#but just like Adrestia you cannot develop too much the Alliance

[randomnameless]

Thoughts on the Eastern church?

Well...

thanks to a certain paralogue, we know what some people of the Alliance think mercenaries are used for :

Lorenz here is describing the job Knights should have (at least the knights from Faerghus and the Church do), but says mercenaries were hired for that job.

So, in the Alliance, at least for Nopes, it's perfectly acceptable for a noble to rely on hired swords, aka people who are in for the money, than to rely on a permanent force of knights.

And it's the same thing with the Eastern Church, they have no knights - and pride themselves on not having any permanent "military" force - and rely on a local noble (Nilsson? I forgot)'s troops to protect them when things are going wrong...

Except when that local nobles doesn't send them his knights, so they have to cry at the Central Church to please send the Knights of Seiros to help them protect their cities/people.

Bar their hypocrisy, there is also the... lack of presence in everyday/general Alliance/Federation life, like, in Nopes, apparently, no one in the Federation gives a fuck that their King wants to slaughter the Archbishop for "reasons" and no one seems to have any attachment to the Central Church or the Church in general, FE16 Lorenz reminds Billy that in the Alliance, Nobles only pay lip service to the Church.

So... what is their role? They're not spreading the faith or even making sure the randoms who parrot it get the right "version" of said faith, they do not protect their people/the faithful, and no one apparently gives a fuck about the Church of Seiros in the Alliance (if siding with the Empire and killing its Archbishop is any indication)...

At least they didn't try to kill the Archbishop and aren't as xenophobic as the Western Church members, so they won on that level.

Bar that, they're a pretty much souless organisation - even with Fodlan's standards that doesn't bother giving a fig about its own worldbuilding or lore/world elements : but I think we get a pretty picture in GW, when apparently the Bishop of the Eastern Church wanted to, uh, celebrate Clout's coronation to "ease the people" - who are later revealed not to give a fuck about the CoS - so what was even the point?

Is he representing his entire Church Branch, doing something useless, rather, pretending to have some importance when he has none? And banking on said "pretend importance" to have a sway on the new leader of the country? IDK.

The Eastern Church doesn't have anything meaningful to write about - bar, again, their hypocrisy - but imo, and maybe it's more hc than canon at that point, the Eastern Church is a church branch that forgot why it exists or what is its purpose (spread the faith or at least make sure it's not deliberatly misinterpreted/used by people who dgaf about it, provide relief/support/help to people, etc).

[damoselcastel]

queenlua replied to your post:

   Tellius wanted racism to be a Big Theme, and while there’s missteps/mistakes in that, an advantage of making it a Big Theme is at least you get a proper variety of perspectives, PoV, etc.  3H feels like it wanted to make a minor theme / subtheme out of it, which leads to…   half-assed development of a lot of stuff that really should’ve been addressed.  (though FE7 is an interesting counterpoint of “how to handle it without making it a Whole Big Thing”, tyvm for the link)    

I think FE7′s depiction of Sacaen culture and how the rest of Elibe discriminate against them is darn successful cause it seems to draw on more Asian-local examples of racism. The indigenous peoples vs dominant modern ethnic groups, or the historical scorn China had for nomadic peoples (y’know, the Sacean Plains with horse-archers and yurts, pretty evocative). So this might’ve been more of a case of “writing what you know” and selling the worldbuilding, while more recent games try to go broader, but the Japanese writers just don’t have the awareness/familiarity with writing about colorism that’s embedded with the West’s influence over the globe.

Agreed that racism as a theme in Tellius at least gave the issue enough room to breath (even if there’s big in-world things that cuts the message off at the knees). I think it’s why Jill is so successful as a character, because her behavior is shoved in the player’s face multiple times throughout the story- so we not only see her initial bad biases but also witness when she starts to question them and then when she’s changed her mind/behavior. It’s not even locked to supports, the barracks conversations show it off splendidly, especially in her home town of Tarna.

3H at least put some more thought into the fact that human ethnicity should matter and how the setting could address it (mostly shown via “outsiders” like Petra, Dedue, Shamir, and Cyril). Like, it’s nice to know some of the characters are genuinely POC instead of just whitebread toasted with a tan. But you’re right in that they only wanted it to be a subtheme or in the background... I can’t get over that there were these ethnically and culturally distinct pockets left on the Fodlan continent not even 4 years before the game starts... and yet everyone and their dog talks about Fodlan and how it used to be unified under one ruler- c’mon fam, what WAS Duscur before they annihilated it? Did it just not “count” cause because it sure seems like they existed apart from the rest of Fodlan culture under the influence of the church for almost 1000 years.

