12 Gods of Hell(Where are 12 hells/realms in FF14?)

12 Gods of Hell(Where are 12 hells/realms in FF14?)

The FF14 game is amazing and probably the best in the world highlighting duality and having strong references to real life examples, such as the Sitra Achra (i.e. the other side in the Kabbalah) and Dante Circles (See screenshots for real life references).


https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...6cfe2770d6.jpg

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...96dcd8c9b7.jpg

However, we just battle 12 gods from "Myths of the Realm", and went to a heavenly area and they let us defeat them, but their counter parts were never seen. For example, Byregot (the builder), based on duality, should have a entity, "Builder of Hell", in the 12 hells/realms. Based on duality, there should be 12 hells/realms with 12 gods of hell.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...d4ba7d8022.jpg

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...fc46316512.jpg

https://ffxiv.fandom.com/wiki/Hells_and_Heavens

Isn't it interesting that the "gifts" supposedly from the 12 hells come from defeating fellow warriors of light on a massive scale, such as the hellbound armour set and mounts?

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...13dc022a69.png

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...bc2ab69952.jpg


I would personally like to see a battle, alliance raids...possibly chaotic, between the 12 gods of hell in their respective 12 hells/realms vs Sephiroth/Zenos & WoLs.

Your thoughts?

Pretty sure it was apparent there were only Twelve gods worshipped by Eorzeans (plus the beastmen’s gods) and it turned out

the whole thing was made up anyway and they weren’t really gods but creations made by an elder primal based on her friends. Anything in the religions beyond what was written on the Onphalos stele was just invented by people.

Not really any room for any of that.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Pretty sure it was apparent there were only Twelve gods worshipped by Eorzeans (plus the beastmen’s gods) and it turned out

the whole thing was made up anyway and they weren’t really gods but creations made by an elder primal based on her friends. Anything in the religions beyond what was written on the Onphalos stele was just invented by people.

Not really any room for any of that.

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This begs the question, "Where are these hellbound armour sets coming from?". These hellbound armour sets and mounts can't come from thin air...

Based on the FF14 fandom site, there should be six realms of hell,

1) Hell of Fire Realm
2) Hell of Water Realm
3) Hell of Wind Realm
4) Hell of Ice Realm
5) Hell of Lightning Realm
6) Hell of Earth Realm
7) Seventh Hell watching over the 6 Realms mentioned

These hellbound armours sets and mounts could reasonably represent the Gods of Hell (GoH) in FF14.

Your thoughts?

The way I always saw it, we had 7 hells because we had 7 shards. Because of the 14 shards, 7 had calamities and no longer exist. The one which presides over all would thus be the source.

The way I also see it, is that Pandaemonium is meant to be the hell, hence why they went as far as having us enter it via the Aetherial Sea near the Atiascope.

In there, we of course fought many bosses.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The way I also see it, is that Pandaemonium is meant to be the hell, hence why they went as far as having us enter it via the Aetherial Sea near the Atiascope.

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That's what I was thinking as well, and fitting for it to have been run parallel to Myths of the Realm. Guess Yoshi was really desperate to get all the mythology stuff out of the way in Endwalker, so he could make room for...?

Does anyone remember the Diablo fight in Shadowbringers? Can you imagine fighting this large, hellish monster in Realms of Hell without the allagans giving him a very weakened body vassal?


https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...cc97480a66.jpg

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...9c945df0a7.jpg


https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...f25bacb513.jpg

I feel that it would indeed be the "end of times" for Eorzea, if the Gods of Hell were unleashed and brought armageddon into this world against the WoLs....

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The way I always saw it, we had 7 hells because we had 7 shards. Because of the 14 shards, 7 had calamities and no longer exist. The one which presides over all would thus be the source.

The way I also see it, is that Pandaemonium is meant to be the hell, hence why they went as far as having us enter it via the Aetherial Sea near the Atiascope.

In there, we of course fought many bosses.

