One of the best stories humanity ever produced was a draft of a rewrite of the Epic of Gilgamesh written by a Ecuadorian poet in 1935. It was tossed into a fireplace by an angry boy and lost forever. Another of humanity's best was told 65,000 years ago and was overheard by a small tribe of embarked Neanderthals boating down a river in what is now northern Georgia. A short woman at the bank scrubbed a wooden idol in the water and sang an ancient tale in an unknown language. These two are eclipsed by everything produced by two brothers at the coast of what is now Cameroon between 503 BC and 490 BC, which they shared with some family and friends, and were beloved by everyone except a sour uncle.

Burning

idk what dm needs to hear this but you arent getting that done in a single session

So about the benchmark...

Something incredibly funny that folks over on Twitter have discovered is that if you set your computer's date to 1st April, Meteor will... change somewhat.

Looking a little more gentlemanly than usual, Meteor.

Apparently he can get pretty damn blocky too, so make sure to check your hardware if you can count his polygons.

More assorted doodles of my FFXIV Catman and friends...

Out of all the Final Fantasy summons Alexander is by far my favourite and I wanna know how it was pitched because it is a buckwild concept

I was thinking to myself "that sounds like something that would originate from Final Fantasy VI" and I was right

That game is wild, combining classic fantasy tropes like the first 5 games with heavy religious themes, imperialism, and steampunk. (spoiler alert for a nearly 30yo game) The apocalypse happens in that game.

Also, according to the Wiki, Alexander is inspired by the Gates of Alexander, a mythical wall supposedly built by Alexander the Great (who is an important figure in the Quran) to guard the realms of men from Gog and Magog, the enemies of the people of God in the end of days. Hence your "divine justice/holy" connection.

[map by u/republic8080 on r/ImaginaryMaps]

TL:DR It's an angelic holy castle named after Alexander because it was built to protect humanity and enforce the judgment of God. And it's a steampunk robot because Final Fantasy VI fucks.

Also also, the “World of Ruin” where you first get Alexander in Final Fantasy VI, like its name implies, is the post-apocalyptic part of the game, further cementing the Gog and Magog/biblical end of days connection.

So basically, Alexander fits very well in the setting and themes of the game in its first appearance. And all of its subsequent appearances are like that because the original Alexander was like that.

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.

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:

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.

I was very aware of this back when I was playing it, and it's shaped a lot of my headcanons about Ariane's relationships with the Scions (she's very close to them now, post-Endwalker, but it took a long time to get there and early on she struggled to connect with them), but re-reading dialogue from the ARR patches is like... wow these people were really cavalier with the WoL's safety for a while there.

Like I don't want to single out any one character because really they all do it, but I was just reading the part where Moenbryda arrives and they're working out the plan to follow the aether trail and figure out where Lady Iceheart is, and Moen's all like "This is super dangerous btw. Should be fine though! If you die it'll be quick, anyway. So, ready to get started?" and Minfilia's like, "Sure thing bestie :) " and the WoL is standing there like, Hi. Is anyone going to ask me what I think, seeing as it's definitely me you're going to send in there? No? Okay. Cool.

The next quest definitely tries to smooth it over a little, like Minfilia says she has every faith you'll return to them like you always do, and that Moenbryda is brilliant and you should trust her, and Moenbryda too urges you to have faith in the plan.

But I definitely remember this as one of the parts of the story where the Warrior of Light felt the most expendable to the Scions. I think the fact that the Archons are all Such Good Friends already really reinforces this. Anytime a group of them are in the same room, the WoL is the odd one out, the new kid who has a good party trick but isn't really one of them and everyone knows it but is being polite about it.

And the thing is I don't think they mean it. I've written before about the Hero Complex that pervades the Scions in the wake of Louisoix's death, but I think it has a lot to do with that. And I think that if the WoL were to die on their way to find Iceheart, they'd be mourned just as Moenbryda is, and I think Minfilia and the others would certainly carry the weight of their death and feel responsible for it. (And of course, when the moment arises, both Moenbryda and Minfilia do the Hero Thing and sacrifice themselves.) Nonetheless, the way they all project all their hopes onto the Warrior of Light at this point in the story... it is depersonalizing. Moenbryda is a friend. The Warrior of Light is The Hero. And with that comes all the assumptions about what heroes do.

