C'kayah Polaali

Man, the bolded stuff makes for some really great RP prompts! Gets my writin' hand itchin'. Ain't it the truth! Roswyn's right, though. Fantasia is a terrible thing to have in-game. I have seen exactly two people in this game use it correctly. Both times treated the fantasia as a pretty serious, grim piece of magic. In one, a certain malicious scientist transformed everyone's favorite lalafell into a Miqo'te. It took him weeks to be able to stop tripping over his own tail and to re-learn how to fight in his new body. He's still dealing with the ramifications of that. When he changed, no one ICly recognized him. There are people to this day who are ICly convinced that it's all a trick, that this miqo'te imposter is part of some plan to fool people. In the other, a Hyur was transformed into a Miqo'te. The size difference was much less, and she had a much easier time learning how to move, but differences in her senses and perceptions caused her a great deal of difficulty. For various reasons, people were more prone to recognize her when she announced who she was, but they reacted to her in extremely powerful ways. This was a much more recent piece of RP, so I haven't been able to see the long-term ramifications, but they've basically been the focus of her RP since it happened. That, people, is how it should be done, if at all. None of this "Hi! It's Bob! I'm a Miqo'te now!"

Those are lovely, especially this one! Here are some older ones I dug up: C'kayah and Suri Blu, back before she moved to Limsa and got hitched. I don't remember who caught C'kayah's eye here, but obviously something is afoot! Natalie bought this for C'kayah for the Royal Ball. You will never see him dressed like this again. On the job training in breaking and entering with C'kayah and Suri Blu. She hadn't quite understood the request to "wear something inconspicuous"...

The Miqo'te perked up as he walked into the bar. Gridania could be so boring, but it looked like his favorite topic was being discussed. He opened his mouth to boast about his many conquests, then grinned. He couldn't do it. Instead, he did what he so seldomly did around around strangers: he told the truth. "Yes", he said simply, "though fewer than some might expect. In the years I've lived and loved, there have been seven who have held - and still hold - my heart, all but one a Miqo'te like myself. "The first was killed in the calamity, for which the Garleans will answer. The second and third have each taken mates other than myself. I still see the fourth, though circumstances conspire to keep us apart. The fifth has vanished, as she sometimes does, while the sixth betrayed my love when I was most vulnerable. "The seventh is a Hyur, and she surprises me the most." He smirked at the raven haired Highlander, his eyes flashing with mirth. "But you should have to answer your own question, shouldn't you?"

Kage's Kalamity also befell Lili. The best place for the newly Miqo'te is obviously in the grass...

*ahem* *taps foot while staring daggers* I said "honest", not "good looking"

It is *so* good to see you back, Erik! I'm glad the surgery went well, and I'm looking forward to getting to RP with you again We're gonna *need* an honest Paladin around here. I mean, there's gotta be at least *one*, right?

C'kayah almost never sings anymore, but he's actually got quite a nice singing voice (about the same range as, say, Nick Cave or Greer Grimsley), and is musical enough to have once worked teaching a Hyur nobleman's daughter to sing.

I'm very happy to see this! C'kayah will certainly come there! He may even conduct some shady deals there!

This whole discussion started when I was out of game for a little while, so I've been staying out of it. That said, I honestly don't see any real rise in harassment or "RPer griefing" in the game. Sure, I've noticed the crowds outside of the Quicksand, but they really just seem to keep to themselves, enjoying the fact that they can now do the Manderville or whatever. Actual harassment? It's pretty damn low. I've been playing FF 14 for almost a year now, I've been RPing (on Balmung) around Ul'dah for most of that time. I remember seeing random people in the Quicksand dancing in their underwear on tables then, just as I see them now. There doesn't really seem to be more of them. At least not per capita. And that's the interesting bit. When I first started RPing in Ul'dah, there didn't seem to be a ton of RPers there. Unlike most MMOs, where the RP scene starts out very strong and then slowly tapers off over time, the RP scene here (again, on Balmung) seems to be growing. The MRPIQ* and MTBRP** factors have gone waaaaaay up. I think that with that we're seeing more trolls, but I don't think we're seeing proportionately more trolls. Now the last games I played seriously before Final Fantasy were Eve Online (which I still love), and Star Trek Online. Both are incredibly RP-hostile games. CCP does acknowledge roleplay in Eve, but there's a strong history of people meta-ing the system*** to penalize people for RP. Star Trek Online, on the other hand, despite what you'd imagine basically throws RPers to the sharks. And sharks there are. In one popular RP hotspot, one particularly anti-RP fleet kept a near-permanent presence of people in spacesuits carrying fire extinguishers and glitter shooters (both of which exist in the game) in order to completely obscure the screen for any roleplayers who were RPing in public. For months on end. That is what harassment and griefing looks like. The occasional overloud interrupting troll or dancing underwear jockey is a far cry from that. So yeah. In conclusion? I tend to deal with most trolls (such as they are) in a completely in-character manner: They're obviously crazy, or had too much to drink, so C'kayah will laugh at them or ignore them at his convenience. OOCly, there's always the blacklist, though I think I can count the number of non-gold farmers on my list on one hand. *Mean RolePlayers In Quicksand **Mean Time Between RolePlay. Don't try to calculate these at home, kids. I'm a professional! ***During an early 0.0 war, the spokeswoman for one side was banned(!) from posting on the official forums by repeated complaints by people from the other side that her RP persona constituted harassment.

