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Posona · **08-22-2017, 03:24 PM**

First let me say that while I have started Stormblood, I've barely played any of it yet and probably won't for a while.

Okay so I've been working on a new character. He's a Xaela, and at first I didn't even plan to use him for RP, I was just messing around in the character creator and decided I wanted to make a new character to learn how to tank, but then I got attached to him and he developed a backstory before I knew it. Since no planning went into him beforehand, I'd used the name generator and went with the first name that struck my fancy--Cota Sagahl.Â

While creating his backstory I stuck to the lore of the Sagahl, but the only thing I know (that any of us know, to the best of my knowledge?) is that they're basically vegetarian, they don't eat meat or use animals as beasts of burden. Therefore anything else concerning his past isn't lore-based because it's not in the lore. I've looked at all the lore posts concerning Xaela and I've seen nothing more concrete. So my question is, if I were to go into greater detail on the Sagahl tribe--like if I were to say they only use one type of weapon because they've no need for anything else due to their diet, or that they're excellent botanists and weavers, or that in order to defend themselves against aggressive beasts they use a sleeping powder to knock them out instead of kill them--would that be overstepping lore boundaries? Would it also be overstepping boundaries to assume they're on the more peaceful side because of their beliefs in beasts equaling men? If I've overdone it then I'll create a new/off-shoot clan, but I'd rather avoid the $10 name change. (Which I know isn't exactly necessaryÂ but I'm too detail-oriented not to.)

Kilieit · **08-22-2017, 04:09 PM**

I think this kind of elaborations is fairly standard! I don't think there's a problem with it, as long as you consider two things:

1) What will you do if someone else has also elaborated, but they've made different extrapolations than the ones you made?

2) What will you do if more official lore comes out that poses your ideas as contrary to the official ones? (A lot of xaela RPers - especially Dotharl - had this problem when Stormblood released, because the elaborations that the in-game quests made weren't immediately intuitive from the previously provided elevator pitches.)

Most people resolve this fairly simply by just having their character be from a different family unit in the tribe, or from a different camp, that had their own extra quirks without the difference being so significant as to have caused a formal tribe split. If that works for you, then you're A-OK.

Posona · **08-22-2017, 07:01 PM**

(08-22-2017, 04:09 PM)Kilieit Wrote: I think this kind of elaborations is fairly standard! I don't think there's a problem with it, as long as you consider two things:

1) What will you do if someone else has also elaborated, but they've made different extrapolations than the ones you made?

2) What will you do if more official lore comes out that poses your ideas as contrary to the official ones? (A lot of xaela RPers - especially Dotharl - had this problem when Stormblood released, because the elaborations that the in-game quests made weren't immediately intuitive from the previously provided elevator pitches.)

Most people resolve this fairly simply by just having their character be from a different family unit in the tribe, or from a different camp, that had their own extra quirks without the difference being so significant as to have caused a formal tribe split. If that works for you, then you're A-OK.

Thanks for your input! Those were definitely my main concerns. Obviously there will be other Sagahl out there, but so far I haven't even seen one in passing, and it looks like Cota might be the only one on the Xaela discord channel I'm in (atm). Admittedly, if I had planned him out beforeÂ naming him, Sagahl is probably the last tribe I would've gone for, but I'm actually happy with it now. It's not as unique and thrilling as many of the others, but now I'm glad because it poses interesting challenges for development and interaction. I had considered the different camp idea but I wasn't sure how that worked, since I've barely started on Stormblood and it'll probably be a while before I get that far.

Arashin Kujqai · **08-23-2017, 12:00 AM**

Tbh, I typically work with what information we have and just go from there into developing my character. Just looking at their explanation alone gives me a few ideas of how to take it.

A tribe which sees all beastkin as equals with man, therefore refuses to eat or use them as beasts of burden. As a result, the diet of the Sagahl mainly consists of steppe shrubs and vilekin.

