C'kayah Polaali

(This is a little sketch I wrote to help establish C'kayah's personality. Plus it was just fun. Hope you enjoy it!) The flute was buried under a slim volume entitled "Intrigues of the House Haillenarte, Sixth Astral Age". The Miqo'te C'kayah, dressed for the heat in loose white linen, turned the book over in his hands while the merchant pattered on about Ishgardian history. "…fascinating account of the excesses of the daughter of Lord Einagh, who was renowned for her appetites and once caused the death of the Overlord Karainik's favorite chocobo…" C'kayah nodded, leafing idly through the pages. It was exactly the sort of book he preferred: small enough to carry, lividly decadent, and desperately esoteric. A decade and a half away from his tribal sept was enough to put an educated veneer over his barbarian childhood, but vanity prevented the sort of dedicated study that would give him a rounded education. "Good, good", he said. "I'll give you ten gil for it." The merchant laughed, his comically small red hat wobbling precariously on his head. "Ten? Why the tale of Lady Trinarises downfall alone is worth at least twice that much!" "What's this?", the Miqo'te interrupted, touching the little flute. It was tarnished silver, finely engraved, and completely out of place among the stall's books. The merchant narrowed his eyes in puzzlement, momentarily stopped short before habit took over and he continued. "That? Why, it is a magical toy! The flute of Balsheerba! Do you not know the story?" C'kayah shook his head, smiling. The merchant's story was sure to be a fabrication, of course, but entertaining enough to overcome that shortcoming. "You know of the Eleven, don't you? No? It's an old story, told to children. For each animal kind - rats, bats, squirrels, cats - there are eleven perfect individuals having great wisdom and skill. They are the ruling council for that kind, and they hold great influence over them all." C'kayah opened his mouth to interject, but the merchant simply walked roughshod over the interruption. "Yes, yes. Always eleven there are. Don't ask me why, it's magic, of course! But this flute, you see… Sultan Balsheerba wanted to drive out the birds which threatened to despoil Ul'dah during his time. You would not know it, this was before you were born, and there are few who know the tale. The birds during his reign grew jealous of the beauty and vanity of Ul'dan women, and so they mounted an invasion of the city. Yes, yes, it's all true! Of course it is! C'kayah closed his mount and smiled, while the merchant continued. "…Now, as I was saying, the Sultan Balsheerba was under tremendous pressure to do something about it, so he offered a reward - no, I don't know what he offered, that's beside the point sir! The reward was to inspire, that was all. And inspire it did, for the great Lalafell toymaker Birin crafted a flute all carved over with cats. The song of this flute was so lovely that it swayed the eleven perfect cats, and they coordinated the defeat of the birds!" C'kayah picked up the little flute, rubbing at its tarnished surface with his thumb. It was a pretty little thing, and there were cats embossed in its surface, which made him smile. "It will look fine enough once I polish it, I think", he said. "Polish? Yes! Of course! It is silver, you can see by the tarnish. Worth at least…" "Eighty gil", the Miqo'te interjected, reaching for his belt pouch to count out the coin. "…two hundred, and no less", said the merchant. "My own daughter loves this instrument, so I could not bear to give it up for any less." C'kayah nodded appreciatively. "I can see why, with the care she has lavished on it. Why, it is so tarnished, I wouldn't believe any living hand has touched it for decades. One hundred." "My poor daughter, she lost this very flute last week. It only tarnishes so much because it is consumed with regret over the loss of her hand. I could not possibly disappoint her for less than one eighty." "From the looks of it", the Miqo'te retorted, "her only regret would be the possibility of you bringing it back. Yet, I think it would amuse a young friend of mine, so I might give you one hundred and forty for it, but you must throw in the book as well." "You are a cruel man, who knows not the depths of a young girl's despair. If you did, you would understand why I could only begin to salve her loss with fineries costing far more than the one hundred and sixty I would accept for this - and that only because you are a regular customer!" "A single piece of paste jewelry should please her more than this toy. Why, looking at it, I would be surprised if it played any notes at all. All the same, I like your stories, and so I will give you one hundred and fifty for it, along with the book." The merchant shook his head in mock-disappointment. "You see the lows to which I must sink in order to maintain my family? A loss I will sell this at! A loss! It goes against all tenants of good business! But you, sir, are a good customer, and so I must sometimes take a loss to ensure your fickle loyalty. Fine. One fifty." C'kayah counted the coins into the merchant's hand and then slipped the little flute into his pocket. Tucking the book under his arm, he made his way back up the crowded path. He sometimes carried little cargos for a stern man in Vesper Bay who's daughter delighted in little gifts of this sort. And in any case, the story was quite entertaining.

