Ask Lore Questions for the "Between Two Fernes" Panel at Fan Fest 2018 in Las Vegas!

4.4 revealed that Elidibus assumed the face of somebody while his body was notably smaller than the original bearer of said face. Can he, while incorporeal, just morph his face into anybody he wishes?

Can we have a timeline of important events in Solus' life? Marriage, birth of children, formation of the Empire...things like this.

In the Omega questline, it recounts Omega’s journey from its homeworld and the “dragon star” to Hydaelyn. It passes a number of other “stars”.

Given that the word “star” is also frequently used to mean “planet” in the game script, is Omega traveling through interstellar space or within the solar system?

And is the dragons’ homeworld the same “dragon star” tracked by the Ishgardians? I had previously guessed it must be a planet, and likely to be the dragons’ world, but for it to be in visible motion it must be within the same solar system. (At least I assume it’s in visible motion if it’s being tracked!)

How fast are airships compared to regular ships?

We haven't seen anything in-game that refers to the Divan, but they are mentioned in the lore book. Who are they?

Will we ever learn more about the Abalathian Hinterlands and the amount of clans/tribes of hellsguard that live there speaking the old tongue? It seemed like it was more of a small footnote in the lore book, given we see next to no hellsguard in Dravania despite that it is also a part of Abalathia's Spine. If there are enough hellsguard there to have an established culture where they speak the old tongue that not even Aerslaent uses (to our knowledge) and can permanently reside there (meaning there is ample food and water,) why does other lore regarding the amount of hellsguard in Ul'dah contradict it by saying that many leave their ancestral home due to it not being hospitable/not enough food for the clans.

Though not used since 1.x to describe the hellsguard, where does the lohengarde name they originally were called come from? It isn't from the old tongue/ahldzoeng, as hell is hyll and guard is waht, and we have loh (cloth/clothes,) gara (skin,) and garr (choir) as our closest written and phonetic to lohen and garde in the current dictionary.

Given sea wolf can be actually translated into the old tongue (Merlwilf) with no contradictory name it just seems odd that this archaic but not retconned term has no match in current lexicon.

Will we ever see an expansion to the current roegadyn dictionary? At the moment fans are having to transliterate from german or protogerman to make new words or 'roega-fy' them because we've not seen any updates to it since it was first released. Additionally, if we have confirmation of clans still using the old tongue can we learn how sentence structure works, or priority of nouns/verbs/adjectives in spoken order?

With the hellsguard is the dark nose-tip actually a biological difference that further differentiates them from their seawolf counterparts? On some face types it seems like just a dark mark, but on others it's so defined that it gives a galka-ursine or even dog-like impression. Is that the sole physical differential trait beyond skin tones or are there others not yet shown?

Did the aesthetics of the Allagan Empire differ over time/location/etc.? Obviously the real world answer to why the Crystal Tower looks very different to somewhere like Azys Lla is down to it's FF3 inspiration, but were there such different looks in architecture between different periods or places during Allag's reign à la real world art movements?

We saw in the early WAR quests that Curious Gorge's clan had strong ties to the Warrior job, is it possible that there are some Hellsguard tribes who have ties to other unknown jobs like Beast Master?

Did Omega lose its navigational data due to irreparable damage in transit? Did it travel for so long that its memory log simply didn't have the capacity to retain that information over such a long journey? Was it so long ago that the very stars drifted on their course too far for its original navigational data to remain relevant when it woke?

Compared to some of the massive creatures we've seen from all the way back in 1.0 to today, Leviathan's.... kinda puny, particularly for a Primal named for a titanic ocean-bound beast of literally biblical proportions. Is this meant to be Leviathan's actual size, or is this merely a sub-par summoning thanks to the efforts of the Drowned?

Where did Omega get its inspiration for its various battles? Some from history, some from first-hand collected data, sure. It's the stories about demonic clowns and eldritch gods of entropy trapped in tree-flesh that I'm wondering about.

