discussion Welp Dragoons, it was a good run, but we are all now either retired or dead

[Zelmanov]

 

 

 

 

 

Look at that, as seen there, there are only TEN (10) dragoons in active service by the end of the war. Even at their peak it was a small club of 30 or so.

 

and thing is? I can point out 9 out of the 10

 

Estinien

Heustienne (maybe not count because she was reported dead)

Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt

Brucemont (named dragoon that gives you your armor and appears in 50 - 60 drg quests)

5 nameless dragoons on the lead up to the moogle quests.

 

 

 

that leaves ONE SPOT, POSSIBLY TWO (maybe 7 if you want to assume being those nameless dragoons) for an active service dragoon in RP....KOJI WHY

[Seriphyn]

...

 

This might be the one instance I would support lorebreaking tbh

[Virella]

Dragoon Roleplay summed up after Lorebook

 

 

On a more serious note. Man, that does suck. Its not fun to hear that you've been roleplaying something for years, and basically get told "Nope, you can't do that now due to new lore" type of deal.

 

I wouldn't even know what advice to offer on trying to make your character fitting in lore again. It just sucks. All I do know, myself and a lot of others, will be giving Dragoon RPers the time and space to figure out the mess has created for the Dragoon RP community, if it is even fixable. I just suspect to see many retired Dragoons popping up, and I would be okay with this (Hells, I can't blame people for wanting to continue to RP a Dragoon to begin with. Some of you have been doing this for YEARS). You all really can't help it you're roleplaying something what you wouldn't have done if you had this information earlier.

 

I'm legit sorry for you guys.

[Kellach Woods]

Keywords: in active service

[Teadrinker]

I've got some folk in my FC struggling with this right now.

 

To be honest, I'm leaving them alone and I'm not exactly stoked for this revelation. This means there are a total of 30 Dragoon soulstones in existence. Like....you can't even have an NPC that is a Dragoon.

 

Anyone who knows me knows I do not advocate lorebreaking. I loathe it. However, this is a real kick in the junk to what was an otherwise really awesome section of the RP community who was really doing nothing but doing it right and doing it well.

 

.....

 

At this time I think I'd actually fall on the side of lore leeway as well. I wouldn't CREATE a new dragoon character right now (or ever again apparently ) but if you had one just keep doing your thing imo.

 

Are you technically in breach of lore? Yes.

 

Can anyone force you to reroll? No.

 

Will people perhaps STOP RPing with you as a result of said revelation? Perhaps.

 

This SUCKS.

[Kilieit]

And once again, pasting what I wrote on The Tumblies by way of MY TAKE ON THIS:

 

30 active dragoons, at one time.

 

Which is to say:

 

There are more than 30 living and generally fighting-fit people who are trained as dragoons; lots more. All but 30 of them are all either retired, semi-retired, assigned to a desk job, on sick leave, doing non-Dragoon-specific field work, training potential dragoon recruits, or otherwise not currently acting as A Battle-Ready Dragoon Of The Holy See. As in: they are not currently under any Dragoon-specific orders, so they are not counted as “one of the 30″ who can be relied upon to show up at less than a day’s notice to big battles with the Horde.

 

When one of the 30 is injured or sick, and no new recruit is available (remember the recruitment process is also incredibly harsh - there are probably a lot of times when there are no suitable recruits ready to step up), one of these periphery dragoons will be asked to come in and step into the ranks and fill whatever dangerous Dragoon-specific role that previous person was doing before they were incapacitated. There’s probably a hierarchy of who gets asked - based on why they’re “”on leave””, how long it’s been since their last mission (sooner is better - the longer someone’s been out of action the less chance they’ll be called back to it), how suited their personal strengths are to the task, and whether it’s easy for them to leave their current business or not. Refusing is, of course, likely treason and/or grounds for accusations of heresy, but they probably try to be kind.

 

The reason there’s only “10 current dragoons” after the War is ended isn’t necessarily because there’s only 10 people remaining alive who’ve ever been taught the art of the dragoon, although losing 20 out of 30 people from the actively serving dragoon force during the battle seems about right.

 

It’s because after the war there are only 10 dragoons currently acting, as dragoons, in service to the Holy See.

 

After the end of the war with the dragons, they probably didn’t see fit to replenish the ranks of the… dragon-killing squad… with other knights-in-training when they could be assigned to relief or crowd control or literally anything else than torturously indoctrinating themselves into the dragon-killing squad.

