Naunet

I'm not seein' it. o.0 Unless you pick the "pretty" fac, and even then it's only in the face. But nothing about the male bodies says effeminate to me.

Yes.... very interested in a commission. Or two. Possibly not XIV-related, so I hope that's okay.

300k for slot 9. :3 I would also be interested in seeing a dA or other link with this guy's work if possible. Considering paid commission.

Or, y'know', a walk toggle. /notbitteratallnope!

While I personally have pretty much given up on WoW outside of some RP I still putter along in (haven't actually played the game since... I think just before that PvP patch in Mists), I definitely agree here with your opinion on XIV. The roleplay and the people in general are fantastic. The gameplay? Nnnnnot so much. I do, however, appreciate all the little roleplay-friendly details SE has put into the game - especially the slew of emotes (including facial expressions) and how your character looks at a target. Prior to this game, I played TERA, and we couldn't even WALK there, so the friendliness to rp is a breath of fresh air. I might be tempted to start TERA back up again if they weren't doing absolutely dumbfuck things with their costume system, simply because the combat in that game is amazing. But... WildStar will have to settle that for now, and I do intend to poke ArcheAge (currently playing on the Russian client ) more once I can manage to get into the beta/release, thanks to it being f2p and the sandbox thing is nice and new. And... hells, perhaps I'll keep an eye on Black Desert and see what happens with it. I'll admit the video of the city has me pondering things, but I know very little about the rest of the game... Oh and D3. Because awesome.

But can they walk? /teraptsd

Color me impressed by that city. It's pretty much exactly what I was wishing for in my earlier posts (though a few more enterable buildings would be nice...). I still can't get over how terrible the draw distance is though. All those objects flicking in and out of existance is kind of hilarious and rather takes me out of enjoying the scenery haha.

"We hope there is truth in your words, firedancer," K'deiki shook her head slightly and shifted her wiry, ratty tail beneath the many wrappings that obscured her body. Sand blew past her face, chafed her weathered nose, sunk into the crags of her features, and with one hand she tightened the cloth about her head. A defensive gesture. "In all her wisdom, Azeyma still shines, and yet we all find ourselves wary of being burnt once more."

The worn tip of K'deiki's staff sunk deep into the sand as she came to a halt several steps away from where she had only moments ago handed out her decision. She bowed her neck forward until her forehead rested against the pale, dry wood, breathed in K'yohko's sharp, furious scent, and let him speak his piece without reproach. She could understand his anger; she had felt it herself and knew at least one of the other elders would likely agree with him. But K'deiki was tired of this negative energy draining her family. "Do not hunt alone," she spoke after the nunh's words waned, though not his anger.

So wait, is Black Desert doing the whole "someone PKs you and takes your stuff" and/or the whole "if you die, you can lose your stuff" dealio? Interest gone.

Haha yea. On the one hand, points for realism. On the other hand, minus a whole lotta points for massive inconvenience.

Playing the need vs. want game is a bit silly. We're talking about video games. We don't need anything, but there's a lot we want. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting things. I just love being able to go inside buildings. I get a thrill every time I find an enterable building. One more potential setting for rp! FFXIV has a lot of enterable buildings, but not in their cities. Two of the three cities in XIV don't feel like cities so much as... a cluster of market places and pathways. I mean, where the heck to people live in Limsa? There's not a single place where you could conceivably point and be all, "Yup, that's a home." Obviously we don't need enterable buildings. I've used the balcony outside Ruby Road Exchange numerous times as a pretend stage for an inn room. We've used the building out in Highbridge as a stage for a Brass Blades office that's supposed to be in Pearl Lane. There's a little hermit house in La Noscea that we've used as a stage for a character's home in Limsa. In TERA, one of our characters owned a medical clinic, and frequently we just stood at the corner at the edge of the street where we'd decided the clinic would be and just rp in party chat (or sometimes /say, which got entertaining results). We've pretended the empty, probably never-to-be-used "housing" areas in Velika were jail cells, and psychotherapy rooms, and multistoried mansions, and inn rooms. Obviously pretend is a powerful thing. It's still nice to be able to go inside buildings, and it is frustrating when you're walking around in a city but all the doors (if there are any) are impenetrable.

