Fordola

do I smell a redemption story in the works

I had hoped she would have been written out of the story entirely, I really don't like her backstory.

I really hated like her in the msq and hope she dies in her dirty, lonely prison cell

I wouldnt be opposed to getting some redemption for Fordola, or atleast SE better trying to establish that her enlisting with Garlemald was not just "because she's evil", but more "What choice did she have?"

But lets not kid ourselves. The girl has willingly aided in the opression of her own country, and has god knows how much blood on her hands

And once the Resistance learns she's the one who ordered the cannon at Castrum Abania to fire on Specula Imperatoris, I cant imagine they're gonna go easy on her, since she's killed, or attempted to kill, her own countrymen, and willingly

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Savagelf

do I smell a redemption story in the works

---

I don't see how she could be redeemed when she made it a point to have herself and her group be as brutal as possible to her own people because of some very lacking reasons.

It's almost as if these things are more nuanced than black and white scenarios.

From a writer's perspective, there's the saying that "No villain is truly evil". Sure, modern works give us sociopaths (Zenos) and "just want to watch the world burn" types, but most if not all villains have some sense of "right" behind their actions.

In Fordola's case, remember, she grew up in occupied Ala Mihgo. For her and others like her, Garlean servitude was the better option (with total oppression and/or death being the worse options). She knew this, and she knew who she was working for but in her own jaded way, she too had pride for her homeland. Notice how she was visibly upset when Garleans talked down to her and her unit? The opposite would be Yotsuyu, who - by her own admission - got dealt such a crappy hand repeatedly in life that she just became a mean, selfish woman who really only cared for herself (in before hard Tsundere switch with Gosetsu, calling it now).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

It's almost as if these things are more nuanced than black and white scenarios.

---

Do tell what nuance there is to the actions of Fordola and her group and how you can excuse their actions in any way or make it understandable. It's not like a gun was being held to their heads every time and told to do x and y, no they made it purposefully their own goal to opress and make it as bad as possible for any of their own people they encountered in their tasks. Take that tax collection bit for example, they could have collected it and been off again but they made it a point to stomp and beat the man half to death, all the while one ranted about ala mhigans being stuck in the past or somesuch

So it was their own view that their people were mongrels and deserving of the punishment their group gave them so liberally. Their own actions got them a reputation as some of the most cruel amongst those loyal to the Empire.

I could understand if they were legitimately a group of people that weren't liked by both sides and just tried to carve a position of respect and maybe 'going easy' on their own people despite the way they were viewed because THEN there would be some nuance to the actions they might have done, good or bad, but they purposefully didn't do any of that. In fact they fully sided with the Empire in every way and made it a point to hand out punishment even where it was not demanded by their own will. They were complete d-heads for no good reason.

when everything one work for is destroy one pride become like deflated balloon. One must slow begin to realize when one is wrong and start make thing right. I believe Genaral Rauban will be and advisor to the new leader of Ala Mihgo Lyse but what title will Lyse take Duchress of Ala Mihgo. I doubt she want leadership now it be thrust on her. sometime the great leader is those that have leadership force on them though I think be interesting is for twist in story she married the king of Doman

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lazaruz

And once the Resistance learns she's the one who ordered the cannon at Castrum Abania to fire on Specula Imperatoris, I cant imagine they're gonna go easy on her, since she's killed, or attempted to kill, her own countrymen, and willingly

---

She already admitted to Lyse, that she was the one who gave the order.

I can see Fordola getting a redemption story. Her motivations were to 'free' her people by forcibly paving the way for the Ala Mhigans to be wholly part of the empire and not just a controlled province, and she used any means necessary to accomplish her goal. Including sacrificing her conscience. It's a fairly common anti-hero plot line.

I rarely have wanted a character dead so much, that it kept disappointing me when she got away from us.

She's done so much crap and was such a hardcore traitor, if she gets a redemption story I'll be ticked and kick that b%^&* in the shin anyway

well i hope she lead a new resistance against the eorzean opressors, that will be more interesting ^^

Eorzean oppressors?

Lol, even if Eorzea were keen to that, it not only took the combined might of all 4 city states, but another country and several warrior tribes to pull off what they did. Eorzea couldn't "oppress" much of anything on its own, much less occupy Ala Mihgo. After all, it took 20 years for them to even consider trying to fight back and retake their own eastern border.

Fordola and Lyse will be BFF by the end of Stormblood. I reckon there will be an redempation story for both her and Yotsuyu. Yotsuyu and Gosetsu will bond, this will make her warm up to Doma.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ErryK

I had hoped she would have been written out of the story entirely, I really don't like her backstory.

---

Me too I don't like her at all. She doesn't deserve any sympathy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Eorzean oppressors?

