Bismarck

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

In 2.5, Minfilia considers that Midgardsormr's origin with Althyk and Nymeia may have just been with Hydaelyn, after all. If Althyk and Nymeia were both Hydaelyn, perhaps Llymlaen was also Hydaelyn, and then all the waters come from Hydaelyn, lol. I've figured for a while that the sea serpent had some connection to Midgardsormr; they have strikingly similar anatomy.

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It is true that Erik doesn't explicitly say that Althyk is the earth and Nymeia is the water... The more I strive to make sense of it all, the more I find myself believing that it's all just mythos. What would that make Hydaelyn though? I mean, we know she's real. *sigh*

Digression aside, I'm more inclined to buy what Erik is sellin' and regard Thalaos as pure Lominsan folklore. I think we need some help from the Devs on the Perykos issue though. S/He doesn't even have GE page started!


...And what's Llymlaen, a deity of wind, doin' 'twixt oceans 'n' sea serpents anyway?! /lalafuriousmotion

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Originally Posted by Mishini_Dracoto

Anonymoose, do you have a publication of your collection of Eorzean Lore? (Maybe you're a contributor for a wiki or something . . ?)

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Bingo.

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Originally Posted by treuhavik

Bingo.

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Do you know what wiki he's a contributor to? >_>

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Originally Posted by Mishini_Dracoto

Do you have a publication of your collection of Eorzean Lore?

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The harder I try to collect,save, and share in some organized form, the more I realize that I only have enough time to do the first two on a frequent basis unless it becomes, like ... employment, lol. I test out lots of ways to try to preserve/polish things with Gamer Escape (where I do have admin), since (as great as DBs are) there are some things only a traditional wiki (or hybrid) can accomplish, but it's very slow-going alongside the whole obligations of life thing.

It usually just ends up being me and my tomes sitting around scribbling notes until someone requests a forum post, article, or publication, lol.

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Originally Posted by treuhavik

S/He doesn't even have GE page started!

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A ton of the things I have thorough notes on don't have formatted GE articles, yet. It's frustrating not having an army of delegate clones. :(

Well Anonymoose, I LOVE your posts. I am constantly reminded of all of the things I have forgotten. I blame it on not using my Journal I got with my 1.0 CE lol.

At any rate, I also suffer from:

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The whole obligations of life thing.

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but if you were to do a raw upload of your notes with no organization, I would spend lol probably a significant of time at work whilst not working, organizing the text.

I'm not entirely sure what the best structure of such an Eorzean scripture would be. Chronological? Well, that's great, except that there seem to be a lot of events where the dates &n times are lost to us. Perhaps written based on powerful entities/beings and then sorted oldest to newest.

For example, Erik's quote about Hydaelyn, Midgardsormr and Silvertear falls. . . might actually be a good opening.

If only they could be trusted! In 1.0, most NPCs referred to Dalamud as something that'd been in the heavens since the beginning of time, something later revealed to be off by at least a few thousand years. I usually have to attach mythology to the present-day subject. For instance, the Keeper of the Lake and the Battle of Silvertear Skies would end up hosting most of the mythology of Midgardsormr, and those events would be fitted to a chronological timeline, since 1562 is known. Most of the time, that works out best, seeing as my notes for Dalamud hosted such things as "mythologically Menphina's loyal hound" and "scholars consider it one hunk of rock orbiting another hunk of rock" and "accused of glowing red due to the rise of Ifrit," and yet we were still able to suss out in Patch 1.18:

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Is Dalamud really a moon? 'Celestial Body' does denote a natural object, but maybe the term is being used loosely. Perhaps the red hue it takes is an activation protocol of some kind; some kind of Magitek that powers a sort of base of operations that we'll have to invade someday a la FFXI's Tu'Lia...

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That's why to discern the truth of the sea serpent, I'm still stuck on little knowns like Nepto Dragon, lol.

And all of that could just be wrong, too. Let us not forget the time this tried and true method led me to the epiphany that the five races were blessed by the primal Siren based the name "The Echo," some dialog from my favorite drunken pirate, and Answers having a harp in it.

Ah, well. It's the journey that counts, and the forum is the best inn on the path.

[EDIT] inb4: "Using Anonymoose's method I have discerned that the Vanu Vanu are actually over-tempered Sea Wolf ancestors."

Just imagining the raw notes of Moose make me shiver with excitement. I'd also support a raw release if it wouldn't take up much of your time. I'd be one who would enjoy reading all the theories and thoughts from now and back then. I do have a lot of free time too which also adds to it :>

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

If only they could be trusted!

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Seriously. Want an even simpler example? Look no further than the Deepvoid Deathmouse, lol.

Native Eorzeans are the main source of our information and it's painfully obvious most know very, very, very little about the nature of their world, let alone it's history. Which is exactly why I can't help but feel every Eorzean myth should be taken as exactly that until proven otherwise (which will probably never happen when it comes to the really important things, like The Twelve). Hells, even the myths themselves seem mostly inaccurate, as you can see in the discussion leading to this one.

