Ildur

I'm afraid such a fast rotation of Hydaelyn doesn't make sense on a physical scale. Such a high speed would have drastic changes on the winds, for example. I'll poke a friend of mine who's an astrophysicist so he can do the math for me (I'm lazy and bad at maths). But besides that, there's nothing in lore determining that Eorzeans stay awake for various cycles of daylight before going to bed. Since the simplest solution is the most probable, it's more likely that this is just a gameplay representation for aesthetics (so that people that log in at night aren't doomed to have only a night-time game world) and for certain mechanics (I think weather and daytime affect fishing in some way).

The only problem with IC dungeon runs is that, without a vanity system, you can't look the part if you have specific looks in mind. For example, one of my characters is a Brass Blade and I have gone to incredible lenghts to get her to look like one. However, when I try to run dungeons with that gear, I get plastered because some pieces of it are too low level and others aren't for tanks. And let's not mention the silly timer. However, if you can handwave the looks or don't mind, then it is quite a good way to get to know other characters.

I remember some bombs and gnats during a FATE or Leve, I forgot, which were very explicitly said to have come from the Void, or at least a portal. I should go fish for it and see the actual wording. But it would seem that the most likely explanation (to me) is that there are creatures in the Void that take physical form when entering the physical dimension. Kind of how angels and demons work in Christian theology.

It is true that they own the Shroud and that Gridanians (or anyone else living in it) is a tenant. For that, it is perfectly reasonable for them to have rules and to frown upon people who break their stuff. What is not reasonable, however, is that their 'frown upon' is trying to murder people. This would be akin to the mountain lion trying to eat your neighbours for no reason at all or because it felt threatened by them. Your most likely course of action as a person would be to save the neighbour, not to stand idly and say "Well, he must have done something!" and let the lion eat him. What we have to decide is if the Elementals are below humans, like the lion (in the sense that they have no rationality) or if they are above them, like gods. And then we have to wonder if they are good gods, because they certainly seem very fond on executing people without giving reasons more than "I'm threatened by him".

It is at least mentioned during the quests about the Ala Mhigan refugees in Quarrymill, since I remember very clearly commenting the "somethingwrath" to people right after doing them.

Roleplaying a Padjal, an Elemental or a chosen one of the Elementals is just making your character a Mary Sue. Padjal are part of Gridania's ruling body, so it is a major "Mary Sueism", even if you imply he's wandering around and not delving in politics. Still, they are directly influenced by the Elementals, so besides being a leader of Gridania (and nobody could refute you because that's what Padjal are meant to do) you are also a Chosen One. Being deemed pure by the Elementals is akin to being a Chosen One of any other god-like entity. Being one of the Elementals taking physical form is no different that implying your character is Nophica made manifest, or that you are a piece of Bahamut soul. It's just asking for incredible trouble. Of course, if you don't care about the implications your character has on other roleplayers (maybe because you are part of a close group who is okay with those type of characters), then be my guest. All the other suggestions are intereting and plausible enough, though, specially the Wildlings one, though you have to remember Wildlings are 'cursed' to roam the Shroud forever, so it might be hard to justify going anywhere else ICly. Not impossible, but pretty hard to do unless you handwave it with "the Elementals work in mysterious ways".

Here you can find what the "Void" means traditionally in the Final Fantasy series. As far as ARR is concerned, though, the Void seems to refer to some kind of alternate reality where there is no matter. Creatures emerging from it most likely gain a physical form when entering a material realm, as otherwise the term "Void", which sugests nothingness, makes no sense. Though it is possible that Squee was thinking of it as just a generic hell, but that's unlikely. There's no hard lore about it, though what is true is that Squee uses it as a generic fantasy hell as far as summoning creatures from it is concerned. There's no word on how to contact them in-game. Though I remember a FATE in Northern Thanalan were a cultist lets herself be taken over by a succubuss and ends up taking its physical form.

Or you could make a new thread for it. That way, you will get many appraisals!

