KEY ENEMIES
So, Ascian confirmed as Paragons! Or did we have official word before?
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KEY ENEMIES
So, Ascian confirmed as Paragons! Or did we have official word before?
Anyone else cringe when reading all of the new blurbs about Gaius Van Baelsar's lackeys? Gunbaghnakhs? Seriously!?
I'M SO HAPPY THEY RELEASED INFO ON THESE NEW GUYS AND THE ASCIANS. END CAPS LOCK.
Seriously tho, I think I might have figured out the history of the Ascians.
/inbeforesomeoneelsespoilstheloreforeveryone
Here are a few things about the Ascians we know...
The beastmen fear the Ascians. They fear them so much, they are willing to halt their quarrel with one another when one of them appears in the 1.0 Main Quest line and the Sylphs are asked to shroud the group in protective magic to hide them from the creature.*
The Paragons are the ones who taught the beastmen how to summon the Primals. The current Primals didn't appear until recently, post Tragedy of Silver Tear Falls when the Agrius and Midgardsormr crashed into the lake in Mor Dhona, creating a huge imbalance of aether throughout the realm and freeing the lesser primals. In fact, the lesser Primals didn't assume corporal form until about 1564 when Ifrit and other Primals began to appear. Garuda and Moggle Mog didn't appear until 1572. Titan and Leviathan appeared sometime between that. **
The Ascian we see in ARR remarks something to the extent of "To think that I would live to see Bahamut once again". We know Bahamut was sealed away sometime in the 4th Umbral Era, during the fall of the Great Allagan Empire. Dalamud is a construct of Allagan technology and magic. For the Ascian to have last seen Bahamut, he would need to be several thousand years old.*
The 6th Umbral Era was brought about by the rise of immortal mages who made a pact with the demon lords of the seven hells for immortality in exchange for full dominion over the realm and sacrificing (I believe it was, I'll have to find the line of text) 2 million souls. The Archons, men and women who are believed to be reincarnates of the Twelve themselves, rose to fight against them. It can be speculated that these mages are the Ascians.
My theory is that the Ascians were once Allagan mages who made a blood pact with the ruling creatures of the void in order to become immortal and gain power. In exchange for their power and immortality, the Ascians were bound to completing their blood pact by destroying the mother crystal, in effect creating a huge imbalance in the aether of Eorzea, possibly expanding the rift between the Void and our own realm and killing off several thousand, if not millions, of people in the process by returning the world to nothing (A common Final Fantasy bad guy theme). The Ascians were likely the ones to have summoned the Elder Primals in the first place which brought about the 4th Umbral Era and ended the 3rd Astral Era. In a last ditch effort to save the realm from destruction, heroes (possibly the Archons) sealed away Bahamut inside Dalamud and casted him into the heavens. They may have also imprisoned other Elder Primals as well (such as Odin).*
Having failed that time, the Ascians may have tried another catastrophe in the 4th Astral Era to bring in the 5th Umbral Era. Not much is known here aside from the tidbit that darkness descended onto the hears of man, but I speculate the Ascians managed to bring about war between the various nations that rose up after the fall of the Allagan Empire (Nym, Gelmorra, etc.) The Twelve may have intervened and stopped them somehow (again, possibly Archons)
The 6th Umbral Era was known for the Great Deluge brought about by the Twelve to purge the lands because of the dark magic that was consuming the realm by a group of "dark mages". The Grand Companies rose and the Archons came back. They succeeded in driving back the Ascians and the 6th Astral Era came out, this was about 1572 years ago prior to the start of 1.0...
It was in the 6th Astral Era that the Ascians, now calling themselves the Paragons, went around and taught the beastmen tribes how to summon the Primals and use crystals to feed them energy. This created a huge schism in the balance of aether in the realm, which was likely the Ascians goal in the first place.*
The 7th Umbral Era was brought about by the rise of the lesser primals (this is a term I use, not a term used ingame) and the fall of Dalamud along with the return of Bahamut. I suspect that Nael van Darnus (who was of Allagan descent) was corrupted by the Ascians to get the events which would bring back Bahamut. Because of the aetherial imbalance, the world was thrown into chaos. The archons (the Circle of Knowing) attempted to do what they could to save the realm while the powers of Twelve once again intervened before Bahamut could actually destroy the realm for good. To be honest, I think that the Twelve is simply a thing that the five races created to explain the divine powers of the Mother Crystal, so when Louisoix 'called upon the Twelve' he was simply using the power of the Mother Crystal...which if I recall, calling upon the Twelve uses a great amount of aether...and aether is the lifeblood of the mother crystal...