Also with the way Shamir mentions that Adrestia went and stomped Dagda, plus some library mentions about invasions and excursions preformed by the Kingdom into Sreng and elsewhere, that Fodlan is still very actively expansionist. I’m not certain about the Alliance but the only reason they might not be the same is because Almyra’s too big and powerful so they end up playing defense all the time. I’m so curious about THOSE contextual politics, but they’re really not at all the focus for the plot.

Plus I’m not sure if we really get to see any inter-Foldan discrimination... like do Adrestian nobility talk down to those from the Kingdom and the Alliance? Consider them backwater and ill-fit for ruling? Cause I CANNOT BUY the way the game tries to sell “and they were united under this amnesiac mute and lived happily ever after” despite in-game history explicitly explaining WHY the Kingdom and then Alliance splintered away from the Empire. (the biggest plot focused race-wars in the game are Nabateans vs Argathans but that’s buried beneath so much, fans really aren’t sure precisely what’s going on there)

[randomnameless]

I was checking the other wiki for more info on FE16′s unused content 

(is it me or the other wiki isn’t edited as easily as a snapchat selfie?)

We missed the best battalion in the game :’(

OTOH, if we’re supposed to think those battalions are random mercenaries chilling around waiting to be hired, i’d feel bad about a battallion of random crazed villagers chilling around, just waiting to be hired but apparently they cannot be healed...

From the unused map sprite, even if it doesn’t match the character’s sprite, Rhea bleaches her hair when she cosplays as Seiros, and we were robbed of the “two eyed Dimitri” map sprite.

I’ve finally found the beta “Felix’n’Annette were supposed to fight against Dimitri” convos, idk what was the beta AM, but here it seems as if Felix’n’Annette are fighting alongside Cornelia and the randoms Faerghusians in Firdhiad. Maybe they defected when Dimitri wanted to go to Enbarr, then Flèche happened, Dimitri returns home and has to fight against them? idk.

More interesting though, is the cut “trading” activity, where, apparently, we would have been able to send merchants somewhere to get rare and endemic products.

It’s interesting because it has some flavor text about the destinations!

Brigid A group of islands with abundant nature, floating in Western Fódlan. They lack in production of arms and goods, but they are excellent hunters and fishers, and are well-known for their unique cuisine.

They were unlucky in Civ and didn’t start near a mine of iron or copper? If only we could have more Brigid dishes, i’d be a happy nerd

Land of Albinea A vast land located Nothwest of Fódlan. They require a variety of resources for development. There are lots of famous foods that take advantage rich nature in the area. 

Albinea doesn’t have a lot of ressources for development (TFW no iron/copper) but apparently they have a lot of “famous food”. I think Albinean moose is used in some dishes?

Derdriu, The Aquatic Capital The capital of the Regan Dukedom, and the central part of the Alliance Territory. There are a lot of factories there, and they leverage the port to produce and export goods to build their wealth.

Look at those merchant republics exporting goods and developing factories, then what, they developed tariffs? Sleazy merchants. OTOH, from this description alone, I have the feeling the Alliance’s nobility desperatly tries to assert its authority through “ancient noble blood” and what not, because if someone is rich enough to have 70% of the factories used, and controls the trade, even if Count Gloucester recalls how Gloucester the Elite was the dudest bro in the world, rich merchants won’t give a fig about him.

Fort Merceus A fortified city, and the capital of the County of Bergliez. Extremely rich in agriculture and fishing thanks to the blessing of the fertile Gronder Field and Airmid River.

The Empire seized every fertile land in Fodlan? I remember a raunchy novel implying Cichol blessed the fields of Gronder (bla bla earth dragon magic?) but with the river + those magical fields, the Empire’s supposed to be self-sufficient, at least when food is concerned. It contrasts with the Kingdom where recolts aren’t that rad, some are forced to turn into Dagdas and Ingrid’s family deals with bad recolts.

Arianrhod, The Fortress City A fortress Kingdom city on the border with the Empire. They put a lot of effort into military preparation, but it's said that they have a surplus of equipment and due to their non-agressive defense policy.

TFW everyone works their butts to build a super fortress city but then your local nobles say it must be used to strengthen a “non-agressive defense policy” :’(. OTOH, Arianrhod being a non-agressive defensive “fortress city” near the border with the Empire means that, at least during the first part of the game, the Kingdom and the Empire weren’t at each other’s throats.

Almyra The great country to the East that has long been at war with Fódlan. The throttle on trade was loosened when the former king began his reign, and they now export many goods.

