Ildur

I'd say it depends more on the tribe's actual culture rather than an individual preference. Though, of course, the tribe's culture could be that it is something of personal preference. There's also this bit how the tribe letter flows into names: So "K'ailia"'s good pronounciation would indeed be "Kay-lee-ah" and not "Kuu-ay-lee-ah". You would have to add the "Koo" sound if the name had a consonant next to the K', though. I always went for the interpretation that the prefix was basically a "of X tribe" that worked similarly to "of X city" in medieval and ancient times. It doesn't make much sense to use it inside the tribe itself because everyone is of that tribe. But it could still be used as a formality of sorts. Following that line of logic, the K in K'airos (or whatever) isn't actually a part of the name. But then, again, each tribe could have different cultural views of how the names should be used.

There was a knot in K'airos' stomach. And in her chest, and throat. Their kiss lasted too long. She would have cut it short just one moment after it was given, but her head was unwilling to move, fearful. She mantained the kiss as she waited to stop being scared. The fear dwindled, but didn't leave. She tried to think, to distract herself, but couldn't. Then she concentrated on what she was doing. The knots inside her tightened and pulled as she felt her sister's warmth and smell closer than it had ever been. She kept crying, her ears dropping as low as they could. At least it was not fear. She opened her eyes, and she saw that the frightening sight that had manifested around Aijeen had vanished. She pulled herself away, but kept close, one arm still wrapped around her sister, and the other hand still placed on her chin. She had trouble breathing, but knew she should say something. "I love you." she repeated with a thin smile. The words came out of her mouth weakly, the knot on her stomach pulling her senses again. They weren't words she wouldn't have said, but they came with a different taste in this occassion. K'airos didn't like them, but she had to say them, she thought. Endure them, like one endures bitter medicine. Her head pulled back, closing her eyes, facing the sky. "We'll be happy again, okay? Let's go have dinner and then we can...remake our plans the way you want them to be. Okay?"

K'airos had paused in her run. At first she had just frowned in confusion as to how her sister had fallen and raised so strangely, but then she jumped in place, bringing both hands to cover her mouth as the increasingly terrifying sight before her unfolded. She did not have time to think of any of this before she found herself hugging D'aijeen with all her strenght. Her eyes stared into the abyss below them, and then they were closed shut by her own fear. She pulled her sister as close as she could. More memories were shaken. Her sister had created a monster once, many years ago. A creature made of shadows and bones, covered in dark. A beast that D'aijeen couldn't control back then, that had tried to hurt those on the way of its scape into the desert. The fear of what her sister had awoken back then kindled again, pulling her away from those times towards the present. To just what seemed like a moment ago, when she had seen her sister on the docks, broken and crying. To her words about D'hal's death. To how she had calmed herself. And then she was pushed closer until they were no memories any longer. K'airos opened her eyes, moving them from the abyss to her sister, one hand moved to her chin and pushing up so that they were facing each other. "We'll solve this." K'airos said almost whispering, a collection of tears preparing to burst out of her eyes. She took a breath. Her eyes closed. "I love you too." Her tears came out, and then her lips laid against D'aijeen's.

With her ears dropping and her tail curving down between her legs, K'airos watched her sister run away. It took her a brief moment before she herself noticed that the direction was wrong. Her memories stirred, and something in her head reminded her of one time when D'aijeen had left to think, to be alone, and then was never seen again, back when they were both part of a tribe. She panicked. "Wait!" she shouted, jumping forward to chase D'aijeen, leaving behind their dinner. "Come back! I won't...I won't see mom anymore, alright? I'm sorry! I won't see her! I promise! We'll even go far away from her! And the sea is this way, too! Come back!"

"It won't get worse! I miss her and I want to see her!" K'airos protested, dropping her hands down to her knees to help herself stand up. Her tail swope to the other side again as she did this. "It won't get worse. I'll only see her every once in a long while! And I can speak with her! She'll listen to me. What does she have to do for you to be okay with this?" She barely managed to stop herself from kicking the sand under her feet with frustration. Instead, the aborted action came out as an emphatic stomp.

