Twinflame

You are forgetting the fact that large swaths of the playerbase not only support homosexuality, but are homosexuals who are married to their partners. It is untrue to say that the US is the only country that sees this as normal; many countries are far ahead of the US in respecting homosexual rights and see us as backwards. To those countries, Japan is downright primitive. Treating it as abnormal is an opinion and many people see that opinion as aberrant and divisive. Going ahead and implementing it with restrictions completely disregards the opinions, lifestyles and in many cases the actual irl status of those who are in favor of homosexual marriage. Which is why "putting off" that decision is in NO WAY neutral. If they do not implement same-sex marriage they are actively disallowing it. They are actively stating that the beliefs and lifestyles of many of their players are strange, unusual, and will not be accepted until divisive elements in the playerbase agree to it. Given the tone of a lot of their commentary, this seems to go completely against Yoshi's paradigm. They're afraid of the vote-kick function being used to troll. Their afraid of whispers in raids being used to say cruel things. They're afraid of people rolling need on things they don't need because it is rude. And then they turn around and actively speak down to a large element of their customers, as if there's something strange and unwanted about them.

((An brief story to follow this RP done in the IC chatbox the CRA website)) The nights move on their own, hundreds of feet below the walkways in Limsa. After dark the shadows sink below the buildings, and the ink throws up a cold wind that smells of salt. The occasional reflective flicker on the surface of the ocean is just that; a flash on the very utmost level. It does not penetrate. Instead, it is thrown away. The same would not be true of bodies. The ink would accept the bodies and toss them about in its waves. Joyfully, like a child with a doll, the shadows took the dead body of Ernafalk Bleigearyson and slammed it against the barnacle-laden walls of one of Limsa's towers. The businessman's lifestyle had left him fat and buoyant, and the gray sack of flesh and bone that had once been so frugal and duplicitous was easily shattered against the stones of his home. Megiddo looked down, a frown on his face. The remarkably thin Duskwight stood stock-still on the walkways, and watched. More accustomed to pitch black caverns and nights in the Black Shroud, his eyes watched the bloated gray corpse smacking against the tower. Again and again. It had been caught in an eddy where two walls converged at a concave angle, and though the water sucked out of that corner, the body never escaped before it came washing back in. "What are you looking at?" A Lalefel inquired beside him. The cold wind pulled at clothes and hair, and nearby banners swayed. The Duskwight was not moved. His pale eyes blinked, and he responded without tone, "I believe someone may have fallen." "Well, that happens! It's likely too late for him," he shrugged and bid farewell, "Good evening!" And the Lalafel walked on. For several seconds more, Megiddo observed the floating body, the occasional flickers of light that would not stay in the ink to keep him company. Then he turned to watch the small Lalafel walking away from him. Perelon Paqirelon knew the power of ink in ledgers and documents, but would not consider the ink that the ocean became after nightfall, nor the inky color of the sky that sank heavily over Limsa. The white stones at his feet, the gray and yellow lights that glowed throughout the city, deluded him into thinking the night did not seek him. Even as he walked away from the bloated corpse of his partner and the Duskwight who had already vanished into the shadows, he did not realize that the cold wind was that of death. He had a meeting to get to and an assassin to hire, after all! Business trumps all. Silence sneaks up on people like a bandit, like shadows. The meeting spot was typical in that it was away from the heart of Limsa, from the voices of people and the eyes of the Yellow-coated authorities. If Perelon's instincts were good to him, the silence and multitude of shadows would not sit easily with him, for when he arrived at the place where he was to meet the professional hitman and discuss the job of killing Antimony, he was alone. While it is terrifying to find an assassin in the dark when you do not expect to find one, it is perhaps even moreso to not find an assassin where you expected one to be. "What is this? Which shadow are you in?" Perelon spun. He stood on a round platform no more than ten meters in diameter, on which there was a single lamp next to which he stood. In truth, there was only a single, great shadow, which was the entire world around him. "Is he late? An unreliable worker at this point wourld be-" "I am not late." Perelon stopped. A fragment of snark sat at the back of his throat, but it choked. A scarecrow-thin shadow stood straight and still in the dark, and the cold wind did not move it. "Oh, Perelon Paqirelon." The shadow had a familiar voice, deep and choking, "Antimony said that you were very good to her, so you have my respect. This will not be humiliating to you." "Antimony?" The Lalafel gaped. "What-!" A movement of shadow, brief as a passing thought, left the platform empty. The body of Perelon sunk initially, but became buoyant after his flesh bloated in the ocean. Both he and his business partner would be found soaked through the following morning, bits of their meat eaten away by the fish. It did not look like murder, for indeed, both Perelon and Ernafalk had fallen without being injured, and writhed desperately in the water. If they had not been so out of shape, they may have swam to safety. It was such an unfortunate coincidence that the two partners had fallen separately, drowned alone, on the same night. Dawn found Megiddo lingering in an orchard, peeling an orange for breakfast. The smell of the sea clung to his hermits linens, and his knives were steal clean where they were concealed. Of course it wasn't his most subtle work but, as he threw the skin of the fruit into the dirt, those two hadn't really earned his best.

