Naunet

She thought at first he was another imagined voice, born from whatever nightmare had seen fit to grip her family. K'yohko had left with the others for war. How could he have returned and Thalen not? How could he have returned while her daughters were still gone? Then the sands shifted next to her as something settled on the ground. She recoiled at the smell, half curling towards K'ile, and the firm warmth of his body dragged her thoughts away from the dunes, away from the horizon and an endless wait. K'ile was here. K'yohko was here. Her beautiful girls and the light of her soul were not. She screamed, a short, choked sound that broke off into a sob, and scrabbled back in the sand. Wide eyes flicked to the body, then away, and she sought to hide. "They're not here," she wailed, pulling her arms to her face to ward away the sight. She didn't know what K'yohko wanted of her, why he would show her yet another corpse - there had been so many already! - and why he would speak those words. Her girls were not here. Thalen was not here. She could think of nothing else.

"Why would--" The words hurt, as though she had spent an entire age in silence and her throat had forgotten the sensation of sound. K'piru choked, coughed, could not pull her gaze away from the dunes ahead. Her ears shivered, straining along with her nose as she sought for signs of her approaching family. "Why would you say such things?" She hadn't noticed K'ile's approach, was numb to his touch on her arm, and though she had heard his voice, she wondered if perhaps he was not really there at all. Perhaps none of them had come back, and she had called up the sound and scent of her mate's brother as a messenger of a nightmare. "Why would you say such things," she repeated, voice low and tenuous. The blue-white light of the moon through lingering smoke cast odd shadows on her upturned face. "They'll come back. I am waiting for them. They'll come back."

I agree that a skype group would be more amenable to long term conversation, especially as not everyone will be online at the same time likely, and if we're all in a skype group, we can scroll up and read through whatever conversation we missed.

The woman who had come seeking further aid for the wounded left shortly after, returning to the tent with its heavy scents of medicine and blood and fire. K'ile and K'piru remained frozen in the middle of the ragged camp for some time, bodies supporting one another as though they were the only things keeping them from sinking into the sands and becoming lost forever. K'piru already felt lost. At some point, K'ile stood, pulling her up with him when she made no move to get up on her own. She couldn't feel her legs moving as he guided them both out from under Azeyma's eye, and the eyes of the tribe. Her feet drug through the sand as foreign instruments. She strained briefly when they turned away from the horizon, but went quickly limp, once more numb. They curled up under the shelter of the rocks, and there K'piru cried again for a short time. They were quiet tears, her body trembling but making no sound as they burned tracks down her face. They soaked her skin and cloth as her daughters' blood, as K'thalen's blood had soaked their own; they fled her body like the blood of her family. *** When the shadows of the cliffs merged with the shadows of night beyond, K'piru finally stirred. She hadn't slept, but her mind had fled. It returned to her there in the cool crevice K'ile had brought them to, and she blinked slowly, feeling course sand along her side, a warm body at her back. She breathed in his smell, and her heart clenched. Body unmoving, her eyes roamed towards the open sands, catching on a few, tattered remnants of tents set up to ward off the elements and then shifting to gaze past them, further into the dunes. A faint shudder echoed in her skull and deep in her ribs and in slow, deliberate movements, K'piru pushed herself up. K'ile must have drifted to some shallow, troubled sleep briefly, for he didn't move when she stood, her legs unfolding shakily, feeling as weak as a newborn. She kept her eyes on the dunes ahead and let her feet carry her forward. Once moving, she didn't stop until she'd crested one of the dunes a short distance outside the camp and dropped down into its valley. It didn't take long, as though her movements were outwardly calm, they were also quick. There at the bottom of the dune, she fell to her knees in the sand and turned her face up. Her features shivered with a strange, hopeful desperation that she was only half aware of. Any moment now, her children and nunh would come bumbling over those dunes. K'thalen would give some half-hearted excuse for their delay, some silly adventure he'd prodded her girls into playing along with. K'airos would be sheepish but happy, and K'airi would be vibrating with a sense of victory, the kind of rush she always seemed to have upon returning from a hunt. They would return soon, and K'piru would be here to greet them.

Pot pies? Mmm...