Oh, also here is another helpful link. Making a character sheet is not necessary (though it can help if you forget details, just like I do), but I found it helps quite a bit in making characters. It also has a long list of hobbies, since you mentioned having trouble with that part.

I, Ildur, have solutions for every point! A: Poke them OOCly with brackets if you are worried about that. Most people will be welcoming unless they are huge jerks or if an "intruder" wouldn't make sense. For example, if they are pretending to be inside a non-public building. Though players tend to be sensible and use party char when rolepalying in unreacheable areas. If they are out in the open, you can assume they are willing to be 'interrupted'. B: Practice makes perfection. There might be some tricks you can pull of to 'be better', but overall you won't get better at it unless you try. If you find someone who you feel is way more talented than you, then go ahead and roleplay with them! That way you can learn from them, or even ask them stuff. C: I lied. I don't have a solution for this point. There's nothing wrong with being shy, and you might want to fight against it by jumping recklessly into interactions without thinking too much about it. Just the usual "why would my character interrupt?" considerations. D: I don't think you should give wiki pages much importance. They are nice "I want to know more about this character" pamphlets, but don't immediately correlate with the quality of the character or their player's roleplay skill. While having long detailed backgrounds is very nice, a lot of characters don't need it. You can have the basics down and then have him develop and grow while you roleplay him, instead of having a lot of things set in stone from the beggining.

If you go read the Miqo'te Naming Conventions in the official lore forums, you'll see that tribes are divided into territories, with ussually one nunh per zone. So you can say that the tribe of your character is "the Aldgoat Tribe of the Sagolii Desert" or "the Aldgoat Tribe of Coerthas" or wherever without incurring into any lore breaking. Even if canonically they are somewhere else (or if they are different than your made-up N tribe), you can justify it by saying that they are from a different territory that developed in different ways. Go crazy! Also, remember there's basically no lore about any of the actual tribes except for the U (drake) tribe, which has a village at the border of the Sagolii Desert, but they break the lore by having the nunh and the leader being the same person (which is something that rarely happens, according to the lore thread). Here is a summary of the dev posts about the matter. There have been also a great number of Miqo'te threads in the past in this very same forum, so you might want to take a dive into them.

There are aldgoats in game that can be found around Camp Drybone, though it's suggested in a FATE that they come from the south. I don't recall them being anywhere else, but that doesn't mean they can't be found in other zones. Just something to keep in mind when deciding where the tribe was/is located. Another thing you might want to flesh out a bit is how the tribal society worked. No need to be extremely specific, but things like how leadership was formed, usual diet, religious rituals, if they were nomadic. You know, things that can come out in conversation with your character some day and that could give you insight as to how she was raised. As for information on aether, I can provide you this wiki link and this other one. The last post there is actually quite nice.

The reason Squee probably used was "because it's cool!" You can pretty much add your own meaning to those tatoos since there's no lore about it, just as Ansemaru said. They could be anything from ways to recognize family members, to ways to recognize roles in the society, or just pretty decorations.

I am sad that it doesn't even get mentioned. Maybe it is hidden in some inconsequential NPC, but who knows? The Greenwrath is an interesting concept for roleplay and if there were more information about it in ARR we could use it more effectively. But right now, some things might or might have not been retconned, and some things might or might have not changed. It's hard to say. Back on the subject of the Ixali: the Elementals seem to have a policy with those that live in the Twelveswood that asks them to return what they take from the forest. If you want to cut down 10 trees, you have to plant 10 new ones. I imagine other things would work like some kind of barter (because I'm not sure how you would return consumed food, for example). It's likely that the Ixali were breaking this rule in some way. The specifics of it can be assumed to have been lost to history and, if there's more than one version, we can pretend all of them are product of an in-universe lack of data about the matter.

There's really no trick to it. I just play mine as if she was a tiny human. Just remember to not be extremely cute more than accidentaly (those emotes!), as playing a cute lalafell falls on the 'tired out' territory. Unless, of course, that is your goal.

