Valence

https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/f346081af5012ceaca64e56345cd969f7365827e They might be indeed re opening some servers.

I'm not even sure why we are talking about "Western Europe". It can be a lot of other civilizations. Or it can just be, you know, Eorzea.

On the motherly figure, Gridanian Conjury could actually fit the bill pretty well for the simple reason that the main gridanian deity is the Matron, Nophica. She's the mother of nature and fertility (vegetals, animals, everything). On White Magic Kieron has already quoted what I had in mind. Succor/White Magic isn't that much harder than a lot of other jobs to get into. Scattered soulstones exist and are probably found in Amdapori ruins, or maybe sold for fortunes over black/shady markets and whatnot. Much like gems of Shattoto, or some other soul crystals. Generally to access a job skills and knowledge, you have several options, and some may be closed depending on the art: - Legal and approved training under an official authority, being the keeper of said art. Probably the "easier" since as long as your character qualifies and pass whatever trials or tests there is, they will be teached by mentors. And it's the most lore friendly. For example, the Padjals, but they won't teach anyone else than their own (and the WoL). This therefore excludes WhM from that method. For example, it's a very good way to explain a Samurai background, or a Ninja background, for Hingan or Doman characters without too much hassle, or even Warrior for a Hellsguard, since those jobs are well alive and active, and teached to suitable characters. - Some jobs like MCH are brand new, and will be taught to pretty much everyone, while some lost jobs like bard are being re opened right now, beign taught to specific people (in the case of bards, to Serpent Adders). This works pretty similarly to the above, except that since the job is super new or just rediscovered, it means that nobody has a lot of experience and years of practice. Everyone is learning from scratch or the first few pioneers like Stephanivien (MCH). - Legal or illegal training under a mentor, repository of the art. This is the case for a majority of jobs in the lore. Most jobs have been forgotten entirely except by a few scholars and a lot of jobs tend to just re emerge when the WoL stumbles on them. This is the case for Bard or Red Mage, or Black Mage for example. Those are jobs that got eradicated or disappeared entirely, except for one or two individuals, like those NPC trainers. It directly implies to be taught by a famous NPC, and can imply a certain level of special snowflakism if we're to call it that way. Being taught by X'runh Tia or especially Jehantel, is... assuming they would teach your character, and/or have the time to. - Self taught training because the only repositories left are books and/or soul crystals. This is especially mentionned in the Red Mage quests, where it is made mention of Red Magic repositories of knowledge held in Ishgard, and Sharlayan. This is probably the most widespread way of learning a job, since it can apply to most of them. But it is also the one the most on the fringes of lore, dealing with a lot of unknowns. It also is the most "patchy" way of learning since books are just books, and the knowledge is probably far from complete and you will have to search for those books all around arcane libraries and blurbs and archaeology (cf the monolith in the Peaks for RDM) or whatever you fancy. Or for the case of a soulstone, filling the requirements for the soulstone to open to you and share its knowledge, and they rarely share everything at once, just bits when it thinks you are ready. Your character would probably be a lot less proficient at the art than one properly trained. - The excuse of a hidden community where knowledge of the art has been kept and your character is somehow conveniently part of it, or trained by it. It's the most easy one to resort to, but it's a bit like the dark side: it's easy, it's fast, and it's.... totally out of the lore. It doesn't mean it goes against it per se, and if it goes against the spirit of the lore or not is up for debate, it just sits out of the lore. It's not just world building, but essentially creating your own source of a certain lost or forbidden art. tl;dr: all jobs can be explained. A tiny amount will be accessible through proper training and schools, a bigger amount will be accessible through a few or a lone survivor of the art (a famous NPC), and the majority will be accessible through the very hard way of learning yourself by finding whatever scraps you can about it.

BLM WoL isn't the only one soulstone :thumbsup:

Well if you read what I wrote in my first post you will probably notice that I'm the first one to point out all those cultural differences. Let's not fall into the opposite extreme. I still stand by my point that Inuits are pretty far fetched and extreme case to take as a solid example considering their environment and living conditions, but sure. Edit: I mean, come on, we know what Eorzeans eat. It's not inuit meat/fat diet. It contains sugar and sweets at various degrees like most historical civilizations that didn't live in insanely extreme climates.