"I see." K'airos sighed, closed her eyes and kept very still and quiet to think what she was going to say. She didn't believe that their mother didn't love D'aijeen, but then her sister had a strange sense of love. "I won't see the tribe." she finally said. Another sigh left her mouth afterwards. "But I still want to see mom. She never tried to keep me with her, or to make me leave you. If she tries to...uhm...separate us then I'll..." Her voice was calm until that moment. It shivered. Her tail moved from one side to the other in one quick swoop. She tapped her fingers again. "I'll stop seeing her. But we'll give her a chance. I want to give her a chance."

There were a few rebelious locks of hair on K'airos head, and she continued to comb them into submission. "I'd like to see them once per year, at least." she said plainly, as if she was preparing to bargain. "Though I don't know if they'd consider me an exile by now. And...I'd...I'd like to see mom once a moon, too." she added. The rebel locks at last surrendered to her merciless combing. She straightened her posture and smiled. "But I will stay with you all the other days, and we'll continue our plans together!" Still smiling, her fingers started tapping against each other, hands raised over her chest. "We'll buy a house and live together there. And we'll have Shelly as a pet! And she'll keep watch for us. Maybe we could set up a shop! You could then stay with me while I work! We'd sell Shelly miniatures! Or...something. I don't know what's good to sell...and I don't know how to manage a shop." She poked her chin with one finger, pondering about something related to the economy of a Shelly based economy. She then lowered her finger, and continued to tap her hands together. "But...how does that sound to you?" She looked at her sister, expecting her answer.

"I guess. Would you like that?" K'airos asked. She had impaled the fish on sticks and was taking turns twisting them over the fire, then letting them roast in place. Her eyes raised from their future meal to set on her sister. "I still have duties there, but I could find work someplace else. Of course..." she said, tilting her head and combing her head with her hands, as she hadn't brought a comb. "That would set us back on the savings. Though..." she trailed off again. There was hesitation, a short breath and then the words."And I heard that our tribe was moving closer to it. So I don't know if you'd be comfortable with that. Maybe we could set ourselves near Ul'dah? Or maybe even around the Bay! Or in Horizon. There's less Amalj'aa, too, so I'd just have to deal with even more brainless beasts." She tilted the head the other way and combed that side.

There were no further discussions about diets while Shelly kept watch as the sisters got to their proper attires. However, K'airos tried to kept herself and D'aijeen distracted by narrating how awful the food in the Cove was, how evil the buzzards were since they constantly tryed to poke Shelly out of her shell, how the air smell too much of salt. By the time they had changed, K'airos had also spoken at lenght about boats. Even though it was clear she didn't know how they worked or why. Her dream boat was some sort of floating wooden cottage, imagined from what she had heard about Gridanian houses, dragged by many pet smallshells that'd crawl their way across the bottom of the sea. After all, boats were made of wood, and wood floated. So anything made of wood should float. And so her cottage would surely float. She wondered why there weren't any actual floating cottages in the Cove, but she didn't allow that to better her that much. With the awkwardness of the dress up out of the way, K'airos lead D'aijeen closer to the fishing village. She was now dressed in her usual red and rust Brass Blade uniform, though her hair was still dyed green, and her lips were painted green. D'aijeen's bloodied clothes had been thrown into the bad, which, naturally, was now much lighter. She stopped next to one of the large net racks that littered the village and silently 'borrowed' four fishes from a nearby barrel recently filled with them. "I'm not fishing." she offered as an explanation to D'aijeen, though she didn't look at her. "Fishing is silly and boring. I could catch them faster by swimming and using my own hands!" A moment later, she had procured everything she needed to make a small campfire. That is to mean, she found the remains of someone else's and claimed it by right of sitting next to it. "Now we just need fire and we can eat."