 

They also likely struggled to find a periphery dragoon that wasn’t preoccupied with issues relating to the end of the war and the reform of the government, including injuries sustained during the final battle. (They probably aren’t authorised to wear their drachen mail unless they’re one of the current 30 - maybe plenty of the footknights we see on the bridge are, in fact, trained dragoons that Lucia asked to come out?)

 

Those remaining 10 dragoons are probably doing a mixture of coordinating the taking of the Aery, routing the remainder of the Horde, and the reconnaissance and diplomacy we see them performing in the Sea of Clouds during sidequests.

 

There are lots more trained dragoons, not counted among the official 10, doing what the dragoons we see in the DRG quest-line are doing… travelling to find themselves (Estinien), taking care of their family (Montorgains), trying to finish a personal quest (Heustienne), or doing their best to make up for past mistakes (Alberic).

 

[ETA: see below posts from Teadrinker & me for more context]

[Teadrinker]

It quite clearly says "The Order is comprised of thirty Dragoons."

 

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE your interpretation more and will probably err that way myself.

 

But it's not what that page on that book says.

 

NOTE: This opinion should NOT be taken as any sort of official stance because of a dumb green name. Come to your own conclusions.

[Warren Castille]

It's almost as if it's a bad idea to place yourself in an elite office of a canonical faction.

 

I sympathize with people who just got fucked, but we all know that aligning with something with capital letters brings these sorts of risks.

[Kilieit]

Yeah, I more or less never posit my interpretations as Official Super Interpretations That Are Definitely Textual. My relationship to canon tends to be... aspirational, shall we say? I would like to run with canon as far as possible, but... man... I mean... I come from WoW. I'm maybe a little looser about smoothing things over with headcanon, and widening interpretation to allow for a greater freedom of roleplay, than most people would be. It was a sanity-preserving tactic back then, and it's hard to get out of the habit.

 

I'm in the lucky position that only a couple of my characters know anything about Ishgard apart from "it's cold", so I don't personally have to retcon anything, but man... I have friends who've worked really hard on making their characters believable and entertaining within previous dragoon lore, and it sucks if they have to scrap literal years of character development and roleplay and come up with a completely new character because of an arbitrary number from a piece of peripheral media.

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

I think we're all at risk of facing retcons like this, it happens. It's avoidable with more attention to detail and finding a safe zone.

[Caspar]

Surely they could have made it 300 instead of 30? I mean, i dunno how large their armies are, but that's not a lot. They can still be scarce!

[Lyraciilee]

Just because there are only 10 in active Service of Ishgard doesn't mean there are only 30 soulstones. The text does not explicitly say such a thing. Alberic was allowed to keep his soul stone after he retired as Azure Dragoon and passes it over to the WoL. That would imply there are many more soulstones than only 30. (Because if there were only 30, there's no way he would be allowed to keep his soulstone after retiring. They would NEED it for the new dragoon that would take his place.)

 

While if your character was a part of the Order that does throw a huge wrench in your character backstory, it's still possible to have a Soulstone, and be a Dragoon without being a part of the order. It's also possible that there are indeed reserves for this part of the military or teachers and such that are not counted in this.

 

Also please consider that the Temple Knights of Ishgard are different from say the militant forces of say House Fortemps. You can be a Knight of House Fortemps and not be considered a Temple Knight. I assume such things would probably be available for Dragoons as well, although that is entirely my personal interpretation. Those whom would be like a House Dragoon or some such thing, would also not be accounted for in that active service.

 

A Dragoon is just another title and ranking for an elite type of solider. It's still possible to have the same skill set or something similar while not being a part of the order. It's not like the WoL in the job quests is actually considered a part of order, or at least that is also my interpretation.

[Branson Thorne]

Well.........fuck.

 

*tearfully tosses out an rp character*

[Valence]

That's... hard.

 

Though... We kind of expected it. I mean, wasn't there a lot of heated debates around playing a dragoon before Heavensward came out? Then people eventually chilled over it, but the main concerns never really... got made moot, right?

 

It was still a possibility.

[Caspar]

That's... hard.

 

Though... We kind of expected it. I mean, wasn't there a lot of heated debates around playing a dragoon before Heavensward came out? Then people eventually chilled over it, but the main concerns never really... got made moot, right?

 

It was still a possibility.

It was never as frowned upon as Black Mage or White Mage, even if those debates happened, because the Dragoon's abilities are within the range the average RPC player seems more comfortable with, and Ishgard is a favored RP origin. That should be no surprise given the narrative of the expac. But even so nobody could have predicted it would be an order *this* small. How could 30 men be enough to contribute significantly in a war against a horde of dragons? Ishgard was constantly at war.