Even their test server can't handle loading everything at once. That doesn't bode well for the general populace. [edit] Regarding the city, impressive and all, but I'd be willing to bet you can't enter any but a very few buildings. Would love to see cities in MMOs that actually feel like cities instead of constructed facades. GW2 is as close as I've ever seen get to that.

K'deiki tilted her head back, turning the deep lines of her face towards Azeyma's gaze, seeking silent guidance from the watcher, their guardian. The sun bore down bright and hot upon all of them alike, she thought, and would burn them all the same as well. Was this Azeyma's wisdom? "K'yohko," she spoke, not looking away from the sky. Her withered hands twisted about her staff. "There has been enough trouble within our family for now. The strange comes to us with our missing. Perhaps there is a sign in that. We'll hear what he has to say." The elder K'deiki would turn then, lowering her head, and begin to shuffle back the way she had come, though at a much slower pace. "Welcome him for now, and welcome our lost home."

K'piru had no answer. She felt drained. She wanted to hate him for saying these things, for driving K'aijeen away. She wanted to hate K'aijeen for rejecting her every attempt to reach her, help her, teach her, for treating her family's love and generosity and understanding with reckless abandon. And most of all, she wanted to hate herself for giving in to those words, for hiding from her daughter when she must have needed her most, and now for giving up. For leaving her to be swallowed by the sands. She wanted all these things, but for now, K'piru could only feel the suffocating shroud of grief. K'ile could send Thalen to her, but it wouldn't bring back her baby girl.

Just a few days, she thought, begged silently, begged Azeyma. The goddess remained silent and shrouded from view, however, and K'ile Tia as relentless as ever. They'd not given K'aijeen enough time. She would return, and what would she do, what would she think if she found the tribe had moved on without her? It would be worse than what the racks did to her. Worse than... K'piru's thoughts pushed about in her skull in a fragile state, shards of glass that cracked against one another and dug furrows in her brain. No daughter left. "Nothing," she breathed out, the word a question, an echo, and a denial all in one. K'aijeen's image reflected in her thoughts and she clung to it - not nothing, but her daughter. Her baby girl. Her limbs lost their strength, grip slackening beneath K'ile's hands. A small, desperate part of her thought she could say no now, and sneak away, hide from the tribe without their knowing, and when she returned with K'aijeen, they would all know just how wrong they had been. But it would never end that way. The firedancer was right. No more words came to her then, only the silent heat down her face, the sand in her belly, the weight on her chest. She managed a nod of her head, and she felt the action like stab through the gut, a betrayal of her blood, her family. K'piru felt like a traitor to her daughter, but there was nothing else she could do. There was nothing else they could do.

"You don't say that!" K'piru slammed her fists, still gripping the leather, against his chest, and her thoughts cursed K'ile Tia with the action. "She's my daughter! You--you don't get to say--" She squeezed her eyes shut, felt liquid fire trace burning tracks down her face. As she bowed forward, until her head rested against her forearms, K'piru felt the blow of the firedancer's words deep in her gut. "She's my daughter," she hissed through teeth clenched against a roiling nausea. The words were thin, useless things, flung at the tia in a last ditch effort. She could see her daughter's small, red-furred form painted across the backs of her eyelids, felt the knife cuts of her words. "She'll come back to... she has to come back to me."

"She's my daughter, not yours!" In a conflict of action, her fingers locked in a white-knuckled grip about the leather straps as she pushed roughly at K'ile's chest. His shadowed form blurred until it merged with the rest of the tent, became nothing more than sun-tanned leather and sun-burned skin beneath her hands. Her heart clenched until she thought it might stop completely, the vice about her ribs threatening to shatter the thin bones. She'd known this would happen. She'd known, she'd known. She'd done nothing to stop it; K'ile Tia had not let her do anything to stop it. "She will come home to me!"

