Valence

So... It might be good to have an idea of what your character is, what is the concept behind, and also how does that tie to the lore maybe? Looking at your pic, you seem to play a lalafell? Maybe you can already dive a bit in lalafell lore? Will your character be a dunefolk, or plainfolk? Is he a literal part of their traditions and customs? Does he live in Uld'ah, or elsewhere? Or has he totally strayed from his background and wanders around? As for the concept, it's a archetype (or several) that you are looking for, really. Nothing more. Tropes, basically. Is your character a dashing rogue? A shrinking violet? A tsundere? A pirate scared of blood? A stuck up archaeologist? Whatever you fancy! There is virtually no limit here. And that's where you literally flesh out your character 3 dimensionally (hint: use strong keywords to serve as pillars to define his personality and traits, 3 to 5-6 max). For example my character is defined around -Quirky, Nosy, Crafty, Scatterbrain, Punk, Self-driven (want to look cool and be cool). Those words are the literal basis around which you will weave everything else. They are also your failsafe when you are actually RPing, the cement you can always go back to refer to if you are lost on how your character would react. Once you have done that, how does your character personality tie with his background story? How does his past explain his personality traits? Or the other way around? ( I'm not exactly exhaustive here so if you have questions or anything, don't hesitate to tell me to elaborate on things )

In general, the Garlean Empire feels that everyone should be united under its banner. They hold very imperialistic views with the ideal aim being to unite everyone, get rid of conflicts, and especially the threat of primals. They function a bit like the Roman Empire, from which they take their inspiration. They conquer new nations and lands one after another thanks to the power Magitek afforded them. Depending on the willingness of those nations to resist, their later treatment under garlean rule once annexed will vary: the more you resist, and especially the more you continue to resist even after, means that the Empire will be especially brutal and tyrannical with you, but the more you collaborate and accept quietly their rule and you will be afforded to keep governance of your nation as long as you comply to the few of their rules and authority (like military service among others). In fact, the Garlean Empire is not that much interested in meddling in internal affairds of the nations they subdue, and instead prefer to use proxies and let them govern themselves. Doma resisted quite a bit before being conquered. They were oppressed to an unknown degree (unlike Ala-Migho for which we know that it's pretty harsh), until they decided last year to revolt against the regime, taking advantage of the death of the first garlean emperor, hoping the empire would have other things to take care of, infighting among other things. Unfortunately for the doman resistance, they seriously miscalculated and Doma (the city) got literally razed to the ground as reprisal, spawning a huge stream of refugees fleeing to Eorzea (some of them lead by Yugiri in the MSQ). So, I would say, the general view of the Garlean Empire towards other nations is essentially a strong feeling of their own superiority (through Magitek, culture, etc). They don't hate them, but just consider themselves to be superior to anybody else, in a rather martial culture. I bet they didn't see Domans in any other way, but still seem interestingly enough as seen in the ninja questline to have taken interest in their Shinobi orders to train their own Imperial Shadows. Now though, after the recent rebellion and the razing of Doma, the Garleans probably see Domans no better than Ala-Mighans themselves: terrorists or people harboring terrorists. Also, being forced to enlist in the garlean military is actually one of the main scenari supported by lore! A huge part of the garlean military is actually composed of auxilliaries and militias that originate from a bit of all the nations they conquered. It can for example be seen in the 2.0 MSQ, when you just finish the quests for your starting city, in the following cutscene where all the gaurds and soliders discussing between each other seem to hail from different places. Nero even goes to call one out and slay him for being a possible double agent. The garleans are no fools and perfectly know that they don't have the manpower to waste in huge legions, and the biggest part of their forces is composed of those enlisted foreign soldiers. Some of them willingly as part of the deal they have with their rulers (to then having the possibility to get afforded garlean citizenship, I think the military service is quite lenghty though, like 10, 20 years or something). And some of them, against their will. It's a very good way for garleans to not only field their superior technology to balance out their inability to resort to any Magi, but also to field mages from nations that don't have that issue! If you want to read more exhaustively about Garlemald, you can find a compilation here. As for Doma in relation to Garlemald, see here.

