Verad

Verad has exactly one enemy in the sense of somebody bearing a personal grudge against him: Jeresu Resu, the debt-trader he drove out of Ul'dah in the Case of the Ransacked Rug. There's also the two specific Blades who beat him half to death, but they don't hold anything like a real enmity beyond enjoying hurting people in general. His other enemies are more abstract - poverty, corruption in the Blades, and prejudicial attitudes towards dubious goods being the biggest threats.

You'll just have to imagine it's a very large piece of imitation fool's gold.

I wanted to look like a drow without looking like a drow. Verad's shade is sufficiently dark enough to make him obviously Duskwight, but the blue shading of his skin - accentuated by his clothing - makes him stand out from most other Duskwight males I've seen, which veer towards the brown black ends of the available skintones. This combines with the hair and the beard - which are white, typical for portrayals of drow, but the result of age rather than natural coloration - to make him appear outlandish in a crowd, even amongst his own species, heightening the effect of a buffoonish and social character. Silver just provides a nice complement to all of the blue.

Iiiiiinteresting.... :tonberry: Verad has many evil twins. Not all of them are Duskwights.

Blue, grey, white, silver. Pretty straightforward.

The following thread can be used for OOC discussion and recruitment for Scales in the Sand. Sign-up sheets for events will be posted, and comments/criticism are welcome. Event 1: The Road to Highbridge Day/Time: 8 PM CST, December 11th Starting Location: Highbridge Premise: Following Verad Bellveil's inheritance of a house in the Goblet, the Ward's local Housing Authority is convinced that he is running some sort of scam on the Goblet as a whole. In order to allay concerns, Verad has registered as an adventurer with the Guild and is performing the minimum number of leves required to maintain good standing. In order to adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of the law, his first leve is to investigate signs of especially brutal bandit activity along the road between Highbridge and the Shroud. Knowing he is in well over his head, he is inviting friends and adventurers to come with him, in the hopes of not getting horribly murdered. Help him avoid this fate! Spaces: 5 (More may open as interest increases) 1. Anstarra Silverain 2. Kiht Jakkya 3. Osric Melkire 4. Airka Lakshmi 5. Note: This is a roll-based event. Rules for the system and how to make a character sheet for it can be found at the Roll Eorzea LS page, here.

