Small question - do matches and/or cigarettes exist in lore?

[OttoVann]

Maybe this is a stupid question, maybe not. Otto doesn't smoke and wont be anytime soon but I am writing up a new story (while also still writing Typical Day) and I am curious if smoking is around basically.

 

I understand pipes are in the game? But I also wonder about cigs and ways to light them

[Roswyn]

I think they exist and I've seen them rp'd and rp'd them myself. I mean...

 

You can roll them yourselves.

 

*cough*

 

Also matches. Or if you wanna be sexy (Read: stereotypical) for the ladies be a thaumaturge.

 

All things I've seen in rp. :cactuar:

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Maybe this is a stupid question, maybe not.  Otto doesn't smoke and wont be anytime soon but I am writing up a new story (while also still writing Typical Day) and I am curious if smoking is around basically.

 

I understand pipes are in the game?  But I also wonder about cigs and ways to light them

 

I'd imagine cigars or easily rolled cigarettes are probably doable. (As would a blunt, I guess). 

 

For lighting them, I'm not sure about say, a pocket-lighter, but I'd imagine we have access to flint, some very basic thaumaturgy, or maybe there's a torch one uses?

[Telluride]

Not sure about tobacco, but there would be several ways to light something.

 

Pistols exist in the game, so it would be fair to extrapolate that a little magitek engineering could yield up something to throw up sparks. There are several references in the game that suggest that Eorzeans can harvest gases from Bomb monsters, too, for fuel. Now, you wouldn't likely have mass-produced lighters, but someone like Otto could afford one.

 

Fire Sprite cores are canonically used to heat things, as are Fire shards.

 

Also, any Thaumaturge ought to be able to snap fingers and produce a little flame on command.

[Warren Castille]

Given the kinds of wonders the alchemists of Eorzea HAVE created, I would be very upset if they couldn't figure out strike-anywhere matches that actually strike anywhere.

[FreelanceWizard]

There seem to be a lot of ways to create fire in the setting, so I think it's safe to assume Fire-aspected crystals, bomb cores, fire sprite cores, and the like all make it onto the market in various ways to provide portable fire sources. There's probably little shops and merchants that sell such things, and given how important fire is, they're probably fairly common. If nothing else, there's always flint and steel.

 

As for tobacco or other smokeable plants, if pipes exist, surely cigars and cigarettes do as well, though they're probably bespoke or "roll your own." I don't seem to recall tobacco existing in game, but you could easily just refer generically to "herbs" or "grass" or the like.

[Seriphyn]

There are multiple pipesmoking NPCs around. Old fashioned long stemmed pipe.

[Coatleque]

I've seen some kind of plasmoids floating around in Mordhonna. If you drink one you might be able to create fire with your fingers!

 

{nerd aura}

[Ha'uruh Nunh]

In the Halloween event, Baderon or whatever in the Limsan bar says he smoked hallucenagenic plants in his youth.  So there's that.

[Mae]

When it comes to stuff like this, I typically look to draw parallels between the game's setting and real-world tech/developments. If the tech/development was being worked on in the Renaissance (doesn't have to have been perfected), then I typically think it's fair to be used in-game. Sooo...

 

There's evidence of use of cigarette use as far back as the 9th century with the Mayans, with the medium being packed into both tobacco leaves and corn husks. Whether or not the medium was exclusively tobacco is unknown, but the smoking of tobacco and various other herbs was a well-established practice in the Americas by that time. Smoking -anything- as a practice goes back as far as 3,000 years worldwide (... some cultures smoked clarified butter and fish guts?), but that's all been either as fire offerings, incense-like setups, bundles, and various pipe forms.

 

There's reference to matches in China as far back as the 4th century. However, these weren't strike matches, just sticks that had been treated with sulfur to quickly ignite when introduced to a smoldering coal. Various other incarnations were worked on up through the centuries, but it wasn't until about 200 years after phosphorus was discovered that there was a leap from "need a hot coal" to "self igniting". Self-igniting matches chemical matches finally came about in the early 1800's, where the treated end of a stick was dipped into a bottle of sulfuric acid. This was expensive and dangerous. This was followed by a few versions that were variants of "chemicals are contained in a glass capsule at the bottom of the stick and needed to be crushed" that were slightly less dangerous (no sulfuric acid or asbestos), but just as expensive. The first strike matches came out about a decade after the first self-igniting chemical match, but was dangerous and impractical as it included rubbing a sulfur-tipped stick in a tube that was coated on the inside with phosphorus. A jump was made about a decade later to something closer to what we have now, and further improvements occurred over the next eighty years.

 

 

So. Smoking cigarettes is probably just fine. Whether or not tobacco as we know it is in Eorzea might be debated by a few, but I consider it to be like coffee -- if someone's going to be dead-set against the existence of a plant that has no icon in the game, there's plenty of substitutes that have icons that would work just as well. All it is, essentially, is dried plant matter that's chopped and then stuffed into a tube of thin paper or dried leaves.

 

The matches part could be more debatable, as self-igniting matches didn't show up in the real world until the 1800's. HOWEVER... Eorzean alchemists are obviously much more advanced than alchemists/scientists of the real world, so there's a lot of wiggle-room that way. Strike matches being available isn't that much of a stretch to me.

[Iex]

It is hard to say what is not possible in FFXIV because the development level of cultures are vaaaastly different, even between the city states. (Gridania seems extremely primitive compared to the others, but that is merely because of the culture of being one with the shroud.)

 

We also have genetic experiments of sci-fi levels, Lasers, multi-shot guns, airships, bombs, magitek, power armor, and good old fashion magic with alchemy. If you have done the Alchemist story.... the limits of alchemy seems very blurred. Something as simple as a match, I would be hard-pressed not to believe possible, even if it is just a TINY TINY fragment of a fire aspected crystal surrounded by an ignitable compound on the end of stick. (Or maybe a fire crystal turned to a fine sand and adhered to the stick.)

 

Impact on the fragment causes heat and flame. ignites the compound, and slowly burns the stick.

[Gabineaux]

I think Somnus is something you smoke based on the opening scene in Ul'dah? I imagine ..there's some seedy types who would sell you that kind of thing IC.

[ZindelloTarantella]

I think Somnus is something you smoke based on the opening scene in Ul'dah? I imagine ..there's some seedy types who would sell you that kind of thing IC.

 

Tarot being one of them, heh.

 

But yeah, I have to concur with everyone else--strike matches are 'advanced' but with just how many flammable things there are in Eorzea I don't see why strike matches (though probably with some folksy-fantasy name like 'Spark Sticks' or Sulfur Sticks').

[OttoVann]

Wow all these replies thanks so much.

[Dogberry]

I've had Dogberry light his various smokeables with fire shards before. Seems like a reasonable alternative to a match.