Theory for becoming a Warrior of Darkness

It's important to make a distinction between natural / gentle chaos and forceful destruction.

The First is suffering from a lack of chaos - change. The cycle of day and night has stopped. If we go further with that time itself is winding down - people have stopped aging, crops won't grow, there's no weather (except maybe a dead breeze), etc. We need to bring those things back because they're natural processes. How? I couldn't say that - the whole "Warrior of Darkness" thing is still unexplained, and I'm pretty irritated about that after 4.56 giving us no clues as to what's happening going forward (beyond that we're going to the First Shard). Probably by just doing the same things we have done - intentionally or otherwise, we've already been harbingers of chaos in both Ul'dah and Ishgard.

There's a big difference between the gentle, natural change we're supposed to be bringing (back) to the First... and the sudden, violent upheaval favored by the Ascians. Think of it in terms of death - all things die, gently or violently. We're harbingers of gentle death (of the status quo), while the Ascians take a far more extreme and violent route.

Will that change anything about our character? Prolly not.

The title "Warrior of Light" is something others call your character. In a world where light is threatening to destroy the world its only natural to call a hero standing against the light a "Warrior of Darkness".

Is there really an order/chaos theme with the light/dark in this setting?

I mean, we've helped bring about great change if we're talking about chaos = change. We've helped reform Ishgard, waged war to bring change to gyr abania and yanxia by driving the empire out etc.

Yes, the First suffers from constant day, but when we go to the void or 'world of darkness' is that also not constant night? Where as if this was a sign of order/chaos, one would think the void would be constantly shifting rather than always dark.

I know in some settings, like WoW these days, they assosiate order with light and chaos with dark/void, but I'm not entirely sure that's actually the case in FFXIV. Unless I've missed something they haven't actually elaborated on what causes too much light/dark other than assosiating WoLs with Hydalyn and the ascians with Zosiark.

It's just a hunch, but I have a strong sense that we're missing a huge dimension and scale of perception that would put Light/Dark in context. I think of Ascians as being something like eldritch beings; dealing with them is frustrating because they aren't especially forward with what their cryptic warnings mean, and don't seem convinced we would understand them anyway. Going Darkness sounds to my intuition to mean that that missing context is something we'll finally absorb.

The Chaos Ascians spread in our point of view fits well with Evil, but there could very well be more than one approach to the Balance, and part of that is taking a brand new path than either WoLs or Ascians have done before.

Put another way, I completely disbelieve that the Flood of Light is a consequence of there being "too much Good" in the world. How it started and what it does mean, we've only minimal clues to go on, but I seriously doubt it's going to be a rigid Good/Evil binary.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Is there really an order/chaos theme with the light/dark in this setting?

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It's not a given - but if you equate Ascians with the Darkness side of the equation, they are ALL ABOUT the chaos. It seems to be the primary tool they wield, and perhaps the only tool. The fact that too much Light, resulting in Flood of Light, leaves and ordered, uniform nothingness, strongly points to Light being associated with Order. These hint strongly to me that, while they may have deeper intricacies, Light and Darkness are at least PARTLY associated with Order and Chaos.

But let's assume, for the moment, that Ascians aren't really Darkness, or that they are and they just choose Chaos out of preference, not because it's innately associated with Darkness, and the fact that Floods of Light behave they way they do is coincidental. In this scenario, then, just what ARE Darkness and Light? So far, we're defining them solely by the things they are NOT. They are NOT Good and Evil. They are NOT Order and Chaos. Darkness is Darkness and Light is Light. Are they, literally, how shiny things are? When we turn off the nightlight, are we succumbing to the Darkness? That would be silly, so I think we can also say they are NOT literally Illumination and Lack-of-Illumination.

If we refuse to tie them to concepts we can understand, Darkness and Light become so hopelessly vague that literally ANY decision the writers make can be arbitrarily assigned one way or another. "What? You saved that starving orphan girl? I'm sorry, but that action promoted DARKNESS. Fortunately, you saved the little dog next to her, as well, and earned 6.25 LIGHT points, as well! That's a net gain of 3.75 LIGHT, well done!"

