Where the heck is an Au-Ra's ears? I just noticed that my character doesnt have any. How do they hear anything? Vibrations through the horns maybe?
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Where the heck is an Au-Ra's ears? I just noticed that my character doesnt have any. How do they hear anything? Vibrations through the horns maybe?
Their horns are hollow and act as their ears; supposedly to an extent that's more effective then that of the more conventional races like the Hyurs, but it's anyone's guess how they stack up compared to the Viera or Miqo'te.
Wait, what? No ears? It's hard, but if I tilt my camera all the way to my character's back and then zoom in, I can see the earrings I glamoured dangling from somewhere behind her horns. If the earrings aren't actually attached to ears... that's kind of spooky.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...52/unknown.png
More than one source identifies Au'Ra as the progeny of dragons. As well as the cranial projections (horns) are how they hear and have spatial recognition.
The descendance is supposed to be in dispute in the lore, as to whether or not they actually are, which I think adds a nice touch to the story for them. It's never been confirmed nor denied really.
I think you'll find that simpler earrings are directly attached to the horns. (They definitely are on my male Au Ra.) The flowers are probably placed lower so they don't clip.
But yeah. They don't have separate ears. I assume at a character design level it was to make hats fit more easily and not have to worry about horns sticking through everything so much.
Canonically they hear through the horns so it's possible that the eardrum is completely concealed under it, or maybe there's a small opening at the base that doesn't show on the character model.
Just don't think too hard about it, or how they use linkpearls. Or earplugs.
I have a mental image of my Au Ra needing a blanket wrapped around his head because he can't use earplugs when we go hunting the siren.
I don't believe there is a single official source for this. The character creator blurb for the race outright states that their horns giving "enhanced hearing and spatial recognition" is not a draconian trait, and therefore a reason to consider them dissimilar.
The overall vibe of the description is that their appearance leads people to speculate that they are related to dragons, but this seems to be a coincidental sharing of visual traits that don't actually have the same function.
Meanwhile, the lorebook page about the race doesn't even raise the possibility.
Yup. People tend to forget that dragons are not indigenous to Etheirys - Middy traveled with his clutch of eggs to our world (post sundering) went "Yo, can we crash here?", to which Hydaelyn went "K." He pretty much tells you this in HW/SB (minus the sundering part).
Interesting. I'd love if SE added more lore content for them. I love lore. I'm a lore nerd. Yep. I've been hunting down bits and pieces of lore for all the races but sadly, Au Ra seem to have very little. Not finding much there.
The Au Ra honestly have a lot more lore then most of the races due to having their own settlements and an entire zone in the case of the Xaela, with only the Viera and Miqo'te also having much of a culture to themselves still.
That said, it would be nice to visit the homelands of other races like Aenslaent and the southern isles to get a picture of what the native Roegadyn and Lalafell culture is like. Both were mentioned in Endwalker, so I assume it's just a matter of time.
I could see one of them potentially being the locale that the trial series for Endwalker is focused on, personally.
Ooh, that would be cool. Who am I kidding? I'd welcome anything for any of the races that lets us see just a little more of their cultures!
Edit* I really need to go back to those areas and quest and read more. I think I've largely missed a lot because I came from another mmo that cherishes rushing to end game so a lot of the stuff from the base game and first few expansions I "escape key'd" through before realizing I was missing the best parts of the game in doing so.
there was even an official statement that they are NOT related to dragons
Au Ra being somewhat draconic is plausible. The auri race share some traits with dragons, but the horns could be an independant genetic change. Descended from and being 100% draconic are separate. For reasons why they are draconic:
-they have a minor version of the adaptation trait dragons have when growing up (at certain stages of their lives, dragons in ff14 change shape and size depending on their life and nearby crystals)
Sui no sato and a tribe in the steppe can explicitly survive underwater far longer than is normal
A northern glacier tribe, the Aogurs have a unique skin tone explicitly caused by the nearby glaciers and the refracted light from them
the quiil tribe also communicate through song and melody for similar reasons dragons do- to attach emotion to meaning
-On the first, Au ra are known as Drahn. Drahn means dragon in dragonspeak
-There are the falak or serpent like dragons at the bottom of the tempest on the first. There's the hydra dragons in the world of darkness which is the 13th.
