Politics

[Iscah]

I think there's one more consideration to make. As a shard of Azem, we're descended from a member of an elite, nepotistic circle of tyrannical despots who unilaterally made decisions on behalf of the rest of the world for thousands of years. From a roleplaying perspective, we need more opportunities to lean into that. There is a fantastic opportunity for us to build a clique of powerful friends that goes on to form a world government for the entire planet, ushering the shards into a new era of prosperity under our iron fist. Now that the Scions and Ascians are no more, we finally have the potential to make that dream into a reality. Consider the following:

Hildibrand

Vanhudi: Let's get straight to the point: I want you at my side. With the Vaunted Warrior of Light as the template for my clone army, we could conquer this and every other land in creation!

> 'That... that's not a bad idea, actually.'

Hildibrand: 'Ah... ha ha ha! A splendid jest, my friend. A splendid and... not-at-all-indicative-of-suppressed-megalomaniacal-ambitions jest... yes?'

<long silence>

(Lv.90, Gentlemen at Heart)

I'm sorry, am I missing sarcasm here? Because that sounds way outside the roleplaying scope of this narrative.

Mamool Ja mercenaries have been in Limsa Lominsa for 5 years and some have even broken away to make their own society in Vylbrand, butchered the locals to make their own castle, and actively assault adventurers. I don’t believe we’re going to Tural to do the same thing and the idea of such is flawed.

Plot twist: we already defeated the warmonger guy and the news just hasn't gotten around yet.

[Lyth]

I think the bigger question in this debate is: 'So what?'

You wanted choice, and now you have it. If you want to forcibly create a textual reading where you head off to Tural as kingmaker and conqueror, all the power to you. All this sanctimonious moral posturing surely gets tiresome after a while. If you've spent the past story arc dreaming about being an Ascian edgelord, then surely this is the golden opportunity that you've always been waiting for. If this is meant to be a vacation, then let it be an evil vacation. Let it all out.

I'm personally disappointed that we only get to choose from four candidates. If I'm going to install a proxy dictator to rule over Tural in my stead, surely I should have a degree of choice in the matter. I'm personally leaning towards Ezel II.

If the flying pig is not an option, then at least let us re-glamour our chosen despot, like the custom delivery system allows. After all, who do you think dressed Aymeric up as a blue elephant in the first place?

I'm sorry, am I missing sarcasm here?

Irony, mixed with caricature. I'm only mad north-northwest. When the wind blows southerly, I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.

...

Lore is a relatively small community, where some interpersonal interactions have developed over multiple years. You're observant to notice that it's unusual for someone to have such a strong opinion of someone with whom they've never interacted with before. If you watch closely, you'll also see that there's also a recurring trend to the target.

[NanaWiloh]

I'm sorry, am I missing sarcasm here? Because that sounds way outside the roleplaying scope of this narrative.




Plot twist: we already defeated the warmonger guy and the news just hasn't gotten around yet.

Plot twist: Pip is the warmonger

[MikkoAkure]

Plot twist: we already defeated the warmonger guy and the news just hasn't gotten around yet.

I thought about that as I typed that but let's open up the book and see what it says-

WAIT A SECOND.

Molaa Ja Ja's purpose for crossing the seas to Eorzea was to win glory and strengthen his claim to the throne of the Autarch, ruler of all Mamool Ja. Upon arriving, however, he struggled to find employment for his warband, and in a bid to make a name in this foreign land, he took the drastic step of capturing a piece of it.

"2-headed Mamool Ja ruling warbands and fighting each other over who will be Autarch" is old retconned lore, along with "Mamook" or "Mamool Ja" being the name of the nation, but it would be hilarious if we get all the way there to find out we already killed him.

I would expect that the 4(3?) princes/princesses are on the poster and the only unknowns to us are the Miqo in the white coat, the Mamool Ja at the bottom, and the mysterious Hyur on the top. Either they're all claimants, or one or two are not important (or alive) enough to be on the poster and the other characters are just other important characters.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Plot twist: we already defeated the warmonger guy and the news just hasn't gotten around yet.

I would actually find that funny.

WoL whispers to G'raha: Is this like the 12 where we're not supposed to admit we've killed this guy?

