Valence

If I may add a but of feedback, I tried answering at first but had trouble with the form of the survey at almost every step. Questions like "everyone is open to walk-ups but nobody wants to initiate" for example, cause me trouble. I want to check it because it's true, but at the same time what do we consider walk-ups? You're in the wild and not RPing, and someone walks up to you? You're in the wild and RPing, and someone walks up to you? Is that made unnanounced? Is that after an OOC warning? Or do we consider walk ups making connection/contact at first (on forums or else) and then arranging something to happen? To me, especially that last one, are totally different situations. I'm opposed to random walk ups except MAYBE when I'm already RPing, because I'm picky with whom I RP. But making preliminary connections and prospecting before hand? Sure, sign me up. So, should I check that choice or not? I also have a problem with how the distinction between "too lore strict FCs" and "very flexible FCs" is written. I want an option "most FCs are too RP flexible" or else it's biased in my opinion. You are just presenting on side and the middle ground, but not the other side of the coin there. I had to specifically check "Other" to add it myself. I don't think that's good form. Same on the ERP frequency question, why adding "when it adds character development" only for "once in a blue moon"? This doesn't really concern me a lot, but I feel that it's biasing the answers quite a lot.

It's a fairy tale with shonen streaks. Nobody expect political realism in lighthearted adventure sagas. It lives with itself like that, like it lived with itself pretty well in 1.0 with the way darker and dry/objective, everyday stories and world, that was depicted. The problem though, is that it tries to tackle grey and nuanced themes when the story is still super manichaean and reduces them into simplistic strokes, granted.

It was! I mean, it's been a number of different threads but that was the most recent one. I think my comment is down to -9 now, but it was up at +7 at one point so thats probably 20+ downvotes. As was said above it's probably a lot more tied to the "negative" comment about Ysayle, since my own replies weren't as much downvoted. But yes, Thordan has less charisma than badass Baelsar, or more-edgy-than-bismuth-Zenos-with-a-god-voice-actor. Out of the three, fuck Zenos tbh. The two others are great. And frankly, I don't give two fucks about downvotes. If I was after upvotes I would only write comments on lore like the ones I wrote just above that started the whole thing.

My character may (or may not) be of interest, since she stayed very much into her teenage angst and fuck the world mentality, albeit in a bit more adult and serious way now that she's hit 20. I suppose she gets along well with young rebellious punks since she's one herself. Just a slightly more mature than your usual teenager that is. Has what? 3 more years of life experience? So technically not a teenager though.

I haven't witnessed that yet I suppose. But speaking about characters on that reddit in a negative way is the best way to get downvotes since it's full of fanboys and girls and hysterical groupies at times. Was that in the Igeyorhm reddit commission thread by any chance?

I don't have the time to read absolutely everything, so my apologies. I think most already answered that true neutral =/= apathy. I'm experienced in playing such kinds of characters so maybe I can provide examples, even if I swapped to chaotic characters when coming to TOR and then FFXIV since those settings are very expressive and "romantic" (not in the sense of love) and are pretty great for those kinds of characters. Played a true neutral librarian/bookworm character with a social anxiety streak (Shrinking Violet ) in eve online and that for 8 years or so. I guess the character was engaging since I had very little issues interacting or finding people. The only problem as usual is how to initiate something since you have to rely on others to do it for you, and so you have to provoke them to do so. And the setting didn't make it exactly easy to find hooks and stories (complex setting with a lot of political sugarcoat is always more tricky to play and be creative in than a high fantasy adventure). But in any case, that character was driven, and certainly not apathetic. They would do anything to discover new books and obscure texts and whatnot. They would engage very easily and surprisingly socially over the internet if a discussion or debate proved interesting and academic, and then would shrink back to their introverted self after. A bit like yours their view would sometimes clash with the bigoted and sometimes zealous ideals of the people in their own faction and they were often embroiled in political threats and struggles against their will, but being true neutral it was a matter of honor to hold their ground instead of yielding. If you're after true neutral anime characters, the first thing that comes to mind and that I can only recommend is Kino's Journey main character, Kino, who is the perfect archetype of a true neutral character, and who also almost never takes directly part in each episode except a few ones, preferring to watch and observe most of the time. Can be insightful (and the writing is outstanding).

You mean you use the prism before putting them in the commode? Mh, might be good then I guess.

Except if I believe a friend that watched the stream, you'll still have to use glam prisms (of a single type). If so, it's going to be super cumbersome for RP and i'll have to continue filling up my armory bag with easily swap-able pieces...

