C'kayah Polaali

I have yet to see that, truth be told @_@ And I've seen quite a lot of Miqo'tes, especially being in a tribe myself. So far as the hooker angle, goes, considering how I think I've found a grand total of 3 female Miqo NPCs who aren't hookers or dancing girls, I think playing either would fit right in the setting. I, personally, haven't come across any female Miqo hookers or dancing girls - though I have run into a decent number of female Hyurs who RP those professions. I'm not surprised, though. Fire up the character creator and look at what female Miqo'te start out wearing. If you came to the game with the desire to RP a prostitute or dancing girl, you'd be drawn to the Miqo. Someone mentioned on this board the hypersexualization of Miqo'te women. I think there's definitely some of that just in the imagery within the game. I would be so amused to see someone playing a Lalafell chippendale, though. Which, I suppose, just goes to point out my own bias in the perception of the races here...

Ditto for me. C'kayah is a rogue in the original sense of the word, though he is a humane rogue - not evil, but certainly not good. While he lately is mainly a smuggler, he's worked at various professions ranging from thief (unproven!) to teacher. I want to mention that the character is still pretty loosely fleshed out, and I'm very willing to flesh him out in ways that suit other people's RP. In other words, if you need to know something about someone who does X, I'm willing to consider changing C'kayah to do X to suit.

There's always something. I've tried playing characters that have absolutely nothing in common with me, but I've never been able to maintain momentum with them. Having some small thing in common with my characters gives me a point of reference that I can work from.

Oh, I love this idea! C'kayah loves to travel, and supports his habit by acting as a "message bearer". And when I say "message bearer", I really mean "smuggler". Small items only. Definitely not "thief" - at least, those accusations never stuck. Despite coming from a small community within the Coeurl tribe, he's now about as urbanized a Miqo'te as you could meet. Yloise, perhaps C'kayah has brought you hard to find things, or perhaps he's bought things from you for others.

There's a lot of good points in this discussion. I'm pretty new to FF, still, so I don't have a clear view of the RP community here, yet. From RPing in other games, though, I've seen people in situations like you're in. I suspect the solution here is similar to the solution in those other games: Quiet, bookish characters are hard to get RP with, especially pick-up RP*. The best way around this (as other folks have mentioned) is to reach out to people OOCly. They need to know that you're RPing a quiet, bookish character sitting in the corner, as opposed to just being afk. I've gotten involved in someone's RP plot through random pick-up RP exactly once. Every other time (both with my own plots and other people's plots) we've all known one another to some degree. I tend to think of pick-up RP as a foot in the door for this sort of thing: it lets you play around with someone you've just met without any commitments. Be outgoing with your RP. That doesn't mean that you have to RP an extrovert. Instead, it means that you try to draw other people into RP with your actions. Nebbs makes an excellent point about giving. Acting as an enabler for other people's RP is probably the best way to get people to RP with you. I'm pretty quiet at the moment, since I'm still in the "lurk and listen" stage of feeling out the RP community here, but I normally try to do this pretty much every time I play. If you can't think of anything else to try, ask someone about some characteristic of their character. We're RPers, after all. There's nothing we love more than to natter on about our characters. This is sort of a follow up to the previous point: Always Be RPing. I ran into another RPer while questing in some random deserted corner of the world (in another game). I had my RP tag on, and he stopped to chat a little in character. Just a little throwaway bit about how the mist looked evil, then we were on our way. This little bit of random RP stuck with us both, so we ended up doing a bunch of plot RP together. Be patient. Some days the RP gods simply aren't smiling on you. *I call the sort of random RP you strike up unexpectedly with someone you've never interacted with "pick-up RP". Sort of like pick-up groups.

Hahaha, agreed! I'll be in touch, R'mah...

Having it be an alias sounds good. Maybe it's a nickname he was given by a Roegadyn he used to associate with. It's a pretty flattering nickname, so there'd doubtless be a good story behind it...

It sounds like our playtimes don't overlap very much, but I'm certainly interested in more RP. I usually play a couple of times a week from about 10 PM to 3 AM Eastern. Give me a poke if you see me online.

Pants? Hmph! I wear skirts sir! Or ma'am...for that matter. There is always room for such things. I feel like they can only add to a story. Alas, I've been getting excited about the idea of playing a baddie associated with Ambrosia (what better way to collect people's secrets than a burlesque club?), but I just noticed you're on Gilgamesh. I may have to create a character there to check out the RP scene. Thinking more about the question, though, I think some games create an environment that - I want to say "discourages" creating villains, but it's really more that there's a gravitational pull away from villains. Most of the quests I've seen in FF so far, for instance, really cast you as a hero and a force for good. I think a lot of people who start playing the game and then start accreting their character concept as they're questing experience this as a tug toward playing a heroic character. I'm a method actor sort of RPer, and I certainly feel that tug. It was far easier to come up with a villainous character concept for my dark elf in EQ2, for instance, because so many of the quests were from a villainous point of view. In FF, I think you have to explicitly compartmentalize your villainous character that much more, so that you're in an OOC mindset when you quest.

I'm comin', I'm comin, keep yer pants on! I used to play a baddie in EQ2: a dark elf Chekist-style agent for Freeport, and this was a ton of fun to play. I haven't done a lot of fleshing out of C'kayah yet (hell, I haven't even had a chance to RP him), but I might have him swing to the dark side. Part of my problem is I don't really grok the FF backstory well enough to really have a feeling about the landscape, but I'd love to talk about possibilities. I'm a big fan of subterfuge and the like. How much room is there in the backstory for that sort of thing?