Wow, interesting bits here! Who is the former king this is talking about? Claude’s Almyrian Grandpapa? Of course greedy merchants from the alliance try to make some business (tm) and Almyra even exports goods! Maybe the pals raiding every wednesday are just a faction who doesn’t want to negociate/trade with their neighbours and only want to fight’n’feast, idk. Making peace through trade though, i’ve read it somewhere but i can’t remember where are they trading coal and steel?

Sreng Region A desolate region where the Sreng people live. It's said that Zoltan, the master swordsmith, once lived there, so there may be valuable weapons waiting to be discovered.

Alright who is Zoltan because we find his weapons in the game. Still sad that there’s nothing about the Sreng people, but talks about a swordsmith in a region where Birdie is sighted in the game makes me think a bit, maybe Zoltan is one of Macuil’s alias, like Cichol and Seteth, or Rhea and Seiros? “There may be valuable weapons waiting to be discovered” TFW you’re a thief trying to discover magic weapons in a desert but get attacked by a talking magic beast :’(

Fhirdiad, The Kingdom Capital The capital of the Kingdom located in Northwestern Fódlan. The study of magic is popular, and the people are said to be skilled at crafts, but the surrounding lands are barren.

Look the Fhirdiad magic school of sorcery gets a mention! It makes me wonder why Fhirdiaid pushes for magic studies but the Empire is supposed to have the most magic oriented army in the continent... Contrast with Bergliez again, the Kingdom’s lands are barren. And yet they still manage to have cheese. Fhirdiad randoms are supposed to be skilled at crafts, what, Cordelia asked them to craft spare parts for her Titanuses and the randoms obliged, not knowing what it would be used for? Or because they don’t have natural ressources, they had to craft a lot of things to compensate for the shitty climate and barren lands?

Morfess, City of Sorcery A desert city located far to the Southeast of Fódlan. The climate is rough, but the study of magic is popular, and it's said that their skill at weapons forging is also high.

Okay I'm pretty sure Morfis/Morfess specialities being “magic + weapons forging” was, in this version of the game, the devs trying to tell us that Macuil used to be there. Climate is rough, dude loves deserts. But as @damoselcastel​ pointed out, maybe Morfess/Morfis developed its own branch of magic and also uses it to forge weapons. TFW the only things we get from Morfis are a battalion of mole people looking mages and plums. Yes, plums.

County of Gloucester A territory of the widest plains in the Alliance territory. Agriculture and cattle-breeding are prosperous, and it's said that County Gloucester himself uses them to develop new foods.

Oh, so next to the economic mess/Fodlan’s version of Amsterdam in Derdriu, Count Gloucester rules over a pretty rural area of the Alliance? He develops new foods, like what? He tries to create fusion food? Now I imagine all kind of jokes made at Count Gloucester’s expense with various sheeps, when the Riegans just need to develop 3 more technologies to fully enter to the industrial revolution era. No wonder why he’s so salty :).

OTOH, again, more worldbuilding : apparently only the Kingdom wasn’t blessed with fertile fields? It sucks for them.

Enbarr, The Imperial Capital Capital of the Adrestian Empire that has a long history. More people there than any other city in Fódlan, and it also has a huge market that sells mostly food.

Compared to the description of the other capitals, this one feels flat. So, Enbarr is old and it has more people in its walls than in any other city in Fodlan. Market sells a lot of food. Enbarr dictates food prices in the continent or what? Or maybe the huge food market is like, the biggest food market in Fodlan where food from every part of the Empire is sold (it manages to enter Enbarr thanks to the canal?). I’m kind of disappointed, otoh, Ferdie reading an agricultural treaty gives him a new light, if food/agriculture is so important in the Empire.

now the million gald question : is Enbarr exporting food to the Kingdom who’s in need or not

County of Varley This area is lacking in water sources, which is rare within the Empire. It's said that they forge precious weapons and armor using the minerals taken from the Ogma mountains.

hahaha what kind of minerals taken from the Ogma mountains are we talking about crest stones or nabatean bones i mean

Fascinating to note, again, that the Empire is the bestest place to be in Fodlan because bar Varley, every area isn’t “lacking in water sources”. So maybe we have a lot of swamps in Adrestia, but at least there are no deserts. With water, you can grow stuff, so it’s a huge bonus for agricultural development. then why are the adrestians so nostalgic about a time where they controled a frozen wasteland and want to reconquer that frozen wasteland, like, it has nothing of interest no natural ressources nothing so why

If only Bernie could forge us something OP...

Kupala This area is just a part of the Alliance's Territory of Margrave Edmund , but it's an autonomous region where the mountain people life. They produce weapons and armor, made with precious minerals.

