A Duskwight Discussion

[Teardrop]

That is an -awesome- family tree! Super +1 to you Meg!

 

We're like a rainbow across that picture! :bouncy:

 

A rainbow of grey-shades

[Magellan]

*grumbles about lack of Wildwood information and growls at the Duskies*

 

J/k, =p

 

Very informative thread, and its really nice to see the community work together to compile information like this!

[Eva]

Anyway, I wanted to stop by and show you guys what I'm working on, based off PM conversations with several people in this thread

 

:surprise:

 

Eva and Myavar appear to be distantly related, which makes sense, considering the jokes earlier in the thread! This is, of course, pending Eva's approval.

 

Wh-? Yes. YES!!! This is awesome! And that would make a great deal of sense. I mean it's also possible that both characters have such similar traits due to similar upbringings. Eva's somewhat atypical in that she was raised entirely on the surface, but her father tried to keep to those traditional duskwight values, so she's a bit caught between two worlds.

 

The reason I'm bringing this up now is because it involves so many of you, that you should publicly see where you all connect. Since we've begun to discuss culture and what we have in common, seeing the paths of influence will probably be extremely useful. Think about how cool it would be if Myavar and Eva both shared certain traditions, even though they had never met and couldn't ICly trace their lineage to any common point? Stuff like that, I think, is awesome.

 

*still stunned* I think this is great!! I could probably provide more information about the Plunierre Clan [before it was destroyed] if it would help at all. The population was probably greater than one might think. It really was like a small underground village and not just a couple families.

 

But that's awesome!! Kudos on all the hard work! :love: If you need faces of the three survivors of Plunierre I can diddle around in the character creator a bit later too.

[Kyatai]

(ye gods I need to work on more of my Clan details.... You shame me, Meg, you really do.... )

 

Stop standing around handing out pie, and you just might find some time to write up your family tree

IKR?!

 

So very irresponsible...... *sigh*

I feel shame.

 

*offers izzy a really belated pie*

Welcome?

:cry:

[Kari Illderthane]

Whilst I am loving a lot of these ideas, and the chart that Twinflame created.

 

We need to remember that this is only player created lore and not everyone may want to play the styles of Duskwight we create, so just remember to keep an open mind for others who may have a totally whole different take on the concept for a Duskwight. *goes back to stalking the thread*

[Teardrop]

Whilst I am loving a lot of these ideas, and the chart that Twinflame created.

 

We need to remember that this is only player created lore and not everyone may want to play the styles of Duskwight we create, so just remember to keep an open mind for others who may have a totally whole different take on the concept for a Duskwight. *goes back to stalking the thread*

 

Actually, I think its always been about taking a look at what is in the official lore, and basing our choices and concepts on what would be possible within it . That's why we pretty much posted everything written on Duskwights right from the outset, to get it all out in the open, and then most worked from there.

 

Is there something of a particular concern you've seen, Kari? Some trend or aspect of the conversation you're uncomfortable with? Besides our own families, which I think pretty much every character of any race has a reasonable expectation of control over, what are the "player lore" points you've seen :? ?

[Kari Illderthane]

Oh no you have me totally misunderstood I love the lore that is coming out and don't find anything wrong with it at all. it does fit with the little knowledge we have been told. All I was doing was just giving a friendly reminder was all.

[Yssen]

Kari does have a point here. While we can reasonably expect to have control over our own family and such, we do have that what we create could be yanked out by the roots as more lore comes down the pipe from SE. We know precious little at this point, but what we do know is.

 

1. Most Duskwights are bandits, mercenaries, and thieves. This is seen in both how NPCs talk about Duskwights, and how Duskwights are portrayed when they are encountered in the game. 

 

2. We have only ever encountered Duskwights that now live on the surface in the game.

 

3. We know that most of the Duskwight ruins we see in the game have been long abandoned, and even had enough time to be re-purposed over the years. There are even Duskwight NPCs that discuss the concept that the Duskwight lost their homelands and larger settlements long ago.