I don't even think the writing is unaware of all this. Like the second quest I described is called "The Instruments of Our Deliverance" in English and it really strikes me as like, a triple entendre. The white auracite is an instrument to deliver the Warrior of Light to Iceheart's lair, of course. Iceheart seeks to make herself an instrument of Shiva, to end the Dragonsong. And the Warrior of Light is the instrument of the Scions' deliverance, of Eorzea's--for which Iceheart calls them "a pawn of liars and schemers." They are both instruments, at once heroes and pawns, determined and deceived.

And in Moenbryda's defense specifically, she says she wanted to go with the Warrior of Light to confront Iceheart despite not having the Echo, but Urianger made her promise not to as the risk of tempering was too great. She seems grumpy about it, too!

Oh, I 100% agree, particularly about this part of the plot. Like, the quest title "The Instruments of Our Deliverance" is directly a line from Iceheart's summoning ritual. And the full line makes it... so much more painful, in fact. "We whom gods and men have forsaken must become the instruments of our own deliverance." Yeah. That's you and Ysayle. You have no support from anybody. Not even Hydaelyn can help you. Right on the money there. And everything surrounding that teleport reinforces your abandonment. Aymeric's wildly flowery letter thanking you for doing this which is read to you before you go sure does sound like the sort of speech you'd hear at your funeral when this fails. None of the Scions are waiting for you to re-emerge from Akh Afah except Moenbryda, who sent you in there to die. And the small-but-personal kicker for me is F'lhammin, right before this, promises you a hot meal will be waiting when you get back, but then... oh, no, that's not true. Everyone else was more important.

This puts more weight on Haurchefaunt being the sole person on the star who objected to you being cavalierly sent to your death.

Partly, this is mechanical. They couldn't send the Scions in with you, but yeah, right before the bloody banquet, they drag you to the lowest point you can get on as many levels as possible.

Roegadyn players, tell me about your character's name!

What was your thought process behind it? Does it mean something important? Does it follow Sea Wolf/Hellsguard conventions or does it draw on other cultures? Is it the same as their birth name or has it changed? Can other people pronounce it? Do they go by any nicknames or shorten it for convenience?

i have a few different roegadyn characters. i love roegadyn names!

Niumyna Wheiroegawyn was named because her father was a fearsome pirate who in all his years was said to only have one love, which was the sea. Only of course until he set eyes upon his daughter for the first time and he had a new love. His name, Wheiroega, was mostly because I wanted to play some with masculinity and player expectations.

Eliloh is of mixed heritage, with a Roegadyn mother and Highlander father. Her name means "foreign clothes" and was meant to evoke that uncomfortable in your own skin dysmorphia that was important to her narrative and growth. She's also a bit a product of spite from when I was running into roleplayers with a very narrow view of what was permissible (based entirely on fanon) for such a character that I didn't jive with. So I shared in a bit of that feeling of being out of place roleplaying her around others.

There's also Merlgraeb and Gilded Antler, an older couple I enjoyed roleplaying who were both deeply in love but from very different cultural and economic backgrounds, so their relationship didn't really ever work out as people wanted it to. Antler was a wealthy Hellsguard pugilist who fought in the Bloodsands for sport, while Merlgraeb was a poor country boy from Vylbrand whose father died at sea and so he never left the island because he was deathly afraid of sailing.

whenever someone in a story tells a character they're training to fight to treat their weapon like an extension of themselves i always feel like more weight should be put on that statement. on the implication that in learning to wield a weapon you must become it. you must make it a part of you. you must walk down a path from which you will never be able to come back from.

weapons should mold to their wielders like grafts. great warriors should appear fused to their blades, and unbalanced - amputated - without them. their hands should be unsteady without the grip and weight of a killing instrument. there should be more body horror in the choice to take up arms.