C'kayah Polaali

[align=center][/align] Nald'Thal's Hand Social Club is a small organization devoted to the discovery, development and exploitation of business opportunities both within Ul'dah and across the world. It has no public clubhouse, instead holding meetings in the Laughing Lady tavern. Characters with any connections to the Ul'dahn underworld may have heard rumors about the club. It is commonly known by those with connections that the club has associations with the Ul'dahn criminal underworld. Less commonly heard is that the club itself is a front for an up and coming criminal organization. Least commonly heard is that the club is run by a miqo'te outcast, a Tia who employs only female miqo'te, as a perverse mockery of a traditional Seeker breeding group. Here's the way it works. If you need some villain for your RP arc, contact us and we'll provide it. We'll help work out IC reasons why the NHSC would be involved, and provide you with short- or long-term foils for your characters to struggle against. There are currently 9 of us in the NHSC. Not everyone in the NHSC is willing to participate in any kind of RP, but there are enough dark RP enthusiasts to support anything you might want to do. We're all on board with the idea that, as foils and supporting actors in other people's stories, we aren't necessarily going to succeed at what we do. For the most part, we expect to lose - though we often will lose very stylishly! We can also put you in contact with a group of players portraying Sultansworn/Immortal Flame officers, for the law-and-order side of the equation. If you're interested in including the NHSC in your RP, either post here or get ahold of me or Emelie Annel. We operate out of the Laughing Lady ICly, so we may also be contacted in that linkshell.

Those are absolutely fantastic!

I think that, again, this comes down to the idea that the Sultansworn and/or free paladins are upholding a particularly Ul'dahn concept of law, order and good. Plato argued that that which we call good is merely that which everyone desires. In the case of Ul'dah, "everyone" really means the Sultana and the Syndicate, and their desires largely center around economic flow and the maintenance of the status quo, power-wise. In other words, I think it's entirely justifiable for a Sultansworn or free paladin to resort to things like assassination or torture in order to benefit the greater good.

The Laughing Lady works this way, too. It's mainly a set of RP linkshells (one OOC, one IC) for the tavern, and then the associated FC is mainly just for the convenience of people who want to help run (OOCly) the thing. This lets us have plenty of patrons from different FCs, and it provides enough flexibility so that we can simultaneously have IC tavern RP, OOC discussion about the RP as it happens, plus FC-only discussion about things we want to bring into it, all at the same time. The NHSC, on the other hand, is strictly just a linkshell. It probably could be a free company, but I like people being able to participate without leaving their current FC. So, I guess, it's really up to you and what you want for your FC/LS.

AmberMush, you mean? Brother! I'm personally also all in favor of text-based events. I got my start doing online RP with mushes, and then Eve Online (which doesn't let you get out of your spaceship to interact with people, so it's all text-based in chat), so RPing with actual avatars standing around together is still a bit of a new experience to me. I figure, then, that since I'm mainly focusing on that chat window, why not go all the way and have events that way.

I wanted to post a little OOC info about this tavern. The Laughing Lady exists as both a Free Company and a set of Linkshells. You do not have to join the FC in order to patronize the tavern, nor does joining the FC mean that you are an employee of the tavern - C'kayah, for instance, doesn't work at the tavern. There is an in-character linkshell which is the basic tavern - sometimes we gather at the tavern at Bronze Lake and use that as the Lady, but mostly we RP within the linkshell. There is also an out-of-character linkshell for use in discussing ongoing roleplay and the like. The feel of the tavern is very much like the Silver Eel (from Fritz Leiber) or the Mos Eisley cantina, so it's definitely not your Prancing Pony. Contact Kinala Lendis or C'kayah Tia in-game for more information, or for invitations to the linkshells. I'll also mention, as an example of the sort of thing we want for the Lady, that the Nald'Thal's Hand Social Club operates out of the tavern. The NHSC, OOCly, operates to provide villains for other people's RP. There are six of us so far in the NHSC, operating as criminal mercenaries. ICly, the NHSC is an organization devoted to the development and exploitation of business opportunities within Ul'dah and the rest of Eorzea, but it's pretty obviously a front. If you're interested in using the NHSC, ping C'kayah Tia or Emelie Annel in-game. We're both usually in-character and available in the IC Lady linkshell, which is a great place to contact us ICly.

Same here, though I subscribe heavily to the moral relativistic point of view that says you should take character alignments into account within the framework of their society. In other words, you've got Ul'dah, where there is rampant exploitation, slavery, vast wealth disparity, and a general low regard for the value of human life. A Lawful Good Sultansworn, in that context, would feel that all of those Ul'dahn values would be both just and good.

They're a lot of fun, I really recommend coming.

I don't really play C'kayah as cat-like at all. I do try to use his ears and tail in emotes, because hey, he's got ears and a tail! He's pretty well urbanized at this point in his life, though, so he doesn't roll R's or anything like that. Purring is a bit of an interesting thing for me. C'kayah tends to be a very smooth talker, and I bring it out in emotes by having him murmur, purr, or speak silkily, but the purring is intended to emphasize a particular style of speaking.

That's terrible! I'm sorry this happened to you. With my gil balance usually hovering around 30k, I can't really help you guys out, but my thoughts are with you and I hope Square Enix can do something to get at least part of what you lost back to you.

