Yian Kutku

As a quick note, Summoners also require a soul crystal.

My choice of words, sorry. Square Enix has said nothing about monetization; I was mainly grasping for a way to take into account the possibility that someone will use the Perform function, record their performance, and then try to sell it for money. Which is definitely a copyright issue.

Basically we're not supposed to use Perform to play songs from, say, the latest Top 40 Charts or something. It's a copyright problem that nobody really wants to dig up at the moment. So to be safe, we're only supposed to Perform songs that are either already in the game somewhere (thus sidestepping the copyright issue), or that we came up with on our own and are willing to give it away without monetization. There is, of course, no word on how strictly this will be enforced. Staccato was primarily pointing out that certain songs from RL have been referenced in-game via localization parodies, so it's not clear whether this falls under "music that's already in-game", or "music from other non-game sources". Because the lyrics have changed to fit Eorzea, but the melody allegedly remains the same. Personally I would assume these fall under the legal grey area of filks and other parodies, ie safe only as long as the authorities don't push it.

Two examples come to mind, off the top of my head. One directly involved me, the other not. The first is when someone dismisses or belittles OOC concerns. The specific case (non-FFXIV) was that someone made it their character's mission to insult and antagonize my character without my permission, or indeed knowledge that they were going to do that in the first place. This happened over the course of a month, where their character would bad-mouth mine to everyone they knew (and they were well-liked and trusted by their in-group IC, so everyone I tried to interact with approached my character with suspicion and hostility), outright refuse to associate with my character IC (while still hanging around my character loudly proclaiming how they don't want to), and generally made RPing miserable for me. I contacted them OOC that this was not where I want to be for my character, and I was feeling uncomfortable OOC with the sheer hostility my character was receiving. The answer I received was that I should "learn to separate IC and OOC", and "it's just RP, no need to take it so seriously". I ended up leaving that RP community soon afterwards. It wasn't until much, much later, that someone else who happened to be in that RP community (who wasn't involved in all this) asked me about it and learned my side of the story, before relaying the background: that person had randomly chosen my character to pick on because they wanted to start a plotline about Friendship After Rivalry, and everyone else thought that this was pre-arranged between them and me OOC, because that's what that person had assumed. So my own bewilderment at this treatment had read to them as me being a prima donna incapable of separating IC and OOC. To this day I don't know whether this misunderstanding was cleared up. I did tell that acquaintance my side of the story, but I don't know if they decided to pass it back to that RP community. To be honest, that bridge is well burned for me. TL;DR When someone says they are not comfortable with the current plotline OOC, listen to them, rather than deciding that they're a bad RPer who should suck it up. - The second instance is when someone is in the middle of a group RP session, and then takes a metaphorical huge, steaming dump on the conversation. The conversation in question was something light and inconsequential, mostly about people's backgrounds and how they felt about being in Eorzea. Just shooting the breeze, learning about each other, nothing too serious. Then someone, who had been silent until then, mentioned "with a giant smirk" that she had been orphaned at a young age when her parents were murdered in front of her eyes, spent her early life begging in Ul'dah, was raped almost daily as a child, sold herself into prostitution when she could, and had scars all over the place. I was about to join in the original conversation then, but stopped short when that dropped into my chatbox. My immediate thought was: "How the hells am I supposed to respond to that?" The conversation, which had previously been fairly brisk, devolved into one-line responses about "that's terrible" and "well, sorry to hear that". I left quickly afterwards, because I didn't want to get involved. The character might not be able to read the mood IC, but surely there's a better way to join in the RP than to kill the conversation completely. TL;DR Include OOC considerations when planning to join IC conversations.

Question about measurements: We all know the ones about length/distance and weight (well, mass, but close enough), as well as the basics for time. What about volume? Assume liquid for the moment, since for all I know there's a "cubic ilm" measurement floating around somewhere. Is there an equivalent to "litre"? Or whatever the Imperial version is; I'm mostly only familiar with metric. ... speaking of which, does Garlemald have their own units of measure? While Eorzeans use renamed (Earth) Imperial units, do Garleans use renamed (Earth) metric?

