Xha'li

Alright, holiday break is over, back to business as usual!!! I'm proud to announce our new PvE officer, Darkly Dreaming, has been doing a fantastic job of coordinating things and helping people run content that they need to do. Can't wait to see what he does.

After a holiday Hiatus i'm back and have a rather large post to share with everyone here! Our various recruitment teams for the different divisions got together and came up with the concept of a community spotlight. It's a brief discussion with a member from one of our divisions, and a way to help people in our community and here on these sights to get to know our various members. The first one up just happened to be us in FF XIV, and it's our Division Commander Beljora, though you might know him in games as Agrias Oaks. We'll be rotating divisions each week, so you'll also get to know some of our other members you might not see in game. Here it is, hope you enjoy! 1. What is your forum name? You're real name too if your comfortable sharing it! Forum name: Beljora Real Name: Koby 2. What game(s) do you play with the Remnants of Hope, and who is your main character in the game(s)? So far I've played GW2 (Hlifhildr) and FFXIV (Agrias Oaks). I've been recently eyeing SW:ToR since that starfighter update... 3. How did you end up with the Remnants of Hope? Aidyn, Dahkeus, and Applegate invited me... and then pretty much texted me every day 'til I finished the requirements, lol. Glad they did that though. 4. What is your favorite in-game memory from your time in the community? Probably various memories RPing in FFXIV so far.... I remember in a recent RP event Theodinn Ravenshield was tossing people potions to heal their wounds during a huge battle. At the end of the battle our NPC captain was stabbed through the chest by the Kobold Chief and fell dead on the ground... Most of our characters were shocked and on the verge of tears and Theo is like "Did you try a potion?" "Here, I have this potion, give it to him." and Xha'li grabs him and is like "HE'S DEAD!!" It made me laugh out loud so hard, though I know it was emotional in-character. 5. What about your favorite memory from the time we spend outside the games? Has to be when I wrote the proposal for the FFXIV division. Tension was high because a lot of people had very legitimate concerns for adding a new division, and they didn't mind expressing them to me. I decided I would still fight hard for this new division, because I knew my time on GW2 was pretty much done, and I would have to leave the guild due to inactivity unless I could get a FFXIV division instituted. 6. Is it Pot-A-toe or Pot-a-toe? Potatoe. Obviously. (Xha'li here: CHEATER!!!) 7. What object would you say you simply could not live without and why? PC/tablet/smartphone/car are too unoriginal and boring, right...? Excepting those obvious things... I bought a water-pick for cleaning between my teeth sometime back. It's the kind of thing that seems like a complete gimmick, but it's so damn good at cleaning around a permanent brace on the back of my teeth. I dunno how I ever got on without it. 8. Favorite TV show and why? Game of Thrones (I'm sorry Firefly, it was close). There's just so many angles to this show, so much to discuss and think about: motivations, relationships, politics... and I feel like I understand it more every single time I watch it, so I certainly get my money's worth for blu-rays. I didn't start reading the book series until I became a fan of the show, so I've only read the first two books 'cause I don't want to ruin season 4 myself. I know, I can't call myself a true fan now, but, hey, I only ever said I was a fan of the show. 9. Zombie Pirates or Space Ninjas and why? Close call.... but... I ultimately have to go with Space Ninjas. Sure, zombie pirates are great, but there's only so many unique stories you can create before roaming the high seas eating brains will eventually wear thin. Space Ninjas however have infinite planets they can travel to and they can change the course of galactic warfare in an instance. The Weabiles have captured the Emperor of Reycon and are forcing him to sign a treaty that will end hostilities in the gamma section for a millennium!? Oh, ****, space shuriken through the heart! 10. If you could be any mythical creature or monster what would it be and why? Hm, probably a Phoenix. They drew a good hand from the mythical creature deck. Immortal andawesome-looking. 