Clarification: The Scholar Fairy

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Originally Posted by nicomede

I just want to add that this "two aspects of one faery" statement does not exist in the french translation of the game.

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It's likely just a semantic choice - I mean, you still have the scene where she flickers back and forth between Eos and Selene, no?

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Originally Posted by Naria

Alko Zolka ... says that "fairies are otherworldly creatures which the scholars learned to bind and control".

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...I've got nothin'. If they are indeed from "another world," I wouldn't even know where to start, and the game itself is still really fuzzy about how we're supposed to categorize aetherial entities (primals vs. summons vs. elementals vs. sprites) in the first place. It could just be the word choice. Though, "otherworldly" sometimes just means "seemingly not of the natural world," which is synonymous with "etherial" and in Eorzea "not of the corporeal" often means "of the aetherial."

I'm still wondering if there's a secret second class of the TRANSCENDENT regnum for non-voidsent aetherial entities that they just never told us about... too bad I never had a chance to test the early 1.0 "Eluder" abilities on elementals.

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Originally Posted by Naria

http://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acci...c502eaa986.png

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Firstly, my reply is going off my fuzzy, overwhelmed memory, so please correct me friends!
When you unlock Scholar, Alka seems quite shocked about meeting a fairy, but identifies it as such from the tablet and, we could infer, prior knowledge about faeries perhaps from myth (he says something along the lines of, 'now I've seen everything!' He does not explicitly say anything about faeries in Eorzean mythology. But, perhaps we can infer this from the names of some funguar [and perhaps other sources in game], which hint at some mythology or folklore about fae in Eorzea).

Like Mr. Moose suggests, perhaps "otherworldly" could be a reference to Fae being folklorish, mythological beings. :)

True enough "otherworldly" doesn't have to mean literally that they are from another world, although it seems a strange word choice for a magical researcher to use when other worlds do actually exist if he did not mean the literal definition. "Bind and control" though definitely suggests that the fairies exist independently of the scholars--that they are not entities that are created by arcanists like Carbuncle or the egis. Huh, now I want to go hunt down all of the flavor text for anything with faerie in the name to see if there is anything we've missed. :(

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Originally Posted by Naria

"Bind and control" though definitely suggests that the fairies exist independently of the scholars...

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Completely agree. It is said that each Scholar soulstone holds one fairy - that fairy contains the memories and knowledge of all its previous masters. That is how we can summon Lily, and it is the same Lily as the previous master of the soulstone. So, other scholar stones would in theory hold a different fairy - perhaps they look different, perhaps they are even male! Who knows!

The big question for me is whether they originally existed independent of scholars. We've known that they have independent personalities, but my original assumption was that they were created akin to Carbuncle and then bound to the soulstone to develop into a unique entity over time as it gained experience and eventually changed hands. The quote above doesn't explicitly contradict that theory; it could be a fanciful way of saying the same thing (they're not-of-the-natural-world creatures that are created by magicks and bound to those who use them). However the specific words used carry connotations that suggest otherwise, that they existed in another realm in some form and were then summoned from it, enslaved, and bound to the soulstone. Despite the more likely way to read it, I dunno if I'd buy that that's the more likely scenario.

I'm not sure how I feel or what point I am trying to prove or even if I have an argument or counterpoint - I just want to probe a little more. I feel that Lily is something more - she doesn't quite fit in with what we know about primals and egi and even carbuncle: She is like them, but somehow more. And I like how interesting it is.

Could it also be Alka Zolka's interpretation of the stone tablet he read? The "bind and control" scholars have? As we can see through the cutscenes, and as Alka himself even comments, we often have very little control over Lily's actions. She does seem to have her own will and desires to a point. Yes, we can give her orders, place her, tell her what to cast. But, I don't see her as being like carbuncle, which is more like a well-trained pet that has little-to-no personality. I see her as having a consciousness, a soul of sorts, and a voice - a voice she does try to use to speak to us, however faintly, during cutscenes.

If the faeries are beings who were forcibly enslaved, an idea which I rather enjoy, I can't see that going down to well if we ever do meet those 'without a master'. Lily can silence a foe - I wonder what a group of angry faerie liberators would do? Cause a plague from the sea?

Takes me back to my XI days of releasing faeries from the bottles - I feel for you little buddies!

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

It's likely just a semantic choice - I mean, you still have the scene where she flickers back and forth between Eos and Selene, no?

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I don't remember but maybe. In-game texts anyway very clearly present Selene and Eos as two different faeries you have to master, and "Lily" does not exist.
I hope someone who can read japanese would help me with that.

(I love the discussion here btw)

Here to offer some from the Japanese texts. Same with most, I only have what I can get from cutscenes in the inn and lvl 50 conversation with Alka. The only phrase of interests that Alka said when asking him about sch would be:

" 使い魔である妖精「フェアリー」を従えて "

I would translate it as "accompanied by their sprite* familiar, "Fairy"" but for more clarity, I have to break down the words one by one.

使い魔 (tsukaima), can be referred to any type of animals, monsters or spirits as long as they have a master and more often than not, has to be summoned. Of course, the method of how they gain a master depends on the setting of whichever world they're from. Dictionary translates this term to "familiar" so I went with it.

妖精 (yousei), is essentially "fairy" in Japanese. But despite that, フェアリー (feari-, katakana for the English word fairy) is used too in brackets. I cannot translate it properly without repeating fairy twice so I opted to use "sprite* for the yousei part instead. This would suggest that the fairy we have is under a race/type/something called "Fairy"?

従えて (shitagaete), although I use "accompanied", in Japanese, it actually also has a "subjugate" tone to it. Basically, it's hard to say if our fairy is forced or not, except that she submits to and obey us.

Lastly, her name is リリィベル (ririiberu) in Japanese. I'm not familiar with other FF games but I googled and in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light there is a fairy named "Lilibelle" so I suppose it's reference to her?

PS: Alka greeted in Japanese, something along "Hey, partner! Something you want to talk to me about?" and did not include Lily/fairy.

Thanks a lot Nevaeh! This is great :)
The staff answered me in the translation forum (french) and was very helpfull. So, they told me about "lilibell" name in japanese and i'm waiting for subtle changes concerning selene/eos presentation in-game.

The "learned to control and bind" part makes me thing that the fairies were already excisting beings, and that the SCHs learned to control them. Somehow bind them to themselves and co-operate with them. (I'm using co-operate here because they indeed seem to have a will of their own).

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Originally Posted by nevaeh

妖精 (yousei), is essentially "fairy" in Japanese. But despite that, フェアリー (feari-, katakana for the English word fairy) is used too in brackets. I cannot translate it properly without repeating fairy twice so I opted to use "sprite* for the yousei part instead. This would suggest that the fairy we have is under a race/type/something called "Fairy"?

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The only thing that I would add to this is that the only difference between 妖精 "yousei", and フェアリー "fairy" would be an eastern or western perspective. Yousei could be any kind of friendly magical... thing. While "fairy" specifically concerns the western image of (butterfly)winged tiny human like beings. In practice though.... they are likely to be the same.

For FFXIV specifically, this possibly means that "fairy" is a type of "yousei" (or in english, that "fairy" is a type of "sprite", which means there may be other types of sprites). Building on your translation I would translate it as "accompanied by their sprite familiar, a "Fairy""