Koen

It makes you wonder if Highlanders born and raised in Ul'dah get treated the same as refugees simply by also being tall and ripped, or if the other races can tell the difference. I suppose there would be a few things different between an Ala Mhigan expat and a Highlander descending from an Ala Mhigan migrant, which could help differentiate. Their accent would be Ul'dahn, or at least a warped mix, and I imagine they would all keep their eyebrows, teeth etc. intact, since that simply wouldn't be part of their culture. I guess it would depend on the person. I think it'll be interesting to see how the Ala Mhigo expansion works out with how scattered and changed most of the people who escaped are, really. Some will have moved on and found good lives for themselves in other places. There's also people born to refugees who probably don't have an emotional connection to Ala Mhigo unless it's via their parents, and might like the idea of retaking it in theory, but when it comes to throwing themselves at Garlemald's forces, are maybe not so eager. It seems the people who can actually remember Ala Mhigo would be the main bulk of the refugees willing to fight to take it back, and I imagine most of those people would be at least 30, with a few probably getting closer to 40 or 50 for them to remember before the King of Ruin started lopping off heads. They don't have many people in their prime. Good to see the lorebook is helping someone change their character's background to something the player prefers rather than something negative, though. Especially amongst all the unlucky dragoons.

Worked for me, much appreciated. Hopefully the free trial will last until Square manages to get the problems sorted out.

Go ahead! All I did was change some of the colours on one of the templates. I somehow managed to delete half of the tabs by mistake at one point while making it, so I'm not the best person to look at for how to code the thing though, haha. I've seen the Sasagan's Scimitars before when I was poking around the site (and ran in to Hannah in the Coffer & Coffin), and while I think he'd be comfortable in that lifestyle, the only military he's willing to be a part of is the Ala Mhigan one, unfortunately. I think Kale is a similar rank to what Koen was when the Garleans took over though, so he might be able to relate to him, maybe offer some advice if they ever bumped in to each other and got talking about it.

Since he only recently started wandering Thanalan and La Noscea again, Koen really doesn't know a lot of people. He's semi-actively looking for connections in random RP out in the world, but I figured posting here might speed things up a bit! I managed to put together an RPC page for the old guy, so you can look at that here. To put it simply though, he's just an old soldier who's recently come back to the city states for the first time in years. To give a few examples of the types of people he would be interested in: an alchemist or merchant who deals in poultices that could ease some of his aches and pains; it always pays off to be friendly with a healer or two, so he'd be interested in keeping in one's good books; he would like to get involved with members of the Ala Mhigo resistance to get a feel for their progress, and finally, he's currently looking for some honest work to earn a few gil, whether it's manual labour or something a bit less physical, like waiting tables. One rare connection is that of a student. While he's open to the idea, he's not the best teacher and is as harsh to any prospecting students as his parents and superiors were to him. If someone can withstand the training, though, they stand to gain access to a wealth of warfare and combat knowledge. One note is that, fortunately, he managed to find a reliable smith in the pint-sized form of Jojo's smithy, so he's not currently in need of any smiths for work, at least. However, he thinks it's always a good thing to have more people on your side, especially with the uphill battle the Ala Mhigan resistance is facing, and so the more people he's on good terms with, the better! Feel free to post a reply here, or PM me if you'd be interested in RPing some time. I'm in a EU timezone, but I'm often on at active EST times as well.

Call it bullying if you want, but I don't think most people see it as that or have anywhere near that intent when using the phrase. I know I don't. I just see it as the same as describing someone's character as Chaotic Neutral or any other alignment. It's a term that, while having a broad range of wiggle room for the type of character it can describe, gives you a general feel for what the character will be like. It's simply a way of describing a character's archetype without having to go in to too much detail. The only difference between a special snowflake and someone RPing a "typical merc" is that special snowflakes don't advertise themselves as such. If you've interacted with someone whose character is as flat and interesting as an A4 piece of paper, Spongebob shenanigans not accounted for, I think it's perfectly okay to say to a friend, "So and so's character is a special snowflake" in the same way that someone who interacted with my character could say "Koen is a typical 'old soldier' type".

A special snowflake, as far as I understand the meaning of the phrase, is someone who makes their character part of some special order or otherwise relatively exclusive group that they see as 'special' to make their character interesting and attract people towards interacting with that character. A special snowflake does this in place of things like making their character have a well-written backstory, deep personality and room to develop as a character, often abandoning the lore or common sense for the sake of "Oh, but that'd be super cool". It's a lazy way to make your character 'cool' that shows a lack of creativity or effort in making a character, and it's perfectly okay for people to not want to interact with a character if they think it's some lazily made special snowflake. I know when I came across a pregnant Azure Dragoon in full armour with a pet dragon in her purse in the Coffer & Coffin, I wasn't keen on RPing with her in the future and wrote off the character ICly as a crazy person.

At the moment, he's just looking to get his gear fixed up. Before that, he tends to blame Garleans for most things.

Koen has over 30 years of stories about war, travelling Eorzia and plain life experience he can share bits of, if that'd float your character's boat. He's been looking for an armorsmith ICly, which could work as a link, or he could've picked up whatever device/artifact you're thinking of.

Both sound like they'd be a lot of fun. I'm still working out the details of this guy's personality, but I'll make sure to poke you if I see you running around.

Well, I'd feel bad saying no when you're that enthusiastic, so of course! As for the link, If I knew how to join that thing, I definitely would. A gathering of ripped people who hate Garleans sounds like a fun time to me. :-)

I'm never sure what to write in these things, so I've just followed the template. I'm not technically new to the game, but I've been gone for so long that I might as well be a newbie. I've played as a healbot and a DPS, so I'm trying out tanking now with one of the new classes. It was difficult at first since my natural reaction as a healer main in most MMOs is to life my robes and run like a wussy, but I've gotten used to it! I don't have much RP experience, but I've done it before after a few drinks and the people I know who do RP seem like nice enough people. I figure worst case scenario: I walk out in to an alleyway and get stabbed by a Lala for committing some kind of RP blasphemy. We'll have to see. Creative writing isn't my strong suit, so I've just stuck to a basic character while I'm catching up on any new lore and whatnot. He's an old-ish Ala Mhigan (I'm thinking in his 40's), and he's been wandering around getting up to this or that. He used to be in the military before Ala Mhigo got taken, so he's rigid with certain things in his day-to-day, but it's been 20 years and he's become more relaxed as old wounds have healed. He has a soft spot for little kids, and he thinks he's great with them. His face is pretty ugly though, so he scares most of them off. Anything more detailed, you'll have to prod him and have a chat; no guarantees he'll share anything though. ^^ I have no idea what kind of RPer I'll end up being. Probably light or medium, but I'll have to see where things take me. I'm mainly focused on leveling up so I can get access to more cool looking armours, but I'm sure I'll have time to do the "sit at a bar for 10 minutes and hope someone walks up" ritual a few times during the process. As for me, I'm a EU player, so hopefully there'll be more than a few EU people out there who don't mind dealing with someone relatively new to the RP thing. I'd like to think I'm laid back, but I've never heard someone admit to being otherwise, so who knows?