continued patience with any of the mechanics of housing as you enjoy the setting. General rule of thumb: we probably can't change something during an event if we're engaged or cheerfully pinned to the door to greet possibly nervous newcomers. Everyone's been incredibly understanding of this and we thank you! There are a lot of opportunities for creativity. The Lion's Den has a stage for anyone who likes to perform. This week, Rin Ao'kha and Xangai Hotgo had a great time sparring in the Training Hall together. It was the first time I got to try out combat RP in XIV. There's even a room for practicing magical spells or meditating like a Hearer. Each private room has a full description when you call up the room information menu. Our FC also observes certain holidays for parties and regulars will be invited. We operate under the pretense that the Inn is well-warded and that most damage through accidents or fights is minimal and washed clean by the next week. NPCs are always available (including bouncers if necessary) and I will often drop the names of important NPCs and their dispositions if people want that kind of interaction. Stuff like this is also listed on our website but is not necessary to know for play. We're neutral to good in alignment and want to stay hands-off when it comes to how you unfold your plots even if we help provide the prompts for creativity. Once you come to Bramble Lodge you're pretty much a regular and if you ever enter the hall some Wednesday night and find that there's no one to greet you because we got a flurry of activity, just know that you've probably gained the status of Lodge Regular. Go where you wish and with confidence. This is casual time. We're still hiring for lodge staff on Wednesdays as well. Being part of the staff is a great prop for entering RP. Any interested players can find me as Masaki or Iria Iyla to ask about helping out. Or send me a message here too it's fine.

I love those pictures posted by ExAtomos!

We lost our internet connection shortly after getting dinner tonight. But thank you for the great caravan and thank you to everyone who stopped by the lodge!

If no one else beats me to this, I'll look for you when I'm in game!

Thank you, everyone, for a fantastic first night of weekly gatherings. Thank you for plots, for cake and (good)drama, and "Hello, Feet!" I have not laughed that hard in a long time!

Just a reminder that our weekly gatherings start tomorrow at Bramble Lodge and we hope to see you there! RP Levelers are welcome to bring friends, roleplay, and enjoy the house of Bramble Lodge Inn and Hunting Lodge for a night! It starts at 2pm PST / 9pm GMT and will run until 10pm PST / 5am GMT! Lavender Beds, Ward 7, Plot 19. See the previous post, from me, in this thread for full details.

Thank you! I really get that asocial character thing - I've got a character who only likes to hang out with animals in the Shroud. I know that storyline timing can also keep you from the casual crowds. If, in future, your character ever needs to just drop in (maybe to gather information from a group of hunter-warriors just as one example?) just know that we're equally happy to do a smaller, less socially focused, scene with you during this time as well. There's no pressure - come when you wish one day - just know you're welcome in any way you find your character can make it to some interaction with us.

I'm looking forward to it - and very glad you can make it!

Thank you! Yes share your ideas with me any time and bring your character(s) - this all sounds great and I'm really looking forward to it.

[align=center]RP Levelers Wednesday Gatherings Starting July 6, 2016[/align] Doors Open: Wednesdays, 2:00pm PT / 5:00pm ET / 9:00pm GMT Doors Close: 10:00pm PT / 1:00am ET / 5:00am GMT Recurs: Every Week Place: Lavender Beds, Ward 7, Plot 19: Bramble Lodge <> Style: Completely Casual Theme: What Theme? Okay it's like an Open House. On Wednesday nights members of RP Levelers Linkshell are welcome to visit in-character and spend their evening in Bramble Lodge. Come in a group or come on your own. Rest your feet in one of our rooms, or, gather together friends to queue for raids or story content in one of our rooms. We're happy to be the gathering point for anyone's RP dungeon groups. (Characters and their friends don't have to belong to RP Levelers to come visit.) We have over a dozen public rooms including a hunts room, spa, club room, feasting hall, pub & stage, training hall, sanctuary, tinkerer's workshop, sitting room, apothecary, library, and guest quarters. No matter who you are, you can find some place where you can relax and have a good time at Bramble Lodge. OOC What you need to know: Mostly it's just a venue. We want to give you a nice place to spend time when you're working hard at those levels. Since we're a micro Free Company, we don't have player-characters who can provide staff duties inside the house. Masaki or Soji should almost always be around to greet you in person when you arrive but you're free to NPC the waitstaff as necessary while visiting. Most of the people employed at Bramble Lodge are Miqo'te. And there are, of course, NPC bouncers if the party turns violent. (Don't break the furniture!) The venue, a hunting lodge, is an Inn for travelers so an RP hook should be easy for most players. Nevertheless, MQ folks can still help with plot hooks for visitors such as 1) helping merchants settle in from trips 2) giving out Gridanian hunt leves to adventurers or mercenaries 3) displaying rare tomes in the library 4) playing darts in the hunts room 5) hiring employees who might like working at Bramble Lodge on Wednesdays. Just find one of us from MQ online if you need a more specialized hook to get you to the Lodge. We're happy to help come up with something. General knowledge of Bramble Lodge is that it's owned by the Mori Miqo'te clan and affiliated with the city of Gridania. Its owners are members of a Free Company who are in good standing with the Twin Adders with a reputation as hunter-gatherers rather than mercenaries or heavy combatants. (But baby we can fight.) The Lodge operates within the rules and jurisdictions of Gridanian and Twelveswood society. In traditional RP-speak we are pretty much Neutral to Good in alignment. Want to help out? Let us know! If you'd like to be a member of the crew on Wednesday nights then please join us. Want an in-character job interview and all that jazz? No problem! We're always looking for greeters, waitstaff, bouncers, lodge staff, library staff, or pitch your own role to us. So, I hope I remembered all the most important details. Let's give this thing a go next week.

