Ildur

If Squeenix doesn't get rid of the silly 'you must do it solo' restriction for the instanced Story Missions, all my characters will end up being Marauders and Gladiators. Because I heard those are the two classes with the least trouble when soloing. Not all of them will be so ICly, but besides roleplaying I like to actually play and enjoy the game. And those solo missions? I don't enjoy them at all. With that said, I normally make my characters picking the class I want to play. In the case of ARR, though, I'll probably have a bunch of OOC classes in my main so I can cover all roles for party play. If one of my characters ends up having various classes ICly, then changing them will be handwaved like the game does: it's my character using another weapon or, in the case of some magical classes, using different spells.

Ulanan's Loot Table [table] [tr] [td]Item Name[/td] [td]Drop Chance[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]90-180 gil[/td] [td]90%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Olives[/td] [td]70%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Hat of Half Hiking[/td] [td]50%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Modeled Mask of Madness[/td] [td]25%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Wanderer's Wand of Wanton Wrecking[/td] [td]3%[/td] [/tr] [/table] The Gil: Sparklies! The Olives: A jar filled with olives. It's a pretty big jar. It's worth 9 gil. The Hat of Half Hiking: This magical hat protects its wearer from the sun and the rain! Sadly, it didn't protect her from the stabbing that killed her. It's worth 15 gil. The Modeled Mask of Madness: A wooden mask with only two very round holes for the eyes. You could swear it's staring at you. But that's what all the creepy masks do. It's worth 10 gil. Wanderer's Wand of Wanton Wrecking: This wand grants unlimited swiftcast as long as you alliterate while casting the spells. The alliterations have to be coherent phrases of more than three words, but they don't have to be related to what you are doing at all. Any spells cast without alliteration fail completely. It's worth 900 gil. Sorry, I can't be serious! All of Ulanan's stuff would be normal and, therefore, very boring.

See, I think there's a problem here: Miqo'te are human beings for all intended purposes. And so are Elzen and Roegadyn and Hyur and Lalafellin. We can say that they are different species on a biological level, but they aren't so on the intellectual level. And humans, may I recall you, are defined in our world as 'rational animals'. So the fact that Miqo're have cat characteristic does not mean they are inhuman at all: what makes them human is that they are capable of abstraction and rational thought. If the different Eorzean races did not have the same capacities for rational thought, the cultural differences between them would be much more marked and inclusion in the same society as equals would be right out of the question. But we here we have all this different 'species' or 'races', coexisting in the same societies with basically the same opportunities. Miqo'te aren't, in short, lions or dogs. They are people. Maybe their society is primitive, but that doesn't make them any less capable of critical thought and abstraction. But my biggest problem with the original post is that it tries to form a basis for a culture by the use of purely biological data which, as I have said before, is very inaccurate because real human societies don't work like that. Spartans didn't execute children that were judged ill or unfit because of their unique biology (clue: they didn't have a unique biology), but because their society was thought and structured around the art of war and, as such, they consciously thought that having weak citizens would make them worse at waging war. The only thing human biology had anything to do with that is that the elders looked for specific signs of illnes/unfitness. But that's it. The people thought and made up the culture like that not out of biological necessity but out of a conscious choice. The only reason all this biological speculation about Miqo'te sounds feasible is because there's not enough lore to contradict it. But, at the same time, there's not enough lore to confirm it. Coming back to my 'Miqo'te are people' statement for a moment: implying that we can form an accurate and realistic culture for them based only on biological data interpreted from some tidbits of lore is akin to saying that, if I want to understand chinnesse culture and I don't have access to the proper 'lore' (so to speak) but know a few specific bits of data, then I should study apes and birds. Posibly apes and birds that live in Asia. And then conclude that because certain birds or apes of Asia act in a specific way that can be correlated to chinnese society somehow, then that chinnese people act like those birds and apes in every other aspect too. Of course that chinnese people are not a fantasy culture made up by someone with a typewritter, mind, but the point is that you can't understand a culture by only looking at their biology. You have to study all the bits. Like the enviorement. Enviorement has much more to do with a culture than biology. A society that relies on farms to sustain itself will have different beliefs, for example, than one that relies on minery. Everyone will use whatever interpretation they want for their own micro-canon, and that is quite fine. I do think that this specific interpretation of a fantasy society is not only innacurate but also unfair, as it treats a whole race as if they were simple animals when the in-game universe explicits they are people. Oh, and finally: pickles! Because all posts should have some random non-sequitur shouting at the end.

