Lore: Soul Stones

What exactly are the soul stones that we need for jobs? What could they be made of that allow memories and such to be stored and passed on? Also are there plans to elaborate on the heroic souls held inside the stones? Maybe mini solo dungeons to give us lore or to access lost abilities.

There was a really old thread on the subject in the old 1.0 forum (which is now archived, found here), but the general consensus arrived at was that the Soul Crystals are exactly what it says on the tin - they're literal crystals that contain the memories (read, skills) of past practitioners of that particular Job.

Jobs are disciplines that fell out of use or have been tightly controlled, even outlawed, and given the difficulty in training in such a role, and thus the Soul Crystal serves as a convenient short cut to becoming a master in it without having to go through all the rigmarole of starting from scratch (hence why it piggybacks on an existing class - just pop on the Soul Crystal and boom, you're now a PLD or a WHM or any other Job). Of course DRK may feature a totally different method, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. ;)

It's kind of for that reason that you see some NPCs with certain abilities that you cannot get on your job: soul stones are kind of cheating. The NPCs devoted their life to their craft and have developed their skilles under their profession. You devoted your life to adventuring and want to do some of the things they can do, so you cheat and get your predecessors to do the training for you, but at a diminished rate.

As such, you are probably the first adventurer to obtain that particular soul stone and maybe even the first person to use soul stones to cheat like that. So you may develop unique abilities to your job through adventuring *ahem* level cap increase *ahem* that would be imbued in your stone. When you eventually pass it along, you would likely pass along those abilities too. It's a never ending cycle of cheating.

This makes your soul stone kind of unique, in that it is not held by a formal member of that job and will likely never again contain the same abilities as a different one of the same job.

I learned to cut my wild tangents short and keep my theory-crafting to a minimum in general question threads, so that's my heavily heavily reduxed version. :P

I generally see soul stones as a big fat reference to Final Fantasy X-2 and I love it. They're basically dresspheres when it comes to the lore behind them (except that memories/souls contained in them haven't yet had any sort of "controlling/influencing" impact on our characters... yet). Technically the dress-up aspect of it is even there when you take into account our gear sets. =P

The concept of storing knowledge in crystals, and subsequently learning abilities from them, isn't unique to FFXIV. This was actually quite common in Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, to the extent that it was even referenced in the game's preamble:

Sword in hand, a warrior clutches stone to breast
In sword etched he his fading memories
In stone, his tempered skill
By sword attested, by stone revealed
Their tale can now be told.

Crystals literally play a multi-faceted role in the Final Fantasy franchise. They could be the source of magic, a type of fuel and, in some cases, USB memory sticks not unlike Allagan tomestones. :p

And because of their use as "shortcuts" to learning a job in FFXIV, I've always felt that the "jobs" we currently know are really no more than pale imitations of what they had been in the past.

Consider this: The way we use "jobs" in the Seventh Astral Era is through a mix of class kills and a handful of job skills acquired from the stones. I doubt that an Allagan summoner of yore mixes modern arcanima with his or her magic, for example.

It also means that there may have been a lot more to the original jobs that are forever lost to time, that we now try to emulate through modern skills that are functionally equivalent to those of the job.

And I suspect that the dark knight will be explained as a "job" that exists only in modern Eorzea. It has no historical precedent, making it therefore unnecessary to "restore" it through the use of a soul crystal. From a lore perspective, it would also mean that learning the job would entail starting from scratch, from the very basics of harnessing one's rage and dark energies, to perform the role.

As for why we haven't actually "seen" a dark knight, it's probably because it's more exclusive than the typical war and magic disciplines, which have their respective guilds all across Eorzea.

So, I suspect the dark knight will be FFXIV's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition) prestige class. :)

Not sure how relevant this is but in the Monk questline it was mentioned that once person dies their aether goes back to the lifestream. However there are some whose aether remains (especially if they die gruesomely or have unfinished business) and become crystals (soul stones?) Or ghosts.

It's possi that a strong willed individual could leave traces of themself as soul crystals. This is most evident with A towa cant.

@TinyRedLeaf it is possible they are a job originating in ishgard so the 2.0 players will not have seen since could not go to ishgard.
@Balthin interesting i did not play X-2 but that might be something they are building on for future release
@Wolfandre that is an awesome thought tho we do not know the level of our predecesors but since we do hold the stone we belong to the stone now too lol
@Enkidoh thanks for the link a bit of info but still many questions it leaves :)

I hope to hear more theories and maybe here something from the lore team i do think when i did the dragoon quest line on my cat i recall the soul crystal chose when you were ready to learn the move so its really hard to figure out how they work exactly but thank you all that have replied so far ^.^

it was also common in FF3 and FF5. Shards of crystals imparting the knowledge and skills of a legendary job.

