Raimdelle Reborn: The Neverending Bestiary

[Anonymoose]

deepvoid spoken ... Bottle of Spoken Blood ... Methinks either they are willing to bend old Raimdelle's rules for story expediency

Now that you bring it to my attention, the whole BLM story arc actually makes me very confused as far as mobs are concerned.

The first several quests deal with you being sent to close Planar Fissures between "this world and the next" (Yayake). The fissures seem to be mini Voidgates - aftershocks caused by the initial incident, perhaps. This implies that Yayake is simply making a mistaken assumption when she says they lead to the next world, they just lead to a different one: the Void, "a netherworld rife with shadow and monstrosity" (Ququruka). But that's part of the problem: though most of the monsters that come through the Voidgates are indeed voidsent, some are just undead.

What's up with the Ghosts (Deepvoid Soul / Void Echo)?

Ferne called ghosts Ashkin back in the day when we only had Bogy/Revenant ghosts. The Revenant Things FATE backs this up, saying that these are souls unaware of their death, unreturned to the lifestream, lost and violent. The names of most of them imply these circumstances. Corrupted Nimians were taken by the tonberry sickness, Betrayed Souls were killed by heretics in the Darkhold, Poisoned Peasants succumbed to the noxious fumes of the Aurum Vale. I can make excuses for a lot of things. Some mobs get accused of being from the Void when they're not. There's a dormouse in the Shroud named Deepvoid Deathmouse just because Gridanian's think it's unnaturally big. Maybe we can hit ghosts with a sword because aether gathers around the unsent soul and that's why it's a corporeal blob. Maybe it has an unnatural circulatory system with a little bit of blood we can beat out of it. But why does the ghost drop Voidsent blood when it's, as far as we've been told, an Ashkin? Devil's Advocate? Maybe the Bogy/Revenant is a creature of the Void and never had anything to do with our Eorzean dead in the first place. Maybe the names of the ghosts are just as misguided as the name of the mouse. Wisps are confirmed as being from the Void and Eorzeans believe they, too, might be the souls of the dead.

Barring a lore nuance that I've overlooked, I believe the ghosts may be an oversight - a mistake. I still don't think SE would willfully misguide us about game mechanic basics. If anybody's wrong, I'd expect it to be Eorzeans. This leads me to believe that Eorzeans may be mistaken about the mouse, Eorzeans may be mistaken about the wisps, and Square Enix may be mistaken about Ashkin ghosts coming out of a Voidgate and dropping Voidsent blood. Especially in light of...

What's up with the Zombies (Deepvoid Pikeman / Deepvoid Wizard)?

Under the Armor identifies Zombies and Skeletons as Ashkin. Even if we assume that Ferne and Raimdelle are wrong and bogies are just hairless floating snurbles, what are zombies doing coming out of a Voidgate? At least this time they drop Spoken blood. That makes sense. Zombies were one people, people are Spoken. Nobody said the blood had to be fresh. Makes you wonder, if the ghosts' bodies are a new corporeal form on a Spoken soul, is it Spoken blood? Maybe the item name was misidentified. Clearly the fissures just want any blood. But then why are two types of Eorzean undead people coming out of the Voidgates!?

Other monsters that come through the fissures (for the sake of completeness):

• Deepvoid Scamp - Imp - Voidsent ✓
  
• Ahriman - Ahriman - Voidsent ✓
  
• Planebreaker - Demon - Voidsent ✓
• Void Lantern - Wisp - Voidsent ✓
• Void Plasma - Gargoyle - Voidsent ✓
  
• Void Trumpeter - Demon - Voidsent ✓
  
• Barbatos - Gargoyle - Voidsent ✓
  
• Void Tyrant - Death Gaze ... ?

I don't know what Death Gaze are. They look Voidsent as all get out, despite sharing many features with the Scalekin Aevis (they were both versions of Plate Wyrms in FFXII), and mega despite the fact that the Simurgh FATE outright calls them Cloudkin. Anyway, most of the monsters that come through are indeed Voidsent.

So - we only have two Ashkin anomalies to deal with - and it clearly runs deeper than Eorzeans' habit of just slapping the name "DEEPVOID" on anything having an 85% chance or better of having tumbled down the snurblehole from the Ascian realm. Maybe the quest just needs some polish. I mean, it already suffers from major, "Is it Magic or Magick in FFXIV?" syndrome.

UNLESS THE ZOMBIES AND REVENANTS WERE JUST IMPS IN GLAMOUR ALL ALONG!
OHOHOHO!

In the end, though, I feel obligated to say, since I spent so much time picking at it, that this is still one of my favorite story arcs in the game. A gifted thaumaturge allying with beastmen in a time before tempering only to have his hubris with powerful magicks rip open a hole to the void resulting in his friends being torn into their aetherial components which were then devoured by a voidsent entity in order to make his corporeal form... how black mage is that? Big thumbs up. Awesome tale.

Conclusion
Travanchet totally sent The Key, whatever the hell it was, through a Planar Fissure to the Void.

Thread-relevant Conclusion
TBA

Silver Linings
Because it's such a vague class, I keep just throwing anything that's animate and bound to something into the soulkin column even though I have reservations about them. Looking into the Ashkin made me realize that Bockman, a Dullahan, is said to be an undead revenant. This fits with past Dullahan in the franchise. Perhaps Eorzeans were wrong about the "ancient golem" part of their theories. Maybe, unlike the ghosts, these revenants know they're dead, and they're just downright vengeful about it... I'll move them to Ashkin for now. Progress! I still wonder about Golems, though... Why only with certain magicks only during umbral eras? An Ascian summoned one, maybe it's void magicks. Let's move them to voidsent for now. PROGRESS! ... Hm. I'm gonna need to do some digging on what the statues in Qarn are. Haunted? Magicked? There's a golem there... Something new to focus on at least.

Thanks again, Roland!