Melkire

H.M.+N.U. N.M.+N.U.

Cold. She hated the cold. In Thanalan, it was always warm. Dry heat, humid, broiling, unbearable... it didn't matter, she loved them all. There was nothing more comforting than baking in the desert heat, than the delectable sticky feeling that came with sweat adhering to cloth and armor. Azeyma held her beating heart for the blessing that was heat. The cold, on the other hand, was an abomination. An absence. Not life but death. She marched up and down along the parapet as she inspected the Flames, the soldiers. Her Flames. Her soldiers. Half a dozen of the best scraps that the sergeant had been able to scrounge together at the time. She came to a stop before the last man in line. He saluted, and she saluted back, as was good and proper. At least he wasn't Lancaster. Elevated as she was, she'd have still had to look up at the big highlander; the midlander, at least, was more manageable. "Private First Class Gregson. Report." "Ser. Not much has changed, ser. Been stationed here at Dragonhead for near a moon, worked out of here and Whitebrim both, gone looking just about every which way. Nothing out here, ser, not unless it's the wildlife that lives here. We, ah, we did spot two 'sworn arrive a few suns ago... they, ah, they seem to be looking for someone else entirely-" "Names?" "Caught a 'Castille,' ser, and a... Raft? Roft? Joft. A Ser Joft." Corporal Kokojo shook her head. Not names she knew, though the latter sounded familiar. "No sign of Mynhier, then?" "No, ser." She frowned as she turned on a merlon to stare west, off into the horizon. The sun would be setting soon. Azeyma's blessings on whoever found themselves out after dark. Her blessings, and the Fury's mercy. "...ser, if I may ask... why are you here?" She glanced back at Gregson. "He's either out here or he isn't. It's about time you stopped dallying about and started actually looking, because we need the man in question now more than ever... if there's still a man to be had. I'm here as oversight 'til the job's done or I say it's done. Understood?" There came the sudden stamping of six simultaneous salutes.

If you make it cute, they will come. Was in a rush bc work, otherwise it would've occurred to me to make the belts brown.

Wellllll... if this is a general shipping thread now... Harlem Shake x Everyone. Do the Harlem Shake. (not even joking, ran into this guy in Gridania last night)

Can we put Roen up on a cliff with PLD/Chocobo to be the "Judge"? I demand that she be able to yellow/red card players! /onlyhalfjoking Laws: - No Weaponskills - No Color Magic - No Items - Final Destination Also I love the whole Judge concept. Alas, lore-wise the Sultansworn are as close as XIV gets. Judge system was a lot of fun to exploit too. *gimps battle* Oh, it was... until it became a pain-in-the-ass come post-story endgame content. Techniques, Skills, Color Magic, Healing... these things were in the revolving door that was the "Forbidden" section, and it made endgame... ugh. The novelty of abusing Gunner-Mogknights, Beastmasters and Assassin-Snipers wore out fast. On-topic: can we get a list of participants for all to see? Don't need it publicly known which side they're playing for, but I for one would like to know who might be participating.

Don't forget that Gharen gave her his knife, then the D turned around and proceeded to stab Itar. ...Imeanwaitwhat. @Kage: With regards to ships that are absolutely canon and I refuse to believe otherwise... there's this thing I call the S.S. Applecats... it's a sweet citrus ship that sails on chocolate oceans and takes strides to avoid colliding into "icebergs" made of burning books.

Can we put Roen up on a cliff with PLD/Chocobo to be the "Judge"? I demand that she be able to yellow/red card players! /onlyhalfjoking Laws: - No Weaponskills - No Color Magic - No Items - Final Destination Also I love the whole Judge concept. Alas, lore-wise the Sultansworn are as close as XIV gets.

*Flexes Jin'li's fingers* And suffer you shall, for I am kind. ...I didn't say I wanted more catharsis.

"More weight" is right. There's little to no emotional impact come journey's end if there hasn't been a struggle. The more a character suffers, the more cathartic their victory.

...is it Zaiaku? I think it's Zaiaku.

Askier: let me think about the whole outnumbered/positional thing and get back to you after we're both off work. Merc/Franz: this time around, once the combat rules are finalized, I'm going to commit them to a text file. We'll share that with anyone who's organizing a particular engagement (love you, FFTA) so that they can copy-paste it for everyone to review before a fight starts.

...this is getting ridiculous now. I need to petition Square-Enix to rename the game "Mask Mask Revolution." Someone finally got their cavalry set finished! ...that's an awful lot of lance-waving...

What, you've never hightailed it back to base camp to go sit in front of the fireplace under some blankets with a cup of hot cocoa in your hands? Wtf is wrong with you. Go do that. Live a little. On-topic: Combat rules for being outnumbered (1v2, 1v3, 2v3, etc.) need to be clarified, reworded, or revamped/overhauled. I know Nat, Itar, and I ran into some issues with this during the last event (the confusion is included in the North Thanalan log). Combat rules for healers and healing also need to be clarified. How do the healers count turns? Their own turns, or their ally's? Are they counting each ally's turn? So is their party going to get a wave of +1s all at once? One wave per healer? Are they counting rounds, as in the whole party has to have taken a turn per member? What if certain one-on-ones in a large fight are going faster than others? Are healers limited by how slow their slowest fighters are rolling/emoting? People to talk to about these things: Nat, Itar, Siha, Daphine, Unnamed Mercenary, etc.