To be fair, it's based off Mongolian, so it goes on its own pronunciation guide. Which admittedly doesn't mean much in light of English's tendency to confiscate all the vocabulary it can from other languages, with or without their "proper" pronunciations. I'm still slightly puzzled by the correct way to pronounce "Yanxia", because depending on where you are in China, even the basic Mandarin pronunciation can be different. It's either "Yan-sia" (Southern China) or "Yan-sha" (Northern China), or, if you want to be stereotypical, "Yan-tsee-YAAAH" or "Yan-sharrrrr".

Maybe you were thinking of "inculcate"? In any case, I've noticed that SF&F as a genre tends to be less reluctant to use little-seen vocabulary, although this obviously depends on the writer. This is especially the case for FFXIV's English localization, which occasionally goes overboard with eye-watering words. For example, I hadn't known what "sternutation" meant until I did the Moogle quests.

I actually do use a thesaurus (well, Thesaurus.com) quite often when writing up RP or stories. It's surprisingly helpful, especially when you kind of have a word in mind, but it doesn't quite fit exactly. Using a thesaurus is more of being able to find a better word for the situation, rather than a horizontal progression of alternate words. I'll echo the sentiment of improvement through exposure. Read, read, and read even more. One tip to keep in mind is to notice how something is said, rather than merely what is said. What words can you cut out to make the sentence tighter? What words can you add in to provide more colour? You can use in-game dialogue as your examples as well. Merlwyb, Eynzahr, and Baderon are all Lominsans, but they speak in very different styles. In fact, I'd recommend rewatching cutscenes and making note of how the characters speak. Why was this sentenced phrased as such? Why use this word, instead of another? Doing so might be a bit too much like homework, though. The suggestion to just read a lot is more relaxing.

I'm noticing it's a lot easier to catch sight of long-running RP plotlines, but noticeably more difficult for pick-up casual RP. As in you'll be making connections, whether you want to or not. It's surprisingly difficult to just hang out without getting pulled into something bigger. This is just personal experience, though. I also see more RP in the Drowning Wench, as well as the usual spot in the Quicksand. Fewer people in both places than in Balmung's Quicksand, but there's usually something happening whenever I drop by. (Weirdly I've not seen much RP at the Carline Canopy; from what I hear, this is something that just turned out like that, rather than any conscious decisions.) Having said all that, if you are currently on Balmung, I would most definitely not recommend moving.

It always amuses me that Midgardsormr as a mount carries our luggage as well as us. I have to wonder if he dematerializes our stuff as well whenever he goes poof, or if we have to load and unload him every time we dismount. Personally I assume that IC I'm calling on my mount far less than I actually do in-game. Probably maybe just to get into the area, fly around whenever plot demands, and then go off to spend their time as they choose. Every other major travel is RP-canonically on foot, borrowing some other communal transport like a caravan, or some such contrivance. I'm not canonically calling my loyal wyvern mount every time my next daily hunt target is more than ten steps away, even if that's what I'm actually doing.

Possibly Now that I check it does fit: Orn Khai is Verb Adjective, and depending on which whei way it's supposed to be read, Whei Ahf is Verb Adjective or Noun Adjective. Which matches Ohl Deeh as either Verb Adjective or Noun Adjective. So that's one mystery solved, thanks.

