balmung The Eldritch Collective

[Jebei Dotharl]

In the boughs of the Twelveswood, under the watchful eye of Gridania, sits an estate built upon the ancient stump of a great tree.

 

This place speaks of power. Power, and the responsibility had by those who wield it.

 

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Who are we?

 

EC-RP is a roleplaying Free Company on Balmung, Crystal DC, focused on storytelling within the boundaries of FFXIV's lore and setting. Established in 2015, we have been providing a place for those with darker inclinations since A Realm Reborn.

 

Our Free Company is dedicated to leveraging everything we've learned in order to provide storytelling in a lore-friendly environment. Instead of focusing on constant, escalating threats or attempting to keep abreast of the MSQ, we prefer to focus on grounded roleplay that fits into the setting.

 

What sets us apart?

 

Without putting too fine a point on it? EC-RP is different from most other antagonist Free Companies in that it aims to foster an environment that is not simply criminal or cackling evil. The term "morally grey" gets thrown around a lot, but we prefer to look at it as moral realism. A villain does not have to be always evil all the time. Instead, that bent towards the dark can be revealed in other ways. A quiet, more subversive evil that most don't realize until it's too late.

 

We want to tell stories that matter and we want to tell them with the greater community. Our approach to roleplay is to provide unique opportunities for organic storytelling. Every action has a reaction, every choice has a consequence. If you've ever been reading a good book and had the ending spoiled? We hate that too. At EC-RP, we avoid telling stories with predetermined outcomes. Characters and their personalities/growth should guide the RP, not the hand of a player. No metagaming, no OOC frustration over being told to have your character act in a way that would go against it. All of these things get in the way of organic roleplay.

 

In addition, in EC-RP, your voice matters. We eschew the usual IC/OOC hierarchy to instead provide a home where you can and will be able to adjust the direction of the Free Company and it's stories. 

 

For anyone interested in joining or obtaining additional information, please feel free to take a look at our website: eldritchcollective.com

 

We look forward to hearing from you!

 

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Jebei Dotharl

[Lior]

Hey there, FFXIV roleplaying community!

 

It's been a little over a month since we shook things up, and I'm here to share some recent updates to those who may be interested in what our free company has to offer.

 

• We've made a number of long-overdue updates to our website. Most notably:
  • We've taken the time to better explain our roleplaying philosophy, what being lore-conscious means to us, and our expectations of our members and our environment.
  • We've started to better document some of our evolving company-wide stories. Which leads us to our next exciting announcement...

 

• We've revealed our latest free company campaign! It's been a while since we've ran one of these, but after a bit of soul-searching we've come to realize that we can start to tell more intricate stories if we abandon some of the aggressiveness we've held towards pre-defined outcomes. While we still uphold organic roleplay as the gold standard, we're excited to change up our paradigm and begin outlining some more definitive storylines and their eventual conclusions.

 

• Finally, we've made the decision to limit our recruitment going forward. As much as we love to see new faces, it's important for us to focus on fostering our existing community and emphasizing our philosophy first and foremost. While anyone can apply if they've been referred or directly invited by another member to do so, for the foreseeable future we will only be opening recruitment to during the last week of each month, and only accepting three new members each period. We appreciate prospective members' patience as we focus on quality over quantity!

 

That's it for the time being, but we'll continue to update this thread with critical announcements or as recruitment windows open going forward.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Lior

[Lior]

The Collective's next campaign is officially underway! We were thrilled to have our members come out in force last night as we introduced the premise of the story we'll be telling over the next couple of months, and even more grateful for said force when that premise led to an assault on an Imperial Castrum and a climactic battle to boot! A re-cap of last night's events has been added to our ongoing campaign journal, and we invite those interested to read up on our most recent happenings.

 

With this next chapter now in full-swing and the last week of July upon us, we are pleased to announce that recruitment is officially open and will remain so until Sunday, August 2nd. We invite all those interested to take the time to apply, and look forward to meeting you!