"I'm no untried child! I know how to survive for a few days--a few days! I just need to wait for..." Her voice broke again, and her green eyes shook with emotion as they looked upon K'ile's silhouette, his blue eyes strangely bright in the shadows. K'aijeen was a smart girl. Clever in her wickedness. She must have gone to the cliffs, hidden her trail, and she would leave no trail when climbing over rock. K'piru could take shelter there, and wait. Following after the tribe would be only a matter of seeking out the signs they habitually left in the wake of their passage. She felt her hands close on the straps of the leather harness K'ile wore, pulled her weight on them in desperation. "You can't take this from me! You can't tell me--I will stay here for her and you can't tell me no!"

She felt as though a great boulder was crushing her chest, as though sand had choked its way down her throat to churn in a gravely mess in her stomach, as though Azeyma's pitiless gaze had seared her eyes from their sockets. It mixed with the fear of what her daughter had done, the anger at the girl's defiance, the grief at her hateful words and rejection and left her nauseous. K'piru spun, releasing her grip on the makeshift pack to lash out at the tia behind her. "You can't tell me that!" She shrieked, voice cracking. "You found nothing - nothing! You don't know what's happened--what she's--where she's gone, because you found nothing! You know nothing!" The words tore from her throat breathlessly, shaking her limbs. "If she were gone, you'd find--you'd..." A sob cut off her voice then, an angry, violent noise.

"You cannot tell me to give up on my daughter," the words grated out suddenly, choked, spat. Fingers that displayed their growing age in the prominence of knuckles and faint veins closed tight about the pack. Her tail lashed, its brown and grey peppered fur flicking in and out of a thin line of light from the front of the tent. The cloth about her shoulders, white accented with bright bursts of color that were dim in the tent, drew taught, shivering. Her vision blurred again, but she did not try to clear it. "You can't do that. I told you not to put her up there. I told you--"

The rough texture of twine and tanned hide brushed her nose as K'piru ducked her head, spine hunching forward in a lonely display of supplication. But to who? Azeyma's light seemed so dim; it could not reach the shadows in this tent. "I'll be along with Aijeen soon enough," she breathed, voice paper thin, dry as the dust beneath her feet, and felt her fingers securing knots in the twine to hold the pack closed. "She only needs some time. I can wait for her."

"I understand," her voice came out as nearly a whisper, and after she pulled in a shaky breath as she drew on the rope about the skin to cinch it shut, hiding the various objects inside from view. K'aijeen had always been good at hiding, at only being found when she wanted to be found. Except for that one time, four nights ago that seemed like a year already. Her throat tightened around her next words, "K'zhumi and K'ailia are... learning well. They can help K'eyrah if there... if anything happens on the road."

"He's gone to help the children pack our meat stores," K'piru murmured, barely reacting to K'ile's entrance save for a backwards swivel of her ears. Their ruddy brown fur had begun to grey at the tips, and the grey spots pointed towards K'ile like eyes. Which was all well and good - that the tia was here likely meant... she did not want him to see her face right now. She did not want to look at the man who would tell her her child was gone. Her tail drew thin lines in the sand as she bowed over her hurried collection and began to pull the skin up around it. Her vision blurred but she blinked it away. She didn't answer his question immediately, if she intended to answer it at all.

Bowls and sticks and other odds and ends required by the tribe's shaman clattered within the tent as K'piru scrambled within it, her tail twitching uncontrollably behind her and occasionally knocking items to the ground. A string of bone beads and dried wood quivered between her fingers, the thin digits shaking in her field of vision as they sifted through this salve, that powder, this water skin, that warding fetish. Items gathered on a skin spread out in the middle of the room, rough rope woven into its edges that would serve to draw it shut around its intended contents. No one who had gone looking for her daughter had returned with anything more than apology and empty air and the weariness of hours spent under Azeyma's glare. And though news had reached her only reluctantly, she was wholly aware of her tribe's present need to move on. K'thalen had spoke as much to her, the night before when they both lay awake together in the shadows of the tent, hidden from the tribe, though not hidden from worry. K'piru, however, was not prepared to move on. Not yet. Not ever. A small sound caught in her throat as a few fetishes slipped from her hands, their angular, knotted forms scattering in the sand at her feet, and she knelt immediately to retrieve them. K'aijeen was playing a cruel game, she thought. A heartless and painful one, but like all games it would come to an end. And K'piru would be there for her return.