 

4. We know that Duskwights are reclusive and elusive by nature.

 

All the stuff that is coming out is great, don't get me wrong. I do think that a distinction needs to be made, though. All of this is lore and culture is player created, and not handed down to us from SE. Players should in no way feel obligated to have to conform to what is agreed on. In the end it could all be uprooted, and become lore broke later down the road.

 

I think I am going to ask a few Duskwight questions on the lore thread of the official forums. Hopefully get some things clarified from the devs in a fairly rapid fashion.

[Myavar]

I'm of the mind to be flexible when it comes to adjusting personally created lore. Everyone is right in that we don't have a lot of detailed information from SE, but I don't personally have any problems with backtracking through Myavar's story to alter things if it comes up that my stuff conflicts with SE's stuff =3

 

I have zero problem with other people's lore, and if they don't know about this thread or want to use anything that has been posted here then that's fine too! If we gain anything from having vague information from SE it's the freedom to be creative with our stories!

 

Mind you... if I meet a DW in game named Drizzt (or any form of) that's an archer and is trying to pretend they're a Do'Urden Ima spin on my heel and bound the other way >.>

[Teardrop]

Aw, that's too bad, because I thought we were doing pretty good at just having a discussion of the lore, and not so much creating lore itself .

 

I guess maybe the interpretations of areas that could be played with in our character back stories due to explicit lack of official lore is where the trouble might fall, but the the pen of a developer would truly be mightier than any sword for a good many background concepts, should they merely write a line or two that conflicts with something someone wrote up in their background. Not just for Duskwights, but for all the various refugees and deserters and tribe forsakers and any of the other back stories that are depending on a lack of lore for support (quite the opposite of depending on detailed lore for support, which is kinda what we want as well...one way or the other, works for me )

 

I know I'd go back to the drawing board if SE said Duskwights weren't allowed to settle near Ul'dah, or for whatever reason, the crafting skills PCs have wouldn't expand to having Duskwight craftsmen within their society or the ability to trade with outside civilization (even then, in the short background story I wrote, I recognize Duskwight tradesmen probably would face some negotiations issues due to poor relations with others) ...hope I don't have to face that. Or, hope I get enough hard lore that I can modify my backstory if it goes against what is official :thumbsup:

[Garaf]

 

This seems difficult to reconcile with the lore behind the split between the Wildwood and the Duskwights.  The lore says that the Duskwights went underground, not that the Wildwoods came to the surface and seems to imply that the Wildwoods more closely resemble the "proto-Elezen".  On top of that, I have a hard time picturing a race dividing along such disparate paths within 500 years.  It seems like they would need much, much longer to develop into separate subspecies with distinct cultures.  I would conclude then that Gelmorra wasn't a Duskwight/Elezen city so much as just a city with a diverse population and probably did not play much into relations between the two.  It's definitely something that could use further clarification from SE, but I don't know if we can count on that.  Everything I saw on Gelmorra came out of conversations with NPCs.

I think the answer here lies in something different. I think the two tribes grew apart simply because they lived in very different environments, but still held on to a similar culture. The "split," in terms of why the two tribes have animosity for one another, is stated to have something to do with the founding of Gridanian (and to a seemingly lesser extent, Ishgard) by the Wildwoods. We know that the founders of Gridania made a pact with the Elementals in the Black Shroud in order to secure the city-state. This deal (or the events surrounding it) are probably what lead to Gelmorra being fully abandoned. The animosity between the two tribes being caused by disagreement over this pact with the Elementals. Wildwoods went for it, Duskwights refused. Duskwights got kicked out and retreated further into seclusion.

 

Gelmorra very well could have been one of the first elezen settlements when they came down from the north. This would explain why there are both above ground and below ground Gelmorran ruins. Long and short, my theory is that there was not a large amount of animosity between the two tribes when they gravitated to different living environments. The animosity came later, probably over what the Duskwights call the "loss of their homeland."