I'd say I need help coming up with one, but to be honest I have no idea where to start, so "brainstorming" it is. If it matters, this is for a prose fanfic, rather than RP. The dragon I'd like to name is this fellow, who, as far as I know, does not have a canon name. I've been going by the official Dragonspeak dictionary, and I realized I have no idea how dragons are named. Older dragons apparently do not have names based on that dictionary, like Vidofnir, Vedrfolnir, Gullinbursti, etc. However, younger dragonets and apparently wyverns do: the three examples I know of are Ohl Deeh and Orn Khai for dragonets, and Whei Ahf for wyverns. Ohl Deeh translates as "call deep" according to the Dragonspeak dictionary. Which kind of makes a sort of naming sense: a "deep call", or a "caller of the deep", perhaps. However, "ohl" might also mean "bone", so it would be "bone deep", which makes rather less sense. Orn Khai is "born sad". Which, again, may make sense, if a little peculiar and heavy for a kid. And when we have Whei Ahf, whose name either means "wait half" or "method half". At which point I gave up. Should I just slam together two random words from the Dragonspeak dictionary? Should I ensure the name has some meaning? What arrangement of words is better, ie why "Ohl Deeh" and not "Deeh Ohl"?

Every Chocobokeep in the game has the uniform, including in Ishgard and Dravania, so I'm guessing it's game mechanic QoL. Even so, there's usually a lore excuse for it (because as far as I can tell MCKF tries as much as possible to close loopholes, even if he has to come up with something on the spot), so I'm mostly curious what the lore explanation for this one might be.

Quick question I had while staring at teleport prices: Who owns the Chocobo Porters? We'll leave aside the obvious bizarre convolutions of the "summoning stones" in Dravania, and the separate Falcon Porter system in Othard. This is just for Chocobokeeps in Eorzea, including Gyr Abania. They all wear that yellow tunic, and a chocobo mask. This implies some sort of uniform, as well as the spiel they give whenever you ask them about the whole Chocobo Porter system. Is there any mention (possibly in the very early tutorial dialogues) of who owns this service? (Curiously, the Falcon Porters in Othard wear falcon masks, except for the one at Onokoro, and the Blue Kojin at Tamamizu. The Blue Kojin even has a different spiel explaining porters, albeit with the same general gist. I have no idea about the Onokoro guy, though.)

Posting separately from the general Lore thread in case there are people who haven't played through 3.2 (or even more importantly 2.55) yet. (I know they're around, so I don't want to accidentally ruin their day.) We're all fairly familiar with what happened to Minfilia. At the end of 2.55, after most of the Scions apparently sacrificed themselves to buy you time to escape, the WoL and Minfilia are the only ones left. Then Minfilia suddenly gets what seems to be a communication of some kind, and she tells the WoL to go on, while she stays behind for ill-defined reasons. Fast forward to 3.2, when we finally discover what became of Minfilia: she had become the Word of the Mother, and Hydaelyn uses her as a spokesperson of sorts. My questions: how, and why? I asked this question in the Mateus RP discord (one of them, I forget exactly which), and the immediate response was that Hydaelyn was evil, lying to Minfilia and puppeteering her, so on and so forth. Which strikes me as not really supported by canon, but I was told that it totally was, so maybe I'm wrong. For the question of "how", I'd like to know how Minfilia went from being corporeal and on the verge of escaping with us, to remaining behind (on the other side of the tunnel collapse Y'shtola caused) and somehow turning into the Word of the Mother. The answer I received was that Minfilia was told to go back to as close to Y'shtola as possible, where she got caught in Y'shtola's Flow spell, and then Hydaelyn plucked her from the Lifestream. Which ties in to my next question: why? Why Minfilia in specific? Why that time and that place? The Scions were in danger not because of something Calamity-inducing like Bahamut, or aether-problematic like Primals, but entirely due to plain mortal politics. Minfilia was in no more danger than when the Ultima Weapon blew up the Praetorium, or when Livia slaughtered the minor Scions, and Hydaelyn did not see fit to interfere then. Why Minfilia and not, say, Noraxia? For that matter, why Minfilia and not anyone else actually present at the time, like Y'shtola or Thancred? If the Flow theory is accurate, it is highly doubtful that Y'shtola would be aware that Minfilia would get caught up in it, making it simply due to area of effect. In which case, there are very likely several Brass Blades and Crystal Braves in the vicinity too, or Y'shtola wouldn't have bothered collapsing the tunnel. If it's a matter of the Echo, Minfilia and the WoL are not the only ones with it. If it's a matter of people with the Echo being in life-threatening situations, there's Krile, who was present when the Isle of Val got wiped off the map. The more I think about it, the more I'm confused.