She shook her head. "What? No!" she started. But then she let her shoulders drop, turning around and walking towards what she thought was a big enough cluster of boulders near the cliff. "I guess that If I break your clothes you won't have anything to put on." she said, defeated. A few more steps and she spoke again "You also need some actually filling food! And my diet doesn't include myself for dinner. You need actual filling food! Shelly!" The smallshell stopped clapping her limbs around between each other at the shout. It wasn't actually responding to it's name, but K'airos concluded that was the only logical explanation. With a stern but amused frown she commanded the walking rock: "Keep guard! If anyone comes by, pinch them with your...pinchers! Or just look cute and distracted them." The little creature moved one antennae up and down. K'airos interpreted this as a salute, and so she turned happily to continue their march. But Shelly did not move from its spot, instead chosing to keep clapping its pincers.

"Alright, let's change." K'airos nodded. Raising one arm away from town towards the coast, she said: "I've not seen many people on that side, so we could change somewhere there." She walked back to the rock she had been using to stare at Shelly, the smallshell and living rock, before D'aijeen arrived and picked up the bag that was lying next to it. The sound of metal pieces clashing against each other could be heard when she lifted it over her shoulder. She let out a sigh of relief. D'aijeen had at least come back to her usual inscrutable self. "I'll change first, since you need the clothes I'm using. Then I'll keep watch!" She made a little hop, turning around to face her sister. "Then we'll eat! And while we eat, we'll discuss about your new diet! Because I think that you are too thin." she said, pulling from her clothes to emphasize how tight and uncomfortable they were on her.

That was the second thing K'airos had not seen coming that day. Her instincts kicked off again almost immediately by demanding a sudden and forceful action. But how could she? Her sister had witnessed someone's death, and she had come to her, broken, covered in blood and tears, looking for reassurance and soothing. Pushing her away could destroy that. She had to react firmly, and yet she couldn't. She placed her hands on D'aijeen's shoulders and gently pushed her away, creating space between them. Her eyes were anchored at D'aijeen's shoulders. She frowned and opened the mouth twice, and twice she failed to say anything. Then she tried a third time, and something did come out of her. "Is that a...a thing of the Dodo Tribe?" she asked, trying to find excuses for her sister's behaviour, even though she had no idea of what any of that tribe's customs were actually like. "That's not something that sisters do. We should talk about that..." she said, and then quickly added in a forced new cheerful tone that was almost the same as the real one: "But first we should get you a new set of clothes! And introduce you to Shelly!" She stood up, and tried to make D'aijeen stand up with her. She didn't wait for her to answer or say anything, interrupting any possible reply with more words that were increasingly upbeat. "Maybe we could learn to sail! That'd be a nice change from Thanalan. Oh, and go shopping! Vesper Bay must have some Lominsan wares before and cheaper than in the city! And I hear they have a pretty statue of a lalafell lord. Some...Lolorito guy? I don't know who he is, but he has his own statue!"

((Ugh! Double post))

It took a very long moment for her emotions and thoughts to catch up to each other. Her mother, K'piru, and the imposter called Antimony were the same. She always knew that, but just now her mind could actually accept it in the same way she had accepted it as a fact, back in Drybone. Her tribe was alive and well. D'aijeen had lied to her about her own't family's death, and of her tribe. K'airos remained there, kneeling by her sister, cradling her between her arms. After what must have been a full minute, she tilted her head and looked down, smiling. "I think...!" she cheered "...that we should get you cleaned up. and changed! And then we can eat something. But not here. All the food gives me a tummyache. So we should go to the Bazaar, or to Vesper Bay. Spend a couple of days there by the beach! We could even go swimming! Or rent a boat! Shelly will be our first mate!" She finished by looking and pointing with one hand to the living rock. It was still clicking its pincers together. K'airos smiled broadly, identifying it as another proof of smallshell aproval. "See? He agrees! It's a good idea!"

She failed to see the change of subject coming, and so her words strumbled into each other awkwardly, forming a meaningless sound. She tilted her head, looking into the sea. "Well, you told me nobody but you should find me." she started after a short cough. "So...I thought...after a while...that if I was here as a Brass Blade somebody could recognize me. Then I dressed up as you, because if anybody was looking for me, they wouldn't be looking for you! And you wouldn't confuse me with you, because you are you and you know that I am not you! So you could recognize that you were really me! Except I wasn't...you, so you couldn't really confuse me with yourself! But others could...you know, confuse me with you and then they wouldn't find me." K'airos felt satisfied with her logic once she was done explaining it. She turned her head again to look at the odd living and limbed rock behind them. It clicked its pincers together. She thought that it must have been applauding at her cleverness.