Well yeah, that could be said about anyone. I signed up... whether she is coherent at the time is yet to be seen. "S-s-ser Castille, I'm c-c-cold and you're f-f-f-freezing. We need to w-w-warm up...."

So this happened....

So what you're saying is, we have three days to prepare. :geek: :thumbsup: No, what he's saying is that in three days Jin'li and Osric are screwed lol You're screwed. I'm saved. #FifthElementReference #misquoting #howtosummonRoen

My experience with Fracture and TP on T5: You can apply Fracture to Twin all the way through conflag phase, provided you make careful use of Invigorate (pop it at 600, then pop it thereafter whenever it comes up and you're 600 or below, read: always). Keeping up another DoT on Twin just means that much more DPS. Downtime from the boss jumping (read: transition into divebomb phase) and the need to avoid DoTing the little snakes past a certain health % generally means you're not Fracturing at that point (Touch of Death is the better DoT over a longer period of time anyway) 'cept on the big snake. Haven't broken into Twisters/Dreadknights/Hatch yet, but I've experienced little to no issue with TP starvation in T5 before that point, even on runs when I go without getting Conflag on me. In general though, priority for DoT abilities: Demolish (w/ rear bonus) > Touch of Death > Demolish (w/o rear bonus) > Fracture I apply all three DoTs to anything beefy in T1, T2, T4, and T5. No TP issues there with proper Invig usage. MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KEEP IN MIND: don't get your mind in a rut over "rotations". This is a common mistake I've seen in my relatively short time playing MMOs. You don't ALWAYS have to apply Fracture, or ALWAYS keep it up. Is your TP dipping dangerously low? Leave out Fracture for a while 'til you stabilize, and if you find yourself some breathing room to start weaving it back in, do so. Of course, as Merri pointed out already, the further into endgame you go, the less valuable those DoTs are per-GCD. Eventually, you reach a point where a single Bootshine/True Strike/Snap Punch/whatever is worth more than Fracture. If that point is T6, then you're better off leaving it out altogether at that point. But for T5? If I'm on-target on Twin and I'm in the groove, maintaining all the debuffs, DoTs, and self-buffs? Top of the DPS chart, if the aggro table is any indication (I don't parse). EDIT: if any of this is wrong, someone please correct me! preferably with maths. =D

...Bellveil has an office?! What?! WHERE?!. It's... a rug, in the alleyway outside the Quicksand. He's got three of them?? Think Faye means Pearl Lane, as you well know. ...that's still awesome though.

...Bellveil has an office?! What?! WHERE?!.

This takes place a few suns (read: days) after this scene. [align=center]________________________________________________________________[/align] Flame Corporal Haruko Kokojo dropped her quill onto the inkwell, rubbed at her face with one hand, and yawned. That display of weariness well and truly belied just how dire the straits had become for Ul'dah. The Blades were looking to stir up another political turf war in the name of their murdered brethren, the Flames' security had been compromised, the reputation and prestige of the Sultansworn teetered on the edge of a knife as did their numbers, and - if the reports were to be believed - the Garlean threat was soon to be on their doorstep. Again. The little Lalafell woman frowned. What they really needed right now... what could really make the difference... was a symbol. A person. Someone who embodied the very values of the Jewel, who brought together the pragmatism of the Blades, the vigor of the Flames, and the dedication of the 'sworn. She leaned back in her chair and kicked her legs back and forth as she thought it over. A symbol... a person... a leader. Ser Coatleque Crofte had been the nearest thing the Sultansworn had to such a person since Natalie Mcbeef had been demoted and transferred to the Brass Blades along with her protégés... but Crofte was new and inexperienced, and had looked to the sergeant to lead. And Sergeant Melkire was compromised. Rumors had it that Mcbeef had been demoted even further for insubordination... and that Kiryuu had been promoted up the ranks in her place. Kiryuu was a possibility... but he had never led, to her admittedly limited knowledge of her fellow Lalafell. He had only ever followed. If there was a leader in Ul'dah, it was Flame General Raubahn... but the Bull had his hands tied with matters of state and the larger war effort. What was coming at them, from what could be made of Melkire's case files, was small, insidious... and difficult to spot. Difficult to prove. Difficult to quash with a display of sheer military might and force. No, the General was not available... and they needed someone smaller, someone used to the sort of back alley skullduggery that was bound to be the arena for this particular battlefield.... ...Red Wings? No. Private Od'hilkas had not yet reorganized and repopulated the unit... and the Miqo'te simply walked and breathed Flame. There was no Blade, no 'sworn there.... She blinked, turned back to the desk, and rifled through the papers there. There was someone. She hadn't checked in with Gregson for at least six suns, now. She'd dispatched him to Coerthas last moon, along with a few trusted men, back when the sergeant had struck out Little Ala Mhigo as a possibility. She found the report she'd been looking for, held it up to peruse it, eyes scanning back and forth. If Erik Mynhier wasn't in his fatherland, perhaps he was in his motherland. The captain had gone missing moons ago, and search parties had been sent out... but over the sevendays, those parties had been culled one by one, until only this last remained under Melkire... and Melkire had delegated the responsibility to her when matters with Mergrey had come to a head, had become too distracting for him to give the search his full attention. Mynhier was a Flame Captain... was a Sultansworn... reports indicated that he was a pragmatic man... had been trusted and revered by many. A symbol. A person. A leader. Kokojo hopped down to her feet, picked up and slammed her helm into place, buckled on sword and shield, snatched up and folded Gregson's report, and made her way out of Melkire's office. She needed to speak with Lieutenant Peak and Commander Swift, in that order. She had a man to find. And that man was hope incarnate.

