Meracydia/Miqo'te/Azys La speculations (spoilers)

[verislie]

Stagnation grew, probably a class deficit as well, causing unrest and non compliance with allagan citizens versus those in power. Amon brings Xande back to resurgence the fallen glory. The allagan empire is still filled with more casual citizens who may have patriotism, but not so much the drive for war as new Xande does as the old xande did.

Xande loses his sh1t on the population who still hold bitterness towards his cause for global domination. As an example of these azeyma believers, he tosses parts of their religious capital up in the air as an example to be made of and desecrated qarn (?).

His daughter, who is more on the people\\'s side, feign desperately for means to stop him and finds an answer within a shadowy figure from between the void. He supplies her with the information and resources to overload a energy transference from dalamud to the tower and straight wrecks the environment, the empire, and the era.

[verislie]

So I'm not sure if there's time line issues or other story canon not lining up with that story I just posted, but I do have a few questions.

Are these temples and azys laminated with the sun goddess motif as a display for religious purpose? And when was azys la founded? Could it be that the religious significance of these areas underlie a plethora of crystals which new xande needed to obtain the power of darkness? With all this aether being drained from the world and stored within the tower, how did the environment fare under this unbalanced system? A mighty earthquake really decimated floating cities? What if the earthquake tossed azys la in the sky? That last one seems less believable due to the anchors underneath, unless those were premeditated.

[Chewy2nd]

Velruis on the /r/ffxiv subreddit posted this, seems to confirm the Meracydia-Miqo'te connection

[Eisen-Zorn]

Reminder: Xande was only one ruler of the Allagan Empire. They supposedly were around a long time, so it's quite possible that the Allagans were ruled by more than just Xande. Remember, Xande is referred to in the Crystal Tower story as the greatest ruler of Allag, so it's likely that Xande was just a very well liked and prosperous king.

Still, considering that the Crystal Tower is directly connected to Dalamud which is directly connected to Bahamut, it's likely that Azys Lla was created shortly before Amon cloned Xande or shortly after the Xande Clone took power. That is, assuming that Bahamut's resurrection and imprisonment in Dalamud coincide with the building of the Crystal Tower. It's possible that the Allagans put him in Dalamud long before and decided later to build the Crystal Tower to harness his power.

Either way, it's highly unlikely that Azys Lla was created when the original Xande was alive.

[Kallera]

It does seem likely that azis lla was made to research how to contain bahamut. As there are rooms containing dragons in tubes, as well as a island full of fresh meracydian dragons, (likely a penal colony back in the day that broke down.) So it is at least tied to the eventually creation of dalamud. Harvesting primal power may have been a separate project born out of azis lla's research. What im getting at is it may be connected to the crystal tower, but what's its connection to cloning Xande?

[Riusvell]

Velruis on the /r/ffxiv subreddit posted this, seems to confirm the Meracydia-Miqo'te connection

That would be me, actually! I was sleeping when -Kryptonite- posted in my reddit thread I had to put it in there myself.
But, thanks for doing that while I was practically laying knocked out!

Also, interesting to note; The Sesame seeds are harvested in Sea of Clouds, which happens to be the last area before you can go to Azys La.

[Fenral]

So based on all of this, we could surmise the early allagan empire devoted themselves to the sun goddess Azeyma. They built the temple of qarn, azys la (on the ground) among other structures of reoccurring importance in the story. Before xande's first death, the empire completed the crystal tower which would now power the empire.

Source? I see this mentioned a lot, but can find it in neither the quest dialogue nor the NOAH reports, at least in English. The empire thrived for a thousand years between the reigns of Xande, and some unspecified event, some unspecified amount of time after the completion of Syrcus Tower, initiated its rapid decline in a matter of generations. But from what start date?

My current hunch is that it was simply how they used the Tower. The generation that completes it thinks they've done something great for their kids, and in turn tell their kids it's the source of prosperity for the whole of the empire. Those children then raised children who never knew what life was like without a wellspring of limitless energy providing for their every want, and once the generation that remembered life before it finally passed, there were none in the empire who could imagine life without it. Desire and ambition are successfully eliminated from the human race, at least in the Allagan Empire, but it's not the perfect world they hoped to build, as those same forces were what held the empire together. So they revive the man who started it all.

His daughter, who is more on the people\\'s side, feign desperately for means to stop him and finds an answer within a shadowy figure from between the void. He supplies her with the information and resources to overload a energy transference from dalamud to the tower and straight wrecks the environment, the empire, and the era.

We actually don't have enough info to determine which faction, if any, the Princess belonged to. From what we know she could just as easily be a Xande loyalist. However, if she whose memories live on in G'raha consorted with Ascians, you'd think he'd have thought that was worth mentioning. If that does prove to be the case, and he didn't tell us for whatever self-absorbed reason, I'm taking a knife and carving the flesh off the shoulder where he dares to wear the mark of the Scions. It's probably not the case, though we do know the Ascians were at least involved on the Meracydian side of things.

So I'm not sure if there's time line issues or other story canon not lining up with that story I just posted, but I do have a few questions.

Are these temples and azys laminated with the sun goddess motif as a display for religious purpose? And when was azys la founded? Could it be that the religious significance of these areas underlie a plethora of crystals which new xande needed to obtain the power of darkness? With all this aether being drained from the world and stored within the tower, how did the environment fare under this unbalanced system? A mighty earthquake really decimated floating cities? What if the earthquake tossed azys la in the sky? That last one seems less believable due to the anchors underneath, unless those were premeditated.