This is a very interesting and well written post. With that in mind, my reply will probably come out as nonsensical internet grumbling! However, I think this goes a bit too far into biology-only territory, considering the Miqo'te mere animals and not people. Granted, you have mentioned that your interest and focus is in biology, which is still interesting, and useful as many of what you detail here can be used to understand how the tribe system probably works on a basic level. It still forget all about what these people would think about it, as pressumably they are thinking people and not lions driven mostly by their insticts. Case in point: The "I'll kill all of our enemies and eat their babies!" line is probably just a gag, the character being bloodthirsty and kind of troll-ish (in an internet sense). It cannot be interpreted as anything else because it's a line that shows up for -all- races, as far as I've seen. So if we give it a specific straight interpretation for Seeker Miqo'tes, we'd have to interpret it for all the other races also straight: that all races have a thing for eating their enemies' babies. I hope the reason why this is ridicolous requires no explanation. I'd also think that the devs would have mentioned it at some point if Seeker society was okay with killing children of the previous nunh. From a purely biological view point it makes sense, sure, that Seekers would kill the others' children because they are obviously not 'strong enough'. Except that people aren't completely driven by their instinct, and cultures aren't just formed by biology alone. To have a more accurate picture of how a society of thinking people would work with this tribal system, we'd have to join this biological extrapolation with a cultural one. See how Miqo'te thought has evolved across the ages, what they think, what other cultures influenced in them and the supernatural factor of the gods or other entities that could have meddled in their history and changed their ways in one direction or the other. Also, consider that cultures are not shaped by biology. Look at us, humans of Earth: we have a crapton of different cultures with different values, and yet our biology is the same. If we want to come up with how Miqo'te societies work, we need to also find out how their thought shaped the culture. Or we could go the easy way and try to not think too hard about it because there's really not enough lore to base any of this off.

That pretty much settles the whole thing down!

Nothing says "I'm a serious Miqo'te" more than an eyepatch. Sadly, I think they are always on the left eye. Or at least the two models I saw during the Beta. With that said, what I do when undecided about characters is make them all and try to roleplay them (this ussually means hunting around for fellow roleplayers). Backstory is not that important at this point, in case you are worried about that. Think of it as a 'test run'. The ensuing roleplay might even force you to come up with details about your characters you didn't even think. But, more importantly, it will grant you practical experience with them. Since you will be playing them a lot (or so I guess, anyway), it's quite important to try them both and decide based on this practical experience instead of the theory behind the character. That's pretty much how I settled which one of my characters would be my main for roleplaying in ARR, really.

It would interesting to make this confusion an in-character deal, with historians unable to decide if the Calamity was a big deal but not enough to warrant a change of eras (since Bahamut didn't last very long), or if it really was big enough that it is now the Seventh Umbral Era, or even if it's the Seventh Astral because 'obviously' the Umbral one only lasted as long as Bahamut. Even more fun can be had with different organizations using their own dating. A shipping record from the Limsan docks might read as if it's the Seventh Astral Era, while records in Ul'dah detailing the same shipments date them as if it was still the Sixth. Lots of confused fun can be had! At least until Word of God says what the denizens of Eorzea are using at large.

