I had some difficulty playing Saraj at first, and encountered a lot of the issues brought up here. The lore on the Au Ra is pretty thin, even moreso for the Xaela, and that makes it hard to find a good baseline for your character. Their method of speaking, their mannerisms...there's nothing to really go off of. But that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which can be good for the creative process.
I tend to construct characters pretty organically. The first few times I roleplayed Saraj, I'm pretty certain she behaved very differently than she does now. That's not because she's developed as a character, but more because my understanding of how I want to play her shifted as I started experimenting. So that's the best advice I can offer, is to experiment with ideas, and see what sticks. As an example, I had this idea earlier on that Saraj was obsessed with the history of Ishgardian Dark Knights. It's an idea I've been leaning away from recently, and one which I've decided I'll abandon completely, because it's not interesting and it does not add to the character in any meaningful way. I only found this out after experimenting though.
There are a few things I can offer that might guide the direction a character goes in. First, we know that Othard was conquered by the Garlean Empire, within the past decade or two. The Domans and the Raen probably were better off under Garlean rule than the Xaela though. To the Garleans, the Xaela were probably no different than the beast tribes of Eorzea after all. They're primitive hunters and gatherers, divided into disparate and warring clans.
So that's a good starting point for any Xaela character: How did they deal with the Garlean invasion? Obviously they made it to Eorzea somehow. Were they driven out by the Garlean invaders, or are they here for some other reason? What happened to their friends and family back on Othard, if they had any?
Then there's of course the clan aspect. Every clan has a different "trait", so how does your character deal with adapting to life in Eorzea based on what they were used to in their clan?
As an Au Ra, and especially a Xaela, you're a savage refugee in a strange land. There's a lot of material there to take a character in all sorts of different directions. You'll need some creative license, and because there's few concrete details, you'll need to accept that the version of history you choose to base your character on might conflict with someone else's, but I'd like to think that the lack of concrete detail gives us the liberty to be creative.
In the spirit of being creative, I'll offer this idea: The Xaela, who revere the Dusk Mother, are attacked by the invading Garleans. Isn't it possible, and indeed likely, that out of desperation one of the clans may have summoned the Dusk Mother Primal to defend them from the Garleans? If that is so, what happened to those Xaela and the Dusk Mother Primal? Were these Xaela tempered? Was the Dusk Mother defeated, or trapped in an Ultima Weapon-style Allagan war machine? Food for thought, and perhaps a hook someone can use to make something interesting.
I tend to construct characters pretty organically. The first few times I roleplayed Saraj, I'm pretty certain she behaved very differently than she does now. That's not because she's developed as a character, but more because my understanding of how I want to play her shifted as I started experimenting. So that's the best advice I can offer, is to experiment with ideas, and see what sticks. As an example, I had this idea earlier on that Saraj was obsessed with the history of Ishgardian Dark Knights. It's an idea I've been leaning away from recently, and one which I've decided I'll abandon completely, because it's not interesting and it does not add to the character in any meaningful way. I only found this out after experimenting though.
There are a few things I can offer that might guide the direction a character goes in. First, we know that Othard was conquered by the Garlean Empire, within the past decade or two. The Domans and the Raen probably were better off under Garlean rule than the Xaela though. To the Garleans, the Xaela were probably no different than the beast tribes of Eorzea after all. They're primitive hunters and gatherers, divided into disparate and warring clans.
So that's a good starting point for any Xaela character: How did they deal with the Garlean invasion? Obviously they made it to Eorzea somehow. Were they driven out by the Garlean invaders, or are they here for some other reason? What happened to their friends and family back on Othard, if they had any?
Then there's of course the clan aspect. Every clan has a different "trait", so how does your character deal with adapting to life in Eorzea based on what they were used to in their clan?
As an Au Ra, and especially a Xaela, you're a savage refugee in a strange land. There's a lot of material there to take a character in all sorts of different directions. You'll need some creative license, and because there's few concrete details, you'll need to accept that the version of history you choose to base your character on might conflict with someone else's, but I'd like to think that the lack of concrete detail gives us the liberty to be creative.
In the spirit of being creative, I'll offer this idea: The Xaela, who revere the Dusk Mother, are attacked by the invading Garleans. Isn't it possible, and indeed likely, that out of desperation one of the clans may have summoned the Dusk Mother Primal to defend them from the Garleans? If that is so, what happened to those Xaela and the Dusk Mother Primal? Were these Xaela tempered? Was the Dusk Mother defeated, or trapped in an Ultima Weapon-style Allagan war machine? Food for thought, and perhaps a hook someone can use to make something interesting.