[EdwinLi]

Plot twist: we already defeated the warmonger guy and the news just hasn't gotten around yet.

I will not be surprised if that is the case.

WoL has done so many things already, it is hard to not have accidently resolve something before it happens.

I am more curious about how the Golden City is going to play into this though.

I am guessing one of the challenge for the throne may end up being to find the Golden City and claim whatever item the candidates need to get to win their tournament.

Either way, Wuk Lamat is acting as more than the person we are obviously going to support in the tournament for the throne. She is also our sponsor for adventuring into Tural to find the Golden City which we always have in each expansion when enter a new region. Though I do notice our sponsors tend to be involved in Politics most of the time.

WoL has been lucky so far with always getting Sponsors into new regions since those sponsors always cover a lot of basic needs for WoL where most adventurers had to pay out of their pockets or get permission directly from the Adventurer Guild.

At this point, it feels like every new expansion we should expect someone with political influence sponsoring the WoL for traveling into new regions since these guys always provide WoL his/her always free Inn rooms.

[Cleretic]

Finally, as I believe I have spoken about your behavior once before, I really must thank you for providing evidence backing up my claims without me needing to dig through old messages prior to that initial post. I do not like wasting my time with that. You should probably look that post over again and familiarize yourself with the behaviors I outlined.

See, here's the thing that gets me about you: You haven't. You've alluded to me having allegedly unacceptable behavior, but when I've asked for specifics (which I've done several times) you have been completely silent. In fact you've only left me more confused, because you're demonstrably okay with the things that I'm actually not okay that I've said.

I don't expect you to come back. But if you do, could you enlighten me?


As to the actual subject of the thread, I think it's important to remember--and something the people being negative about this seemed to miss or ignore--that our first priority in Dawntrail has been explicitly stated not to be 'immediately go and throw hands'; rather, it's to go and gather information, learn what's actually going on. It's actually a normal thing for the Scions to do, it's just rarely been us doing it. It was normally Thancred's job, although we did see Tataru and Alphinaud try their hand at it at times.

I think that's important because it shows in multiple ways that they're conscious of not going in blind; not only do they want to avoid making a problem worse through not listening, but G'raha also seemed conscious of the notion we could be getting given incomplete or misleading information that gets us manipulated. (Fitting that he, of all people, is aware of that possibility.) I think it's a given that we'll be participating in the rite, just by game design virtue of 'you don't tell players abut a cool thing and then not let them do it', but I think our reason to is unknown right now.

My guess, we'll find something out that forces our hand. Maybe that the warmonger is even more prepared than we first thought, that the Golden City is more than just pretty, or that there's a familiar face outside of Thurianger that we can't in our right minds let go uncountered. ...Granted, the list of candidates for that second one is pretty small unless you go into side-content, but there's still people. If we saw Nero or any of the other Garlean Empire tech-heads (who are most of the ones still alive), we'd probably get involved at least initially because we want to stop them.

I think we'll enter on the side of Wuk Lamat, because otherwise why make her the first one we met, but our motivation will not be 'because Wuk Lamat asked'.

[Loggos]

To me the perspective, that we only help Wuk Lamat because it is ostensibly our interests that we try to satisfy first and foremost, really doesn't capture the (sub)text of the (short) 6.5.5 quest line.

Imo the story made it clear that it's the compassion for the people in Tural that motivates us (in classic hero/main character fashion - you can say this is cheesy and clichéd and yes, it probably is, but it's most likely our motivation nonetheless) because *they*'d be the ones who suffer first if they were to be dragged into a war.

In my eyes it was Wuk Lamat's strong reaction and her desire to avert the damage *to her own people* that was established as the primary argument by the narrative, which was also underscored by Erenville's supporting statement.

The latter is quite important imo because he serves as a grounded and down-to-earth contrast to Wuk Lamat's hotheadedness. If even someone as calm, smart and cunning as Erenville, who we can assume has the well-being of both the people of his old home Tural and his new home Eorzea on his mind, then it lends a lot more credibility to Wuk Lamat's endeavor.