.
Anyways, now that the Mother Crystal is weaker and vulnerable, the Ascians might be approaching what is their endgame and plan to destroy the mother crystal once and for all to fufill their several millenniums old blood pact.*
This is all speculation of course, but I think its pretty solid based off what we know...
Either way...
IF I'M RIGHT, SOMEONE BETTER BUY ME A MANSION IN GAME.
Edit: someone reminded me of an article talking about Garuda, and the Garuda questline says she's been an enemy to Gridania for night on ten years. However, this still asserts the fact that the lesser primals didn't appear, or rather, re-appear until recently.
Gunblade, Gunhalberd, Gunhammer, Gunbaghnakhs, Gunshield ..... still no Gunsubligar
Though we can definitely expect the Gunbook!
http://cbslasvegas.files.wordpress.c...book.jpg?w=300
Dear god... Fern... Make the gunbook happen!!! Also... because it will eventually happen...
http://cdn.memegenerator.co/instances/600x/40220504.jpg
The Gungun.
http://blog.mimoco.com/wp-content/up.../03/jarjar.jpg
NOT IN MY FFXIV.
Perhaps a better name might be... The Gunmusket? The Gunflintlock? The Gunrifle? The Gunpistol?
Sorry, I was too hung up on the fact that Livia is Gaius's daugther to actually notice the name.
And for what it's worth Gaius ALSO wears a similar weapon, his left gauntlet too has a gun on it (during the Futures Perfect cutscene Papalymo shields the party from exactly that shot by absorbing it, it is apparently an energy-charged shot). The difference is that she uses such a gauntlet on both hands...
Given her weapon is not a Bagh Nakh in any way, those are claws, essentially, whereas she uses arm blades... So I guess they ran out of names.
Still loving the cannon-shields, however. Heavens, that roegadyn is a veritable mech
agreed, the tartarus is probably the coolest of the 5 so far (well 4 bradamante may well be lost forever thanks to hildaderp.)
http://static2.finalfantasyxiv.com/a...aMovFYGSzY.jpg
Sorry... I could maybe be convinced about the validity of the gun halberd... and possibly about the gun shield, too... But gunbaghnakhs? Someone isn't trying hard enough.
You can make your own y'know?
http://files.sharenator.com/cock_gun...306368-580.gif
I shall call it The Gunderpants
Let's assume this is how they work...
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8...lh1io1_500.gif
Allow me to attempt to convince you.
Your weapon of choice is your fists. Your arms are of equal weight, allowing you to dispatch with counter-weighted armor and constant recalibration of balance and momentum. This makes you agile, and to enhance that agility, the blunt impacts usually provided by fists has been converted into slashing impact by blades, or claws, upon the fists - otherwise known as "tiger claws," or bagh nakh in Hindi.
These are your strengths - but your weakness is that you are limited to melee combat; you cannot interrupt a charging enemy's momentum; you cannot scatter an approaching group; you cannot launch a ranged or surprise attack... unless each of your wrists were armed with a gun. No time is wasted on the prep or the draw, you point and fire.
If an enemy group is charging you in formation, automatic fire from both hands breaks their form and momentum, allowing you to slip between the defensively dodging enemies and dispatch them with martial prowess. If you are facing a larger or heavily armored enemy, you can disorient them and break weak points with fire before delivering a volley of blows to their Achilles heel.
Not to mention nobody's going to see it coming when they catch one to the head from across the field or castrum from the seemingly unarmed. Not trying hard enough? They'd be my weapon of choice!
The only weapon that'd be pretty stupid is a gunbow.
So you can shoot while you shoot.
I don't know Moose... I would argue the Gunbow is an amazing idea... I think the point at which it gets silly is the Gunpole for fishers.
i'd be more afraid of the point blank range implications. thinkin back to FFVIII squals shear trigger timing on impact...she might very well be able to rip a tank to shreds. the initial impact, gunshot, then reverberation of the claw tearing you a new one. whew.
