Goodfellow

I didn't want to make a whole new post about it, but thought a PSA might be in order for anyone sitting on a fantasia for the new races: Viera and Hrothgar naming conventions won't be released until the post-launch crush dies down. The random name generator will presumably put out lore-friendly names, but we won't know what sort of significance they may have for a little while.

Good points. Lolo has always been a traveling merchant, so with the world opening up (ish) I'll probably just say he's been occupied with business, traveling farther afield and whatnot.

With the new xpac, a lot of people are coming back to the game and back to the RPC. I've been leveling alts for a couple of weeks myself, familiarizing myself with how the game has changed and thinking of how to explain where Lolo got off to for all that time. Other returners: how have you explained away/justified/Incorporated your absence IC?

Just a note on the potential for Qestir signing. Sign languages are full languages with their own independent lexicon, syntax, etc. Signed words aren't just signed representations of English or Eorzean words or whatever; they're words. So if "speech is a lie," I would assume that signed speech would be equally a lie. The written word is a bit fuzzier, but there are written systems out there that represent things other than language. + and - are words, but they're also mathematical functions that we can represent purely symbolically without reference to language, for example. I'd imagine Qestir symbols would tend towards the latter. My two gil having not actually gotten to Reunion. This is all really fun discussion, but it raises another practical question for other Qestir players: how do you present your name? Outside of writing, which the folks here have reasonably mixed feelings about, how does your character meet people and introduce themselves? Would names not be "words" as such and so fair game for speaking or do you just wander through life referred to by nicknames applied to you by perplexed Eorzeans?

I can't find sources at the moment (but I promise they exist), and I also haven't gotten to the steppes in-game yet, but in the north of Spain there are pastoral communities that use an older, non-Arabic numeral-based system of symbols, mostly carved into stones or the sides of windmills and other buildings. These symbols can represent numbers or basic geographic references relevant to their work and do not correspond to the language itself. It may be totally off-base, but reading y'all's references to Qestir symbols or markings, that's what I was reminded of.

Thanks for the replies, all. I agree that the written word feels like a biiit of a stretch (no disrespect to Qestir players who use it). Regardless, it seems like thorough emoting is the norm.

Like the subject says, I'm curious to hear from people who have actually RPed as or with a Qestir Xaela about their own creative takes and strategies for working with the "words are lies" business. Thanks for your words (lies or otherwise)!

The sun was streaming hot through the windows and slats when Styrm awoke. Through the hot, groggy throbbing of his addled head he heard the staccato beat of a fist pounding against the door. He began to rise when he felt a hand alight on his shoulder. He looked to its source and saw the old man, his finger pressed against his lips. "Shh..." Over the old man's shoulder he could see the other man, the one he'd fought. He looked tragic in his pain and his fear, but he was awake. His good arm was raised; there too a finger over lips. The pounding at the door was replaced by a voice: "Open up!" No one answered. More pounding, and again: "Open up!" Styrm made as if to move toward the door, but the shop-owner called out just then that they were closed for the day. Silence. The three of them waited, each in the character of their own expectations: fear, remorse, rage. It was silent another moment, and then, "Fine. But you'll be open tonight." None spoke, wondering if the visitor had truly gone. Finally, the broken man's voice cracked their musings, trembling but sure. "He'll come tonight. We should all go." The proprietor looked around at his life and his eyes glistened in his indecision. "I won't," was Styrmsthal's only reply.

The proprietor had nearly tripped over him when he arrived to open the smoke shop in the early morning. First thinking him a drunk or a ruffian he made as though to tell him off and away, but he noticed two things in succession that closed his lips. The man sitting on his doorstep, grey-skinned and slimy with night sweat, was nursing a ragged, ruined arm. Next to the broken man, still half-covered by the fog-thick shadows of the Lominsan pre-dawn, was a giant of a man. A roegadyn. The roegadyn. "Ye'll be knowin' who we are, won't ye?" he rasped through a deep yawn. The proprietor nodded. "Tried to poison me, 'e did," Styrm noted, indicating the man with the point of the previous night's dagger. The shop owner's eyes went wide. "He wasn't...you weren't meant to--" He fell silent as the roe rose to standing, huge and slow like a storm on the horizon. "Hells, we're past all that, we are. Ye're closed today. I'll want somethin' for the poke," he squeezed his poisoned palm," and 'im some'ut fer th' arm." The shop owner only nodded and opened the door. He closed it behind the three of them. ______________ The Goodfellow? Styrm took a long drag on the pipe. It was a fine, fine smoke. The owner had talked, but he hadn't liked it. Still, he'd given Styrm the pipe and the leaf, for fear or for pity; Styrm wasn't sure. He was surer than ever that Joz--Kink, ye bastard, she's Kink--was in some mess. He'd not ever seen the Goodfellow, no, but he'd heard the name back when he'd run jobs in Thanalan. Back when he'd met Taru. Lalafell...robe...book...Kink... Taru had brought him on as protection, bought his time outside the arena. Kodu Co. was putting a caravan through the Goodfellow's old territory and the merchants had insisted to Taru that he bring more muscle. There'd been no news of the Goodfellow in some while, but they were still nervous to make the way again. Styrm, good for the job, had wanted more information. Taru didn't say much. The Fellow and him, there was some history there. Not t' hurt me? What did the Fellow know about him? Why did he care? Don't be a shite, Styrm. The night, the venom, the treatment, the smoke. His head swam. He sat down near the door. In or out, coming or going, they'd wake him. The shopkeeper would be sometime yet tidying up that arm. Shop was closed. He ought to sleep. Joz...me...book... To sleep. Just a bit. Sleep.