Finding a group or a FC that matches what you're looking for, is already hard as it is. Generally you'll be confronted to the roleplay Triangle of Hell: RP affinity / OOC affinities/ Timezone affinity. Pick two. Finding a single contact, or a handful of individual contacts, in my experience, is a nightmare. You'll find many, but few will actually stick for the same reasons stated above. And you will also have to deal with IRL, meaning, that people often tend to drop from the game for various periods of time. Its very rare to find someone dedicated to the game that will be online most days/weeks. Or at least regularly and consistently, even if not often, so you both have your little special moment of the week that rarely fails. I have no answer to bring to you because I have the same issue. I haven't roleplayed in months for that reason alone.

Yeah but Inuits have such a special diet that I don't think applying it to more or less "standard" pre industrial revolution diet is fair. Fact remains that people before contemporary dental care had rotten teeth, even with a lot less sugar than today, which helped them not to lose them all before their twenties I guess. Some civilizations, again, fared better than others, of course.

Soap isn't exactly new IRL either. It goes way back to Antiquity and saw more or less consistent use until today. This doesn't mean by any means that everyone washed themselves on a regular basis, like, say, the poorest social classes since soap wasn't probably the cheapest commodity, but they still had the possibility to wash themselves with natural water sources. You don't necessarily need soap to keep yourself more or less clean. Some cultures and civilizations of course, were a lot more into baths than others. Of course, ignorance also lead to weird beliefs like ancient egyptians thinking that applying human and animal feces on their wounds would help them heal better so... There is that too I guess. Dental care was probably a whole other matter, with some cultures doing it better than others, like romans washing their mouths with alcohol and wine, while greeks did it with... urine. So yeah. Mileage tended to vary a lot. Middle age and Renaissance... Let's say nobody cared and they just pulled rotten teeth out. Although that until very recently people consumed overall a lot less sweets, but well. Still. Arabs though, brushed their teeth with a powder (old toothpaste), and developed a whole lot of ways to wash their teeth/mouths especially after dentistry, and after every lunch, with medical schools teaching about dental care too. Teeth "pullers" got kicked out of the land. With all that said now, in lore we know that Hingans (and probably Domans as well) are rather fond of their onsens and public baths, as seen in Kugane among other locales. We also know that La Noscea boasts places like Bronze Lake that look more akin to hydrotherapy, but are still basically, water/mineral based baths and body care. Eorzeans also seem to be fond of oil, unless Godbert Manderville and his son are to be considered too eccentric to make a rule out of it... I'm sure I forgot about various plants, herbs, or other things mentioned in lore ingame here or there. Now though, does everyone take the same care of their cleanliness the same way? The wealthy elite and the poorest classes? Citizenry from Ishgard or from Hingashi? I don't know. As for teeth... uhhh. Perhaps. Either way Eorzea always seemed to have included a lot of contemporary habits and traditions, and sometimes way of life, so maybe one could make a case about that. Hard to tell in my view.

IRL roleplay projected into Eorzea mostly. ( RP that I see around me, that is )

A MCH ceruleum guitar?

My mistake for the faeries, I totally forgot about that part stating that they are stored and bound into their soulstones. A carbuncle is already part of the elemental genus, if I'm not mistaken (need to take a look for confirmation in the lorebook since i'm at work, but I'm pretty sure it is the case). As I said, one has a way higher spiritual and intelligence elevation than the other (faery vs carbuncle). Worth to be noted, the elemental genus is pretty wide and can encompass many, many things. Including spriggans, again, if I'm not mistaken. Edit: And I did the confusion again. Spriggans are soulkins, but classified as such for dubious religious reasons while they actually share many similarities with sprites/faeries and elementals and stuff. Anyway. Elementals are elementals, as well as carbuncles, faeries, sprites, plasmoids, egis, etc.