K'airos had trouble understanding the words mixed with the crying. She catched glimpes of it, and made a mental picture with what she got: There was D'hal, a lalafell and a fight. That tiny creature must have been her murderer. But there was also her mother. It could not be the woman called Antimony, for she wasn't her mother, and D'aijeen had just said "mom". Not a pretender or a fraud. Not Antimony. Just "mom". She almost smiled at that. Yet she did not. While she was forming these images in her head, she immediately threw them all away, one by one. There was nothing to think about. Nothing mattered more than her crying sister. "That's alright. You did nothing wrong!" the words came out quickly, pushed by her sisterly instincts. "It wasn't your fault." she told her once more. And then again: "You don't have to apologize. It's not your fault!"

"Of course you didn't!" K'airos' answer was quick, a reaction from her instincts. She had no idea what had transpired. Her sister was stained with blood, but she dared not to imagine anything. It didn't matter right now. She felt that her duty as a sister was to soothe D'aijeen first and ask later. Or perhaps never ask about it. She rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. "It's not your fault. Do not blame yourself." she said, and repeated those words two more times, moving her body back and forth, cradling her in her arms. "Just cry until you feel better, alright? Crying will do you good. Don't hold it!"

K'airos smile broke down into a thin line when her eyes noticed that the red on her sister's clothes was actually blood, and then her expression broke again into mild despair. "What happened? Are you hurt?" she asked, eyes wide open. She glanced at her without letting go, and she quickly concluded that there were no wounds to worry about. Only a gross red color covering her attire. She knelt down, letting Daijeen rest her head against her shoulder. "What happened?" she asked again, her voice lowering. Behind them, the limbed rock moved closer to them and stared at the shadows below them.

Crescent Cove's coastline was littered with fishing nets hanging over the beach, hurriedly placed over wooden frames, with both men and women going from one to the other to capture the catch of the day and clean them from all the other messy junk the sea threw at them. The town itself was nothing but a handful of wooden shacks and houses, with no tavern or inn. Travelers had to rely on the good will, and greed, of the locals. K'airos had been such a traveler for some time. She was ways off to a side of the village, perched on a rock overlooking the nearby beach, deep in thought. Close to her was another, smaller rock with two long protrusions on the front, two really wide ones next to them and about half a dozen smaller ones to each side, clawing their way into the sand. Nearby, there was a large brown sack, and a scimitar resting against the sand, at arm's reach. Besides moving rocks, there was something else odd about K'airos. The miqo'te woman was lying on her stone viewpoint with the head hanging from the edge, staring at the limbed rock a few falms away. She was dressed in strangely white clothes that didn't fit her shape: they were too tight on the sides, and the front. And everywhere, if she payed attention. A white bilaud with a carefully tied pink bow, a white hat adorned with a silver ornament on the front. At least the hat fit comfortably over her head. Her looks were broken by the sudden black boots covering her feet. But there was something else. K'airos' red hair was now a pale green, and so were her lips. From the pier, the woman looked like a bright white smudge against a brown cliff. "I should teach you tricks!" she said cheerfully to the living rock. It did not answer, but she felt the need to continue. "Maybe you could open the door for us. Or peel potatoes! Your pincers are good for that, right?" The rock raised its antennae slightly and, for a brief moment, it looked like it looked at its own limbs in confusion. "Great! I'm glad you agree with the idea!" the girl said, clapping her hands together and rolling off her rock. With this action, she noticed another mostly white figure with green hair and a tail arriving on the piers and moving quickly across them. She smiled, took a deep breath and brought both hands towards her mouth. "Aijeen! Over here!"