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I felt like in Endwalker, Pandaemonium was a horrible experiment that went bad. The ancients had captured and caged different monsters from different worlds, and Athena was trying to achieve godhood. So, I felt that it really did not cover the Realms of Hell or even the origins of Diablo. If that was indeed the intention of the developers, it leaves open a lot of questions...like where did these hellish monsters come from?

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Originally Posted by TempusFinis

I felt like in Endwalker, Pandaemonium was a horrible experiment that went bad. The ancients had captured and caged different monsters from different worlds, and Athena was trying to achieve godhood. So, I felt that it really did not cover the Realms of Hell or even the origins of Diablo. If that was indeed the intention of the developers, it leaves open a lot of questions...like where did these hellish monsters come from?

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Diabolos is just a high-ranking Voidsent that managed to reach the Source at some point, and the 13th isn't any of the Seven Hells. The Diablo Armament is emulating him, but it's just a magitech weapon that is entirely Allagan and Garlean. Pandemonium could have inspired the mythos of the Hells in the same way that Venat's coworkers and their observation post became the Twelve and Heavens, but we're unlikely to ever know for sure because CS3 just got bored of the Source's worldbuilding and mythology. There's also the Ridorana Cataract, which is a gaping hole in the ocean that is supposed to lead down to the Hells, but I don't think it's been mentioned in any capacity since Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by TempusFinis

I felt like in Endwalker, Pandaemonium was a horrible experiment that went bad. The ancients had captured and caged different monsters from different worlds, and Athena was trying to achieve godhood. So, I felt that it really did not cover the Realms of Hell or even the origins of Diablo. If that was indeed the intention of the developers, it leaves open a lot of questions...like where did these hellish monsters come from?

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The hellish monsters are most of the time Voidsent or before that were either simple monsters or old constructs of the Ancients.
Also we know that Aether can corrupt and mutate beings.

The seven hells most probably don't exist because the entire creation myth is a lie. According to the Eorzea Encyclopedia they were believed to be byproducts of creating the seven heavens (and we do know that those were simply the territories of the not-primal gods mortals cached a glimpse here and there).
The armor and such you mentioned were probably just made in that image just as the WHM and BLM artifact gear was, representing them but not more.

I do wish we could have seen more or at least remained obscure in the truth of things.
As it stands now though, the whole thing is removed from the game in favour of getting rid of loose ends and explaining everything.

The only way I could imagine them now is that the seven heavens and hells might exist through the believes of the people in Eorzea given that we basically need a God machine to manage all those prayers or that there truly does exist some hellish realm beyond everyone else.
There is always the chance of the writers picking such things up again for an interesting story but right now it doesn't seem that they are interested in actual world building much.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

There's also the Ridorana Cataract, which is a gaping hole in the ocean that is supposed to lead down to the Hells, but I don't think it's been mentioned in any capacity since Stormblood.

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For all we know at least, going downwards does result in strange and "afterlife" kinda things like PotD, Antitower or the Sharlayan Aetherial Sea entrance.
So who knows, maybe something does exist below the aethersoup down there but the writers seem pretty disinterested anyway.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

The only way I could imagine them now is that the seven heavens and hells might exist through the believes of the people in Eorzea given that we basically need a God machine to manage all those prayers or that there truly does exist some hellish realm beyond everyone else.

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That's probably exactly how the seven hells and the seven heavens exist; Eorzeans seem to be mighty capable of believing things into existence. Probably unintentional creation magic, to be honest. Though to be fair, even Athena and Lahabrea invoke them, so it's not outside possibility that there really are some sort of seven heavens and hells, somewhere.

As far as the hellhound armor and all that goes, I'm assuming the designs come from Eorzeans seeing voidsent. Voidsent literally run around towns handing out cookies, so it's not like it's unusual for an Eorzean to have seen one.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

That's probably exactly how the seven hells and the seven heavens exist; Eorzeans seem to be mighty capable of believing things into existence. Probably unintentional creation magic, to be honest. Though to be fair, even Athena and Lahabrea invoke them, so it's not outside possibility that there really are some sort of seven heavens and hells, somewhere.