It's reasonable, I think, to assign an accent to the races because they probably do have one. But only and only in the case of the elezen we can use a real world accent, because the devs have stated that their pronounciation is french-like. We don't know what accent Miqo'te have, for instance, and saying that Roegadyn have, say, russian accents or whatever is a bit weird. Basically, we shouldn't stick a real life language as a races' language. Just emote that you are speaking in a native language instead, and use proper english punctuation (or whatever language you are roleplaying on) to avoid confusions and stereotypes.

I think I didn't miss anything. Enjoy! Or not. Probably not enjoyable. So have a donnut instead! Part 1: The Basics Part 2: Growing Up Part 3: Past Influences Part 4: Beliefs And Opinions Part 5: Relationships With Others Part 6: Likes And Dislikes Part 7: Self Images And Etc.

I do not think it makes sense for races to have the same native language, as they all have different cultural backgrounds. Different cultures have different necessities and different view on life, and that is reflected on the way they speak and think. It doesn't even make sense for the city-states to have the same main language, reallistically, since they all have very different cultures too. (Though you can handwave it due to the extentsion of economic relations and the lenght of history). Though we could think that Eorzea works like ancient Greece in our world: culturally aligned city-states that also shared a common language (though even then there were some differences, like how some letters were written down). Unless stated otherwise by the lore, I'd say this is the case: the races have been together for so long they all have a common language now. Now, for RP interactions: I always consider that the characters are really speaking in their own language. However, because learning a new language is a lot of work (and making one up, in the case of the devs, is probably even more taxing), everything gets 'translated' to english as far as the player is concerned. Just add a little emote to specify if you are suddenly speaking in ancient roegadyn. Otherwise, you run the risk of letting people out of the conversation when, in-character, they should be able to understand you.

That's a very good question. Seeing how the Empire military structure is based on that of the roman empire, I'd say roman names are probably a safe bets. Using the few named characters that come from the empire, we might be able to shape a very limited but useful idea of how their conventions work. There's also this post in the official lore forums. Someone there analized the known garleand names with different degrees of success. In that thread, one of the devs made a short post about how the word in the middle of garlean names represents their sociopolitical position. So it's worth a read, even though most of it is speculation.

I. Basic Info Characters: Ildur Vaernian. Ulanan Ulan. K'airos Thalen. Thiereia Elentre. Primary character: Ulanan Ulan & Ildur Vaernian Linkshells: Commerce Regulation Agency. Primary RP linkshell: Commerce Regulation Agency. II. RP Style Amount of RP (light, medium, heavy): Medium-Heavy. Chances are I'll be in-character everywhere I go, but plot situations might force me to state that my characters are not actually were you see them (like injuries, kidnapping, plain physical impossibilities due to travel times, etc). I tend to play 'unavailable' characters anyway if I enjoy their gameplay. Clearest clue to know if I'm in character and not emoting is that I will be walking instead of running or sprinting. There are also moment when I might not feel like roleplaying. Those are odds, but can happen. Other than those cases, poking me randomly in the street should result in on-the-field RP. Views on RP combat and injuries: I prefer my combat on text doses and with a determined roll system, decided by OOC discussion between the parts, to determine success or failure of actions. It ussually comes down to 'rolls above 50 are success' for simplicity's sake. Rolling can be skipped if the scene is planed to end in a specific way because of PLOTZ. I am, however, not against in-game dueling matches. I just prefer text-based combat. Unless we are all on a hurry. Then it's probably better to duel it out. Views on IC romance: Not my cup of tea. Views on non-romantic RP (family ties, etc): Those are good and I actually encourage them. It gives characters more depth by making them look like they are part of pre-existing social structures. Views on lore: Not breaking lore is important, as it defines the basis from which all characters spawn their own microcanons in order to interact with each other. Reasonable bending is allowed, since it's likely that many details will not be covered by it. Differences between microcanons should be discussed OOCly only and only if reaching a definite answer is required for the current plot. Otherwise, it could very well be an IC interpretation of the world, and that's fairly okay. Views on chat functions (/say, /linkshell, etc): The /shout channel is OOC. /yell is yelling loudly or shrieking, /say includes normal speaking and some not-that-loud yells. /party, /linkshell and /free company channels depend upon each party, linkshell or free company, respectively. III. Other Info Country: Classified. Timezone: GMT - 3:00 Contact info: Private Messages through this forum or whispers in game. I'm as likely to miss or catch them equally! [align=center][glow=blue]~Special announcements can be found in the posts below~[/glow][/align]

