A couple questions about Au Ra

[KaivaC]

In the near-two years that I've been playing as an Au Ra, there's been a couple of questions that have been bugging me. I dunno, it was a small thing at first, but now it's nagging me to the point that now I have to ask and see what some of the more lore-centric forumgoers think. (I say this with no knowledge of the Encyclopedias)

The first question is about their horns. I get that they use their horns for hearing and it grants some spatial awareness - but can they feel things on their horns as the other races can with their ears? I'm not talking about stuff like having something like a hammer or sword impact their horns - I am quite positive that would hurt a lot. But do they have the sense of touch their as the other races do?

The other question revolves around the scales. It seems pretty defined as Xaela always have dark (black) scales and Raen will always have light (white) scales. Are there really no other known variations of their scales? Or crossbred Au Ra who have scales of both Xaela and Raen? Or if it is even biologically possible for them to have scales that are not just one color of black or white?

[SannaR]

I'm not sure about the horns part but the scales part could be a possibility? As in a side quest with the Raen princess there was historical records of a half-breed who hardly had any scales. Though it does feel like most Xaela wouldn't fall for a Raen as the Raen come off as being more peaceful? Maybe a Mol or someone from one of the other tribes that don't take part in the Nahdaam? We also don't know how long ago the Raen left due to all of the constant fighting.

[Iscah]

Interesting questions! I don't think we've got any official answers to those (unless it's in the second lorebook) so this is all just guessing.



I've assumed that the horns must be hollow or semi-hollow and acting something like an extended eardrum - their actual ears seem to be completely enclosed by the horns. I have no idea if that's actually scientifically possible so that sent me off (yet again) on an extended Wikipedia trip trying to think of comparable elements.

Actual mammalian horns are made of keratin around a core of bone, and continue to grow through the animal's life. That would add up with things like cow or antelope horns that come out as a single continuous 'line' - curved or spiraling but a constant shape along the length of it. So I don't know if Au Ra horns with their complex shapes would really count as horns, or some other kind of structure. Shape-wise they're more like antlers (which are bone, covered with skin while growing), but those are shed each year - although it does say that "some equatorial deer never shed their antlers". That article also mentions that moose antlers improve their hearing, but apparently by acting as a parabolic reflector directing soundwaves into their ears, not for directly detecting sound.

The article on hearing pointed me to the interesting trivia that snakes are able to use their jaw bones to 'hear' vibrations through the ground.

Dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus and Lambeosaurus had hollow crests (made of bone and part of the skull) but they were probably used for amplifying sounds they made, rather than sounds they were hearing.

And from there to a living relative: cassowaries also have a bony crest or 'casque', and it's briefly mentioned in the Description section that "it has also been speculated that the casques play a role in either sound reception or acoustic communication". So there's a hint of plausibility there, at least.

Turtle shells have an inner layer of bone, then a thin layer of skin, then hard keratin scutes forming the outer shell. I can't see it mentioned in the article (or the main one on turtles) but I've heard elsewhere that they do have feeling in their shells, presumably in the skin layer rather than directly on the scutes, and it's not just like hard armour.

Also the best references for "mammals with scales" are the pangolin (overlapping scales) and armadillos (scutes - a bony layer in the skin covered with horn/keratin - probably the closest equivalent to Au Ra scales).



So, with all that information gathered... what actually are Au Ra horns? Bone and keratin? A skin layer inbetween?

Presumably there's bone throughout the whole structure, or they'd be quite vulnerable to breaking (which is a rather awful thought). And we don't see anyone with broken horns ever.

The horns have the same texture as their body scales, so perhaps they do have a skin layer in the horns as well, and it all forms in the same way.

And the thing about moose antlers is an interesting idea too. Maybe Au Ra do have an external earhole (just not visible on the game character models) and the horns direct sound into it like that.



And finally we get back to your actual question, which depends on what the horn structure is like. If it has a skin layer, it's presumably sensitive, but a harder bone/horn structure would be less so. They might feel pressure on it indirectly (pressure or force on the horn transfers to their head) but probably not directly feel something touching the horn part - like we can't directly feel something on our hair unless it's putting some kind of pressure on our scalp.

As for what it might sound like to them, if their ears are fully enclosed within the horns then it might be something like what you can hear if you put a cup over your ear and then tap or scratch on it.



Something related that has bothered me for a while: the fact that Au Ra wear earrings on their horns where human ears would be. It seems to me that it would be - if not actually painful - quite audible any time the earrings moved or swung around. (And then there's the need to drill holes to put them in there in the first place!)

There are options in the character creator for 'fixed' metal plate decorations instead of hanging earrings - eg. can see on my alt character here - a flat metal piece on the outer edge of the horn.

This seems more likely to be what they'd actually use, and equippable earrings are only for simplicity of all characters being geared in the same way (and with the same item models).




On the other question of scale colour... a few unique characters have colour-tinged horns - Yugiri's are pink towards the tips, and Mide (from the Alexander questline) has blue. Beyond that, I don't think there's been any talk of it. The nature of how the game handles character models makes it unlikely that we'd see characters with other coloured scales, unless perhaps they modeled it into the gear pieces they were wearing. But more likely it would be talked about and not seen.

The closest thing is the mention in Sui-no-Sato of a past Ruby Princess marrying a Hyuran man, and their child had less scales than a normal Au Ra - so genetics can create something "in between" and not just follow one parent or the other.

[KaivaC]

You know, I didn't even think of Mide. Totally forgot that her horns had that slight color change as well. Very interesting if there are perhaps Au Ra around that haven't been seen yet that could have differing scale colorings. I'd hoped with the focus on Au Ra in the recent patches, we might've seen the possiblity, but were instead mostly dealing with Xaela.

