Death and Dying

Do our characters die? Or are they just knocked out when our HP reaches 0? If they are knocked out, then Raise doesn't bring someone back to life, it just wakes them up. But if that's the case, why don't smelling salts wake us up?

If we do die, and raise brings us back, then why don't NPCs that die be brought back with Raise?

Death is in the game, I just did the ALC quests. So death does exist. When we return to our Home Point, do our bodies disappear, rind the lifestream, and reappear at our home aetherite?

The amount of abuse we can take and just fall unconscious is rather amazing.

Think of KO as being literally at death's door, with no way back on your own. With the last of your strength, you can do two things: die, or use your adventurer training to release the same magics as Teleport and Return to propel you back to safety. Raise will also refresh your vitals the same way as teleportation. As for how it works and why other NPCs for the most part can't do it, read the post "An Aether-what?" further down the lore page.

You can try to explain it all you want, but game mechanics are often separated from lore. Otherwise you have paradoxes like these. Our characters die in the video game, but they don't die in Eorzea.

Infinite time-loops + multiple alternate universes: the Crystal just keep punting you sideways until you find a reality you actually survive in. This is why once you drag yourself back to the boss that killed you in the first place you'll see all the same cut-scenes and not Titan being all "What, again? This is the tenth time today and you still haven't learnt to dodge".

I mean, obviously Ezorea is something of a many-worlds five-wagon-pile-up, what with every. single. one. of us being THE CRYSTAL BEARER, the first non-Padjal in centuries to be a White Mage (except for the six others in your FC), the first non-Ishgardian Azure Dragoon (except for those three you ran into a FATE ago), etc.

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Originally Posted by FJerome

and not Titan being all "What, again? This is the tenth time today and you still haven't learnt to dodge".

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That would be awesome ^^

Technically it's not true death your character experiences, but rather just unconsciousness (in fact, the 'death state' that resulted from losing all HP in FFXI was literally called 'KO' - ala, knockout), so the same thing should therefore apply here. Hence Raise, despite the references to 'raising the dead' in the spell's lore (ala, the CNJ questline), really doesn't - from a gameplay perspective it's more akin to resuscitation.

A further hint is the Brink of Death effect if you are KO'd once already, are raised and then defeated again with Weakness status and then raised again - if your character is already classed as 'dead' why would the weakness effect be called 'brink of death' if they already were? It's a concession to gameplay - nothing more.

And yes, death is constantly referred to throughout the storyline - the THM Guild are effectively funeral directors (whose school of magic developed from magical techniques they employed in the treatment of corpses for burial), the graveyard near Drybone plays an important part of the story (like, the player on several occasions has to assist with the burial of the dead), and even the new ARR WHM Job quest line, a Job usually associated with the protection of life and healing, ultimately

involves tracking down the ashes of a long-deceased padjal WHM.

The game's storyline has a very morbid tone in places, although nothing too gruesome, but the obsession with death did start getting depressing after a while.