-One of the gwibers explicitly states it was an attempt to recreate dragons. Given Vrtra confirms that the shards had been split before Middy arrived on the source, this means at least some dragons found their way to the first before the flood of light.
-Ratatoskr was "A wanderer and bearer of dragon's songs" and has been implied to have gone to the furthest reaches of the skies to bring messages between her kin. Given the above its not unfounded that she found a way to the other shards at some point. Nearly all au ra are nomadic or at least have a sense of wanderlust. Dragon broods do take after their lineage fairly strongly and unlike other migratory tribes that are slowly stopping like the miqote, the auri are still going.
-Au ra have no set age or maturity rate (the statement about races not mentioned living like hyurs was made before the auri race) So do dragons
Pretty much everything you stated is often why people mistake them for having draconic ancestry in the first place. Still doesn't mean Au Ra (or anything with similar traits) = dragons. Au Ra existed on the Source before Middy ever showed up and official sources (doesn't get more official than the game itself) are pretty clear that they have nothing to do with each other. The game also makes it quite clear that dragons are from another planet; hell, we visit a partial memory of that planet in Endwalker. For Au Ra to be descended from dragons the devs would need to throw lore out the window.
EDIT: I don't recall that group of Au Ra in the Ruby Sea being stated anywhere to have some super natural ability to breathe under water...? What does that even have to do with dragons, given that's not something associated with them, really? I could be forgetting something (insert insomnia complaint here), but even discounting that, we, the player, gain the ability to breath under water via a blessing from the Kojin, so it's not unheard of. Also, the "Drahn" thing is very likely meant as a joke, not some definitive confirmation.
EDIT again, don't post when low on sleep, you fool!: I doubt any of Middys' kids can traverse the Rift (space) as he can, probably relating to his extreme age and how the older the dragon= the stronger they get. The game goes out of its way to remind you how powerful he is (was) yet tells you traveling through space taxed him severely, and he's never quite been the same. Not enough time to recover, I suppose. Each time we've seen/heard of him, it's about him waking after a long sleep to do some stuff (fight off the Garleans at Silvertear, for example), then immediately return to sleep to restore himself... none of his children seem capable of the same feat (Middy has "died" how many times, now?), so again, I doubt they can travel through space.
Word of god claimed that they can regrow both their horns and tails, so I'd assume they're not that much of a liability in combat.
The Radiant maiming/fending sets also accounted for the latter by including tail armor; a logical design choice from a nation with a significant Au Ra population.
I am just joking, I just find it a funny thing because people will complain about gear being '' unrealistic '' but then they run around with what is essentially limbs outside their full plate lol.
I mean I doubt they regrow them quickly and that it doesn't hurt.
Same in other games or like Tieflings in DnD it has always just been a funny and weird thing to me.
You clearly didn't read my entire post
Middy arrived after the first was split from the source, this much we agree on.
So where did the legend of dragons come from on the first, and the dragons in the tempest that we can fight in the overworld? Or the dragons in the 13th? And why do the au ra have a literal dragonspeak name on the first and so many otherwise dragon exclusive traits? The dragons must have travelled the rift at some point is the only plausible answer
There was also no confirmation that au ra existed before dragons did in game or out of game. On the contrary dragons came before the au ra did, since it was during the period when all the new races were coming about that au ra came to be that middy arrived according to vrtra.
Therefore, au ra decending from dragons and in other shards too can happen as is repeatedly implied.
to say that au ra being draconic would require throwing all lore out the window is nonsense. Because everything i wrote in my posts is also from official sources.
I did read it, I just strongly disagree. Given we know the Fae of the First can just zip between planets apparently(via dreams), if the mood strikes them (Feo Ul does this even before becoming King), it's not unheard of that stories could travel. Lets be real, here; myths about big, magic lizards aren't exactly original, either. Further, Vitra never says the Au Ra showed up after dragons did. Where are you getting this from?
Saying everything you stated is supported by lore is a longshot, and more a case of seeing something that was never there to begin with and thus looking for patterns that don't exist. Sometimes a bird is really just a bird, not a mage in disguise.
