The Greystone Bastard (naming lore query)

**Tenkuu** · 12-07-2015 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by Cilia

The unfortunate implication of such an interpretation is that you believe the Warrior of Light has no identity beyond that of a Scion, or the title of "Warrior of Light." Which is just malarkey. It could be argued that much of Fray's, meaning your, anger stems from the fact that people do not see you as anything other than those titles and what they carry with them.

There is no such implication, that is only your inference. Who your character is and who they identify with are separate matters, and here I was only referring to who they identify with.

Anyway, you wish to contest that some part of the Warrior of Light is willing to throw away everything and start anew someplace else, say Thavnair or Othard, without the Scions?

Oh, no one will debate that the Warrior of Light might want a little break from everyone and everything that they know, but as far as starting over entirely on their own with no acquaintances or friends, or anything else familiar for that matter? Absolutely, I'll contest it. It's part of the Warrior of Light's character to care and want to do things to help their friends.

Whether you choose to believe it or not is immaterial; the proof is in the pudding, even if the recipe was changed a little by "Fray." Who is you.

Unfortunately, you are forgetting a very important thing: Ilberd who has similar dialogue in the english version mentions absolutely nothing about the Scions in the japanese version. The english version seems to tend towards a certain tone that the japanese version does not use. More to the point though, Fray is a dark side of you, and only a small part of you at that.

I never said nobody else showed concern for you, just that if you want to be cynical about it, it's not concern for you as a person but concern for you as a utility. Tataru does seem to care for you as a friend, but the bit from Alphinaud is from 3.0 and in reaction to Estinien's comments, who you stated you do not respect in the slightest. After the Ifrit battle, though, the Scions have few qualms about sending you in to do battle with Primals time and again when any ordinary person would be scared out of their wits. And the Warrior of Light is terrified even if they don't show it to anyone else.

You do realize you're not using words correctly here? You're the one with the cynical attitude, not me. And btw, *I* don't respect Estinien or like him, but both my character and Alphinaud do. Even so, Estinien still manages to repeatedly offend not just Alphinaud, but also Ysayle. With regards to the Scions though, no, it is not concern for you as a utility, certainly no more than they regard one another as utilities. Thinking so, that's the cynical attitude. Of course the Warrior of Light has doubts, fears and insecurities, where do you think Fray came from? Everyone has those, the Scions included, because no one is perfect. If Thancred's ordeal and the raid at Waking Sands and its subsequent events haven't convinced you of that, then you haven't been paying enough attention to the plot. I ask again: how long do you think they have been at this? Far longer than you for certain, so they'd have far more reason to be afraid.

Fray is talking about you and your fight with Leviathan here... and since Fray is you, you're basically admitting you were scared to go fight Leviathan, and it was an incredibly stupid and risky plan. Bismarck is even crazier.

Again, Fray is your doubts and insecurities, it's the little voice inside you that will always have some negativity to it even if there's no reason for it. Fear though is healthy, it's what keeps you on your toes. You wouldn't dodge if you weren't afraid of being hit on some level, after all, no matter how tiny.

I fail to see how Minfilia is burdened with more responsibilities than the Warrior of Light. One does paperwork, one regularly tangles with phantom gods that will lay waste to the land if suffered to remain manifested too long, on top of shadowy sorcerers intent on bringing ruin to the world and gods know what else. Hmm... yep, that paperwork sure is stressful!

If you fail to see that, then that is your problem. It's been explained by myself and countless others in both this thread and several others how she literally oversees *everything*. If somehow you can't comprehend how being responsible for everything would be stressful, you must never have been in a managerial position with all the work that it entails, otherwise you would understand that the higher up the work chain one is, the more hours of work are required of you. Minfilia, she's at the top of that chain.

I'm not saying nobody does anything to help us; they just leave all the heavy lifting to us. Nobody else regularly risks life and limb. We're put into life-or-death situations and expected to do the work of a dozen men, and nobody bats an eye or gives us much more than pocket change and a pat on the back. While that is what heroes do...