[Warren Castille]

BLM was different because it was always illegal. WHM was different because the game spelled out how rare they were. DRG wasn't ever addressed in any limiting capacity, we just argued over player observations. Slightly different circumstances.

[Verad]

Most likely possibility is that players on the RPC underestimated the in game power of dragoons compared to Black/White Mages, to use your example.

[Nero]

I'm genuinely curious and confused as to what the goal is in limiting the number of Dragoons. What exactly are they trying to convey with this factoid?

 

Should we be finding the Dragoon characters more badass because the standards are so strict and the fighting is so dangerous? Should our WoL be seen as even more amazing because they're a second Azure Dragoon? Should we think dragons are more intimidating because they can kill Dragoons so easily? Hell, should we think that for all of their training and might, lore-Dragoons are incompetent because they seem to die so often despite the high standards and elite training and specialised equipment? Who knows, maybe they're trying to kill Job RP.

 

It's just a little confusing to me as to why you'd stick your guns to an exact figure. It takes way less mental gymnastics to keep the figures plausibly vague, especially when every other relevant figure in making this "thirty dragoons at a time, ten dragoons presently" figure believable (example: Ishgard's total population, the size of Ishgard's military, the number of soul crystals, the number of Drachen Mail, etc.) is conspicuously absent.

 

EDIT: Also, unless I missed quest text somewhere, we still have no idea how dragoons jump. Basically, WoL gets chosen by Eye of Nidhogg, and now he can jump into the air. Is it exclusive to dragon power or something?

[Valence]

You find jumping 100 meters high into the sky with a full armour suit and lance and all somehow less impressive than casting balls of fire? I mean, the only difference between a BLM and a THM is the scale of destruction...

[Caspar]

BLM was different because it was always illegal. WHM was different because the game spelled out how rare they were. DRG wasn't ever addressed in any limiting capacity, we just argued over player observations. Slightly different circumstances.

The limiting capacity was probably "what are the Dragoons doing outside of Ishgard?" up until the end of the Expac's patch cycle, if anything. But I still think that the lack of stigma has a lot to do with the thematics of the class and the focus of the expac, even if they're a minor case in comparison to those other Jobs.

 

But yeah, it definitely is a strange choice given that it makes the size of Ishgard's army and the proportion composed by Dragoons questionable. If the Dragoons are a tiny portion of the army, why not instead change training methods so that a large number of less elite (but still effective) Dragoons can be churned out? If the Ishgardian army is small, why not try for full mobilization? They were constantly afraid of being exterminated by the Dravanians. It doesn't make sense that an army would be that tiny.

[Trigonxv]

In light of this Monk players should take caution as well, It may not be as severe as what just happened to dragoons but there may be a significant wrench in the unknown that when revealed could stranglehold Monk RP so play it out moderately I guess.

[Caspar]

In light of this Monk players should take caution as well, It may not be as severe as what just happened to dragoons but there may be a significant wrench in the unknown that when revealed could stranglehold Monk RP so play it out moderately I guess.

Haha, thus why I avoided making my character Ala Mhigan in origin, as well as technically not Doman either.

She might be similar to a Monk, but I can easily dodge that bullet when it comes.

[Warren Castille]

Most likely possibility is that players on the RPC underestimated the in game power of dragoons compared to Black/White Mages, to use your example.

 

This is entirely possible. I guess Dragoon jumps really are howitzer shots on soft targets.

[Teadrinker]

It's just a little confusing to me as to why you'd stick your guns to an exact figure.

 

It's also strange as hell because there is literally ZERO precedence for this level of specificity in SE's lorewriting.

 

They normally opt for the "We're going to be so vague we don't have to explain anything!" angle.

 

Now, all of a sudden:

 

THIRTY DRAGOONS.

 

 

[Valence]

In light of this Monk players should take caution as well, It may not be as severe as what just happened to dragoons but there may be a significant wrench in the unknown that when revealed could stranglehold Monk RP so play it out moderately I guess.

 

Isn't Widargelt supposed to be one of the few rare or only survivor of the Light sect?

 

Not sure for the Dark sect though...

 

 

 

But yeah, it definitely is a strange choice given that it makes the size of Ishgard's army and the proportion composed by Dragoons questionable. If the Dragoons are a tiny portion of the army, why not instead change training methods so that a large number of less elite (but still effective) Dragoons can be churned out? If the Ishgardian army is small, why not try for full mobilization? They were constantly afraid of being exterminated by the Dravanians. It doesn't make sense that an army would be that tiny.

 

Because if their job implies such a high amount of casualty, if you start churning out lower level dragoons that can maybe not even jump correctly or whatever, then you just send them all to the slaughter.