((The following thread is a general IC thread for participants in the Scales in the Sand plotline. IC discussions and actions performed outside of events can be posted here, as well as small sequences and hints of what's to come. Like so: )) "Not a chance are you getting that item, ser, begging your pardon. But not a chance all the same." Weak as his jaw was, Orrick Thatcher set it nevertheless, peering up at the customer from his seated position with a defiant expression. Around him, the sun beat down in the Thanalan noon heat, and with such force that the canopy over his stall seemed to sag. In other circumstances, he would have retired to the shade with a cup of water to wait out the bell, but a crowd of customers had gathered, attracted by the lure of Ishgardian rugs available at below-market prices. There were other trinkets too, to be sure, and it was one of those that had the interest of the buyer in question. The man gestured towards it with a hand clad in a black, silken glove, spread out for display amidst a few smaller swatches of carpet that had been laid out for samples. It was a small thing, a necklace apparently made out of a simple brass and with a pendant designed in an abstract pattern. "Why not?" he asked, his voice the kind of smooth and deep tone that could make the average Miqo'te street dancer - and if pressed and deep in his cups, Orrick himself - shiver in their smallclothes. "My gil is as good as the next man's." Save for a vague impression that he was looking at wings, Orrick had never known what to make of the necklace. It had fallen out of one of the rugs when he'd purchased them in bulk out of Pearl Lane, an unexpected bonus coming along with luxury goods bought at cut-rate prices. He'd mentally tagged it at about twenty gil and forgotten about it, never even considering taking it to the Goldsmiths for appraisal. There was no real reason not to sell it. But still - . "I'll tell you why," said Orrick, rising up from his knees to his full height of five-fulm-six-ilm, and finding he still had to peer up at the customer, a Highlander by the look of it, if a bit on the short side for his kind. "You're too damned suspicious, that's why." The man appeared taken aback. "I beg your pardon?" "Here, look at you. It's the midday bell, the sun's beating down on the lot of us, and you're all in black - " "I can manage the sweat." "And you have a black eyepatch. And a scar over the other eye! Whyn't you have two?" "The right eye healed!" "And don't think I didn't hear you when you were looking at it, that chuckle. And you murmured something. It was very ominous. Had a bit of the omen to it. What was it you said?" Orrick furrowed thick brows together as he tried to recall. "At last, something-or-something." "'At last, after all these years,'" the man provided. "Yes, exactly that! Too suspicious by far. For all I know this's the trinket that'll lead to completing some ritual to drop another moon down on us. No chance you're getting it." The customer appeared affronted, placing one black-clad glove to his chest. Following it, Orrick noted that underneath his long black trenchcoat, everything on his person appeared to be made of buckles. That settled the matter. He started glancing about the other customers as the man began to prattle about discrimination. His eye landed on a bespectacled elezen in shabby formal wear, apparently distracted by the weave in one sample illustrating the sigils of the great Ishgardian Houses. "Here! You!" The man glanced up from his appraisal with an owlish blink, only to find the necklace flung in his direction. "Complimentary with your purchase," said Orrick as the man fumbled to catch it by its chain. It was a gamble - but better for the elezen to get a free necklace and not buy anything than to let this man get it for himself. He turned towards the black-clad man with a smug, "So there" look. "You want to buy it, get it from him. You'll not see it from me." He huffed. Nearly puffed. He did not stamp his foot, much to Orrick's dissatisfaction. But he did leave, turning with a dramatic swish of his heel that sent the tails of a black coat billowing behind him as he stalked away from the market. Pleased, Orrick settled back in his stall to attend to the rest of his customers. The elezen, thank the Twelve, paid for a small throw rug, and Orrick flattered himself to think the incentive of the trinket had been the tipping point. The matter settled, he turned to tend to his other customers. If he noticed, between the crowd of buyers and the general din of the Exchange, the elezen and the black-clad man meeting further down the street, he thought nothing of it. If he saw the elezen hand the man a small handful of gil, he didn't comment. Once the item left his stall, it was no longer his business, and making the rent was a far greater concern.

Of course, differences in presumed ability are the case in the Grindstone as well. You have people portraying experts with Limit Breaks as part of their repertoire and total incompetents fighting in the same patch of dirt. It's the system that equalizes things more than anything else; come up with a similar setup for a magic-based Grindstone and the problem of power difference isn't one.

If this is what you are taking from this exchange, then I'm not sure why you came here seeking advice.

I would also handle it this way, as would my FC if we chose to work with this kind of plot. Not coincidentally, I am working with this kind of plot as we speak! Also, I have to ask - is this something the players in your FC have specifically asked for? "Ooh, yes, we would like to have lots of PCs outside the FC to have extras, and only that will do?" Or is this something you feel to be necessary?

Only if you are unable to sell the importance of it to the players involved. That is entirely on your abilities as a storyteller and an event coordinator. I can assure you that there are people here, myself included, who have engaged in plots which would appear to be of great political significance to the setting, but did not need a cast of PC extras in order to sell it. All that mattered was whether the players thought it was significant based on how events were portrayed.

We want you to not treat PCs as NPC extras for immersion's sake.

Taking Exalted seriously is the first step to not enjoying Exalted, I've found. I agree. FF14 is the same way. There are some serious elements in this, same as there are in Exalted, but this is also a setting in which you can get jerked around on ridiculous levequests, you help a goblin clear out a dragon from its village so you can get a particularly noxious cheese, NPCs are constantly engaged in squatting contests for no good reason, and one of the ongoing questlines involves an idiot inspector, equally idiotic sidekick, and a kabuki actor who uses a chicken 1/100th of his size to fly around. And it's not as if the settings are distinct in how they justify character abilities - substitute "essence" for "aether" and it might as well be the same. Why are Sidereals able to manipulate the stars and astrology? Essence. Why are Solars able to perfect everything? Essence. Why are there dinosaurs that pee heroin? Essence! What you do with Exalted, you can do with FF14. You have the power!