Those tidbits were in the game before the DLC, so at that time we didn’t know was Kupala before Nemesis’s party. Interesting to note that this is an autonomous region in the Alliance, and not a part of the Alliance like any other territory (Leonie’s village). Maybe the Alliance thought it was too much of a hassle to keep an effective control over those parts of the mountains, for little benefit. Why needing to crush them when we can trade with them?

Territory of Margrave Edmund The region is almost entirely made up of coastal area or islands, and trade with far-off areas is thriving. You may be able to get something rare. 

Or maybe the Territory of Margrave Edmund is just some sort of puzzle, when the Lords needed to give him a territory because he’s a noble they thought about the most difficult, shitty place to administrate and thought about this place, islands, coasts and mountains. Totally not a difficult mess to send knights to keep order of something. Coasts + islands = pirates? But apparently, in the general Alliance trend, Edmund managed to trade with “far-off areas” instead of maintaining a military rule/dominion, and apparently, it works so well that he sometimes manages to get something rare!

Land of Dagda A vast land far west of Fódlan. Their weapons crafted with unique skill are well known. They are hungry for meat that you can only get in Fódlan.

Meat for weapons seems a good trade - I mean Dagdians weapons are supposed to be unique but also well-known. It’s such a shame we never see anything like that in the game :) IIRC Shamir doesn’t have a special Dadgdian pref bow and i hope they’re not talking about the fetters of dromi :’(

why did they cut those worldbuilding parts???

[damoselcastel]

archer3-13‌:

damoselcastel‌:

queenlua replied to your post:

   Tellius wanted racism to be a Big Theme, and while there’s missteps/mistakes in that, an advantage of making it a Big Theme is at least you get a proper variety of perspectives, PoV, etc.  3H feels like it wanted to make a minor theme / subtheme out of it, which leads to…   half-assed development of a lot of stuff that really should’ve been addressed.  (though FE7 is an interesting counterpoint of “how to handle it without making it a Whole Big Thing”, tyvm for the link)    

I think FE7′s depiction of Sacaen culture and how the rest of Elibe discriminate against them is darn successful cause it seems to draw on more Asian-local examples of racism. The indigenous peoples vs dominant modern ethnic groups, or the historical scorn China had for nomadic peoples (y’know, the Sacean Plains with horse-archers and yurts, pretty evocative). So this might’ve been more of a case of “writing what you know” and selling the worldbuilding, while more recent games try to go broader, but the Japanese writers just don’t have the awareness/familiarity with writing about colorism that’s embedded with the West’s influence over the globe.

Agreed that racism as a theme in Tellius at least gave the issue enough room to breath (even if there’s big in-world things that cuts the message off at the knees). I think it’s why Jill is so successful as a character, because her behavior is shoved in the player’s face multiple times throughout the story- so we not only see her initial bad biases but also witness when she starts to question them and then when she’s changed her mind/behavior. It’s not even locked to supports, the barracks conversations show it off splendidly, especially in her home town of Tarna.

3H at least put some more thought into the fact that human ethnicity should matter and how the setting could address it (mostly shown via “outsiders” like Petra, Dedue, Shamir, and Cyril). Like, it’s nice to know some of the characters are genuinely POC instead of just whitebread toasted with a tan. But you’re right in that they only wanted it to be a subtheme or in the background… I can’t get over that there were these ethnically and culturally distinct pockets left on the Fodlan continent not even 4 years before the game starts… and yet everyone and their dog talks about Fodlan and how it used to be unified under one ruler- c’mon fam, what WAS Duscur before they annihilated it? Did it just not “count” cause because it sure seems like they existed apart from the rest of Fodlan culture under the influence of the church for almost 1000 years.

Also with the way Shamir mentions that Adrestia went and stomped Dagda, plus some library mentions about invasions and excursions preformed by the Kingdom into Sreng and elsewhere, that Fodlan is still very actively expansionist. I’m not certain about the Alliance but the only reason they might not be the same is because Almyra’s too big and powerful so they end up playing defense all the time. I’m so curious about THOSE contextual politics, but they’re really not at all the focus for the plot.

Plus I’m not sure if we really get to see any inter-Foldan discrimination… like do Adrestian nobility talk down to those from the Kingdom and the Alliance? Consider them backwater and ill-fit for ruling? Cause I CANNOT BUY the way the game tries to sell “and they were united under this amnesiac mute and lived happily ever after” despite in-game history explicitly explaining WHY the Kingdom and then Alliance splintered away from the Empire. (the biggest plot focused race-wars in the game are Nabateans vs Argathans but that’s buried beneath so much, fans really aren’t sure precisely what’s going on there)

duscur is suppose to have been sreng territory until recently in the kingdoms history i believe when it got gobbled up in westward expansion until they hit their limit and now have to play defensive with the sreng tribes, kinda like how the alliance plays defensive with almyra. although in the alliances case it tends to work with the other countries to push almyra back because almyra is basically fantasy mongolia again this time with dragons, well sreng and the kingdom mostly just seem to deal with each other since sreng is mostly occupied by disunited tribes, something that might actually be a bit of a callback to archanea among other things where the upper half of the continent was completely occupied by roaming tribes, desert, and a frozen wasteland.