Hornet, these are spectacular! Thank you for posting them.

The whole age thing is a bit challenging in Final Fantasy. From what I've seen of them, there are a ton of very young, very competent characters. I personally don't sweat it too much. Starting down the path of "it doesn't make sense that this character is so young and yet can still do X" can lead to some sad places. At the end of the day, all that matters is that the game is fun to play. Interesting RP trumps any number of "sins".

I've got a question and an observation. The question is "does this mean it was last Saturday the 7th, or next Saturday the 14th?", and the observation is "I usually get online later in the evening, and I live in the Pacific timezone, so it's usually over by the time I get there. Other night owls should come join me there!"

Those are seriously cute!

Nice sketches! They've got a cool "New Yorker" sort of pen-and-ink feel to them that I've always loved. I'm kicking myself for missing this last time around, but I'll certainly try to get in on your next round!

Check out Wings on the link shell front, too. It's mainly an OOC LS, but they do a lot of RP coordination in there, too. Oh, and I'm always open for more RP, myself. I'll look you up when I'm next online.

I've seen Xha'to Moiu running around. I actually thought he was an alt of yours, and tried to RP with him. For that matter, you have no idea how many Tia's I've seen running around. Damn copycats! Pick your own last names!

Hey there! Welcome to The Game (sorry, couldn't resist). There is some lore about traditional Keeper names which you might find useful. Also, just clicking on the random name generator in the character creator does give you lore-appropriate names (that's what I ended up doing for C'kayah). There are a bunch of RPers who don't have names that fit the lore, and that's typically fine, too. Maybe what you put as your name in the character creator is just a nickname. Maybe you changed your name to try to fit in better with some culture you're living around. Maybe you just don't like your name. Maybe you were exiled from your community and stripped of your proper name. There are all sorts of possibilities. As far as Ami Nightpaw goes, I don't think you'd have a problem. Worst comes to worst, tell folks that it was given to you by an alcoholic Lalafell whose restaurant you used to wait tables at.

"Oh, by all means", C'kayah purred silkily, "give your own report in detail. Be sure to include your own initial decision to give away the seal, I'm sure it will make for fascinating reading. Be sure you take care to spell my name correctly: U'kwor, that's ew apostrophe kay double ew oh ar." The pair continued on their way, seemingly clasped in comradely love, through the streets of Ul'dah. The Miqo'te breathed heavily as they went, as if the exertion was more than he cared for. Nodding at the cheerful yellow flicker of light from a wine shop, he continued to talk. "When we're done with the healer, let's stop there. Following the two of you was thirsty work. I'm fond of the light, sparkling wine of Vesper Bay, though something fortified would not go amiss tonight. That shop, by the way, is renowned for its cheese. They buy from a man who imports this hard cheese from the south which is- ah, here we are!" The pair arrived at a door, marked simply with "M'riss", and the sigil of a healer. A light burned inside, strange for the hour. The Miqo'te kicked the door, his soft boots pounding softly on the wood. A female voice called something from inside, indistinct through the door, which presently opened. M'riss was an older Miqo'te woman, with dark brown hair shot with silver and the pale skin of a Keeper, dressed plainly. Silver framed glasses hung on a fine chain around her neck. She looked at the pair, her eyes glancing at C'kayah before coming to rest on the Hyur he supported. "Yes? Come in, come in", she said. "What happened to you?" The front room was a workroom, with a stout wooden table in the center, the tools of her trade on shelves and in drawers around it. C'kayah helped Tobias into the room, toward the table. "My friend here got in a bit of a scuffle", C'kayah replied. "Took a boot to the knee and a heavy blow to the ribs. He's in pain, and he's having trouble walking." M'riss closed the door, settling her glasses on her face. She moved to peer into Tobias' eyes. "Oh? Fighting, have we been? Take off your shirt, we'd better check you out."