Lol, even if Eorzea were keen to that, it not only took the combined might of all 4 city states, but another country and several warrior tribes to pull off what they did. Eorzea couldn't "oppress" much of anything on its own, much less occupy Ala Mihgo. After all, it took 20 years for them to even consider trying to fight back and retake their own eastern border.

---

Eorzean opressors might be a wrong way of putting it, given the actual strenght of the alliance, and such. But I do feel like there's some merit in atleast thinking that quite a few people are in all likelyhood not gonna be happy about Eorzea overthrowing the established order within Ala Mhigo, especially since people like Fordola might not have known much else, kinda like Hien's short line about not having been born before Doma was occupied, and because of that he has never known a free Doma.

Also lets not forget that Eorzea is/was for all intents and purposes the agressor when it comes to the recent conflicts in Ala Mhigo. We werent retaliating because of imperial actions, or something like that. We declared war upon a (arguably 2) garlean province, as a means of, among other things, ensuring that Shinryu and Omega didnt end up in the empire's hands, plus since "The Griffin"s scheeme had in all likelyhood already doomed us into Garlemald thinking we'd declared war (so. "Damned if we do, damned if we dont")

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lan_Mantear

She already admitted to Lyse, that she was the one who gave the order.

---

Ah, guess I must've forgot that part. Thanks for the reminder! ^^

Would this be a bad time to point out that the allaiance mainly worked with Conrad's group and that there are other branches of the Ala Mihgan resistance that may be more inclined towards immoral and dark deeds that loyalysts like Fordola may have had to deal with over the years?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Areic

I rarely have wanted a character dead so much, that it kept disappointing me when she got away from us.

She's done so much crap and was such a hardcore traitor, if she gets a redemption story I'll be ticked and kick that b%^&* in the shin anyway

---

In what way was she a traitor?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eyvhokan

In what way was she a traitor?

---

For one, she got her own comrades killed because she ordered to fire a cannon at Specula Imperatoris while her men, Garleans and resistance fighters were inside.

Who the heck is Fordola?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

After all, it took 20 years for them to even consider trying to fight back and retake their own eastern border.

---

Seems people pretty severely overestimated the Empire, turns out they're such a minor threat they can't even derail mine and Lyse's far east holiday plans.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dinnertime

For one, she got her own comrades killed because she ordered to fire a cannon at Specula Imperatoris while her men, Garleans and resistance fighters were inside.

---

On top of that she sided with the imperials. One could say to a certain extent this was to ease them off the Ala Mhigans, but she was hardcore siding with them and not giving two craps about her own people. So no sympathy for dat bitch

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niraves

Who the heck is Fordola?

---

She is one of the key characters in the Stormblood expansion
https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net...20170501112556

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dinnertime

For one, she got her own comrades killed because she ordered to fire a cannon at Specula Imperatoris while her men, Garleans and resistance fighters were inside.

---

and with one shot, killed Conrad, leader of the resistance.

with two or three, she could have decapitated the leadership and crippled the resistance. While Zenos would no doubt squander the oppotunity, she and the skulls could have ended up genuine war heroes from the imperial side...had it worked.

Unfortunately, All 4.0 seemed to prove is that SE cannot make them convincingly threatening, or anything other than cardboard stormtroopers that are mandated to lose every encounter, which is sad, I would haved loved to see Garleans faffing around in Kugane.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

After all, it took 20 years for them to even consider trying to fight back and retake their own eastern border.

---

I actually dont think it's as much to do with the Eorzean Alliance lacking the strenght to go toe to toe with the Garlean Empire, because I mean we've techniqly done so already once at Carteneu (although neither side walked away as the winner, and both suffered catastrophic losses in particular thanks to Bahamut. So there's no way of knowing who would've won). But rather it's why would Eorzea spend the manpower assisting what could, in effect, be considered a enemy nation, since Ala Mhigo very much so attempted to invade Gridania in the past (And said attack is what coincidentaly caused the original formation of the alliance in the first place). And this is assuming the alliance even wins to begin with. Because if not, all that would've happened would be Eorzean lives being spilled on foreign soil, trying to help a nation that atleast one member of the alliance is in all likelyhood not exactly on good terms with.

Hell a major part of why we even went to Ala Mhigo is after The Griffin's scheme, we were doomed regardless. No matter what we did, Garlemald was gonna think we'd just given them a declaration of war after what happened on Baelsar's Wall

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jandor

Seems people pretty severely overestimated the Empire, turns out they're such a minor threat they can't even derail mine and Lyse's far east holiday plans.