What is the name of those bookshelves? They look quite handy...

Here we go at last! 71WJo45vne4

Anything above Garuda is too powerful to manifest as egi for common mortals. It's clearly said in lore and quests that Ramuh and Leviathan (who are still basic beast tribe primals), are already too powerful for even the WoL and current Sharlayan knowledge to summon their egi forms. As I said above, lore doesn't say it's not possible to summone those egi (or even the egi of eikons way more powerful like the Warring Triad, probably Bahamut or Alex too). Lore just say it's too powerful even for the WoL. Honestly, make of it what you will. You can perfectly have been present at the rares places in time when he wasn't sealed away. Like when he gets summoned for the first time, for example. Or if you are a time traveler (or a millenia old dude), be present when he gets back long ago in time and releases Mide and her beloved. That's an interesting way to look at it. Is it mentioned anywhere that multiples of the same Primal can't be summoned at the same time? Or is it merely a situation of no one actually trying it yet? I mean, thinking back on it, it kind of makes sense since there's been no multiple instances of any of the other Primals - they're always re-summoned after they're gone. Still, that's an explanation for why no one after he sealed himself away in time. Anyone who encountered him prior to that point would have been able to attune to his aether. Hence why my ideas involving having fought alongside the WoL or being present at the "two" outward manifestations of its power (travel from present to past and back). If one has managed that in a manner contextually similar to what happened with Bahamut's aether, I would figure one would be able to Trance him. Yeah Primals can't be summoned in duplicates, even if they have unique personalities tied to the summoning. Trancing however, doesn't necessitate for a primal to be dead or not active, as far as I know.

They already made the arrow in the knee in the bard questline!

He did? I must have missed that. There was a lot of info delivered at once..

Well, I meant, Au'ra horns.

Possibly, I would hate that as it would remove some of their specific, endemic traits. I like having endemic traits proper to a race, or else everything turns pretty generic. Granted, it's not yet on the level of "why not giving horns to lalafells or everyone also?", but you get the idea...?

I think the lore itself tried to portray a poacher a bit like that, which is Pawa Mujuuk (of the archer class quests). She is every bit of cocky, charismatic to a fault, and I suspect that Silvaire didn't exactly got tricked by just 'blinking away for a second' when she escaped. You might want to look into it for better ideas. You also have the lore around the Coeurlclaw clan, which can offer a lot of morally grey areas (the post moogle quest line portrays one of them and you learn that a lot of them didn't exactly ended up there by choice at first). Note: the Coeurlclaw are just the most notorious of poachers, but independent little bands like Mujuuk's group are non affiliated for example. There is also lesser poacher clans, like the one in the East Shroud: the Raptor poachers I think?

Since I don't really RP walk-up, I suppose I'll probably have very little occasions for me to use that specific tag. But I think a lot of RPers I have seen use it just as a way to label themselves as RPers more than anything.