There are very few arguments that favor a gun mechanically fastened to a melee weapon compared to just having a gun and a melee weapon. The one factor that slightly mitigates that in favor of these proposed Gunbaghnakhs is that they are welded to her gauntlets, leaving her hands free. At that point the debate becomes one of semantics, because those are clearly no longer baghnakhs, they would be closer to patas, or maybe katar. But now the question becomes why do the guns need to be mechanically fastened to the bladed weapons if her hands are free? it seems like it would add unnecessary weight to weapons that probably already have significant enough mass to deal damage, at which point the added weight isn't increasing inertia more so than just slowing you down.
I have a strong aversion to gun+weapons of any type, the reason I see validity in the gun halberd is that it really is close to a modified musket+bayonet, where with the musket (a weapon with a one shot capacity and a rather long reload time) the bayonet allows you some means of self defense if you are unable to reload and opposing forces are within melee range. And we saw in the Darnus fight that the time between each opportunity to fire was long enough that having a decent melee weapon at hand was necessary. Whereas the musket was a long range weapon with limited melee capacity when paired with a bayonet, Darnus' gunhalberd was a melee weapon with the limited capacity to fire ranged attacks, and seeing as the halberd already is a weapon that requires the use of two hands I'd be willing to concede that attaching the firing mechanism to the halberd itself in this instance is ok.
I won't go into why gunblades are stupid here... unless someone really wants to have a debate about it.
Sincerely?
It's the large amount of time there is between switching weapons. Holstering/unholstering a gun and then sheathing/unsheathing a melee weapon takes a very long time, specially if you need to switch from the gun to the melee weapon (which is the purpose of having a melee weapon in first place, in case the encounter actually reaches melee range, what shouldn't happen in a realistic setting).
There is an ACTUAL reason why modern assault rifles are actual gun+weapon hybrids, what do you think bayonets are? They're there so you have a capacity to engage in melee an enemy that manages to get close enough to be under you effect aiming capacity. Melee weapons are also your fallback in case of out of ammo.
Now you take that concept to the absurdity levels that fantasy reaches, and there you go, you reach those weapons.
Also if you want to get on to how gunblades are a silly weapon, you need to remember they are a german invention (or was it hungarian? one of them), used by cavalry so they wouldn't have to spend time changing from their muskets to their swords when charging in... Yes, gunblades are real weapons.
Gunfist by Yellow \o\
yeaaah my dream *-* oh wait an enemy weapon arghhhh D:
Livia <3
I hope one of his lines in combat is Stop! Hammer time!
Looking forward to the drama between Gaius and Livia.
Ridiculous! Preposterous! RIPOSTEROUS! I'm seeing a six-shot revolver grenade launching gunpole. The concussive force from the blasts alone should ensure a nice pull. Sure, one might argue that all you need is a net to collect the fish, but really I pull for the relaxation. I'll just cast n' reel while we make a quick lap of the surface with the trolling net.
If I had a saber and a pistol, I'd probably not have either holstered whilst in the fray. (fun fact, war horses are trained to be steered with your legs, not with reins, allowing mounted combatants the use of both hands.) Second, I am well aware of gun swords. But question for you: Have you ever tried to hold 3 feet of steel out in front of you with one hand? While riding a horse that is in full gallop? Good luck hitting anything.
There is a reason gun swords are almost unheard of today... because they were incredibly unwieldy. The US navy even tried using a pistol built in with an 11 inch bowie knife blade for boarding parties but almost immediately switched back to the standard cutlass. Most pistol swords that were made were actually used for hunting boar, and almost all of them had very short blades. Much shorter than a standard sword.
As for your argument about modern rifles... did you even read what I wrote about muskets, bayonets and Darnus' gunhalberd?
When it comes down to it, a gun sword is little more than a novelty, the idea of which far outstrips the actual functionality.
Gunchocobo confirmed!
I'ma gonna drop this here...
http://images.wikia.com/assassinscre...leofForli4.jpg
I think we can all guess Livia's true profession now.
I would opt in for this idea! Just give it to meh, add it to my armory even if it's for kicks and giggles! XD
http://i873.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps6f2732d8.png
Check out the video!>>> http://youtu.be/syojvKNaolg?t=17s <<< Check out the video!
What are you fishing, Moose...? Death Sharks? Goliath Whales? We all know from Zelda, Fisher is only a step away from a battle class... I wonder if you can distract Gaius van Belthsar by waving the fishing rod...?
Amusingly... The ORIGINAL Gunblade by Squall didn't shoot anything. I believe the Ultimania guide explains the bullets forced the blade to vibrate violently to increase cutting power.