wols/ocs who have custom echoes- what do they do outside of seeing into the past/translating other languages?
for solkgeim, she can essentially give others echo visions of her own memories. its something she rarely actually does, but solkgeim very much believes that if you keep explaining something, eventually someone will understand you perfectly. and what could be more comprehensive than showing someone the memory directly? it's about connection, it's about wanting to be understood.
for gentle yarrow, her echo is essentially just a little bit... stealthier? the echo "allows you to pass through the walls of a man's soul, and hear the resonations of his past." yarrow's echo lets her sneak into the souls who have more barriers up around them- for example, multiple times throughout shb, she has echo visions from emet-selch, and he is not pleased that she can do that.
but yeah! a lot of people have other things their wol/oc's echo can do, and im curious about it!
as far as my silly miqo'te go:
m'hilo can hear different aetheric signatures as different sounds— usually, it manifests in the company of other people, and their very souls start sounding to him like different motifs or pieces of music. music is already an important theme of his character, but i think this specific characteristic of his echo also reflects how he relates to others: m'hilo connects with people on a very intuitive, instinctual level; he might not come to understand them right away, but he always listens first. what he lacks for smarts and social graces he more than makes up for in good natured charm and emotional intelligence. it also ties him back to his azem, whose motifs are borrowed open handedly from the mythology surrounding apollo... the main inspiration for it, though, is the iteration of answers that replaced all field music before 1.0 shut down, and the idea of being able to hear hydaelyn sing where her presence is strongest. and also hadestown's use of diagetic music to connect people and bring the world back into tune. yay
xheh'li - who isn't a warrior of light, but is my only other ffxiv oc who does have the echo - achieves aethervision with it instead. it doesn't make up for his blindness, and it's not true sight by any stretch, but it does give him another sense to navigate the world with.