I think FreeLanceWizard's post was quite accurate. We should give him a cookie. I do have to say, however, that I know of a few people who refuse to use this forums because they equate 'Admins and mods are on the same linkshell' as 'they will be an evil tyranny of evil', based on that lone fact, or on anecdotal experience from other, unrelated communities. As if that somehow proved that a knit close group of people couldn't be any good ever. I find that quite silly. But people will think what people will think. There's not much to do about it. You either ignore them and continue or you can adapt, which I guess in this case would mean to form a multi-linkshell moderator team. But then they will think you are part of a conspiration. Somewhere someone somehow will think that a group of people from various linkshells really mean that you are evil anyway. So there's no victory move at all, really. Quite a sad thing.

The lack of elderly Miqo'te is probably an aesthetic choice made by Squeenix. However, there's also the possibility that Miqo'te age much more gracefully than other races.

Ulanan would carry a jar of olives, two potions, a roll of bandages, a cup and a small metal bowl for cooking, a spoon, a few travel rations and all of her gil (she's not wealthy). Also a creepy wooden mask, because nothing freaks people more than a small lalafell looking like an anonymous psycho.

I'll take them into account, as I think naming conventions are good tools to give the world consistency. Cultures meet and merge somewhat in the Eorzean city-states, so finding that people have adapted another culture's names into their own isn't hard to believe. That should give me enough freedom to use names that don't follow the rules strictly and that don't break the lore.

1- I have not found any references of how long they live. Or, for that matter, how long any of the races live. For the time being, I'd just apply human years to everyone while avoiding specific age topics when talking with other people. You know, just in case. 2- Technically anywhere. I think I've seen Miqo'te NPCs almost everywhere, so you can very easily say your character was born and raised in any of the city-states. I think there's also a specific location you can visit in-game that is a Seekers' village, but I haven't personally reached that place. 3-Check this Miqo'te Naming Conventions thread in the official lore forums. That should give you an idea of how tribal/traditional Miqo'te culture works. Hope this helped a little bit, at least!

My (probably) future main character, Ulanan. If her cuteness doesn't kill you, her alliteration will.

I heard that, according to many scholars and wisemen, one is suppoused to drop an introduction here before posting or lurking around for a long period of time. Not doing so is considered unpolite and punished by getting cookies. So, following the protocols of this time and I age...I actually posted on other sub-forums first. Oops! You should probably know that english is not my first language. So please excuse me if I commit any orthographic and/or gramatic atrocities while I'm here. I'll try to keep them to a bare minimum. Disclaimer: the 'bare minimum' previously mentioned might be fatal for sentient creatures. I played Lineage 2, WoW, a bit of Aion, some Champions Online and TERA. The last of which I actually still play. Kinda. Sorta. I just log in to roleplay, really. Now I flee because, as I stated before, the Law might pursue me since I didn't follow the due introduction protocols! Disclaimer: Add a chase theme music of your choosing here.

I made a lallafel female just to see the emotes during the last few hours of the latest beta. Some of my friends gathered and decided to roleplay, so I joined them. The character has grown on me, so I think she'll be my main now, at least for roleplaying purposes.

I'm quite sure the current year is supposed to be 1577. At least the wiki specifies it in the Lore 101 section. No idea how long months are, though. My (uneducated) guess would be that they are the usual 4 weeks to keep things similar to what all the players are used to.