11. Favorite Book or series and why? I read a lot of non-fiction economic and science books, some of which would probably qualify as my favorites........ but I wont bore you with those. I've read Mark Twain's Joan of Arc several times. It's a pretty easy read like you'd expect of Twain, but, unexpectedly, it has a very serious tone (a small witty phrase here and there, but never overly sardonic like most of his books). It's a story of a (real-life) illiterate 17 year old girl from a 1-horse town at the edge of France who manages to become the Commander and Chief of France (yes, while still 17) and restores most of France to Charles VII from absolutely nothing (a treaty had literally declared absolute surrender, handing France over to the English on Charles VI's death). She is captured by the English about 2 years later, tortured into admitting that it is sin to wear men's clothing and subsequently burned alive. Twain takes liberties, but most of the dialogue after her capture is taken verbatim from court transcripts. It blows my mind every time I try to fathom that it's based on true events. 12. You get together with some members from RoH in real life, what do you do? I actually DID get together with some RoH members (Applegate, Azerial, and Kain) in real life not that long ago. We went to the Renaissance (thank you, spellcheck) faire. We watched a few shows, Azerial and Kain bought some pretty awesome outfits (though... how many times do you really get to use them...), I nearly froze to death because I didn't know it was 40 degrees out when I left (It's Texas... and it was like 75 two days before), but it was a lot of fun! Also, I've met Aidyn before. We mostly played Super Smash Brothers Melee. Oh, and I went with Applegate, Aidyn and Aidyn's brother to a metalwork festival around here... They seemed pretty disappointed in it if I remember right, but I thought it was pretty interesting myself. 13. Can you dance, and if so what's your favorite dance move? God no. 14. Favorite song and why? Oh man, this is, by far, the hardest question... I'm a huge classical music fan and could go on all day about it. While not technically a 'song' I would say Schuberts Piano Sonata in B flat edges out the win for me. I once heard it described that the low trill in the left hand represents Schubert's impending death from typhoid fever. The low trill returns frequently and somewhat out of place in the otherwise straightforward but beautiful melody, as if to remind him of its presence. The melody then repeated louder, but this time where you'd expect to hear the low trill you instead hear a defiant series of chords played. Finally, during the development section the low trill and melody mix and give the melody a much darker mood. Granted, we don't actually know what Schubert was thinking with that piece, but that explanation of the trill has stuck with me every time I've listened to it. Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde comes in a close second It's been analyzed to death by smarter people than me, so I'll spare you an explanation on that one. Those and pretty much anything from the Romantic period I'll love, really. Or post-modern. I'm a big fan of musical theater as well. And pretty much anything by Ricky Ian Gordon. I met him once and he was so nice to me despite me being stupidly nervous. I also like Bluegrass fusion. I listen to J-Pop to practice my Japanese listening skills. I became a pretty big fan of Kalafina while listening to various J-Pop artists. And while the music itself doesn't really blow me away, Nagi Yanagi's voice from Supercell is unreal. The composer didn't use real human voices in his music until he came across a video of Nagi singing karaoke. Sorry, feel free to ignore any/all of those. 15. Lastly, and most importantly, what is it about this community you love the most? I love how varied people's interests and ideas are, but that we can all talk to each other in such a respectful way. Like I wrote in one of the recruitment posts, "It's a rare environment where members can discuss Call of Duty with as much respect to one another as when we discuss AD&D RP." It allows me to be exposed to things I normally wouldn't be, like games or music that aren't my usual genre. I also like that we can argue our various visions for the guild that we all love and put things behind us once official decisions are made. I dunno if it's applications scaring trolls away or what, but I just generally find a higher caliber of people in this guild than I normally come across on the 'net!