I spoke with Valia the other day about opening Bramble Lodge (LB: ward 7, plot 19) for a weekly IC gathering of our RP Leveling crew. It doesn't even have to be one-night-a-week, as we'd be happy to host a few evenings a week for this fantastic crew of people. So we're trying to figure out good days for this. Let me know in game, here, or in my mailbox what nights are good for you if you're interested in having some RP gatherings. MQ, the owners of Bramble Lodge, are able to provide a Venue, but since we're a micro-FC we don't have tons of staff in the house to really fulfill the grand 'event' feeling. All the same RP Levelers are always welcome to NPC wait- or lodge-staff as needed. If you have a character who'd like to fulfill that kind of role, though, just let us know, as we'd love to accommodate roleplayers who'd like to play bartenders, wait staff, etc. inside Bramble Lodge during these RP Leveler gatherings. Because we are an Inn, Bramble Lodge doesn't just accommodate a pub crowd, but can accommodate those with airship crews, reclusive sorts who like libraries or quiet areas, hunters & gatherers, mercenaries, military and merchants who are traveling and need a place to stay for a night. We have 16 public rooms for play and we can give you hooks too if you need something to do, like looking into a hunting commission or finding a particular resource in the Shroud. Friends of players in RP Levelers are also welcome to attend these gatherings. Again, let me know in game, here, or in my mailbox what nights are good for you if you're interested in having some RP gatherings. I'll gather up the numbers and figure it out from there.

Yeah this! Have two-manned Aurum Vale with one at 48-50 and one at 60 without healers. Good times. (It really was - even with bad breath!) So bring on the crazy! I'll try anything at least once.

Thank you for the invite today! I'm another DEEPS who won't frustrate you all in a dungeon run. I can also run on SCH as a healer for storymode level 50< content. I like to laugh when I'm out there. I also like unconventional groups or trying things differently. If you're a tank-healer set up looking for a DPS team, Soji and I have played together as DPS from the beginning and love BRD/DRG attack strategies. Other things I enjoy doing: FATE parties, Levequest sharing, simple daily Hunts (and the big ones too but I'll happily accompany daily hunts and wait out Hunts that require fates with friends etc.), story mode dungeons in particular but learning some hard modes would be fun too, trials! short and sweet, and beastmen dailies. These things are lonely without buddies! Forgot to add: I'm Pacific Timezone and I work until about 5pm and have a lot more time in the evenings to game than during the day. So you'll see my leveling activity after 5pm Monday through Friday.

I would like to express thanks and gratitude on behalf of the characters of Masaki, Soji, Iria and Owleth today for this event. I've not always had the pleasure of such lively RP company, such excellent ideas for events and booths, and I wanted to give applause to everyone who has participated (while I break for dinner). The event flew by - I was never bored - and each experience was the kind of thing that allowed us to meet new roleplayers and expand our roleplaying experience within our FC together. I would highly recommend working with Aziza Nightshade and crew. Aziza is professional and fun and even coordination while in character was very smooth. If you run this again during spring next year, MQ would volunteer to sell seeds again for charity. Thanks for a great Saturday!

MQ would like to set up a booth in which we sell heirloom seeds & bulbs for gardens with all proceeds going toward Gridania's reforestation project - entirely RP stuff no actual gil required by purchasers - though we will probably have little packets of seeds to give away just 'cause it's fun.

Perhaps that, but the poachers and looters and thieves were a problem in 1.0 as well, when the elementals were at their full strength. I think that the problem lies in how much the poachers are poaching, not that they are poaching. There's some interesting lore that the areas of South Shroud are elemental-sanctioned hunting grounds. Certain things can be culled, just obviously not to excess. Here's some lore snippets: Now, the whole Coeurlclaw poacher problem is obviously exacerbated by the fact that its "King" requires initiates to murder Wood Wailers. Hey thanks for this insight as it paints a better picture that I can't easily reach since I wasn't able to play in 1.0. I can find all kinds of lore fragments taken from the cut scenes or flavor text, but I'll never know how the gameplay felt in the open world. So, what I'm hearing then is, there are more reasons for the poachers and looters remaining in the Shroud despite their behavior and these stem from before the Calamity. Also that Amberscale information was just awesome to sift through - I appreciate it.