This is never explicitly stated. In fact, in the confines of the original questline, which is the only point at which the soulstone is even addressed, the soulstone does exactly two things: 1) It tells the Padjal that you've been chosen by A-Towa-Cant and thus they have to train you and 2) it very occasionally allows you to learn certain techniques without them being explicitly taught to you. In the 51-60 questline, it occasionally teaches you new techniques, but is never explicitly addressed within the quests themselves. In the 61-70 questline, it teaches you one technique at the end of the questline, and never once comes up. I may be at a loss as to what is your point here? I never said the contrary? I actually said that it's very ambiguous for WhM if the soulstone is absolutely required or not. I'm pretty sure this is pure speculation and head canon on your part, Valence. There is nothing that I can recall in the quests to back up your speculation. I can't think of a single place where this is mentioned. Do you have a specific quote where it is stated that White Mages cannot use White Magic (Padjali or otherwise) without a Soul Stone? I think this is a misunderstanding. In the questline, it is pretty clear that you wouldn't do any white magic without A-Towa Cant's blessing and thus, elemental blessing, bestowing you a soulstone in the process. This doesn't mean that the soulstone is the key, thus why I specified somewhere else in my post that it's ambiguous for jobs like WhM. The gatelock is on the sharing of knowledge, and not on the job crystal per se (but maybe it also is, see Sounsyy's link on soulstones, it could be interpretated either way). But the fact remain that to become a white mage, you have to be chosen by the Elementals and their padjali friendos. Period. The only other solution was briefly mentionned by KojiFox as a dirty way to do it, and as far as I know we don't know more about that yet.

The summoning of a faery is more complicated than a simple carbuncle. It involves actual anciant nymian tablet texts and sigils (as seen in the SCH quest), and a deeper understanding of the nymian tactics described inside. That makes faery summoning more of a lost art indeed, knowing that most old nymian scholars used to have faery companions. BLM would tend to burn themselves to death without their crystal, but WhM can't simply access the magic (Succor/White Magic) as taught by the elementals to the padjals. Wether this was the case or not for anciant Amdapori magic is left to speculation I think. I suspect that old Amdapori White Magic might differ slightly from the one controled and granted by the elementals to the padjals of the Twelveswood. It is unclear for some jobs if they really need their crystals as a key for their art to work or not. It's definitely the case for BLM and MCH for example, but rather ambiguous for WhM, DRK, and probably not necessary for jobs like Nin, BRD, etc. In any case, a soul crystal is a repository of skills and memories not that dissimilar to starwars Holocrons, that will only open to the people with the sufficient base knowledge and affinity to the art. Some of them, like BLM, also act as essential keys to the job for it to work properly.