I cheated a bit on the libido thing because Megs is completely sexually incapable. I'm sure he appreciates a pretty body still, but it's not like he's got any moxy for copulation.

Y'all should work together to make a lore appropriate tarot thing happen, imho.

Imho, reading people's profiles and then doing readings/predictions based on that would be meta-gaming. I'm just a stick-in-the-mud like that, sorry. However, I've seen this done a few ways. In TERA, one of my guildies RP'd a very interesting king of psychic with a weird predictive ability I never fully understood. Nearest thing I can call it is empathy, but it was visual and sound based. It used the idea that people were constantly broadcasting things, and she'd pick up on that. So while RPing with her, she'd ask us to send her tells of whatever our characters were "broadcasting," and we could make it abstract or as simple as we wanted. Then it'd be up to her character to interpret them. This was a lot of fun because it put others in control of the seeing. We could try to direct her towards secrets we were keeping about our character. It also let us emotionally connect with the character in new and interesting ways. Another thing was in WoW, I knew someone who ran a tarot gig irl. Once a week she would give free IC tarot readings on her gnome. But she didn't just make stuff up; she used actual cards and the readings were honestly related by her gnome. It was a pretty popular thing and she got lots of repeat business. In my opinion, injecting tarot isn't that big of a deal. If it bothers you because tarot doesn't exist in the lore (understandable), then you can just change the words and imagery around. Call it something other than 'tarot' and change the names of the cards to things that reference in-game lore. Instead of a suit of Coins, for instance, you'd call it the suit of Gil. If someone wanted to run IC tarot readings, I would utilize them frequently. Wouldn't y'all?

1. What do you think is a main character? The main is the character on which I place special emphasis. I can have different "mains" for different things, but usually I choose to main the same character for both RP and PvE initially. After a few months or a year, I might end up having a different RP main than PvE main, if I spend more time RPing one character than another thanks to plots and stuff. 2. What do you think makes a character an alternate character? If they aren't my go-to for some specific activity. My PvE main is the character I spend 90% of my PvE time on. My RP main is the character I spend 90% of my RP time on. If I'm doing, like, a 60/40 split or a 20/30/30/20 split, then I ahve multiple mains. I think if I was doing a spread with ten 10% characters, I'd say something like "I don't have a main". 3. Do people have a responsibility to make certain "mains pair with mains" if you sense an interesting relationship (friends/rivals/lovers/enemies/long-lost relatives) forming or is it okay that someone's just not going to be around at random or for long periods of time? Tbh this is a new concept to me. If one of my characters ends up in a serious relationship, whether it is a main character or not, I make a point of logging in to that character more often. 4. Have you ever discovered that your main was paired off in one of those situations with someone's alt? They just didn't play them at all or played other characters? Did it stall out your story? What did you do? My main in WoW lost her v-card to someone who never logged in again after that point. What should've been a decently remarkable event got pushed aside like it never happened. When the character finally popped up a year later, my guild treated him like a sleaze-ball, and I'm not sure how he felt about his character suddenly being perceived that way. 5. What's the biggest stereotype you think of when you think of people who only have one main character? I think of PvEers. This isn't an insult to say that they're less of an RPer or some such. On my WoW server, some of the most reputed RPers were also some of the most successful hardcore PvEers (this didn't prove true in other games, but there's no reason it's impossible). In my experience, people who spend the majority of their time RPing (as opposed to PvE or PvP) tend to spread that time between multiple characters. 6. What's the biggest stereotype you think of when you think of people who suffer alt-itis and swap characters often? I dunno. I had three full TERA accounts with eight characters each. So whatever the stereotype is, I'm probably it. 7. Which are you? A single or two main characters? 5 main characters? A bunch of alts? I usually ave one main and craptons of alts. Over time I'll generate a second and a third main. I try not to end up in a situation where I don't have a main. I also try not to get too attached to people on characters I play less often. 8. How did you usually break up your time between your main characters? Play on demand? Always on one, demand for the other? One with one group and when they all sign off switch to the other? For RP I play whichever character is needed for the plot that is happening. Because my mains tend to generate complex stories, the scene that's happening dictates who I play and that's fine with me. If there's nothing serious on, I'll take into account who is around and try to RP a character emotionally attached to who is present. In both of those situations, 90% of the time the answer is to RP my main. When there's no plot and nothing special going on, I'll RP an alt if I feel like a change of pace. It's worth stating that in my main game, my RP mains recently became a level 10 character that I'd rarely ever touched before and someone I usually used exclusively for "casual" RP. This is because my usual main caught a disease and is out of commission until it is cured.