We can guess where the real-life inspiration comes from, but we've heard nothing of industrial-era trains or ruined cities of machinery, which leads me to wonder what kind of crazy stories the Allagans let slip to Omega while they were trying to reverse-engineer this bad-boy. Was there a weird, ambiguously sinister bring-your-children-to-work day authorized by Amon while various stories and tales were exchanged between adolescents and a potentially murderous giant robotic cricket?

Do they use sour cream in tacos in Eorzea, or do they use mayo?

This is culturally relevant. Please answer this question for Hingashi as well.

Why aren't there any Lalafell in Ala Mhigo?

The Roegadyn NPCs throughout Othard all use Hellsguard models, and if I remember correctly, Gosetsu was said to be from a different clan of Roegadyn, as indicated by his unique facial features. Are the other Roegadyn of Othard meant to be from that same clan and simply reuse Hellsguard models, or are they actually Hellsguard?

Will there be any sort of canon confirmation regarding the existence of the player races' other clans? Could there feasibly be Lowlander Hyurs, coastland-dwelling Elezen or gold-scaled Au Ra, for instance?

Even given the fact that there is comparatively little Raen lore in the game, there doesn't seem to be anything within the in-game dialogue that refers to their creation myth. The tales of the Dawn Father and Dusk Mother seem to be firmly concentrated within Xaela culture. Do the Raen have similar beliefs? Do they use different names for Azim and Nhaama?

With strong enough belief (and an ample amount of crystals), would it be feasible for Azim or Nhaama to be summoned as primals?

Stormblood brought us the primals Susano and Tsukuyomi, the Shinto gods of storms and the moon, respectively. Before Tsukuyomi's reveal, many players speculated that she would appear, and that Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, would then follow. Given that Yotsuyu and Asahi's names refer to night and day respectively, some believed that Asahi would bring forth Amaterasu the same way Yotsuyu did Tsukuyomi, but 4.3's climax proved us wrong.

With that said, can we anticipate Amaterasu making an appearance somewhere down the line, even after Othard's story has pretty much been wrapped up?

Throughout crafting and gathering item descriptions there are often inconsistencies. For example, a level 60 botany node in The Fringes contains Bloodhemp,a grass that is native to Othard. This or how equipment worn by people inhabiting the Azim Steppe appears to (and gear obtainable in Bardam's Mettle) are made of Kudzu, a plant native to the Black Shroud. I can excuse some of this but a good degree seems very unfeasible. Are the items/descriptions and where they are in fact implemented handled by different staff?

In The Fringes for M'naggo's Custom Deliveries there is an item called "Cotter Dynasty Relic", naming an Ala Mhigan dynasty but not providing much information otherwise. A majority of the information that has been provided to us about Gyr Abania's history prior to Garlean Occupation focuses on its founding, the Autumn War, and The Mad King. In the future will we learn about more points of Ala Mhigan history other than these?

How can Y'shtola see in the Burn?

Will we ever see Unukalhai in the MSQ?

Reading through the Ishgardian guildleve descriptions, there are a lot of references to unspecified members of the High Houses - so I'm wondering, how widely are people referred to as being "of the House"? They're definitely not all referring to people we've met in the story.


(Then again, some of them definitely are. Commendations to whoever wrote the description for "The Goggles, They Do Naught" and the very irritated requests for AST weapons. Gave me a good laugh.)

At one of the previous lore panels you hinted that its probably not a coincidence that Azim is suspiciously similar to Azeyma. Will we ever find out what inspired two very different cultures to share a god?

The Xeala creation myth says that eventually Raen and Xaela lived in harmony but the Raen of Sui-no-Sato say that their ancestors were driven out their homelands.

When/why did the Raen leave the steppe?

If Midgardsormr is the father of all dragons and the eggs he brought from his home world to Hydaelyn are the first brood, what is the ancient dragon in Alphascape 2? Midgardsormr even says"come forth, my child!"

It's clear we have established some trade with the New World, but where on the map of Eorzea is this place? Is it a small island or its own continent? Why do we not explore it?

Is Papalymo truly dead from the spell he casted using Tupsimati to seal Shinryu at the end of Heavensward,and on that note is Tupsimati lost forever?