This could take a few forms from my perspective, it could mean their tribe is peaceful inÂ general or even worship beasts to some degree. It also just may mean exactly as it says, they won't use or eat them but if they'd have to defend themselves from a beast then they may at the very least kill it. The line that sticks out the most to me is just that they "see all beastkin as equals with man" to mean you could see varieties of this tribe on different levels. Some may be overly respectful, some just forcing themselves to abide by their traditions, some who see them as weak as any other creature. The fun sounds like it'd come from the differentiation of how your character personally is. Something I had to learn recently was that the tribe doesn't necessarily make the Xaela, it just goes hand in hand with them.

As for the mention of sleeping powders and etc, there's actually potions that you can throw/use on enemies that induce paralyze, sleep, blind, etc, so you're definitely not overstepping there. I would say don't be afraid to take a couple liberties so long as it doesn't kill immersion or create tension with other tribe members that would argue it OOCly, nothing too extreme but still just logical enough to fit. Like for the camp concept, there are more than likely Xaela that exist within the Azim Steppe that are beyond the map we actually get, could easily say your tribe grew up in the more western area or northern etc. Perhaps they did have a camp in the steppe at some point but split ways eventually? They're not really too out of this world or lore breaking to actually get someone to nit-pick it. Feel free to roam around the idea just a little bit and not worry about differences as those differences will be what makes the RP sessions interesting.

Posona · **08-23-2017, 02:36 AM**

(08-23-2017, 12:00 AM)Valic Wrote: A tribe which sees all beastkin as equals with man, therefore refuses to eat or use them as beasts of burden. As a result, the diet of the Sagahl mainly consists of steppe shrubs and vilekin.

This could take a few forms from my perspective, it could mean their tribe is peaceful inÂ general or even worship beasts to some degree. It also just may mean exactly as it says, they won't use or eat them but if they'd have to defend themselves from a beast then they may at the very least kill it. The line that sticks out the most to me is just that they "see all beastkin as equals with man" to mean you could see varieties of this tribe on different levels.Â

Yeah, one significant part of his story was that the tribe itself was split into two schools of thought: killing in self-defense is okay vs. no killing no matter what. Something happens that eventually makes it impossible for both sides to stay as one and they break apart from each other, one side creating a new tribe entirely so as not to be associated with the other. One of my issues is that I'm not sure how scattered the tribes are? Do they usually stay in and move as one big unit, or are there usually camps scattered about with each camp having its own leader and variations on customs and beliefs? Are the camps usually small or do they vary in size?Â

This is what I was going to go with: he comes from a relatively large camp of Sagahl that already has a rift in it on whether or not it's okay to kill in self-defense, and he's part of the family of leadership in that particular camp, which draws attention to him in positive and negative ways as he grows up. They are not isolationists, they trade with outsiders and allow outsiders in (though the people are torn on this issue too), make camp in areas with few aggressive beasts in order to avoid conflict, have their own beliefs and superstitions (for instance, a yellow moon is a bad omen, blue eyes are a blessing of Azim but not considered conventionally attractive or favorable), and the only herd they keep is sheep for their wool and milk. Fruits and vegetables are a delicacy, they're skilled weavers and metalsmiths, expert botanists, only use spears when they need to use weapons at all (on large vilekin, for instance; spears are best for piercing carapaces). Leadership is usually established by birth but can be challenged and taken through combat, but since they're largely more peaceful this only happens if they feel their leader is truly incapable of leading. The elderly are revered and give counsel but all final decisions are the leader's. Learning to read and write is treated with indifference, but if one has a particular passion for it they're considered odd. They don't believe magic should be used by mortal men, that doing so is inviting disaster because it's impossible to fully understand something that comes from the realm of the gods; it's dangerous and also extremely disrespectful. They're generally a quiet people who are more likely to side-eye the things they don't like/trust/believe in rather than outright say something about it. They can be passive-aggressive to a fault.

Valence · **08-23-2017, 06:25 AM**

Others have already answered possible solutions, especially the usual one being working on a "local lore" (versus "global lore"), about a specific unit in the clan and whatnot. You can definitely play on expanding your own lore applied only to your little nucleus of family for your character. World building with that approach, is a nice writing exercise and I understand how it can flesh a character out. And it's certainly not really overstepping boundaries, but rather taking risks with the possibility of steering away from xaela stuff in favour of your own.