As far as the hellhound armor and all that goes, I'm assuming the designs come from Eorzeans seeing voidsent. Voidsent literally run around towns handing out cookies, so it's not like it's unusual for an Eorzean to have seen one.

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Exactly!!! If we look at how the "Ageless Necropolis" was brought into existence, it was created with the "fear of death" of a very small population on the Source. The Source is also known as the world of Hydaelyn and also as Etheirys.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...e6eb0b26b9.png

"Being thus forced to confront the realities of mortal existence, what then filled their hearts was a dark and unreasoning terror. Harnessing this heightened fear of death for his own ends, a genius of an age gone by now channels the people's desperate prayers for succor into a new primal incarnation." -In game description

We have over 12000 Years of Sins from the different Populations of the Source, channeling the people's sins into several primal incarnations with virtually uncapped power. Based on the FF14 folklore and the duality theme, I thinks it's very reasonable to think that the Realms of Hell exist, manifesting and powering the Gods of Hell for over 12,000 years. And I think the bottomless hole near the Ridorana Lighthouse could be a great location, and I would not be surprised that some sort of powerful Diabolos lurks on the Source, like Zodiark on the moon.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...7d4261f867.jpg


But it still begs these questions,
1) Why did all the Ancients want to leave back to the star?
2) Why did they wait until the WoL were stronger than them to leave?

Perhaps, the Ancients knew there were more powerful enemies on the source...so they waited to leave...

Your thoughts?

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Originally Posted by TempusFinis

I felt like in Endwalker, Pandaemonium was a horrible experiment that went bad. The ancients had captured and caged different monsters from different worlds, and Athena was trying to achieve godhood. So, I felt that it really did not cover the Realms of Hell or even the origins of Diablo. If that was indeed the intention of the developers, it leaves open a lot of questions...like where did these hellish monsters come from?

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I just really do feel like it was the intention of the developers, because we can't ignore how they took this very strange step of making us go underground, where a hell would theoretically be located, to find Pandaemonium in the present time.

We can't ignore that Pandæmonium is the capital of Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost nor that it means "all demons" or "all-demon-place" in Greek.

We also can't ignore the artwork that gives off the vibe that half the mask is on fire, which was intended to say Lahabrea is back and taking us to hell (we didn't know we'd go back in time at the time this was released):
https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...ErUKK2AiB4.jpg

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I just really do feel like it was the intention of the developers, because we can't ignore how they took this very strange step of making us go underground, where a hell would theoretically be located, to find Pandaemonium in the present time.

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We did have Tomestones of (The Divine) Comedy at the time, too.

By the way, even if the hells existed, it wouldn't mean there are gods down there.
Even in the creation myth, the hells were byproducts and (correct me if I am wrong) there was never a mention of God's there.
Nald'Thals governed basically over the decision.
While it's definitely true that the hells could exists simply because of how beliefs influence aether like with primals (it could theoretically be a primal in itself) and such, nothing suggests counterparts to the twelve.
There also wouldn't be sinners there or such because we do know exactly how the afterlife in FFxiv works, namely that you are broken down in the Aetherial sea if you aren't an ancient soul with strong memories and emotions being the only thing that can linger there for some time.

So in the end the seven hells would be something entirely different either empty, with its own beings or maybe unfortunate souls who stumbled there.
It's important to note that the seven hells are also only the belief of Eorzeans.

I think the closest we would get to the hells (if they don't exist as a pseudo primal) are the 13th and the realm between worlds.
I guess a primal version would truly be the closest to the whole thing and an interesting take actually.
Instead of an entity, it's a place that is summoned. Alexander actually was pretty close to such a thing given it's sheer scale and purpose.

Edit:
I think this topic is far too interesting to get buried in General Discussion tbh. It kinda belongs into the Lore part of the forum.

