The Start of the Stream
And so their journey began. The four Warriors of Light felt overwhelmed by the great task destiny had placed upon them. They did not know the true significance of the four crystals they held in their hands... The crystal that once, long ago, shone with a light so brilliant. The time for their journey had come. The time to cast off the veil of darkness and bring the world once more into the light...
...
And so the Knight who passed the trial and carried the crystal raises the Excalibur against Chaos.
The Ninja who passed the trial and carried the crystal raises the Masamune against Chaos.
The White Wizard who passed the trial and carried the crystal raises the Mjöllnir against Chaos.
The Black Wizard who passes the trial and carried the crystal raises the Spellbinder against Chaos.
The ______ who endured all in the path and carried burdens raises the __________ against _________.
In astral and in umbral; thus begins the _______ of calamity and hero alike.
Sudden thought-...
Warrior of Light: "You'll never beat me with your stolen techniques."
Zenos: "And what, are you gonna beat me with your stolen techniques?"
Warrior of Light: "What...? I don't steal techniques!"
Job Trainers: "Actually Warrior of Light...yeah, you do."
Character Arc: Mitsurugi Shirogane
tragic hero arc
we all know how this story goes. when it began, you were almost the perfect hero, but almost is never enough. you lacked introspection, or you were too stubborn or vengeful or reckless - as reckless as the world that helped to ruin you. you were not perfect, and that's okay. we knew the story ended in blood and we watched it anyway. we knew you would die in the end and we still couldn't help but love you, just a little bit. at the very least, you are more human than a hero could ever be.
Tagged by: @honoura
Character Arc: Michi Tohru
tragic hero arc
we all know how this story goes. when it began, you were almost the perfect hero, but almost is never enough. you lacked introspection, or you were too stubborn or vengeful or reckless - as reckless as the world that helped to ruin you. you were not perfect, and that's okay. we knew the story ended in blood and we watched it anyway. we knew you would die in the end and we still couldn't help but love you, just a little bit. at the very least, you are more human than a hero could ever be.
Tagged by: @honoura
Character Arc: Alyth Shihab
disillusionment arc
it's hard to imagine yourself when you were young. maybe you were meant to be a hero; maybe you could have been, in another world, but this world only made you sad. there seemed to be too many problems to fix and too much cruelty and too many hard lines that you did not know how to soften. the world turns and it is bloody and hard and you sit on your bed, thinking about the blood and the hardness and all you failed to do. i know it feels like you could sleep until the end of time, but i hope you don't. i hope you lift yourself out of bed one day, not to save the world, but to peel an orange and to walk in a forest; to find all the softness you could not create.
Tagged by: @honoura
Character Arc: Dorothea Enheduanna
redemption arc
your story had a pretty rough start and you did some things you're not proud of, but you made the choice to change. i won't go through how important it is to accept responsibility and keep striving to improve or whatever because you know that already. what i think you should know is that your fuel does not need to be shame. you don’t need to stand over the bathroom sink with your blood in your hands until you can no longer make out your reflection. you will look at your face and you will see the person you used to be, but that person no longer exists. today, you are looking, and that makes all the difference.
Tagged by: @honoura
Character Arc: Nina Warfield
corruption arc
so. you got worse. and i'm not entirely sure i can blame you for it. maybe it was in you all along, hidden and waiting, or maybe someone planted it in you and watched it grow. either way, it's there now and you hold it in your fist like a second heart - this blood, this hunger, this thrill of having teeth and using them. perhaps you are right to. you are a mirror for the hardness of the world, and a mirror that we could all stand to look in more often. it's hard to watch the bleeding bring about more blood, but it is undeniable that you are very good at wounding.
Tagged by: @honoura
Character Arc: Ringo Shiro
romance/friendship arc
you started this story a little hard, or awkward, or stubborn. that's okay. it's harder than it should be to admit, but what you really want is love. that's what your story is all about - not just the act of loving, but the allowance of it. the confession that you do not want to fight or bleed or save the world, but to simply feel the way two hands fit so easily together. you will have two chairs and a table and you will shut your blinds, and you will say the word love without faltering. this is a happy ending, and you do not need to feel guilty. it hurts our hands to fight - never to hold.
Tagged by: @honoura
halloftherestless reblogged
Burning
halloftherestless reblogged
halloftherestless reblogged
literally how it feels to play paladin and the whole party gets behind your passage of arms
halloftherestless reblogged
Gridania vs the Elementals
Had a bit of a grouse on Twitter after seeing a decent take with a buncha of real not decent replies. Transcript of the tweets:
ARR inherited the mess in Gridania from the 1.0 team, no idea how to fix it, so ignore it.