C'kayah chuckled as the Hyur approached, allowing the man to take his arm while reaching across his chest to do the same with his other hand, supporting him in a companionable way. "Gil is the blood of life here in Ul'dah, didn't they tell you that?", he purred silkily. "There's no sin in recognizing that fact. In any case, the poor Sultansworn over there, moved to speechlessness by the sight of my concern for your well-being, must have something for his trouble, mmm? Before I came along, he was doubtless looking forward to whatever reward he could gain from your gift of our employer's seal." C'kayah shifted next to Tobias, pulling him in the direction of M'riss. "The healer is this way. Let's go get you looked at, and then we can both go make our reports about this evening. Tell me, when I mention your attempts to dispose of the seal, should I give some reason on your part, or should I leave it to them to speculate?"

C'kayah visibly winced as the man's hand went to his side. "Carefully, friend, I suspect a broken rib. You don't want to move too much, or you'll risk a punctured lung." He slipped the seal into the large leather pouch hanging from his belt, withdrawing a handful of gil which he underhanded to the other Miqo'te. "You, Sultansworn. My friend is injured. Do me a favor and stay with him while I fetch a healer. There'll be more gil for your trouble when I return." The nearest healer that he knew of was M'liss, five blocks away. Funnily enough, he did intend to fetch her. He'd watched the fight, that Elezen had landed a near-killing blow on the man. Turning to go, he raised a cautioning finger. "Don't let him move, too. I think he's in shock, he won't know if he hurts himself more."

Problem is that got used for the Seeker/Keeper break. How so? When you start the game and make a Miqote it asks you to choose your character's clan which would be Keeper and Seeker. Oh, that's right. That's an unfortunate use of the word.

Problem is that got used for the Seeker/Keeper break. How so?

Depends what you mean by tribe I read that as there's nothing above local clans/villages/bands while the Seekers have group equivalents to say the Cherokee or Apache I believe you both have a point. They seem to imply that Keepers are more clan-like. And a Keeper clan is made of 2 to 3 families. I guess it could be possible to classify a few families as a tribe? I don't know. I am not familiar with the true definition of tribe. I'm not an anthropologist, but I don't think there's a really good formal definition of "tribe", so I don't know if it makes sense to talk about the true definition of the word. I personally like the idea of calling groups of Keeper families "clans" instead of "tribes", both because Keepers do seem more clannish than Seekers and because I like having a different word to refer to the (very distinctly different) Keeper social structure than the words used for Seeker social structures.

So addapting this for Keepers "tribe" would become the maternal surname, sept could represent villages or wandering groups, and breeding groups would be all the females who 'share' a male? So in this case Xha'li Moui would be from the Moui tribe, Coetheras Foothill sept, and one of only 4 in the K'zhuzu breeding group along with, Xha'a, Xha'to, and Xha herself. I don't think you'd want to adapt this for Keepers. It makes sense for Seekers, since they don't have traditional families and instead have this tripartite division from tribe->sept->breeding group. Keepers, on the other hand, seem to focus solely on their families or breeding groups, and may or may not have tribes. I'd probably argue that you could just say "family" for Keepers. Which is interesting in and of itself. Now, I don't play a Keeper, so I haven't really read up on Keeper culture the way I've tried to do for Seeker culture, but this Miqo'te naming conventions article has an interesting bit: It doesn't come out and say that they don't have tribes, but at the very least it strongly implies that they either a) don't have tribes or b) their tribes aren't very important to them.

C'kayah's a smuggler and a thief. Though he's involved in a FC already (with their attendant story arcs), I'm always looking for more RP fun for him.

C'io Behkt did a nice write up for a few Coeurl tribe villages which I've been basing C'kayah's sept on, you might want to add that in. She speculates about a few common cultural attributes, at least among the three villages in her write up. I'm going to jump on a modest soap box and propose a terminology change, since different people are tossing around the word "tribe" and using it to mean anything from the entire letter tribe down to a single breeding group. My suggestion is that "tribe" refers to the letter tribe only, and that smaller sub-groups have different terms - I'm not fond of "sub-tribe", because it's vague enough to cover anything down to and including a breeding group. I'd suggest the word "sept" to cover both a tribal village (in the case of settled tribes) and a big nomadic unit within a tribe. The key with it is that the sept is culturally unified, and it's bigger than a single breeding group. Breeding groups, of course, can then simply be "breeding groups". So you'd have a hierarchy of terms like this: Tribe -> Sept -> Breeding group. So, in C'kayah's case, he was born from C'xin Nunh's breeding group. That group was part of a larger Coeurl village, so that village is his sept. That sept, combined with all the other Coeurl septs, makes up the Coeurl tribe as a whole. You wouldn't have to live with your sept to be part of it, of course. Think of the sept as an extended family. So if your Miqo'te takes part in a breeding group that opens up a new hunting area, and lives isolated from anyone else, they're still part of a sept. If your female Miqo'te joins a breeding group from another sept, they'd effectively be marrying into that new sept. They might talk about their new and old septs the same way that we talk about our families and the families we marry into.