The problem with FFXIV, in my opinion, is that you can't really come up with anything cool, since everything is explained by aether, Allagans, Ascians, or whatever—no real mystery, no gods, demons, or anything. It's always explained "scientifically."

That's because this is a Japanese developed game, a country where less than 1% identify as Judeo-Christian (most Japanese are a mixture of Shinto and Buddhist), so that is reflected as a more agnostic viewpoint towards spirituality in their popular culture like the FF series (and hence FFXIV). Specifically, it's clear there are no real 'gods' in FFXIV's universe, every one shown so far has been a false entity created through a bastardistation of Ancient creation magic, huge amounts of aether, and the power of belief (or something similar along those lines).

And it was revealed fairly early on that the 'afterlife' in FFXIV's universe is not a psuedo Abrahamic idea of heaven and hell, but instead a variation of FFVII's Lifestream concept, in itself taken from Buddhist belief and the writings of biologists Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, in that the afterlife is a cycle of constant reincarnation; where the planet is essentially a living entity that all life is born from (as energy) and thus returns to it in death, to become a intrinstic part of it and to eventually be reborn in a new form (I mean, it was even literally called the 'Lifestream' by Eorzeans for much of ARR's life, and has since sort of been retconned in name as 'the Aetherial Sea' from EW onward). The 'seven heavens and hells' in Eorzean belief are just empty beliefs with no actual basis in how things are in Hydaelyn's reality at all I'm sorry to say.

Anything that shows spirits in a pseudo afterlife other than the Lifestream is an artificial construct or a result of aetherial manipulation and is not a real heaven or hell (even the Void, long regarded as a hell like dimension, is just Hydaelyn's Thirteenth Shard warped by the Flood of Darkness and is tipped permanantly to that element. Ditto with the First Shard being almost lost to the element of Light and hence the warped angelic like entities that were created as a result.).

(Also it's actually meant to be six heavens and hells, not seven - that was a deliberate error on Michael Christopher Koji Fox's part, where in keeping with his passion for thinking up interesting swear words Eorzeans cuss, felt that "Six Hells!" as a cuss wouldn't roll of the tongue as well as seven does. So, it became Seven Hells! (and thus Seven Heavens too) accordingly, and the contradiction with Eorzean religious belief of the Twelve just ignored in universe. Bsaically, it's just to make a better sounding swear word! This was revealed at a lore panel at a past Fanfest many years ago).

Because yoshi-p said that ff14 could be a theme park for the final fantasy universe, I feel that the Hell idea would be a great opportunity for the developers to introduce other aspects of the Final Fantasy Universe, such as themes and characters from Final Fantasy Type-0 and other series.

Also, these characters below could be used in those Realms of Hell.

Tsukuyomi

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...10373c5843.jpg

Occuria


https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...783b594338.jpg


Maduin



https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...218c46cc70.jpg




Chaos



https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...f39bad5f77.jpg




Promathia



https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...f950b5676a.jpg




Etro

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...5f838579d5.jpg


Zomala

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...c5ea77e8ff.jpg


Kujata

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...b77636717e.jpg

Your thoughts?

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Originally Posted by TempusFinis

Your thoughts?

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I think...if you think FFXIV needs to find a place to put Tsukuyomi, you need to play more FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Astronis

I think...if you think FFXIV needs to find a place to put Tsukuyomi, you need to play more FFXIV.

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^This. Also several of those other enemies listed are already in the game too in various ways (Chaos is in the final Omega raid Alphascape, Kujata is just a run of the mill bull enemy that appears as part of the MRD class quests, and it's all but guaranteed Promathia is going to be appearing in the final still to come FFXI raid.).

SE will continue to use enemies and names from past FF games in FFXIV in new ways or as fanservice, don't worry about that.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Also it's actually meant to be six heavens and hells, not seven - that was a deliberate error on Michael Christopher Koji Fox's part [...]

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My understanding is that it wasn't an "error" but a request he made to the lore planners at the development stage for them to adjust the planned cosmology so he could have the "seven hells" swear.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

My understanding is that it wasn't an "error" but a request he made to the lore planners at the development stage for them to adjust the planned cosmology so he could have the "seven hells" swear.

