Adding onto this since it’s been going around again a lot lately.
I posted this with little to no context during the Fan Fest in Las Vegas last October, and it was literally just a few notes transcribed directly from the mouth of Koji Fox on the Lore Panel as it was on-going, posted in my haste and excitement to bring some closure to the mystery of Auri horns and tails to Tumblr.
With that in mind, a few things should be of note~
- This panel took place in the same weekend that the Encyclopaedia Eorzea was being released, so only people THERE would have read the Au Ra pages. I was not one of them. XD
- The lore panel description of Auri hearing seems, at first, to be at odds with the in-game description of Auri. (pointed out by @the-batcams initially)
“…the first and foremost [trait] being the enhanced hearing and spatial recognition granted by an Au Ra’s cranial projections…”
- the in-game description
However, as @khunbish-adarkim and @tarot-dancer (won’t tag ;n;) pointed out in a reblog,
“Remember, spatial awareness just means, you can pin point the direction a sound came from better, not hear it better”
- @khunbish-adarkim
Spatial awareness/Spatial perception is also more than just pinpointing the direction a sound is coming from. It’s about the ability to sense and be aware your relationships between yourself and the environment around you.
- @tarot-dancer
This doesn’t mean your Auri CAN’T have amazing hearing, though. After all, we’re RPing in a fantasy world in which Koji’s only explanation for being able to swim for extensive times without any kind of gear in the next expansion is, and I quote, “we have magic”. This totally legitimizes every time me and my FC mates ask a question and answer each other, flatly, “AETHER”.
There also came worry from the bit about damaged Auri features regenerating, so here are a few notes regarding that…
- Tails were not actually explicitly mentioned regarding regeneration during the panel. Only horns were mentioned.
- There was no mention of the rate at which their features regenerate, or to what extent.
This doesn’t mean your Auri’s damaged horns and tail are illegitimate or against canon. It just means there’s a possibility that they can grow back–maybe even be healed? (Though I recall hearing that after a certain extent of damage or time, not even skilled mages can patch up dire wounds. I tend to think of healing magic as a sped-up version of natural healing rather than sudden magical regrowth of lost parts. After all, we still have scar options in character creator. But that’s just me!) The lack of a rate of regeneration also leave room to say that your Auri’s damage won’t regrow within their lifetime, or may not regrow properly. Or they simply haven’t regrown it, and that’s that. No explanation.
What can you take from all this, ultimately?
Play your character however you want. In the end, whatever you come up with is your character’s canon, and you don’t have to RP with anyone trying too hard to belittle you for wanting to color outside the lines a bit. Is it fun to justify things with in-game lore? Yes, but by no means it is required to have fun in RP.
Now go make some lizard stories.
