I hope you enjoy my channel. I've been playing MMO's for two decades from 2D MMO's to the latest and greatest games. I am an avid FFXIV player, have been since servers went live and I also dabble in many other MMO Games.
I value the social aspect of MMO's and endeavour to experience the best social experiences of the games I play. Another thing I love is getting involved with the theory-crafting of the FFXIV community regarding Lore and upcoming additions to the game.
I agree that this is likely what the writers are going for, Azem's involvement and such, but I'd much rather it be auracite and finally give us more info on auracite's (white and all others) history and origins, as we've always just had teasers with the Ivalice Ultima and even Athena's involvement with the mysterious space rock wasn't enough explanation for me. Or at least I hope the key has auracite origins, but was given to, and used mainly by, the seat of Azem as part of their duty, instead of made by it.
I really wish we see a different version of her in one of the other shards. A version of her that's happy, married, has successful adventures and everything turned out well for her.
The music is a bit loud and it’s a bit difficult to understand what you’re saying at times. I had to use CC to read what you were saying. Great topic discussion though on future predictions, quite excited to see where the msq leads us next.
My theory is quite simple. Azem created that key, and thus, bears her signature. I think time travel is going to be an integral part of the seat of Azem's 'traveler' title, and will be behind orchestrating certain events such an Pandemonium as well as the source's WoL acquiring the key. I don't have much more to say on it at the time because it will cause my brain to spin in all directions. Also, Iirc, Azem's crystal was forged by Emet Selch. He did this in secret after the convocation disbarred Azem after she defected from their plans to call forth Zodiark.
*Necromancer will never be a playable job.* Then why exactly would they put them out there in that dungeon labeled as a warrior of light when there are 16 other jobs? It seems like the silliest possible choice for them to pursue. Also dark knight, reaper and summoner all exist and **FORSURE** should not playable by the WoL if you use the same logic they used as an excuse for Necromancer not being a job. We have clear evidence that necromancer is already a warrior of light, saying that it cannot be one is worthy of a gold medal in mental gymnastics.
she sounds like an ascian. she talks almost if she knew something about azem. but in general the electrope stuff just makes them sound like ascian in their prime and their ability to revive.
That key would be the perfect tool for spreading enough chaos to start an umbral calamity. Wouldn't surprise me if the Ascians planted it on the south isles to be discovered.
Maybe the original is in some type of stasis in the crown or being channeled and used for an alternate goal. Like minfilia getting used in shadowbringers.
Always liked this cutscene a lot. Draws on a lot of established stuff and brings out plenty of the ugliness about the city-states that often went unmentioned. Stuff that would be given more serious resolution later on down the line, in the Alliance working more closely with the beast tribes and bringing their conflicts with them to an end. As reprehensible as it is, you can kinda get the sense why Varis would feel this was the only way to oppose the Ascians. To us, we'd dealt with an extremely burnt out Lahabrea and an Elidibus who'd mostly just been meddling in the background. It doesn't seem like it should be impossible for us as we are to deal with them. But then we have Emet, who is really just far more dangerous and powerful than either of them. And he's certainly not barking up entirely the wrong tree. It did take us one more rejoining, personally, to defeat Emet. It just came about in a way that Varis probably never could have imagined. I always wonder how Varis would have taken it to see both Emet out of the picture and the Alliance with a cure for tempering. I feel that is a lot more "talking the talk" of us keeping the peace and being able to deal with the Ascians on our own. But you also get the sense that he was a pretty twisted guy at this point, and probably would have fought to the bitter end the same as someone like Quintus. XIV has a lot of really standout villains, and Varis tends to get overshadowed a bit in the grand scheme of things, but I think this cutscene is him at his best. Still a little sad we never got that oft-discussed full Garlemald themed expansion that could have slotted in between Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
I still don't understand what Varis' big plan was. So he knows that the Source and the 13 shards were once one world, and he knows that all races were once one race (I guess the Ascians told him), and he knows that the Ascians want to rejoin the Shards with the Source via the calamities. And his plan to oppose the Ascians is...by doing the exact same thing they are doing??? Either I am missing something crucial here or there was a different plan of how the the story would've evolved but then it got changed into ShB->EW. Because whatever "Varis' big plan" was feels like a giant open plotline for me.
His though process: Ascians want to destroy humanity and treats then like toys. Human will is strong, but divided between nations and shards humans are too weak to fight ascians. Once the shards and nations combine together we will finally be equal to them and be able to kill them for good. His idea of "re-joining" simply means humans will get stronger and fall under his rule. There doesn't seem to be an understanding that the source will be sacrificed. Or maybe he thinks once we are all "complete" he can kills all the ascians before that iunno.
