FFXIV's New Raid Story Has Gotten OUT OF CONTROL 

They make us hate the smirking villainy of every big bad until they can get into the reason they are a broken person... and then we have to remember them. Remember that they lived...

@@errorabortretry3694 **gasp** Yoshi-P trying to make Edgedancers out of us

I mean YoshiP has stated on-record they didn't have a single idea of what they were doing with the Ascians back then beyond "generic bad guy" so.. them being cartoon villains does make sense. But it's nice they're retroactively expanding on them now, yeah. Now will it fit in with the "end" result...? Ehhh... prooobably not, or at least not much, given they're so.. *cheesy,* but eh. We've seen weirder things happen.

it's also teaching just about everyone how massively weird the ancient greeks could be....

The best thing about the raids so far is that they have confirmed for me that he was a Giant Fucking Nerd. A really sad nerd who was trying to help his people, but still a Giant Fucking Nerd.

Hmm. What is the current status of the Heart of Sabik?

@@yanipheonu The last we saw of it was in the ultima weapon at praetorium. It could have been pulled out of the rubble at any point and taken somewhere. Basically, we don't know, but that's the last we saw of it.

IIRC The heart exploded alongside Ultima Weapon on Porta Decumana, so, unless it may somehow remained somewhere in the Praetorium it is lost.

Its actually quite possible that our actions in Past!Pandaemonium is what sets the Heart of Sabik loose to later be used in the Ultima Weapon by the Allagans. Alternatively what we dealt with in Praetorium in the Ultima Weapon was only a replica of the original, which we will find in Pandaemonium.

real ultima monkaw

They already named the final wing; Tartarus.

@@magus13131 Is there an official source on that, or did we make an assumption? Because we went to Tartarus. That's where we fought Hephaistos.

Tbh it could easy be Lahabrea gets shundered (or killed due to technically being shundered already) Elidibus and Emet somehow avoid the shundering, yet they find a soul trapped in crystal, the other half of Lahabreas soul untouched by the shundering (A method to survive the shundering ironically). Needing all the help they can get and Elidibus knowing this half of Lahabrea would need the world to be restored to realize his goals, logically they would free him.

@@magus13131 where'd you get this from? We went there already

One thing worth mentioning about that crystal that came from the sea. It appeared while they were observing the Aetherial Sea, as if propelled by something and its aether is unusually dense. The group in Sharlayan found that crystal, but their research was halted for years due to the prep for the Final Days. The research only continued after we solved that crisis. So if that crystal was trying to warn us about something in our current timeline, at the time it was sent to us... ... We got the message *years late*.

oh to be the deity of vegetation

Yoshi-P has said in interviews that the final EW patch is going to have some kind of earth-shattering event changing everything in the lead-up to 7.0, and it definitely seems to have something to do with this.

Until they make it mandatory for MSQ completion (like Crystal Tower-raids), it will be only a flavour story addition, only with extra flavour texts later in some dialogue options. If we are lucky, it will get an Omega-sidequest treatment, if not, it will get the Eden-treament (literally no effect on the story). Every other speculation on tie into the story - sadly - is uncessary :( And I want them to have more effect on the MSQ SO MUCH. But as you see, for example the Ragnarok flies, regardless if you have completed any other sidestory, or not.

@@viktoriapocze4412 not necessarily true, coils was very plot relevant to the MSQ and that is optional content that a lot of players miss entirely.

@@pforgottonsoul Doesn't change the fact it only gives extra dialouge to the MSQ.

Only Elidibus, Emet-Selch and Lahabrea were unsundered, the rest of the convocation were though. I do think what he says has merit though, maybe in 6.4 they'll show that the memories come back to lahabrea and it makes him go crazy. Or, they might just stick with his old lore where him constantly changing hosts with reckless abandon is what made him go insane.

I thought they pulled their sundered shards back together themselves by sheer will power

What if they escaped the sundering through Pandæmonium

There's one other question though. Is this really the same lahabrea? the more we go through the story, the less i feel like this lahabrea and the one we knew about are the same.

In a live letter Q&A, they confirmed that lahabrea was able to escape with emet-selch because he "happened to be nearby"

I came here to say this myself

Same. Came here to say that too.

yes, caster mains know

I'm convinced one boss in this pandaemonium is going ro be him (as both dark side and light side at once in the fight switching modes). Maybe like the gatekeeper since most likely athena runs this reflected version. That or Mateus will appear in 7.0 as Mercydias present-day evil Emperor conquering it for Palmecia or so.