I personally tend to think that there is very little that strictly goes against lore. Want to play a White Mage? Sure you can. It will certainly put you far ahead in the special snowflake ranking, but sure you can. You can always find a reason for it to work. Maybe you are an heir of Amdapori lineage and padjals/elementals don't know about you? Maybe you went through those dirty means to obtain Succor through what the lore team seemed to tease us with? And then you can say pretty much the same thing with most jobs, a black mage stumbling on a gem of Shattoto (How rare are those? Are they even many or just a single one?). Down to the more mundane jobs and soulstones really. It's just a matter of how "special" you want to be. Most jobs are already special in themselves. A soulstone is special. Some more than others. I mean, even a summoner (which is already damn special), playing with a Ramuh-egi, or a Leviathan-egi, or even an egi from the super powerful Warring Triad, is not stricly against lore. It just puts you directly above the WoL, is all. So I believe that yes, you can perfectly find explanations (stretched or less stretched) on how you can tap into Alexander's taint and use it as a trance. And so, like we have seen in those countless thread about "is it ok if I play a WhM?", the answer is always the same: do what you like, just be aware that it can close doors with many players. You make it sound like wanting to stay within the bounds of the lore is a bad thing. I never got why people felt the need to tie their characters to important lore figures or give them powers on par with people/jobs that are supposed to be legends or extremely rare. It's safer and more interesting to play something original that fits the established lore than try to find ways to bend it to justify your character having X ability. No I'm talking about those people who don't actually care about the person's characters but only initiate roleplay with a person just to question them about why they can do X or Y and hope they find something to point out. They happen more often than you think. I'm just pointing out if he goes for the Alexander idea he will encounter them. I've never seen this happen, not even once. Now if you're including anyone whose character doesn't immediately buy into the fact that your character can do things that they really shouldn't be able to in the confines of the lore, that's entirely different and something you need to get used to. I've seen it happen. Hell, its happened to me, my friends, and their friends. Consider yourself lucky, because those kinds of people are annoying as hell to deal with, and they do not like to let up. To me it's not exactly rocket science why it seems to only happen to the people resorting to a certain kind of special/specific abilities, and not to the mundane characters. It stems from a conflict taking its roots directly into power play and the level of characters "OPness". I'm not saying this negatively! The fact is that people have various tastes and so have roleplayers. We can already see it pretty strongly in that thread here but that's a recurring discussion. I think you will find bad apples in both sides: as much as you probably have had to deal with RP ayatollahs that just show up with the petty OOC motives in mind you describe, I have had to deal with the opposite, which is RPers with a whole other level of power play than my own that just show up specifically to turn their edgy characters into the spotlight in some sort of attention seeking display by just crushing all the mundane characters around, perfectly knowing that they will have to turn their attention to the edgelord newcomer (how would you react if the WoL suddenly shows up in your everyday life and started showing all their skills?). However I learned to temper that a bit because it also often stems from basic misunderstandins and false expectations. The intent is not necessarily malicious. In the latter case, some players just don't realize immediately that they are choking all the RP around them by the mere presence of their powerful character (and they just like being the center of attention and the hero of their own story, it's only natural in RP). In the former case, I have also seen a lot of the people you point out doing what they do because that's the only logical way their characters would react to someone claiming to be super powerful or using some very unusual/stretched powers suddenly showing up with a big smile and a flower in the mouth (how would you react if someone suddenly claims to be literally batman IRL? Do you tell him "omg I believe you, you are so awesome!", or do you answer with a lot of sarcasm?). This is incidentally why I learned to take extreme caution with the kind of RP affinities and characters people play, before going to actually interract with them. Most of those issues always come from that particular issue of power friction.

But what is the Source, is the question? The place where they go between worlds? The place where the WoL and WoD went to meet Minfillia and stuff? That's left rather... vague. Until we know more.

Just hotfixes (like every time in any game) and crafter gear if I remember correctly.

13 worlds for.... 14 games?

I am not sure you will get a lot of rational thinking and logic behind all of this. Eorzea seems to combine armour and weapons tracing back to Antiquity and the Roman era (Ul'dah and gladiator garbs especially), savage tribes, hordes or mongols (miqo'te tribes, xaelas, etc) up to low middle-age (Gridania) and high middle-age (Ishgard), or even Carribean pirates (Limsa). So... I think the point is that magic, aether and all that jazz tends to screw up a lot with things and basically in Eorzea, the only rationale is that magicks always tend to trump technology. Unless technology rises to such levels that it can be a match or even outmatch Magi (like Magitek, or Allagan relics). And even then, I bet that Sharlayan, or especially Mhachi, Amdapori and Nym Magi was probably a match to the wonders of Magitek or even Allag.

weeps silently

That's the problem, I know many people that have connection issues. And even then, I thought toggling off the open access automatically removed everyone inside except you? Maybe not... Interesting. But anyway, no I don't get many interlopers fortunately. It's just on principle.