Her light, her life. She couldn't find her light. In her silence, K'piru screamed. *** The two were not alone in their displays of grief. As K'ile and K'piru bowed against one another, the weary atmosphere of the tribe dragged further into desolation. The wounded ground and shook in the pain of the bodies and hearts, and those shadowed word-bearers shook with them. Throughout it all, Azeyma watched, ever aware, ever distant. Enough time passed that the sun had traveled a great leap across the sky when someone finally approached K'ile and K'piru. She came from the tent they had packed the wounded into, bare feet leaving sluggish gouges in the sand behind her. The cloth wrappings she wore were stained with the reds and browns and yellows of death, as K'piru's were, and when she spoke, it was with a quietness that dared not disturb their solitude. "Leeka took a turn for the worse," she began, blue eyes shivering over K'ile's back. "We need... I don't know what to do. K'piru..." The motionless woman in K'ile's arms did not respond save for a weak twisting of her tail.

Her sobs stopped with an unnatural suddenness, the sounds stilling though her body still trembled as though it were about to shake into a million pieces. Her limbs did not feel as part of her body; her head sagged as though her neck were nothing more than limp tendon and skin. Her tail writhed still, painting vicious contortions in the sand, but its actions seemed well beyond her control. K'ile's words sounded from very far away, warped and muffled and echoing strangely in her skull. She knew he still held her, but she couldn't feel his arms. Something choked in the back of her throat, but whatever words or noise she had attempted to form died before she could even think it. She still looked to the horizon, past a blurry wall of hair, but she could not find those approaching silhouettes. Their absence left her utterly numb. Her only response to K'ile was a complete cessation of everything.

Each word he spoke sunk into her chest like arrows, with all the fatal accuracy of their family's greatest hunters. She writhed in the sand, in K'ile's arms, her limbs struggling to claw their way towards those shadows she could see so clear and so far in the distance, black spots, like ash. Like charred bodies. The wail that broke from her lungs and throat pulled roughly on her spine, curling her against K'ile's arms. Her fingers first dug into the sand, tearing into the rough grains, and then into those arms. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. Her life, her blood, so much of what she'd cared for, and everything she had cared most for - it was all gone. Her stomach twisted until she felt ill, but when she coughed and gagged, only thick, wrenching sobs that shook every bone in her body worked their way out. She clambered desperately at K'ile while simultaneously recoiling from his scent, from their scent.

"Don't lie!" The words tore her throat ragged. "Don't you lie to me!" Her arm ached all the way through her shoulder as she continued to strain desperately against K'ile's grip. She could see them - all fiery read hair and tanned skin, bruised from battle but grinning, relieved. She could see them; they crested a far dune, tiny shapes rocking with heavy steps on the horizon. They were coming, and she had to meet them, to welcome them home and clean their dirty faces and care for their hurts and help them rebuild their lives. "Don't lie," K'piru sobbed and doubled over herself and K'ile's arm. "They're here. He's... he's coming." The words tumbled from her mouth in broken splinters of sound.

The day the sky had filled with flames, their Warden's light and heat bathing them in an incomprehensible destruction, flashed across K'piru's mind. She watched the sweat beading on K'ile's cheek and heard again the screams of children, of elders, of family. In the dirt and blood smudged on his features, she saw tents wreathed in flames, dark silhouettes fleeing and catching alight themselves. Their shrieks of pain echoed like cracks of lightning between her ears. She hardly realized the scream was her own. Hands pressing flat against his arms, K'piru pushed back against K'ile, crying out, "No! They're just coming up behind!" And made to flee, in the direction the tia had come. She couldn't feel her limbs swinging, only the shuddering of her heart in her chest. She couldn't see the sand beneath her feet, only wavering mirages bathed in fire.

K'piru had barely adjusted her eyes to the blinding sun before muscled arms enveloped her, pulling her to a bandaged, bloody chest. Her nose pressed against warm skin, she at first thought it K'thalen and leaned heavily into the embrace. Her shoulders shook. But when she breathed in, though she caught smooth, comforting edges of K'thalen's scent, it was distant. More than just the char and blood - things she'd smelled so much of the past days that she felt certain they were permanently seared onto her senses - there was the smell of someone else, familiar but different. She brought her hands up to grip the other's elbows. "K'ile," she breathed out, and her tail curled tight against her leg before she lifted her face. The hollowness of his expression, what she could make out of it, chilled her, and her voice shook as she tried to form the question she wanted, "Where is...?"

