C'kayah Polaali

I think you still missed my point. Even if everyone is angry, would it be enough to quit the game forever because of housing issues? It's not that it's housing. It's the amount of work it took to get to the point of buying a house, only to not get one because of artificially limited resources. Think about it like an atma weapon. If a bunch of folks who did the full atma+books grind didn't get anything from the quest because SE only had a few hundred of the weapons to give out as quest rewards, how would they respond? Because literally that's what we did. Our tiny little FC. Each of us basically did the full atma+books grind, and we've got nothing to show for it.

Ultimately for me the issue is the limited wards. Once again (and this was partially my fault) we weren't able to get a FC house. The smalls in all the wards were sold out in minutes. I know this is only a game, and it's all pretend funtime, but those of us in FCs (especially small FCs) that have the gil and rank for a house but weren't able to get one have put very real work into this game and gotten the shaft again. This really feels as if I did a big long questline for a month, completed everything in it, and then the last screen said "Sorry, we're all out of quest rewards. We may have more in a month." The SE defenders keep pointing to the limited server resources, but that's a fallacious argument. 3/4ths of the servers are so underpopulated that they have nearly deserted wards, while the other 1/4 are so overpopulated that their wards are full (like Balmung's), yet they insist on keeping the same number of wards per server. They could cut the number of wards on the underpopulated servers by half without affecting housing their, and that would give them an additional 12 wards for the full servers. But they don't. It's clear that they don't because they somehow think that the way things are working today is fine.

She was a conjurer, this much was clear. He had been trained in the art enough to recognize what she was doing, but her skill clearly surpassed his. She spoke like a sylph. He supposed her clan lived deep in the Shroud, having more contact with the enigmatic beings than with other namegivers. She gazed at his leg, her hands radiating the telltale warmth of aetheric healing. The burning pain in his legs receded until it was just a dull ache, and he felt a little strength returning. He shifted, sitting up, and grunted with the effort. His head no longer swam, but it was clear he wasn't going to be traveling far on his own. "Thank you", he said, a little of his usual smoothness returning to his voice. "I'm indebted to you, but I'm afraid I must impose on you a little longer." He began to struggle to his feet, the strain showing in his voice. "Could you... help me up", he gasped, reaching out for her hand.

Yeah, I absolutely would. I play C'kayah at a fairly low-power level (that is, he's not a superhero, he's an ordinary guy in FF), and he's a risk-seeking criminal, so there are a lot of potentially lethal situations he can run into. He's actually crossed over three times in the course of play, and has been pulled back by others (once with my OOC assistance - hi, Kiht!) at the last moment, which has ended up giving him a strange outlook on death. That said, I'll echo what Roswyn said about coordinating OOCly with other people. Not necessarily that your character is going to die (in two of the three deaths of C'kayah, there was basically no warning. He died from injuries sustained in an surprise attack), but simply that your character is killable. I have ended up having OOC arguments with people who I play with because of our differing views of the killability of our characters, and believe me when I say that's not a fun argument to have, especially if you're feeling strong emotions because of the death scene you're currently playing out, or have just played out.

She was strange. He could see it in her eyes. Mad eyes. No, he corrected himself, not mad. Alien. He dealt with Moonkeepers in the Shroud frequently, and some of the more isolated clans were very unusual. The hothouse environment of the social, intelligent Moonkeepers breeding strange philosophies. She must have been from one of these clans. He struggled to sit up, his leg burning as he moved, drawing a cry from his lips. She'd done something to it, but not enough. The wound was closed, but the flesh around it still burned like liquid metal had been poured into his veins. "Poison", he gasped, panting heavily, looking imploringly at the Moonkeeper girl. "Poison arrow..."

For C'kayah, it really comes down to: Enemies. They're stacked up like cordwood. A deal gone bad. There's a line from Neuromancer that describes how C normally operates: "He knew that at some point he'd started to play a game with himself, a very ancient one that has no name, a final solitaire. He no longer carried a weapon, no longer took the basic precautions. He ran the fastest, loosest deals on the street, and he had a reputation for being able to get whatever you wanted." He doesn't have a deathwish, and he's more careful these days, but he still tends to run fast and loose. An ex-lover (or current lover!). You never know. The mate of an ex-lover (or current lover). Ditto. Osric Melkire.

C'kayah: Drinks like a fish. Whereas most Miqo'te have furred ears and tails, I'm sure C'kayah also has a furred liver. Purrs. Not in the cat sense, but he tends to modulate his voice to make it very silky and rich. He's aware that his voice is his greatest tool, and he exercises great care with it. Much to Osric's irritation. Is a compulsive flirt. He used to be a compulsive womanizer, but it's possible he's settling down a bit. Not much, but a bit. Which leads to... ...he can be easily manipulated by a pretty face.

His dreams were fitful. He lay on the forest floor while sprites circled around him, poking him with sticks. It was storming, and rain lashed him periodically, soaking the fabric of his pants and making his leg hurt terribly. At one point they converged on his leg, pressing into him with herb-scented hands that seared his nerves with fiery pain. Their rough attentions continued for a time, then they seemed to leave him alone, and blackness descended once more. It was peaceful and warm, like a blanket on a cold day, and he welcomed it, pulling it over him. Just as he was snuggling under it, drifting to sleep, the sprites returned and began to speak to him, insistently. "Mister, waking up is desirable if you'd like to recover." He shook off the voice, snuggling under the blanket of darkness, but the sprites were persistent. "Mister, waking up is desirable if you'd like to recover." He groaned, stirring, but kept his eyes closed, hoping the sprites would lose interest, fickle creatures that they were. "Mister, waking up is desirable if you'd like to recover." He opened one red-rimmed eye to see a round-pupiled violet eye staring back at him. He gasped, would have yelled if he could, the pale round face of the Moonkeeper watching him from less than a fulm away.