---

If memory serves it's actually somewhat implied the reason the Empire steamrolled their way inside Ala Mhigo, is not as much blatant army superiority, but rather that the Mad King, Ala Mhigo's last ruler prior to the occupation, kindof gutted the capabilities for Ala Mhigo to defend itself, in his quest to en masse find and execute anyone and everyone who might be working to betray him (with theories that it was a garlean agent that "tipped off" the Mad King that people were planning to overthrow his rule.) Plus doesnt the MSQ more or less state that Zenos was holding back intentionally, because he wanted us to survive, but even more importantly, fuel our hatred for him, so that once we get to the palace in Ala Mhigo, he (Zenos) gets to fight someone skilled, and driven, enough so that for once, he might actually feel something?

(TL;DR Zenos was in all likelyhood holding back the garlean army, so that he'd get his "good fight" against the WoL. And Varis didnt interfer because he saw Zenos for the "monster" that he was, and believed such a man unfit to rule)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lazaruz

I actually dont think it's as much to do with the Eorzean Alliance lacking the strenght to go toe to toe with the Garlean Empire, because I mean we've techniqly done so already once at Carteneu (although neither side walked away as the winner, and both suffered catastrophic losses in particular thanks to Bahamut.

---

Wasn't Carteneau the entire Eorzean Alliance (sans Ishgard?) verses one Imperial legion? And doesn't Garlemald have at least 12 legions? I'm not saying we wouldn't win if it came down to it (we are the heroes of the story after all, the plot armor is about as thick as it gets) but it makes perfect sense that the Alliance isn't keen on picking a fight with them. If the Empire did decide to commit their entire force to a full-scale invasion of Eorza, we would be severely out-manned, not to mention, likely out-gunned due to their advanced Magitek.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rymm

Wasn't Carteneau the entire Eorzean Alliance (sans Ishgard?) verses one Imperial legion? And doesn't Garlemald have at least 12 legions? I'm not saying we wouldn't win if it came down to it (we are the heroes of the story after all, the plot armor is about as thick as it gets) but it makes perfect sense that the Alliance isn't keen on picking a fight with them.

---

Very true. Didnt quite think of that. Carteneau was just against the 14th legion, not the wider army. My misstake.
Although at the same time that also lends even more credence to the alliance being unwilling to spill lives of their soldiers, trying to retake a nation they're not even on the best of terms to begin with, when also the people you're fighting, is the Garlean Empire, and if you're unlucky, the entire army will come knocking sooner or later as a retaliation for the invasion.

I'm curious though how much of a fight the Eorzean Alliance would be able to put up today though, since the Grand Companies have more combat training, and most importantly Ishgard has ended its isolation, and rejoined

I actually liked her. T_T

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ghastly

Me too I don't like her at all. She doesn't deserve any sympathy.

---

I didn't like her either tbh. I do believe we should pity her a bit, but she was so unforgiving in most of her actions that I'm not sympathetic towards her. In some ways I believe she chose the cowardly route in deciding to become Zenos' lapdog.

She seems stubborn and prideful. I doubt changing her views will be easy. Even if she has a change of heart, she should serve prison time for everything she has done.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lazaruz

Very true. Didnt quite think of that. Carteneau was just against the 14th legion, not the wider army. My misstake.

---

Just a small nitpick but it was actually the VIIth Legion (Nael van Darnus's legion) that fought at Carteneau, not the XIVth (Gaius refused to support Project Meteor and simply watched the devastation unfold from his airship). Any remaining troops from the VIIth after the Calamity would have been absorbed into the XIVth though, so from a certain point of view that is still correct though.

I'm not sure if the writer's can conceive of the Alliance losing anything, really. There is too much NPC plot armor established, and the general region of Eorzea are basically untouchable areas.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Just a small nitpick but it was actually the VIIth Legion (Nael van Darnus's legion) that fought at Carteneau, not the XIVth (Gaius refused to support Project Meteor and simply watched the devastation unfold from his airship). Any remaining troops from the VIIth after the Calamity would have been absorbed into the XIVth though, so from a certain point of view that is still correct though.

---

Ok it's time I sew my mouth shut and stop typing, because that's my third embarassment in this thread alone XD
(Have a like though for the correction, lol)

Well from her point of view she was trying to help her people. She was born into the empire and thought the only way to be treated right would be to submit to the authority.
So the act of rebellions were actually hurting her people in the long run.
Because she had no sense of what it was before the Empire and never thought they would be able to be free from it, in her head she might have thought she was taking the hard route by turning against her people to get them accepted by the Empire, when she was actually taking the easy route of submission. Now she can still realise she was wrong all along and that she always had a different way to help her people without hurting some of them.
That, of course, don't excuse any of the messed up things her and her men did, so I'm curious to see if they'll make her take some backlash for it or just go "whatever psycho, we're good now"

Kinda like what they'll probably try to do with Yotsuyu, which in her case would be really dumb since her reasoning was pretty much "My family was mean to me so I'll ruin my whole country and torture everyone there! that will show them"
Nice going girl, way to take your anger on the wrong people.