Yes, all magic users draw from aether and the difference between them is the school and techniques used to cast something. A conjurer will not proceed the same way as a gladiator with Flash or a monk with chakras for exemple. Arcanists do indeed use sigils and geometric patterns they draw on a book to channel their own aether into finely tuned spells, or to summon aether made entities called carbuncles (also classified inside the higher genus "elementals" like faeries, spriggans or elementals, if I'm not mistaken, I don't have the lorebook with me right now). Conjurers channel the aether of the land around them through their canes or wands: Nature's bounty, borrowed from elementals and whatnot through prayers and stuff. This is a moogle art originally, taught to Gridanians, but other forms of conjury and healing exist across the world, like ishgardian chirurgeons or ala mighan shamans. Conjury is mostly categorized into two main fields: healing and curative spells, and elemental spells (earth, water, fire, ice, etc, some of them like fire probably harder to draw upon depending on the land around, and frown upon by gridanian conjurers). Thaumaturges channel their own body aether reserves (vary a great deal depending on the individual, some have almost none, some have plenty) into the gem of their staffs, channeled through the aether conductive materials of the staff itself, like bone or electrum (gold does the opposite though, it's insulating). They burn quickly through their own limited aether, but can regen it better, especially through the Coco brothers school of thaumaturgy which implies swap between astral and umbral elemental states, but that's only for thaumaturges of the newest generation teached at the Ossuary in Ul'dah. Older thaumaturgy is rather different, and other cultures can also have their own flavor. Thaumaturge magic is elemental and can be mostly comprised of all the elements, even if the Coco brothers only use half of them (fire ice and thunder). Black mages draw their aether directly from the planet indeed, and considering the raw, powerful energies implied, if they don't have a gem of Shattoto with them (the soulstone), their most powerful spells will cook them from inside. White mages also draw their aether from the planet, and wether their method is more gentle or if the soulstone is also mandatory just to even cast white magic spells, is left to speculation. I suspect the later considering the WhM 30-50 quests, where the soulstone has to be specifically bestowed by elementals to the WoL so that they can access the arcanes of that magic, like padjal do. Astrologians draw their aether from constellations and stars yes. These are apparently powerful sources of magic and can be called upon by trained sharlayan astrologians. A personal theory of mine is that ast magic is actually purely astral (diurnal) or umbral (nocturnal) magic, which gives aspected spells like aspected benefic and whatnot, but that's not specified in the lore per se. Astrology is actually in essence a time magic, using various time distortion and manipulation effects to change the states of things, or steer future possibilities to their will. Red mages channel their aether exactly like thaumaturges/black mages: through their swords that act as staffs, and the gem at the top. While they can definitely draw upon the land like their white and black mages ancestors can, they refrain from doing so mostly by personal ethics, considering how the War of Magi leaded the world to the 6th Umbral Era. Their swords also act as special caralysts forged to channel their specific blend of white and black magic into potent spells, without having to draw from the land. Carbuncles are mostly what you described yes. Egi and Faeries don't make exception and are in essence similarly created. Faeries just tend to exhibit more personality and intelligence (close to Spoken/humans, where carbuncles are closer to animals). Egi are infused with primal essence that the summoner has to have basked in before being able to summon them.

But that would prevent you to resort to Duskwight/Gelmorran/Gridanian lore though, that's what I meant, because the Duskwight society appeared in the Gelmorran civilization way after the founding of Ishgard in a separate place (year 700+ versus year 300+). Unless you play a Duskwight expatriate in... Ishgard I suppose? Convoluted I know. Either way, playing an ishgardian native (with a duskwight model) is also a possibility yes! But you might need a lore compilation on Ishgard instead.

Keep in mind that as Sounssy has said above, nothing prevents a Duskwight to have moved over around the world, especially when they are discriminated upon at their birthplace. That said, while you will see Duskwight and Wildwood models used for Ishgardian characters ingame, Ishgardian elezens are NOT duskwight or wildwood, but a 3rd bloodline that isn't represented by the 2 playable ones ingame, and that I assume takes visual traits as a blend of both considering the devs chose to represent them through both models. Either by laziness or something else, the fact remains that they descend from the original elezen clans that also gave birth to the elezens of Gelmorra, which branched into Duskwight and Wildwoods in the Shroud. The ones that went in Ishgard branched out earlier, before Gelmorra, is all, but share the same ancestry. I mostly felt the need to point that out since a lot of people, especially before the appearance of the lorebook, speculated a lot about the Ishgardian elezens, and that seeing some duskwight models in their natives might give you the wrong idea.

Necroing that thread because I eventually ended up going through the SB Bard quests. That are about the Autumn War. So the WW2 comparison wasn't that poor actually (although in the case of Eorzea it seems to have stuck way longer). It seems to be rather similar, where mostly old Gridanian people and a nationalistic fringe still clings to loathing Ala Migho, but aside from those, vindicative feelings seem to have mostly vanished to make way for the more modern Eorzean Alliance, and helping in the liberation of Ala Migho. Without spoiling, it is however mentioned that a specific buried secret could change drastically the view of all gridanians if it was to be unearthed. So... the Autumn War scars are still healing apparently.

