The Rise and Fall of The White Raven

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http://gamerescape.com/2013/08/21/th...e-white-raven/

Anonymoose and some other members of Gamer Escape have been working on this guy for the last several months.

It's a huuuuge summary of FFXIV 1.0 focused around Nael van Darnus, and it's fact checked by everyone's favorite Ahriman :D Should be a great piece for anyone getting into FFXIV for the first time!

MOOSE AND CO, YOU ARE ALL SO MAGICAL. (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) *rolls around in happiness*

Sweet baby jesus, .__. so good. Sending to all my friends who are coming fresh to the game.

*settles in for a nice, long read*

This is amazing, thank you. :)

Was a really, really entertaining read! I stayed up last night reading the entire thing! I couldn't stop after I got about a paragraph in!

Great job to everyone who worked on it so laboriously! I think a lot of new and old players will find this very helpful and insightful to what happened in the past game! Thanks!

http://i.imgur.com/Z9XqvRb.png

Hi. I am new to the game. So is AAR an alternate realm from where Bahamaut was at or does it have something to do with time travel?

ARR is just the name for the new game. It's the same Eorzea that was in 1.0, but 5 years later. Bahamut causing his cataclysm and beginning the 7th Umbral Era is what ended version 1.0 of FFXIV.

Very good read I feel kinda epic fighting my way through all of it now that I look back even if I have no earring for my trouble. I didn't even put the connection together between the name Dalamud ~ Bahamut until after i read it...I am normally so astute! I blame NCIS!

Just finished reading it. Great job Anonymoose and everyone else who made the summary a reality! This is the summary we should point to for anyone wanting to know the Dalamud storyline. Best part for me was:

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Though its name had been distorted by centuries of imperfect record, though knowledge of its nature had been lost to history, the great sin banished to the skies by the lost Allag was revealed.

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Dalamud... Bahamut...
/slaphead I should have realized that one word was just the corruption of the other after thousands of years. Thank you so much for mentioning that.

This is hands-down the best lore article I've read about 1.0; I never played it so all this info is really appreciated!

that was a great read and it puts the End of an era/new beginning video in better context. I cant wait to explore and adventure my way thru this story.

As someone who was never able to play 1.0, and has only really watched the important 1.0 cutscenes on youtube, this was an amazing read. I definitely feel like I understand the main scenario a lot better now. So a huge "thank you" and "amazing job" to those who worked on this!

This is just testament to how much goes into making the story for games like Final Fantasy. This is a great read!

I have to say, I totally missed the connection between the two names. I've never been good at cryptograms though.

*goes off to waste some time at work reading the article*

You guys did a really good job!

This is amazing! I am definitely a fan of this compiled lore! Count me in as a new fan of the Lore forum!

*(Applaudes)*

Brilliant work, Ferne... and brilliant work to Moose and every single one of you that contributed to this masterpiece.

Absolutely brilliant and it will find a home on my blog

Very well done, to all parties involved!! :D

Thank you very much for the kind words! /deepbow

To those who mentioned the connection between the names Bahamut and Dalamud, even I had to ask to be sure. When a member of my FC asked about the similarity, I thought it might have been a clever ruse because H and T and M and D in Al Bhed... but it turns out that was part linguistic similarity and part coincidence. The English localization team, especially, puts a lot of style and linguistic quality into the game, some of which you'd never see unless you were looking for it, and that's one of the things that I think makes XIV stand out.

Unfortunately, 20 years down the road, you don't be able to just pop in XIV and re-live the nostalgia, and this is why we're so into cataloging the lore while the servers are live. A record of text, images, and videos we'll always be able to go back for - and so much of this story is worth going back for!

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The English localization team, especially, puts a lot of style and linguistic quality into the game, some of which you'd never see unless you were looking for it, and that's one of the things that I think makes XIV stand out.

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Seriously, the writing in this game is a work of art.

I'm glad someone posted this ^^ fantastic read. <3

Forum moderators, please sticky this.

There is enough information here to answer ALL questions regarding the state of the world before ARR and to some extent, why things are what they are in ARR. Things a newcomer like myself would appreciate because now, I know the reason why I am going after the Darth Vader-esque boss.

One suggestion, would be to expand the title of the post to: The Rise and Fall of the White Raven: (add something to clarify that this is the background story before ARR i.e., 'Eorzea before Reborn' or 'The Story of FFXIV so far..").

Wonderful read, wonderful editing. Fernehalwes and Anonymoose: Please carry on with this incredible work and keep documenting the lore of the game :)

Please help spread the lore by replying to this thread asking for the forum moderators to sticky this.

Great work, awesome read. Just makes me want to know more about Naels life. Maybe Ferne should write some books. *wink,wink*

Wanna thank Anonymoose and everyone involved. Even if you are a 1.0 player and beat the story line. This is a great read and you will likely find info you never experienced and can't recall. A great refresher before the official launch as well.

This was an enjoyable read.

The many many hours over several months of chatting with Moose on the Gamerescape chat, theorycrafting, speculating, postulating, fact-checking and contradiction-identifying has finally paid off. It was not without a roller-coaster of surprising moments where we found ourselves fascinated by the little gems we had uncovered.

And the write-up is really well done. I am highly impressed.

And I thought I was paying really good attention during this whole era! Thanks a lot for this, loved every sentence and will definitely recommend to new players I meet. :D

This is incredibly fun to read! Its an excellent review of what happened in 1.0, I played the first version from start to finish, but it has been so long I had forgotten some of the little details that link everything together. Now I am even more excited for ARR!!! >_<

Thank you for this! As nerdy as it sounds, I have been studying up on the lore and history of XIV as much as I could... from the storyline itself to the production of it and everything it took to get it where it is now. This is, by far, the most comprehensive collection of events I have come across without having to follow fifty million other links. I would love to see other articles like this one go on to explore the stories and histories of other characters as well, perhaps even expand this one to give more detailed background.

Anyone else see the potential here for a written series of books/novellas for XIV? A collection of short stories and anecdotes of Eorzea, perhaps? ;)

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Originally Posted by Alleviator

Anyone else see the potential here for a written series of books/novellas for XIV? ;)

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Blizzard did that and aggravated a good number of players by needing to read the books to understand what was in the new expacs. Better would be tales of XIV 1.0 expanding and telling tales before the Calamity. Possibly explaining things that happened in the 5 yr. span between the two and are in game now.

Colossal work and interesting to read too. Made me cry, shards!

That was awesome. :)

I am starting to wonder, now that we've had time to watch the ARR Main Scenario... <WARNING:SPOILERS>

How much of a hand did the Ascians have in exposing the Garleans, and by extension the Darnus & Garlond families, to the Lunar Transmitter?
How much of the influence on Nael's ambitions was a consequence of Lahabrea's scheming?

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Originally Posted by Catapult

How much of the influence on Nael's ambitions was a consequence of Lahabrea's scheming?

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This was one of the things I chose to ask about that I filed as "If you think it'd help..." and it was answered with a PLEASE LOOK FORWARD TO IT. We've seen some pretty overt action on Lahabrea's part since the Sixth Sun actually set, but I don't think we've any real concept on how far back the invisible hand of ascian influence reaches... I'm sure we'll see what they were part of and what is part of a different arc (if anything actually is, in the end) in time.