Au Ra arent of dragon descent zzzz
Plus their concept was based on demons/succubus n such~
Maybe one day we will find out the connections.
Huh...I didnt realize my question would start bringing out more lore but im all for it! Besides the Viera, the Au-Ra race, in my opinion, is the most unique of all the others (Lalafels as well, but I...just cant take any of them seriously) so any extra lore I can get about them would be amazing. I hope that if SE ever does increase the lore about the races, we learn more about the Au-Ra and where they came from/who they are.
I'm still waiting for them to follow up on a claim at a lore panel that there were more clans of Au Ra then the Raen and Xaela.
Perhaps it's overseas in Meracydia and/or the New World that they dwell, and maybe they and other clans unique to those lands might become available as customization in lieu of adding more races beyond the ones we have already. A lot of people have lamented that female Au Ra aren't more similar to the males in stature and build, so maybe that could eventually be a thing in such manner.
Most of the "shared traits" you suggest are pure conjecture. Things like "Ratatoskr hypothetically might have flown high enough to reach another shard" is not evidence of a link between anything. Certainly not that the writers intended that to be a hint that Au Ra are truly draconic.
Nor is the fact that Au Ra are nomadic any exclusive sign of a connection to Ratatoskr - and in any case there are plenty that are not. We've seen settled populations in Sui-no-Sato, Thavnair, Werlyt, apparently Hingashi. Claiming "nearly all of them at least have a sense of wanderlust" has zero basis in canon. You're inventing facts and then claiming those facts are proof of your theory.
As already raised in another reply, the ability to breathe underwater comes from the blessing of the Kojin. It does not require any sort of draconic adaptation trait at all.
For the Angura tribe, developing a particular skin tone in response to constant light glare off the glaciers sounds far more like the natural human skin response to light: developing a tan, or possibly whatever passes for one when you don't have a human skin colour to begin with.
And the Qalli tribe are no proof of anything. Humans attach meaning to music. Birds communicate through song. Just because dragons do it doesn't mean that's where the tribe got the idea from. Do we also need to ascribe all the other Xaela tribal traditions to draconic origins? It's just another quirky tribe identity in a long list of quirky tribe identities.
Where are you even getting this from?
We have no reason to think that Au Ra do anything other than age like normal humans. We've seen young and old Au Ra. We've seen Yugiri's parents (aged 50 and 48) and Temulun (70) and they have specific "old" faces not available to players. We are told when playable races have strange ageing patterns like Elezen being a little slower than most, or Viera living for centuries. There has not been a single mention of Au Ra ageing slowly.
It is not "the only plausible answer".
Dragons in the World of Darkness appear to have been put there by the Allagans, along with the assortment of clones and sacrifices also seen in the same raid.
The only "Falaks" I can recall seeing in the Tempest are of the same model as the Tatsunoko of the Ruby Sea - and the lorebook (vol.2 p.256) specifically says that they possess "none of the blood of the First Brood". Therefore, looking like a dragon does not automatically mean a creature has any relation to the beings descended from Midgardsormr, and it is quite possible to find these non-alien "dragons" on all of the shards - and people may call them dragons regardless.
Words in one language can sound like unrelated words in another language, and "Drahn" could be one such neat coincidence with a side of meta teasing. We have seen no other signs of the language. The one known Drahn culture (admittedly Drahn-cross-Galdjent) is Voeburt, which borrows from German language, and Drahn names seem European. (For all we can know, it's plausible that the idea of dragons exists in the First and the Drahn were likewise compared to them and thus derived their name from them - perhaps very hypothetically at whatever time their ancestors came to Voeburt from the Far East, losing whatever name they previously had in their own country. I'm not asserting this as canon, just pointing out that it's every bit as easy to invent a counter-argument, so you cannot state with certainty that Drahn=Dra[n].)
And the "so many otherwise dragon-exclusive traits" are mainly according to your own list of ideas.
I've already said earlier that the game text says Auri horns are unlike dragon horns, so they are not a shared trait, just superficially similar. They have tails, but so do Miqo'te. They have scales, which is indeed unique among the playable races, but I would disagree that they are comparable to dragon scales. I've long said that it seems better to equate them to scaly mammals like armadillos or pangolins - I think the scales bear a closer resemblance to those than to reptiles.