I could get behind an heirloom thing. It makes sense. Since Clan Hla'Rahel is broken off of Clan Desfosse, I think it would make sense if we shared a lot of traditions. Luckily, I haven't personally given that too much thought, so I'm an open book! Anyway, I wanted to stop by and show you guys what I'm working on, based off PM conversations with several people in this thread (My PM-count is higher than my post-count lol), because I"m about to be gone for a week and won't be working on it while I'm away. I have yet to get confirmation on all of what's in that pic and obviously most of it is missing explanations. I'm going to attach a snippet of explanation to each connection between clans, but right now, here's some interesting tidbits: Eva and Myavar appear to be distantly related, which makes sense, considering the jokes earlier in the thread! This is, of course, pending Eva's approval. Clan Voleur (Le Card's clan) broke off of Clan Desfosse a single generation after its founding, and was active in the Black Shroud along side Clan Desfosse and Clan Viedeces (Silsix's clan). Voleur, Desfosse and Viedeces each had fairly violent cultures that would have been exposed to one another. Desfosse and Viedeces both worked as professional assassins and had a long-running rivalry. Voleur was forced out of the Black Shroud by non-Duskwight forces about one hundred years ago, and has likely had little to no contact with the Shroud clans since. An exile from Clan N'Ardente entered Clan Desfosse at about that same time. Clan Mauvaix, however, did not influence Clan Desfosse until very recently. What this means is that Desfosse, Voleur, Viedeces and Hla'Rahel have been culturally influenced by one another as well as N'Ardente and Plunierre, but not necessarily the other way around. Clan Mauvaix influenced Clan Desfosse very tangentially, but there is no reverse interaction there presently. Ignore the Miqo'te tribe in the lower left: there is no cultural exhange. That's just me connecting my fiance's character for the sake of my own personal RP. Thiereia is a PC played by Ildur, who I will poke to turn his attention to this thread. The reason I'm bringing this up now is because it involves so many of you, that you should publicly see where you all connect. Since we've begun to discuss culture and what we have in common, seeing the paths of influence will probably be extremely useful. Think about how cool it would be if Myavar and Eva both shared certain traditions, even though they had never met and couldn't ICly trace their lineage to any common point? Stuff like that, I think, is awesome. I'm actually really nervous about showing this to you guys before it's done. If you want to change anything at all about what I've been working on, let me know, please! All of this is fluid and I would gladly move things around to increase or decrease the extent of certain connections, or to expound more upon a certain clan. Please throw feedback my way, and again, recall that nothing in here is finalized or currently 100% approved by all affected! Also, this is mostly just the tree around Megiddo specifically. There's a lot more going on with Clan Desfosse and lots of places to make more connections with anyone who wants to do so.

