#return to ivalice raids

[unbreakable-oaths]

Ma’am? She’s only above 5 ft in her dreams

[arianeoftheglade]

The Prima Vista

[snippity]

ivalician squire's armor

[devotedlystrangewizard]

NOT AR ROULETTE THROWING ME INTO VOID ARK IVE BEEN PUTTING THAT ONE OFF FOR AGES

[onwesterlywinds]

THE RISKBREAKERS' 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!

Saturday, May 25 marks the Riskbreakers' TENTH ANNIVERSARY as a free company!

We'd love to have you join us on Crystal/Balmung for as much of our celebration as you'd like: 💎 Noon - 1PM Pacific: Fall Guys 💎 1PM - ~4PM Pacific: Return to Ivalice raid sweep 💎~4PM - close: Open bar night at the Sandsea (RP)

On behalf of the entire company, THANK YOU so much for an absolutely incredible ten years. We can't wait to keep saving the world alongside you all!

...And if you're looking for a new social/RP/PvE free company on Crystal, please don't hesitate to hit me up!

[eggdrawings]

Finalist piece from 2019(? I don't remember anymore) FFXIV fanfest art contest! Themed after the 'Return To Ivalice' alliance raid series

[tritoch]

look i know a lot of people don't like the stormblood return to ivalice alliance raids and they're very long quests and they're intentionally annoying and matsuno's writing really isn't the best fit for ffxiv but you have to understand. you have to understand. some of us were once young gay idiots and seeing this

was like getting run over by a freight train. my god. the doomed yaoi of it all. still get chills thinking about it. twenty fucking years of thinking about delita and ramza and finally we get the AU reconciliation timeline to fix their estrangement??? im a mainline game???? unbelievable.

[physicsfox7]

You sly dog, you got me monologuing!

Why not?

So I've gotten back into FFXIV pretty hard since I tried it last year. A few friends really pushed me, and I'm enjoying it. Good story, good music. The combat still feels a little bit wonky, but I'm an old school FF player and this is my first MMORPG.

The best times are when my friends aren't busy and they can run dungeons with me, or we explore areas they've seen 100 times and as I explore this new place they tell me about it's history and memories they have of it.

The game is mindblowingly gorgeous. Every time I revisit Gridania and sneak back to my favorite perch at The Hawthorne Hut, I am entranced by the leaves flowing in the wind, the rain falling on a roof, or the ridiculous amount of stars shining in the night sky.

(I know, anyone who's played already knows this, sue me; I am sprout.)

A couple of weeks ago we ran the Alexander raids together, and it was an absolute joy to watch experts play and simultaneously nurture their adopted sprout. Yesterday we visited Ivalice, and I was able to fall in love with the FFT soundtrack all over again and see old friends.

The community has been extremely kind. When my friends are busy, or trying to find some peace for themselves (or hitting the new expansion hard!) and I am left to my own devices, I have come across almost universal support. New job class and running a dungeon for the first time? They'll give you tips, let you run at your own pace, and when you screw up? They pick you up, dust you off, and encourage you to try again.

An unintentional side effect of immersing myself in another FF universe is RP. And no, not ERP. Although that exists, I have not had an opportunity to explore it. (I'm 100x more shy in a video game than on Tumblr, go figure)

We go to a quiet bar, torment ourselves with exotic food that we don't get to eat and drinks that sound terrifying or delectable. Sometimes both. And we talk. We talk to each other, as our characters. Intricate backstories that span a whole game and four expansions, almost 1000 primary quests. These folks have spent years perfecting their characters story.

Now, I had no concept of how in depth this was when I walked into that bar. A simple question about where you're from can spawn conversations that run for hours, with everyone having an opinion on the country you're from. Just don't be Garlean. My first night, I was asked what I do for a living. I said adventurer, because that's a fairly typical answer. I was immediately swept under their wing, to be given tips on how to clear Copperbell more efficiently, what weapon I should be carrying, where to find the cheapest gear that will protect you and look good.

My god, the clothes in this game. Hundreds of articles for each portion of the body. There's a whole website dedicated to picking out the perfect outfit for your gunslinger or white mage.

The best trick? Have loving friends who send you the really sick Converse/Vans, despite your protests. When you push them for why? Because I wanted them. (For reference, decent boots run 30k gil on the market board, the Converse/Vans run 750k because the materials are hard to come by. Needless to say, I have run the last 28 levels wearing orange sneakers, and I look fucking good doing it.

So back to the RP, the original point of this post. Last week, I was sitting in the bar talking about places I wanted to visit (in character, I have already been there for the quests). Mor Dhona was mentioned, as it's the site of on of the most pivotal moments in the story: The Calamity.

When it was recommended to me, my character pulled out a worn leather journal and wrote it down. An innocuous but important detail, to make the immersion feel deeper. The journal was passed around, returned to me, and eventually put away. Not even a physical thing, it spurned a long conversation about the adventurer's life, and the trials they undergo.

