Proud Dahlia

Take cover, draw her gun, and get a clear picture of her surroundings would be her first instinct. In the long-term she would lay low for awhile, lock down her workshop, and place some homemade lethal traps out front.

Nadine would most likely be a military engineer of some sort, most likely Air Force. It's not all that different from what I see her doing in Eorzea, honestly.

I was struggling to think if I should reply to this thread because I was worried I was going to go off on an angry tangent. The original post here is framed in a way that is pretty presumptuous about people's politics. I'm not even going to get into the statement that most of the internet is "liberal". Moreover, there is the stated notion that prejudice is a "conservative" notion. That's frustratingly simplistic and naive. I don't want to start a huge argument over this, but trying to frame this argument while drawing comparison to modern politics (modern western-centered politics, at that) is a recipe for disaster. Anyway, on to the subject at hand. Eorzea as a setting is full of bigotry, hatred, and hardship. These things exist and are very real. They do in fact tend to be the norm, for varying reasons depending on the specific instance in question. Should this necessarily be reflected in people's characters? No, not necessarily. Adventurers are often defiant of norms. That said, I feel the darkness of the setting should not be ignored. So perhaps your Ishgardian isn't especially wary around the Au Ra, or perhaps your character feels the mistrust of Duskwight is wrong. That is perfectly fine. However, as a writer one should ask "why?". What makes this character different? What about their experiences or beliefs causes this deviation from the norm? This can help build a further understanding of your character and make them more alive. Similarly, players of commonly persecuted characters should consider that public opinion may well be against them. Perhaps your Duskwight is becoming rather prominent within the Conjurer's guild. Is she making any rivals? Are the common folk rallying against her promotion? These sorts of things can also enrich a character and their ongoing experience. These are not, of course, mandatory, but it can exist to add some conflict to a story that might otherwise not be there. In closing, prejudice certainly exists and there are cultural norms. A player need not necessarily have their character embrace them, but should be aware of them and may wish to think about the role they play in their life.

If it's not too late, I'd like to enter Nadine Marteau for the competition tonight.

Are you sure? Because that only seems to be true of Ishgard and Ul'dah. Limsa and Gridania seem a lot nicer than their 1.0 counterparts.

Nadine is Ishgardian and wishes to return home. The only thing that has been keeping her from doing so is that she wanted to finish her father's work of developing an invention that might be useful to present to Skysteel Manufacturory. She's done that now, so she is quite eager to return.

I was talking to someone about this very thing last night, and I have a more complicated answer to this question than a simple 'yes' or 'no.' Nadine is not a fighter by trade. She is a smith and inventor. She is not a mercenary for hire and only adventures as far as to retrieve materials for her trade or test her (primarily combat-related) inventions. That said, she is still able to handle herself in a fight and is trained enough in the use of weapons to defend herself or join a militia rally, and is actually pretty good with siege and artillery. More than that, she would not object to running active maintenance for a military unit that sees a lot of action. She's not afraid of leading a more dangerous life. Ultimately, while she's not a primary combatant or a front-line fighter, she's not entirely a civilian as I would like to see her playing an active role in the Dragonsong War.

This is true, but Garleans also have artillery equipped with guns (Magitek armor, etc) that they seem to use in fairly large numbers. They also, from what I've seen if I recall, don't make regular use of any sort of non-magical ranged weaponry apart from these. Garelean units seem to be all melee infantry, mages, and magitek. As noted before, fielding mages is a very potent option, but costly. As a well-oiled authoritarian machine with a surplus of able bodies and coin in the war chest, they can spare that cost. Its entirely possible that personal firearms are more symbol of office than anything especially practical, much like a military officer's saber in the real-world gunpowder era. That is not to say they aren't deadly, especially in the trained hands of the Garlean elite, but again the reason they're not so prevalent in the rank and file might simply be because they're obsolete compared to what else Garlemald has going for it.

The standard internal release and second wind. Second Wind especially is nice for leveling as its an MP-less self heal. From LNC you'll want invigorate primarily. Blood for blood is important for grouping at 50, but its more likely to kill you when leveling. Keen Flurry can be nice though.

I understand your wariness, but that can apply to pretty much anything. Bad roleplayers will godmode no matter what weapon you're using. This is why I tend to not do combat RP with people I don't feel I can trust.

Well, what we know so far is that machinists will be trained at Skysteel manufactuory, an Ishgardian weapons producer inspired (either loosely or directly, we've yet to see) by the work of Cid Garlond to create new weapons for the war against the Dravanians. Already we're beginning to see Ishgardians use powder-based siege and artillery heavily. Considering their goal is waging war more efficiently, I feel it's safe to assume reproducibility and accessibility are major factors in design. What would be the point if they're developing esoteric things only highly trained specialists can use? Given that cannons are already becoming very commonplace, personal firearms will probably become relatively available soon. That said, I think much of a machinist's personal arsenal (such as their turrets and special barrels/ammo) will be the realm of the highly experimental and prone to backfire and failure. It is prototype and not ready for public use. It may have flaws only one who built it could compensate for or perhaps it's prone to breakdown and needs constant maintenance. They're things only a trained individual can make effective at this point in time, for whatever reason. It depends, but I do see common firearms and explosives becoming more available, because the cutting edge (see above) is already working on trying to advance that technology beyond its current capacity. Personally, I'm very interested in seeing how this industrial shift influences the very rigidly feudal Ishgardian society.