The FC is not all in-character, as we are host to many non RP'ers as well. We do however have a linkshell dedicated to RP talk, and anytime we are doing an official RP event or someone starting up their own they can be in character there.

Holding a Karaoke night on our TS 3 server. It has been AMAZING and will definitely be posting some of these songs here when we finish with them! This is just one of the many social things we try to do as a community. Horror(ible) move night this Saturday! Will be showing Sharknado!!!!!

Just held one of our first social events tonight in central shroud! It was an awesome afternoon of hide and seek, and it was a blast! 2 hours just completely blew by! Apologies to Reupet who got distracted from his thesis paper Intro RP event this saturday for all our new members, and it's been nice meeting so many great people!

Congratulations to the wave of new members, and to our newest trial Member Nighthunter911! Also hosting another RP introduction event and Hide-and-Seek game!

Congratulations to our newest three members! SeanSavior, Solitatrythunder, and Nnebulosa. They are fantastic additions to our roster, and truly looking forward to watching them help grow our division!

Congratulation to Xelios, our newest full member! Congratulations on completing your trial and being such a warm and friendly addition to our community at large!

Story night! One goal we have with these FC stories to type them up and novelize them to some extent. This will help others who join later on to know what is going on with the FC story, and who's come and gone in that time. Will be posting at least part of the first one here later on!

Our community will be holding a small event this coming thursday and thought i'd share the details of it with others who might be interested at all in community life RP. Our FC story is based around the struggles of a town plagued by aether imbalances still present 5 years after the calamity. We held our introduction event to our first story arc, From Whence we Came, and are gearing up this Saturday to get things fully underway. Yet this thursday it's about the simple things and not the struggle to survive. Our members will be exploring how their characters would contribute to the day to day tasks a town needs to do to survive. From farming to mining, patrolling and crafting and anything in between. It will be starting at 8pm EST, though those die hard RP'rs are welcome to participate all day if they like. Our FC home is in the Lower La Noscea Region, with our town centered around Moraby Dry docks and farming community in Red Rooster. As always let me know if there are any questions!

Huh, and here i thought you might have figured out that this is how i dressed for your final interviews Alright it's Saint's Wake time and the decorations are out! We'll be holding a photo session and some holiday festivities later on this next week! Also i mentioned it before but our Halloween Contest is in full swing! While we get our costumes ready for next week i thought i'd share this image from one of our other games! Pretty scary if you ask me!

Absolutely not! We have a number of community members from all of our games that call different parts of the world home. One of our newer members in the FC is from Australia. Due to time difference there might not be as many on during you're peak gameplay, but our website and online community always has someone on and things to talk about!

The winner of this weeks caption contest was: "Why'd this lady give us pumpkins! I told her we need mushrooms or we'll be tiny like this forever!" Also we are in the midst of a PvE Marathon weekend. Our PvE Department leader created a contest for people to level and for each level gained you get 1k gil. Each milestone level you hit; 10,20,30,40,50, you gain 1 x X k gill. X being the first number in the milestone. There were also rewards for joining FC fate groups, dungeon runs and other social things! Looking forward to seeing more like this in the future! Also congratulations to our 7 new trial members who've taken their first steps towards becoming full members of our community!

The above post about the Halloween and Art contest highlight something i truly wish to talk about as it's honestly one of the things i truly enjoy the most about the Remnants of Hope. The community itself. All members play at least one of the games, with several playing 2 or all 3 of them, as well as a few casual games on the side together. Yet we all share the same Team Speak 3 server and belong to the same forums. The reason being no matter what you play or your style of play is we are all one big happy (dysfunctional ) family. We discuss our favorite games, books, manga, music, and... well you see where this is going. We also have an amazing community set up with a well structured body and an enduring legacy. Also we have this, our Weekly caption the Picture Contest. I figure i'll share in the fun with you all and show what we are working on and the winner of the contest! We have a weekly riddle i'll try to do this with too!

Yes, as Dahkeus said we offer a lot of options for all members, including our social events. Our internet pictionary is the think of legends. I mean really, you get a clue and have to use a MS paint application to draw it in a few seconds. Also congratulations to R'mango and Athrun, our two newest members who have just completed their trial!