While the horse-archer theme can be Mongolia, fans have presented evidence for Persian inspiration which I think is more on the nose this time (plus the Near East had plenty of its own nomadic archer tribes). I do remember the library mentioning the Kingdom vs Sreng conflicts, I’ll have to go back and see if Duscur is specifically mentioned in context to it. Especially since I think mostly in the exploration notes... Sreng was a mystery? I can’t recall the specific mention of nomadic tribes.

Big FE3H Spoilers under the cut pertaining to GD and Church routes:

archer3-13: as for the nabateans and argathans, what i garnered is that its basically a what if of what happened in archenea. dragons existed living it up, some humans popped up and started developing advance technology, the tech and humans became dangerous so the dragons put them down. in archanea that was thabes which duma kinda did independently and which naga scolded him for and sent him off cause her thing was how the dragons were not going to rule the world for much longer and humans were gonna be the next dominant species so best to help them as much as she realistically could. in fodlan the agathans still had to be put down and well i dont know how much sothis believed in humans she did atleast keep them around and healed the land but unlike thabes enough of the agathans were left to take an indirect revenge against the nabateans.so well thabes would pass into legend, agathan society hid itself away to plot revenge. well naga would gift humanity relics in order to defend themselves, the humans of fodlan forcibly took them at the agathans behest. well archanea dragons were destroyed by nature and their own pride, the nabateans were destroyed by humanity itself as part of the agathans revenge for their own destruction.

The Archenea analogy is faulty because of three reasons:

1) The revenge was not indirect, it was pretty damn direct even if the Argathans had the puppet master role. They found Nemesis and his gang and told him not only where to find the sleeping Sothis, but to kill all who lived in Zanado and drink their blood (which is how all but the 5 Saint related Crest lines began- through theft and cannibalism). It was also the Argathans themselves that fashioned Fodlan’s Hero Relics out of the corpses of the murdered Nabateans, literal bones and hearts, which seems to be very unlike the Holy Weapons of other FE games which at most might be described as forged “fangs” and gifts. I also have to wonder how involved the Argathans were during all this, since even in current Fodlan they doppelganger their way into influential places and hide under a different face but remain very active.

2) We don’t 100% know what the initial relationship between humans and Natabeans was like, but it didn’t seem to be the master-slave antagonism that happened with the manaketes. In fact it’s stated that the Natabeans shared their own technology with humans, presumably peacefully, before any conflict with the Argathans occurred. Also with the way Argathans have magical nukes, it’s easy to guess the reason Sothis had to “heal the land” after Serios had gone to war is because they’d gone full nuclear and rendered it otherwise unlivable. Argathans do want revenge and to destroy the remaining Natabeans within the Church, but the reason for why Serios went to war and destroyed them pre-Nemesis is only hinted at and seems to have a pretty different tone than the Archnean dragon politics.

3) The attitude of the surviving Nabateans. Rhea reshaped Fodlan’s culture but for more than one reason: not only to reward her allies in helping her to defeat Nemesis but also to appease the now prolific Crest Bearers while hiding the truth of how Crests are gained and life lengthened (we know from Jeralt that Natabean blood can make a human live well over a century). She took a lot of responsibility but also a position of soft power, where she could watch over Fodlan’s successive generations but still let humans rule over themselves and make political decisions like the Empire splitting into new nations- that’s a lot of independence (plus the way she talks about Wilhelm and how he comforted her, the implications) and she even transforms and flies down in defense of the fleeing students when Thales invades with imperial forces. Seteth and Flayn only recently rejoined society, but seem to be very at home living among humans (makes one wonder if Cichol’s unnamed wife was a human, especially since Cethleann’s incapable of transformation and has “special blood”) Macuil couldn’t stand the appeasement of those who’d murdered their people and left, Indech seems to prefer solitude and perhaps fears humans and how powerful they can grow.

Also from the way Argathans treat and talk about current-day humans, they don’t consider themselves to be on the same level and definitely look down on them. Heck, I’d say they looked down on Nemesis and his gang with the way Thales just calls him “a thief” despite the fact they must’ve worked with (or manipulated) them for 150ish years. Argathans also seem to be as immortal as Nabateans, so come off as more even-footed rivals.