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This is my understanding as well.

Anyway, as others have said, we already got our Hell in the EW raid series and Pandaemonium. It was the parallel to the Heavens in Myths of the Realm.

Are there 7 stages within the Pandy arenas? I can't quite remember back that far. I remember the design of raid itself was weird, with a long tunnel in the main portion of 1-8, and then the 9th arena switching it up to the aetherial sea of the present time. So if the long tunnel had 7 different stages, with one boss arena being repeated, that'd match the idea of "seven hells."

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Originally Posted by Catwho

This is my understanding as well.

Anyway, as others have said, we already got our Hell in the EW raid series and Pandaemonium. It was the parallel to the Heavens in Myths of the Realm.

Are there 7 stages within the Pandy arenas? I can't quite remember back that far. I remember the design of raid itself was weird, with a long tunnel in the main portion of 1-8, and then the 9th arena switching it up to the aetherial sea of the present time. So if the long tunnel had 7 different stages, with one boss arena being repeated, that'd match the idea of "seven hells."

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We got teleported to another part of the complex for Phoinix, but I think the rest of Asphodelos and Abyssos were one continuous path.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

We got teleported to another part of the complex for Phoinix, but I think the rest of Asphodelos and Abyssos were one continuous path.

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Then 7 stages of Pandemonium in the long raid tunnel with one boss arena being outside of it would match 7 Hells.

They just didn't explicitly call it "seven hells."

Not a tunnel, at least, not how I remember the first part of Pandaemonium - you fight Eric in that open area at the entrance, then you're sent down into the sewers under the complex against the Hippokampus. Phoinix seemed to change it's surroundings though to that weird ShB-esque "ruined colleseum in golden clouds" place, but it appears that it was meant to be somewhere in the main containment facility itself. And then you go and fight Vincent inside Shinra Mansion Hesperos inside the main hall of the castle itself.

Gameplay wise I guess you could call it a long tunnel of sorts though, but lore wise it's clearly not.

XIV could have had a wonderful and expansive metaphysical universe but someone at SE really hates Gods and liberating souls from the grinding wheel of samsara. It honestly makes XIV extremely bleak.

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Originally Posted by yuurei94

XIV could have had a wonderful and expansive metaphysical universe but someone at SE really hates Gods and liberating souls from the grinding wheel of samsara. It honestly makes XIV extremely bleak.

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The problem is less missing true gods or cosmology, that has been the case in basically every FF.
Quite a number of media actually don't have those while being interesting.

The problem is that we are at a point where basically everything has been explained and demystified, even lesser things.
The twelve tbh should have never been shown given their importance and even being in the character creator, simply having those raids with "stand-ins" not sure where they came from themselves would have been better imo, leaving room to think if they are just primals, not real at all or actually do exist.
It's also not good that almost everything can be traced back to either the Ancients or (before them) the Allagans.
Even our learning of the Ancients and Hydaelyn felt hollow given that Sharlayan somehow knew all along, even about the Loporitts. Endsinger as well was connected to the Ancients.

At this point the world is at a very weird place of having no real mystery at the moment that isn't related to Shards (basically the aftermath of the Ancients) and as such feels kinda boring in worldbuilding.
Like if an Excel manager did the worldbuilding and even if we find some new mystery it just get's solved and cleared at the same moment.

I would welcome the hells and such but these writers have honestly not the talent or the will to tell stories in a "non-solving" way anymore.
Even something that is not connected to the Ascians, Ancients or Allagans would be fine at this point, like for example a "parallel world" outside our cosmos or a civilisation that existed independent from the Ancients back then.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

The problem is that we are at a point where basically everything has been explained and demystified, even lesser things.

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Exactly this. They've overexplained everything. It's a trap a lot of fictions fall into, unfortunately.

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Even something that is not connected to the Ascians, Ancients or Allagans would be fine at this point, like for example a "parallel world" outside our cosmos or a civilisation that existed independent from the Ancients back then.