So what you're saying is, we have three days to prepare. :geek: :thumbsup:

According to observations from my brief forays into Limsa, reasons for this include: 1. Too many people (and FCs, for that matter) roleplaying in /tell, /p, /fc,, or /l rather than in /s and /em. 2. No one walks the "streets" in Limsa. Instead they stand/sit around, be it in the Wench, at the Bismarck, or at various points in the city. Also, RP peeps get lost in Hawker's Alley, yo. Dat Jita 2.0 .... 3. Point 2 is compounded by the fact that the city's segregation into floors is MUCH less RP-friendly than Gridania's and Uldah's segregation into zones. ...I had more, I've just forgotten. Gimme a few minutes to think it through....

1. Don't ever macro as Monk. Greased Lightning will screw you over with varying skillspeed. 2. Ideal crossclass, imo, is: Invigorate Blood for Blood Fracture Mercy Stroke Bloodbath Not necessarily in that order. Take Fracture first for low-level synced dungeons and use it when TP consumption allows for it. 3. Find a static that wants a MNK for T5. MNK gives ridiculous damage output, right up there with SMN and DRG+BRD. Haven't cleared T5 myself yet, otherwise I'd give you tips. What I can tell you: time it so that all of your offensive CDs are going to be up for when you need to burn Asclepius (sp?) down. IR, B4B, etc. Monk isn't difficult so much as demanding. You have four debuffs and numerous buffs to keep up at all times, you have positional and rotational requirements to maximize your DPS, etc. Good luck with T5!

...I really think that you, and others, should talk to people like Gharen, Askier, Aya, Cedric, Verad, etc., before making this kind of assumption. The political intrigue that results from tensions between Blades/Sultansworn/Syndicate/etc. is a major feature of roleplay in Ul'dah... but you don't have to be a member to get involved. Hell, that's not even all of the RP that Ul'dah has to offer. And that's not even getting into Thanalan as a whole. THe problem is that line right there. It is a BIG deal in Ul'dah roleplay and something not everyone want to get involved in. It's not an insult, it's just the truth. Giving people more options isn't a bad thing, here. I'm just stating a fact - the Brass Blades/Sultansworn/Sydicate thing is a HUGE thing in Ul'dah and some people may just not want to be involved and have other options. I know Aya is a waitress at the Quicksand, which is obviously easy to get into RP with because everyone goes to the quicksand. She's probably had her share of dealing with the Holy Trinity above. If you are a player in uldah you deal with those three things automatically, whether to you want to or not. This is just an idea for another OPTION. Then, if correct me if I'm wrong, your real issue with Ul'dah is inevitably colliding with the political intrigue scene, as opposed to "I HAVE to be a ___ or else I don't get into RP". The former is understandable. The latter is just incorrect. I just want to make sure, because with topics like these, miscommunication sucks. People get the wrong impressions on both sides of the fence, etc.

...I really think that you, and others, should talk to people like Gharen, Askier, Aya, Cedric, Verad, etc., before making this kind of assumption. The political intrigue that results from tensions between Blades/Sultansworn/Syndicate/etc. is a major feature of roleplay in Ul'dah... but you don't have to be a member to get involved. Hell, that's not even all of the RP that Ul'dah has to offer. And that's not even getting into Thanalan as a whole. This isn't me being defensive. This is me calling out an erroneous conclusion. You don't have to be _____ to get involved in _____. EDIT: And as for taverns... I only walk into the Quicksand or the Drowning Wench if I want someone to reach out and grab me for RP, guaranteed. The large majority of my roleplay in cities, Ul'dah or otherwise, comes from walking the streets, not from sitting/standing around in a tavern. Personal anecdote, I know, but that's been my experience. EDIT #2: Let me throw Gus' name in there, as well. Ghost-hunting was hilarious.