About the Warrior of Darkness.. theories? (spoiler-ish??)

[Kotemon]

I just got that far in to the MQ last night but

don't read if you're not interested..

Is it me or are all the members of that Party of Darkness (including the derplander) the characters that were in the intro to 1.0? As well as the warriors who were assumed to be saved by Louisoix in the intro to 2.0 ARR? In that intro it was shown that they were teleported into the present day. Yet they are shown to be fighting an unknown Ascian in the echo instead. Am I the only one who's thinking they were the former hero's of light from 5 years ago. I think some folks have said we were the hero returned from 5 years ago (in some form) but that didn't make sense in the intro. Did <player> just rise to take their place and will eventually be like them if we ever fail? Any theories?

What was the point of killing Ravana again if Ascians wanted the primals to be summoned?

[CyrilLucifer]

I'm going to keep any theories about the Warriors to myself until future patches, but as to your last question:

As I mentioned in the other thread, Unukalhai says specifically that RavEx and BisEx were likely not summoned by Ascians. The Warriors killing Ravana's incarnation definitely confirms this and that Elidibus does not want the Warring Triad released via the Primals. If their summoning was provoked by Ascians, it was not Elidibus.

There are a lot of interpretations beyond this. Mine is that Lahabrea and his group were basically rogue agents. They worked for the same overall goal, but using very different methods, which Elidibus states flat out in 2.1 to you and again to Nabriales. It's also the reason Elidibus gave Urianger the white auracite: they overstepped their boundaries. While Rav and BisEx were clearly post-mortem of Lahabrea, the 12th group was still working to finish Lahabrea's goals even with him defeated, as seen by the SMN questline.

I think the mistake a lot of people make with the Ascians is assuming they are all a hivemind, when it was one of the first points of introducing Elidibus to show that they don't all agree with each other. That was the purpose of the scene with Nabriales and Elidibus at the end of 2.1.

Short version:
3.1 Ravana, and any future Bismarck summoning, was not supported by Elidibus, but may have been done by the Ascian Watery Triad (Lahabrea's group). They aren't completely gone, we still have Pashtarot to deal with.
Alternatively, the summoning of BisEx and RavEx (and 3.1 Ravana) may have been instigated by another force entirely, after all, the method you use to encounter them is very, very odd and Unukalhai is vague about it.
The original ones in 3.0 may have been supported by Elidibus, or may have not. It's impossible to say.

[Berethos]

One thing to note with regard to the heroes having returned after 5 years, and how that didn't make sense with the introduction that you saw - for you and me, and others who started with 2.0, we are not among that group that was sent forward in time. We are often compared to them, and eventually are given the same title due to our actions in ARR, but they are a different group.

For those who played FFXIV during its 1.0 incarnation and finished the required story quests, they were the Warriors of Light that fought 5 years prior and had returned - not just in some form, but actually returned. The 5 Warriors of Darkness that you encounter were likewise at that same battle, but something happened after they were sent through time that set them down a different path than the one the 1.0 legacy players take (which is the 2.0 story...1.0 players and those of that started with 2.0 have the same story as of 2.0, but with minor dialog differences here and there for 1.0 players that reflects how their character was actually there and knew all of these people who don't remember them until later).

[Laerune]

I think the Warrior of Darkness are not working for Ascians in general, but for Elidiibus. It could be Elidibus has a different agenda then his brothers and sisters. I too think they are the 1.0 heroes, why else make them look alike?

The Warrior of Darkness are adventures that for some reason decided to turn away from Hydelyn. We know from the Echo vision that at one point they were fighting against an Ascian. Maybe Hydelyns blessing failed them and they found a new blessing in Ziodark. Maybe Hydelyn is the big bad and we are fighting as the champion of the real baddie? So many questions.

[Alberel]

I'm reluctant to follow the thinking that because they look like the characters from the trailer they ARE those characters. We know that Derplander and co have always been used as a proxy of sorts for our own characters in game media. I'm leaning more toward the Warriors of Darkness being entirely unrelated to the characters we've seen previously; their appearances merely being dark reflections of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the original intent was for the WoDs to actually imitate the player character's appearance but this would cause all kinds of complications with voice acting and such so they likely decided to use our favourite proxies again and turn them into real characters.

[Vexander]

I'm banking on them being Primals of the original Warriors of Light. They're two-dimensional enough to work that way. Maybe the Ascians usurped them and corrupted them something. I could see Ascians corrupting primals.

[Kallera]

Well, I beginning to think derplander and friends are from an alternate reality, a world which saw its last ascians destroyed.

Thing is there are things that don't connect...yet.

In the vision, derplander was about to destroy the last of the acsians on his world. Something must have happened to make him take up the opposing view to hydelyn's work and help Elidibus, and I think the outright removal of the acsians as a force might have something to do with it.

I guess the question i would want to ask out of all this is: is Zodiark's existence also waning/threatened at the moment? Perhaps it is not a case of the darkness getting stronger so much as both sides running out of power, seemingly stronger to the other out of desperation....



...or Zodiark could be Hydelyn, but that's a baseless guess at the moment.

[Berethos]

I'm reluctant to follow the thinking that because they look like the characters from the trailer they ARE those characters.

According to this - http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post898626 - they're both proxy's for our own characters (for trailer and advertising purposes it would seem) as well as characters that exist in Eorzea on their own. Since they are confirmed to exist, and this party of five is identical across the board...unless we learn later that they are a twisted version based on them but with a different origin, it's the same set of characters.

[Alberel]

According to this - http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post898626 - they're both proxy's for our own characters (for trailer and advertising purposes it would seem) as well as characters that exist in Eorzea on their own. Since they are confirmed to exist, and this party of five is identical across the board...unless we learn later that they are a twisted version based on them but with a different origin, it's the same set of characters.

That quote from Koji has always been very problematic though. He's speaking in the sense that Derplander is a real character in the same way that everyone else's WoLs are real characters even when perceived by another player; they're just not THE WoL in your version of the story. The easiest way to think of his statement is that Derplander is Koji's character. He exists in the world, but if he's not being played by you personally then he just another adventurer.

We saw Derplander go to Ishgard with Tataru and Alphinaud and become a dragoon in the trailers. If the WoD was the same Derplander then Alphinaud would have recognised him when we met them would he not? Of course as soon as we take control of our characters none of the stuff in those trailers ever actually happened to Derplander; it happened to OUR characters instead. This is why Koji's statement about Derplander being a real character can't be taken as literally as people would like: it's simply impossible for him to be real in that sense as soon as we players interact with the game as we replace Derplander in the story.

[Berethos]

We saw Derplander go to Ishgard with Tataru and Alphinaud and become a dragoon in the trailers. If the WoD was the same Derplander then Alphinaud would have recognised him when we met them would he not? Of course as soon as we take control of our characters none of the stuff in those trailers ever actually happened to Derplander; it happened to OUR characters instead. This is why Koji's statement about Derplander being a real character can't be taken as literally as people would like: it's simply impossible for him to be real in that sense as soon as we players interact with the game as we replace Derplander in the story.

We can still take it literally - when Koji talks about him being a proxy, he's talking about the times we see him in scenes and doing things that our own characters do in-game. When he's talking about him as a real and separate character, he's talking about the one we see in the CGI cinematic trailers. Even with the Heavensward trailer, what the Derplander (and crew, for the 1.0 and End of an Era) is involved in doesn't quite match up with what we do - he's fleeing alone at a different time from when we split off, he heads into Ishgard alone, etc.

Basically some of the representations of Derplander are proxy, some are him as a character - it's not fully one or the other, and now we've actually met the character version (from what we know at present).