The state of the Garlean Legions post-Endwalker

TL;DR: It's Not Lookin' Good Fam

The 1st and 3rd Legions were the ones fighting over the Garlean capital after Varis was killed. While the 3rd then got tempered, the 1st mostly didn't and kept up the fight, holding out in hopes of reinforcements from the other legions. With Nerva turned into a blasphemy and Quintus unaliving himself when it turned out no reinforcements were coming, the survivors of the 1st and 3rd are being led by Virgilia and are cooperating with the Eorzean contingent.

The 2nd Legion was holding Corvos (Locus Amoenus) but were decimated by blasphemies, with only a few survivors showing up in Garlemald later.

The 4th Legion is a whole thing, but at this point, most of it has surrendered to the Bozjan Resistance after their defeat in Zadnor. Lyon remains in the wild, but it's unlikely he'd continue calling himself and his followers the 4th Legion.

The 6th Legion is ostensibly still trying to free the Gration from Shiva's ice in Azys Lla. No idea who is leading them with Regula dead.

The 7th Legion is ALSO a whole thing, but following the defeat of the Diamond Weapon and Valens getting pulped, they likely are no longer a thing. Since the remnants of the 14th that were working on the Ultima Weapon project were rolled into the 7th, this in turn tells us the fate of the 14th legion post-Praetorium.

The 10th Legion attempted to rally forces from the 4th, 5th, 8th, and 12th Legions to march on the capital to reinforce the 1st. This attempt to rally failed (meaning they probably did not succeed in getting enough people from those legions to make a meaningful force) and the 10th Legion's survivors surrendered to the Eorzean Alliance at Ala Mhigo.

Given the 4th's situation (i.e. Gabranth was trying to capture Bozja to create a new nation) and the 12th's situation (punching bags in both Doma and Gyr Abania and without a legatus with Zenos dead) it makes sense why they wouldn't have responded to the 10th's call to rally. But this is the ONLY information we have about the 5th and 8th Legions, and in turn tells us something about the OTHER remaining numbers in the list, but we'll get to that.

The 11th Legion was tasked with holding Nagxia, but in the course of doing that, committed war crimes that made Varis (y'know, the guy who restarted Black Rose as a project and loved the idea of testing it on civilian populations) reprimand them. My guess is that after this point, the 11th Legion was either disbanded or severely limited to the point where they were not considered worth calling by the 10th Legion.

Along similar lines, whatever the situation(s) were with the 9th and 13th Legions, there has to be a reason why the 10th did not page THEM for the big rally either. But they DID page the 5th and the 8th, even though we don't have any indication about what those legions were about.

Specifically, the 10th called the 4th Legion (engaged in suppressing the Bozjan Resistance in southern Ilsabard), the 12th Legion (supposedly in withdrawal from positions in Gyr Abania and Doma following the revolutions), and the 5th and 8th Legions.

By the time the 10th is doing this, the 1st and 3rd are already in civil war in the capital, the 2nd's been destroyed by the Final Days... meaning that specifically, the 10th does NOT call for aid from the 6th (in Azys Lla), the 7th (embroiled in Valens' thinly masked power grab with the Weapon project), the 9th (for unknown reasons), the 11th (probably because war crimes), the 13th (for unknown reasons), or the 14th (which was rolled into the 7th after the Praetorium).

Now, the 10th might not have called those legions for a number of different reasons:

• The 10th knew those legions would not respond because they were on Nerva's side of the civil war.
• The 10th knew they wouldn't respond because they were embroiled in local conflicts within their posts.
• The 10th knew the legati of those legions could not be trusted.
• The 10th knew those legions had already been dismantled or destroyed, so there WAS no one to call.
• The 10th knew those legions were posted too far away to join a column marching on the capital in any reasonable amount of time, because big empire is big.

We don't know which of those reasons apply to which legions, or if it's other reasons. But we DO know that the 10th still felt confident in calling the 4th (who they thought were still loyal) and the 12th (who, despite getting spanked in two recent revolutions, were still positioned to provide support) for aid.

All of which is to say that the state of the Garlean legions post-Endwalker is, at this point, pretty dire. The 10th chose surrender over going to support Quintus, and no one else showed up to support Quintus or signaled any intent to do so. There are a bunch of legions we don't know the present dispositions of, but the one sure thing we know is that either a) they didn't answer the 10th's call or b) the 10th straight up didn't call them.