Spoilerinos, but just like Yotsuyu, I was hoping Fordola was written out of the story.

I feel like they are both such weak characters and the "backstories" were such a miss for me.

Like, okay - both of these crazy batches are going around murdering and being generally terrible, and I am supposed to feel sorry for them?

Hard pass.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nerfworthy

I actually liked her. T_T

---

I didn't mind her character, she just suffers from what a lot of other characters do in this game: a lack of any real depth. They tend to kill off the most interesting ones, sadly. That said, Stormblood brought more of those characters which the game sorely needed, like Gosetsu and the Au Ra tribes.

I love Fordola, and I find it kind of sad that people don't understand that from her perspective she sided with the right people.

Also remember that her unit wasn't founded by Zenos, but by Gaius (Skulls of the WOLF). Gaius, as seen with Rhitatyn, would legitimately raise up non-Garlean people who earned their position on merit alone, and Fordola and her unit were formed under that promise. As soon as he was exiled in Eorzea, though, and Zenos took over... by that point she's bought into one hell of a sunk-cost fallacy.

People talk about her firing the cannon, too. She could've refused, sure. But someone else would've done it, and she knew it, and she knew her unit would die regardless. Better to try and prove SOMETHING with it, right?

(She's a lovely, nuanced character, and I sincerely hope she isn't killed)

I love Fordola immensely and was glad they added a character like her to the story to help provide a counterpoint to what I felt was some rather weak writing in the Gyr Abania section of the story. However, sadly, she also suffered heavily by the mad rush to liberate both lands within the same patch cycle in the same way that Lyse's character development was butchered. (We skipped entire sections of her character arc after the Steppes because she /had/ to be the resistance leader by the time Ala Mhigo was liberated; and it was done in such a way that honestly her title didn't feel even half way earned.) Had the first patch cycle been focused entirely on Doma and the next few focused on Ala Mhigo I think both she and Yotsuyu in particular would have been given the time to cook that they needed, along with most of the other relevant story lines that were mashed beyond recognition in their mad rush to end with some measure of a climax.


I also don't understand why people think you need to like or feel sympathetic towards a character for them to be effective at conveying their role within the story. Yes, the poor writing butchered most of her arc, but it was understandable why Fordola did what she did. Especially if you like reading the lore and didn't jump in blind with this expansion. The fact that she stuck so heavily to those brainwashed beliefs was a touch I appreciated as well as in lore it's pretty canonically evident that the Garleans went out of their way to ensure her generation would be loyal. A beaten dog will eventually wag it's tail towards it's abuser, after all.

Well, she couldn't really refuse on account of Zenos would've killed her if she didn't go through with it. Plus, she and her unit believed that what they were doing would pave the way for Ala Mhigans being seen as legitimate citizens of the empire instead of "savages". In her own way she was trying to fight for the freedom of Ala Mhigo even though she was wrong, just like Gaius wanted to save Eorzea from the primals even though his methods were flawed. I personally wouldn't mind her getting a redemption arc. Yotsuyu on the other hand knew exactly what she was doing and her singular goal was to inflict suffering on innocent people because of her own troubled past.

I'm actually far more interested in seeing what Fordola does in 4.2. I'd imagine at that point, Garlemald will have mustered enough forces to attack both Doma and Ala Mhigo in a massive counterattack, in conjunction with whatever it is Elidibus has planned. I assume we'll see Gostestu and Yotsuyu return as well, with the latter fully backing the empire in a murderous rage. It would make for an effective contrast with Fordola, who is, at this point, probably going to have to ask herself whether she truly is for a strong Ala Mhigo, as she has always said she's been, or is she really for the Empire, who has oppressed her people since she was a child?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kallera

-snip-

---

Sadly.

I hope it changes - I want to see some major losses because the stakes don't feel very high when it's obvious which characters are going to prevail time and time again. For all the flaws in regards to WoW's storytelling it is bold enough to allow for major changes to the game world over time. Including major leader figures changing or dying.

Furthermore, although I like Yotsuyu and Fordola quite a bit I do wish they'd just kept Regula around to provide more moral greyness. We came to learn that he was a pretty honourable fellow - he just happened to be fighting for a different side. Having him serve as a contrast to Zenos would have been quite interesting, I believe. Though he was, unfortunately, written out of the plot rather abruptly and never mentioned again. Something that they really need to stop doing...