John Spiegel

It is completely awesome to NOT have been one of the time jumpers! One of my characters was not at the battle, so he lived through the devastation and had a subsequent breakdown. The senseless death and destruction, coupled with forgetting his father's and sister's names and faces proved to be a bit much. Journals I wrote for the time outline his "fall from grace" and subsequent rock bottom. As of five years from the destruction, his life has returned to "normal". That is until he got a letter out of the blue from his father. I am not sure the extent of Bahamut's direct destruction to other parts of the world (he severely messed up the aether, so that's something that can manifest anywhere or something).

Uhh.. try them both? You seem indifferent. RP is RP. Go get 'em.

If you see a John Spiegel or Alex Silversheath on Balmung (next week... I'm not off till then), those are me. Feel free to /bump into either of them or some sort or just send me a /tell OOCly. Currently, John is in La Noscea more or less. Alex is in Gridania for the most part.

Name: John Spiegel Type: Anti Hero (specifically Byronic hero) Specializations: Fighting... like a lot... with big weapons and unconventional tactics (ORANGES!). Personality: Introvertedly extrovert, silly, serious, calm, crazy (he spans the spectrum) Best Suited For: He follows his own moral code, as a result some of his actions might be looked upon dimly by his peers. ****VERY IMPORTANT**** Can you kill my character: Nah, JJ's too hard to kill. Reason (Optional): I've written JJ to be pretty much a good guy, but he's done very bad things and his actions blur the lines of good and bad at times. He's rather anti-establishment and social structures and the sort. He's not the sort to bother anyone that ain't bothering him or innocent folk.

1557 of the Sixth Astral Era (20 years before ARR start) Five years before the Battle at Silvertear Lake (1562) where the Garleans got their butts whipped by dragons. My character (well, both of them) are highlanders. John is in his mid-to-late 50s and his son is in his mid 30s. I am tip-toeing around the Ala Mhigian lore until more is learned. So I am interested in anything new that pops up!

This story arc directly follows the Hells of a Day (feel free to comment on that one too) I posted a few months back. The overview of this arc starts off with two stories, one of John Spiegel as he leaves the Black Shroud for Thanalan and one of Alex Silversheath (John's son) and his discovery his dad isn't dead and his subsequent search. Oh yeah, the chapter titles are play on traditional Irish and Scottish tunes. Chapter 1: Ye Take the Sky Road and I’ll Take the Highbridge Chapter 2: The Rocky Road to Ul’Dah Chapter 3: The Ishgardian Weaverwoman

JJ: He bathes "regularly" but his career/hobby ends up giving him a solid masculine musk. After an especially fun/brutal day in his career/hobby, blood and sometimes innards aren't foreign. He also smells of herbs/spices that he uses when smoking his meat or whatnot. Alex: He's rather clean and smells of herbs and potion mixtures, a pleasant fragrance to those who like herby smells. When he's relaxing, he chews on the wooden part of a stick of smoldering incense. He smells of various fruits as well. After a day or two in the field, he smells of earth and plantlife and some BO naturally.

John Spiegel - He's a seasoned adventurer with countless stories about his deeds (good and bad). Depending where/when you've met him, you might think he's a good guy or a bad guy. Like, there's times he's rampaging against a bunch of unarmed people and gets covered in guts and blood (turns out, OMG, they're god damn monks!) Or other times he's drinking milk at a bar. (omg, tuff guy!) He doesn't care about ranks (he'd tell someone to blow their rank out of their ass if they used that as some sort of entitlement badge) or names, hell, he rarely ever uses his full birthname, let alone gives anything past "JJ" because he likes that shortness of it (or something). 1527 - (age 12) - JJ's parents died when he was 2. JJ was at an Ala Mhigo military orphanage thing. JJ killed a mean dude in Ala Mhigo that brutally beat someone JJ cared for and got the hell out of Dodge. 1530 - 1545 (15-30) - JJ gained a name for himself as an adventurer and fighter, though you would get mixed signals. Age 16 he burned his scalp leading to him being bald. Age 23 he lost his right eye. So he's ~6'6", bald, eyepatched and carries either a greatsword/scythe or both at times in solid darksteel armor. 1545 - 1557 (30-42) - JJ kind of dropped off the map or at least didn't go slay dragons and crap for a couple years (wanted to raise kids in a non-single-parent home) JJ and family work as smugglers and live some ways out of Ala Mhigo, getting people that were being killed for their beliefs out of the nation when King Theodorac came into power (1552). When the Garleans came through, JJ his wife and a couple monks fought them off to buy everyone else time to escape. 1557 - 1572 (42-54) - JJ returns to full-time adventuring. His children are adults, his wife was killed, his home (second time his life got dropkicked majorly). He just got up, dusted himself off and went onward to new adventures. 1572 - JJ was at Bahamut's Big Birthday Hissy Fit. He fought as a freelance fighter, refusing to fly any of the defending nations' sigils or even his fallen homeland. Got timewarped.

