Star formation

With focus returning to the Final Days of the Star, a question suddenly came to mind as to its beginning. Back in Stormblood, somehow both Shinryu and Firemane Midgardsormr were able to weaponize star formation with the Protostar attack. Even weirder, the Allagans managed to get Proto-Ultima simulate a core-collapse Supernova with its internal reactor. Now granted, those entities were all much smaller than both the Source and the Daystar that illuminates it, but given how strange astrophysics is in Final Fantasy XIV I wonder where the pre-sundered Star (and Dragon Star) came from and if the Protostar/Supernova literally involves creation of miniaturized stars.

Don't take attack names during battles as always having deeper connections to the story or lore - they're often just to look cool (as Omega and Shinryu were originally from FFV, and as they had little more than excuse plots in FFV for their existence and origins (something about being ancient weapons that were locked in eternal conflict with each other if I remember right), many of their attack names were simply copied straight from there).

It's like in FFVII during the final battle where Sephiroth has his super attack Supernova to summon a comet that causes the sun to swell up and engulf the Planet and half the solar system), despite, you know, already having summoned a giant space rock to threaten the Planet with - and then everything is fine immediately after - it's gameplay and story segregation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

something about being ancient weapons

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There's a bookcase in the Interdimensional Rift which explains that Shinryu followed Omega into the Interdimensional Rift, and then was sealed into the Void because the 12 Holy Weapons failed to destroy either of them (these are the weapons you unseal to defeat Exdeath with). FFV is the first time the series really makes use of optional super bosses, and both Omega and Shinryu are just that. FF1 through FFIV had tough bosses here and there, but never bosses with more than one gimmick to account for, while Shinryu and Omega both had multiple. By today's standards they are easy peasy, but by the 90s standards they're part of the reason FFV was deemed too hard for American audiences.


As far as the attack Protostar goes, it's mainly a really cool way of illustrating insanely hot, gaseous dragon breath. Protostars are the formation of stars in real life, and they're basically an insanely hot cloud of gas that takes half a million years to actually condense into a star. Their temperature range is 2000 to 3000 Kelvin, which is roughly 3140F to 4940F or for you non-USA peeps... 1726C to 2727C Compare to the lava of Earth, which is only about 1500 degrees Kelvin at its hottest.

It's actually an insanely neat way to reference the Gas Dragons of FF1 in my opinion, even if that's not the creator intent. They had a gas breath that caused instant death(supposedly by noxious fume). However, breath as hot as a Protostar would cause all sorts of insane things to happen in the air, to the material of the room, to your armor, and to your fleshy bits. Want to know what it's like to have your skin evaporate? Yeah... it ain't exactly a relaxing sauna visit.

Another thing to be careful about is that FFXIV uses the Japanese term for "planet" in the English version of the game. In Japanese, "hoshi" means both "star" and "planet" and the English team decided to keep that around and call the planet a star for flavor reasons it seems.

The "Dragonstar" is probably just the world that the dragons came from and whenever Ascians mention "this star" it's our planet.