I'm the same way. I've never really understood how you can take a character through multiple games like that (I'm not making a value judgement on people who do that, mind you. I simply don't understand it). Instead, I like making characters who have some deep connection to the setting, and they tend to evolve in pretty drastic directions. I'm also pretty in-depth when I play them, which is why I tend not to play alts. I also tend to avoid sweeping changes to my characters as I play them. Instead, I refine things, or fill in things in their past. This definitely applies with C'kayah.
For C'kayah, he started out as a sort of combination of the Grey Mouser and Casanova. I'd been reading Casanova's autobiography, and I loved the idea of this adventurer who lived by his wits and skill and charisma. The original C'kayah was a smuggler who carried small cargos around Eorzea. This was something I threw in to explain how he was involved with my first FC here: They were these "ends justify the means" types, and C'kayah supplied them with explosives. His conjury came into play with C'kayah serving as a combination guard and medic on trade caravans in his past.
Now, C'kayah was originally an archer, and later a conjurer, so he started in Gridania. At the same time, I'd been reading a bunch of the Coeurl tribe stuff that the old C-tribe RPers generated, and I wanted to place him as coming from the Sagolii. The sept that C'kayah came from had a tradition of going walkabout, like the Quarians in Mass Effect. I decided that C'kayah went to Ul'dah and became a thief. He pissed off the wrong underground family and got himself exiled from the city, hence his arrival in the Black Shroud some twelve years ago.
This led to me deciding that this was how he got into smuggling. He lived in the Shroud and made connections with a lot of the Moonkeeper and Duskwight clans in the area, and parlayed those contracts into a meager business moving things between the clans and Thanalan.
When Ul'dah opened up to me, I decided I liked it and wanted C'kayah to live there. I'd done a forum RP at the time with some folks that ended up with C'kayah stealing an Ishgardian diplomatic seal. That led to me creating the head of the family C'kayah had upset, and the story of how he'd bought his way into their forgiveness with (among other things) the seal.
On a whim I decided that he'd freed a slave on his way out of Ul'dah, and that the two had become lovers in the Black Shroud. His lover was later killed in the Calamity, giving him a good and personal reason to hate both slavery and Garleans.
Later I started fleshing out his original past in Ul'dah, and decided that he'd been taken as a sort of cabana boy slave when he'd first arrived. This gave him a taste for luxury, as well as playing into his personality. His owner was an older woman who had fickle tastes, so when she tired of him and freed him, he turned to crime as the easiest way he could think of to gain the luxuries he loved for himself.
Meanwhile, I started dabbling in creating and running RP groups myself. This led to the creation of (first) the NHSC and (now) Tylwyth Narah. ICly, this allowed me to build on C'kayah's natural charisma, which led to this very natural-feeling progression where he just built and grew the criminal enterprise he finds himself at the head of.
For C'kayah, he started out as a sort of combination of the Grey Mouser and Casanova. I'd been reading Casanova's autobiography, and I loved the idea of this adventurer who lived by his wits and skill and charisma. The original C'kayah was a smuggler who carried small cargos around Eorzea. This was something I threw in to explain how he was involved with my first FC here: They were these "ends justify the means" types, and C'kayah supplied them with explosives. His conjury came into play with C'kayah serving as a combination guard and medic on trade caravans in his past.
Now, C'kayah was originally an archer, and later a conjurer, so he started in Gridania. At the same time, I'd been reading a bunch of the Coeurl tribe stuff that the old C-tribe RPers generated, and I wanted to place him as coming from the Sagolii. The sept that C'kayah came from had a tradition of going walkabout, like the Quarians in Mass Effect. I decided that C'kayah went to Ul'dah and became a thief. He pissed off the wrong underground family and got himself exiled from the city, hence his arrival in the Black Shroud some twelve years ago.
This led to me deciding that this was how he got into smuggling. He lived in the Shroud and made connections with a lot of the Moonkeeper and Duskwight clans in the area, and parlayed those contracts into a meager business moving things between the clans and Thanalan.
When Ul'dah opened up to me, I decided I liked it and wanted C'kayah to live there. I'd done a forum RP at the time with some folks that ended up with C'kayah stealing an Ishgardian diplomatic seal. That led to me creating the head of the family C'kayah had upset, and the story of how he'd bought his way into their forgiveness with (among other things) the seal.
On a whim I decided that he'd freed a slave on his way out of Ul'dah, and that the two had become lovers in the Black Shroud. His lover was later killed in the Calamity, giving him a good and personal reason to hate both slavery and Garleans.
Later I started fleshing out his original past in Ul'dah, and decided that he'd been taken as a sort of cabana boy slave when he'd first arrived. This gave him a taste for luxury, as well as playing into his personality. His owner was an older woman who had fickle tastes, so when she tired of him and freed him, he turned to crime as the easiest way he could think of to gain the luxuries he loved for himself.
Meanwhile, I started dabbling in creating and running RP groups myself. This led to the creation of (first) the NHSC and (now) Tylwyth Narah. ICly, this allowed me to build on C'kayah's natural charisma, which led to this very natural-feeling progression where he just built and grew the criminal enterprise he finds himself at the head of.