@@seekittycat That is basically what he intends to do. More than likely once he took the throne and learned that he fought tooth and nail to become a figurehead, Emet-Selch probably gave him sparse details on why he built Garlemald and nowhere near mentioned that they would be sacrificed.
@@seekittycatI've got a couple of counter points against his plan or maybe even dismantles his logic altogether. 1. His empire has spent more time fighting everyone but the Ascians. He doesn't get to claim he's fighting for the greater good when he subjects the inhabitants of the conquered provinces to misery and fear. He doesn't get to claim peace and call us 'savages'. 2. Up to the point of where this parley takes place the Scions killed Nabirales and Igeyorm while Thordan killed Lahabrea, an Unsundered Acian. <rhetorical>Remind me: How many Ascians has his empire killed so far?</rhetorical>
@@bluesrike Even in the cutscene itself, Nanamo makes a good point on the things he says. If he's willing to sacrifice even his own people for some perceived greater good, he isn't fit to rule as emperor.
It reads like accelerationism to me. He knows the Ascians aren't going to stop. He doesn't believe he could stop them even if he wanted to- let alone anyone else. He knows first-hand of their immortality. Get the rejoinings over with, rip the bandage off this broken world and its weak people. But he also has a severe case of Main Character Syndrome (and why wouldn't he), so he seems to think he or his descendants can survive what's to come.
5:30 - I feel like once we cured tempering, we kind of glossed over the fact that a LOT of people were needlessly killed because we developed the cure a little too late for them, had they not just been imprisoned for a while or something rather than being immediately killed. I'm sort of surprised some character never called out the guilt that someone who executed those people would probably feel for having done so.... can you imagine you execute a group of tempered citizens and literally the very next day an excited elezen kid approaches you saying "hey we can cure them now, where are they being held again...?"
You can also mention Kageyama, as he is a real piece of work. From the whole take over of kugane castle, to the tax evasion of Uldah, extortion of innocents in the blue mage questline, him implied plans for the Namazu, and the united tribes quests. Like man, that guy is awful.
the crown could be one of the first regulators prototypes and some of the scientists messed up with her memories to create the sphene we know. but your thoughts i had the same, but i wrote it as feedback in game. but lets see what they make it out with this, if this is true. i speculated like some bad power hungry prime minister that manipulated the kings and queens for their own gain...of course this bad prime minister is an endless so he manipulate sphene to keep him alive under all costs.. but this was just my feedback that i wrote and speculation and not what the game MSQ could take way, sorry
Music a bit too loud Bro Imo for better understanding, checking other languages than English would be useful because of how much the English localisation changes entire sentences and nuances unlike French and German that are direct translations to Japanese
So, something popped out at me when I was rewatching ending cutscenes for the base expansion: Erenville mentions, "It remains to be seen how interdimensional fusion affected other reflections. Krile's parents spoke of the power's capacity for both good and evil. I cannot help but wonder how Sphene's deeds will be remembered by those they touched." I think they may have activated it in the gap of time between Zoraal Ja getting the Key and the fusion to the Source happening. Time dilation was TOTALLY a thing, as 30 years passed by in day (rough comparison), so more than enough time had passed, for them anyways, to attempt a fusion prior to the one with the Source. Also, where is Preservation???? And WHO is Preservation? Like I know generally who they are and what they do, but they gotta still be around, watching from the shadows......like Ascians. lol
When the crown is shown after the credits, it is pulsating. If you go back to cutscenes where we speak to Sphene you will nptice the crown is pulsating then too. The question is: does the crown pulsate in the presence of anyone or only the warrior of light who is a shard of Azem? This would be a crucial clue in uncovering the relationship between the queens' crown and Azem. Now to find a cutscene where the crown is pulsating at a time when the warrior of light is not present.
....or the crown contains the actual soul of Shpene with memories intact and just need a corporeal body which we could totally get for her from Garlemald scientists.
I think there was some kind of mistranslation on the post. In the encyclopedia 3 there is a chart of all the reflections and which have been rejoined and which have not. including what the calamity was caused by. the ninth is solid. meaning it has not been rejoined. the one that was devastated by lighting is the 12th. it is much more likely they came from the 12th.
If its been over 400 years, maybe the OG soul of Sphene has been reborn already? On the 9th presumably if she died before the soul system was up and working.
I like to think that she's not dead but on the brink of death and the crown is keeping her alive in a form of stasis until a cure for her illness is found.