Then, my brain said something to me a couple of days ago. What if the journal was real? Tangible, physical, something detailing my characters adventures as that happen, stuffed with "drawings" (my character can draw, I cannot. At all. I have an ink jet printer and an app that converts jpegs into very convincing sketches) and souvenirs from his adventure's?

Sounds a bit silly, but it would be an easy way for me to track the details of conversations, and giving me a little arts and crafts project, as a treat.

So I did it. I bought a (frankly overpriced) leather journal with a compass rose sewn onto the cover with black thread. Beautiful sturdy leather and crisp cream pages.

Then I set about bringing it half way to destroyed. A leather journal carried in the field, through the rain and rivers, into combat, through the snow and up mountains does not stay immaculate for long. My character has had the journal for about 4 months, so I needed to beat it up and give myself a head start. Scuff the leather, soften the edges, curl the whole thing so it never sits flat. Drip a little bit of sealing wax on the cover, put small punctures into the back and knicks out of the corners.

The pages? Some got the tea treatment, to try to age them. No dice, this damn modern paper is resistant to stains. Water stains are forthcoming, but I am an impatient being and already started writing in it. Then a revelation came to me.

I am an absolutely massive fan of FFVIII. Obsessed with it. I know the names of every song in the OST and where each song is used, I have the Lionheart necklace and ring, I have beaten Omega on multiple occasions for fun. Anyone who knows me know I am an FFVIII nerd, and I ain't sorry.

So when I was designing my character last year, the face has scar options. Well, what better choice than Squall's scar? I'll have some of that I said.

Well, my character is from a small, relatively peaceful fishing village. Where the hell did he get that ridiculous scar?! The first job he took, of course! But alas, he was carrying his journal with him when he was injured, and it seems it soaked up quite a bit of blood. Some recommended beet juice. I tried raspberry tea, cherry juice, pomegranate concentrate. Nothing. Oddly, the tea dyed the test page blue.

What time of the year is it? Halloween of course! So we buy some fake blood and I'll be damned if it doesn't look like the real thing. It stains the pages, and the rough parts of the leather.

Now, just 4 or 5 days later, it has a leaf from Gridania from the day my character arrived there, drawings of the aetheryte station, some of the people he's met along the way and some of the more impressive geographic features (the ones that coincidentally took my breath away), and even a Triple Triad card. There are plans to visit the Sea of Clouds and meet the Vanu Vanu, so we'll be tucking a feather into the pages. So many other things await.

This has become a (probably for you, dear reader, painfully) long post about my current autistic obsession. I am particularly proud of this journal. While I was inspired by another persons comment, the execution was all mine. So, having gotten to the bottom of this essay, either by scrolling or reading, I have but one question: Do you wanna see the journal?

edit: it will literally only take one person saying yes.

[autumnslance]

I saw you replied to my fear post, thank you for that. I’ve been trying to make an OC that is both a main and a character for writing like Aeryn is for you. My next question is can I take a canon character like Aerith, Rinoa, or Yuna for example as a base and then work to make them my own OC? I’ve been really into FF7 and the Atelier series, Aerith is the perfect candidate to be an Alchemist! Are any of your OCs inspired by your favorite characters in other series?

You're welcome! And I think that taking an existing character as inspiration is a good way to start with making an OC. I've done it a few times in some tabletop games, but also often don't consciously, only realizing there are similarities to characters I've loved after the fact.

In a tabletop game, I made a character initially inspired by a dancer character from one of the Lunar games, but the game didn't go anywhere (as often happens). I held onto that base concept, and then years later found a Pathfinder game the concept worked in perfectly, also letting me revise the character greatly.

My WoW paladin, Alynore, was inspired by characters like Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5, Paksenarrion from Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion novel series, and a little of Sleepy from The Black Company novel series. They're all dedicated military women, leaders, queer (1 bisexual, 2 asexual), no-nonsense, and value dedication, justice, and even kindness in their own ways.

I also took the idea of some favorite twin characters from a show who were taken in by their noble father, but ran away a few years later. I did a "what if a trusted member of the household was discovered to have let them run away, and now was charged with finding them?" and turned that into an OC in another game.

Aeryn maybe has some other Final Fantasy heroines in her makeup, but as I'd played through XIV twice before, I noted how the game treats what I call "Assumed Default WoL." They can't account for every permutation of the player character; even games like Dragon Age, or Mass Effect, or Baldur's Gate can't account for every version of their player heroes. But there are baseline assumptions, and so I baked that into the concept when I came up with Aeryn. An adventurous altruist, a determinator, a little bit of a gremlin--especially as time goes on and "this is my life now" really sets in (and WoL's dialogue options include a few more unhinged possibilities in some places). I looked at the influences and inspirations, said "OK, I know why they adventure, why does this girl?" In Aeryn's case, I started simple: I knew her brother was 1.0 WoL and never returned, so she was looking.

That was it. A lot of the rest of the details came later.