It's also clear it's mostly a People problem, not the utterly alien blue-orange morality Elementals the folks who live in the Shroud adapt to living with (& corrupt folks use as excuses).
The Elementals are obviously not policing every detail of folks' lives & barely comprehend mortals as seen several times. When they lash out it's cuz they sense a threat they don't understand. Hence the need for Padjal & Hearers. Who are people & make mistakes or are corruptible.
Assuming the Elementals are evil or cruel for the hell of it is grossly misunderstanding the alien horror aspect of the Shroud & the druidic story of the Padjal. Nature isn't all kind & fluffy. The Elementals aren't even personified nature; they're aspects of it that can react.
The trouble in Gridania always comes from people mistreating each other, & sometimes that includes making claims about the Elementals. It's the same as corrupt priests in Ishgard or Monetarists in Ul'dah. Using authority for personal gain. It's explicit in the StB LTW quest.
I'd love to see Gridania get a glowup the way the other city-states have. I don't expect it to happen. Mostly I wish for it so maybe a fraction of folks would grasp slightly better the concepts of corrupt authorities vs alien nature elements.
I also once wrote a lot more about "why doesn't Kan-E just fix it?" as if it's that easy. https://autumnslance.tumblr.com/post/625180125899669504/the-seedseers-privilege
What happened in the EW Tank quest was cuz the Elementals couldn't tell who was at fault or why. They do not understand mortals or their reasons. They just knew something was happening. Removing padjal aspects instead of killing the boy too likely was their idea of mercy.
Meanwhile I'd side-eye any Hearer who claims "your kid specifically can't be cured cuz the Elementals say so."
If you don't trust an Ishgard priest making such claims of Halone telling him the same Herself, you shouldn't believe that Hearer, either. Why would they care or not?
Anyway. Not everything's a nice neat black & white easily understood & fixed situation. And the Elementals don't actually need fixing. Gridania does, but that's gonna take longer & isn't necessarily the WoL's job, but it's peoples'.
This, though I have one small point of disagreement.
ARR inherited the mess in Gridania from the 1.0 team, no idea how to fix it, so ignore it.
The mess was caused by ARR. In 1.0, the framing of the relationship between mankind and elemental was much more clearly expressed and featured prominently again and again in every class quest, side quest, and city-state MSQ you did. You weren't just told about the elementals but you were shown them, how they worked and interacted with Gridania was on full display in the active worldbuilding of that era.
ARR did away with that. The elementals are "weak" now. They feature more prominently in Eureka than they do in the Shroud. We are told about them, but never shown them. We're told a couple times how they interact with the world, but few times and far between (HW: Kan-E; Y'shtola's resurrection or EW: Tales from the Twilight). Not even really in the Conjury quests!
ARR also introduced new systemic problems that were not present in 1.0:
- Everyone's favorite pop-up speech bubble about the elementals not wanting a girl healed or whatever. That is not at all in keeping with elemental lore. It's something you can find literally nowhere else. It makes no sense. It certainly wasn't a thing in 1.0 where about 60% of Gridania and elemental lore still lives.
- Ala Mhigans not permitted to stay in Quarrymill. I'm more lenient with this one because there's a whole plotline, newly added Quarrymill lore, etc that all sort of revolves around this point. This at least has buildup and goes somewhere. Like the last point though, not something the elementals ever were interested in in 1.0. Gridania is full of Ala Mhigans.
- Keeper discrimination. It comes up twice in two prominent questlines: ARC and a Moogle Courier quest. This was not a thing in 1.0, it's not a thing in other Gridania lore outside those two places. The elementals don't hate Keepers. The systemic oppression is aimed at Duskwights, at some point someone coopted that for Keepers.
These are all ARR issues that exist only in ARR. They didn't exist before, and sadly they never went back to Gridania later to explore these further except in a few outlier quests: SB BRD, LTW, EW Tank Role questline, etc. But the issues people have were never addressed, never confronted. Hell, we didn't even get to see how Gridania made peace with the Ixal in the way we saw the seeds of with the kobolds or the Amalj'aa.
So the wider community has basically just sat and stewed on the same dozen lines of questionably accurate text for 10+ years now. Unfortunately some of which only show up in the EN localization. With no real way of engaging with what was there before, and having very little that engages or challenges that old ARR lore since. EW gave us both a Tank role quest and an Alliance raid where the wol was told to love the elementals, that they do what they do out of an "abundance of love", without first addressing the very human wrongs committed in the elementals' name (not actually committed by elementals, because the elementals almost never show up or do anything in ARR+). But fixing systemic problems in narratives is hard! It takes a long time to do it well. And I'm not sure the team knows how or wants to try redressing what was set up as a loose thread before at this point, so it continues to get ignored. And probably always will at this point.