Lahabrea is also the Scion of Light connected to Mateus in Ivalice, so the whole split into halves thing fits well there too.

@@Xyrenos There is already a Mateus in ffxiv for what it's worth - the first boss of The Royal City of Rabanastre.

@@Junebug89 sure there is the ivalice one. Doesn't mean they can't put ff2 mateus in, we already have the ultima weapon with the ultima spell and ultima the high seraph and ultima thule.

well to the ancients Zodiark was god he was the literal will of the planet that they called forth, Venat rebelled against god and brought suffering and death to the world. She wasn't cast into a lake of fire or anything but she was forced into the aetherial sea, its not an exact 1 to 1 analogy to the Christian versions but just take a few steps back and it kinda lines up

Considering Emet Selch was Hades (seemingly Greek mythology’s parallel to Lucifer, though I could be wrong please correct me), I agree he fits the part. If anything maybe Azem is Lucifer because he’s literally symbolised by a star (the morning star).

She did cast humanity out of their perfect world and into the imperfect. Can be wrangled into the snake I guess. Also, Lightbringer.

The portrayal of Lucifer as a morally complex villain or sympathetic anti-hero is not really uncommon in Japanese works that take influence from religious works, especially in taking a sympathetic interpretation of Paradise Lost and running with it. This goes at least as far back to the 70s with works like Devilman. Most of the common conceptions of Lucifer are extra-biblical with some questionable translations of scattered passages to make it fit (e.g. “ha-satan” or “the adversary” from Job being a role and not a proper name). I wouldn’t consider the Underworld of Greek myth to be analogous to the Christian conceptions of Hell. Christians more likely drew from myths about Tartarus.

Venat is a Christ-like figure in my mind since she embodies absolute love, self-sacrifice by giving her life, and her toils and great suffering to save mankind from its fate of forever being lost in darkness and death. Her long march as well gave me flashbacks of Christ walking to His death carrying His Cross, she was also enlightened to the truth of evil, in the case of Christ it is sin and the Satanic Forces which are at play to cause sin, and for Venat it is despair, Nihilism, and dynamis forces at play.

Passion.

@@DrakkarCalethiel and i wish the gaming industry has more of it. this is what happens when devs genuinely care and love the game they are making. lack of passion for games i find is one huge factor in driving them into the ground.

@@KitaiAryik The game industry has tons of passion in it, unfortunately that passion is exploited and abused by the beancounters at the top to maximize profits for stockholders and CEO's who don't care at all about making good games.

@@Khotetsu true enugh. not saying there isn't any..just wish there was more of it. alas more and more of em are chasing after the $$ these days. doesn't mean passion doesn't exist in the industry. just fewer and farther in between nowadays. and what little there is is mostly drowned out unfortunately

@@KitaiAryik Yeah, my point wasn't that you were saying there's no passion in the industry, but more that where the passion exists is largely at the bottom end of the companies, where it can be exploited into telling overworked employees that they're lazy/a traitor to the company for not working 70+ hours a week on a $40k salary, rather than at the top end with CEO's who care more about creating a game that's good than making sure it releases in time for Christmas to have a good quarterly fiscal report to show the investors.

Yeah. Its being written by a junior writer. Who clearly also has some inspiration from Ishikawa. Either way, its amazing story telling.

@AvengingFossil Yes must we say under every single post about the writing that it's not just about her? But she clearly is involved in the process of each of the major pieces of the story being told here. It's not like a totally unrelated process. But cool thanks for that I guess? What a very important part of the commentary.

The only problem with that is that the reason the people of eorzea worship the twelve is because they had been spotted at various points in history, in particular during events that destabilized the aether in an area which made access to the phantom realm easier to spot. I think its more likely for the Twelve to functionally be the Titans, given the heavy use of Greek Myth. That the Ancients took over stewardship of the Star from the Twelve, only this time peacefully instead of by force, who took a step back to observe how things would go.