That's a good point, let me edit my post for more clarity!

Wow, Sounsyy! Wow! I woke up and it's like Christmas but with Lore! Thank you so much for posting all that. I share so many of your conclusions and I'm about to lore dive the other forum posts you left here. According to Kan-E-Senna, elementals can see into your emotions and know your heart, are sensitive to Woodsin created not just within the Shroud but beyond it as well. White Mage players are well-aware that A-Towa-Cant went on pilgrimages to cleanse taints beyond the Shroud because the Shroud is not an isolated bubble immune to the chaos of the external world. Taints from without make their way in to the Shroud through sources such as shared groundwater and I believe it would be the same with people entering the Shroud too. You see that in 1.0 with Yda, Papalymo and the adventurer entering the Shroud for the first time. (However the Shroud's also changed since the Calamity and I address that below.) Quotes from the Lore seem to demonstrate this to me. Including: Zezekuta Wrote: "—they were among Gridania's finest warriors. They all fought nobly against the Garleans occupying Ala Mhigo. A necessary evil, I suppose. Yet all that violence doubtless served to compound their woodsin." And Miounne wrote: "From childhood, we forestborn are taught that bringing woodsin into the city brings the greenwrath upon everyone in it. There is no greater danger in all the wood." Around level 25 MSQ, we see people being turned away in Quarrymill (considered the judging grounds for immigrants who want to live in the forest) probably based on the fact that their hearts are too steeped in violence, much like the quote from Zezekuta above. If you observe the emotional resonance of Meffrid vs. Albreda and take into account what Kan-E-Senna said about the elementals judging people by the state of their hearts, you can see the implicit connection. Albreda's heart is pretty calm; Meffrid is emotionally volatile. Albreda was allowed to live in Quarrymill; Meffrid is turned away. Even though Meffrid may have fought valiantly in the Resistance, my theory is that there's something about that violent experience that the elementals have deemed too dangerous to allow in the forest. My other theory is that the reason the Coeurlclaws and Redbellies are rampant in the South Shroud is because the Hedge that is mentioned by O-App-Pesi in Sounsyy's post has been all-but destroyed during the Calamity, and the elementals are severely weakened due to aether being drained low everywhere in the world right now. So they are relying upon the Wood Wailers and Conjurers to continue to hound those who have a great deal of Woodsin because the elementals only have enough strength to come forth in times of great peril; such as one of the Conjurer quests in the South Shroud where you fight off Voidsent with the NPC Hearers. However similar some of this is to a sentient dragon wishing to enter, I would imagine that the elementals have a very different concern with the nigh immortal and highly aetherically charged Dravanians because they are not common mortals who have short lifespans while running amok in the forest. I think it would also depend on how long the dragon wishes to stay. This is the very real peril presented to the Shroud these days and it makes for an awesome roleplaying situation. So I present all these ideas to the OP for the day the dragon enters the Shroud. There's one more topic of interest here and that's the continuing White Mage story through Coerthas from level 50 to 60. It's really important to know and just in case people don't want to see a spoiler about job quests, I'll put it behind a spoiler tag: It also shows that something can happen well beyond Gridania that brings on the Woodsin without ever being inside the forest. I only present all this stuff as enjoyable lore tidbits for the OP to build story with and I hope it's helpful and gets some fun ideas stirring.

During some lore research for the Shroud in the past few months, I skimmed across a random forum comment somewhere (and can't find it again) about a wvyern once bound in the Central Shroud near Haukke Manor but -- huge huge but okay? -- I can't find a thing to confirm this anywhere. It's very likely some poster was misremembering something about wyverns and the upper level of Central Shroud or something. (But if any of you know what this is, please to tell us! It's an intriguing idea.) There is the Amberscale Rock up there which does have the shape of a dragon or something with wings and a draconic style of face. But so far the only lore I've found about the Amberscale Rock is that can remove almost any enchantment from an object including a golem's soulstone. The only other interesting tidbit about anything serpentine that I recall off the top of my head is from Milith Ironheart's first Sightseeing log in which you discover: I have theories, but nothing concrete, as to what the Skyserpent's Egg is/was. If you go to Stillglade Fane, especially at night when it glows, you can see the Egg right over the entrance to the tunnels. Other than this, I've heard that Woodsin is what visitors or inhabitants accumulate when they live in a way that defies the will of the elementals. It was what made it difficult to enter or return to the Shroud if you'd lived differently than the elementals wanted and they had rituals to cleanse it. So I suppose it would depend upon whether or not a dragon was living in accord with the Pact that the Elementals made with Gridanians (ecological mindfulness really). Did this dragon live in a similar way? If not, they might have accrued Woodsin. I'd think it applies to any sentient race entering the Shroud. I have more I could say here but I gotta go read the spoilers rules to make sure I don't make an oops. And I'd really like to hear what anyone else has to add as well.