That's quite a useful bit of data! The Greenwrath is actually kind of catastrophic. People who are target of it draw nature's wrath, whose most obvious manifestation is animals trying to kill you (and anyone who gets in the way). Additionaly, it looks like in 1.0 when the player arrived at Gridania, there was a whole questline dedicated to purifying one of the woodsin (which is exactly what it says on the tin: sins against the woods) and thus not being target of the Greenwrath. It was implied that all outsiders had to take part of this ritual if they wanted to stay in Gridania. But since the player never does this on the storyline, we can assume this practice has been dropped. The reason for that might be that the Elementals are just too weak after the Calamity, though it could also be that it just got retconned and is not part of canon anymore. Source. There's also apparently something called a "wildling", which is basically an undead: a soul claimed by the elementals and cursed to roam the Shroud. Since there's none in ARR, as far as I can tell, they are pretty uncommon or they got retconned out of existence.

I understand the White Mage questline deals with the Greenwrath, but I have not personally done it. There's one example of it during the main storyline, though: there's an Ala Mhigo refugee who has been targetted by the Green(wood?)wrath. The local wildlife hates him and the Gridanians refuse to help him or his fellow refugees. He even tries to leave them behind but gets attacked and you have to save him (from a goblin robber, which I don't think are part of the Elementals repertoire of creatures, so it was probably just a coincidence).

The Ixali (Ixals? Ixal?) angering the Elementals means they would be targets of the Woodwrath and, therefore, they would be attacked by every living animal in the Shroud. Since they have at least one camp in the Shroud (we can argue there's more off-screen) and we never see them being attacked by the local wildlife, this is unlikely. I think the most likely reason for the Ixal to have become hostiles towards Gridania has to do with Garuda, who is stated to be among the most hostile of the Primals. Perhaps she managed to temper a great number of them (just like Ifrit did with the Amalj'aa). I also found this paragraph of lore in another webpage:

Since being a free paladin doesn't seem to grant you any kind of payment, I would agree that people who become free paladins will, most likely, do so for the sake of helping others. However, you can believe in helping others, join a group that does exactly that and still find yourself taking and justifying evil actions: Both a Sultarnsworn and a free paladin, no matter how much they dislike politics, could pick a group of brigands and decide that torturing them to find their leader's plan is justificable because of the greater good ("We torture these brigands today but we'll catch their leader or ruin their plan, saving many innocent lives"). If this does or does not make you evil could be discussed, but the point is that we shouldn't think that the Sultansworn are inherently more propense than free paladins to evil or unlawful actions than free paladins because of the politics involved in their organization.

This also means they can be less moral, though. The 'dishonored' paladin we see in the storyline is only someone whose moral code kept him away from corruption. But free paladins do not have any kind of regulative entity keeping them in check (or corrupting them). They can go both ways.

Hallowed Grounds and Spirits Within kind of hint at some kind of spiritual or holy power. However, they are just names and there's nothing in lore linking Paladins to the divine or holy in any direct way. The skill names might just be fancy labels, in-universe, because they are really flashy moves.

Do not oversimplify the posture and, more importantly, do not confuse correlation with causation. We are not choosing to ignore this bit of lore "because we don't like it", but because it's inconsistent with the gameplay and incoherent with the genre. I can make a White Mage, you can make a White Mage, anyone can make a White Mage. We all get specific skills unique to each Job. Mechanically, we all can be White Mages. The lore has no business telling us that we can't be White Mages because we can. Gameplay is our empirical demostration of it. I reject (this bit of) lore because it is not coherent . And because of this incoherency I don't like it. Is my dislike of the lore correlated to my rejection? Yes. Is my dislike of the lore cause of my rejection? No. And what is the correlation between my dislike and my rejection? Their common cause: that it makes no sense.