Did someone mention seafood? Hi, Aureliya, and welcome! Nice to see another LOTRO/D&D vet. I'll keep an eye out for you on Balmung.

Just wanted to update this: I have gone ahead and created C'kayah on Balmung, and I'm hoping to be able to RP there one or two nights a week. I'm concentrating right now on leveling him enough to be able to get around from city to city, but I'm really looking forward to RPing with you folks.

I'm new to FF and the Miqo'te, so I'm still going through the larval "brain dump" stage. It seems to me that "tribe" (at the level of, say, the C tribe) encompasses a big enough population of Miqo'te that you'd almost have to have smaller divisions within it. Taking a guess way down at the small end of the scale, if there's a quarter of a million Mi'qote among the tribes, then each one would be about ten thousand. That's hundreds of breeding groups for each tribe. Scottish clans have the idea of a sept, which can be considered to be a smaller subdivision of a clan, and made up of individual families. I'd imagine you'd see the same thing with Miqo'te: You'd have a tribe, which might be spread across a pretty big portion of the continent. Individual septs within the tribe would concentrate on a smaller area, or a village or two. Within the septs there'd be the individual breeding groups, as well as all the Tia from those groups.

I. Basic Info Characters: C'kayah Polaali Primary character: C'kayah Polaali (aka C'kayah Tia) Linkshells: Tylwyth Narah, Friends of Momodi, Open RP Primary RP linkshell: Friends of Momodi II. RP Style Amount of RP (light, medium, heavy): Heavy. I'm a total RP whore and will happily RP over anything else. I don't RP C'kayah as being part of the canon storyline - he doesn't have the Echo, he hasn't fought Ifrit, etc. He's a roguish sort, involved in smuggling and theft (and more recently infiltration and fixing). If you're looking for a grey area foil for your good guy, look no further! Views on RP combat and injuries: C'kayah's not a heavy combat character, and tends to feel that if he's actually in a fight (as opposed to simply ambushing them) that he's done something terribly wrong. That said, I'm fine with RP combat, and I'm willing to accept any reasonable injuries as a result. Anything permanent (death, maiming) needs an OOC chat, first. Considering the nature of villain RP, I want to point out that I'm also open to the darker forms of violence should the story go there. Views on IC romance: C'kayah's an inveterate womanizer and flirt, so romance often figures into a lot of the RP I do with him (not exclusively - he'll flirt with an attractive guard who's threatening to take him in, for instance). I'm careful to maintain the IC/OOC divide here, since it can be a sensitive issue for some folks. Views on non-romantic RP (family ties, etc): I'm open to pretty much any sort of RP, and see RPing family/tribal ties as being a great way to explore characters in more depth. I like to develop my characters as I RP, and this certainly includes RPing existing family or friends. I'm particularly impressed with the other Coeurl Tribe Miqo'te here, and would love to work my RP in with you folks. Views on lore: I am an enormous Lord of the Rings geek. This, however, is not the Lord of the Rings *smiley*. While I like exploring the lore, I'm not a huge lore-hound and won't look down my nose at people for their lore-related choices. Views on chat functions (/say, /linkshell, etc): I like /say to be IC, but I'm flexible. It all depends on context, really. III. Other Info Country: United States Timezone: Pacific (GMT-8) Contact info: PM me here or contact me in-game.

This sounds like a great idea! I RPed a messenger in LOTRO, and it was really fun. Not only do you have a ready-made IC justification for going anywhere, but you have an easy "in" to pretty much any RP group. As far as the secret society bit goes, I think that has all sorts of promise, as well. From experience, it's a bit harder to RP, but it can be extremely rewarding. I'm not particularly knowledgable about FF XIV lore, but there seems to be enough power struggles to support this sort of thing. I'm mainly on Siren, but I've started a version of C'kayah on Balmung, too, and I'd be happy to help out with this. I'm an old fart with kids, so my playtime is fairly limited (probably 1-2 times a week on Balmung), but I'd love to be involved with this.

Nice to meet you all! I'm a long time roleplayer (various pen-n-paper RPGs for decades, a few MUDs, Eve Online, LOTRO, Everquest II, Star Trek Online), but I've never played any of the Final Fantasy games before. A few of the folks in my Traveller RPG group play, and they pulled me into this. I'm playing on Siren with them, though I'm interested in the FF RP community, as well. My friends aren't big into MMO roleplaying (which I think is largely because they haven't been properly exposed to it, you know?), so they're not terribly open to transferring to a RP server, so my RP experience will probably be kinda curtailed from that, though I'm thinking about playing the same character on both Balmung and Siren so that I can get my RP fix in. Anyways, I play C'kiyah Tia, happy-go-lucky Miqo'te about town. He's new enough that I haven't really developed too much in the way of background or personality for him, but that'll come as I get more knowledgable about the lore. So far his main twist is that, despite being a Seeker of the Sun, he follows Menphina the lover. I'm sure I can come up with a good reason for that. There's gotta be a black sheep in the family, right? Anyways, pleasure to meet you all, and I look forward to RPing with you, either on Siren or Balmung.