Squeenix stinks at making their lore friendly to roleplayers. Which is pretty weird considering all the other neat little tools like emotes, poses, facial expressions and sitting on certain surfaces in sensible ways. Anyway. I think it's a small enough detail as to not worry anyone if you decide to ignore the lore about adventurers being the only ones allowed to buy properties in those places. Handwave it by pretending that your character made some legal juggling or got some special permission, if anyone asks.

Isn't this true for DMC too? Or any other game? DMC must have some ranking system, else you wouldn't be able to get a rank of any sort. If there's a system in place, then you can attain mastery of it. What does DMC have that allows it to retain the 'semblance of challenge' even after you become a 'master' of it?

Clearly achieving a high rank because of combos or whatever requires some form of skill, but isn't it an optional part of the game? If I go play DMC right now, do I need an S rank to beat all the bosses and finish the game? Meanwhile, in games like Dark Souls you do need to learn the patterns and when it's a good idea to attack with your character's current setup of weapons/spells. It's not an option between "you can mash the button and proceed" or "you can carry out a complex chain of hits in a particular order in order to get a bigger rank!". You either learn to deal with the attack patterns or you get stuck. Which I think is what Aeriyn was saying: you don't need much skill, in any of its many shapes, to 'beat' the game. Unless you do. I have no idea how DMC and the like work. Maybe if you don't have full S ranks on all stages you get the Very Depressing Ending or something.

Well, if you had four big dinosaurs and thousands and thousands of tiny rodents in your planet, which one would you determine as the 'dominant' species? I guess that, because we are talking about what is essentially a service, we can understand dominance in two ways: quantity of consumers, and raw quantity of offers. I'm not sure all the subscription games together would ammount to anything as the majority of MMO players. They certainly have a lot, though, but it's hard to determine that thanks to F2P games being kind of volatile in the matter. What we certainly have is a 'dominance' by F2P in the offer side of things, however.

Losing internet for half a day is not fun in this time and age. Anyway: the problem with (instant) knockdowns and stuns in Wildstar's mobs is that they last for a fair bit and are always followed up by a heavy hitting attack that you cannot dodge (for you are stunned/knocked down). So you can kiss goodbye to half your health. And that's with a heavily armored class. I haven't run much into that problem anymore, though, mostly because it looks like things are dying much faster (probably a buff to engineers' damage, I imagine). I should let myself get stunned to see if they changed anything else. That Azera thingy reminds me a lot to Tera. I think even their title font is similar.

Pft! Best music for videogames is in Bstion. The sliders actually don't do much. You can crank them all the way to the minimum or the maximum and some parts will barely move. And then you have only one slider for the mouth, mouth size, that also changes the size of your jaw along with it. And once you consider that most faces are pretty unique looking (it's not so noticeable on humans and aurin, but on everyone else it kind of is), you end up with a lot of very easily recognizable clones with slightly different features. And maybe wider noses. And yes, the game is terribly optimized. I thought they'd optimize before open beta, but apparently they want the first impressions of the game to be "This game is not very well optimized". Housing in Wildstar is pretty neat. You get a FREE plot of land at level 14, and then you can dump money on it to personalize it. Each plot has a designated area for the house proper and then a bunch of 'slots' where you can place other, non-housy things. Like a garden, or a mine, or a crashed meteorite because it's cool. I think building the smallest house costs like 1 gold (which isn't much) while the biggest costs 3 platinum (and you need level 30ish or something). But most of the expenses come from furnishing the place and filling the slots. You can get furniture via quest rewards, random drops, buying them directly from your house, other players or one of the crafting professions (architecture). You can place things pretty much wherever you want, even floating in the air. Though the UI for moving furniture is pretty bad and fills your screen with a big window (the 'crate' where all your furniture is stored at) that you can't hide nor close because that spits you out of the edit mode. Overall it's pretty neat, but it's a huge gold sink. I don't think you can furnish it like you want until you are at least at cap. Unless you don't mind going bankrupt. One thing that bother me a lot in Wildstar is...actually, there's two things: repair bills, which seem way too expensive, specially if you run dungeons a lot for gear; and mobs with instant knockdowns/stuns. Though the last one has been tweaked greatly by making those mobs weaker...or at least the ones that used to wreck me over and over again.