@@TankHunter678 They have also used a lot of FFXII references with the Ascians, using all the names of FFXII scions of light and their bound espers as the symbol on the mask of the Ascians. There is also a connection between the zodiac sign of the scions of light in FFXII and the zodiac sign of the Convocation of Fourteen in FFXIV that is imprinted on their constellation crystals / memory crystals. The associated elements from FFXII do not however match up if attempting to match the Twelve with the Convocation members. There is definitively something there, but there doesn't exist enough information to confirm anything for certain. One theory i believe to be true is that the Twelve is connected with the convocation of fourteen, where the convocation of fourteen split their souls to make gods that may watch over the reflections until they are rejoined. But aren't the Twelve only twelve, and there are fourteen reflections. Well, we're missing Zodiark and Hydaelyn. As Elidibus and Azem was a part of the convocation. So it should have been called the Fourteen, not the Twelve. There remains lore in Elpis to be discovered, and a proper timeline of events and decisions just before, during and after the final days and the sundering. During the sundering, the three unsundered (Elidibus, Lahabrea and Emet-Selch) are believed to be unscathed, the rest of the convocation members were sundered into shards. The remaining shards were used to resurrect and recover parts of their memories of the convocation members. They are known as Ascians. But I believe that the three unsundered were actually damaged in some way, that their souls were also split, damaged or corrupted in some capacity. We already see this demonstrated from Lahabrea in Pandæmonium, where he intentionally split his soul into two shards. So Square Enix is showing us this as a possibility. That tells me that this is the direction the story is leaning towards. Also, if Hydaelyn's task was to hold Zodiark at bay. Why didn't the Twelve come earlier to help if they were not tied to Zodiark in some way? There are also small details hinting to what happened during the sundering in Omphalos, the hub. On the floor of the crystal you encounter just as you enter, you can see the symbol for each Twelve god around the crystal with a colorless shard in the middle. If you study the patterns on the stone as well, you see that from each Twelve god symbol, there are twelve arrows aligned with each symbol pointing outwards from the center to a plant. I also think that the myth of creation also contains clues to how you could connect the relationships of the Twelve with Greek mythology and maby the convocation members as well.

My running theory for the Twelve is that they're not the Convocation, but rather Venat's group that opposed the creation of Zodiark. We know from Shadowbringers that Venat assembled a group in secret to oppose the Convocation, but we know very little else about them, and it would tie up that loose end somewhat if it's revealed that they had created/become the Twelve to assist Hydaelyn in protecting the Source and the Shards. Plus, if the Ascians created the Twelve to maintain the shards, it would have to have been after Venat became Hydaelyn and sundered the world, because it wasn't until that moment that the shards came into existence. Though, they could very well have been created to help maintain the world before it was shattered, and simply be constructs of the Ancients' creation from long ago who somehow survived the sundering intact.

She says why. She knows Lahabrea well enough to know that with her knowledge he will eventually become just as obsessed with it as she is. She wanted to make sure that her work continued. That's why she was also okay with being put to death by Lahabrea, becuase she knew he'd eventually come to understand her obsession. That's why he ripped off that part of his soul and memories in the first place; he knew she was right about him.

same makes me sad knowing what's gonna happen to them and there's nothing you can do to change that =/

Well, to loosely quote Magus from Chrono Trigger - "A pity. We couldn't change a thing."

The only relief you can take away from it is when dont know how long it was until the Final Days calamity began proper. They could've lived peacefully for 1,000's of years.

I think the black masks get ascended too but only some, either due to the soul they inherited or perhaps by merit, are given a title (and corresponding red mask). Just replayed shadowbringers and I remember emet mentioning they usually give a title to one of the remaining shards of an ancient convocation member if one falls. Implying sometimes they dont

Immediately thought of these points, yeah. Ascalon still being there is a huge red flag.

The edited theory is a bit unhinged cause emet and elidibus couldnt feel lahabrea anymore since he is stuck in the sword, so they think he is dead when in fact he is just stuck and separated from atheral sea

In fact, some of the Ascians were elevated from other worlds. Nabriales is, I believe, specifically the form from the 12th, and I think both Gaia and Mitron are the shards from the First.

I think it's also important to point out that the research that Athena was doing was to cast aside their flesh... Not unlike what the ascians are known for. Lahabrea must have completed Athena's dark works as a method to further their cause.

Very important point here. Lost the thread a bit with the soul plucking side line.

@@grampaseri I have a slightly wilder, darker theory that the heart of sabik is erichtonios, their first successful attempt.

Elidibus didn't get placed into Zodiark after the Sundering, though. Zodiark was created with Elidibus as his heart from the beginning.

@@Poldovico E became the heart before the sundering. Lahabrea reclaimed his half before the sundering. Everything needed to happen just before the final days

Can you translate the meaning of this sentence for a non native english speaking person?