The wording about indirect pressure sounds pretty interesting. There was one part in the story where a Xaela mentioned hearing things with 'his ears', so I'm led to believe that Au Ra tend to refer to that region as their ears. Whether they're talking about the horns - or their internal ears - sounds interesting.

[ObsidianFire]

There's a few other things about the horns in particular. One is that while they can be hurt or even broken, they do grow back to how they were before. The other thing that relates to both horns and scales is that older Au Ra (older then we can make our player character) seem to have more scales and longer, pronounced horns. So it seems that horns and scales keep growing (or spreading in the case of scales) as Au Ra age. We also see several Au Ra hairstyles of both genders that have smaller horns growing on other places on the skull.

It should be mentioned that while the outer ears of animals varies a lot, the middle and inner ear is very similar for all vertebrates (animals with skeletons). The middle ear is a thin membrane of skin attached to bones that vibrate when the membrane vibrates (on lizards you can see this membrane very easily). The inner ear is a sack of fluid attacked to the bones in the middle ear. The bones of the middle ear cause the fluid in the sac to vibrate which causes little hairs lining the sac to vibrate too. Nerves from the hairs go to the brain's hearing center. The fluid is also important for helping with a person's sense of balance.

This gets really interesting as we don't know what part of the ear Au Ra horns are supposed to correspond to. It could be that they're just a very weird outer ear and the middle and inner ear works like normal. It could also be that the horns function as both the outer and the middle ear at the same time, with the vibrations of the horns going right to the inner ear. It could even be that the horns go into the skull a ways and are the outer, middle and inner ear at the same time. That would open a lot of options for having weird stuff like a inner ear that doesn't have fluid to carry vibrations (or mess/help with balance).

Personally, I have the opinion of Au Ra horns being a replacement for all of the ear parts, including the parts of the ear in the skull. Growths like that aren't skin deep at their base. Stuff like nails and claws need things like nail beds to grow from. And horns often have a lot of special bone growth surrounding them so that they don't put a crazy amount of stress on the skull. All of those need some underlying structure to support them from breaking off with normal use. So whatever Au Ra horns are, they probably distort the skull bones of the Au Ra in some way compared to normal human skulls. I have a really hard time seeing something like the hole needed for a normal ear canal staying in the proper shape all the way to the inner ear through something like that (a human's inner ear is slightly below your eyeball). Au Ra also probably have a very different muscle set-up around their skull compared to most races.

One thing I do think is that Au Ra horns are not like the horns we see on normal animals. Normal horns are essentially bone growths. They're solid, not hollow and don't vibrate well, which is the main function of Au Ra horns. I also don't think Au Ra horns are made of cartilage either (although that's the closest real life material I can think of). While cartilage is what makes up the human outer ear, it's too flexible for what we see on the Au Ra. It also can't regenerate when damaged, which Au Ra horns can.

So pretty much... Au Ra horns are made out of some fantasy organic material. If anyone knows what it is or how it works, it was probably the Allagans.

[KaivaC]

Allagans seem to have a hand in a vast majority of the things that we see in Eorzea haha.

I'm really struggling trying to headcanon how things sound in their ears. Has it ever been addressed or hinted whether their hearing is as good as Miqo'te, or if their horns provide anything different than enhanced hearing. The only particular thing that I have heard of in regards to that is just spatial awareness, which really, everybody has.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

It is also not unfeasible that a special kind of bone growth and other body tissue formation exists only within the biology of Eorzea, that is not present in our world ... making things like horns and other "accessories" and some of the curiously structured animals there, possible.

[KageTokage]

They've implied that there's more clans of all of the different races that we simply haven't seen yet, and they even explicitly stated in a lore panel that there's a third clan of Au Ra more ancient then the Raen and Xaela (Perhaps a pre-cursor to both?), but it's yet to actually have been mentioned anywhere in-game or in the lorebooks.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some Au Ra with scale colors other then white/black, but I suppose only time will tell.

[Sounsyy]

Fernehalwes actually has some answers to this from this and the last Fanfest Lore Panel.

re: Horns

Fernehalwes: First, it's hard for a tail or horn to be removed. They don't periodically fall off like the horns of a deer do. They grow continuously until they reach a certain size and then they stop growing. They don't get super long. They stop growing at a certain point. Now if they're damaged, whether it be a fall or in battle (if an axe takes half of it off) then the horns will slowly regrow until they reach that maximum point again. The horns themselves are hollow and the vibration of sound within the horns aides the Au Ra in hearing. Now does that make their hearing better, than say a Lalafell who're supposed to have the best hearing of all the five Eorzean races? No, their hearing is about as good as a normal Hyur, it's just that they hear sound in a different way, and they process it differently. They're processing that vibration of the air that's within their horns.

re: scales

Q: Will there be any sort of canon confirmation regarding the existence of the player races’ other clans? Could there feasibly be Lowlander Hyurs, coastland-dwelling Elezen or gold-scaled Au Ra, for instance?

MCKF: Yes, of course. When the game launched the focus was on Eorzea and we told you all about the different clans that were in Eorzea. As we’re now expanding out over into the East, we have Ilsabard and Othard, we have all these different places where we’re encountering new clans of the same Hyur or Elezen race. So the Hyur that you see in Hingashi, these are neither Midlanders nor Highlanders, they’re an Eastern clan of Hyur. So of course there’ll be a lot more and we have plans in the future of introducing these clans that don’t fit in that two-clan system you have in Eorzea.

[SannaR]

Bah beaten to it lol