The Ascians are associated with chaos - Archbishop Thordan specifically called them "harbingers of chaos and strife" during our brief one-on-one chat with him, and Lahabrea mentions needing a "chaotic confluence of aether" to reawaken Zodiark after the Ultima Weapon is wrecked. Given that Zodiark is definitely associated with the Dark and Hydaelyn with the Light, the dark/chaos and light/order duality naturally follows.

If it looks like a duck...

I just think of something? Anyone here play/read Suikoden 3? Luc's plan of destroying a True Rune is to prevent an absolute order future, where there is nothing but pure white. Maybe it is best to think of overflowing light as a pure order. Where darknessm instead of evil but disorder of things.

You guys should play some SMT and really get a feel for Order and Chaos. Kinda what they are going for here with this Flood of Light and why balanced forces are the best outcome.

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Originally Posted by Tanker4444

The title "Warrior of Light" is something others call your character. In a world where light is threatening to destroy the world its only natural to call a hero standing against the light a "Warrior of Darkness".

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The term "Warrior of Light" and its related monikers feel a little inconsistent to me, with regards to how official they are.

For the most part, it seems like "Warrior of Light" is just something civilians use to describe first the adventurers at Rivenroad and Carteneau, and then yourself for saving the realm from the Ultima Weapon (if you're not a 1.0 veteran; if you are, then you're just reclaiming and re-affirming the title). As in, it's a name given by mortals.

However, more cosmic beings also call you things like "Hydaelyn's champion" and "Bringer of Light", generally with immense amounts of ham. "Hydaelyn's champion" is fairly straightforward, since we try to stop the Ascians in order to help Hydaelyn, and they know it. But "Bringer of Light" might be a bit more meaningful now that we are supposedly going to be "bringing the darkness" to the First.

So I don't know if the term "Warrior of Light" (and correspondingly "Warrior of Darkness") will be something other mortals call us, or if it has actual cosmic significance. Or both, and the civilians are somehow subconsciously responding to the cosmic titles by adopting it and assuming they came up with it themselves.

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

The term "Warrior of Light" and its related monikers feel a little inconsistent to me, with regards to how official they are.

For the most part, it seems like "Warrior of Light" is just something civilians use to describe first the adventurers at Rivenroad and Carteneau, and then yourself for saving the realm from the Ultima Weapon (if you're not a 1.0 veteran; if you are, then you're just reclaiming and re-affirming the title). As in, it's a name given by mortals.

However, more cosmic beings also call you things like "Hydaelyn's champion" and "Bringer of Light", generally with immense amounts of ham. "Hydaelyn's champion" is fairly straightforward, since we try to stop the Ascians in order to help Hydaelyn, and they know it. But "Bringer of Light" might be a bit more meaningful now that we are supposedly going to be "bringing the darkness" to the First.

So I don't know if the term "Warrior of Light" (and correspondingly "Warrior of Darkness") will be something other mortals call us, or if it has actual cosmic significance. Or both, and the civilians are somehow subconsciously responding to the cosmic titles by adopting it and assuming they came up with it themselves.

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In the keynote we were told that in the first area we will visit there is a legend that one day a Warrior of Darkness will come and save them from the encroaching light.... I suspect that´s where the whole warrior of darkness thing will come from as news and rumors of a champion from a faraway place spread in our wake.

That said, warriors of light are, near as I can tell, heroes that rise up to fight some evil or avert a catastrophe, usually at the behest of Hydaelin. They may or may not have light crystals, since others we know such as Ysayle have crystals but arent warriors of light; and the other two warriors of light we know of, Ramza and Tenzen, may or may not have had crystals. Over the ages these heroes invariably rose to prominence in the eyes of the people who started calling them Warriors of Light. At least thats what I can gather, maybe the Eorzea encyclopedias offer more insight on how the term came to be used.