John Spiegel (JJ) Breakfast -- MEAT Lunch -- MEAT Dinner -- MEAT! Snacks -- MEAT? (JJ is an opportunist, he'll eat anything. Being a pure adventurer, if he sees berries, he's gonna eat berries. If he sees a bunny, he's gonna eat bunny.)

Alex Silversheath - (lost his home near Ala Mhigo (The Spiegel Household) when Garleans came through in 1557, lost his home in Gridania due to Bahamut's big hissy) First Residence (Gridania) A modest one-story home generally lacking in keepsakes from beyond five years ago. Two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen/living room. By the kitchen there is a rack of dried/drying herbs The second bedroom houses Alex's alchemy/botanty stuff The living room houses bookshelves full of books. Aside from his big puffy chair is a case full of incense and a tinwhistle. His bedroom is pretty bare aside from journals kept from 1575-present, a Nophica and Rhalgr shrines. His closet has clothes of all walks of life (field, dress, monk clothing) and some smut mags/novels in the back of the shelf. There are a couple of pinwheels that sit in a vase on the windowsill There's a couple bottles of rum on some shelves. Second Residence (Ul'dah) A somewhat small apartment above an apothecary granted to Alex some years back to serve as his home away from home. It lacks even moreso in individuality than his Gridania residence, but still houses an alchemy/botanty station, two shrines, rum, clothing and naughty mags/novels. John Spiegel Hasn't had a home since Ala Mhigo fell, occasionally stored stuff at either of his childrens' places -- which was usually weapons or trinkets. So the timejump really hasn't hurt him financially.

Well, now I have a list of new FF songs to learn (I've been wanting Aleport since I first heard it) on the harmonica. Was waiting for something like this to pop up!

@DrGalaltic - that's awesome! I want your powers. >.> I just got done electronically rednecking my first full rendition of the FFXI theme for Selbina, played on a harmonica. I rearranged it to follow the format of typical jigs aside from keeping the final section a double repeat of the first section. (I obviously don't know the lingo) [video=youtube]

Server: Balmung Primary Linkshell: Crystalline Characters: John Spiegel, Alex Silversheath (Spiegel) and "PROJECT JJRoeg" (a completely new character for me) Style of Roleplay: Pretty light-heart or comical at times. Can get really heavy/sad if a time calls for it but for the most part my main (JJ) is pretty much a real life digital Loony Toon while he slays dragons and behemoths and stuff. JJ, to most onlookers, is a man of horrible morals and choices. I'd like to think he has questionable morals and sometimes bad choices! Strongest Skills: I'm pretty good at just "going" with it and figuring something out along the way. I'm no lore-mongerer, but I stick to what I know.