I think the crystal inside the Key is the one from that Hythlodaeus story, but I don't think the crown has any relation to Azem. We see four Ancient glyphs on the walls of the Millala museum- one of which matches the design (which they've never explained) on the Scion Traveler's Mask. I think that's Azem's, and it looks nothing like the crown. Though the crown could very well be another Ancient or Ascian glyph. In Alexandria (the dungeon), a background NPC says "They've done it! They've preserved the queen's..." I wonder if they had all they needed to create an Endless of the full Sphene, but suppressed her in favor of the re-creation of memory that we meet. Perhaps they could control it? Or they knew the real Sphene wouldn't have been on board with the whole genocide plan. Think of Otis, there were two Otis' existing concurrently, but the one in LM was a memory re-creation like Sphene, with the "real" soul in the robot. Could the real Sphene's soul be trapped in that crown, seeing everything around her, unable to do aught but watch?
I don’t think Azem would settle at being a ruler. But, they would help a just ruler that encourages “living life to the fullest” Now, if you told me zidane was an Azem shard, that would track. And a Zidane figure would help a stone queen…
The middle of Pashtarot's glyph. Flip it upside down. It's very close to the crown, it has the same teardrop shape in the center with the sides curling up and around.
I havent finished the entire video yet, so maybe this is mentioned. But at an encounter or conversation with Sphene, she makes a sudden personality change. Which made me wonder if Sphene isnt Sphene, but that her memories are used by someone else EDIT: This encounter mentioned at 7:44
Dunno know about azem, but that crown does seem reminiscent of an ancient or ascian mask. And ascians convincing people to use advanced tech to get them to make a calamity happen is pretty much their whole shtick.
Shot in the dark but figured I'd post this: If you look at the crown upside down, the top part that has now become the bottom, looking upward resembles the olden glyphs from ShB of how Hydaelin and Zodiark were drawn, same as their minions that were released. As of the moment, I am finding more design similarity with that than the sigils for the rest of the crown. The type of curvature and giant blobs just aren't there in the normal sigil designs. Under this assumption, if this is a visual representation of some form of Primal as what Hydaelin and Zodiark were, the question is what is the rest of the crown. The "new" top half "could" be interpreted as the Primal bottom visually fused to some other figure in that drawing style, some figure or person with a yellow diamond top and giant wings. The wings section oddly resemble Necron from ff9 moreso than the primals we know since they have traditional repeating patterns instead of weird mechanical curves like Necron. Funny enough, there is a character that is defeated earlier in ff9, Trance Kuja, and upon defeat, there is a location transfer with the new location being a giant yellow/golden beam of light in a city before Necron comes on the screen. If you go back to the final boss cutscene, when Sphene is defeated, there is a giant swirling golden light sky view similar to this transition, which could be a color reference as well as the Azem swirl on the artifact which was used to travel to other locations. Robot Sphene's data when dissolving actually looks like it's going upward instead of disappearing like after Sphene talks to Wuk Lamat, and the background being that golden view with the swirl does not even show up in the boss until after Endless Sphene has forced her way back in. That giant swirl that the cutscene purposely pans to is never explained. Her crown also glows during this time period. Necron's philosophy also would match Sphene from what I found. Necron's creation: "In Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Ultimania - File 1: Character Book, Necron is described as, "a being awakened by Kuja's fear, despair, and hatred, which called out to it as he learned of his mortality, just as his ambitions were within reach"." Describes Sphene after the final fight, especially after talking to Graha earlier in the story. Even the concept art for Hill of Despair where Necron is fought has the similar design style of those blobs and swirls of the crown overall.
I said from the beginning that this is the 9th reflection, because it was played in ff9 just like the first reflection casually dropped THE warrior of light from ff1
You need to watch the dollhouse TV series to understand living memory. Sphene is a doll. Her original memories and maybe soul are stored in that crown and we will need to acquire it eventually.
The crown was hinted to be a more advanced version of the regulators. This means the original Sphene memories are inside the crown and she can PERHAPS revive herself an infinite amount of times. I don't know if it was stated that Sphene herself needs soul to keep herself immortal. We know the regular citizens of Alexandria do need souls because death is a controlled concept in Alexandria; therefore, if anyone dies by a reason outside natural death, then that person will have a spare soul to revive themselves. I don't think that was the case with Sphene since she was an endless(an upgraded version)
I took Sphene being from the Twelfth Shard before its destruction from Lightning during the Second Umbral Calamity or Calamity of Lightning! The Ninth still exists as far as we know!
The only problems with this, is that the 12th shard was rejoined 5000+ years ago, before the calamity of ice. But the Milala only travelled to Alexandria's shard after the calamity of ice. So it being the 12th requires some kind of time travel, which hasn't been implied and would probably be too much time shenanigans after the Crustal Tower and Elpis. Also it seems as though Living Memory still exists on a living shard, as if it wasn't rejoined and somewhat recovered after it's own lightning calamity.
