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The Au Ra and New, Affiliated Plots


K'nahli

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Me, my fiance, and a friend of mine are all playing our Au Ra in forum RP in order to just get their personalities right and have an excuse for them to join the Night Blades once they are actually released. Our backstories are basic enough for any race (We're all playing a family unit - 2 brothers and one sister), but we'll be adding in details as lore is released. Since we have one of our players traveling to Othard and the story is from his point of view, it's easy enough to leave details out because a Keeper Miqote wouldn't no the nuances of the Au Ra anyway :P

 

Langli was a Miqote in 1.0. She was young - 16 - and an underground prize fighter in Ul'dah. Her personality was over-the-top exuberance. She was eager and loud and hyper and somewhat annoying, but she was a loyal girl with big dreams. I shelved her in 2.0 - I thought she was cute and she was fun to play, but I'm not really much of a Miqote person in general.

 

Most of that personality and back story is staying. I'm aging her to 18 but she's going to want to become a big star on the Golden Saucer circuit somehow (If there's fighting, then that way, Triple Triad would also work) and will be one of her main motivations for wanting to move.

 

We are kinda basing our three characters off of Samurai Champloo. Rin = Jin, Arato = Mugen, and Langli = Fuu.

 

It'll be hella fun.

 

 

Me and my two cousins are plotting something similar, a family unit that's fleeing Othard (though not Doma specifically) to escape the Garlean occupation. One male and his two younger sisters. Depending on what lore allows we may be from a backwater region of Othard and have our own slang terms for things for a little "WTF are they talking about" fun.

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It strikes me as really bizarre that people are actually role-playing a new playable race before we actually know what they're like in terms of their attitude, background, culture and the effect they'll have on the world around them.

 

A fair amount of people roleplay Garleans and we don't exactly have an overwhelming wealth of information on them. As long as they don't go running around shouting "I'M FROM THE EMPIRE, EVERYBODY", while staying vague as hell if questioned about their background/origins, most of us don't even bat an eyelash. *shrug*

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It strikes me as really bizarre that people are actually role-playing a new playable race before we actually know what they're like in terms of their attitude, background, culture and the effect they'll have on the world around them.

 

A fair amount of people roleplay Garleans and we don't exactly have an overwhelming wealth of information on them.

 

Well, we know a lot more about Garleans than we know about Au Ra. I think trying to roleplay them now is just begging to be forced to retcon the majority of your rp. xD Doesn't hurt to start thinking about stuff, but literally all we know about them is that Yugiri is one and they aren't from Eorzea.

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It strikes me as really bizarre that people are actually role-playing a new playable race before we actually know what they're like in terms of their attitude, background, culture and the effect they'll have on the world around them.

 

A fair amount of people roleplay Garleans and we don't exactly have an overwhelming wealth of information on them.

 

Well, we know a lot more about Garleans than we know about Au Ra. I think trying to roleplay them now is just begging to be forced to retcon the majority of your rp. xD Doesn't hurt to start thinking about stuff, but literally all we know about them is that Yugiri is one and they aren't from Eorzea.

 

Most of the worry falls on how RPers would handle said RP. If they don't have some big, in-depth backstory for the character that they plan on sharing with everyone they meet, and the character is kept physically covered at all times IC... there shouldn't be too much to retcon later. They can just be extra patient and avoid racial topics until 3.0.

 

Basically, if you're bad at dealing with extreme restrictions (ex: an inexperienced RPer who wants to avoid breaking lore like the plague)... don't do it. If you aren't, and you can execute it in a wise and careful way, you shouldn't have too many issues.

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(ex: an inexperienced RPer who wants to avoid breaking lore like the plague)

 

Or someone that recognizes an individual's interactions with people are necessarily colored by their cultural and geographical background and that it's impossible to know how someone would react to things Eorzeans do/say without at least some understanding of Au Ra culture and history?

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(ex: an inexperienced RPer who wants to avoid breaking lore like the plague)

 

Or someone that recognizes an individual's interactions with people are necessarily colored by their cultural and geographical background and that it's impossible to know how someone would react to things Eorzeans do/say without at least some understanding of Au Ra culture and history?

