C'kayah Polaali

Thanks for everything you did with the old Open RP linkshell, Nebbs! I wish you all the luck in the world!

C'kayah grew up in a sept of the Coeurl tribe. There's a coming-of-age ritual called "Hunting the World" where young adults go out and see things, then return to the tribe. C'kayah went to Ul'dah, and never returned. If C'kayah hadn't been so taken with Ul'dah when he arrived there, he wouldn't have become A'rela Nereh's latest "cabana boy". He wouldn't have been subjected to certain thaumaturgical processes as part of suiting her tastes. He wouldn't have turned to crime after she tired of him and discarded him. He wouldn't have started smuggling, he wouldn't have met S'aitei or Natalie or Lili or Kenthy. He wouldn't have started his own crime organizations. He would have likely gone back home and either tried to challenge for Nunh, or he'd be a hunter. A very different C'kayah. [Placeholder for the story - I'm sick and drugged, so I missed that part ]

C'kayah and Kenthi juuuuuuust got married (though in their case, it's more that they hijacked the ceremony for their own purposes). This pretty much sums them up:

Like Dogberry and the rest of us old farts, I started with D&D back in about the eighth grade. Online, on the other hand, my first experience was on AmberMush, which was easily my best experience with online RP until possibly FF. Considering some of the people who played on AmberMush, this says a lot about the quality of the RP community on Balmung.

How do you see this differing from the linkshell Xheje is creating (http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=10309)?

Erik was one of the first people I RPed with on this server, and he's always made it a rewarding experience.

I approve of this product and/or service! Seriously, though, I do. There are plenty of underground/criminal/dark linkshells around, but most of them are fairly focused on individual groups, but there isn't anything that I'm aware of that's simply the equivalent of the underground grapevine. I'll happily join!

From what I understand, he started it as a joke, was surprised at how many people actually paid for the "service", and sold it because he didn't want to have anything to do with it. It's been around for a while, though. It's at least past the restaurant death-zone in terms of business life. Sorry you got that, Kage. That's a crap sort of day.

Hey, maybe if the parents had learned math properly...

For C'kayah, I used the same method that I used to generate his appearance: I made myself a sea breeze and hit the "randomize" button until one popped up that I liked. He was originally C'kayah Tia, but later dropped the Seeker suffix in favor of his maternal Grandmother's Polaali, mainly because he no longer lives in a tribe and doesn't feel that the role-suffix applies. Setoh, according to the story I'm assembling, was originally Seto'li Viqqoh. When he left his clan he wanted to cut ties with his mother, so he dropped the li and added the Miqo'te H for emphasis. I chose Viqqoh specifically so that he could be Chokho Viqqoh's cousin. I made a Duskwight who hasn't gotten any real play, but I keep thinking I want to develop him more. His name, Armistead Moreau, is a combination of one of my favorite authors (Armistead Maupin) and Doctor Moreau. It seemed lore-appropriate for a Duskwight, so there you go.

[align=center]Syndicate/Bourgeoisie[/align] [align=center]The Royals (Sultanate)[/align] [align=center]The Immortal Flames (Blades, Torches, Sultansworn)[/align] [align=center]Adventurers/Merchants/Petty Crooks[/align] [align=center]Proletarians[/align] [align=center]Refugees[/align] There's nothing petty about C'kayah's criminal activities. Over the past couple of years, he's built up two organized crime groups from the ground up, working his way from a simple smuggler and thief. His current organization enjoys the favor of the Syndicate (courtesy of an under-the-table job for the Sultansworn), easily brings in many tens of millions of gil a year (ICly, of course), and has it's tendrils in many organizations across Eorzea. His organization employs a legitimate front business and has assets including multiple offices and safehouses scattered across the continent. In the time that we've been around, as part of various RP arcs, we've smuggled things to avoid tarriffs: brandy, silver, and the like. We've also smuggled illegal things: explosives for a group in Vesper bay - they used them against the Garleans; a Duskwight perfume illegal in Ul'dah; potions and toxins of esoteric sorts. We've also stolen artifacts, precious gems, gold, and the like. We've taken on contract work ranging from ensuring the safety of a client who wanted to infiltrate a militaristic cult through work supporting the Sultansworn's attempts to leash the Flames. We've robbed caravans, we've captured rivals, tortured traitors, fabricated rumors to harm our competitors, and engaged in skirmishes both within Thanalan and without. And lastly, to secure C'kayah's privileges and allow his return to the city, he impersonated an Ishgardian guard to steal an Ishgardian seal for the head of a minor Lalafellan crime family. There was tax evasion, too. But C'kayah paid the fine for that, for which he has a receipt.

