C'kayah Polaali

You'll have to come RP with C'kayah sometime, then. He's pretty biased against Elezen in general...

Ditto! I'm always up for random RP.

I'm personally hoping this means that I can dress C'kayah in a bikini and he'll /doze in that pose. If that's the case, I'll organize a "Tias of Hydaelyn" calendar.

Hey, I'm level 28, and I have plenty of neat... no, wait. You're right. You're so right. *sobs into his aetherial crocs*

The "sneaky fucker" theory doesn't apply only to lions (and for the record I'm not a big fan of drawing parallels between Miqo'te and any kind of cat), it's pretty common in any group of animals where a dominant male is "supposed to" have exclusive access to females: there are plenty of various ruminants, monkeys, apes, etc that exhibit this. For that matter, while human societies aren't built like this, there's still plenty of "sneaky fucker" behavior among us, all throughout history.

Yeah, but "tribe" can be used both for the prefix-tribe and "tribe" as in a particular tribe, which is probably what S-E meant (so if X'ehl Tia is born into a tribe already lead by X'hyr Nunh, they're both from the X-tribe, yet if X'ehl leaves with a bunch of women and becomes X'ehl Nunh, they will still be X-tribe, but they will also be individual tribes, I assume, anyway). I hate that this is the case. I would much rather that there were different terms for prefix-tribe, sub-tribe and breeding group.

Just for the record (I'm sure it's been mentioned, but I'm chiming in here anyways), combats don't take level or equipment into account. They're done using a random number generator, and it's entirely possible for someone to create a level 1 character and immediately win a Grindstone tournament. So don't wait, or you'll be late! And sometimes you'll get to be healed by C'kayah, if you come. That's always an experience! As opposed to a certain "healer" who's name starts with an "E", C'kayah has never caused a patient to scream or burst into flames.

Trauma!

I think it's been pretty well established that a Seeker tribe is made up of numerous breeding groups. A single Nunh per tribe would imply that there were, at most, only a few thousand Seekers in Eorzea. As far as the Seeker/Keeper mix goes, you could also argue that Kipih Jakkya's presence supports the idea of this pairing being rare (and possibly troublesome) for tribal Miqo'te. Kipah, after all, is an "urbanized" (as opposed to tribal) Miqo'te. I've been thinking about a couple of things with regard to Seeker breeding. We know that a Tia can become a Nunh by challenging an existing Nunh, proving himself fitter, and taking that Nunh's place. It's assumed that combat plays a part of this challenge, but is it there anything else? This depends really on what a tribe would consider to be proof of fitness. And how much does female choice come into play? Is an ability to convince the females of a breeding group that you're a better choice part of the challenge? I don't like to compare Miqo'te to lions (ears and tails aside, they're obviously very close to the other sophonts of Eorzea. Much closer than to any sort of cat), but there have been recorded instances of the females of prides killing a dominant male who proves to be a liability. This shows that there's at least some need for a dominant lion to convince the females that he's the correct man for the job, so to speak. Another thing I've been wondering about is something that biologists sometimes call the "sneaky fucker" theory. A decent number of the children produced by "dominant male" breeding groups of animals, where only the dominant male is supposed to breed, aren't actually children of the dominant male. Instead, while the dominant male is off defending his claim, other males will sneak in and mate with females (often with the enthusiastic cooperation of the females). I'd be surprised if quite a bit of this didn't happen among Seekers. Even if all the Tias are driven out of a breeding group, roaming female Seekers would have ample opportunities to come into contact with Tias while they're away from hearth and home.

If I could put C'kayah in a Miqo'te miniskirt, I'd sign up. As it is, you probably don't want to see that...

Exactly. I think part of it is probably perceptual, too: the few large world MMOs I've played in have suffered under constant complaints about travel times and empty areas, and I can't think of any that haven't made changes to - at the very least - reduce the perceived size of the game world. I see it all as metaphoric, really. The fast day-night cycle doesn't mean that days are really 15 minutes long, it's just a metaphor for days going by. Likewise, the small world doesn't mean that the world really is that small, it's just a metaphor for the "actual" world our characters live in.

Just for the record, I haven't forgotten you. Our online times just haven't seemed to cross, yet.

This, really. I personally think adventurers getting their chocobos from Grand Companies speaks more to the sort of training that GC chocobos probably got, compared to the average run-of-the-mill riding chocobos. We do, after all, routinely ride our chocobos through the midst of extremely hostile groups of creatures who are often extremely motivated to stop us. Our GC chocobos don't blink an eye, they just trust us and power on through. They're likely to be the equivalent of the highly trained cavalry horses of a hundred years ago (or more). Chocobos in general? Pretty cheap, as Liadan says. Our chocobos, on the other hand, are pretty damn special.

Around the time of the Calamity, it became really hard for C'kayah to get good wine in Gridania. He still shudders at the memory. Hold me, somebody...

I think they're both nice consoles. Really, to me, it's all dictated by which games are available for which console. We've got an XBOX 360 now, but we're getting a PS4 because of certain games my daughters want to play.

I couldn't recommend talking to these people enough. I get more RP out of the folks in this OOC linkshell than I get out of my heavy RP FC.

I remember looking at this when you first wrote it and thinking "Man, if C'kayah was a Keeper..." That said, there is some Keeper on his mother's side, which doesn't fit with your roles but could be a hook for something. Alternately, I'm always up for RP.

That's a fantastic idea! I've always gone in for the "take a deep breath and jump in" method, but that can take some nerving up, especially when I'm new to a game. I'm going to try this. Olofantur, I know what you mean. If I have to run off in situations like that, I'll usually send a tell explaining things. I'm pretty firmly in the "more OOC info shooting around is better" camp.

Any chance of extending this later? It's ending about 30 minutes before I get home from work...

I'm game. C'kayah's never been too fussy about who hires him, though he normally tries to keep more on the thief/smuggler side of things and less on the kidnapper side. He's also been out and about in the world for about 15 years (he's 29), so the requirement to have known Tsimh isn't a problem. Let's look each other up in game and talk about this.

Oh, you so should! I've had the biggest mancrush on him ever since Buffy!

Just the fact that this question still gets asked is reason enough, don't you think?

Most of the times I've seen this sort of thing has been the more ordinary "we RP a FC aligned with X", but I have seen one instance where someone's actually RPed a high officer in some faction. That was in Star Trek Online, where one of the players RPed the Admiral of a task force based at DS9. The key to that RP working out well was that they 1) had buy-in from a bunch of other players who wanted to be involved with RPing a military unit, and 2) had pre-worked out a story with ready made reasons why other people wouldn't be under the Admiral's jurisdiction (in that case, the task force itself had a fairly independent mission and didn't make up all the forces at DS9). I think that's really the only way something like this could work well. Trying to portray a high level Maelstrom officer, for instance, means you're immediately put up against all the folks who will say "Huh? Why should I salute you? I'm not gonna". But if you say "I'm a high level Maelstrom officer in a special operations unit that focuses on opposing Garlean covert units", you'd be able to avoid all that. Hell, you'd probably be able to use that as an excuse why you don't wear your rank on your sleeve.

C'kayah was inspired somewhat by the Grey Mouser (from the Fritz Leiber stories), a little by Jack Harkness ('cos, c'mon, who doesn't like Captain Jack?). While I originally rolled him as a C-tribe miqo just randomly, I then discovered C'io Bekht's biography in the wiki, which started me down the path of discovering miqo and C-tribe culture. So, yeah. Definite inspiration there, too.

C'kayah's also on an "extended pilgrimage" (going on 15 years now), so he completely understands being different than the rest of his tribe. I'll keep an eye out for you. What times are you on?