I loved that patch. Even more that I liked 3.3. I tried to put the finger on what made me feel that way and... I think it's not just the cutscenes and screeplay. It was already damn epic and dramatic in 3.3 for the end and closure of the Dragonsong War, with the icing on the cake being a very mature epilogue. No, it's character development. Proper character development. I think it's more or less the first time in the series that they put the emphasis on it like that. I actually came to like Papalymo and Yda, where I absolutely loathed them before (especially Yda and her detestable silliness). I dunno, but it feels whole now. That's what the story lacked until now. I hope they carry on that way. I am also very pleased by all the other storylines. I wasn't sold on Alex at first, but it sure got my attention for that last part, and the very end of Midas also. Even if it's kinda full of plotholes and wonky stuff (like most time travel stories anyway), it grew on me as we finally learn more about the story. I don't care much for goblins, but the whole atmosphere got quite nice. I like what we learn on that specific primal and how it works. I loved the conclusion reached by the brain computer of Alexander at the end, that's good stuff. That whole series sure had even more cutscenes than Coil. Very good screenplay. I'm still way too biased towards Coil though (because of the Story and mechanics, it was just perfect), but... Alex gets an honorable mention from me. Also, Hotgo tribe lore! Out of the blue. The whole Warring Triad stuff is getting better and better. Sophia's lore on Meracydia is sweet. It tells us a lot more than we knew. We keep being told that those Eikons are way more powerful than the usual shit summoned by beast tribes (you bet they are, they were summoned by a whole nation continent to face almighty Allag). We learn one of the true purpose of the containment bays in Azys Lla (creating other Dalamuds!). It's promising. And... we also learn about garlean cover agents screwing up with the VIth legion commander, sent probably by aristocratic rivals. That brings a lot of sweet stuff for garlean lore. PS: <3 Nero YES! I was very concerned and just thinking, "Hey now, stop that!" We drank wine. We dead. At least it was a nice dinner. The face the WoL does while that servant pours the wine in that almsot intolerable moment of suspense... "Not gonna get poisoned twice in my drink thank you very much".

Their interface is sometimes cringeworthy. Have you seen that joke of the new jukebox? Playlist is limited to 8 damn songs. They also removed the "show all rolls" category. :frustrated:

Ah, ok. I got confused when one guy said he shared his with his alt. So, anyone can just walk into them like you can with private rooms, without the owner's permission? It's always the same issue, like for FC estates/FC private rooms. Want to invite someone specific? Then you have to open it to everyone in public mode, even if you don't want everybody coming in. Want to close it to random interlopers? Then your friends stay out too. It's too binary, it's annoying.

Yes it is confusing. It could hint that most of those worlds/realities are bland copies of our own. More like parallel possibilities than different worlds. But then, what about Ligntning and that Samurai girl from Vana'diel?

He's not at the same place! Which means, he keeps slipping like a clumsy idiot I don't remember if he was here in another spot for 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2?

First of all, you really souldn't bother creating alts for just trying other classes. Just unlock them on your main and play them here. You will get all the benefits of your main: GC seals unlocked so easy access to GC gear for leveling, no need to get back to the MSQ again, access to more roulettes since all is unlocked too, and just not to have to switch chars and stay on the one with all your contacts and all is kinda handy. It's also never lost since it makes you actually unlock a lot of cross class skills that are very nice to have on the main class(es) you play, or just outright mandatory (*cough* healer swiftcast *cough*). NEVER EVER ditch your main character, or a character above lvl10-15. You will lose all progression you made on it. Since you can rename them or use fantasias, all the stuff/gear and skills and progression you made on them is irrelevant and independent to the character itself. Keep them. Maybe someday when you will have done everything you want to do on your main, you will get back to them with more fun and pleasure. I started leveling an alt slowly a bit before 3.4 hit (I have always been a single character player in most MMOs that allow me to unlock all the classes and stuff on the same char). I had a lot of pleasure to get back through the 2.0 MSQ again. I liked it a lot more than I did the first time, now that I am more versed in the lore and universe. I notice that a lot of the things shown here are not immediately obvious for people that never played 1.0 for example (they don't go through lenghts to make you -feel- the story). My advice is to do one at a time. And then for RP, as Virella said, it's another debate/story.

One person only. Can be visited like private rooms though. Actually, they are exactly like private rooms.