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There are a couple of things like this still in game (Chekhov's Heart of Sabik is still sitting on the mantlepiece, though it gets picked up and shown off every once in awhile), though at this point I am not sure if I want the devs to leave them there or do something with them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I just really do feel like it was the intention of the developers, because we can't ignore how they took this very strange step of making us go underground, where a hell would theoretically be located, to find Pandaemonium in the present time.

We can't ignore that Pandæmonium is the capital of Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost nor that it means "all demons" or "all-demon-place" in Greek.

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It goes further than just the name of Pandaemonium itself. In the Japanese version of FF14, the levels of Pandaemonium are explicitly named after the layers of the afterlife.

The first level is Limbo (辺獄/Hengoku - changed to Asphodelos in EN).
The second level is Purgatory (煉獄/Rengoku - changed to Abyssos in EN).
The third and deepest level where we fight Hephaistos is Hell (地獄/Jigoku - changed to Tartaros in EN).

The third raid tier is called Tengoku (天獄), which is an interesting play on words. The reading sounds like 天国 (Tengoku, meaning heaven) but it's written using the second kanji from 地獄 (Hell). Funnily enough, 獄 (goku) on its own also means prison or jail.

I haven't thought of a good localization for it, but the general vibe is "hell in heaven" or something like that. The "heaven" here being the aetherial sea, since that's the closest thing to a real afterlife in FF14's setting, where Pandaemonium (the hell prison) has manifested. The English changed this to Anabaseios.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

It goes further than just the name of Pandaemonium itself. In the Japanese version of FF14, the levels of Pandaemonium are named after the layers of the afterlife.

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They are named such in the English localization, too. In keeping with the Greek theme of the Ancients: Asphodelos is meant to evoke the Asphodel Meadows, part of the Greek afterlife. Abyssos is Greek for...the Abyss, which is in some cases thought of not as Hell but still an abode of demons and lost souls in the afterlife. Tartaros (Tartarus) is Hell, more or less. Anabaseios is a bit weird, but is based on the Greek for an ascent, the opposite of a journey down into hell. So the word is meant to be a place of moving upwards from the depths, rather than any location in any afterlife. Kokytus is a river in the Greek underworld.

ETA: Thinking about it a bit more, I wonder how much of it was serendipity or just a bit cheeky that one of the attacks on the way out of the nine (per Dante) hells was called Harrowing Hell while the one who went into it all to free the captives there beat the ever living crap out of Pandaemonium itself.

So, now we all know why…I guess that’s it. I’m looking forward to what the developers come up with in the future. Thank you for your responses.


BTW, I have this sixth sense that some of these forum posters are undercover Square Enix employees…but that’s a whole different discussion for another day…

Seven Hells would be an excellent Alliance series.

The problem is that if you beat hell, then everything else afterwards is worse than hell.

How do you justify that the worst place in the multiverse is somehow not the worst place in the multiverse?

It's a paradox.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

Seven Hells would be an excellent Alliance series.

The problem is that if you beat hell, then everything else afterwards is worse than hell.

How do you justify that the worst place in the multiverse is somehow not the worst place in the multiverse?

It's a paradox.

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One way to do that is to just leave room for speculation like "this hell was just a primal imitation, if it exists what would the real one be like?" or don't go to the deepest level and let the player speculate what it's like.
Showing isn't the problem but completely explaining everything is.

Alternatively you could just make the last Raid in hell a link to this forum but that would be Savage difficulty.

While I think pandaemonium is the closest we'll get , it would be cool to get deeper lore on the ivalice mysteries in ff14 like the true ultima. I like the idea of putting something like a hell at the bottom of ridorana cataract! The occuria would be cool maybe they could be an evil reflection of hydaelyn linking the Venat name. Tho it's likely they chose that name because in the eyes of the tempered convocation she was but a heretic as Venat was to the occuria in ff12 for giving man the secrets of the stone.