Lore form the Monster Hunter Wilds collab (yes, there IS some!)

So, great news from friends of mine that play Monster Hunter, there actually is somewhat meaningful lore to the Monster Hunter Wilds side of their FFXIV collab! Specifically there's two big elements.

The first one I don't think is particularly spoilery, it's just fleshing out the premise: That this is happening because of rifts between dimensions. That's the go-to explanation for most of the crossovers that both Monster Hunter and FFXIV do (far as I can tell they came up with it independently), but this time we've got Omega weighing in on it, so we get a slightly more data-driven read on it: apparently these rifts are reasonably frequent, to the point where he's both familiar with the concept and could deduce it with the aid of environmental differences--namely the fact Alpha is much fluffier over there. Presumably, the fluffiness hierarchy is radically different on that world.

...Then comes the spoiler part, though, both in terms of the story of the collab and the story of our own game. Yes, somehow of all things it's the Monster Hunter Wilds collab that pulled the trigger on having actual new information in a crossover.

Specifically the boss Monster Hunter players are fighting, Omega Planetes, is an entirely different Omega unit that was sent out into the universe, and just happened to stumble into that rift. The reason our Omega knows about this phenomena is because this has happened quite a lot, with a pile of Omega units unaccounted for because of it!

Omega Planetes specifically saw no real differentiation between the world of Monster Hunter and any other. It's acting just the same as it always would, with that world having resources that warranted a high-priority conquering; the MonHun characters get involved and stop it from doing that. Our Omega doesn't shed a tear, because it knows that the Alphatron Star has fallen; there is no home for Planetes to go back to, and nobody waiting for its call. I don't recall off the top of my head if this is new lore; I know Omega didn't go to Ultima Thule, but I don't recall if it learned the things we found there on-screen.

Still, it brings a bit of a plausible explanation for an uncertain thing in FF lore: that any given Omega in any Final Fantasy game might not be the same Omega, but could almost all plausibly be from the Alphatron star.

And with Arkveld coming on our end next week, it's entirely plausible we'll get some lore to talk about on our end, too!

I know it's mostly Doylist concepts in tongue-in-cheek Watsonian language ... but "a pile of un-accounted-for Omega units" is my new preferred headcanon - except in every game the source of their Omega is the source of all Omegas.