Who are we?

Something I've been wondering is... Who are we?

Do we have a past? Childhood? Parents? How about our original place? Are we from Eorzea? Thavnair? The New World? I didn't played 1.0, so... Where was my character during Dalamud's fall? Did he saw the red moon and Bahamut?

Or we were just suddenly created by Hydaelyn and sent to the world the same day we travel to a city-state to become adventurers?

You are want you want to be !
We don't have background, you create yourself.
You need to make some RP about your origins.

We are generic silent protagonist number #376249.

We were created in the snowflake factory to vanquish the local evil overlord. Up until the start of the game, we spent our time permanently wasted in a shabby bar somewhere at the back of beyond, which explains why we have no memory of the time.

The rest is up to you.

Players who start at 2.0 and onward are implicitly not from Eorzea. The rest is up to you.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Players who start at 2.0 and onward are implicitly not from Eorzea. The rest is up to you.

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This is perfect for Au'Ra roleplayers. Especially when you find out why in the 2.X patches.

I did play 1.0, but barely stuck around after beta and was a lala. He died before the calamity, head canon is that he was the one who arranged my smuggling in.
(incoming mental gymnastics)
2.0 I'm an Ala Mhigan Highlander (yes, I'm Au'Ra right now but that's gonna change), chased away from his homeland by the Garleans. Now, I try make a home in Limsa as a sellsword and a courier, only to end up as a high ranking officer and known as the Warrior of Light. 3.0 more of the same, except this time with dragons, moogles, and way too much snow.

4.0 Return to my roots as a Cowboy Samurai. (Which is apparently a trope, and here I thought I was being original.)http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.../SamuraiCowboy

Even during 1.0 it was assumed that you were coming to Eorzea from some vague otherwhere. (One example, the adventurer unit of the Maelstrom is called the Foreign Levy.) However, the purpose of this assumption on the part of NPCs has nothing to do with what the developers intend for you; rather it just makes more sense for them to go on expository rants teaching you all about Eorzea if they assume you're newcome to the realm.

For example, an Eorzean has little reason to teach another Eorzean about what aetherytes are, but it's the first thing you get lectured about when you show up. Why? You need to how know that game mechanic works. "OY, PLAYER FOREIGNER! OVER HERE! I WILL TEACH YOU OUR GAME MECHANICS AND WORLD LORE MYSTERIOUS AND EXOTIC WAYS."

There is not a single thing in this game that lends weight to the assumptions of these NPCs, though. It's up to you if you want to opt-in and go along with it or opt-out, tell yourself these NPCs are mistaken, and write your own Eorzean backstory.

Well, it's mentioned you're not from Eorzea, as in, you come to Eorzea, however:

In the SMN questline (lvl58) it is mentioned that Bahamut's aether was spread across all of Eorzea and that you absorbed some of it (as anyone else).. so it'd indicate you were there or at least close by.

Since I'm a Duskwight I RP as though I'm from Eorzea, just not from directly around the city-states - since otherwise I have to come up with a complicated story about how I got to where I started out and it's too annoying and snowflakey. Zojha's summary neatly resolves most contradictions (lol) and I assume most NPCs don't know what they're talking about. Why, the Valentione's Day guy told me this year that he hoped I'd find love - while I was wearing my eternal bond ring!

Figuring out what was and wasn't canon for my character in the 1.0->ARR chaos was a real pain as a new player.

Professor Moose and others have explained the basics for it, but to add a little more lore information to this, the player's character is a foreigner who has come to Eorzea to take up work as an adventurer, the lore reasons for doing so however actually appear to differ slightly depending on whether or not your character starts in ARR or was a Legacy character from 1.0.

Characters who were originally from 1.0 were foreign mercenaries and sellswords who were originally attracted to Eorzea answering the call from the (hastily cobbled together) alliance of citystates that were expecting the Garlean Empire to assault the entire realm after the fall of Ala Mhigo... except that invasion never came (save for Gaius's disastrous foray into Mor Dhona that ended with him fleeing with his tail between his legs when Midgardsormr and the Dravanian Horde showed up). So the citystates disbanded their army, leaving lots of heavily armed youth suddenly unemployed (which brought the inevitable social problems with it). Accordingly the adventuring guilds were set up to put these bored, restless, sellswords to meaningful work, and 1.0 characters were among them.