Canon issues with the Crystal Tower storyline? Nonsense!

The founding date of Azys Lla is unknown, but Tiamat's presence indicates that it was at the very least in use during the second reign of Xande. Some of the facilities seem to have been re-purposed form elsewhere in the empire, but when is tricky, not to mention the biggest question of them all: if Xande had access to the "infinite" energy of the Warring Triad, why in all the Hells didn't he try to use them instead of the only "near-infinte" Syrcus Tower?

Still, considering that the Crystal Tower is directly connected to Dalamud which is directly connected to Bahamut, it's likely that Azys Lla was created shortly before Amon cloned Xande or shortly after the Xande Clone took power.

What im getting at is it may be connected to the crystal tower

This is digging into FF3 a bit more, but the tower that Desch sacrificed himself (temporarily) to preserve in that game was the primary control unit for FF3's Floating Continent. We already have a "Desch," that is to say, the "last of the Ancients" who sacrificed himself to preserve a certain tower, and they really wanted to be sure FF3 vets made the Desch connection to that character before he left, so...

Unlike the Binding Coil, we still have yet to see the CT lore referenced at all outside of its own storyline, but the possibility of a tangible storyline connection between the Tower and Azys Lla is not zero.

[Eisen-Zorn]

I'm guessing this is the possible timeline:

- Allagan Empire rises to almost absolute power.
- Xande Dies.
- Eikon's wage war on Allagan Empire.
- Allagan Empire expends ridiculous amounts of resources combating the Eikon and Primal threat.
- Allagans create Ultima and Omega to battle the Primal and Eikon threat.
- Allagans managed to subdue the Eikons.
- Allagans create Azys Lla and begin attempting to harness the power of the Warring Triad.
- The Crystal Tower is created as a focal point to harness the power of the Warring Triad.
- Something, possibly Tiamat and Bahamut, cause an incident at Azys Lla.
- Bahamut is defeated, but Tiamat is imprisoned in Azys Lla.
- The Ascians convince Tiamat to resummon Bahamut.
- Bahamut rages against The Allagan Empire.
- The Allagans mange to subdue, but not defeat, Bahamut. He is contained within the Allagan creation Dalamud.

- This is where the timeline gets confusing. For whatever reason, perhaps Bahamut or something with The Warring Triad, The Allagans completely abandoned Azys Lla. I say abandoned because the facility appears to have been left running and just simply locked away never to be found. Perhaps it was restarted when Thordan arrived, but even the Guidance Nodes address you as if you're just a visitor to the facility. It's as if The Allagans just left it one day and never went back. Whatever the reason, it seems to coincide with Tiamat's resummoning of Bahamut.

- Dalamud is created and The Crystal Tower is now being used to focus the power of Bahamut.
- Amon, not satisfied with the state of The Allagan Empire, clones Xande and his family to rule Allag again.
- The power of Dalamud is not sufficient to reclaim The Allagan Empire's glory days.
- Xande becomes reclusive and seeks greater power from The Void.
- Xande makes a pact with The Cloud of Darkness.
- Xande's daughter manages to thwart this attempt and The Cloud of Darkness is prohibited from entering Eorzea.
- While The Cloud of Darkness is stopped, Xande's daughter inadvertently causes the Crystal Tower to overload and essentially buries The Crystal Tower and the rest of Allag in the region.
- The Allagan Empire is reduced to almost nothing and eventually fades away leaving only its history.

It's not clear why Azys Lla was abandoned, but a lot of it seems to be rooted in when The Ascians appeared to begin interfering in the affairs of The Allagan Empire. We don't really know what The Allagan Empire was really doing with The Warring Triad aside from wanting a perpetual power source. It's possible that whatever they did there got the attention of The Ascians, and after the whole Bahamut incident they locked it away. In fact, now that I think about it, it makes sense that The Allagans would go through a lot of trouble of sealing away Azys Lla to keep The Ascians away from it. The Ascians can teleport pretty much anywhere, but Lahabrea needed the key to Azys Lla to get inside.

So, I'm guessing that The Allagans played with too much power, The Ascians showed up and started wrecking everything, The Allagans started spending all of their time trying to keep The Ascians out of their affairs, and then The Ascians finally shut it all down by convincing Xande's daughter to overload the Crystal Tower.

TL;DR: It's The Ascians fault.

[Kallera]

Omega, iirc, was made to deal with bahamut specifically. Unless there was a correction on this.

There presence of a protoype ultima(proto-ultima) suggests that the ultima weapon was either mass produced or the develoment branched into multiple antiprimal units to handle primals and eikons, the magitek we know today may be based on the lesser designs.

Did the allagan's use of autonomous military weapons start here? Maybe that was their answer to primal "tempering".

[Riusvell]

So I just recently did Qarn, and stayed behind to explore a bit and maybe see some things.
I took a screenshot of one of the pedals where you have to kill a facer on, and well... I went to Azys Lla to check the structures out myself.
Now this might be a bit of a stretch but, I observed the flooring of the Cathedral. And they, for me, do seem to have a bit of a similarity.



As I said, this might be a bit of a stretch. I can't say those two are actually related.
Here is the album of what I could screen before I got kicked out of the dungeon because it ended; http://imgur.com/a/7PSu0#12