And yet, Exalted.

One possibility to get your feet wet would be to show up at the Grindstone if your character is interested in martial conflict. It would be a good way to engage in some combat, meet some friendly rivals, and network outwards. I'll leave the particulars of that to Warren since he's much more involved in it than I. As far as being a sellsword goes, part of the problem of being "for hire" is that it relies on somebody else to find something that requires hiring your character. However, your interest in hitting a Castrum provides an angle there. It wouldn't be too difficult to find a couple of people interested in performing a small raid on one of the Castrum for a specific objective, however minor - stealing some supplies for an NPC employer, for example - or acquiring some lost token from her husband that she's been made aware is in Centri or Meridianum. This needn't be a very large group - two, no more than three other players - so you can assemble it without feeling the pressure to run it as a formal event.

This is all fine, of course, and my questions were meant more in a general philosophical sense than to undermine your own interests. People discuss the issue of "cliques" and cliqueishness, of being inside and outside, and it does, as you indicate, often appear to be a perceptual problem. There are times that I do not feel particularly "in" despite all evidence to the contrary, so I know it can occur. As for your situation, short of the obligatory "show up at the Quicksand and do not run from the old Duskwight selling junk to you" recommendation, does your character have any short-term goals that you could use as a motivator to approach strangers?

At what point does one feel like they are "in" rather than "outside" when it comes to RP? What's the criteria for being "in"? And does anyone ever specifically define themselves as being part of a clique, or is that something that other people do for them?

You write the words "Aether" and "Realism" next to each other. You then draw one circle around them. That is the line.

Dragoon jumps are powered by RPer frustration over their inability to explain dragoon jumps. There, it's settled.

Dubious Distributions is a small medium-to-heavy RP FC with a theme focused around the losers and cast-offs of Ul'dahn society, led by a charming-but-probably-idiotic Duskwight. Together, we will either become greater than the whole of our parts, or collapse in a flaming wreck of failure and sad. We are seeking active RPers whose characters fit the aforementioned concept. Please visit our website for further details.

Mostly comedic, although lately that's been taking a darker turn. I'm going to need to moderate that and get back to form. Actions scenes are tricky for me, and they've really only come up on the few occasions that Verad has participated in the Grindstone. Then his style varies between incompetent - no marmot is safe when Verad draws his bow - and competent, but undercut by his own ridiculous sense of style and his insistence on evil twins. I'd feel really bad for Eorzea if the entire setting revolved around Verad. It would all become a lengthy Hildebrand plot.

Because playing an elderly, bearded Duskwight peddler stands out far more than a Midlander, the original choice. There was no way to not make Verad look like a drug-dealer as a Midlander.

I've seen such blogs and tumblr posts do this very thing for Balmung RP. I think one such RPer was the one to deface a few wikis earlier this year. I knew about some of the posts and the wiki vandalism, but there's a blog of that nature for Balmung? Really? Where is it? PM it to me, plz.

I think the narcissism is there; it's merely expressed OOC by positioning themselves as authorities and the correct arbiters and gatekeepers of acceptable RP instead of IC through their characters' actions. I have to make a distinction here between knowing the lore because you care about it (please don't hurt me Sounssy) and knowing it because knowing it gives your claims regarding correct RP authoritative weight. It's a vanity more likely to show up in things like shaming blogs and tumblr posts than in RP itself. Of course, now I'm interested in what a lore-compliant Sue would look like, using the loose internet definition of Sue as "Overpowered character I don't like."

Lore killed my father. *Slow, empty stare.*