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Originally Posted by treuhavik

Native Eorzeans are the main source of our information and it's painfully obvious most know very, very, very little about the nature of their world, let alone it's history. Which is exactly why I can't help but feel every Eorzean myth should be taken as exactly that until proven otherwise (which will probably never happen when it comes to the really important things, like The Twelve). Hells, even the myths themselves seem mostly inaccurate, as you can see in the discussion leading to this one.

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With the amount of total civilization collapses (basically multiple Dark Ages) throughout Eorzea's history, it seems very natural that this should be the case. Lots of gaps in knowledge, lots of hazy myths whose roots in reality are uncertain (or nonexistant).

I'm just chiming in this thread, to mention that we should not take the benchmark video into account about Bismark. Each benchmark had things in it that ended up not appearing in game or altered.
It's after all something to test performance of the pc. Remember the gigantic tortoise, people fighting Ifrit somewhere in Thanalan, mindflayer + dragon combo as final boss in Tam-Tara deepcroft and so on.

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Originally Posted by Vydos

people fighting Ifrit somewhere in Thanalan

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There was that time that Yoshi-P mentioned something about a design plan to have Primals appear in the open world for FCs to defeat and capture, with the ability to summon him themselves. This idea seems to be lost to the design process, though. Which is unfortunate as a FATE style battle with Primals other than Odin would have been quite fun, even if the promise of summoning was not a reward.

So Heavensward is out, and....I'm still stumped on why Roegadyn mythology would feature the Vanu Vanu primal. The seas couldn't have gotten that high in the Sixth Umbral Calamity, could it?

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

So Heavensward is out, and....I'm still stumped on why Roegadyn mythology would feature the Vanu Vanu primal. The seas couldn't have gotten that high in the Sixth Umbral Calamity, could it?

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Ah! That's probably quite simple. The Vanu Vanu never actually call him Bismarck, they only ever call him "The White." More likely is that the word of the Roegadyn myth has spread enough that when someone spotted the Sky Whale, they called him that and that's what he's been known as by the spoken races since.

The call him Bismark directly in his first appearance if you watch that Cutscene over again. I think Bismarck is mentioned a few times by name when you ask around to learn his history as well, how he was born a white whale, and so the other whales hated him, and tore him asunder.

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Originally Posted by WyrahFhurrst

Ah! That's probably quite simple. The Vanu Vanu never actually call him Bismarck, they only ever call him "The White." More likely is that the word of the Roegadyn myth has spread enough that when someone spotted the Sky Whale, they called him that and that's what he's been known as by the spoken races since.

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That's actually not correct - the vanu actually do call him Bismarck, in fact, the first time you actually see it a vanu specifically calls him that and 'the White':

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Originally Posted by Heavensward main scenario quest 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'

Vanu Elder: "The White! The White! Mighty Bismarck, Lord of the Mists!"
Haurchefant: "A flying whale?! By the Fury, i-it's a Primal!"

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Of course the docile untempered vanu of Ok'Zundu never call their tribe's deity 'Bismarck', simply referring to him as 'the White', and regarding the Primal Bismarck (rightly) as an abomination and sacrilegious to their faith (the fact it goes around eating floating islands whole certainly wouldn't put in their good books, so that leaves us back at the beginning - why is the Primal version of the vanu deity named for a figure from roegadyn myth? ;)

EDIT: sniped by Lusavari. :p

They actually have an origin story of Bismarck. They say he once swam in the ocean (which matches the Roe legend). However one day the other whales turned on him and tore him asunder. He was saved by some goddess (hazy on this detail but it was definitely some form of divinity) and given the power to swim through the clouds gifting him with an ocean to swim in. As he swam he saw upon the ground others who were like him ostracised for their differences and he rescued them carrying them into the sky. There he created a land upon they could live peacefully. Those rescued were the Vanu Vanu and the land Bismarck created for them was the isles in the Sea of Clouds.

Possible spin off of this Myth I considered is that the actual Bismarck could have been a vessel, perhaps a Allagan Airship that carried them to the Sea of Clouds. The oppression they suffered could be linked to Allag research since they seem to have had a hand in at least one beast tribes origins and myths. As for the link between the Roe and Vanu Vanu legend, It could be that thing the Roe thought was a whale in ancient times and whatever carried the Vanu Vanu to the Sea of Clouds was the same thing. We know that Seal Rock has Allag artifacts so the Allag were active in the neighbourhood. Submersible Airship maybe? Underwater Allag research facility?

@Belhi

That's what I am thinking, too. That the "Bismark" that the Vanu Vanu were transported in was just an Allagan Ship, perhaps it's defining feature being White, especially if we're to believe that UFO might be Allagan. Maybe it was white in order to best conceal itself in the clouds? After all, the Vanu Vanu say that Bismark was white when all of the rest of it's kind was black.

We now know that an old Lominsan Legend turned out to be an Allagan research base: Seal Rock

maybe the "-marck" in Bismarck may just be Mark? As in BiS Mk.2?