Many of these very adventurers later served at the Battle of Carteneau during the Calamity, many dying or injured during the battle, with a handful spirited away by Louisoix to five years in the future (ARR's beginning), with the memory of their identities becoming obscured "as if by a bright light", thus they became an ideal of what adventurers should aspire to be like, becoming known after that as the "Warriors of Light." A 1.0 character who satisfied certain requirements in 1.0 (namely, they had to have passed a certain story battle in the 7th Umbral Era story in 1.0), were part of this later group, where they teleport back into Eorzea five years later at the start of ARR.

ARR characters on the other hand, were foreigners attracted to Eorzea after the Calamity, having heard tales about the Warriors of Light saving the day at the Battle of Carteneau, and were inspired to become adventurers based on that ideal. The game seems to assume that unless you are a 1.0 character with the 'Legacy' story, the original Warriors of Light never returned, instead becoming a legend that attracts idealistic youth to Eorzea to become adventurers and protect the realm from evil, which is what all ARR characters are.

Either way, regardless of whether your character is a 1.0 character, a 1.0 character with the 'Legacy' story, or an ARR character, your character is basically a blank slate with it left up to the player to fill in the blanks about their origins, past history and personality, very much in keeping with the FF series (and RPGs in general) table-top RPG roots (after all, the player characters in the very first FF game are nameless generics only identified by their Job class).

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

Well, it's mentioned you're not from Eorzea, as in, you come to Eorzea, however:

In the SMN questline (lvl58) it is mentioned that Bahamut's aether was spread across all of Eorzea and that you absorbed some of it (as anyone else).. so it'd indicate you were there or at least close by.

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This line actually has a few different variations:

As a 1.0 "meteor survivor" player, I was told I'd adsorbed Bahamut's aether at Carteneau, and I believe if you've cleared coil prior to that quest you are told that it is a result of encountering Bahamut there.

Honestly its a vague "somewhere else" but if you want you could always just say that you are from a remote Eorzean community that did not interact with the cities much or have an aetheryte. This was the basic story I used as a Keeper and a Raen and it works for both since as a Keeper of the Moon and a Raen both characters would have been from isolated communities that wouldn't be considered mainstream Eorzean in culture.

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Originally Posted by Vulcwen

Well, it's mentioned you're not from Eorzea, as in, you come to Eorzea, however:

In the SMN questline (lvl58) it is mentioned that Bahamut's aether was spread across all of Eorzea and that you absorbed some of it (as anyone else).. so it'd indicate you were there or at least close by.

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I believe 2.0 story showed a hint on how that was possible being

The 2.0 WoL was the one who gave Cid his goggles back when he or she has yet to be a physical being in the world yet.

Sometime after that event the WoL manifested into the world and what life and time they spent in the world they had until the beginning of 2.0 is up to the player's imagination.

With this there are basically endless possibilities with the WoL's Origin from being a person from another world, reincarnation into this world, natural residence of Eorzea from a small town, Born from another Continent and enter Eorzea for a chance at being a Adventurer, maybe born from Garlemald but left that life because "REASONS", and any other cliche origin story a person can think up.

As they say sometimes the best Origin option is one the Player can freely make up themselves.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

I believe 2.0 story showed a hint on how that was possible being

The 2.0 WoL was the one who gave Cid his goggles back when he or she has yet to be a physical being in the world yet.

Sometime after that event the WoL manifested into the world and what life and time they spent in the world they had until the beginning of 2.0 is up to the player's imagination.

With this there are basically endless possibilities with the WoL's Origin from being a person from another world, reincarnation into this world, natural residence of the world, and any toher cliche origin story a person can think up.

As they say sometimes the best Origin option is the one the Player can freely make up themselves.

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I think you're overthinking that specific scene though -

the player actually used the Echo and accessed Cid's memories of his arrival in Eorzea in that scene, as that is what the Echo does. By breaking down the 'boundaries of the soul', it allows an Echo user to not only interact in another's memories, but in a minor way, directly interfere in them, in that they then place themselves in that memory as having been present during that event (and the person so affected simply then shrugs it off as having always been that way in most cases). But the past event itself remained unchanged, because it's just a person's memory of that event that has been altered, not the event itself (Minfilia even mentioned this way back when the player first met her in both ARR and 1.0, paraphrased as, "The past is like a stone tablet. You cannot uncarve what is already written").

