As I have 40 characters in Final Fantasy 14, I have a wide mix of genders and races. At last count, the race and gender mix I have the most of are female Miqo’te, but as a crazy cat lady in real life, that’s not surprising. Second most popular race is Elezen and then it filters down from there. The race I struggle the most with when making characters in any game is the human-based race. In the case of FFXIV, that would be the Hyur. As I’m human in real life, the appeal of playing one in a fantasy game isn’t high for me.
Nevertheless, I do have four Hyur characters in FFXIV. One male Hyur Midlander and three Hyur Highlander ladies. I used to have two female Midlander Hyur and one Highlander female but after the graphics update, I changed my two remaining Middies to Highlanders. While Midlander females are quite pretty, I like the stronger appearance of Highlanders and wish I could be so chiseled in real life. Perhaps someday.
The first Hyur I ever made, male or female, was Lavanda, who I made a whole blog post about in the past about why I made her and who I based her on.
The second Hyur I made was a Highlander and her name is Vruzette.
The final Hyur I made was Yorhu and she was originally a Midlander. All three ladies have very different stories that I know well but even so, their personalities continue to develop as I play them. I’ve been inspired to play them even more this past month because of a gpose prompt list entitled Febhyurary.
When I changed my Midlander ladies to Highlanders, I tried to match their appearance as much as possible. It’s unfortunate that Midlanders and Highlanders don’t share the same hairstyles but I made do with what was available. Plus, eventually my characters tend to use universal hairstyles available in-game or from the online store.
The Highlander lady I spent the most time playing in February was Yorhu. She’s definitely the character I had the least feel for even though I had a lot of her backstory written in my mind. She’s some form of royalty that has ties to voidsent and she has horns that she can make visible or not and change the shape of. Now that I’ve been playing her regularly for weeks I know much more about her and have better ideas for where her story can go. As with most of my characters, Yorhu is part of a couple. She’s paired up with D’zin, who is the younger brother of my very first character, D’azri.
Yorhu and D’zin are one of my more mismatched pairs in that Yorhu is much more than D’zin should be able to handle. But they make it work somehow.
Right now though Yorhu solo is my main focus and I’ve leveled her to 50 black mage, then 60 red mage, and picked up dancer and gunbreaker on her last night. I started her in Stormblood last night as well and will use the MSQ to level her classes until I decide it’s time to move on with the story. As she’s from The Fringes originally, it will be good to play her through those areas and see where she takes me.
One of the things about Yorhu that makes me smile is that she wears glasses because I wear glasses in real life. I have a few characters that wear glasses but most of them don’t. Now that glasses are separate from helms in the game, it opens up access to more interesting glams.
Yorhu’s glasses are currently red frames and the last time I wore red framed glasses was when I was in middle school. I was not popular and often made fun of for how I’d dress and the fact that I read fantasy books. But nobody will be making fun of Yorhu with her red frames because if they try, she’ll make them regret it. It’s fun how making fantasy characters can make a person feel more confident and/or help erase bad memories. I can’t go back and tell past me not to worry about what other people think but by playing Yorhu I can continue to thrive as the strong, wise, and sassy older woman I am today.
Srinity 