To be honest, one of the housing items I've been hoping for is a mirror. It doesn't even have to reflect anything. It could just be a shiny surface framed and placed on a wall or something. I just want it for the verisimilitude of having a "livable space" that includes various items for daily life, even if in truth they are not interactable. Sadly, I suspect we'll never get mirrors, because my opinion of "it doesn't have to reflect anything, it just has to look like a mirror at first glance" is probably in the minority. (I know reflections in games is very difficult to do, and most devs just have a duplicate world behind the mirror.)

I see MCKF as more of an Au Ra guy. Female Au Ra, of course. Anyway, piggybacking on this topic: out of interest, how was the "unofficial RP server" chosen? I don't mean Balmung, but the ones that came before; I hear it was Besaid? Way back when, I read stuff on other MMOs about how, assuming a reasonable number of servers, no official RP designations, and no cross-server functionality, the unofficial RP server was usually arrange pre-launch by picking the alphabetically last server name (that was not the beta server). There was some commentary about how this ensured the server wouldn't get too large, since most new players would choose the first few servers alphabetically to play on. I also recall this "tradition" hitting a hiccup with DDO's launch, since the alphabetically last server was named Xoriat, and there were a lot of complaints about RPing on a server named after the Eberron Realm of Madness. Like "we should scrap this decision immediately, because I would rather not play the game than RP on Xoriat" kind of complaints. So I don't know if that "tradition" continued on after that. So I was wondering if Besaid was chosen by some such similar criteria (alphabetically first?), or if it was done by poll (organized or otherwise), or if it just happened to be where RPers congregated by chance.

I got the impression the current Nunh was perfectly happy with the tradition of having a Tia challenge him in personal combat in order to take over Nunh-ship, but the son (of the other former Nunh) was just so bad at it that he feels it's a waste of time to keep it at status quo, so he wants to train the son up to present a more respectable (and fair?) challenge. Presumably if some other (unseen) Tia shows up, challenges the Nunh, and wins, the now-former Nunh will just shrug and go "well, that's just how it is". I do find it a little odd that apparently the position of Nunh, as expressed in the U and M tribes, is determined solely by personal combat prowess. It's not as though the Nunh has to 1v1 solo any threats to the tribe. I'm curious if it's possible for a challenge to the Nunh to involve... I'm blanking on the exact term, but I'm thinking more of a leadership challenge, rather than a combat challenge. Being able to lead the tribe in politics and relations with others, rather than combat. (I was thinking of the Mass Effect Krogan krannt, but then I realized any Tia who can command enough respect among their peers will probably be able to peel off and make their own tribe anyway.)

I've always found it a little weird that the Castrums named for directions in Eorzea (ie other than Castrums Abania, Marinum, and Solus) were based on Eorzean directions. From the viewpoint of Garlemald up until the Seventh Umbral Era, Castrum Oriens was the second-most western castrum they had, after Castrum Novum. I suppose they considered it "east of Castrum Novum"? The rest of your post is pretty valid, and makes plausible sense. I'm curious why nobody even mentions van Darnus's involvement in Castellum Corvi, considering Nael's notoriety among Eorzeans. Minor question: for unaspected aether (or spells), would they be aspected towards all elements, or no elements? (Arcanist and Astrologian spells come to mind.)

I would be very skeptical of calling Castellum Corvi anything remotely like a "base of operations", to be honest. It's just too small. An outpost, yes, albeit a curiously tiny one, considering the Garleans tend to over-build everything. And there are no signs that the facility used to be much bigger than it currently is. (There's a bunch of crashed Imperial fliers and airships and magitek machina scattered over a wide area, but seeing as most of them are still on fire, I think they're rather more recent.) However, I do agree that the VIIth Legion probably needed a place to stay while they were constructing Castrum Novum. I just can't imagine Castellum Corvi being that, as opposed to, say, Castrum Oriens/Baelsar's Wall or Castrum Abania. I would not be surprised if Castellum Corvi was just named after crows/ravens in general, rather than specifically for Nael van Darnus.

