New Tales from the Storm (August 18)

In Darkness Blooms the Lily


A good opening to the series, I thought. It seems like it attempts to square the circle of the time discrepancies regarding the rebellion - how it makes explicit Zenos is in town before Varis is actually emperor, and that the former Viceroy was manoeuvring against him.

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Originally Posted by Mieck

It seems like it attempts to square the circle of the time discrepancies regarding the rebellion - how it makes explicit Zenos is in town before Varis is actually emperor

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I was hoping that the player point of view for the war of succession would one day get pushed back a bit, but I was hesitant to accept that, before Solus's death, it was more than rising tensions without a solid citation behind it.

I recently did some re-exploration of 2.0, 2.4, and 4.2 on account of our new friend, Shadowhunter, and had never quite fully processed (or needed to, for that matter, I suppose) that all the castra that went up in Eorzea weren't part of Gaius's rogue invasion. That he was ordered to establish them at all proves just how long Solus has been too ill to rule; Solus's interest in conquering Eorzea via a traditional, time-consuming campaign had long been exhausted. That left a nice, wide-open window for the war of succession to have begun earlier (and to put all those references to "last year" somewhere that didn't break anything), but, again, I was hesitant to make any assumptions.

Back to the Tale, what really caught my attention was the irony of the tension between Yotsuyu and Zenos: a woman drawn to a powerful man solely for his ability to destroy, a man drawn to a courtesan solely for her rage - both seemingly (and understandably) sexually oblivious to one another.

What I find off is in the story Varis is said to be the one with strongest claim to the throne while in-game his uncle Titus is the one with strongest claim but fewer support. Small detail that may not be significant but I find it odd nonetheless.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I was hoping that the player point of view for the war of succession would one day get pushed back a bit, but I was hesitant to accept that, before Solus's death, it was more than rising tensions without a solid citation behind it.

I recently did some re-exploration of 2.0, 2.4, and 4.2 on account of our new friend, Shadowhunter, and had never quite fully processed (or needed to, for that matter, I suppose) that all the castra that went up in Eorzea weren't part of Gaius's rogue invasion. That he was ordered to establish them at all proves just how long Solus has been too ill to rule; Solus's interest in conquering Eorzea via a traditional, time-consuming campaign had long been exhausted. That left a nice, wide-open window for the war of succession to have begun earlier (and to put all those references to "last year" somewhere that didn't break anything), but, again, I was hesitant to make any assumptions.

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At the risk of making assumptions (Mieck says as she goes straight in with an assumption :D), it could conceivably be the case that Solus is made ill / incapacitated by the failure of the Meteor project. I know failure is an odd word, but I think it fits; Eorzea was not reduced to ash, though it was heavily scarred, and the promise of Primal extermination was clearly not met. Here is the old man, a lifetime of triumph behind him, his Eorzean designs rebuffed at Silvertear, having turned to van Darnus' plan in desperation, only to receive the news Eorzea endures, and it might just be enough to push him into a decline.

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Originally Posted by RobinMalvin

What I find off is in the story Varis is said to be the one with strongest claim to the throne while in-game his uncle Titus is the one with strongest claim but fewer support. Small detail that may not be significant but I find it odd nonetheless.

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It's probably a mistake by the writers but I'd like to offer a hand-wave anyway? The Empire is a very young political entity and Solus was their first emperor. It could be that in traditional Garlean culture they followed agnatic seniority (ie everyone in a family generation gets a go before the next generation has a chance, the way Saudia Arabia does it) but Solus had written the rules of imperial succession so that it went by agnatic primogeniture instead (the way most of the West did it). Or visa versa.

So in some views one candidate would have a better claim because tradition was on his side while in other views the opposing candidate had the better claim because the new laws stood with him.

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Originally Posted by Mieck

At the risk of making assumptions <...> it could conceivably be the case that Solus is made ill / incapacitated by the failure of the Meteor project.

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I could see the toll it might take on him to know he was aging, know he was getting ill easier and more often, to ramp up that last great effort to secure his legacy, only for it to not only fail to purge Eorzea of eikons, but free an imprisoned eikon, revealed to have long-ago tempered the very (wo)man he put in charge.

The added characterization of the factions and leaders in Garlemald could also go a long way towards handwaving some of the inconsistencies in Gaius's reputation and behavior if the war of succession already being clandestinely waged.

Baelsar was pro-conquest, but anti-Garlean supremacy in the way that most purebloods behave. Titus, backed by the Populares, would grind the wheels of conquest to a halt, forsaking Garlemald's solemn duty as rulers of might to lead and deliver the world from the blight of eikon and shadow. Those who opposed the Populares, especially the Optimates, would be driven to rally behind Varis, whose victory would ensure that not only those who opposed order and Garlean rule would be stamped out, but that the whole of Eorzea would be ground under the heel of a "superior race" that had no love for them; the death of meritocracy. (Ignoring that he'd have be replaced with Regula ten minutes later, anyway.) From his point of view, if Eorzea was to be conquered right and ruled well, it had to be him, and it had to be then.

That adjusts a lot of context into a more comfortable place.
(Ironically, it could have helped clean his arc up even without bringing him back ... but I'm still happy to see him.)

Moreover, with regard to the Tale, it's really nice to see some of the finer points of the in-game dialogue laid out conclusively. It often fell by the wayside to a degree that Yotsuyu displacing her desire to kill her adoptive family onto all of Doma was a very specific kind of [They're complicit because they let it happen.] whereby the very core of Doman culture encouraged sweeping abuse (and the abused along with it) under the rug. Her avenue for forcing Doma to confront that injustice was a deplorable sort of vengeance, but she never pretended it wasn't.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Moreover, with regard to the Tale, it's really nice to see some of the finer points of the in-game dialogue laid out conclusively. It often fell by the wayside to a degree that Yotsuyu displacing her desire to kill her adoptive family onto all of Doma was a very specific kind of [They're complicit because they let it happen.] whereby the very core of Doman culture encouraged sweeping abuse (and the abused along with it) under the rug. Her avenue for forcing Doma to confront that injustice was a deplorable sort of vengeance, but she never pretended it wasn't.

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Agree on this front. Doma has, to put it mildly, a chequered history. Yotsuyu is an (extreme) product of that society. That's her nurture, though I think the text in this story (and the wider game) shows it needed her nature, too. She is, to use a pretty pejorative bit of British slang, a wrong'un. We get a glimpse of the redemption available, but her nature and nurture could never let her walk that path.

It's a wonderful story. Not only does it flesh out Yotsuyu and Zenos further, we get a name drop in the form of Titus - which, I believe, is the first time the man is actually referred to by his name. We'll likely learn more of him in the coming patches, I suspect.

It'd be very interesting if the other three stories revolve around Fordola, Varis and the Shadowhunter.

Very nice way to sort out the worst of the War of Succession timeline problems. It also makes it very apparent just how little Eorzea knows of what is really going on in Garlemald. I hope we get to see the Eorzean Alliance leaders figure all this out.

Next story is live.


From Azure Ashes


Edits:
I've not levelled dragoon in Stormblood. Are there any parallels with this story and those quests?
Also, it feels like Estinien riding in on a dragon to save the day is a set piece they really want to do...