Gods DAMMIT, Styrm would've thought had he the time. A practiced reactionary, he was nonetheless momentarily paralyzed by the two paths before him: the fight--that long moment that he knew--or the chase, back after the boy and what he might know. Styrm had no time to think all of this, but his gut had already decided for him. He'd found the kid before, but if this man got to him first he'd never find him again, like as not. Fight. The man's hand shot out of his coat as he took a running step forward, wet boots stumbling slightly over the puddles and street stones. Styrm's huge hand shot out as well, closing around the smaller man's fist and forearm. Styrm squeezed and the man's running step turned into a full fall as his scream raced against the loud cracks of bones becoming splinters. The roe swung the man by his now unnaturally limp arm into a crate, splintering it, and maybe a few bones more. He opened his fist; there was blood. Most was the man's, seeping out through messy perforations in his arm. Some was Styrm's, heavy droplets drooling out from the small dagger stuck in his hand. He felt woozy. Poison? he wondered. He pulled out the knife and snorted. Poison. But it wasn't enough. He sank to his knees to rest, breathing heavily over the broken man. "Now...it's gonna be...yer turn," he spoke out, voice laboring under pain and fury. The man whimpered and clutched weakly at the bone flecked rope that was his arm. His teary eyes rose to consider Styrm and they were full of fear. Styrm somehow felt that all that fear wasn't his alone. He leaned closer. "Talk."

Styrm's focus shot toward the man to the side. Hearing Brindle's words, his focus half-returned to the boy. His attention split, he struggled to choose his next move, the words that would put them back on track. All he knew was the boy looked scared. For that matter, so did the man by the puddle. Endeavoring to keep both the man and the boy in his sight, he responded in haste, his questions flying from between his teeth in a low hiss, "Taru?! Ye know 'im, do ye? Where's 'e at, then? Not with th'girl, is 'e? Speak up, laddie!" The man by the puddle was becoming more visibly tense by the moment. He stuck his hand inside his coat, clutching something there. Styrm registered the motion. He wondered if the kid did too.

Styrm thought back over those few weeks. He thought of Joz--not 'er name--and he thought of the suddenness of her disappearance. And of Taru's. He thought of Taru's note; short, empty of import until the unbalanced signature at the bottom, the conspicuously absent book. "Said 'er name was Joz, and I'm thinkin' 'twas 'er what was lookin' t'take from a friend o' mine. Think it got 'er in some trouble. Maybe it don't mean much now, but 'e asked me t'look after 'er," he huffed. "An' I'm tryin' to." Off to the side, a man stepped in a puddle. It sloshed and a light curse escaped him. He shut up and turned to the side, but he didn't move away.

This should be common knowledge, but Zhi is really something else to rp with. As a newbie little baby rper wa(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)y back when when we started our mega-thread, the characters (including my main) that I've had interact with her have fleshed themselves out before my very eyes. I've gone into rp with her with only a general outline of who it is I'm writing, only to come out knowing that character inside and out. Would rp again (y'know, if the first one ever actually ended) - five stars.

A laugh began to rise in Styrm's throat, where it caught. He choked on it a little as it died there. "Lad," he croaked through its corpse, "not a gil's greased' these palms. In fact, my buggered luck would 'ave it, this search--this night--they've jus' 'bout made off with all of me earnins." The dead laugh cracked his lips into the shell of a smile. "Turns out, nothin' costs near so much as gettin' nowhere."

Sounsyy will be in here soon to clear this all up definitively, but in brief, as myahele said, the Xaela have a diverse set of beliefs corresponding to their individual tribes/clans. You can find all the blurbs on the Xaela tribes here. As for the Raen, as far as we can tell, their religion seems very much like Shinto, which fits with their heavy Japanese flavor. Sounsyy makes a compelling argument based on flavor text from the NIN questline that they worship the elementals, similar to the Gridanians.