She actually can, because she can make a character that the game will call a White Mage and grant her Skills and aesthetic looks specific to it. A Padjal? You can't make one if you adhere to the game rules. And that is specifically the problem we have with the WM lore: it goes against the game's own rules. It is not a problem of us not liking the lore (we do not, that is true), but a problem of internal consistency and roleplaying coherence. If you can accept that then it is quite fine. And on the matter of if White Mages are better healers than Conjurers, well, you just said it. Succor once broke the world. Conjury did not. That tells us everything there is to know about how powerful a White Mage can be over a conjurer.

There's nothing wrong with being just a conjurer. What I'm arguing is that if the game allows everyone to be something, then the lore should support that. There's also a big implied difference between Conjurers and White Mages, since ones do not have access to Succor while the others do. It would be akin to asking "Why do you want to play a surgeon? Be a nurse instead!"

Sounsyy, you keep thinking of ARR as a singleplayer game. But it isn't. It's an MMO and as such its lore should, ideally, be designed to allow each and all player characters to coexist. While we surely can't expect Squee or any developer to make special unique quests for each character, we can expect them to not resort to stupid "You are the CHOSEN ONE!" anthics that are actually pretty damn tiresome even in single player games. Tiresome even if they are traditional. I like my story informing my gameplay, though. There are some mechanical restrictions that you can simply handwave as not part of lore because the game can't do it all and has to keep focused. This is the reason Black Mages don't get a torch spell even though they can bombard enemies with a barrage of fireballs. If your story is not going to inform your gameplay, your game is doing something wrong. It's going to be counterintuitive, just as the White Mage lore is counterintuitive because they are unique and super speshiul yet everyone can be mechanically one. This is an incoherency and inconsistency on a meta level that has to be salvaged for the lore to not confuse the hell out of a lot of people and work on a massive scale. This is irrelevant to the roleplaying scene of an MMO. I would argue that, yes, one is wrong and the other is right. The one wrong is the one that makes no sense. Respecting lore has no bearing if it is not coherent with its own game. Maybe it's coherent with the Author's designs and his previous work, but that means nothing for our roleplay. The lore is there to provide the setting, to provide a consistent and coherent world for the players to live in. I do agree that breaking it is bad, but only when doing so threatens the world coherency or consistency (like, for example, saying that my character is Bahamut's best pal). In the case of Jobs, we have that the lore itself is threatening its own coherency by implying there can only be only one White Mage even though the gameplay directly contradicts it. Story needs to inform gameplay: if White Mages are so special, they should BE special. You can tell me that White Magic is forbidden and that there's only one White Mage besides the Padjal, but while you tell me I'm going to point to every single character. I'm going to show you how many White Mages there really are. The ancient axiom of "Show, don't tell". You can roleplay and make fan fiction with it. It is, after all, fiction made by fans. If you are a fan and you roleplay, then you are making fan fiction and you are still roleplaying. What you really meant was: "You are not following lore to the letter and, as the Word of the Author is Holy, your roleplaying has no worth nor validity to me. Therefore, I will use a term I find despective to call you, showing you my dissaproval." Also, I have another interpretation of what roleplay in an MMO means: it's cooperative storytelling. And I can't form a story if the setting and its game are giving me mixed messages. That all smells like fan fiction: you are recycling canon to make up a 'new' character. And you said that fan fiction isn't roleplay. Though I haven't played 1.0, so I dunno. It's just the smell, I guess. It's beautiful when it works and provides a coherent world. When it doesn't, it stinks and we have to work around it. Imagine if the game allowed us to pick Padjal as a race, but then told us that Padjal are very, very rare and that YOU are the ONLY Padjal that has been born outside of the Shorud. Wouldn't it be a bit weird when you run into other three hundred players who want to be Padjal in character, too? No, lore has to move aside for the sake of coherency and fun. White Mage lore makes no sense in the MMO setting. It does in a singleplayer game, but ARR isn't that. It's first an MMO and secondly a Final Fantasy game. The same way an italian is first a human and -then- a citizen of Italy.