The Kafia, Part 1

Those of you who know me personally might have heard of something called "the Kafia," a crime ring composed of deceitful crabs with me calling the shots. Today, the Kafia went down its hit list and Bugbear Strongman was up first. Despite attempting to negotiate on peaceful terms, this guy decided to put up a fight. Unfortunately, he fled before we could get our goods, and Snippy got lost in the tunnels pursuing him.





We stopped at a local Moblin to ask if he had seen the fleeing bastard, but he gave us the gibberish above. After stopping to decipher the riddle, we realized that the vowels were missing:

Nosy people. Get out of here! I busy now!

Unfortunately for him, Snippy was in a bad mood, and we promptly broke some knee caps, leaving him to think twice about giving us cryptic riddles.





















Next on the list was a Goblin who owed us some money after we lent her a certain Great Axe. Like most women, she (Goblin names with the -ox suffix are female; -ix for male) did not show up for her date, so we spent the next two hours tracking her down. She tried to put up a fight, but Snippy distracted her while I clubbed her from behind. Unfortunately, she was not carrying the Great Axe we were looking for, but we got some money from her nonetheless. We left shortly after, leaving her a note saying she had a few days to cough the axe up.




















After that, we were going after one of our own. A former Kafia member named Aquarius had gone AWOL and even joined a rival gang. Snippy knew the rogue's turf well, so we called for some reinforcements to put him out of his misery. After a brief brawl with many casualties on our side, we crushed the rebel and left him for dead. Remember kids, no one escapes the Kafia!















Stories aside, Kearick needed help leveling his Greatsword skill, so he invited us to yet another meripo. While I was there, I got to parse myself against an Adaberk WAR, but unfortunately, the numbers were against me because I had to pull monsters for the party. I will need to work on obtaining a more favorable parse against heavy DDs soon; I cannot have anything staining the Kafia's reputation.
















Here is the incriminating evidence -- hide it well!















*EDIT* I found a picture of Snippy leaping to attack her foe from the meripo above. Yep, she is one crazy Crab alright. 



Notes:
a) "AWOL" is a military term for "Absence Without Official Leave." It refers to an enlisted soldier being absent from his or her post but not necessarily with the intention of desertion.

New to BLU

Alternative title: The Beast Within
So before I return to endgame or move servers, I have decided to tackle some outstanding goals that I did not manage to finish while in Ischemia. In a nutshell, those goals are:

a) Finishing the final CoP/ZM quests (I am stuck on Shadows of the Departed).
b) Leveling MNK to 40 to finish the quest "Return to the Depths."
c) Leveling SMN to 20 to solo some Albatross Rings.
d) Leveling BLU to 50 to solo the Promyvion maps.
e) Leveling WW to 100; finishing the Ebisu Fishing Rod quest.

In other words, there is a whole lot of leveling to do. I have got a two-part plan where I hope to kill several birds with one stone. The first part involves leveling BLU to 30 in order to climb the Promyvion towers solo and to finish the "Shadows of the Departed" quest; I will also be able to farm most of the Promyvion maps while I am at it. The second part involves taking BLU to 50, as a substitute for leveling MNK, and attempting to clear the "Return to the Depths" quest as a BLU.

As such, I have started leveling BLU about a week ago, and so far, it is fantastic. Despite a slow leveling rate at first, things changed quickly once I learned my first spell, and I decided to grab an offensive spell first because I wanted to slay monsters more quickly.






"Foot Kick" took me five tries before I finally managed to learn it. Given that the factors for learning Blue Magic are:

a) Blue Magic skill.
b) Defeating your foe with Blue Magic.
c) CHR.
d) Partying with a BLU that already has the desired spell.
e) BLU AF gloves.

... your first BLU spell will likely be the most difficult to get.















I highly recommend leveling BLU as a subjob and secondary job. As a BST, I am familiar with the monster correlations used in Blue Magic, and the ability to select desired spells is a definite plus -- something I cannot do with my jug/charmed pets. I stopped leveling BLU at level 10 for now, but I did quite well for a day's worth of leveling judging by the picture above. I have high expectations for this job in the future; however, it is time to collect some gil for Secret mule.



Notes:
a) "WW" stands for "Woodworking," one of the eight major crafts in FFXI.

After the Storm

After Clavical's traitorous actions, Ischemia fell apart almost immediately the next day. There are several reasons for the collapse: many players resented Clavical's prioritization of drops based on seniority rather than job priority, and nobody could be trusted to take his place. That is not to say our LS is guilt-free itself; Clavical probably left the LS after certain members harassed him to be next in line for particular drops.

This entire ordeal has left me with a great deal of scorn for endgame LSs, especially those on Diabolos. Although I have not experienced every LS here firsthand, greed and power have corrupted many a LS member time and time again. And so, I would like to ask my readers, as a fellow BST, for an endgame LS on another server. I feel that I need to be among other passionate BSTs to enjoy myself in FFXI. Ideally, I am searching for a LS that tackles:

• Ground Kings
• Dynamis - Northlands and CoP areas
• Sea Jailers
• Sky Gods

Information on LSs to avoid is equally welcomed. Just leave a comment below and possibly an email if you are interested in helping me relocate; I might be on your server soon enough!

The Fall of Ischemia

Today, I was shocked when a LS member directed me to the image below. Our LS leader, Clavical, had bought over 10.7M in gear with one of his mules, Millywonka. The numbers are far beyond what I expected he could afford, especially when he mentioned that he did not want to spend more than 500k for a Thalassocrat. At this point, I believe Clavical has taken our entire LS bank, worth approximately 10M last month, and spent it for himself.












If you check Clavical's FFXIAH page, the sales and profile areas are now blank where it was once heavily detailed about the fifth highest-ranking achiever on Diabolos. Our LS website has also been deleted; the URL now redirects to the ProBoards.com homepage.



















Fearing the worst, I decided to check if Clavical was still on Diabolos and immediately logged into the Linkshell Community website to confirm that he was still on our server yesterday. Since I did not want to jump to conclusions for a one-day disappearance act, I decided to wait until Saturday to see whether he would show up for an explanation.













Unfortunately, an answer never came. As you can see from the picture above, Clavical no longer bears the LS Pearlsack, and to my knowledge, this means he:

a) no longer has a Content ID and thus unsubscribed from FFXI.
b) removed himself from the LS Community Page manually.
c) is no longer on Diabolos.

I wanted to believe that there was the chance someone had hacked Clavical's account; however, the loss of our LS website, the purchase of items well beyond his finances, and his silence in the matter have proven otherwise. Although Clavical had a bad day leading Thursday's Sky event, I feel that his current actions are inexcusable and downright selfish. Given the image above and the items he has purchased, there is a good chance he has joined another server to use them at his leisure, so I hope this post helps other LSs identify the traitor should he come to your server.

Thank you for reading.

Clavical is a large Elvaan male of hairstyle 6B (the same as my own) and was last seen under Windurstian allegiance. He claims to have been a DRK at heart but also had interests in DRG.

Ischemia XXI

I have done it! Thanks to Ischemia's relentless raids into the Dragon's Aery, I have finally earned my own Ridill! So fantasies aside, Ischemia had its fourth round of Sky gods, and we had a pretty good haul overall -- most notably a pair of Zenith Mitts and another Byakko's Haidate. I ended up getting a Seiryu's Sword because no one else lotted it, so here I am posing with my fake Ridill, proudly following in Decu's footsteps.

Genbu













Seiryu








Suzaku








Byakko