In the past I've used descriptors for games like this. One such example was "Hooded Stranger," but that was utilizing an RP add-on that let me change my name and people still meta-gamed. IMHO, there's no best way to do it, but none of the ideas in this thread are really wrong either. Personally, I think Ildur hit it spot-on. If you don't want to keep the identity a long-term or server-wide secret, you could also use a physical descriptor for the character that takes advantage of some kind of unique feature, like I called one of my alts "Scarfaced man" or something.

Clan Viedeces sounds very similar to Clan Desfosse, both in the area in which it is active and the way in which they made their livings. Megs and most of his children were professional assassins and such, so they probably would have either competed with or cooperated with Clan Viedeces on different occasions.

You absolutely can! Have you read Megiddo's wiki page yet? I give a general outline for the history of Clan Desfosse, but I'm very open to changing details and moving things around. Desfosse only exists for two hundred years and entered into decline about half-way through its existence, but had enough numbers that they could take a few splits. If I need to add to things or change time-frames around, I can do that. Just shoot me a PM.

I'll be watching with interest, Kya.

One thing to keep in mind is that not all Duskwight must have a clan. They probably all come from a clan, but as vagrant in the overworld, there may be a decent number of lone Duskwight wandering alone, with no family and potentially even with no connection to other Duskwight. I'm currently using the offline character creator to make a whole family tree for Megs, and I'd like to make his clan (Clan Desfosse) have ancestry ties to as many other player-made Duskwight clans as well. Specifically, Clan Desfosse could have collected outcasts from Clans Plunierre and Mauvaix. I dunno the history of Clan Ni'vollie so dunno how that'd work. But with the permission of Teardrop and Eva, I'd like to include minor characters in Megs' family tree imported from your clans. They would have died long ago by now. Essentially, it's just for personal flavor.

I might've been a little ruder than I meant to in that case, but I'm given to overreaction. Now, if that's what you had in mind, then yes. That would annoy me as well.

Mostly I used your own words, so you can't really complain about my tone. Also, if you were attempting to respond only to the one person, you overstepped that by speaking in far broader strokes. Essentially, whether you meant to or not, you said things that were insulting to all people who disagree with you. What you're trying to say will always be overwritten by what you actually say. Anyway, I'm not trying to imply that healing magic is totally bunk. Of course I'm not, and there are a lot of minor injuries that a White Mage can make go away in their entirety with a wave of a staff. There are other injuries and illness that may take longer to cure but can still be taken care of with magic. There are still other injuries that cannot be fixed with magic alone, but instead require a mix of magical and traditional medicine. Yet others cannot be helped by magic and must be seen to by exclusively non-magical intervention. You are of course free to disagree, and politely excuse yourself from RP with people who do not see magic as being as effective as you would like it to be, just as they are free to step away from RP with you. However, it would be kind of sad if you had to step away from so much RP, as I think most people are not going to be stubborn about this point and will likely allow themselves to fall into a point in between, where the magic heals significantly but they still require natural recovery. Incidentally, my rule number one for RP is: Respect the RP of others at least as much as you respect your own, if not more. So it's not like I'm going to disrespect your choice to RP magic as a cure-all, especially if your friends and regular group go along with that. However, I think if you're super stubborn about it, you're going to miss out on RPing with lots of people. You're cutting yourself off from lots of plots, many interesting scenes, and in some cases, entire characters and Linkshells that rely on a less extreme viewpoint in order to function. We all have our headcanons. They don't always agree. Reconciliation is necessary in order to RP with folk. So if you're rolling your eyes at people who RP differently than you do, but in a way that they enjoy, you're not really showing a large part of the community the respect they deserve. Especially if your character "disinterestedly casts an esuna" and then you expect them to just go along with that no matter what they wanted to RP.