This sort of thing was far more common back in 1.0 during Echo scenes where the player would interact with NPCs in Echo scenes and even be replied back to in turn by said NPCs, sadly in the change over to ARR how the Echo was depicted was changed to be more of a (non interactive) grainy sepia-toned video, unlike the 1.0 depiction of an Echo scene being virtually indistinguishable from 'reality'. But anyway...

The important thing is that scene the player's appearance in Cid's memories did not actually happen - Cid found his googles in another way but because the player interfered with his memories he therefore just assumed that really happened. It was in fact a visual metaphor for that interaction dispelled the amnesia about his past and what happened at Carteneau, the goggles themselves being a metaphor for his past, and not that we somehow really did magically appear twenty or so years ago and handed Cid his goggles in mid air.

But you are right that the player is a 'blank slate' in that it's left up to the player to create a backstory and origin for their character, in keeping with RPG roots like Dungeons and Dragons and the very first FF game, as I previously mentioned.

I'm not sure myself. I started out as a pugilist in gridania...yet the devs want to discount the possibly that I, a pugilist, started in Gridania, or was even a pugilist...its very annoying and I wish this blanket hatred for all things and people that played 1.0 would finally end already.

I just want to keep separate the whole "Warrior of Light" thing. Despite being an adventurer in 1.0. It never sat well with me roleplaying wise, and I don't even like being called it now. I started as a duskwight, hoping to have some unique origin or gamplay that shed some light on how we live, but nope, melting pot, crumbling remains of civilization, and lots of hate on the "greys" that get looked over, classy.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

I just want to keep separate the whole "Warrior of Light" thing. Despite being an adventurer in 1.0. It never sat well with me roleplaying wise, and I don't even like being called it now. I started as a duskwight, hoping to have some unique origin or gamplay that shed some light on how we live, but nope, melting pot, crumbling remains of civilization, and lots of hate on the "greys" that get looked over, classy.

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You don't have to call yourself a WOL when role-playing though. That's strictly part of the game narrative. A Warrior of Light is anyone who is blessed by Hydaelyn and fights on her behalf.

Your RP story can be whatever you want it to be though, as it is wholly separate from the game's story.

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Originally Posted by Velox

You don't have to call yourself a WOL when role-playing though. That's strictly part of the game narrative. A Warrior of Light is anyone who is blessed by Hydaelyn and fights on her behalf.

Your RP story can be whatever you want it to be though, as it is wholly separate from the game's story.

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I guess I feel just lost then, there a lot of things in game that just cannot be taken at face value.

So, I suppose there is nothing written about our past.

I could be just a kid who saw the calamity 5 years before becoming adventurer. Or maybe I could even been born in the FF13 world banished to the Rift after Cocoon's fall appearing in Eorzea after that? Anything?

Thanks for the answers. I'm not so expert with english, so there are things from the lore I could miss... x)

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Originally Posted by Con_Carne

Anything?

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Anything, as long as you understand that this will only be your personal "head-canon", that is, your personal story for your character. Whether or not you can get other people to play along is what role-playing is all about. ;)

That said, it's generally a good rule-of-thumb to stick within established lore as far as possible. So, extraordinary origin stories — such as being from another dimension or world — would require extraordinary explanation. Eventually, if it gets too far-fetched, you'll find in harder and harder to keep your character's story grounded and believable.

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

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Being from another world will not require extreme explaination as the sea of Aether where all life in the world of FF14 comes from is basically a river of souls linked to countless different worlds. How a person ends up in the Aether can be different reasons either they have died in their old world or their physical body are brought into the Aether through some means. From there they are given a new body born into the new world or if they have maintained a physical body when brought into the Aether they can be sent into the world of FF14 keeping their original body but of course know how that also turned out from 3.0 and 3.1 "nutkin" incident.

In Final Fantasy Mobius explaination of the Aether, all life is from and eventually return to the Aether then eventually they are brought to their Promised Land which differs between each individual Soul either being a new world or the world they were original from before their death thus being reborn in the same world. How bad and good that world is also determined by the individual as well. However, in mobius that can only be truely achieved once the individual obtained their Light of Hope given form as a Crystal of Light.