The Relic Weapons and justifying why the Jobmasters have them

[TinyRedLeaf]

In the end, I think the cleanest way to look at the lore will be to assume that one great adventurer from each class guild gets tangled up in events that led them to take up the mantle of a "job of old" on their journey to banish the darkness. These adventurers then come together as one and work together, the "canonical party," so to speak, represented by the CG Party we see in SE's big cinematic. Each one person, each inheriting one job, then takes up the historical restoration of one relic, associated with that job, and upgrades it until it becomes the same as those that the Zodiac Braves wielded (and maybe beyond, who knows.

That's the way I interpret the lore as well.

And this seems to have been implied early in the storyline as well, when you meet the Mothercrystal for the first time. If you recall, there were other adventurers with you (or, at the very least, one other elezen and roegadyn) at the the time. So, it's not too far a stretch for me to imagine that those guys also went on to become the epitome of their respective classes and jobs.

Lately, I've also begun thinking further about some of the themes of the game, and one of the predominant motifs is the "Echo" itself. If you think about it, much of the game is about reviving old knowledge to renew the present and refresh hopes for the future, be it in terms of us adventurers recovering the skills of ancient predecessors, or delving into the depths of the Coils of Bahamut, or ascending the lofty heights of the Crystal Tower.

In a sense, we're all trying to re-create a realm that's an echo of halcyon days long past. I don't know how well this interpretation actually sits with canonical lore, but I do know that I personally like it enough to try working it into my personal "head-canon" for Lyland.

[Anonymoose]

In a sense, we're all trying to re-create a realm that's an echo of halcyon days long past.

I've had this thought, myself, but never went anywhere with it because of lack of evidence aside from "It sounds really cool." You might be more right than you know. Think about it; we're trapped in a repeating cycle of eras, but only seven cycles, and the ultimate goal of most factions so far is for that wheel to end on the world's "true form." Nael van Darnus thought it would "purify the world," and though we later learned that he was a puppet of Bahamut, who had a pretty specific idea of world purification, who's to say it wasn't also a warped version of his own goals? He himself was a scholar of the Divine Chronicles, and he confirmed in the Second Coil that (despite Bahamut's influence) he really did intend to perform an all out GUNDAM "colony drop" with the Meteor Project.

Likewise, the Ascians speak nonstop about "returning the world to its true form" and how we might see eye to eye if we weren't so ignorant. If we were trapped in something unnatural and needed to return the world to its rightful state, your theory would make a lot of sense, specially if every time you failed to do so, the world was further warped and twisted, turning civilizations into beastmen, creating primals, etc. etc.

The only thing that would need some fleshing out is how the deities fit into this - The Twelve, Hydaelyn, Zodiark - when the "true world" was finally created, whose outcome is the best? I mean, probably The Crystal, knowing Final Fantasy but, hey...

Of course, again, there's not much evidence for anything at this point, but at the end of Chapter 1, when all the first theories go up, someone always has the right theory from day one, just incidentally. Wonder who it'll be for XIV ^^