Louisoux before him utilized the power of the twelve to seal Bahamut and he survived....sure as the primal Phoenix but it still counts

The staff of Tupsimati seemed very important early on to the point that one of the ascians,Nabriales,went to obtain it himself but failed.

So Hydaelens "Chosen" have the Echo, the Ascians have something similar (if not the Echo itself), and Garlemald has the "Resonance"

My question is, due to the Light/Dark symbolism:

Is the Echo closer to a "Reflection," (Caused by light), while the Ascians have a "Shadow" (caused by Darkness)?

If so, does this make the Garleans ability "Neutral?"

I know Ascian means "Without Shadow," but I'm ignoring that on purpose.

Rammbroes at St Coinach's Find is equipped with a very similar wand to the "geomancer's wand" that Kyokuho uses in the AST quests. Is this intentional and significant, or just a case of reusing an old item model in two different places?

What happened at the end of the ARR Dragoon quest arc? In the final battle of the Lv50 quest, we see Estinien possessed by Nidhogg, and then our character somehow manifests as the legendary dragoon Haldrath. At the end of the fight, Estinien is never shown to return to his senses, but as the in-game journal describes it, "the being of darkness vanishes from sight, taking the fallen dragoon with it".

If you talk to Alberic afterwards, it seems that Estinien has vanished entirely and nobody knows where he's gone. But then he turns up again in his first MSQ-appearance like nothing has happened.

So...

1. What actually happened to Estinien at that point? (I spent a lot of Heavensward being unnecessarily suspicious of him and his intentions because of this, when a non-dragoon player would have no reason to.) (EDIT to clarify: by "that point" I mean after he's snatched away by Nidhogg at the end of the battle.)

2. What was happening when we transformed into Haldrath? (And in light of later revelations, was it the spirit of the real Haldrath or the legendary one?) Did we somehow spontaneously summon him, in the vein of Ysayle summoning Shiva, or is something else going on?


It all seemed very strange at the time, and two expansions later, there still hasn't been any elaboration about what went on at that point.

The lorebook entry for the Hyperstellar Downconverter at Azys Lla says that it was used to "facilitate communication over the massive distances between stars".

What were the Allagans doing that required that kind of technology?

Why were we able to fight and defeat Zenos and Shinryu at the end of 4.0? Shinryu was treated as large threat requiring Poplymo's sacrifice to buy us time, and driving the Alliance to risk activating Omega to use against Shinryu at the end of Heavensward. However, at the end of Stormblood we're able to just fight and defeat Shinryu like any common primal, with no explanation as to why we're suddenly strong enough to do so.

Nero is my absolute favorite character in the entire game. But every time he shows up, he seems to get very tantalizingly close to Understanding Something about Life, the Universe and Everything, and thus developing some facet of his character... only to squander it all at the last second.

I wonder if maybe this wouldn't be as depressing if we knew a little more about what makes him tick. This is a really roundabout way of saying I'd like to know more about his specific roots, or at least the atmosphere in rural Garlemald. Maybe if there's something in the water, or...

And also if good old Nero's ever going Learn Something during one of these patches, or finally get a chance to be more than just a second banana to Cid (which, ironically, seems to be a deeply-seated complex of his).

How about a second carrot next time? Avocado? This may sound weird but I'm really rooting for this guy. :cool:

At what age do dragons experience their first metamorphosis? In the Stormblood dragoon quests we find out that Orn Khai was born shortly after the beginning of the Dragonsong War, and he's still a dragonet. Is this typical, or does it differ from individual to individual?

What are the "Seven Heavens" and "Seven Hells" supposed to be? During the Return to Ivalice storyline, it is mentioned the Ridorana Lighthouse is next to a geophysical phenomenon thought to be a portal to the "Hell of Water." Are they connected in some way to the Rejoining phenomenon and the shards of the Source, or is it just some really old myths?

since we now know the 'ivalician' timeline in 14 is sorta flipped, does that make lea monde one of the oldest places of power in all of rti and will we possibly get to visit ff14s version of the doomed city or get a blood-sin top based off mullenkamps bra (seen in the pretitle cinematic) or sydneys vambraces with associated lore?