It's OK--and I often recommend--leaving a lot of backstory details loose and vague to start. I did the same with Dark Autumn, with C'oretta, Iyna, and various past characters in WoW and others. It let me add, change, shuffle, and write things in later. Sometimes even retcon and rework things.

Don't be afraid of that, especially when using other characters as starting points. Use the broad strokes summaries of their story and adjust it to fit in the new setting you're importing them to; goodness knows FF itself does this all the time (look at the Ivalice raid and Bozja story and related characters from Tactics and XII!). And then change things as needed, especially as you get ideas and interactions that feel "right" for the character and yourself, the stories you want to tell.

And maybe later you want to change them again (you come up with something new, lore drops make you want to play around with a different thing, etc), or make up AUs, or other characters to tell other stories. Play around, experiment, and remember nothing is set in stone.

[stalwart-spirit]

Moogle Tome event has the Ivalice raids on the list, you know what that means...

You're all officially brought into the Damascas Djinns, we must return to Rabanastre!!

C'MERE

[fatewalker]

what songs would we find on lorelei's orchestrion? modern with lyrics or instrumental is fine!

protagonist's theme from the ivalice raids and voice of no return from the nier raids! c:

protagonist's theme is a really pretty instrumental song that always reminds me of lore playing the harp!! it's pretty common to hear music coming from her place, she has a harp and a piano as well as other instruments that she plays often.

and the same goes with voice of return, it's such a beautiful song that reminds me of her singing!!

[aetherotransformer]

for the ask meme: 3, 4, and 5!

3. Does their Echo function like it does in the MSQ? Or is there a twist to it? 

ill be honest im someone who doesnt really care about the echo beyond as a plot device so its pretty much the exact same as it is ingame. i dont have a good answer for this one soryr

4. Do they have a canon mount or minion? What's its name(s)? 

ashen has three i've decided are his canon ones:

antares. a true griffin gifted to her by the ala mhigan resistance as a going-away gift when she had to leave rhalgr's reach for the far east at the start of stormblood. he's a former war griffin used to run supplies to the reach before he got injured in the attack led by zenos. old man ashen absolutely spoils and takes everywhere whenever she's on business in eorzea

hledík ("snapdragon"). a red chocobo ashen came across during his time in bozja. who knows whether he's wild or an escape from the ivth legion's beastmasters? he loves violence as all red chocobos do. hledík was her main mount during her time in bozja/zadnor (as well as a brief reunion during the garlemald section of endwalker), but she left him with the resistance when she returned to eorzea

the landerwaffe. it's the landerwaffe from azys lla. i farmed the trials for it so i get to make it canon. i imagine ashen has a way to summon it like the whistle but otherwise it just flies around. his mount for more remote/inhospitable regions like the moon

otherwise for practicality's sake (keeping a beast of burden fed/taken care of is a hassle) ashen just hires a local chocobo/amaro/falcon

oh i almost forgot about the minion. she found a construct 14 minion in goug when she did the ivalice raids and fixed it up. stephanivien adores it. thats it

5. Where are they from? What was their childhood like?

ashen was born in ala mhigo as a second generation ala mhigan (his parents had immigrated from northern thanalan ages ago and set up a small shop). at the age of six the garleans invaded and her family was forced to flee; her father was captured in the process and presumed dead, leaving her mother and her to start from scratch in the refugee camps near camp drybone. ashen spent her childhood helping with the slowly failing trading post her mother ran and doing odd jobs. he loves his mom but their relationship has always been slightly strained

[seaseren]

ok. quick Chiaki timeline in the post stormblood

Castrum Fluminis happens. They are very, very upset and kinda spiral- in this state they return to Ishgard. I think they started the Dark Knight quests, as in picked up the first one, during Heavenswared, but ended up running away from the situation- in absentia the situation has. Festered. Hardest part of this mental calculus is getting DRK 50-60 to take place during Stormblood, which is kinda an issue with all the Heavensward classes. There are still conservative strongholds in Ishgard, it doesn't really make sense but eh it'll do

Doing the Dark Knight thing helps some, but not entirely. They are still suffering from a bad case of depression and burnout and spending a LOT of time holed up at home. Very "laying in bed all day and calling it self care" vibes.

Tataru is the first to notice how...out of it they are, and gently remind them, "oh, remember that opportunity Soroban was talking about? I'm getting a team of adventurers together for it but he's really quite insistent that you be there" and also slips in a bit of "imagine how embarassed Alphinaud will be when he comes back if you had to fix his mess for him..." 4. I am thinking this is also when Chiaki and Lar-I-Mar are reuinited- she's part of the team Tataru recruits for the Four Lords, maybe accidentally but I think on purpose. Tataru has the connections. (For the record I am thinking the Ivalice raids and maybe the Mhach raids were just things Lari did- I like the idea that she's been off doing her own adventurer thing!) The biggest issue w this is that it probably means Lari wouldn't be yoinked to the First, but I kinda like the idea that she ends up working with the Scions while the A team Scions are in the First and getting her own reputation- but on the other hand Lari in the First would be interesting too...