The female roegadyn idea sounds totally reasonable to me, and even more, makes sense. We've seen such a wide representation of garlean models that it's hard to give a very specific archetype. Cid is almost a midget compared to Nero, and Zenos/Gaius are really frail compared to Nael... Which makes me think that maybe it's the armor mind you, but the overly bulky frame of Nael van Darnus is sometimes closer to a roe (especially the legs) than an elezen to me, even if the latter has probably been used as the main model. In any case, Nael and Nero are literally giants. In any case, In any given race you can have slender people, fat people, burly people, etc... so I wouldn't sweat it. The female roegadyn offers the advantage of getting the towering garlean archetype right. Then you can play with armor, visors, and whatnot to get a fine garlic looking person. The red skin though, sounds like pushing it a bit to me for a very pale and blond race.

I've never heard anything about a Dark aspect in lore but we have indeed a handful of powerful attacks from some bosses that are of "Darkness" type, which can't be parried or nullified in any way, or go through shields. Whether this is purely game mechanics or actual lore however...

It's probably very different and personal depending on the person. We're only presented the WoL story in the quests, and as you have probably seen, everything is deeply personal and related to their own context: the WoL finds a corpse, Fray's corpse, and so their unconscious projects Fray as their mentor through their soulstone, which is also the soul crystal carried by Fray before their death. You can bet that another dark knight, that never found Fray in the same context, doesn't even know Fray, and has a whole different psychology, will deal with a very different impersonation of Darkness. Yes. That's the whole point of the 30-50 quests, and even the 50-60 one. There is a duality to be found and it climaxes in the lvl50 quest notably when the WoL battles their own dark self impersonation that exudes very dark and negative nihilism about their fellow eorzeans, among other things. Honestly, it's like battling not to fall to the dark side. Ultimately it covers very similar themes than what you could find in Batman and whatnot: bringing justice as a vigilante and punishing the wicked outside the laws. You can guess that the next question that comes pretty fast is: where do you draw the limits? Where does it stop to be justice before it turns into pure vengeance or just bloodshed? The 50-60 quests bring a complement to that: if the WoL was close to fall without a true purpose in the previous quests, their only purpose being punishing the wicked, how does it stay in check without a more positive motive? This is where they introduce the need to protect as well. I've read nothing of the sort. If it's a standard soul crystal, then probably not. However some soul crystals are a bit specific to their jobs, like a black mage soul stone which acts as a gem of Shattoto, acting as a catalyst not to die to their own spells, or a machinist soul crystal that acts as a catalyst without which the machinist couldn't even fire. So heh, who knows, maybe a dark knight soul crystal sucks a soul when its carrier dies? But that's totally out of the bounds of the lore to my knowledge. You would be acting in terra incognita with that, unless maybe you invent something like a cursed soulstone or something to that effect, which makes more sense. Curses are a thing. This wouldn't as far as I know. Might even get out of hands without any check to the balance of their inner darkness.

So your case would be that like bats they didn't rely on vision but on sheer hearing (without the echo location part)? That's what makes the most sense I think yes. They wouldn't especially need vision with such ear training. On the Orben, tribe, now that's interesting. The logical conclusion could be indeed that they shed, but they could also just use them from their dead, or the corpses of their enemies. Could fit some xaela tribes well too, and make those scaled covered boats quite priceless if so.

Lore mentions scale shedding? I forgot about that, is it in the lorebook (being at work and so unable to check myself..) ?

I've always found problematic the fact that we only know the location of two tribes out of dozens. How to play a character we OOCly don't really know where they dwell usually. Even if your character is an expatriate, or doesn't live in the tribe, their name obviously implies that the character has origins. Well I guess you can still play it like the character doesn't know either...

Thank you! That answered my questions completely - except for the Hellsguard one, which apparently hasn't been given an answer in the lore. So, do they have permanent settlements? Could you stumble upon a Keeper 'family group' in the Shroud, and see houses and whatnot, or is it more of a situation where they pitch tents in one place for a little while and then move on, with various family's shifting between different groups over time? Do we know about what age male Keepers get kicked out? I'd assume around puberty, for obvious reasons. I wonder if daughters stay with the mother's family group, or also wander off to join a different group - maybe to scatter the gene pool a bit more. Those questions are hard to answer. We have examples sure, but that doesn't make them generalities by necessity. Besides the Coeurlclaw clan that is in itself an oddity and actually has settlements that you can find in the South Shroud ingame, the archer questline portrays a poacher clan that seem to move all around elusively, so probably without true homes. The Keeper archer in the questline is also another of those female Keepers that integrated with Gridanian society, because after all, it's where society, wealth, and activity is centered. All in all, females don't necessarily stick to their clan and their kin, and can also wander off like makes, but it's not always the case, unlike for males. And what put males apart is how they are considered and live during their childhoods too. They don't hold the same place at all than their sisters in the family nucleus. Sisters are the heirs of their mothers. The postmoogle quests picture a couple of Keeper sisters, one enrolled in the Coeurlclaws, and one living as a wandering merchant around Gridania. The latter tell you about their life and how both sisters stayed with their mother until her ultimate demise though. The big sister had then to take care of everything since the smaller one wasn't in age to do anything. Familial values seem overall to be very strong usually. I'm pretty sure they use the statement "we're a sentimental people" somewhere.