Personally I disagree with a lot of the statements or observations made here. I've seen the economy of smaller servers and I can safely say that while it might seem like a crafter heaven, it's actually crazy expensive for every little thing, or sometimes you can't even find what you're looking for just due to the scarcity of things. Sure, you don't get much competition when you are trying to sell something, but at the same time, demand is lower as well. I actually think that big servers like Balmung have a wonderful and healthy economy. The market is full of everything and the flow of goods is unmatched here. The argument that a community gets stale... might be true, but I have my doubts. Considering the amount of people rotating on that server, between returners, old sprouts, or just the sheer amount of people in itself, I really, really doubt that it could get stale. If that's what you're afraid of, you'll meet new people all the time. We are speaking about the tens of thousands here. Now then, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind at all a RP designated servers but. What if we get one or two? Do you think that every RPer will migrate there all of a sudden? Leave their FCs, houses, contacts, statics, and whatnot? They didn't do it for Mateus or Omega, so why would it work better here? I would even argue that it would work even less since most of the players that actually wanted to transfer already did it. You would be essentially left with an empty server not filling up.

I suppose if my character stumbled on such a thing, she might go full steam ahead holding the Alliance in contempt more than she already does, probably all the way to irrationally hating them, while conveniently forgetting her loathing about any kind of authority and go join the ranks of the garlean military or try her luck at the Magitek Academy (and probably utterly fail at checking in since not even a citizen). And since a DRK soulcrystal does what it does, she would probably be killed while trying to play batman in Garlemald or something.

Are we complaining on a lack of realism on a genre that is defined by its clear lack of realism, or by the shortcuts and oversimplifications that it is known to take at every turn? (aka, shonen) We can swap realism with suspension of disbelief, works too. I was wondering, because when I watch certain genres, I don't expect them to be spot on on details that would be mandatory in other genres. I'm not expecting political accuracy and realistic timeframes in what is basically, a fairy tale before anything. Which doesn't prevent me from wishing they sticked to the 1.0 overall tone, but whatever.

I'm not totally sure what is so "timey whimey" with a bit more than one year since the beginning? Other than the 2 months to go to Othard? Let's say 4 since we had Scions in two to bring back there?

1) One year is definitely short, but it at least remains a certain time period. It didn't happen in a month, or a week. I would be annoyed with way less, but one year doesn't bother me too much. Nanamo still saying 5 years when it's obvious that the MSQ has dropped hints and facts in other lines that it's been a little more than 6 actually, is confusing. The hell Nanamo, learn your calendar. I mean, I can understand you got cloistered in your palace for so many cycles, but still... 2) Even without considering what Sounssy said above, who says that those resistance tempered souls were tempered recently? The resistance has been going on for 2 decades (although it got really meaningful only in the last 5 years considering how a joke it was in 1.0). It's also possible that the tempering goes rather deep, and has been there for a long time. On the Saltery, if you pick up all the wrong answers before answering the correct one, the last choice you're given from what I saw from reddit screens is actually funny (unless those screens were faked, which is also a possibility): 1. "The Saltery" 2. "You really want me to say the Saltery, aren't you?" Anyway, more seriously, and even if I chose Ala Ghanna myself first without thinking a bit more, because Ala Ghanna was said to be actually very profitable before the garlean invasion, there is a reasoning to be had. Ala Ghanna stopped being profitable when Garleans came and crushed the country, but also didn't kick back in because they generally are fonder of metallic alloys and cermet construction. Ala Ghanna's only choice was to export to other cities like Ul'dah or Ishgard, but the export costs were just too prohibitive to sustain. That's also what Lolorito says when you mention Ala Ghanna (would cost more than the price of the stone itself). And the deal breaker here is that being profitable to Ala Migho AND Ul'dah both is mandatory. Ala Ghiri has no real resource of economic value as far as I know. They used to have a chocobo relay and stables, and possibly other services, but otherwise no raw resource specific to their land.

I'm not totally sure that the inhabitants of Sui-no-Sato have a true aristocratic class, but they have a royal family, which seems to be rather... restricted around the Ruby Princess. So... mayyyyybe part of the entourage?

This disturbed me a great deal as well. I thought previous lore stated that Dalmasca was in Ilsabard while Rabanastre was another city in Othard?