 

The same argument could be applied to Garlean RPers.

 

That and the behavior/reactions of Yugiri and the Domans don't seem to suggest that Othard is centuries behind or ahead of Eorzea in terms of technology or basic common sense. It was pretty much just "wow, new areas", "wow, foods I haven't had", "wow, Primals", and "wow, birds that are horses!" if we count Oboro's commentary on chocobos. That was all attributed to simply being a Doman foreigner. You don't really need racial infliction to convey any of that.

 

Does a person need to be aware of a race's stereotypes to RP it? It helps with authenticity when dealing with racial-specific issues and subjects, yes. But if you're actively avoiding those... then what's left to be required to know?

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The same argument could be applied to Garlean RPers.

 

Not really.

 

You could apply the same argument, but it fits poorly. We've seen plenty of Garleans in the story so far and a lot can be gleaned about what they're like from what we can see. Additionally they're all comprised of the five races and conquered peoples (other than the purebloods of course), which we know a good deal about already.

 

Other than Yugiri there is literally nothing to go on with the AuRa. Pretty much everything about them is up in the air. You could write a family background, origin story, etc, and then find out that they don't do conventional families, that they spring fully formed as an "adult" from a clutch of eggs and have no idea who their parents are, or that they've all been sealed away (except for Yugiri and whatever family she may or may not have) and an event at the end of 2.0 is going to release them into the world again.

 

Obviously I'm speculating wildly here but we really have no idea where SE is going with the AuRa. With Garleans we can make reasonable conclusions. More difficult to RP for sure, but still, applying the same arguement doesn't stick very well.

 

Everything about the AuRa is a shot in the dark at the moment and it's probably not a good idea to get attached to character ideas that may have to be severely altered (or severely scorned in the case of Miqo'te lore) to fit with whatever SE writes.

 

But hey, this is RP and at the end of the day it's for fun, so have it. I'll be waiting.

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The same argument could be applied to Garlean RPers.

 

Not really.

 

You could apply the same argument, but it fits poorly. We've seen plenty of Garleans in the story so far and a lot can be gleaned about what they're like from what we can see. Additionally they're all comprised of the five races and conquered peoples (other than the purebloods of course), which we know a good deal about already.

 

I had all of that in mind when I said what I did. Garleans are so varied that we don't know what's what when it comes to their day to day interactions/culture other than "conquer, conquer, and more conquering". We only know things from the viewpoint of story NPCs, and even that isn't exactly the most insightful. We have no primer for what their personalities usually consist of (outside of the assholes in the storyline, but they have to be assholes, because they're villains), we have no primer for how they should or should not react to anything exclusively Eorzean (it will/may vary depending on where they came from, if they're half-blooded, if they grew up in the Empire, etc.).

 

We actually know less about them than we think we do. I'm not saying it's the exact same thing, just a similar premise of knowing too little to make assumptions based on any stereotypes.

 

Other than Yugiri there is literally nothing to go on with the AuRa. Pretty much everything about them is up in the air. You could write a family background, origin story, etc, and then find out that they don't do conventional families, that they spring fully formed as an "adult" from a clutch of eggs and have no idea who their parents are, or that they've all been sealed away (except for Yugiri and whatever family she may or may not have) and an event at the end of 2.0 is going to release them into the world again.

 

That's why I said a person should stay extremely vague. You wouldn't bring up the backstory at all, to anyone. You don't even make one up for your own sake. So when 3.0 rolls around, you could fill in blanks.

 

I can't say that I know they won't do some sort of "and now, all of a sudden, all other Au Ra magically are born/awaken" bullshit, but nobody knows, of course. But I'd like to have more faith in SE's writing team than to think they'd pull some lowly, contrived nonsense of that sort.

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My point was that with the Garleans there is something to go on. With the AuRa we have pretty much nothing, so the argument people are making against RPing AuRa before we know well.. anything about them can't really be reasonably applied to Garleans.

 

Granted, you could pull off RPing AuRa in near total ignorance about them smoothly (and really I sincerely hope there's nothing weird about them at all culturally or we're going to have another Miqo'te situation) and if you're having fun then go for it, but there is reasonable counsel for why it's a bad idea.

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