At some point, the panic and terror that had left K'piru shaking and huddled amongst the rocks in the cliff rolled back. It had to, with so many dead, others caught in their own agonies as seared flesh peeled from muscle and bone, there was no time for her own fear, no time for her own grief. She would look at their strained faces and note only the degree of their pain, or if they had gone slack with death or, mercifully, sleep. The children were the worst, but she couldn't allow herself to see them in any different a light than the rest. The groans and ragged breaths of the wounded were swallowed up by the hide walls surrounding them, one of the few tents they could scavenge from the remains of their camp. So few would survive. A thin arm, skin an angry red and blistered, was stuck out in front of her vision, its small hand held gently in her own. As she smeared cool, sticky fluid on that arm, K'piru reminded herself that their supplies were low. She wondered if she could spare the hours it might take to locate more aloe plant, and without even realizing it, she began to organize those remaining by who was most likely to survive. Her hands took a moment to run through the thin, short hair of the child with the burnt arm, brushing behind his ears, but she didn't linger. She tried to form a prayer for his healing, but the words that she had crafted easily for decades died before they could work past her throat. The child's strained, puffy eyes were not something she could bear to watch, so she moved on. When someone came and whispered low in one ear that their warriors had returned from battle, K'piru tried to feel relief as she stood. The woman she'd been treating looked up at her, confusion briefly overriding her pain - she wasn't in quite as bad a condition as others - as K'piru wordlessly set aside her tools and moved to the tent's entrance.

As someone whose RP is very closely tied to the Empire's machinations, it takes a lot of RP opportunity away from me to just RP as though the whole thing has already occurred. That, and the explanations I've given earlier in this thread, are the biggies as to why I don't consider anything Ultima weapon and beyond to have actually resolved yet. Why wouldn't we want a chance to RP the Garlean Empire as a clear and present, near-overwhelming danger? That's a huge plot arc that, if we only start RP post-Archon, gets completely overlooked.

Lol yes, I thought it was absolutely absurd when I saw that cutscene. I mean, seriously? Host a celebration and wave your hands and wooo poof, it's an Astral era? From a storytelling perspective, they better get a reality check soon and acknowledge that they were way too quick to declare a time shift, or... well, or it's just not that great of storytelling.

I didn't say under siege. I said defeated. Key difference. This was my experience in Rift as well (with the slaying of the various dragons), and TERA (the example you apparently don't care about - al...right?). I didn't think I needed to list every single raid boss that ever cropped up in WoW to make my point. [edit] Ah, Twin. Thanks. ^^

That's how I'd play it! Illidan wasn't defeated until the following patch. The Lich King was not defeated and replaced by Bolvar until the Ruby Sanctum opened up. The undead Nefarian was not defeated until the patch that brought us the Firelands. Shandra Manaya, the Argon Queen, was not killed until the patch that ushered in a breaking of the Federation. Likewise, the assault on Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium does not happen until the Dec 17th patch. That's how I've always seen story handled by roleplayers in the past.

Yup, as per MMO story-vs-RP standards from past games, once a patch hits that progresses the story, all previous plot kicks in as having happened. So until the 17th, we continue to RP as though Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium have not been hit by the Scions. After the 17th... Well, I guess we have to stop referring to it as an Umbral age. It's extremely silly, but that's how these things are handled.

I play it as it still requires a significant control of one's aether, and can be draining if done too frequently. The gil is simply a tax instated by the city states to cover the rather high cost of rebuilding the aetherytes post-Calamity.

I am a plot monster. I eat plots for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea (goes great with a biscuit), dinner, and supper. I am the all consuming maw in the darkness between the stars, and I hunger for plot. I am the eternal will. I... ... would love to discuss plot! My character is an investigative accountant who works for a financial regulatory agency that is secretly . She also has a strange habit of befriending hobos (so far, she has four in her collection!), which may or may not be a wise thing to do.

