[Feedback!] Miqo'te Kunoichi Backstory

[Thunderbolt300]

Hey y'all!

 

I'm gonna own up right now in that while I've got maybe a month of play time to my name in FFXIV about 2 years ago, I never really paid much attention to lore. I'm now about a week and 2 days into actually diving into this stuff truly for the first time, I'm only level 42 (I don't mind spoilers), and I'm trying to drink from the firehose, pretty much! What's worse is that unlike some other MMO's with really in-depth wiki articles, I haven't been able to find much for FFXIV- everything has been pretty lean. I've done a few forum searches and I found this thread, which was a REAL help for getting some things straight in my head:

 

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=14035

 

Either way, I just want to make sure I'm not running afoul of any problems in what lore there is, so I'd be really appreciative of any feedback you can give me! Nothing here is really set in stone- I'm pretty open to making adjustments wherever needed to correct problems and smooth the story out.

 

So! On with what I've got so far. Sorry for the wall of text. I still need to make a wiki page, I know!

 

 

My Miqo'te is L'anayla Aliaru, a Seeker of the Sun from the Viper tribe. Her history with her tribe abruptly ends when she came of age, being kind of a independent tomboy wild child with a wanderlust streak. She struck off on her own, wanting the freedom that the open road affords her. In essence, she's in self-exile from her tribe, and doesn't intend to return. She adapted to the life of an occasional adventurer and primarily life in the cities of Eorzea.

 

Around this time she had her first encounter with Kipra Aliaru (we rolled our characters together with them already being married), one of the Keepers of the Moon, who had also left her own tribe. Kipra has a real thing for hating on Seekers, so their first encounter was rather confrontational, but they warmed up to each other pretty fast after their fight. Fast forward a few years, and they ended up married (opposites attract, and all!). At this point, they've been married for about 10 years now, and have made a living as wandering adventurers with a tendency to thieve and skulk around. 

 

At some point (I'm not really sure when since there isn't much of a timeline that I've seen), they run across a ninja master (probably in Limsa) who had taken refuge in Eorzea after the rebellion in Doma. Without really knowing who and what he is, the pair of them try to set him up for a pickpocket and end up getting caught in the act easily. Realizing this eccentric guy is way above their level of skill, L'anayla and Kipra plead with him to teach them to improve- still, without knowing this guy is a ninja. I figure this guy's motives for teaching them extend primarily toward passing down the traditions, considering the sad state of Doma, and by teaching them only the basics without revealing his affiliation with the ninja, he can better judge them as being worthy of that honor or not of actually being taught the advanced stuff that comes with being a ninja. 

 

Of course, because this is obviously the way it was going to go considering the tone of this write-up, the eccentric ninja master finds them worthy and reveals the truth to them, while also inducting them into the ideology and philosophy behind actually being a ninja. They learn to call this man Master, and he ultimately becomes a sort of father-figure to the pair of them as they continue to train. The training, however, is ultimately cut short when Garlean assassins finally locate the Master and tie up the loose end. The pair of them end up lucking out by not being at the dojo at the time, but they come back to find the aftermath- and what looks like to be a fatal accident rather than a murder. At this point, they're far enough along that they recognize that not all is as it seems. 

 

L'anayla and Kipra grieve for a time and then start to go through their old Master's things, looking to clean up what's been left to them. They end up finding a journal with mention of their Master's history, his motives, and his reasons for training them. The pair of them ultimately decide to honor the memory of their Master by trying to continue his work by collecting ninja relics, history, and knowledge with the intent of passing it on someday. They are also, of course, intent on seeking revenge at some point if they can ever uncover a lead about the death of their Master. 

 

Today, L'anayla and Kipra lead fairly mundane lives at least on the outside- both as aspiring "fisherwomen" and "wandering adventurers"- while working toward their goals in a covert manner. 

 

 

And that's about it. I think I managed to get most of what was going on in my head. 

 

Would appreciate any thoughts on this! Thanks! 

[Thunderbolt300]

Well, either this was so utterly terrible nobody wanted to touch it with a ten-foot pole, or as we like to say in information technology, "No news is good news." Talk about extremes! 

 

I'd still love a sanity check here either way- feedback and criticism are both very much welcome! Does the lore seem right? Is the concept too "out there?" Or is my understanding of the lore pretty spot-on here?

[Warren Castille]

I don't know a whole lot of depth about the ninja lore since I only ran through the 30-50 quests once, but sure why not? There's only one small snag, maybe, that I could think of.

 

The timeline for how things in Doma is, to my unaware mind, not entirely rooted out yet. We know Doma got razed recently, as part of the backlash of the rebellion, but we don't know when that actually started (do we?) If your Master went to Eorzea to hide in the wake of it, your pupils had, at best, a couple of months of training before everything caught up them. Might smooth out a bit better if the master simply retired and left to walk the earth, Kung Fu style, perhaps knowing that there would be turbulence ahead. The Garleans took him out simply because they knew his name and he was a loose end, etcetera.

 

Your story, though. Looks fine to me.

[Larson]

I don't know a whole lot of depth about the ninja lore since I only ran through the 30-50 quests once, but sure why not? There's only one small snag, maybe, that I could think of.

 

The timeline for how things in Doma is, to my unaware mind, not entirely rooted out yet. We know Doma got razed recently, as part of the backlash of the rebellion, but we don't know when that actually started (do we?) If your Master went to Eorzea to hide in the wake of it, your pupils had, at best, a couple of months of training before everything caught up them. Might smooth out a bit better if the master simply retired and left to walk the earth, Kung Fu style, perhaps knowing that there would be turbulence ahead. The Garleans took him out simply because they knew his name and he was a loose end, etcetera.

 

Your story, though. Looks fine to me.

What Warren said.

 

The biggest issue in FF14 is that the timeline doesn't equate to real time like, say, GW2. Everything that has happened since 1.0 has happened within the same calendar year, which is 5 years after the calamity (somehow the world has recovered quite a lot, leading me to assume that perhaps Hydaelyn has 48 hour days or something nifty. Basically, in their world, little time has passed.

[Thunderbolt300]

I don't know a whole lot of depth about the ninja lore since I only ran through the 30-50 quests once, but sure why not? There's only one small snag, maybe, that I could think of.

 

The timeline for how things in Doma is, to my unaware mind, not entirely rooted out yet. We know Doma got razed recently, as part of the backlash of the rebellion, but we don't know when that actually started (do we?) If your Master went to Eorzea to hide in the wake of it, your pupils had, at best, a couple of months of training before everything caught up them. Might smooth out a bit better if the master simply retired and left to walk the earth, Kung Fu style, perhaps knowing that there would be turbulence ahead. The Garleans took him out simply because they knew his name and he was a loose end, etcetera.

 

Your story, though. Looks fine to me.

What Warren said.

 

The biggest issue in FF14 is that the timeline doesn't equate to real time like, say, GW2. Everything that has happened since 1.0 has happened within the same calendar year, which is 5 years after the calamity (somehow the world has recovered quite a lot, leading me to assume that perhaps Hydaelyn has 48 hour days or something nifty. Basically, in their world, little time has passed.

 

That... actually makes a whole lot of sense to me- I like the idea of playing it safe when it comes to the timeline, considering just how compressed it seems to be. Having their master retire to walk the world sounds like a much smoother idea than the one I had. It's kinda funny that I'm much more used to the GW2 timescale as it stands. 

 

This is some awesome stuff. Thanks!