Again, this is our job. It's our skillset, and it's what we were hired for. No one else risks life and limb? Are you kidding me right now? Did we not watch the same ending to 2.55? More to the point, did we not see the consequences of those events on the two Scions we have recovered so far? And you would compare that to what we've been through? Seriously? The worst that's happened to us was temporarily losing the Blessing of Light, and for such a short period of time it was barely even worth mentioning. And what happened when we regained it? Did we sustain any prolonged or life-changing injuries? Nothing at all came from those events aside from a strengthening of the Blessing's power, and that was clearly nothing negative. Our abilities are exactly suited to the tasks we're given, we're never given more than the Scions think we can handle, and more to the point, we are given opportunities to say that it might be too much for us but we never do. This was exactly what happened with Titan when the Scions had little information about him and were worried about sending us out against him.

... if you look past the ideal hero the Warrior of Light is built up as in 2.x...

There is no point to this statement. No one who knows you, least of all the Scions, looks at you as some infallible and emotionless machine. Not even the Warrior of Light thinks of themselves as an ideal hero.

Ignoring Ilberd just because he's a villain is foolish. He is not right, but he has a point.

No one is ignoring Ilberd because he is villain; we are ignoring him because he quite literally talks out of his ass and has only ill intentions towards our friends and ourselves. Someone like that, you know that they're only trying to hurt you and that they assume things about you that are just not true. Actually, Estinien made the same assumptions about our relationship with Alphinaud, and he was just as mistaken.

Fray is the negative aspects of your personality, but that doesn't mean s/he is just anger and bitterness. If you pay close attention, you see flashes of happiness when you agree with Fray's general outlook, and s/he shows signs of sorrow and despair throughout the 30-50 line. The Warrior of Light obviously can't deal with all of the shit that's been heaped on them; otherwise, Fray wouldn't have been so bitter and angry. We pretend we're okay, we put on a brave face for everyone - but deep down inside, we are on the verge of collapsing.

Except of course that Fray is only a small part of you, and the part that you manage most of the time. Not only that, but the Warrior of Light finds themselves nearly alone in 3.0. People like to call Estinien and Ysayle your friends, but really they're just your companions on this trip. Even if you want to call them both friends though, by the end of 3.0 you've definitively lost one in a manner very similar to the Scions' sacrifices for you, and the other one you don't even know if you can save yet. If you situate the DRK quests at the beginning of 3.0 though, you are quite literally in despair because you have just lost contact with the majority of your friends and there is still, at the time, a very real possibility that they might have died. Of course in a situation like that, you're going to be nearly overwhelmed by negative emotions. This is where the DRK job comes from.

Warrior of Light really needs a hug, not someone else to throw them at a phantom god that can easily kill them if they falter ever so slightly.

The Warrior of Light never truly fights these fights alone to begin with. You are always advised to assemble a party of other adventurers to aid you, and the Scions are always giving you advice, feedback and information on your upcoming fights. The hug you talk about comes from having all these people to lean on.

Debatable. It depends on what you quantify as "special."

We butted into another country's affairs while they sat on their hands and waited for us to do everything for them. The only actually special things we did were dealing with Bismarck and Ravana, since that's what our job actually is, and we pretty much went in blind.

I acknowledge everything we did was pointed to by Alphinaud; that's why I consider him the "true" protagonist of Heavensward. We're just his muscle, as always.

3.0 was about Alphinaud truly coming into his own and learning to deal with defeat and loss. There's no point in calling us just his muscle though, because we are everyone's muscle to begin with.

I'd appreciate it if you could explain to me what you mean by saying 3.0's pace was "chaotic." It was a pretty standard 3-act show. And, we got along pretty well without the Scions, or at least the core members of the group most people think about when you say "Scions."

Chaotic because our decisions on what to do next literally always depended on what had just happened a second ago. In 2.x, there was always a method to the madness: Primals were expected to pop up every once in a while, they were monitored by the Scions, and generally things were well in hand until Lahabrea's possession of Thancred and the raid on Waking Sands, which was when the shit hit the fan. Even so, our period of loss and indecision was brief and we were guided to continue the Scions' work with both Alphinaud's and Cid's help, and when we finally reunited with Y'shtola and Yda, we immediately addressed the task of rescuing our friends once the Primal emergency of Garuda had been dealt with. The Garleans were then dealt with as soon as our group could properly get back to work. In 3.0, we're just hopping from one location to the next, following whatever unexpected lead happens to crop up or whatever crazy idea we happen to be having at the moment, and the Primals aside, we're essentially all over the place interfering with everyone else's business. Note how Thancred high-tailed it out of Ishgard after all the crazy business in 3.1 was done in order to get back to the rather more pressing matter of finding our remaining friends. Even everyone else at Rising Stones has their shit more together than we do since they've been gathering information and trying to find the other Scions during all the time that we were gone (and technically still are gone).