@@Kore_Cir Agdistis (in male form) was castrated, and the blood grew into an almond tree. The goddess Nana gathered fruit from this tree, and got pregnant. Nana gave birth to Attis. Nana is Attis’ mother, and Agdistis is Attis’ “father”. Agdistis (in female form) falls in love with Attis, even though she is his “blood father via almond.”

@@debrucey Thank you! It's still very confusing, but I get it now.

@@Kore_Cir Greek myth is pretty confusing 😂

It actually uses: Without Shadow (Ascian scheming music), Thunderer (used during Nabrieles' fight, before Emet-Selch's trial, Twintania and world boss fates) and Shadows Withal (Akadaemia Anyder which was Lahabrea's primary research facility in Amaurot). ^^

yeah I expect them to be connected. I feels intentional that of the two raids this expansion, one is about 'heaven' and the other is about 'hell'.

Hmm…. Zero… mus.

Bit of a correction here, Hythlodaeus wasn't actually "gone" far longer than Hades, he (his soul) was stuck in Zodiark along with the others that made the sacrifice to create Zodiark and was thus not in the Aetherial Sea until we defeated the fused Amon/Fandaniel, and so, would have effectively been about as recently "dead" as Hades and thus his soul wouldn't have been degraded as much as someone's that spent a couple years to a millennia or two inside it. That being said, the whole thing with Rhitatyn and Livia's souls still being around in there was due to their hyperfixation on grudging us requiring the sea to take longer to degrading them then reconstituting them back into the cycle, and they only sat stewing a couple years as sundered/"incomplete" souls, so it can still be plausible that an unsundered soul with a hyperfixation on their work such as Athena's could probably stew around in the pot for many millennia, especially if it's her unflinching belief that she would be best to make her preparations in the "Underworld" instead of the normal one while letting Hephaistos/Erich do stuff in the overworld as her sleeper agents, and would thusly do everything she can to stay within the Aetherial Sea as long as she possibly could. Other than that yeah, you make a good point, similar to the other conclusions people have made. There definitely could be something with that when it comes to the whole thing with the remnants of Lehabrea and Igeyorm's souls keeping Ascalon around and/or the weapon itself having similar properties that allows Zantetsuken to stick around to corrupt any hapless adventurer that grabs the weapon to becoming Odin.

@@Kanethedragon What is there to imply that the souls within Zodiark persist and aren't just fed on much like crystals used to summon the other primals? Hades we killed extremely recently and the events from ARR to Endwalker all happen within a year, according to Yoshida. From what I've understood within the game itself is that the ancient's aether is "near limitless" and the only reason Elidibus is fading so quickly is because of the Crystal Tower and how it functions. Asking because I have completely overlooked such implications and it raises so many other questions. (For example, when Zodiark was sundered and those souls do persist, then they are sundered as well, when Zodiark was defeated in our realm and the other reflections of Zodiark vanished, did those souls become whole again? Did they return to our aetherial sea? Do the other realms have an aetherial sea or is ours the only one that all souls return to?)

It's kind of fitting that the last Unsundered Ascian we are dealing with is the first one we met.

There were plenty of Ascians. Elidibus was the last of the unsundered though

but Gaia is still hanging around on the first of did everyone forget about her

@@cyanmage1 she was sundered

@@shineko79 So was Hythlodaeus.

yeah but we go there to fight Hephaistos for the final turn of the tier. Although I do agree that the naming convention would make more sense if it followed from Asphodelos to Abyssos to Tartarus

though we see multiple eyes in the extreme version

@@ovted129 Theres one huge eye in the fog in the background of the fight too which to some reminds them of invincible's eye. i.redd.it/c22wb3m1zpk91.png the eye in the background of the raid ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6p81_zzgysA.html and of course a clip showing invincible/ with a flashback of what someone saw, or thought they saw in the past. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6p81_zzgysA.html

Eden's Promise was technically Ultimecia (called "Artemisia" in JP) in idea, as the combined form of Artemis and Gaia.

Ericthonios was taken by Hephaistos to Tartarus, and that's where we fought Hephaistos in P8.

@@dejavureal Ah yes, fair cop. Thanks for the correction.

I think the closest thing to an explaination for Ascian immortality we got was in ARR. That said, Sundered souls are said to remain whole in the Aetherial Sea, which is how you end up with people having the Echo. I think non-shard souls are implied to be more thoroughly "recycled" in comparison. We were also able to call on the souls of Hythlodaeus and Emet in Ultima Thule, despite them having already died, so it could be that they would just literally Teleport out of the Aetherial Sea if they believed they ought to do so.