(The journal has been returned to Pema and ready to be dropped again... )

Enemies of the Order are welcome as well, no?

Red! I'm glad to see you here!

Congrats, Freelance! Please don't ban me!

Darker plotlines? I'll be in touch... :angel:

My! This one's so sharp we could just cut ourselves!

I just want to add that someone saying they speak for the whole server should be a gigantic red flag for you - not that you're doing something wrong, but that the person you're talking to isn't worth talking to. I'll also add that my own personal view of lore-bending, which I think isn't uncommon, is that entertaining trumps everything else. Be a good RPer and you won't lack for people who want to RP with you, no matter what the story you're RPing is.

The room was spacious, with sunlight streaming through large rectangular windows and a faint scent of myrrh. Fine furniture in exotic woods, all built to a lalafell's diminutive size, clustered here and there. C'kayah stood at the center of the room, watching as a young miqo'te woman carried his prize to a canopied day bed. He didn't remember the woman from their last meeting, which he took to be a good sign. Babajon Jajajon did nothing unintentionally. That he would engage such a woman showed that he had researched C'kayah's tastes. The dark curtains of the day bed's canopy parted and a small hand took the box. Babajon's voice was thin, yet carried throughout the room. "You had no trouble getting this?", the lalafell asked. "None worth reporting", C'kayah replied from where he stood. The canopy fell closed, leaving the room in silence. C'kayah waited, his eyes wandering. The slim woman stood submissively, head bowed, tail curled decorously around one lean leg. The book shelves, he noted, carried a few new volumes. An instructively erotic tapestry showed young lalafell men wrestling and indulging in Menphinistic sport, also a new addition and entirely in character. As Babajon had researched C'kayah, so had the miqo'te studied Babajon. A faint sound of wood sliding against wood hissed from behind the canopy. A tiny giggle followed. "I see you took my instructions most literally", Babajon said. "Twelve gold rings of Sil'dahn design, an Ishgardian seal for official documents, and the smallest finger of Tuturikku Gogorikku, my greatest enemy and my saddest loss." C'kayah chuckled and hazarded a response. "The cemetary keepers near Drybone had taken good care of him", he said. "The tomb was well-sealed, and the body in fine shape for one three years gone." "Do not speak of those who are your betters!", Babajon snapped angrily. C'kayah cursed inwardly, hoping he had not risked too much familiarity with the lalafell. His fear proved unfounded, however, as the voice continued. "Yet, you have done well. I accept your apology and your penance. Your period of expiation is over, your Ul'dahn privileges are restored." C'kayah smiled to himself. It had been over ten years since a younger Babajon Jajajon had informed him that his ham handed attempts to steal a comfortable life for himself had attracted the ire of the Syndicate families. Now, a decade older and undoubtably wiser, his skills fully developed and matured, he would not waste this rare second chance.

I love these! You've got a real talent for making your drawings dynamic!

Welcome! If you don't see me in game for a while, it's 'cos I'll be re-downloading LOTRO now, thank you. *runs off to dig out his Sindarin language lessons*

As someone playing an Ul'dahn villain, I've got to give enormous kudos to Natalie here. Before I met her, I'd occasionally make references to the Sultansworn or Brass Blades in C's RP. Now I have to worry about turning around and seeing Nat, notepad in hand, waiting to ask more questions about some discrepancies in C's latest alibi. Trust me, you want this.

I'm a huge fan of your RP, Naih'ir, and I really want our characters to interact more. That said, unfortunately, C doesn't fit the bill for these. Let's chat OOCly in game, though. I know a few folks who might want to play your villain role, and I'd love to point you at one another.

Your post is gold, Asgarn, but I do have to take exception to this bit. You see arthritis and other conditions like that develop in heavyset humans because those people are outliers - far heavier than the average humans even a thousand years ago. Roegadyn are supposed to be that big, so I'd guess that they wouldn't have those problems as a whole. You can look at elephants as a parallel. Elephants in the wild tend to be active their entire lives, and typically live pretty free of such ailments. Captive elephants usually can't get the activity they need, frequently get overweight, and do tend to suffer from cardiovascular problems and arthritis. It's clear that it's only the outlier animals that have the problem, despite all of them being big. Roegadyn seem to have a culture that values remaining vigorous (just from looking at all the Roe NPCs in the game) your entire life, so I'd hazard a guess that they remain strong and limber until they really become elderly.

So they would all be Fate farming FCs? RP-FATE being the one that farms them IC? With Hand of Fate, it was more that the Fates farmed us... By the way, how are you able to play with nameplates off? If I tried that, the only things I'd say ICly were "Cae? No, wait. Brandon? Who the hell are you?"

This, really. I've benefited enormously from reading RP discussions by Gilgamesh players (I started C down the villain path largely through a discussion with some of the folks from the Ambrosia FC there). The game lore isn't different between the servers, and much of the RP discussion does revolve around that: Miqo'te lore; the advisability of RPing events from the storyline quest; etc. Since we've recently discussed tagging subject lines in thread, I agree with Xen here that using a [Gilgamesh] or [balmung] tag would be a good way to flag server-specific discussions. Otherwise, I'd much rather we all talk in the same forum.