I also see another approach, or rather, reasoning, that may not be as popular I guess, but that has the merit to be lore centric. With this in mind maybe you are trying too much to go away from the lore we have instead of working with it? For example if you take even the xaela tribes that are actually portrayed in Stormblood like the Mol, Qestir, Oronir and Dotharl, I can honestly say that maybe with the exception of the Dotharl who actually bear brand new Dotharl lore, most of what we learned about the other tribes is either confirmation of the few descriptive bits we had on each of them, or either xaela lore in general covering the whole race and its customs.Â

If you take the Mol for example, the lore doesn't really try to "world build" like you try to do. It doesn't go lengths to describe how their hunting tools are different and what you have or how their people are different from the other tribes. It just flows in the direction of what we knew already of the Mol, and how they do the bidding of their gods in everything and how their whole karma is tied to it. It expands on that mostly. For the rest, well, it shows how they still are xaela, how they have xaela customs, xaela diet, xaela problems, and even how they still participate in xaela steppe politics. Their specific tribe trait with their gods just tends to colour the way they do all of that.Â

While we had a whole new understanding of what the Dotharl actually are and how they think, well, they still portray the same xaela generic customs too. A lot of the quests you get in the Steppes with all those tribes are specific to them yes, but they also most of the time bring up various bits of generic xaela traditions (like milking sheep or how sheep is regarded and treated, etc). Reunion itself brings a lot of lore in that regards (thinking about the xaela children creche for example).Â

What I mean is, you can also try to take all those bits of xaela lore, which are now quite numerous (food, eating habits, hunting, warrior culture, politics, herding, mating, education and whatnot), and try to see how they would apply to a tribe like the Sagahl. And/or play around all that xaela lore we have already.

I think the pros of that approach is that you might also get a tribe more anchored into the nomadic xaela atmosphere.

Edit: if it's any help that's how I proceeded to flesh out my own character background. I could have gone with creating my own Keeper tribe or what you have, with their own made up customs, thinking "what if I try to create a new keeper clan with their own little things and what will happen?". It's perfectly fine but I chose to go the other way around: "Let's take keepers with a city life and botanist/gridanian lore, and see how I can insert all that actual lore in her past and how it will flesh her out". In that case, I made up almost nothing, because the lore is already here, so I didn't go out of the mold.

Edit 2: re reading in details what you fleshed out already doesn't seem contradictory at all with what I say so... maybe that makes my post more like a ramble and guidelines than an actual counter proposal.

Posona · **08-23-2017, 11:58 AM**

(08-23-2017, 06:25 AM)Valence Wrote: Others have already answered possible solutions, especially the usual one being working on a "local lore" (versus "global lore"), about a specific unit in the clan and whatnot. You can definitely play on expanding your own lore applied only to your little nucleus of family for your character. World building with that approach, is a nice writing exercise and I understand how it can flesh a character out. And it's certainly not really overstepping boundaries, but rather taking risks with the possibility of steering away from xaela stuff in favour of your own.

I also see another approach, or rather, reasoning, that may not be as popular I guess, but that has the merit to be lore centric. With this in mind maybe you are trying too much to go away from the lore we have instead of working with it? For example if you take even the xaela tribes that are actually portrayed in Stormblood like the Mol, Qestir, Oronir and Dotharl, I can honestly say that maybe with the exception of the Dotharl who actually bear brand new Dotharl lore, most of what we learned about the other tribes is either confirmation of the few descriptive bits we had on each of them, or either xaela lore in general covering the whole race and its customs.Â

If you take the Mol for example, the lore doesn't really try to "world build" like you try to do. It doesn't go lengths to describe how their hunting tools are different and what you have or how their people are different from the other tribes. It just flows in the direction of what we knew already of the Mol, and how they do the bidding of their gods in everything and how their whole karma is tied to it. It expands on that mostly. For the rest, well, it shows how they still are xaela, how they have xaela customs, xaela diet, xaela problems, and even how they still participate in xaela steppe politics. Their specific tribe trait with their gods just tends to colour the way they do all of that.Â

While we had a whole new understanding of what the Dotharl actually are and how they think, well, they still portray the same xaela generic customs too. A lot of the quests you get in the Steppes with all those tribes are specific to them yes, but they also most of the time bring up various bits of generic xaela traditions (like milking sheep or how sheep is regarded and treated, etc). Reunion itself brings a lot of lore in that regards (thinking about the xaela children creche for example).Â

What I mean is, you can also try to take all those bits of xaela lore, which are now quite numerous (food, eating habits, hunting, warrior culture, politics, herding, mating, education and whatnot), and try to see how they would apply to a tribe like the Sagahl. And/or play around all that xaela lore we have already.