That one line from writing stands out here for me: Show don't tell. So how do you show experience without showing off? To demonstrate a level of mastery, you could turn to a principle found in developmental psychology which studied how older people do things with economy of energy or movement compared to younger or greener individuals. You know that funny slogan that runs like, 'Youth and energy are no match for age and treachery?' That's a cheeky version of what I'm talking about. A veteran at something will accomplish a task with more economy of motion or energy than the inexperienced person alongside him. The older or more experienced person has, well, experience in a discipline and that experience translates into knowing how to cut the right corners for efficiency, or save on expenditures, or get to point A faster and by using less resources etc etc. Simple real world example here: The way I grocery shop (in real life) now is so much more efficient than I did when I was twenty. I really know now, after 20 years of experience with the amount of foodstuffs, with cooking, or prices, how much I can afford to put into a single shopping trip and make a buck really last. Or if you've been in the construction trade for 20 years, one glance at a wall and you'd know 1) how it was put together and 2) how well it was put together and 3) how you'd probably have done it differently but maybe not necessarily better. So that's my secret I guess and it's what I try to apply to a character in game, but in relation to their own progress bar, not in response to anyone else's. My character may look back 2 years into the game and realize he can sew a talisman with less thread or other materials far easier than he once could. He may compare old work to new work, perhaps things take less time, but his consideration of these factors turns inward, not outward, unless ... The character's with a group that has come alongside them in common adventures. How I portray Masaki to random strangers and how I portray him to the other characters in my weekly game group are quite different because of this. So it's different though with different crowds of people. If it's my gaming group, when I feel Masaki's "leveled-up" I spend time in OOC dialog talking about it with the group and coming to a shared consensus. Otherwise you've got a reality bubble clash between what they expect and what you expect. I realize that this doesn't quite fall into the subject header of "how do you wear your experience" but it is vital to being allowed to wear it freely and comfortably so I kinda want to add it here. It helps to talk to your people if you have them and get on the same page. And sometimes you don't even need to do this but it never hurts to engage in that process anyway. With walk-ups, I don't know actually. It's so rare that I engage in walk-up roleplay and I treat walk-up roleplay these days really differently than I once did, precisely because it is freeform roleplay and I can't do much about another person's preconceptions or projections and so on. So what I do in these situations is what I mentioned above - I keep the display of progress always internally measured so that it doesn't feel as if I'm showing off. Masaki, for example, may notice that his talismans are using less thread compared to ones he made at 18 and honestly if anyone takes that as bragging, that's a real stretch. I purposefully make it a minor (or highly relative) observation so that it can't become a pissing contest even if I'm only using my own internal gauge. So yeah, for me it's 'how does the character realize that they've finally embraced that cheeky 'age and treachery' which has bested their previous 'youth and energy'?'

This! Like you have no idea. Masaki's already got rivals, enemies, family (its own headache), allies, colleagues, competitors ... His life is complex and unexpected things happen frequently. But sometimes, a man just wants to go fishing! No moral ambiguity. No fine print. No grey areas. No complexities. Just sitting there shooting the shit with someone(s) else waiting for the fish to bite.

Welcome and hello! I second what Aya says. I play a Miqo'te in a small clan that deviates from the cultural norms as expressed in the lore. We don't really take any guff for it although expectations when people approach us can vary both IC and OOC. The Miqo'te lore has a lot to offer as a fictional culture and my partner and I choose to focus on those aspects of their culture that work for us and created a clan idea from that. So I would encourage you to pursue your idea. Anything thoughtful and creative that respects the source material (even while deviating from it) can't be a bad thing.

LOL @ SicketySix I know it goes without saying but: Yep same. Just looking to fish. If ERP isn't your thing, you'd be good to RP in game with any character from the Miqo'teers FC. We are more a tabletop-style roleplay team than anything else. (On our board, we play largely with traditional dice-campaign elements like: a group meets in a tavern and they go out to slay orcs. Textbook example.) I'm looking for Shroud buddies, people who become Masaki's friends, and who do things like fishing or protecting caravans or whatever -- stuff like that. So expect no ERP from me - besides - this tail is already spoken for!

Hey, I would fish with ya! Masaki is also a Keeper from the Shroud and he knows how to fish. I also play another Keeper named Trowa Tinne, who's a Shroud recluse beastmaster who knows how to fish. Feel free to send me a /tell in game on Masaki Moui, or if I happen to be on Trowa Tinne, either is fine. I'm on PST but I can be online during the day. You can also send me a PM here as well.