C'kayah cursed as he struggled to pull himself out of the gully. His leg wouldn't support his weight, so he pulled himself along with his arms. His scarred right hand closed around a vine, his arm muscles burning from dragging himself along. A sharp-leafed shrub scratched his face, adding to the welts and scratches already there. He cursed softly, more for the noise than anything else, but never stopped his efforts to move. It had been almost a day since the wood wailers had found him, and he no longer heard the calls of their pursuit. Uttering a silent prayer of thanks to Nymeia for small favors, he heaved on the vine and pulled himself free, rolling away from the gully to lay panting on the ground. He was hot and sore and his breath took longer than he would like to return, but finally he propped himself up and surveyed his surroundings. He lay in a small clearing at the edge of the gully, it's sharp drop almost completely hidden by the thick foliage that grew within. A few tens of fulms away the trees started again, thick and dark and oppressive, perfect for hiding in. He looked down at his leg. The bandage had been partially torn away in his struggle out of the ravine, so he gingerly unknotted it, unwinding it and setting it aside. The arrow-wound looked bad. Deep and weeping, the flesh around it a feverish looking red. He hadn't thought the wood wailers used poisons, and he didn't recognize the effects of this one, but it was clear that this was not simply a rapid infection. Once again he withdrew the little leather wallet that held his small healer's kit, searching through it for something else he could try. Once again his fingers found nothing. He uncapped his water skin, trickling warm water over the wound and sucking in a sharp breath as the aching intensified. He put the skin to his lips and swallowed a little water before recapping it and hanging it at his belt. The bandage was soiled - filthy, actually - and he hated the idea of winding it around the wound again. The bleeding had mostly stopped, so instead he covered the thing with soil and leaves, hiding it as best as he could, before rolling onto his hands and knees and crawling for the cover of the forest. He grit his teeth, stifling a cry at the shocking pain from his leg. His vision clouded, and he braced himself there, hoping that he could remain on his hands and knees. Presently he found he could see again. The forest line up ahead looked impossibly far, and for a moment he worried that he wouldn't be able to make it. First one hand, though, and then a knee moved, then the other hand and knee. He paused afterwards to catch his breath. Some small part of him was aware that he was in far worse shape than he'd feared even a few minutes ago, but he forced himself to crawl again. The sun was growing low in the sky by the time he made the tree line. His chest was heaving and a greasy sweat dripped from his face and soaked his hair. He looked up to see a root set square in his path, at least six ilms thick and many fulms from end to end. He groaned. "There's no way I'll cross that without a rest", he gasped, looking around for a good place to roll onto his back. The light faded abruptly and his arms folded, the Miqo'te collapsing to the ground like a ruined house slumping into rubble.

Funnily, I was trying to think of who might be most likely to kill C'kayah, and Osric came up very high on that list! <3 <3 <3

I'm actually pretty happy with the idea that the Rogue class isn't going to turn into something called "thief", but not for YoshiP's reasons. He's got some strange unwillingness to cop to certain realities of his world, which leads him to not want to have something called a "thief" as canon. From my point of view, though, a thief isn't a class. It's an occupation. C'kayah, for instance, is ICly a poor conjurer, a reasonable swordsman, and a decent archer. But he is also a thief. Of course, when Rogue comes out, I'm jumping on it like a junkie on a fix. But don't worry, Madda. C's not going to be that kind of rogue. He's going to be this kind of rogue:

... I thought this was the "cute" thread?

Seriously, though, what can be cuter than a 2 dogs that are friends?

I'll look you up in game, too. C'kayah's in the Shroud pretty frequently as part of his smuggling - I mean legitimate business concerns!

Seriously. It's pretty common in the Air Force (or it was when I was doing ROTC in college) to make Captain in a few years. Now, granted, you'll typically stay a Captain for a long time, but getting there is pretty quick.

This is something you see a lot of in games where rank is an integral part of the leveling experience. In Star Trek Online, for example, all max rank Federation characters carry the title Admiral. It's of course ludicrous that everyone is an Admiral, so most people play their IC ranks as far lower than that (mostly Commanders and Captains, as most players want to retain ship command ICly). FF is a little bit of a special case, in that everyone has a GC rank they've obtained as part of leveling their character, but it's not a really integral part of the experience. I think that's part of why it's not so widely acknowledged that IC GC rank should be different than OOC GC rank.

How are you taking payments? Paypal? Sign me up for one, please My (way to long) wiki page has all the info you need on him.

I can totally see C'kayah dropping a lot of money here..

Sorry, in my mind "dual-wield" means your main hand plus one of anything else (non shield), not just swords. As in you can dual-wield two swords, or you can dual-wield a sword and a dagger.

Chocobo barding that included lots of saddlebags. C'kayah has been (and continues) to be a smuggler, so it would be perfect.