A quick question about Gyr Abania. Very minor spoilers, mostly of the "this thing exists in Gyr Abania" sense, rather than anything plot-important.

I got an apartment of my own on Mateus not too long ago, and it went through without any issues. I also checked the apartment building in my Ward (Mist Ward 5), and something like half the apartments are empty. So chances are getting an apartment should be fairly easy on Mateus. (Compared to Balmung pre-SB, where every apartment in every Ward and subdivision in Mist and Lavender Beds was taken.)

To add on a bit more trivia: I find it more or less a more "modernized" version of 17th to 18th century English; the most famous example I can think of is Samuel Pepys's diary. Using modern words like "has" instead of "hath", for instance, but the sentence structure and grammar is similar. Oaths and swears tend to call upon the Twelve, but not go much farther than that. There seems to be a bit of bowdlerization. I notice a lot of dropping of the "g" in words ending in "-ing" and such (eg "hangin'", "bloomin'"), as well as "yer" and "ye" for "your" and "you". It kind of reminds me of the more non-London areas of the UK, and possibly some accents within London as well. The sort usually stereotyped in media as "low-class". Oaths and swears are a lot more vulgar, including calling on various bodily parts of the Twelve. Lominsan has a lot of stereotypical pirate speak, ie West Country as performed by Robert Newton. Other than that, it bears a lot of similarity to the "Commoner's talk" mentioned above. The Rogues' Guild slang is pretty much Thieves' Cant, watered down to be more comprehensible. You can find dictionaries of it online, or possibly in print. As with many languages, there are a zillion variations, so a term that isn't in one dictionary may be in another. The one I use is the 1811 dictionary by Francis Grose (available on Project Gutenberg, also amusingly slightly censored). Like, I'm almost sure you can do a search-and-replace of Jacke's speech, and it will turn out to be fairly normal.

Actual good news for once: I was doing a Main Scenario Roulette, and zoned into Castrum Meridianum. First thing I noticed was that about half the party were sprouts, including both Tanks and the other Healer. Second thing I noticed was that all of them were watching the opening cutscene. When the mission proper started, everyone just kind of hung around awkwardly at the beginning, not moving forward. The non-sprouts did the jiggly "we're ready to go, Tanks please start moving, we don't want to be in front of you aggroing enemies" dance. After about thirty seconds, I asked: "Everyone know what to do here?" One of the Tanks said "Negative". Since none of the other non-sprouts said a word in chat, I assumed I was going to be the one explaining the dungeon. So I did, starting with "pull as much as you feel comfortable with". This turned out to be single pulls. Nobody complained. The Tanks were kind of squishy when they tried double-pulling; I checked their gear, and they were in the i90 AF sets, so they're at least competent enough to do Job quests. Probably just needed to work on cooldown rotation. I called out where the disposal chute you had to go to after the first boss was. I explained how the enemies will drop explosives we have to plant on ceruleum pipes. I pointed out the cannons that most groups use to AoE down large pulls, and warned that they were kind of fragile, so don't bait enemy AoEs there. I explained the Livia boss fight. Through it all, only one of the Tanks ever responded, but it was always appreciative and positive. (I'm pretty sure they weren't bots, because another of the sprouts helped another find the disposal chute in chat. Capitalization and complete sentences and all.) Through it all, we waited for cutscenes. And when we got to Livia, I saw five Castrum Meridianum map achievements pop up. We cleared easily, with only a single death (me; entirely my fault, since I got too greedy with Holy). Two sprouts (not including the positive Tank, who just went "grats" and left) thanked me. Got three commendations. I just feel so happy that at least a few new players can experience the shitshow of CM in a positive way. I do feel bad that chances are Praetorium will not be as forgiving, if they get the usual speedrun group.