It does not stop, which means all those awesome settings are completely inaccessible for lengthy RP. I posted extensively about the timer on the beta forums, and though my thread was trolled to hell and back, it did get over 300 likes, so... take heart that there are people who would rather the timer gone. We shouldn't have to deal with archaic "solutions" to problems that don't exist in MMOs that are actually constructed properly. >_>

Strange beasts the mud-stained miqo'te did not recognize bounded from the bushes and thick trunks hemming them in, only to buckle and wail, seemingly caught up in the shadows themselves. Each snap of their bones and roar from the forest echoed in his skull and sent a shiver down his ragged tail, which trailed like a banner behind him. He could make out the tall, thin form of the Duskwight ahead, and though the old man seemed to move with an ancient slowness, the unearthed miqo'te struggled to keep up. Roots and vines jutted up from the ground, tripping up his feet as though seeking to ensnare him, and twice in the chaos, lost in the impossible complexities of earth and blood and something very, very old that confused his nose, he found himself turned around, following a spectre that was only a bush or a thin stump. Pushing red, matted hair from his eyes, careful not to disturb the mud markings obscuring his face, the miqo'te stumbled on. With each step, he became aware of a growing frustration simmering in his belly, a slow awareness of rebellion. He wanted to turn on the forest, to bare his teeth and arms and dare it to take him, dare it to drag him back to the hole he'd clawed his way from, and then tear apart whatever came for him. That suffocating oblivion was for worms and bones - not him! The Duskwight's words, however, kept him moving, though to where he didn't know.

It's a practice that was/is rather frequent on the WoW RP forum I managed, but strangely enough I haven't seen it outside that forum... Not sure why!