 

This is what I would have assumed to be the case at first, and at first it seems to make a fair deal of sense. The bit I can't get past though is that it implies, if not requires, that the biological distinctions between the two subspecies developed entirely in the last 500 years. It doesn't seem like a long enough period of time for physical adaptations (namely the wildwood's eyesight and the duskwight's hearing) to occur that would differentiate the two.

 

It's probably an academic point either way, and I apologize if there's been further discussion on it since Page 6. I haven't had the opportunity yet to catch up with everything yet.

[Garaf]

Silly question: Lore states that Duskwight moved and prefer to live in caves, but do Duskwight show preference to any of the city states? Not talking about allignment, I mean actual locations. How "correct" could it be to say, for example "xxxx's clan settled in cave systems below La Noscea".

 

I reread it and it sounds quite confusing, english isn't my first language, sorry and thanks in advance.

 

The specific wording states that they settled in the "caves of Eorzea" not "caves of the Twelveswood". The implication is that while all other story elements of the elezen as a whole seem to revolve around Gridania, the Duskwights settled all over Eorzea.

 

 

So far as player-created lore, when the devs don't provide lore the players can either make it up as they go along, character by character, try to coordinate it as a community, or just ignore those aspects so far as roleplay is concerned. I wouldn't try to discuss the merits of each option, because that's a larger conversation, but a community driven attempt to create an open, non-binding body of lore on a specific subject (in this case Duskwights) does usually seem to be the best case scenario. Which isn't to say it's a perfect scenario, but it probably beats the alternatives. And there's certainly a wealth of cases (UO, WoW, TR, EVE) where player created lore eventually became official canon lore for some games. I wouldn't expect that to happen with XVI but I suppose it isn't entirely out of the question.

[Yeldir Melfusor]

Something that has been driving me up the wall, in terms of trying to write Yeldir, is the issue of lifespan.  Do we have any canonical leads regarding the general longetivity of the Elezen?  If they're proper Tolkien knockoffs, we can just pick anything between fifteen and a billion and be content with that. 

 

Yet I'm hesitant to define Yeldir's age without knowing how old he shouldn't be.

[Eva]

Something that has been driving me up the wall, in terms of trying to write Yeldir, is the issue of lifespan.  Do we have any canonical leads regarding the general longetivity of the Elezen?  If they're proper Tolkien knockoffs, we can just pick anything between fifteen and a billion and be content with that. 

 

Yet I'm hesitant to define Yeldir's age without knowing how old he shouldn't be.

 

This has been frustrating to me as well because we've dabbled with a few background characters who were duskwight and who were elderly.  I'm working on the assumption that they live a bit longer than the average hyur, but not as long as lalafell, since that's what the lore seems to have implied so far (there are other discussion threads about this if you search the RPC forums for 'lifespan' perhaps - here are two such threads:

 

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=2263

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=2239

 

For my own backstory, one such character died at the age of 104 and for my purposes that was considered old.  Eva's father died at 58 and that was considered middle-aged.  There is an old woman originally from her clan that she's speaking with now who is the aunt of the clan's Elder, and we just haven't given her a specific age yet.  This is all kind of in the fog and if they ever do announce anything I'm prepared to make whatever adjustments I have to.

 

I know this hasn't been much help and I'm sorry for that, but in the absense of any sort of official lore, I'm kind of operating on the assumption that an average elezen might live to be between 90-100 years.

[Garaf]

Something that has been driving me up the wall, in terms of trying to write Yeldir, is the issue of lifespan.  Do we have any canonical leads regarding the general longetivity of the Elezen?  If they're proper Tolkien knockoffs, we can just pick anything between fifteen and a billion and be content with that. 

 

Yet I'm hesitant to define Yeldir's age without knowing how old he shouldn't be.

 

Tolkien's elves were a little more complicated than that (even before you get into whether or not going to Valinor counted as "dying" or their "three stages of life") but the only hint in any of the official lore says that they tend to live just a bit longer than Hyur. I would assume from the context that they're referring to a difference of decades, not centuries. It's difficult enough to peg down a Hyur lifespan but I would guess it would, as an average, be somewhere in the ballpark of 70-80 and so the elezen might be in the vicinity of 90-100.