On a scale of "Mundane to Mary Sue" JJ scores a "JJ"! When creating your character, how do you balance between being too boring and too snowflake? If you got a basic outline of how you want your character to be, roll with that and see where it leads you. I recently had to sort out ohhhh a whole character in the span of five minutes based on a couple notes I liked as traits and was happy with what resulted out of it. I am talking about JJ's son, Alex. A botanist and alchemist by profession, but has some pretty in depth hand-to-hand training. When role-playing with others, what character traits, personalities or actions have you found to be interesting and enjoyable to RP with and/or what have you seen just not work or appear too boring to engage your character? I'm interested in most anyone's RP unless it's clear abuse of lore. Even "cookie cutter" stories are fun (in the end, pretty much every story is cliche). I especially enjoy the dynamic my character has with people that tout their rank or title as that my character (JJ) doesn't give a crap about that kind of thing. Respect by actions not titles! Where do you find the line and when do you think it can be easily crossed while still being within the lore? What kind of advice would you give given your past experience. (This is a mix of my XI experience and ARR stuff) To be honest, I totally have made JJ a larger-than-life-badass-warrior-dude-with-crazy-ass-power. However, the majority of the time, JJ is a bumbling silly idiot. It's only in combat that his fright comes out. Even then, he can still be a bumbling silly idiot... he's part insane, part crazy and mostly all JJ. He's not one to boast his strength in any fashion, even taking verbal and physical abuse (smacks to the head, full-on slaps, having moonshine dumped on him... all usually because he's rather blunt or rude in some fashion) does not change that. He's had a stupidly tragic life. Parents died at 2, killed his first person at 13, burned his head at 16, lost his eye at 22, lost his wife, lost whatever home he had like three times and a bunch of other boo-hoo stuff. But JJ just keeps getting back up. Can't keep JJ down. (Yay! TMBG song! "Can't Keep Johnny Down") In the long run, the past incarnation of my character in XI left a lasting impression on me and those I'm returning to. So I guess I did something right? I just had fun with it. If those around you are having fun with you then you're doing something right. Sorry for double post, I must mention that when I first started RPing, I went through so many revisions because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. JJ XI was my first RP character. Ever. E>

What... is in your character's bag? JJ has: Small bit of rope, flint, tinder, collapsible knife, some smoked meat, some spices, canteen of water... he doesn't have much else since he lost his "original" bag during the Calamity Alex has: Mortar & pestle, knife, empty bottles, string, potions, various ingredients, rope, flint, tinder, water, some spare clothes (might be more but not off the top of my head) What do they consider essentials for survival? JJ considers: Rope, water and a knife to be essential. He can get away with making fire by magic if he needs to. Bare minimum he'd search for if he was stranded on an island though. Alex considers: Same as JJ... JJ trained Alex! What are their keepsakes that push them forward? JJ has: A small pouch that houses a couple broken pearls and he wears the bent and damaged wedding ban from his deceased wife around his neck. Alex has: A bracelet he and his sister made years back. That's it, he lost all other keepsakes. How much room is there for things to collect from the wild? JJ: He has a bit of room, and he also has a secondary bag that's rolled up tight for situations like that. Alex: Being an herbalist/alchemst, has a lot of room for that sort of thing. How much Gil would they carry on their person? JJ: None to a couple 1000s. Alex: Couple Gil to a couple 1000s. If they have a chocobo they would haul...? JJ's Chocobo would haul: JJ! Alex's Chocobo would haul: MOAR herbs and stuff What kind of things would they leave behind? JJ: Since he keeps his irreplaceable stuff on his body, he'd not be too upset about losing his travel bag entirely. Alex: His work is in his bag and if he's in the middle of a big herb hunt, he'd be pretty pissed if his bag got left behind. If it was too heavy, he'd toss out empty bottles and the mortar and pestle. What would they discard that you currently keep? JJ: Pretty much his hole bag if he needed to. Alex: His spare clothes and empty bottles if he needed to.

Man, there's quite the collection of musicians, amateur musicians and musicians-taking-a-siesta-from-music-ing here. To you siesta folk, go play~! I wish I had a wide array of instruments under my belt (or even played my main instrument well enough!). Soooo jealous!

