Au Ra physiology and other lore.

[myahele]

I remember Yugiri saying in 2.4 that there are sacred snow capped mountains/place similar to coerthas in which blood musn't be spilled. And that Coerthas has seen too much blood.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm not seeing anything to hate on in the character designs.

It's true Yugiri seems a literal copy-paste of the Miqo'te model/animation set with some changes to her head and a specific tail, however as we've seen, there are unique specific models for story-dependant NPC's, but they still have animation sets from the race set they are from. After all Alphinaud and Alisaie are also the same size, and they're shorter than playable Elezen. Also... there are kid Hyur NPC's, but no Miqo'te ones.

[Kaiser-Ace]

snip

Not sure who if any one is hating. The only thing I can say as far as copy and paste on Yugiri is that it was a place holder model to use between her first appearance and her official reveal as an Au'ra. I just personally don't like lumping them together with the Dravanians and Myracidians. I'm not even convinced that the Dravanians have any connection to Myracydians let alone the Au'ra. For all I can tell all of the surviving Myracidians were locked away in Dalamuld with Bahamut and kept in suspended animation so they could be tortured forever into keeping Bahamut alive. As for the Au'ra, if they came from "Mating with dragons" then that means that miqo'te came from "Mating with Couruls" since they're both half animal looking people. And we all know that the Miqo'te avidly object to that idea.

[KisaiTenshi]

Not sure who if any one is hating. The only thing I can say as far as copy and paste on Yugiri is that it was a place holder model to use between her first appearance and her official reveal as an Au'ra.

In general, the fact that there is a new race that wasn't there before becomes subject to scrutiny about retcons. I'm actually kinda excited to see them, as it's a welcome change from the typical "Big Amazon,Medium Human,Tall pointy-ear Elf,Chibi Dwarf" dynamic that every MMORPG insists on having.

[Kaiser-Ace]

In general, the fact that there is a new race that wasn't there before becomes subject to scrutiny about retcons. I'm actually kinda excited to see them, as it's a welcome change from the typical "Big Amazon,Medium Human,Tall pointy-ear Elf,Chibi Dwarf" dynamic that every MMORPG insists on having.

AH I see what you mean now. Not referencing any particular comments just the friction over the additional lore in general.

[Lainmyst]

Thanks for all the work on this Dynza, it really has me even more inspired then I am already for the Au Ra race. My main is a female Miqo'te moon keeper and will always remain that way as I have a fairly deep back history for her. I have already added other characters that are part of her back story, the same will be for the new Au Ra that I will add. What I will love to find out is more about their lore as this will help in adding a new story dynamic for the new character. It will also be fun coming up with a name based on their new naming conventions.

[Lainmyst]

I hope this thread is still around after Heavsward is out, it would be fun to post screen shots of our new Au Ra race we made, with maybe a short backstory we made for them?

[PotatoSalad]

We needs continue this thread!

[Edellis]

Still holding out hope that Au Ra males gain some muscle in their neck to match that sexy artwork

[Dynza]

Thanks for the praise. I've got some more stuff I working on now, but I don't think I'll have the time to post it until next week. I do want to ask the lore guys something (if they even read this thread) regarding any symbolic meanings in horn shapes or designs in au ra culture. I'm curious if there's any development there, I'll get into more details on my next post next week. I'm sure we'll get a bit of information from PAX East anyway.

One thing I do want to quickly discuss is Yugiri's face.



Yugiri's facial structure/skeleton is completely different from the female au ra PC's in more than just textures. This basically means that Yugiri may end up having a unique face different from playable au ra and that could also mean that the hairstyle worn by Yugiri may be completely unique as well. Though I'd like to think that hairstyle will be available to au ra players, we'll have to wait and see. As a quick note on those who might ask why Yugiri's face may not be available to players, I don't really have the time to go into it right now. Suffice to say it has to due with the skeletal structure of the faces and the heads and the ability for them to be customized in such a way. All the heads used by each of the player races are all the same shape (roughly) and then the face is preset onto the skeleton from and then players can customize the details of said faces. For Yugiri (and a few other NPCs), she looks to have a unique facial structure that simply may not be customizable. So for those of you that want the scale pattern that Yugiri's face has, I think it would be best to request it, or you might be out of luck.

I hope this thread is still around after Heavsward is out, it would be fun to post screen shots of our new Au Ra race we made, with maybe a short backstory we made for them?

I hope the thread will still be here. Chances are pretty good. Even if I don't continue it, I'm sure others would like to contribute. Though I have to say that this isn't a thread to post screenshots of your au ra character, that's more of a General Discussion/Fan Art sort of thing. This is more to point out peculiar and interesting elements of the au ra design and discuss or speculate on lore behind the race. So please post the other stuff in relevant threads or create your own!

Still holding out hope that Au Ra males gain some muscle in their neck to match that sexy artwork

Their necks are fairly thin in their artwork as compared to their in-game models. They overall fit in better proportions both in artwork and in-game model-wise than the elezen do. Though the elezen by design were intentionally structured to resemble to "longness" and slender appearance of the Elvaan. That said, I think they might be able to buff up, or better define the broadness of the au ra male's upper torso. I would certainly like to see additional hairstyles on them, including ones that add more horns like one hairstyle currently does.

In general, the fact that there is a new race that wasn't there before becomes subject to scrutiny about retcons. I'm actually kinda excited to see them, as it's a welcome change from the typical "Big Amazon,Medium Human,Tall pointy-ear Elf,Chibi Dwarf" dynamic that every MMORPG insists on having.

We knew that they were working on a new race at least as far back as 2011. I think they had attempted to create several different race designs but may have had difficulty fitting them into the current story or setting. So they probably dived into their lore to find a earlier race or tapped into the Ishgard scenario outlines and found the au ra. I have no evidence of this, but this something I'm going to talk about in my next major post.

I remember Yugiri saying in 2.4 that there are sacred snow capped mountains/place similar to coerthas in which blood musn't be spilled. And that Coerthas has seen too much blood.

Yugiri does mention something about about sacred places where blood must not be spilled, but I don't think she was specifically referencing Coerthas in general. As far I know, we haven't met Yugiri in Coerthas yet, but that doesn't mean she hasn't been there yet.