That's what makes Haurchefant a good friend, though - he helps you out when you're in the area, is nice and all that, and leaves you to your devices. The Scions do the same, but call you whenever they want something from you. Haurchefant doesn't. When you're in the area you hang out with him.

And that is why Haurchefant is your friend while the Scions are your family. Haurchefant has no obligations to you, nor you to him, and you don't see him often. The Scions don't call you when they want something from you, you live with them and you're often asked to do your part. That's more than fair concerning everything that they provide for you, and no I don't just mean the material stuff.

I know the Scions are a surrogate family for the Warrior of Light, and we did suffer a lot for losing them. But there's nothing saying that some part of them can't be angry and bitter at them for seemingly sacrificing themselves because you're "Eorzea's hope," forcing you to carry an impossibly heavy burden with almost half a dozen peoples' lives directly on your shoulders. It's illogical and irrational - that's fine, because people aren't always logical and rational.

Sure, but that's a tiny part, the same as you can't really know someone until you've gotten into a few fights with them. The Scions, you don't really know them until they've shown you both their strengths and weaknesses: to others, they're just the super reliable group on whom to heap all of the world's problems, big or small; to you, they're the goofballs you hang out with day in and day out and who just happen to be very good at their jobs because they take them seriously. Also consider this: if you've finished the Coils quests, Alisaie in the end comments to you on how it upsets her that no one will ever know of your heroic deeds. Your character's reaction, though not in so many words, is to tell her they don't mind it. We can easily infer from this that the burdens we are asked to shoulder by our friends are seen by us as favors we do for them in exchange for everything that they also do for us.

Why would it matter what Estinien knows of Alphinaud? He knows Alphinaud is sending us off to fight Ravana and assuming that we'll be successful - that's what we always do. Alph isn't thinking about how we feel or what we want to do; he just says "We're gonna kill Ravana because it's what the Scions do. (And by the Scions, I mean that's your job, Warrior of Light, since you're the only one who can kill Primals.)" That's treating us like a tool, which Estinien calls him out on.

Why else? Because Estinien is making ignorant assumptions about Alphinaud. He knows nothing of his motivations, his character, and only assumes he's this snotty little highborn kid because of his age, appearance, and lack of knowledge in certain areas. This is why I have no respect for Estinien: he only makes high-handed concessions when he is proven wrong and otherwise generally makes an ass of himself to everyone around him. And of course it would be Alphinaud's first instinct to ask us to go deal with a new Primal because, again, our Echo and our fighting prowess in that regard have both been proven. It's no different than him assigning Thancred, the most reliable Scion, to investigate the Ascians. He knows his people and he knows what should be delegated to whom. That doesn't at all mean that he's just using us.

I didn't come here to debate Alphinaud and Estinien's character in 3.0. I think Alphinaud grew from 2.x and Estinien was a complex and relatively mature character, if a little rough around the edges. Leaving it at that.

Yes, because some of the comments he made about Alphinaud were really mature... give me a break. Estinien is emotionally immature compared to Alphinaud who has been forced to fill in some pretty big shoes. No one will deny that Alphinaud is naive in certain respects, but as far as maturity goes, when it's against Estinien, he wins that particular contest hands down. Estinien essentially has all the emotional maturity of a kid who bullies others because he's being bullied himself.

I never said we stopped thinking about the common good, just that it isn't the only reason we're fighting towards the end of 3.0.

What I'm saying though is that's not necessarily who you ever were, depending on your chosen dialogue option with the cart driver. You did not start off as the Warrior of Light, you became that person as you earned your Crystals of Light. More to the point, becoming the Warrior of Light did not change you as a person. You were a good person who was willing to help others to begin with, but your ultimate motivation was unique, and then you expanded your horizons and learned far more than you ever expected. And as a legacy player, you merely continued the same fight that you had begun five years prior. Throughout 2.x, you fought to both aid and protect your fellow Scions, it stopped being about just the common good the minute you met them. You need only look at the ending of 2.55 to confirm this: you did not want to leave your friends behind, you were forced to by circumstances and begged to by Minfilia.

**Cilia** · 12-07-2015 07:52 PM

This is getting way too long. And off topic.