I think the pros of that approach is that you might also get a tribe more anchored into the nomadic xaela atmosphere.

Edit: if it's any help that's how I proceeded to flesh out my own character background. I could have gone with creating my own Keeper tribe or what you have, with their own made up customs, thinking "what if I try to create a new keeper clan with their own little things and what will happen?". It's perfectly fine but I chose to go the other way around: "Let's take keepers with a city life and botanist/gridanian lore, and see how I can insert all that actual lore in her past and how it will flesh her out". In that case, I made up almost nothing, because the lore is already here, so I didn't go out of the mold.

Edit 2: re reading in details what you fleshed out already doesn't seem contradictory at all with what I say so... maybe that makes my post more like a ramble and guidelines than an actual counter proposal.

I appreciate the ramble, regardless!

That's exactly what I try to do when I world build, I want to work with the lore. My biggest problem now is that I'm not as well-versed in Xaela lore as other people because I've not played that far ahead. After everyone's responses I definitely feel more confident in my approach and that I'm not taking things too far. I was worried about "overstepping" because of what might happen should Cota meet another Sagahl who would undoubtedly have a different background. If tribes stayed in one big unit and didn't split up across the steppe into smaller units, that would cause problems. At least for me it would just because of how nitpicky I am.Â

But now I have another problem and that's my lack of knowledge about Xaela lore in general. Reading about it and experiencing stuff in-game are two totally different things; I don't know the finer details of half the things you said, so now I feel like I need to keep Cota in reserve until I've played up to that point so I know exactly what to work with. Even though Cota himself is supposed to be different from how Xaela are explained and one of his major character traits is wanting to distance himself from being Xaela altogether, it's because of his experiences as a Xaela that he feels that way in the first place. It's hard to portray that accurately if I'm not even sure what being a XaelaÂ means, not just a Sagahl.

Arashin Kujqai · **08-23-2017, 01:11 PM**

Probably off topic but if you feel like getting a feel for each tribe or understanding what the life of a Xaela sorta looks like... This post of drawings is amazing.

http://ojiyaff.tumblr.com/tagged/51scales

The artist drew all of the tribes according to their descriptions as if they're in daily life. People have been RP'ing Xaela before SB but it's definitely evolved a bit more now that we have actual insight to them in the game in tribes. Playing the game will detail it best and any other questions I'm sure you can easily find. Though I'm a bit curious about your earlier question myself as well, if a tribe has a Khan(leader) over all the tribe or just certain families of it... Or can they spread out the tribe into other areas of the world and have different heads of the families or etc.

One of my issues is that I'm not sure how scattered the tribes are? Do they usually stay in and move as one big unit, or are there usually camps scattered about with each camp having its own leader and variations on customs and beliefs? Are the camps usually small or do they vary in size?

^ this

Iron Bride · **08-23-2017, 01:25 PM**

I generally have worked from the theory that, although the lore seems to use the words "clan" and "tribe" interchangeably when speaking about Xaela, it would somewhat make more sense that a tribe is made up of subunits (clans).Â Â

One of the side quests makes note that there are 50 Oroniri warriors up on the throne, and I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem too believable that the entirety of the steppe is able to be kept under control by 50 dudes/dudettes.Â It makes a lot more sense if Magnai is not only khan of all Oronir, but chieftain over this specific group of throne-dwelling Oronir, with other Oroniri living elsewhere.Â

These smaller Oronir clans living elsewhere, might have slightly different traditions, living under the rule of chieftains or chieftesses, but are still fully Oroniri as they all share a common mythos or philosophy (in this case, belief in Azim as the superior god).Â This slightly looser framework allows for two characters, written by two different roleplayers, to both be Oronir, but to have grown up not knowing one another and to have different ideas on how best to praise the sun - without headcanon conflict.