We don't know anything about "when Au Ra came to be" relative to the other races.
I suspect you are muddling this with Vrtra's account of when the various races arrived specifically in Thavnair.
Just because the things you claim as "evidence" are from official sources does not mean that your interpretation of them is official.
"More clans" doesn't necessarily mean "more appearances". We've long had the Ishgardian Elezen, who aren't related to the Wildwood clan but use Wildwood models, and the Ilsabardian and Hannish Au Ra populations would seem to be in the same vein.
Also I don't think the character creator can handle more than two clans of a race.
So, I really can't believe you didn't read my reply in here past one line of my reply. Or, maybe I can, hence the reason I am posting this.
- I never said it was any official source, I only said several sources, and it wasn't meant to confuse anyone. Any official source I quote, I put a link to it in my replies. They are not official - how can they be when it's never been confirmed or denied they are progeny of dragons? Hence, why I think it's a good storyline for Au'Ra.
- You can simply search Google/DuckDuckGo and read it yourselves on all the fandom and wiki sites.
- I also stated it was in dispute in the lore aspect of the race (it's like you never read this - I'm actually agreeing with you) and it has never been confirmed/denied.
Their lore has all but fallen off the face of the game with regard to this aspect and focused instead on the tribes which is unfortunate to not include ancestorial lore, but the mystery is nice to have about it. Again, like I said - "The descendance is supposed to be in dispute in the lore, as to whether or not they actually are, which I think adds a nice touch to the story for them. It's never been confirmed nor denied really."
By calling it a "source", you imply that it is official.
What you are describing – fandom posts and unofficial wikis – are fan speculation. They are not a source for canon information.
It's no good to say "I'd link it if it was official, but it's unofficial so I just vaguely alluded to its existence" – that has the opposite effect. By saying there are sources but not offering those sources as evidence, an uninformed reader just hears "there are multiple official confirmations that Au Ra really are dragons" and not that some person on the internet thinks it's a cool idea.
funny how much discussion this topic creates ever since au ra were introduced even though they made it clear they arent dragon related.
far mor important though.... and nobody ever tlked about it.... and it would totally make sense if you beliebe au ras ancestors are dragons..... are miqotes ancestors cats?
Au ra always remind me of the Anala on Hells Lid and in The Azim Steppe.
And those seem to be insect like creatures, with multiple legs, like horned caterpillars. Maybe Au Ra are actually descended or cousins to them?
It's a pity there isn't much more lore on them.
The head canon for my Miqo'te is, yes. And just like cats today, it's handy having a human slave around to provide noms, scritches, and to clean the litter box.
If we roll with the suggested origin that all of the races of man came about as a result of the Sundering warping the bodies of the Ancients, that probably shoots down the theory of them being related to any manner of beast.
No, Iscah's right. We're really only interested in:All of those things are sources. Anything else is nothing but a wild guess or rumor and repeating them or calling them "sources" only makes it harder for people to keep track of what's actually been said in credible contexts.
- Things Yoshi-P or his team have said in official announcements.
- Things Yoshi-P or his team have said in interviews with reputable media and content creators.
- Things Yoshi-P or his team have said in Producer Letters, Producer Live Letters, or FanFest keynotes and panels.
- Things Yoshi-P or his team have said in panels at other conventions.
- Things the dev team have written in official supplemental material, such as the Encyclopaediae and Tales.
- Things explicitly stated by characters or objects in game.
- Things reasonably suggested by characters or objects in game, provided you can demonstrate that they are actually reasonably suggesting this and you are not just wildly speculating; even then, we will not all agree on these and when we disagree the burden is on you to prove yourself right, not for us to prove you wrong.
The definition of source is the "thing or place from which something comes, arises, or is obtained"; alternately from my hard-copy Oxford dictionary the "origin; place from which thing comes or is got".
Different things have different sources.
The source for "information that identifies Au Ra as the progeny of dragons" can only be something with the authority to make that confirmation: either the game canon or an official statement, as Rongway listed in detail.
Therefore, by saying there are "sources" that state this is true, you implicitly indicate that it has been said by someone with the authority to make it true.
A random person on the internet does not have that authority. They can only be a source for speculation, not fact.