To add a bit on what Sounssy already said, magic conductivity (or aetherial conductivity) is a thing. Certain materials like gold dampen it to various degrees, which is why the newest models of garlean armored Reapers are gilded. Certain materials like bone or electrum amplify and conduct aether, however, and are used in thaumarturgic staffs. Mostly yes, but you might want to really put the emphasis on small villages for Keepers. And that's usually already pretty big for Keepers. They tend to gather between a handful of families that otherwise live by themselves, mothers and daughters mostly, or the occasional son that has yet to reach a certain age before going off wandering. Keepers are a lonesome bunch. The only exception to this is the Coeurlclaw clan, that is basically living like a Seeker tribe with a single male at the top, being the Coeurclaw King - or a few males actually considering recent SB additions if I remember right - with the difference being mostly traditions (criminal) and females living here mostly through coercition or for a lack of a better choice.

The harmfulness of eating parts of said voidsent? What are you basing that off of, if I may ask? I'm not totally sure to see your point. I was answering to Gegenji's remark on the "complete and utter change over the victim's body". There is examples where the voidsent isn't doing anything to the body, at least for a while. Just to further clarify on the point I mentioned above, I think we have to determine at what point the host is truly considered "a voidsent" and not simply touched or possessed by one. The examples I think we've been using fall into three separate categories - at least by my own personal definitions. Keep in mind that this is mostly extrapolation based on what we know, and thus heavily in the realm of head-canon: 1.) Voidtouched - these are folks roughly on the level of Anya. Some sort of event has made them susceptible to becoming a conduit to the Void or hosting voidsent, but they are not actively being utilized (either not as of yet or perhaps the result of voidsent expulsion from a void-possessed individual, as mentioned below). May allow for increased thaumaturgic ability, and can be dealt with if diagnosed and treated correctly. 2.) Void-possessed - these are like the wayward Coco boy. Through either being voidtouched or some other act (summoning of a voidsent or interacting with an object holding one), the host has become actively possessed by a voidsent. Said voidsent may or may not have full mental control of the host, and removal is much more difficult and dangerous - with the potential of the host's aether being ripped back to the void with the voidsent or their mind already been eroded and suppressed too far for recovery. 3.) Voidsent - this is where you have your imps, ahriman, succubi, and the like. The voidsent has fully manifested on Hydaelyn and transformed its host into their own image, with little to no traces remaining of the former creature (be it animal or Spoken). There is no known "cure" at this point due to there being nothing to save - with what little remnants of the host's psyche likely long twisted or destroyed. The only way to deal with them at this point is to kill them. With this breakdown, I'm postulating that the voidsent to be consumed fall under group 3, since that is the point where they are actually voidsent and not merely voidtouched or a host possessed. Were you to harvest parts from group 1 or 2, you would simply get bits of the base host - squirrel parts from a squirrel or Spoken parts from a Spoken. So, eating those would carry the same benefits and risks as eating them normally. ... Maybe they'd have a bit of a nasty aftertaste from the beginnings of the corruption? Like meat that's starting to go bad? I dunno. :blush: That sounds like a great breakdown to me c:

Out of curiosity, what's different?

The harmfulness of eating parts of said voidsent? What are you basing that off of, if I may ask? I'm not totally sure to see your point. I was answering to Gegenji's remark on the "complete and utter change over the victim's body". There is examples where the voidsent isn't doing anything to the body, at least for a while. Wasn't it killing him? Like, it left no lasting damage once removed, but wasn't he going to die because it was inhabiting him? Was it killing him though? I know that removing voidsent forcefully from their hosts always seem to end in the death of the host, thus why eorzeans generally just kill them off the bat when they can because they consider them lost already. But besides that... The quest speaks a great deal about that if I remember correctly. I will have to check, I'm at work. But they weren't inhabited, they were cursed. The voidsent inhabited something else. I never said anywhere Arya was inhabited. I said she had a taint transmitted through her lineage. I never said Tonberries were either. But let's say that we are speaking about inhabitation though, then yes, those aren't probably the best examples then! However, what do you call cursed exactly? Not a physical taint? A spell?

What happened with the Mateus/Balmung? Did I miss something?