EDIT: The issues with the caster lore is why I usually recommend people phrase a mage character concept where the exact mechanism is important to their story as, "I (heal, create, summon, destroy, etc.) using practices rooted in the art of (thaumaturgy, conjury, arcanima)" and not get too worried about the exact classes and Jobs. Honestly it's pretty lame that mages can't be their jobs most times, as this is a Final Fantasy game and jobs are super iconic. I wish they found a way to work that into the lore. It's honestly a part of why I changed my main from someone who RPs being a caster.

Well chocobo breeding and racing is quite a valid past-time. Horses aren't nearly as central to Eorzea as the chocobo. Of course, all female chocobo are kept in Ishgard such that they could have a monopoly on breeding. No problem, of course, if your character is Ishgardian. Racing, however, seems to be becoming quite popular in Eorzea since Godbert Manderville opened the Gold Saucer.

Interesting to note unrelatedly, but the law that required every English citizen to own and train with a bow is still on the books to this day. (Obviously not enforced.) Anyway, I don't see guns as that big a gamechanger. As noted, most the difference from other projectile weapons are only notable on a large scale. As awesome as a mass battle RP would be, simply duels in my experience can be a headache enough to manage, so I don't see anything of the sort happening ever. What one may want to be more concerned about is the accessibility of personal handheld explosives (i.e. grenades). It would be an absolute gamechanger. Would be, if not for one thing: Magic exists. Anything firearms and gunpowder can do, magic has been doing already. Arcanists can warp a knight's body with aether no matter how much armor he wears, and grenades don't hold a torch to the destructive firepower of a thaumaturge. In small scale fights, I feel magic would trump technology. But I imagine mages are even costlier and riskier to field than armored fighters in largescale battle, but any average joe can be trained to light a fuse and use a gun, so that makes gunpowder win out again. Moreover, it gives the common man the ability to effectively fight large-scale threats such as dragons, previously the realm of specially trained hunters and adventurers. (i.e. us) I don't see the presence of guns and explosives being a gamechanger for the RP environment unless your character is a naval or military officer. In which case, you may want to look into powder-based siege weapons such as cannons if you've not already and see about training your ranged infantry in firearms. On a military and even economical level, the presence of these weapons will change the world greatly. However, on the personal scale, firearms and explosives don't really add too much that isn't alredy there.

Do you mean for the housing items themselves? Because I've found them very reasonably priced, except for a few luxury items, which is pretty much what's expected. The cost of housing as is, though, is absurd especially with wealthy landlords driving it up.

That sounds awesome. Look me up in game sometime. Sounds like where most of Nadine's interests lie, though she's interested in incorporating magitech where able. So far it's proven too unstable and she's fallen back on more classical powder-based combustion for her inventions. I'm sure we could talk about something. No doubt she is. We may have quite a few things to talk about. Sorry for taking awhile to get back to this thread. Been on XIV holiday for a few days to avoid getting burnt out before the expansion, but I'm easing myself back in now so we may see each other around for sure.

What sort of housing items do you feel are lacking? Personally I'm hoping for more paintings and portraits. It's a shame that so far we're limited to Hildibrand and the city-state leaders for portraits to hang in our house. Personally I'd love to put up a picture of Cid or two in Nadine's home.

More often that not I have a list of people who want to RP with me but can't find the time. Which is fine and all, that's just the nature of things. It's pretty rare that I'm in the opposite situation, but that's mostly because I have way too much free time on my hands.

Sadly that was only a convenient aid to the plot. No one actually believes the Syndicate's frame job, and they probably could have gotten to work for its purposes without that single piece of info. And personally? When Iceheart somehow survived turning into Shiva*, I'd have tried to stop or restrain her and tell her to cut the cryptic bullshit and tell me what was going on here if she didn't want me to finish her on the spot.

Well Nadine isn't much for using a shield herself, but she is an Ishgardian smith. She'd be happy to give R'das a few pointers...and possibly try out a few more advanced experiments of her own (such as enhanced fireproofing), if permitted.

Nadine is Ishgardian and therefore isn't terribly fond of anything even resembling a dragon, though at the same time she's not inherently close-minded when it comes to dealing with outsiders. She will probably regard them with a level of mistrust and want to keep her dealings with them short,

I might be interested in having Nadine come for this.

I've seen you about too. Maybe I'll say hi next time I stalk my neighbors at Coral. Yeah, he was literally impaled by a vanguard drill to be specific. I'll be sure to say hi to you as well. And yeah, I'd love to help with that, Chao.

My new character Nadine Marteau is an Ishgardian smith whose family had a fascination with foreign technology, particularly Garlean magitek. She and her father headed to Eorzea when Garlemald renewed its assault on Eorzea in hopes of seeing such technology up close. Unfortunately, her father got a little too close and met an untimely end. Nadine now seeks to finish her father's work reverse engineering Garlean weaponry in hopes of developing new weapons to use against the Dravanian hordes. With Ishgard looking into its own manufacturies, she seeks to return home, but not before developing a weapon of use to demonstrate her prowess. To fund all this, she does oddjobs as a smith and adventurer. Are you a gearhead? A fellow Ishgardian? A Garlean seeking those who have acquired military secrets? A smuggler of magitech? Or do you just need the services of a smith? Then I would like to RP with you.

You can argue that yes, going shirtless in the middle of the desert is a bad idea. But Ul'dah itself is probably not oppressively hot and there seems to be plenty of water, given how a bunch can be spared on a fountain in the Gold Court. Most of Ul'dah seems to have plenty of shade already if not indoors. So, really, there's no reason people can't go shirtless if they want to. Personally, I feel policing people's attire in general is dumb when the elements aren't overwhelmingly a factor. Wearing a bikini in Coerthas is a breach of immersion. Something like this is decidedly more subjective.