This is a fun thread, so I shall necro it. Riiiiiise, thread! Riiiiiiiise! For C'kayah: [table] [tr] [td]Item Name[/td] [td]Drop Chance[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Ornate Duskwight dagger[/td] [td]100%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1000-5000 Gil[/td] [td]85%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Flask of dark rum[/td] [td]80%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Some esoteric book (baroque Duskwight love poetry, epic poems, historical intrigues, etc)[/td] [td]35%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Small item of contraband (perfumes, potions, poisons) [/td] [td]5%%[/td] [/tr] [/table]

C'kayah tends to like the company of women better than men, and tends to both trust women more and treat women better than men. His maternal grandmother was a Moonkeeper, and you can definitely see her influence in his views on the sexes. This has gotten him into some interesting trouble in the past, and I'm looking forward to it continuing to get him into trouble in the future.

I love reading people's wiki pages, and I enjoy keeping mine up to date. Somewhat. I tend to keep it a little behind the times, because it completely eliminates the possibility of someone metagaming with current events in my character's life. Yeah. That sounds much better than "I'm too lazy, sometimes, to update it."

I also prefer to have everything marked. My sole endgame class is a healer, so I don't actually *use* the marks myself very much, but I definitely notice that on runs where the tank marks, I spend far less time keeping up the health of the odd DPS. When I tank, I mark pretty religiously, and no one has ever complained. On the contrary, I'll get the occasional "you mark! I love you!" in a pug. Being a fool for love, that only reinforces my marking habits...

I'll jump on the Enjin bandwagon, too. It's easy to use and well-suited towards making a guild website. All the basics you'd want (forums, roster, calendar, gallery, etc) are there and easy to administrate. While the non-free version gives you a little more control over things (no ads, etc), the free version is just fine. For voice, I'm a fan of mumble. I've used TS, vent and mumble over the years, mostly for fleet fights in Eve Online, and they've all handled their task well. I mainly prefer mumble now because of the ease of administration.

I think it's in general a mistake to look at housing to get an idea of what a gil is worth, mainly because it's too tied to SE's rather unique housing philosophy - considering the size and the cost of a small house on Balmung, you're looking at prices comparable to Manhattan even at 10 gil per US dollar. That said, looking at food prices is probably a good starting point. You can get a boiled egg for about 5 gil, whereas the same thing in the local ABC store is about $0.50. Fairly plan prepared dishes cost more than the egg, but not proportionately more. All together, I'd imagine the exchange rate to be around 5 gil per US dollar, but no more than 10. This works for plain prepared dishes. It makes things like omelettes and orange juice work. The RPers 50 gil wine becomes something fairly nice. A 2000 gil courtesan ends up being affordable. About the only thing it doesn't work for is housing and haircuts. I can live with that, though.

This sums it up for me, pretty much. Though I also try to ensure that my characters (as others have pointed out) have areas in which they aren't competent, mainly to provide more hooks to RP with other people. Now here's an interesting point, in my mind: Just because a character isn't competent in some area doesn't mean that they have a huge glaring weakness that shows up everyday. They might not be aware of this weakness; they might not care about it; they might structure their life such that this weakness simply never comes up. To them, they may be self-contained and capable. Yet when they're faced with a problem that plays to this weakness, they're suddenly faced with something they can't do themselves.

We're growing! We're up to 6 members and the spectacular Kenthy Pennyfeather has agreed to be second in command of the group!

Tylwyth Narah maintain a linkshell, but it's private for members of the organization.