I think the problem's sat for too long now. Whole roleplay communities are built on the mythos of Keeper oppression. Twitter "meme"d war cries of "Burn it all down!" predicated on elemental/forest evil because they won't heal a little girl in a speech bubble probably written during crunch after a swash of temporary Thal's balls! passed the censor. Or Ala Mhigans can't enter the woods because of a war that happened 109 years ago when at almost no point outside the SB BRD quest does that war get talked about by anyone but the historian Erik, somehow also compounding in a double whammy of Ala Mhigo hate.
You are very right in that this is a human problem that requires human solutions, in the same way Ishgard's reformation was. But I don't think ARR adequately illustrates how comparable that example is! That the reverence and adherence to elemental law is Nophica worship. It's theocracy. Which is not to say elementals are blameless of literally everything or benevolent, in the same way they're not evil. They are neutral. They are disparate cognizant pieces of nature allowed agency and consent. This is their wood, its wellbeing is what they care about. We're all just living in it. But the elementals have also made it clear that the people in their wood are a part of that ecosystem, we're not just guests, and that's a big plot point that was lost in 1.0.
If folks are curious about learning more, you can find elemental lore here or you can read through 1.0's Gridania quests here for a fuller scope.
halloftherestless reblogged
Shout-out to house Valentione for having the cuntiest coat of arms in all of Ishgard
I love all the people newly discovering House Valentione's crest!
This artwork is a bit of deep cut 1.0 lore that comes from the very first Valentione's event in 2011, but cropped up recently in the new Encyclopedia Eorzea 3 as well. The motto in Eorzea reads: "Courage Begets Love". And here's what the original lore for the heraldry says:
1.0 Lodestone - Valentione's Day: "The heart-shaped escutcheon used in her house's coat-of-arms was added after the death of Countess Arabelle, in remembrance of the similarly shaped shield she oft carried into battle. As Valentione's Day became more popular, the story of Countess Arabelle and her crimson shield became more and more widespread, in turn, transforming the shield into a symbol of fortune and happiness. Two centuries ago, the Culinarians' Guild was finally successful in obtaining permission from the House Valentione to use a representation of the coat-of-arms on their festive chocolates."
Now at one point, it seemed like this text might have been retconned by the first lore book. See, neither the Culinarians' Guild nor its attached restaurant the Bismarck are anywhere close to 200 years old. They were founded in 1525, not yet celebrating half a century in 1.0's time.
Encyclopedia Eorzea - A Chronology of the Sixth Astral Era: 1525 - "Admiral Guolskyf 'Mastcleaver' Bhaldwaensyn, a noted gourmand, establishes the Culinarians' Guild as part of a comprehensive effort to compile and catalogue the most delicious recipes from all corners of the realm."
However, EE3 with the steel chair in 2023 doubles down on the original text—all but copy/pasting the original blurb.
Encyclopedia Eorzea III - Valentione's Day: "House Valentione is second only to the High Houses of Ishgard themselves. The distinctive cordiform escutcheon of its heraldry was added after Countess Arabelle's death, inspired by the heart-shaped shield that defended the passionate warrior in countless battles. As Valentione's Day became more widespread, people far and wide came to know the emblem as a symbol of good fortune. Near two hundred years ago, after repeated petitions from the Culinarians' Guild, the design was officially approved by House Valentione for use in paraphernalia related to the holiday—its iconic chocolate not least among them."
The Culinarian guildmaster even shows up at the end of the event, saying this:
Lyngsath: "I'll 'ave ye know their flavor is as rich as their 'istory. Some 'undreds o' years ago, the Culinarians' Guild was honored by House Valentione with the sole privilege o' baking these 'eart-shaped treats, ye see."
So maybe the Bismarck is older than it lets on... or EE1 continues to prove its not all that reliable as a primary resource. Either way, this coat of arms continues to slap, and has been a staple example I like to toss out to people who say Miqo'te have no place in Ishgard.
halloftherestless reblogged
Say this with me. Manifest it. Make it real. “I am not harmed by fire or explosives.” Say that outloud. Remember it. The only thing that’s stopping you is your own head. Never stop grinding.
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Festival of the Hunt: Sign-Ups Open!
Howdy y'all! The promised time has come -- the sign ups for the Festival of the Hunt! Please check the Carrd for all the details, which includes date, time, and locations! If anyone has any questions, either reach out to me here or on Discord (if you have my discord). This includes asking to participate as a DM, if being a hunter isn't for you! Or if you just want more than twelve hunters.