This is just my way of handling it, yours might vary!Â Â I think encouraging creativity in this regard is more beneficial than harmful overall and fully support people making headcanon offshoot camps of canon tribes that are a little bit different than the small lore blurb we get.

Posona · **08-23-2017, 07:11 PM**

(08-23-2017, 01:25 PM)Dayuuqi Wrote: I generally have worked from the theory that, although the lore seems to use the words "clan" and "tribe" interchangeably when speaking about Xaela, it would somewhat make more sense that a tribe is made up of subunits (clans).Â Â

One of the side quests makes note that there are 50 Oroniri warriors up on the throne, and I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem too believable that the entirety of the steppe is able to be kept under control by 50 dudes/dudettes.Â It makes a lot more sense if Magnai is not only khan of all Oronir, but chieftain over this specific group of throne-dwelling Oronir, with other Oroniri living elsewhere.Â

These smaller Oronir clans living elsewhere, might have slightly different traditions, living under the rule of chieftains or chieftesses, but are still fully Oroniri as they all share a common mythos or philosophy (in this case, belief in Azim as the superior god).Â This slightly looser framework allows for two characters, written by two different roleplayers, to both be Oronir, but to have grown up not knowing one another and to have different ideas on how best to praise the sun - without headcanon conflict.

This is just my way of handling it, yours might vary!Â Â I think encouraging creativity in this regard is more beneficial than harmful overall and fully support people making headcanon offshoot camps of canon tribes that are a little bit different than the small lore blurb we get.

Yes yes, that's what I'm talking about! I was thinking if nothing else it could be an offshoot that splintered from the tribe proper but I feel that would still entail a name change to properly distinguish. But it really makes a lot more sense to me if they were split up and scattered in that way. It definitely seems like a much safer way to do things, at any rate. I didn't plan on getting in-depth with their particular mythology, just little things that could be related to it--like the idea of a yellow moon being a bad omen. Though I'm assuming they would praise the moon or something similar, I feel like it's a safe assumption to make, and as such things pertaining to the evening/night are given more weight than daytime things. However, even using the different clans within tribes = similar but differing customs idea, I wouldn't be comfortable doing that until I've met Xaela in-game.

How big is Xaela territory anyway? Where is it exactly? I'll still probably just continue playing Stormblood and hold out with finalizing details until I've gotten to that part of the story, but I'm really curious.

Kilieit · **08-23-2017, 07:19 PM**

(08-23-2017, 07:11 PM)Posona Wrote: How big is Xaela territory anyway? Where is it exactly? I'll still probably just continue playing Stormblood and hold out with finalizing details until I've gotten to that part of the story, but I'm really curious.

At Frankfurt FanFest they showed us this map of Othard:

[Image: FFXIV_PUB_FANFESTIVAL_2017_Frankfurt_01.jpg]

Essentially... this whole area?

[Image: 64552f7ef1.jpg]

Is xaela territory. Even the zone we get in-game is a relatively small portion of it; you can see more extending off to the north, east, and the west.

Valence · **08-24-2017, 03:34 AM**

All areas we get to visit ingame are usually very tiny portions of their whole region usually. The Steppe we see ingame is probably one of the many Steppes, where other xaela tribes not portrayed ingame probably dwell in at the time.

Also good to keep in mind that the game always portrays what it can handle in terms of engine, resources and just manpower/dev time. You might notice that a lot of Stormblood scenes especially try to feature armies fighting and advancing and most of the time also just show tiny parts of them, as well as tiny parts of fights and regions.

ExAtomos · **09-01-2017, 08:46 AM**

(08-23-2017, 01:25 PM)Dayuuqi Wrote: One of the side quests makes note that there are 50 Oroniri warriors up on the throne, and I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem too believable that the entirety of the steppe is able to be kept under control by 50 dudes/dudettes.Â It makes a lot more sense if Magnai is not only khan of all Oronir, but chieftain over this specific group of throne-dwelling Oronir, with other Oroniri living elsewhere.Â

As an aside, don't forget just how powerful tradition and belief systems are. It's how nobility and religious leaders keep power over the multitudes below them. So it's definitely plausible either way, having other groups or there being just that one group.

Canon Xaela tribes--how much elaboration is too much?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes