Diabolos

[Anonymoose]

As is the case with many other dungeons, having some prerequisite knowledge going in and knowing where to look leads the dungeon to tell you a story you'd otherwise miss. It'll be a long time before I write the proper Loremonger entry for it, so let's go through the dungeon and then summarize the story it tells us.

At first, the ruins are exactly as you'd suspect for something hidden from the view of the cognizant in a thriving forest; molds and poisonous insects have taken over in the wake of the civilization's ruin. The Agora (town center/marketplace) and city streets are infested with funguar (Demonstool), Wamoura, slugs (Ruins Dross), gadflies, and banemites (Madmite).

The first signs of something amiss are the Gremlin (a grumpy, obscenity screaming mob that looks like the bastard child of a phurble and an opo-opo), and the Hecteyes (a slimy mass with several seemingly-functional eyeballs within it that hangs around the mold colony that has been somehow "tainted"). What are these? Voidsent? Corrupted former citizens? Recent intruders who have been killed, tainted, and stripped of the precious gear they just bought at Rowena's Darklight closeout sale!? Who knows.

Pressing on, in the Halcyon Court (open-air park area), a decaying but hungry goobbue has taken up residence; is it now ashkin, or simply a seedkin mutated by poison and mold? Or is the goobbue long dead and perhaps controlled by parasitic fungi? Is this linked to the gremlins and hecteyes? Again, who knows.

Eventually, the man-made paths become less common and ...organic... paths take over; suddenly the ground seems farther away, as if the city streets have descended into a valley and you're moving between rooftops and bridges on insect and mold-sewn highways. The paths twist and wind towards the Tower of White, the roost of Arioch (a Hebrew name meaning Fierce Lion attributed to a demon mentioned in several grimoires, though possibly a direct reference to Paradise Lost, likening Amdapor to such a thing), who has been feasting on the wamoura there. Within the structure beyond, from whence Arioch may have come, is the Sanctum of Dreams, the lair of Diabolos.

With Central Amdapor behind, the sanctum houses paths of stone and magick that spiral downwards through The Arrested Darkness; voidsent imps (Dastardly Devilet), Taurui (Allotaur), and Ahriman (Dirty Eye) cluster around Baalzephon (a Hebrew name meaning Lord of the North also given to a confusing set of deities and locations associated with them), who may also be corrupted former inhabitants, that are continuously healed by White Magestones. Here's a creepy thought... what if the Baalzephon are former White Mages of Amdapor, healed by their guardian stones, acting as bait to keep the voidsent spilling into their realm at bay? Talk about an eternity of pain.

The confrontation with Diabolos takes place on a magicked platform called The Waking Nightmare, where a key mechanic of the fight is entering pockets of void to hide from his attacks as he awakens enraged and confuses the player with Amdapori mages. Thankfully, his slumber has left him weakened, and he is subdued (for now?).

Now with some idea as to what's going on, trace the names on the map backwards.

During the fall of the Fifth Astral Era and rise of the Sixth Umbral, it seems that the powerful magicks of the Amdapori White Mages, possibly centered on the Tower of White, weakened the Veil to the void, through which came Diabolos, who began to shift reality and its inhabitants into a waking nightmare. Unable to defeat it, they halted its advance, breaking pathways and erecting barriers to arrest the darkness of Diabolos' new dream sanctum (though, admittedly, perhaps the Amdapori themselves named it this and had an affinity for dream magic to which Diabolos was attracted, but let's go with Occam's Razor and the first interpretation, for now).

It seems that even as the civilization fell to Calamity and the ruins were hid by the Elemental magick, those wards held, until the Calamity of the Seventh Umbral Era broke both layers of seals...

Of course, that's all just my interpretation.

So what is Diabolos?

I'd say a powerful voidsent whose particular skill revolves around fear and dreams that came through the weakened border between worlds during the fall of the Era resulting from the overuse of magickal ability during the War of the Magi.

How he fits into the world, though... we'll have to see! SE has been pulling out a lot of big franchise names for LV50, and I really don't feel like we've seen the last of half of them. If anything, this feels like Diabolos' introduction more than his defeat. I feel like Diabolos is a tempting opportunity to save some development costs and re-skin an area as dream [insert name here] and cut some corners, though, so I just hope that, if he does return, it's a healthy mix of alternate versions of existing areas and dreams/visions of places we'd otherwise never see; something that keeps the novelty in alternate versions without making it feel cheap.

[Vydos]

*snip*

Always a pleasure when you bring some much needed light and explanation into the discussion Moose.

[RolandDebreton]

Here's a creepy thought... what if the Baalzephon are former White Mages of Amdapor, healed by their guardian stones, acting as bait to keep the voidsent spilling into their realm at bay? Talk about an eternity of pain.

Love this theory! This is the sort of thing I was thinking of him. Or perhaps many White Mages melded by gravi-dark magic into one terrible, agonized entity?

SE has been pulling out a lot of big franchise names for LV50, and I really don't feel like we've seen the last of half of them. If anything, this feels like Diabolos' introduction more than his defeat. I feel like Diabolos is a tempting opportunity to save some development costs and re-skin an area as dream [insert name here] and cut some corners, though, so I just hope that, if he does return, it's a healthy mix of alternate versions of existing areas and dreams/visions of places we'd otherwise never see; something that keeps the novelty in alternate versions without making it feel cheap.

Could not agree more here. To pull now major players like Diabolos (important to the FFMMO brand after XI), and admittedly important figures like Siren (Long history with the brand 6, 8, cameo in 13) early feels like they'll be needing Doomtrain for level 70 dungeons. So I think the cliff-hanger nature of our encounter with these two points to bigger things. Perhaps the birth of new primals (Primal of the Void/Primal of the Ashkin) as forces note and summon them, perhaps just recurring villiains.

[A_Magical_Unicorn_Rider]

So what is Diabolos?[/B]…

… feel like Diabolos is a tempting opportunity to save some development costs and re-skin an area as dream [insert name here] and cut some corners, though, so I just hope that, if he does return, it's a healthy mix of alternate versions of existing areas and dreams/visions of places we'd otherwise never see

I'd say if they were to create a dungeon based on this, it'd be a boss gauntlet one. As far as the whole dungeon area goes, I think false platforms/floors, invisble enemies ala OoT Shadow Temple would be an interesting idea. But yes, it's pretty obvious Diabolos is a Voidkin, and a very powerful one at that.