I believe part of solving this problem lies in -not- heading to Ul'Dah. Stay in the other places, emote around, ask a couple friends to join, let it spread! Personally I feel the opposite. I started on Balmung in Gridania (Archer/Conjurer RPer, yo!), and found so little RP around there as to make it practically nonexistent. It wasn't until I went to Ul'dah that I really found any at all. I've mentioned this before, but I'll do it again: The #1 technique I use to find RP is simply to send cold tells to people. If I'm bored and want RP, I'll sit somewhere where there are a lot of RPers (The Quicksand, the main drag of Ul'dah, at the aetheryte plaza, etc) and simply examine people. I'll look for people walking (they're almost always RPers out trolling for RP), or people with some sort of RPish tag in their search info. And then I'll send them a tell. "Hi! I see you're a roleplayer! What sort of RP are you looking for?" Something short and simple. I don't ask for RP - not in that first tell. Instead, I'm just asking what they like. Whoever they are, they're already doing something - they're going to turn in a quest, or looking for RP themselves, or whatever. If I ask for RP right off the bat, then I'm immediately trying to pull them away from whatever that is. Why should they? They don't know me. Asking about what they like, though, takes an interest in them, and tries to start a conversation that is about you listening to them. It's not 100% successful, of course. Lots of people are too shy or too busy or not interested or simply afk. But that's okay, because lots of people will respond to tell you about their RP. Then you can have a conversation about that: What do they like, what do you like, how might your characters run into each other. You're finding common ground, and that often flows naturally into actually RPing together.

C'kayah would be Algerian, but he'd claim his mother was French.

Well, clearly "Jakkya" refers to the beast tribes of the Shroud, with their peculiar half-leaping gait, assisted by their birdlike motions. "Kiht" is an onomatopoeic word to describe the sound a spear makes when it strikes the flesh of an enemy. So "Kiht Jakkya" quite literally means "Flight of the Spear".

As do you! Nicely put together, Ameline.

Sadly I can't make it at that time - it starts while I'm still at work, and ends about half an hour after I get home. Considering the last royal ball, it's probably for the best.

I would so love to attend this (C'kayah has a particularly strong relationship with Menphina), but 5 PM EST is simply too early for me. Good luck with this, I hope it's a fun event!

You could always phone them in. A lot of states have distracted driving laws and these people are breaking them. Studies show, after all, that using a hand-held cell phone while driving is statistically as dangerous as driving while drunk. Of course, other studies also show that using hands-free phone systems while driving is statistically as dangerous as using a hand-held phone while driving, so pick your poison.

If FF uses something like XMPP for chat, it would be trivial for them to make a mobile chat client that included FC, linkshells, and friends list PM support. Now I'm kind of curious to run Fiddler with FF and see... It would be interesting if we could chat via a standard chat client...

The best way to improve as a writer is simply to read. A lot. That said, RP has particular demands in that you're writing *quickly* with little to no ability to edit what you write. I've found a few things in particular that have helped me improve my writing in RP: Michael Moorcock was an extremely prolific writer who made very conscious use of story structures in order to churn out books quickly. He wrote a book about it (ha-ha), which is hard to come by these days, but there's a distillation of the book here. I've made use of a number of writing books to help, too. Amusingly, most of the books that I really take advice from for RP are screenwriting books. Something about the format just translates better. The best books for me are: Save the Cat - A very practical book which includes a bunch of tools to help you manage plot and make entertaining stories. Sid Field's Screenwriter's Workbook - a classic! The Emotional Thesaurus - A great resource for breaking out of the "I always write the same thing when my character is feeling X" trap.

While generally never done enough, communication is key. If you're worried about intruding, that's when I'd send an OOC tell to one of the people. The worst they can say is "no". At the same time, many RPers also have a [RPer, walkups ok] tag on their search info. I would count anything as open unless they OOCly state it isn't, at that point. This, right here. There's a difference between an RP being OOCly open and being ICly open. If I go to the Quicksand and RP C'kayah having a conversation with a contact about some contraband that's coming into Ul'dah, I'm clearly doing it OOCly because it's intended to be overheard, and because shady deals happen in shady bars, and because walkup RP could happen because of it. Other RPers are OOCly welcome to jump in. At the same time, if some random person walked up while C'kayah and his contact were having this conversation and tried to butt in, they would not be ICly welcomed into it. Because, hey, it's still two criminals talking crime.

I'll take it! NORTHERN FOLKS, UNITE! Damn straight! 47 North chiming in!

Edgar has a really great ability to cut to the heart of a subject, it makes him a phenomenal asset to this community!

Almost too many to keep track of! Nat and Kage for my Vanya robes. Kenthy and my whole damn FC for my Cashmere robes, and again for leveling kits to get CUL and WVR to 50. Lili for tossing us spare gil towards our medium house. Gareth and Raksha Redtail for making me gear throughout my entire WHM leveling arc.

C'kayah, perhaps surprisingly, loves kids and is really good with them. He has none (absolutely none! He pays a very good alchemist very large sums of money to ensure that this is the case) currently, and no plans for any in the near future. I'm not going to lie, though, and say it's not been discussed...