Why, Anne Parillaud, of course! 64la0fbwJpU But perhaps that's because I've always pictured C'kayah as voiced by Jean Reno... QhvPt_SvbY4

Some games lend themselves to playing villains a little more than others. Everquest II, for instance, has a whole set of evil races with their own evil quests that make it pretty easy to make a character who's simply "one of those". Final Fantasy 14, on the other hand, doesn't really. But! One thing Final Fantasy 14 does have in spades is grey area. Are the Ul'dahn's good or evil? The opening cutscene has Brass Blades planting somnus on a wagon so they can extort money from the driver, after all. Grey area is a petty villains best friend. Background aside, as someone who solely plays villains in FF, and does so actively, I think I can speak to this. I wrote in the shy RP guide that it's good to approach RP as if you were a supporting character in someone else's roleplay, and there's nowhere that this applies more than to villain characters. Heroes abound in Eorzea! But without villains to struggle against, what do they actually have? That's right, nothing. Be that something for them! In C'kayah's case, he's a grey area villain: he doesn't twirl his moustache in a dastardly manner while plotting the death of everyone around him. Instead he's a morally flexible man trying to make his way in a morally flexible world, and choosing to do so on the wrong side of the law. It's easy to get a lot of play with him: He's out there in the world. He acts openly. He'll discuss black market dealings in a public tavern, for instance. This provides hooks for other people to act on. The other thing I do with C'kayah is to offer his "services" as a villain for other people's arcs. I did this when I first started playing, and it turned into the NHSC, which at its height had 9 player character grey area villains working in other people's arcs. More recently, a similar thing is happening with my new organization, Tylwyth Narah. This is really just an application of the idea that I'm playing a supporting character in someone else's story. It doesn't mean that this is all I do: C'kayah has his own story in which he's the hero, after all. But playing the supporting villain does get me a lot of RP. Setoh, on the other hand, is evil. He's a rigidly ethical man with no morals to speak of. A contract "cleaner", he's much like a genie: If you hire him, he will do whatever you ask him to do. It might not be what you want him to do, but it will be what you asked him to do. But because of this, it's a lot harder to play him openly. I partially get around this by not playing him a ton, but I also tend to play his actual crimes out in party chat instead of public say. This allows him to develop a reputation without being out there all the time. OOCly, Setoh is purely a supporting character. He plays in other people's arcs on request, and that's it. One thing to note with both C'kayah and Setoh is that neither of them are stereotypical villains. Even Setoh, who is pretty damned evil, isn't your standard "I expect you to die, Mr. Bond" villain. Neither are supernatural. Neither are Garleans (no offense to those who play Garleans!). They're both ordinary men living in an extraordinary world. I'll end with one big sticking point that I always make sure people understand when I'm talking to them about playing villains: Expect to lose! While the villains can (and do) win sometimes, most of the stories we tell each other in the game - and that is ultimately what roleplaying is: storytelling - end with the heroes victorious. As a villain you have to be comfortable rolling with this. It doesn't mean your character dies, necessarily. Just that you should expect your character to fail. To lose. That said, roleplaying a villain can be a very rewarding experience, and one I can't recommend enough.

I love all this advice in here. I love it. If I could add one thing to it that's made the biggest difference for me: RP like you're a supporting character in someone else's story. Because, to them, you are. Everyone's the hero of their story. Everyone. If you walk in the room like you're "Mighty Gronad the Barbarian, striding among the human worms" and expect everyone to fall all over you, you're going to be disappointed. If, however, you're Gronad the Barbarian and you couldn't help but overhear that RandomGuy's sister was captured by tribal Lalafells, and your own mother was killed by Lalafells and it left you feeling hollow inside so is there anything you could do to help... That's a different story entirely. Enable other people's RP. Do that, and you'll never have an end to people wanting to RP with you.

...you have clothes? Leather straps technically are carried in the "clothes" section of the market boards...

...political correctness strikes again. :frustrated: There goes that "Steal Gil" flavor. Oh, hush, man! C'kayah steals crap all the time, despite being a conjurer! This'll bring the first new class I'll be excited to get to 50 Poison use! *swoons*

Me, too, please!

C'kayah loves food, and he's become a pretty serious epicurean gourmand over the years. He doesn't particularly favor any cultures food over the others, so long as it's well-prepared. He enjoys everything from the most sophisticated and complex dishes to the simplest cuts of meat roasted over a fire while on the trail.