Aurelius

Depends on which one. The more recent one, a Garlean, was probably training in one of the Garlean Empire's many provinces The other, my old Xaela, was most likely embroiled in some manner of brutal conflict in the Steppe even as distant Dalamud broke apart in the sky. I doubt if the former even paid it any mind until he found out who actually caused it. The latter most likely took it as a sort of omen telling him to step up his game.

The long and short of it is that I've been asked to concoct this character by a group of my peers that've known me for a long time. I'm only at my best when playing the proverbial villain, so that's exactly what they want me to do. Anywho, a Garlean pureblood PC that is capable enough on the battlefield to remain a dire threat to hardened career soldiers--one of which is a primal hunter, at that--even when denied access to all but its worn equipment is a difficult sell if it can't use aether. They have posited to me that this could be most readily achieved by it having the ability to use aether -- and access to the echo, but the latter part remains contingent on me figuring out some way to make it legitimate. I may simply have to cave in and go with the resonant angle, but I was trying to avoid doing things to make it too heavily resemble a certain sociopathic samurai we're all very familiar with. The potential involvement of Zodiark on some small level was intended to compensate for the fact that the echo is not a genetic trait, but I do agree that it would be quite problematic. The echo part still needs to be ironed out. As for learning from conscripts, yes, I suppose they could just demand the information, though I would be surprised if many of their conscripts actually have the echo. Between being able to demand answers, Garlemald's excellent propaganda machine, likely being raised in the military, and easily gained rank, that does certainly pose some problems for the "expatriation" part of remaining an active PC (if it even survives its initial purpose) once all is said and done. On the plus side, I do already know how to bring it down a few pegs to prevent it from being overpowered after it goes from opposition to just being another PC in the fold. Edit: After much deliberation, I believe I've decided to reduce the Garlean concept to a simple one-off resonant NPC for them to take out. Funny how some people always seem to end up DMing or pseudo-DMing, isn't it? As much as I like Garleans as a whole, I believe I'm just going to go with a Xaela for my own personal character. Can't go wrong with lizard-Mongolians. Thank you to everyone that participated in helping me figure this stuff out, and sorry it turned out to be a bit of a waste of ya'll's time.

The resonant concept does interest me, but I believe I might prefer taking a different approach to reach a similar end. Provided it doesn't break lore (which, to my knowledge, it shouldn't), the idea I'm mulling over after re-reading the lore books and discussing things in this thread would combine selective breeding (i.e. using bloodlines known to have produced aether-capable purebloods at some point), the use of a surrogate womb (implanting a fertilized Garlean egg in the body of a servant believed to possess the echo, for example), and intentionally exposing the unborn child to gradually increasing densities of aether over the course of its development. One could even involve Zodiark in the process if it was a project signed off on by Emperor Solus. No doubt he has access to the dormant Zodiark's energies, meaning he could imbue the children with a tiny portion of that power in an effort to increase their odds of having the echo. The end result would be a modified Garlean possessed of aether manipulating abilities and access to a more natural form of the echo - one which requires significant amounts of time, training, and experience to use effectively - rather than resonance, which appears to yield an immense increase in prowess up front. Would definitely be interesting to see how that growth played out. After all, such an individual would not be able to receive that sort of instruction in Garlemald, and no pureblood wanting to maintain even an iota of social standing would go asking conscripts for advice in the first place. It's not likely they would be able to advance these abilities much, if at all, before leaving the Empire. This new angle has also had me rethink the character's possible reasons for leaving Garlemald behind. Rather than doing so for survival, perhaps it was for the sake of reaching new heights? I can't picture an individual that would have been constantly pushed and prodded to meet or exceed the highest standards of excellence within the Empire for essentially their entire life being content merely to live out their life in servitude, never attempting to explore the gifts they've had since birth. I don't see the Garleans being foolish enough to tell an individual created through this process of their true nature, but you can bet such a person would always sense something was off. That sense of something missing would inevitably give way to the desire for something more - acknowledgment of dreams unfulfilled, potential untapped. That, in my opinion, would be enough to motivate just about anyone with the strength to do so to strike out on their own in search of themselves. If anyone has any reason this would violate lore, please let me know. If not, I suppose that just leaves me with one final decision to make: which in-game race to best represent the character with. Au Ra and Elezen both have the correct height ranges and builds, but the former has all those pseudo-draconic/demonic/whatever traits while the latter looks awful in most helmets and has the neck of a giraffe. I suppose that leaves Midlander or Highlander.

Hyur model... You mean the tan skinned guy? Company Muscle, I think he's called. I'm not so sure he's a Garlean. Looks more like his circlet just has a white square in the middle of the forehead, though I could always be wrong.

Even beyond that, attempting to manipulate aether is apparently very dangerous to them, from what I've read. One could almost say it extends beyond inability and into the realm of intolerance. The lore books do, however, assert that a small percentage of them actually can manipulate aether. Of course, I'd wager the ones that can probably can't do it very well. Pure-bloods would be too proud to ask their "lessers" for instruction on how to harness that gift, after all. The above is what has lead me to consider one of two possibilities: 1.) By some miracle an attempt at imbuing a Garlean with the ability to use aether worked, but they were so keen to dissect him to find out /why/ it worked that he was forced to flee the Empire for his own survival. Consequently, the procedure would have robbed him of some of his sanity. It's always nice to have little references to FF6 built in, after all. 2.) He is one of the small percentage of Garleans that can manipulate aether naturally. Were this the case, I imagine the ability would only have been discovered shortly after the Battle of Carteneau. This would also provide incentive to leave the Empire due to, again, not wanting to be dissected to further their experiments. I could also see going with the idea that the character was one of Gaius's troops, meaning they had already defected in order to help stop Nael and would therefore be unable or unwilling to return to Garlemald at that time. The problem I see with this second option is just how little we actually know about the few Garleans that can access aether. Opinions would be welcome here.

Very well, then. Thank you both for the clarification. Myself and others had been wondering this for quite a while, given the number of times Garleans have been shown/implied to have some pretty crazy abilities even without their armor. I imagine, then, that these instances should be regarded with skepticism until such time as there is an official statement of some sort confirming their accuracy.

Thank you for the reply. I had noticed that about their armor, and the lore book entry seemed almost like SE was going out of their way to make it known that a handful of Garleans can manipulate aether. The above being said, I shall clarify somewhat: Barring their armor, it has been implied on a handful of occasions that the Garleans /themselves/ may possess vastly above normal physical capabilities. Are these implications generally accepted by the community, or would people prefer Garleans to be treated as physically equal to Eorzeans when outside of their unique armor?

I'm a bit of an old hand at role-playing in other mediums, not to mention a major lore buff when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV. Unsurprisingly if going off the title of this thread my preferred character is intended as a Garlean pure-blood, albeit one modified to possess aether manipulating capabilities at the cost of some sanity. As such, I've a few questions I'd like to ask the role-playing community at large: 1.) Is there a general consensus on where a Garlean's physical capabilities would fall relative to other intelligent races? Nothing in the lore that I've seen directly confirms uncharacteristically high physical parameters as a racial characteristic, but there are some rather notable instances of their physical capabilities being /implied/ to far outstrip that of the other races. 2.) How likely would a Garlean pure-blood expatriate be to even be accepted in Eorzea at all? In particular one whose expatriation was less a function of doing the right thing and more a function of escaping before he could be torn apart to further their experiments. 3.) Do we have any confirmation as of yet on what that third eye actually does? All I've ever found is speculation. The few in-game NPCs that commented on it (some of which no longer exist) were Eorzeans, meaning they too were probably speculating.