It depends on how invasive the voidsent was. The one that inhabits the aether poor relative to the Coco brothers in the THM quests for example, doesn't seem to really harm its host in any meaningful way. The one that is after Arya's lineage in the RDM quests left a taint that could be removed. Some change their victims completely, like the Tonberries were, and while a cure is still being investigated, there is no way to heal them of their affliction. I would also posit that since Voidsent are by definition very aether starved, it's not surprising that besides being extremely foul, it's possibly harmful to any life for that specific reason. Unless maybe, used in alchemical potions that are specifically tailored to dampen or target aether for specific purposes perhaps? As for the reason to eat them, I have no doubt that somebody somewhere, already tried it. Much like a guy already tried to eat coblyn soup. Which ended with them dead but heh. They tried. ( I know, coblyns aren't voidsent )

Generally with armed combat (sword, etc), the one with the longest reach have a strong stake on victory, at equal skill. I'm sure a lalafell could get very crafty and roll around to reach knees and whatnot, but someone experienced would probably expect them to do it. Anyway, even if not, this puts lalafells and smaller characters at a great disadvantage. But. Heh. It's FFXIV. It's not like they're not using huge, cumbersome weapons and other impossibly shaped stuff anyway. And do impossible feats. Let's keep in mind that pure strength =/= weight though. In any unarmed fight, reach and weight will play a part, strength a bit less. And in any armed fight with swords and shit, at equal skill dexterity will do the deed, even if strength might help you alleviate fatigue or taxing your stamina too much. Especially with ffxiv huge cleavers of doom. I guess.

As I said in the other post, I will always take into account what the lore tells us for fact. A xaela will always beat a roegadyn in sheer physical strength alone. This is lore. That doesn't mean that the roegadyn's weight will not be higher though, but since the lore doesn't covers that and what it implies, I'll try not to focus too much on it. However yes, if I wanted to treat it the most seriously possible, a roe could play on his weight a lot. And when it doesn't come to weapons of a certain size, at equal skill, weight will most of the time win, no matter the physical strength. We can take the case of the miqo'te, for which the physical differences are the most extensively covered into the lore: - Culture oriented around physical talents (lorebook: ambiguous how much it affects on genes, but logically it should over time with evolution). - Seekers: wiry strength (lorebook), surpassing agility (lorebook), huge stamina (lorebook). Adept at climbing and diving (lorebook). - Keepers: Similar physical stature than Seekers except for their stamina (lorebook), fierce strength of will and unerring instincts/keen intuition (lorebook). Since I'm playing one, I can hardly forsake all those differences for the sake of "racial stats don't matter". Some of them at least, actually do in the lore. So I guess I would fall into the first category, at least for the differences in physical perks of each race described in lore (Lalafell's hearing, etc). The rest is a lot about suspension of disbelief, which is of course always source of debates. Note: trying to answer that from a lore perspective since you posted into the lore section, but it might be more appropriate for the RP discussion forum...

On top of my head: Lore answers a few things, like the scales not shedding, the horns and tails regrowing to max size, or the ratio of scales vs skin being variable depending on the au'ri individual. The image you linked is totally possible within the frame of the lore. The simple fact that a hyur-aura offspring will bear very little scales implies that they aren't fixed and can vary depending on the phenotypes involved. We know that miqo'te also can purr, and that probably goes in pair with their unique way to pronounce "h" that they put everywhere and that no other race seems to be able to reproduce properly. We know that miqo'te tend to have either a great stamina (Seekers), or more generally strong, wiry limbs and strength there. Keepers also have a way more accute vision in the dark than other races at the expense of their eyes being more sensitive, possibly. Lalafells have powerful hearing. Xaela often show a muscular strength way above any other races. ________________________________ Now then, on the speculation side that's not stricly covered in the lore...: I'm also expecting a case to be made for Duskwights to have enhance vision in the dark due to many generations spent in Gelmorra, but I don't remember any mention of that in the lore, though it sounds very logical. We also know that enhanced hearing isn't technically true for most races except lalafells. This doesn't mean however that some species are naturally more gifted, like miqo'te that are said to have keen senses and instincts. Those senses aren't naturally stronger by genetics, but tend to be naturally trained. Knowing that a lot of the tribes and their origins were constantly favored by their environment, requiring such skills, I think a case could be made that while the biology isn't technically superior for hearing, that a lot of individuals tend to boast better characteristics, especially tribal natives. There is some debate on how a lalafell can match in strength a roegadyn or a hyur, and how their mass being way lighter makes that impossible or not... To be honest, I have no idea here. Logic would dictate that a miqo'te would be lighter than a hyur, but possibly more agile. But this is not confirmed by lore in any way I know of. I generally tend to assume that something is more or less human by default (since all races are human variants), unless specified otherwise by the lore. But sometimes it's just better not to focus too much on oddities.

Could be serving a master as a remnant of the ishgardian social strata. A brume born DRK naturally serving a noble born DRK master doesn't seem too ludicrous to me, for example. Social castes are irrelevant in the night, where DRK serve their own purpose and higher purposes, but to see people resorting to their old traditions doesn't seem off to me.