New Heavensward Short Stories!

[Belhi]

I don't think we will get Tiamat story because they are called stories of the Dragonsong War and Tiamat wasn't involved at any stage in the Dragonsong war. She was already chained up on that Island before the Elezen even moved into the area around Ishgard to begin with.

That said I do hope she comes back into the story. I get this common theme among the Celestial Dragons of being so focused on the past the are trapped their by their memories at the cost of the present. Perhaps we will have some 'letting go of the past for the sake of the future' moment with them.

[Enkidoh]

Thordan VII is apparently the direct descendant of Thordan I which means 7 generations of kings have passed assuming each one names a Thordan. That's shockingly few. I'd compare to real life monarchs but the comparison falls apart when you realize lack of a Dragonsong War means constant political squabbles. Some reigns only last a couple years. Some only a few months. That's not the case with Ishgard which obsessively locks down its power to only a few families.

Inconsistent Lore is probably it. I'll just think of them as 22 and 28 in Elezen years so my brain doesn't collapse into a black hole.

I wouldn't take the 'VII' in the current Archbishop's name to mean that every archbishop of Ishgard is named 'Thordan', or even his predecessor was 'Thordan the VIth', just that he is the seventh to bare that name, much like real life monarchies (like the British royal family or the Catholic papacy). Besides, the Archbishop himself told Ayermic that 'countless men have worn these robes', and given the millennia that the Ishgardian church has existed, there is bound to have been Archbishops with names other than 'Thordan.'

Either way, despite the previous mention of the elezen apparently being longer lived than the other races, HW seemed to retcon this - Nidhogg sarcastically calls the elezen 'short lived' (athough that was almost definitely from the perspective of a near immortal dragon and thus any mortal life span was going to seem short to him), and Hraesvelgr reveals this to Estinien:

Hraesvelgr: "But struggle as thy might, thy youthful vigor will be spent ere thou reachest two score and ten."

'Two score and ten' is therefore seventy, meaning if Estinien is around the chronological age of twenty to thirty, that would mean that the extreme limit of an elezen's lifespan would be about a hundred. And given the fact Hraesvelgr mentioned specifically 'youthful vigor', it can be assumed that most elezen don't even reach that age. So really, based on this, I'm liable to regard elezen as not actually having that much longer lifespans than the rest of the spoken races - certainly not longer than a hundred years at the most.

[Ayuhra]

Nooo stop retconning things, game, my brain has enough trouble keeping track of things anyway...

[Dalvy]

I don't think we will get Tiamat story because they are called stories of the Dragonsong War and Tiamat wasn't involved at any stage in the Dragonsong war. She was already chained up on that Island before the Elezen even moved into the area around Ishgard to begin with.

That said I do hope she comes back into the story. I get this common theme among the Celestial Dragons of being so focused on the past the are trapped their by their memories at the cost of the present. Perhaps we will have some 'letting go of the past for the sake of the future' moment with them.

Doesn't mean she won't be talking to someone involved, like her brothers who were both in Azys lla. The Dragonsong War is not static--new people can enter the field at any time

[Anonymoose]

Either way, despite the previous mention of the elezen apparently being longer lived than the other races, HW seemed to retcon this <...> 'Two score and ten' is therefore seventy

I agree with almost everything you said there, but I have a slightly different perspective on the Elezen aging thing.

For starters, a pedantic correction, "two score and ten" is fifty. But the Elezen age information, as far as I can tell, is meant to be understood as small group of potentials and averages rather than a flat fact. The way Koji Fox (Fernehalwes) explained it at Fan Festival, biologically, childhood can last longer for Elezen, and, as a whole, they can live roughly twenty years longer than the other races (120 instead of 100). Biologically. Even if something is biologically immortal, however, it still dies if you mortally wound it, so most Elezen don't live any longer than the other five races usually do by virtue of the bountiful options Eorzea offers for getting dead.

Compare it to the real-world. Modern medicine and standards of living have radically extended our lifespans, but has that extended "youthful vigor" all that much? The average age of retirement for an NFL player is still 35. Boxers at the same age are considered old unless they're late-peakers. WWE can keep 'em in the ring until maybe 50 if you only risk them going out for pay-per-view for that last home stretch. Hraesvelgr is just saying that a knight has maybe 30 years to invest in the fight, if that, but Nidhogg has nothing but time to torture them, and their children, and their childrens' children, for millennia. Some of those knights who retire might still live to be pretty old if they weren't beaten too badly in their glory days. Jannequinard's pampered arse might make it the full 120, at this rate. 125, maybe, just to spite his family.

At the very least, I wouldn't say it's strong enough of a claim to call retcon.

[DarthSanguine]

'Two score and ten' is therefore seventy,

Nope, a score is 20, so two score and ten is 50.

[Ayuhra]

The way I had been logic-ing it out in my tiny brain before Elezen started to get hard ages attached to them was that Elezen aged at half the rate of Hyur and lived twice as long. That would cap them out at 150(ish) years if they managed to live a full, healthy life and not get axed. That seemed to make sense to me since it's a longer lifespan for sure but not so long that Elezen would have a warped perspective of time in relation to the other races. I certainly never got the sense that they were like elves in other pieces of fiction like Tolkien who just live into perpetuity.

Anyway. To tie this into the topic of the shorts we have now covered Aymeric/Estinien, Haurchefant and Ysayle. It does seem like the hero well is dry at this point unless the next story is Hilda the Mongrel (who seems like she will gain importance as this expansion goes along). Someone mentioned potential bad guys which I can see. Something dealing with Heaven's Ward would be neat. Either that or a story dealing with the other Fortemps, Our Humble Narrator the Count.

[Enkidoh]

For starters, a pedantic correction, "two score and ten" is fifty.

Nope, a score is 20, so two score and ten is 50.

Duh, me talky out of backside! You're both right - for some reason I thought a score was thirty not twenty. Thank you both for clarifying that.

[Zohar_Lahar]

I wouldn't take the 'VII' in the current Archbishop's name to mean that every archbishop of Ishgard is named 'Thordan', or even his predecessor was 'Thordan the VIth', just that he is the seventh to bare that name, much like real life monarchies (like the British royal family or the Catholic papacy). Besides, the Archbishop himself told Ayermic that 'countless men have worn these robes', and given the millennia that the Ishgardian church has existed, there is bound to have been Archbishops with names other than 'Thordan.'

The first archbishop was Reymanaud.

[Ayuhra]

The first archbishop was Reymanaud.

Hence Saint Reymanaud Cathedral. I pay attention to things in the game and am totally up on my lore, I promise.

I still thought Elezen aged way more slowly! Until now.

Video games, man. They mess with ya.