@Tyriont – I saw you skulking around. Had to make sure mycloset full of rum and virgins was untouched. Anyways, I think us over at Crystalline really downplayed having a few of the popular or admin folk. Like severely. So I can kinda see now from others’ perspective on the subject. To pick up where I cut myself off this morning, I don’t see Ellie/Kylin as an “ace in the hole” or “our ticket to the top”, I see them as Derpina and Derp RPers first and admins like third. But from y’alls point of view, yeah, I can see how it might look. But I toooootaly don’t think that way and I don’t think the majority of Crystalline thinks that way either. @Seo – I mean to poke around with you and Gerik more than I did, but I got all washed up in “OMG! I’m BETA TESTING NEW GAMEZ”. Ain’t got anything else to add here. @Spiritual Machine – Making first, second or fifteenth impressions suck! Our biggest foul-up was labeling ourselves “Closed” and clouting we are awesome. Not such an inviting thing really. What we should have said was something more like “Hey guys, we’re kind of keeping new member influx tight as we come up with a rough blueprint of what we want Crystalline to go towards, but shaped by its people over time” or something like that. Because that better reflects what’s going on over yonder. ^^ Of course we’re going to come off defensive, but we’retrying to improve ourselves and explain or try to clarify misconceptions. I’m sorry if all my post seems “NO YOU’RE WRONG”-ish, but so far I’ve gained a bit of understanding of Crystalline as some see it. I really have! @lady2beetle – Yeah, better for us to have said “We’re working on it and might allow a few to slip through the cracks but… we’re working on it.” As Eva says below, she felt since the RPC now clearly hosts a primary and secondary servers, she should define which one Crystalline was going to make home. To just have a separate section that’s probably going to echo everything I have said (plus an adorable analogy)~ A lot of us in Crystalline, like most others on the RPC, are pretty invested and just all up in our linkshell’s stuff like it’s a mama bear and linkpearl-shaped-cub. I can only truly speak for myself, but I think Crystalline as a whole just wants to improve in the communication wing. A whole bunch. And despite how weird our friendliness seems, we’re honestly trying to take criticism in along with offering how –we- saw a particular situation or thing. Believe me when I say we’re taking any criticism and re-examining stuff!

We're often labeled "elitists" and the sort by folks that don't know us real well. I mean, there is some merit to that, though. And to kind of add to what the most recent Gideon's Bible-sized post Eva made: So We're "Temporarily" Closed As ArmachiA commented above, I'm sure a lot of linkshells/guilds had to curb their recruitment at one point or another. We're no exception. The way this new linkshell is being put together is a narrative in and of itself. From an IC standpoint, since we're aiming to do literally most of the LS-building IC, it's fair to argue that Eva (IC) has been timewarped, is scared and has no idea whats going on. She's slowly been RPing finding old (and new!) friends as she picks up the pieces of her life. Since the Calamity wrecked pearls, she has ICly bought a new linkshell and has begun passing them out to those people she was close to before the Calamity. She still hasn't figured out WHAT to make the linkshell into -- her main concern is getting her friends back together by shoving pearls in their faces. From an OOC perspective, I think this was a wonderful move. The game went down like eight months ago. Back in September of '12, Eva whiped the idea out of Crystalline going from an IC-friend pearl to something else in ARR. That was in September of 2012. If Eva ironed out everything herself, had a recruitment drive and a hierarchy ironed out in April of 2013, that's still three months of sitting on our hands and biding our time with Skype or beta RP. That just seems like it would have been chaotic and stressful as that with any large linkshell, especially ones that ain't got a game to go to! From my OOC point of view from the earliest point to now of the "temporarily closed" stuff, I still think it was the best thing we did. Both from a narrative point and from a book-keeping point. Being called "elitist" is just the nature of the beast I guess. I don't see that in a negative term. What we want is to have a linkshell that is both inclusive and long-lasting, and if that means nurturing it slowly, then so be it. And having to build virtually all of it ICly affirms our characters will be as dedicated as ourselves are (immersion thing, lol). We're "Insular RPers" Clearly having our doors closed means that we aren't interested in outside RP. Right? Not one bit! I know I am not the most active outside-RPer, but some of our other members are. My issue is that I'm still working on character stuff (and am kinda lazy about that right now!). I'm kind of late to the game anyways, but that's a whole other story. Just like new RPers being too shy to initiate RP with someone, so can "seasoned" RPers! Just because you ain't personally RPed with us doesn't mean we don't want to, we just might be flies on the wall! I would like to have the majority of my interactions be by chance from other linkshells or freelance RPers since that's just a whole other level of fun. Two people are discussing what to eat. JJ walks by and says "MEAT!" and goes on his merry way. Things like that. That being said, I'm not opposed to "randomly" meeting as discussed via OOC means. But I'm getting off topic I think. I'd like to think myself as a pretty broad RPer, at least when the game gets up. Some of our members may be insular RPers, but I don't think as a linkshell as a whole we are. Other Little Tidbits That Don't Get Their Own Sections I don't see Kylin or Ellie as RPC admins in our shell, I see them as just other folk. Just because they're in Crystalline doesn't mean Crystalline does or should have a big say in the RPC (I don't know RPC workings, but I never felt that way). I would RP with either of them regardless of their OOC obligations and stuff, they just have their hearts in RP. I like that. E> ~~~~~~~~~~ I would like to add more, but this is the best I could crank out in forty five minutes. Time for work! Also, please note I literally woke up an hour ago and didn't have time to proofread. TL;DR = JJ loves you and you love JJ (even if you don't know it yet or even want to. Law of Nature. Don't fight it. E> E> E>)