And c) if they showed up in the Garlean capital in force and WEREN'T on Quintus' side, that means they were working for Fandaniel, which at this point means they're tempered, dead, or worse.

I bring this all up to make sure I've got the right conclusions, and also to centralize any discussion folks might have about what stories remain to tell with Garlemald and which legions that could potentially involve. So have at it, gang.

At this point, I still believe they are probably saving the fate of the 10th legion for a Final Fantasy 12 theme expansion. They been building up something with it in the past expansions and I doubt they plan to just leave it as it is the last time we saw them.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

At this point, I still believe they are probably saving the fate of the 10th legion for a Final Fantasy 12 theme expansion. They been building up something with it in the past expansions and I doubt they plan to just leave it as it is the last time we saw them.

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I'm a little confused... what is it about the 10th Legion that links back with FF12? It's the 4th Legion story that involves all the FF12 characters.

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Originally Posted by unlimitedBLACK

I'm a little confused... what is it about the 10th Legion that links back with FF12? It's the 4th Legion story that involves all the FF12 characters.

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4th Legion set in motion events for the FFF12 theme stuff but in Post events of Garlemald, efforts have been put into trying to reconnect with surviving Legions still scattered around the World. The 10th legion being the one that went directly to the Grand Company of Eorzea maybe the one that ends up getting communication with other surviving Legions, currently do not know which surviving legion in Garlemald is helping with trying to communicate with surviving legions in other regions, and WoL way into regions that surviving Garlean forces may have control over despite their changed situation.

As for leadership issues, other than what goes on in the settlements for survivors of Garlemald in MSQ, Vergilia has regain her sanity so they have a Legatus back to help with organizing surviving Legion members in Garlemald.

However, that is the extent of our knowledge so far since we do not know how is the progress with reconnecting with surviving Legions in regions we cannot go to yet is progressing.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

4th Legion set in motion events for the FFF12 theme stuff but in Post events of Garlemald, efforts have been put into trying to reconnect with surviving Legions still scattered around the World. The 10th legion being the one that went directly to the Grand Company of Eorzea maybe the one that ends up getting communication with other surviving Legions, currently do not know which surviving legion in Garlemald is helping with trying to communicate with surviving legions in other regions, and WoL way into regions that surviving Garlean forces may have control over despite their changed situation.

As for leadership issues, other than what goes on in the settlements for survivors of Garlemald in MSQ, Vergilia has regain her sanity so they have a Legatus back to help with organizing surviving Legion members in Garlemald.

However, that is the extent of our knowledge so far since we do not know how is the progress with reconnecting with surviving Legions in regions we cannot go to yet is progressing.

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Okay, so it's less an argument particular to the 10th being relevant to an FF12 story, and more an argument that "we know the 10th is doing things, they could do an FF12 story".

Which... you're not wrong. ^_^

probably just going to get some off the cuff remark about how all remaining legions surrendered to eorzea or disbanded whenever we get back from tural

Others have remarked upon this before, but we walked past/through who knows how many subjugated nations on the way to Garlemald in Endwalker, none of whom were consulted (that we know of, this could be revealed to have happened offscreen later) when the Grand Company of Eorzea elected to give Garlemald an olive branch. I'd imagine that the 5th and 8th are holding territories north of Corvos and Werlyt but south of Garlemald, which could provide enough lingering tension to build a story thread off of. While at least one of these territories (Landis) is at least nominally pro-Empire by all indications, and places like Nhalmasque further north have had multiple generations of Garlean rule, I can't imagine everybody's happy about the resolution of this war going over their heads and/or still being held by Imperial legions.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

At this point, I still believe they are probably saving the fate of the 10th legion for a Final Fantasy 12 theme expansion. They been building up something with it in the past expansions and I doubt they plan to just leave it as it is the last time we saw them.

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While I see what you're getting at, I'd also contend that an FFXII-style story is very well-tread ground in FFXIV; A Realm Reborn and Stormblood both share a lot of DNA with 12, as well as Bozja in side content. I could see them potentially continuing the Return to Ivalice/Save the Queen thread in side content (it will be a hell of a lot of unlocks later by then), but I don't know how keen the devs are to go back to that well so soon, particularly given that part of the reason Endwalker came right after Shadowbringers was a fear that players would get fatigued of the extended war-with-Garlemald arc.