C'kayah gazed flatly at the Hyur for a moment. The evening's luck had gone poorly - first the dark skinned Elezen snatching the bag he had his eye on, and alerting its guardian, as he was getting into position to take the thing himself. He'd very nearly lost them in the pursuit, as well. Now, misfortune of misfortunes, he had the bad luck to be facing an intelligent guard. The presence of the Sultansworn made things even more complicated. He shrugged, telling himself that fortune favored the bold. "I can understand your distrust" he began, speaking in the same almost casual tone, "after all, you were not aware of my existence any more than I was aware of yours. Yet I must wonder as to your motives. You all too willing to give our employer's property to the Sultansworn here. Were I disposed to suspicion, I might think that you were trying to eliminate anything connecting the Ishgardians to their gem. Especially since you now insist on possessing the very thing that you tried to give away. Tell me, why is that?"

I did the same thing for C'kayah. The randomizer seems to do a pretty good job of constructing plausible lore-appropriate names for the various races.

For the record, I am accepting applications...

Interesting quandary you're in, there. My first impression would be to avoid any sort of deus ex machina resolution for this, simply because there are so many instances where people RP characters that have had these sorts of singular experiences and they do it extremely badly. I'm not saying that you would RP this badly, but I am suggesting that you don't want to put yourself in a position where other folks look at you and think "ahhhh, another 'the Gods cursed me' snowflake". History is replete with women dressing as men for various reasons (check out James Tiptree for a relatively recent example), and they always end up interesting stories. My suggestion would be to pull a "George Sand" and use it as a hook for RP.

Normally I think sepia is overused in these sorts of things, but it looks better in your poster: +1 sepia

Clucking his tongue in disapproval, a second Miqo'te emerged from the shadows. Dressed all in grey - jerkin, silken shirt, cloak and cap - his face coated with grey pigment, he had avoided the trio's notice, engaged as they were in more energetic and entertaining pursuits. His name was C'kayah Tia, but tonight he bore a different moniker in accordance with the twins Nald and Thal, and their foremost lesson: opportunity. With the confident steps of one who has every right to be there, despite his suspicious appearance, he moves directly to Tobias. Stooping, he begins to gather up the spilled contents of the bag, putting everything back in with the exception of the seal case. "I saw what you did", he said in an approving tone. "You saved our employers garnet, and for that you should be commended." He holds up the case, Ishgardian seal out, and continues. "All the same, I do not think this should go to the Goldsmith's Guild." Standing, he hands the bag, minus the seal, to Landrenel. "I am U'kwor Tia", he says placidly, "and as my companion here has been hired to safeguard the garnet, I have been hired to safeguard the seal. Thank you for your assistance in this, Sultansworn." He smiled down at Tobias, his teeth flashing white against the grey of his painted face. "I was honestly surprised to see that they had sent only one man to guard the gemstone. I'm pleased to see that their choice was correct. Forgive me for not coming to your aid earlier, but I had strict orders. You understand the cryptic and untrusting ways of our employer. Come, shall we get you to a healer?"

It's never a bad idea to learn how to deal with your own computer repairs and/or construction. There are a lot of good websites that deal with hardware reviews (Tom's Hardware - http://www.tomshardware.com/, for instance) which run articles about building computers, too, including really nice "build a gaming computer for $x" articles that include full parts lists with links to buy them. An intermediate route I've gone before is to buy a computer from a budget manufacturer and address any shortcomings. Most budget manufacturers (CyberPower, for instance) use off-the-shelf parts, so you can look up what they use on a hardware review site and see if it's good or not. A good example is a $500 gaming computer I built recently for someone: I started with a $430 CyberPower PC with a good motherboard (which is probably the most important thing to spend on, since everything else literally plugs into it) and decent components. Reviews said the power supplies CyberPower uses was weak, and prone to zapping components, so I spent $60 on a very solid power supply and ended up with a really nice and reliable gaming computer without having to take the trouble to build out the entire thing. But yeah, from what I've heard, AlienWare has completely gone downhill since they were acquired.