I always considered that it was a similar concept to 3 and 5 also (which is what X-2 based dresspheres on anyway). The idea that a Warrior of Light can switch between all these different powers is a concept that has been used a lot.

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

So, I suspect the dark knight will be FFXIV's equivalent of a Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition) prestige class. :)

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IDK The Jobs that need classes seem closer to prestige classes IMO (In that they are better than the base class, requires knowledge in the base class to unlock and are more specialized [having less cross-class abilities])

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Consider this: The way we use "jobs" in the Seventh Astral Era is through a mix of class kills and a handful of job skills acquired from the stones. I doubt that an Allagan summoner of yore mixes modern arcanima with his or her magic, for example.

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This doesn't go against anything you've said, but it occurred to me last night; what if the Scholars of Nym and the modern Arcanist are using the Allagan summoning magic of yore?

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Originally Posted by finiteHP

This doesn't go against anything you've said, but it occurred to me last night; what if the Scholars of Nym and the modern Arcanist are using the Allagan summoning magic of yore?

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There is not enough information to say for sure either way, so any explanation I offer would be speculation at best.

It's entirely possible that arcanima could have descended from Nymian magic but, based on what we know, they seem to have originated independently from different parts of the world. Arcanima, we know for certain, originated from the "South Sea" islands, and I've always liked to imagine that the magic was born from the mathematics needed for ocean navigation. Nymian magic, on the other hand, appears to be native to Vylbrand, and seems to come from a mix of healing arts and martial tactics, and refined by years of combat during the War of the Magi.

There are functional similarities between the two arts, but similarity doesn't necessarily mean a direct link. In the real world, for example, it's very remarkable humans in different parts of the world independently invented the different families of languages we now speak today. Some languages are closely related. Others are not. The differences arise from not just the vocabulary, but also from the syntax, that is, the mechanics of each language.

And in the case of arcanima and Nymian magic, the mechanics of their summoning do, in fact, differ. A close reading of the available lore suggests that arcanists summon their carbuncles by releasing and manipulating the aether of gemstones. Crucially, each arcanist has a unique carbuncle. That's very different from the scholar's fairy, as revealed in the Las Vegas Fan Fest interview with Koji Fox:

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MCKF: Fairies again, while they fall under the taxonomy of elementals, they are actually beings that were created. They did not exist before. The Scholar would take the energies and elements from around them and would basically create these beings that were made of the elements.

A: Those are bound to the soul crystal then and passed from one person to the next where carbuncle is more one per person. Very cool.

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So, ultimately, I don't think arcanima descended from scholar magic. Rather, I think arcanima came about from its own roots. However, there is the possibility that it adapted a part of Nymian magic — the art of summoning, for example — but expressed it differently, with arcane geometry instead of pure willpower.

As for Allagan summoning, it becomes more a question of scale. Like the Nymians, the Allagans also shaped and manipulated aether through sheer force of will. But unlike the Nymians, the Allagans were dealing with something far grander: the very essences of primals. And we know further that summoning predated the golden age of the Allag: when the Allagans attempted to invade Meracydia, they were confronted by the primals summoned by the Meracydians. So again, based on geographical reasons, I don't think Allagan summoning is the same Nymian summoning, especially when you consider their drastically different purposes (maim versus mending).

But then again, who knows? They do share enough similarities to be possibily related, and it would be really cool if we knew more. :)

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Lol.

I just thought of an easier way to explain my theories, but it does assume some knowledge of Jurassic Park, either the movie or the original book.

Recall that when the scientists of Jurassic Park extracted dinosaur DNA from prehistoric insects trapped in amber, they found gaps in the genetic sequences that prevented them from re-creating the ancient animals. So, what did they do? They filled the gaps with frog DNA and, voila, dinosaurs roamed the land once more.

Except that those dinosaurs weren't the same kind of beasts any more. It turned out that the frog DNA also contained information that allowed spontaneous sex change, allowing the newly created dinosaurs — which were supposed to be all of one gender — to breed again. Chaos ensued.

So, what I'm suggesting is that there are very likely gaps of information in the job soul stones that we fill with knowledge taken from modern disciplines.

And in the process, we've inadvertently created a new breed of monsters to terrorise Eorzea. :p