[DreamedReality]

It's difficult enough to peg down a Hyur lifespan but I would guess it would, as an average, be somewhere in the ballpark of 70-80 and so the elezen might be in the vicinity of 90-100.

 

 

I know this hasn't been much help and I'm sorry for that, but in the absense of any sort of official lore, I'm kind of operating on the assumption that an average elezen might live to be between 90-100 years.

 

This is the assumption I've also made based on available lore.

[Yeldir Melfusor]

... but the only hint in any of the official lore says that they tend to live just a bit longer than Hyur.  I would assume from the context that they're referring to a difference of decades, not centuries.  It's difficult enough to peg down a Hyur lifespan but I would guess it would, as an average, be somewhere in the ballpark of 70-80 and so the elezen might be in the vicinity of 90-100.

Where's this hint at?  I have no cause to doubt your accuracy, but I'd love to read this myself.

[Garaf]

Where's this hint at? I have no cause to doubt your accuracy, but I'd love to read this myself.

 

From the OP:

 

The official website has this to say about the Elezen:

 

The Elezen are a characteristically tall people, long of limb and slender of build. They are also possessed of a somewhat extended lifespan in comparison to the Hyur. The Elezen once claimed sole dominion over Eorzea, their presence predating that of the other races, and, as such, developed a heightened sense of honor and pride. In years past, the Hyur migration into Elezen lands sparked bitter conflict. At present, however, the mutual understanding reached between the two races allows them to work towards mutual peace and prosperity.

[Yeldir Melfusor]

Ah, dang.  I was hoping it was something with numbers.  I apologize for wasting your time.  Thank you!

[considebalt]

Just wanted to say as a brand new member of this forum, an avid RPer, and someone rolling an Elezen Duskwight that I am beyond impressed with the thought put into all of these backgrounds and personal lore (and that family tree was intimidatingly awesome). You've all made me realize that I have my work cut out for me (As I am new to Eorzea). I'll eventually, maybe finish my character's history and post it on the wiki...possibly, but for now I just wanted to say: wow.

[Teardrop]

We've had a lot of fun with the thread, and I think many of us have come away with a much better understanding of what it means to be a Duskwight, and how this will be reflected in our role play . I look forward to seeing what you come up with...and as you can see if you made it this far on the thread, if you have any questions, or want to bounce a concept off the others, etc, feel free to ask :thumbsup: !

[LeCard]

Just wanted to say as a brand new member of this forum, an avid RPer, and someone rolling an Elezen Duskwight that I am beyond impressed with the thought put into all of these backgrounds and personal lore (and that family tree was intimidatingly awesome). You've all made me realize that I have my work cut out for me (As I am new to Eorzea). I'll eventually, maybe finish my character's history and post it on the wiki...possibly, but for now I just wanted to say: wow.

 I was new to 14 as well. I started at some point durring beta phase two, mostly just messed around and got a feel for the game. It wasn't untill phase three that I really started thinking about RPing and it was some time during that when I found the RPC in a link in a signature of someone on the beta forums.

 

now that the long winded part is over, I have really come along way with Rogier's story in a relatively short time, and I have to give alot of thanks for that growth to the helpful people I found here at the RPC.

 

So, while it may look like you have a long way to go, I am sure that if you open up and share your ideas here that you will find enough sparks to light those ideas into a real blaze of inspiration for a fun RPing character(both for you to play and for all of us to interact with.)

 

{my that was longer than I expected...}

 

anymoogle, have fun!

[DreamedReality]

Added another one for Gilgamesh.

 

Moving to Balmung server. Updated the clan wiki.

 

I hope to see a lot of you ingame. I just wanted to say thanks for this thread. It's been a huge help in terms of finding the official lore all in one spot as well as sparking ideas from all the creativity. You guys rock!

[Teardrop]

Great, Eve...I'm really looking forward to running into each and every one of you in game !

[Kyatai]

*kidnaps Jaques*

 

One.... Of..... Usssssss!