A good bit of the fraction of Highlanders that survived from Ala Mhigo in 1557 ended up in Ul'Dah as sellswords (paraphrased from Squeenix). As for the Calamity, I really wasn't looking for that kind of information. I imagine the first couple years since the Calamity, there were a lot more but as time went on people started to recover. Recover doesn't mean prosper but merely survive. This is just my adaptation of disaster + rebound we observe in the real world.

Feel free to make remarks of your undying love or petty remarks of hatred (because you're so jealous that your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend loves me more than you). This is my first attempt at a full story after many years of not writing. I have done my best to not be too boring as well as exhibit a little bit of JJ's crazyness. This is five "chapters" long and being posted in its entirety. Feel free to comment below. I know I have a lot of rough edges to smooth out, I'm better as a call-and-response RPer than a write-something-you-didn't-RP-RPer. Also still working to get my RP chops back! Storywise, there's not much hard evidence of who JJ is in that he isn't out to prove who he is --- actually being a "fresh face" is beneficial in his line of work since he's made a lot of enemies over the years. He's out to chew bubblegum and find his family, and all his bubblegum got chewed before the Calamity. As you see in short in the start of chapter 1, which is my best attempt to show JJ's unorthodox fighting style since he's had to survive by his blade since a young age and is essentially self-taught in all aspects of combat. Some might argue I'm down-playing the HOLY CRAP TIMEWARP thing, but I'm not. JJ has kind of a one-track mind and all that's on there is making sure his remaining family (Alex & Grace) are okay. As JJ sees it, the timewarp already happened and five years is a long time to lose touch with family. He'll worry about the repercussions AFTER he finds them. Enough of my rambling, here you go!

Is the walking in town thing really something a lot of rpers do? I'm new to rping in an mmo setting, so I'm just curious. I've never actually toggled run/walk yet and still find myself sprinting to get around town quicker. :frustrated: Guess I'm just impatient. When IC, yes, walking in town is pretty common. Even sprinting (if you're late for a date!), but yeah, seeing someone walking awhile is usually a clue they're probably an RPer.

Closest thing to JJ is a MRD. JJ swings around bigass weapons like it's going out of style.

Totally jelly right now. All the options...... To be blunt, that's shitty! I got nothing to add to that other than a generic "you can get back up on that horse one day".

Says who? Where is it written that a cameo has to go by some preset criteria that can't involve interdimensional travel? Perhaps it doesn't suit your tastes that they chose to have the REAL Lightning cameo into the game, rather than just a Hyur with her likeness appearing, but that doesn't make it any less of a cameo. Hell, even Yoshi-P exists in the game in the form of the Wandering Minstrel. What Aysun's saying is that she doesn't want to see every FF character ever interdimensionally travel to this world. She's not saying that eastereggs/nods to past games and such are bad. I'm with Aysun, having it in the lore (not just a silly event) that Cloud Strife is in this world doing Cloud things is just lame. LET'S BRING ALL THE STRONGEST FF CHARACTERS EVER TO THIS WORLD! Yawn~ Bring their costumes? Yeah! That's cool.