Please keep in mind that no matter how much you hate such things, there are those of us who like to RP as doctors, physicians, medical professionals or researchers, or even White Mages that like to RP the process of using magic to heal. I roll my eyes every time someone completely invalidates things like battle injuries and weakness from loss of blood, partly because it's just so boring and partly because I think it's border-line god-moding. The disconnect between people dying from illness and starvation while conjurers just stand there and being able to heal any wound or debuff within a moment of receiving it just seems ridiculous to me. That said, your second paragraph is insultingly narrow-minded. RP is what you make of it and creativity is in the prose, not the content. If a typical disease isn't interesting to you, then you're free to RP other things, but you shouldn't insult what people like to RP. You're also free to RP being some kind of magical instant healer, but respectfully, it doesn't make any sense. There's a huge difference between filling someone's body with enough vitality and emergency healing to get them through a fight (making their HP go up in combat) and being able to wave your shiney stick and heal all their ills like some kind of overwrought religious miracle-worker. Of course, if you're playing with people that enjoy completely overlooking realistic and dynamic injuries in favor of sparkly lights and miracle panaceas, go for it! Just please don't get annoyed if you try the same thing with a random group of people and they treat your character like an idiot for casting Esuna and acting like it helped at all. I honestly love this explanation. In TERA I had developed my healing head-canon to the point that I'd actually drawn up a sketch of how I thought mana moved in a body to maintain and heal it. But in ARR, I haven't given it any thought yet. I think because I'm not presently RPing any kind of healer and physician. I'll need one at one point, though, and I do like yours.

I've got tons of RP I'm still doing in TERA, and that keeps me busy for like six hours a night. In addition to that and working on my backstory and lore, I'm also writing a Monk guide (which I could use feedback on or questions for), helping get the Unity FC ready to push PvE content, getting the site for the CRA LS set up. And, oh yes, working (but not getting paid, lol). Essentially, I'm digging as far into FFXIV as I can without actually having access to the game while still trying to do everything I knew how into it I'd end up getting. lol

I went ahead and added Clan Desfosse to the list. It also links to Megiddo's wiki, which has very general overview of the life and demise of the Clan, for anybody who would be interested in reading that. Thanks for getting that about, Tear.

I had a lot of fun writing the application for this Linkshell. The fact that I didn't want to take it too seriously let me just fill it with personality. It's a hoot, imho. :lol:

I would gladly edit my clan's info into a wiki page if one was made, but I've no idea how to utilize the wiki. I haven't so much as looked at it, so I've got no page up for Megs or my alts or clan or anything. It's on my to-do list, though, so if nobody else does, I very well may at some point! Just have to finish making my family tree and writing my Monk play guide and... In the meantime, though! I can do one of these: Name: Clan Desfosse Location: Shallow caves in the Black Shrough Status: All but extinct Theme: Family above all else, thieves and assassins, conflict with the overlanders Member(s): Megiddo Desfosse (Elder Megiddo), Louree Desfosse More Info: Incidentally, Eva, the reason I'm saying "Clan Desfosse" instead of "Desfosse Clan" is because Clan is the same word in French as it is in English. So "Clan Desfosse" translates directly to "Clan from the pit". Which means your clan name implies, "Stone Rain Clan," and that is just cool.

Official release of concept art for Nald'Thal in-game NPC. He's a ruthless banker in Ul'dah. Looks cheeky to me. Since one of my characters is a worshipper of Nald'Thal this is gonna play merry hell with my backstory. How bout you guys? Incidentally, as you can see, his head looks like his symbol: Based on this I can only predict Rhalgr gonna look friggin sweet.

Or we could just start a new thread, which would be prudent for the Linkshell anyway. But before we did that, we'd want to have the write-up for the Linkshell settled and have more information on the various clans. We could also do a wikipedia entry about Duskwight clans and list what we know of them there. I haven't exactly done a write-up on Clan Desfosse (Megiddo's clan) but I know everything in my head. One thing about these clans is that a lot of them are defunct thanks to the Calamity or just the pressures of the surface world, which is obviously unfortunate.

Eva, was your Clan Plunierre one of Oskar's Northwest clans, or was it a different clan? I also might have missed if Teardrop or Kyatai have names for their clans?

Recruitment needs have been revised to show lower demand for healers, but that'll only last until we get more damage dealers and support, which we need lots of damage dealers.

Megiddo is a tall, thin, and practically ancient Duskwight that one would encounter in the Black Shroud. He would wander into the tavern, take a good look around, and find someone sitting alone to share a table with and strike up conversation. He may also try and stick that person with his bill, since he doesn't have any money.

I think what Kaze was pointing out is that there is a small branch of the family that did cross-breed with Keepers at one point, so if you want to play a Keeper and still be involved in the Hipparion tribe, there's a place for that.