If we are focusing on the argument of our interests, then it also has to be said that the warmonger is eyeing Garlemald first - a country that for the longest time has been *our* colonizer and brutal antagonist - so (from a purely selfish perspective - which I don't condone, bear with me for a second) the part of Eorzea we have personal ties (and thus a personal attachment) to wouldn't be the one to take the (first) hit of his aggressions. (There would be legitimate concern though that a warmongering nation is encroaching on our boarders and endangering our people, too, if they attack Garlemald.)

At the same time Garlemald is a broken country that has just started to process of rebuilding itself.

Don't get me wrong, I really didn't like how they handled (post-EW) Garlemald but as a matter of fact another war would be devastating for the people there. Protecting them from war is a very legitimate concern. It's not exploitative of Tural, it's literally just the humane act of acknowledging the Garlean common folk's right to safety from an act of aggression that they didn't start and would be *forced onto them*.

Lastly, as others have pointed out, preventing war in Eorzea is a legitimate reason to *support* Wuk Lamat in something she wants to do *for her people* anways.

We are not instrumentalizing her. We are not instigating her to do anything.


I disagree with the premise that "acting in our own interest" is inherently colonialist irrespective of the context.

It's a bit ironic to me that we are supposedly the colonizers when the warmonger's interests...are quite literally...colonization. *He* wants to go to other countries to subjugate them. That is colonization.

Trying to prevent that is again not exploiting Tural in a colonialist way.

If our interest is "not being attacked and forced into a war that would bring lots of suffering for our people" then preventing that war - a war that, again, is also *not* in the interest of the Turali commoners it seems - is a sensible concern.

It's a *reactive* attempt to ensure intercontinental peace by answering the call of *someone from that nation who wants to ensure peace for her people*, not a proactive plan to install a ruler that acts as our proxy or metaphorical arm to enforce a broader official Eorzean geopolitical agenda and establish any kind of Eorzean dominance or hegemony in the region. Nor is there any desire to get access to their resourcers, their land or anything.

It is literally just about peace *in Tural* first and foremost, and about peace in Eorzea as a consequence.

Peace benefits everyone. A senseless war, such as the one the warmonger heir tries to start for his own selfish interests, does the opposite.

Framing the collaborative effort between individuals from Tural and Eorzea to maintain peace for both continents' people as an act of colonization and a one-sided installment of *our* primary interests is something I can't agree with.

----

I can agree that the writing is very clumsy though (nuanced political writing isn't exactly FF14's strong suit in my opinion tbh...).

Because yeah, it's very rushed that we decide to go there in such a short period of time and the whole arc of "getting to know each other on a hunt" felt rather random and not really effective (though Erenville vouching for her really does help). I place the blame on the time constraint that came with their poor planning of having to cramp the set-up for Dawntrail into a 0.0.5 sub-patch. I wish they had set up Dawntrail during the entire post EW patch phase but I digress.

And I also agree that it might very well be the case that there is more to the story and that the warmongering sibling is a red herring. So it makes sense that we are cautious and observe first, but we can only observe for ourselves and form our own opinion if we actually go to Tural. Going to Tural in itself seems warranted to me. If there is the risk of war then it makes sense that we take it seriously, try to actually assess the risk and figure out if Wuk Lamat's claims are true to prevent harm in case they are.

So in short, unsatisfying, rushed writing that doesn't capture political nuances? Absolutely. Colonialization? No, I really disagree.

[Iscah]

I do think we could have had a more cautious "I'll come to Tural but I'm not agreeing to help you yet" option when we speak to Wuk Lamat and say we'll come with her. Otherwise it feels like either the WoL has pushed doubts aside and is all-in on helping her, or else is pretending to be all-in while keeping their true opinion hidden, where I would have liked the option to be more open about having doubts and still potentially saying no once we get the full story.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I do think we could have had a more cautious "I'll come to Tural but I'm not agreeing to help you yet" option when we speak to Wuk Lamat and say we'll come with her. Otherwise it feels like either the WoL has pushed doubts aside and is all-in on helping her, or else is pretending to be all-in while keeping their true opinion hidden, where I would have liked the option to be more open about having doubts and still potentially saying no once we get the full story.

I agree. I also wish we could go there without agreeing to help a stranger win the throne. I mean Estinien just hopped on a boat, I wished we could have moved forward in a way that seemed more measured.