((The following occurred at some point during K'ile and K'luha's brief visit to Gridania.)) *** The Apkallu falls created a pleasant white noise in the background as a red-haired miqo’te man, wearing a mask common amongst denizens of the Shroud, crouched idly at its banks. Every so often he would lazily scrub at some leaves he’d pull from a pile in an open, canvas sack next to him. There was a rather peaceful air to his actions, the kind people tend to adopt when on vacation, and occasionally over the sound of the falls, one could hear him chuckling at something not readily apparent. Back by the road, K’ile hesitated in his walk – destination unknown – as he caught sight of the red-headed miqo'te beside the lantern and water. He stared for a time, one ear occasionally twitching, then turned and approached the man, but paused some meters behind him, still staring. The man paused in his task, tossing down the leaves he’d been brushing off and then picked at some dirt under his nails. Apparently satisfied with what he found, he half stood from his crouch, stretching his legs out and tail behind him. After a while of watching from a distance behind, K'ile finally stepped to the edge of the water and looked sideways at the man to his side, frowning when he saw the mask. The man scratched along his jaw, fingers reaching up under the mask before running back through his hair. His ears twitched and the gesture paused midway - hand caught on the back of his head - as he turned his neck slightly to peer at K’ile to his right. “If you're thinking of taking a bath, y'might wanna make sure you can outrun a Wailer,” the low, smooth voice sounded somewhat hollow from behind the mask. K'ile looked at the water, taking his time to think over something or other, and then said, "I wasn't planning on it. You've got a strange smell to you, you know that?" The miqo’te's expression wasn’t readable behind the mask, but he did let out a short laugh. "You sayin' I should consider a bath?" “Wouldn't help. You ever been to the desert?” He scratched at the back of his head, still having not moved his hand from where it hung there. His ears twitched a bit at the action. "Eh, not that I can remember." “Desert's got a smell that sticks to you,” K’ile replied. “Same way some people just smell like magic all the time. You've got a bit of forest on you, too. Mud and roots. Strange combination.” The miqo’te blinked in the round holes of the mask, blue eyes barely visible in the shadows, and then turned his head to sniff at himself. “Don't think I'd know what desert smells like! Been a good day diggin' around in the bush though, that's probably it. You wanna come closer and check?” The last bit came tauntingly, and though it couldn't be seen, the grin he spoke it with was readily apparent in the tilt of his ears and tail. K'ile frowned a bit deeper, his ears swiveling back on his head. "What's that supposed to mean?" “Don't ask me!” came the chuckling reply. “What's it mean when some kid comes by and tells you ya smell weird?” “Probably means you smell weird, don't you think? Like you're not from around here.” The miqo’te watched K'ile for several moments, which might have been a bit creepy considering it just looked like an expressionless mask staring at him, and then leaned his head back suddenly, laughing. “Ehehe, nah, I think it's you that's not from around here.” “That's right. I'm not. Maybe I'm just lost.” The masked miqo’te stood fully then, stretching out his tail behind him briefly before turning to face K'ile. He dug one foot against the soft ground idly. “Heh, lost isn't so bad. Kinda relaxing. But, if you're lost in Gridania, I sure hope ya don't have any plans to go out into the Shroud proper.” K'ile pitched his head up to look into the sky, and then tossed his gaze behind him. "Ah. That's... I'll be just fine. I have everything I need to find anything I want. I didn't mean 'lost' like that really. Forget about it." Across from K’ile, the man scratched at the back of his head again, then let his hand drop down to rub at one shoulder, kneading tanned knuckles against the leather covering the muscle there. “You always talk so round about? Maybe that's why you're "lost".” K'ile lookeds over to the masked man. "I don't. You've got a strange edge to you, though. Between the mask and that out-of-place smell of yours. You don't come off right." His ears tilted. "What, y'never seen one of this? Keeps the Woodwrath away is all." “You did notice I'm not from around here. I've never seen or heard of any of that.” The miqo’te waved one hand. "Right, right. Well, nothing to worry about." A pause, considering. "Are you from the desert, then?" K'ile nodded, "The deepest desert in Eorzea. Far from here. Nothing from there gets all the way out here, excepting those I travel with, which is why it's strange for you to smell the way you do." The masked miqo’te let out a short "Hah" and then twisted his neck, looking up for a moment, then back to K'ile. His tail swished thoughtfully behind him. "Well, who knows, maybe I was in the desert, if you're nose is so sure." A softer chuckle followed this. Taking a moment to taste the masked man's answer, K'ile said, "It's not. I don't know. There's the desert, but there's the forest, and there's something I can't place. There's a few layers of strangeness between the desert and the forest. I guess you just don't make sense." The miqo’te hummed to himself and turned his head so that he was peering at K'ile sideways from behind the mask. “... Alrighty then. I could say the same thing about you, though, coming up to people like that. So I guess we're just both confused, huh?” “Guess so.” He shrugged and dropped back down into a crouch, picking up a few of the leaves he'd been cleaning before. "Some words of advice then: Don't go lookin' at the Shroud to help clear anything up." “What would I look at the Shroud for?” “Heh, I dunno, but here you are.” K'ile squinted and pulled on one hand, "Yeah, I know I'm here. What does that...? Never mind. Whatever." He shook his head, "I'm not figuring anything out." There was a pause, and then the man burst out laughing. “Take it from me,” he said after he’d settled down a bit, “It's probably best to just stop trying. No sense in worrying about stuff you've got no hope at figuring out.” K'ile huffed and threw his arms out in front of him, joints popping with the gesture. "Yeah. Okay. Fine. Evening." He spun away from the pond and took a quick first step towards the road. The masked man blinked after the other miqo'te and let out a short, bemused huff of a laugh. “Try not taking things so seriously, maybe!” K'ile threw his hands over his head and bellowed, "Bah!" as he continued walking. After a moment, the masked miqo’te just shrugged and went back to his leaves.

Follow? The man blinked and then startled as the Duskwight faded into the shadows. "Hey, wait!" Scrambling to his feet, there was a moment of dizzy confusion where his limbs took longer than expected to remember how to support him and the canopy seemed to spin above him. The smells of the forest hammered at his senses so chaotically that he had no way to pick out the Duskwight in the mess, save for the general direction the old elezen had drifted towards. "Wait!" He called out again and stumbled around the hole he'd crawled from, staggering into the thick, moss-covered trunk of a tree, which he leaned against for several seconds before recalling the Duskwight's words. Letting out a noise of frustration, he shook his head, felt as though the action rattled his whole brain about in his skull, and then hurried after the old man in the shadows.

The Miqo'te Naming Conventions post on the official forums should help you. You can also use the random name generator in game to get ideas. [edit] Argh, beaten to the punch.