[spoilers]3.2 MSQ Discussion/Reaction thread

[CyrilLucifer]

Wondering if anyone else has thought this. But after looking at Unukalhai's boots, they remind me alot of Alphinaud's. Which got me thinking....

Could Unukalhai be Allisaie in disguise? It would explain the history with the Garleans. Alot of Krile's assessment of Unukalhai also fits with this statement, as well as the fact that Lousoix's theme is playing during the scene. It would also explain Allisaie's accidental spying on Urianger and Elidibus at the end of 3.1...

Anyhow, just curious to see if this is a road that others might have considered as well.

Uh, well, no. He just has plain, unadorned boots. But if you're all about that, you're going to need to explain why Unukalhai's name has him directly related to Elidibus as the alpha serpentis. And why he can withstand the tempering - by his own words (and actions, considering he was with Krile in range). Ali doesn't have the Echo as far as we know.

[Berethos]

Bonus fun quote time, featuring 2.1 Elidibus:
Lahabrea is wrong about a great many things.

This, perhaps more than any other line, makes me think that most of the Ascians (basically all the black-robed crew) are actually as clueless as to what Zodiark's end goal and true motives are as we are with Hydaelyn's.

As for Cutest Ascian...of all the things he said, the one about wishing he had the strength for something has me the most curious. What did he fail to do, and how does that impact what he's doing now? I really hope we get an answer to that.

[CyrilLucifer]

This, perhaps more than any other line, makes me think that most of the Ascians (basically all the black-robed crew) are actually as clueless as to what Zodiark's end goal and true motives are as we are with Hydaelyn's.

I absolutely agree. This has been brought up by multiple people; it really does seem that the darker-robed Ascians are not aware of Zodiark's true will. It's like, say, a soldier fighting for their country loyally, believing wholly in its purpose, but without an idea of the true intentions of the politicians in charge. Hence Elidibus calling Lahabrea a Warrior; he is one who fights, not one whose focus is on diplomacy (very much like our WoL).

What's most interesting in that line for me is how it actually shows changes in Lahabrea. Forgive the tangent on Best Ascian, hiding it for those who don't want to see an analysis.

What brought that statement from Elidibus on was Minfilia mentioning that Lahabrea did not think terribly highly of the Echo - Elidibus obviously does think somewhat highly of it.

But then when you compare Lahabrea's actions throughout 2.X and 3.0 and then compare Elidibus' line of "Lahabrea may yet learn from his mistakes" - he actually does learn. I mean, I'm fond of calling Laha an idiot and brash, but it's really just me being all tsuntsun. It's clear that Lahabrea really did gain some respect for the power of mortals wielding the Echo, because he started using it to his advantage. Lahabrea did learn from his mistakes and is willing to change his stance. He's not closed-minded at all, but this he's willing to alter his strategy and take advantage of anything he sees fit - including the strength of the mortals (Ysayle) he despises.

Lahabrea is the best.

As for Cutest Ascian...of all the things he said, the one about wishing he had the strength for something has me the most curious. What did he fail to do, and how does that impact what he's doing now? I really hope we get an answer to that.

Well, I fall into the camp that Echo users can ascend into Lesser Ascians under the right circumstances, so my thoughts are obviously biased and highly steeped in crack.

Working on the assumption he's a Lesser Ascian and not Elidibus (I'm sure someone who believes he is Elidibus can find a theory as well!), the most interesting thing to note is that Unukalhai has a name. This doesn't seem like much, but none of Lahabrea's servants are named, they're titled. What that implies can only be called baseless crackpot and I'm not here to spout my crackpot at you unless you want to hear it, but I have seen others throw the idea around that some Lesser Ascians may be former Warriors of Light from their respective worlds.

So, Unukalhai could have failed to protect his world. Or even our world against Bahamut, as a Warrior from Carteneau.

While I'm not quite sure I would go that far, that's a bit of a stretch to make given the information we have in my opinion, I'm of the belief that Lesser Ascians need to die to become Lesser Ascians, so he may have had some purpose and goal before he was changed and was required to give up his original identity.

I think we can all agree he's not really a child at all. It's just his host, hence him slipping up and calling Krile small.

[Frederick22]

snip.

Honeslty I think Lahabrea did not learn anything, and thats why he got killed at the end.

On his first try he totally underestimate us. But what did he do on the second try? Nothing, only tryed to use a bigger hammer instead.

[CyrilLucifer]

You're conflating underestimating a foe with not learning. It's not on him that our Blessing became a Super Blessing in 3.0 (possibly from Minfilia's sacrifice) paired with us becoming stronger as well. If anything, he didn't underestimate us in the ARF, hence why he has Igeyorhm with him in order to counter our strength, since it was clear that one Ascian is not enough to take us down. He was definitely more prepared that time. If anything, it was Igeyorhm who underestimated us. Twice. Once after Bismarck, thinking we wouldn't get the Blessing back and that we weren't a threat. The second time was in the ARF when she popped out her dark crystal early.

If it had been Lahabrea with Thordan after Bismarck, we probably wouldn't have survived the encounter. He wanted us dead; Igeyorhm seemed to just want to do her duty (also shown in their pre-battle dialogue in the ARF to further the evidence for this).

He did learn, precisely for the reasons I stated. He started taking advantage of the Echo in mortals, when earlier he was basically just tossing it away as weak. He found mortal use of the Echo useless until we beat him out of Thancred with it.

Lahabrea underestimating us would have been him coming alone, thinking he could defeat us that way. Not learning would have been him continuing to view mortal potential with Echo as worthless. He does neither of these things.

[AutumnHarvestwind]

I havent followed the questlines involving him, but I would personally love to hear your theories on the cute ascian!

[CyrilLucifer]

Well, he's Cutest Ascian because he's all awkward and adorable and uncomfortable about how we trust him despite the fact that we clearly, really, really should not. He just doesn't know how to deal with it. Even our character seems to think he's an Ascian when we first encounter him, hence the initial hostility and Urianger having to tell us to be calm.

Since you mentioned not following Unukalhai or his theories, I'll start with a basic rundown on who he is and why I believe he is what he is.

This post is huge. Much bigger than I expected. So, spoilered.

First off, I have that nice post a page or so back that has some Unukalhai dialogue that defends the fact that he's very much not a normal child. Why would a child be our enemy at any given time? Urianger's line is "he's not our enemy - for now." Also, he has no fear of tempering and goes right up to Sephirot with Krile, which she calls him out on - remember, Lahabrea implies Ascians have the Echo in the ARF, and we all remember Elidibus' demonstration in 2.2 about the hidden capabilities of the Echo. Either he's tempered by another primal, which would be quite strange if he was helping us at all in that case, or he is in possession of the Echo. We can state this factually, because the game tells us it in the dialogue. He is not afraid of being tempered.

If you're unfamiliar with his name itself, Unukalhai is the alpha serpentis, one of the two sides of the serpent that are held by the Serpent Bearer, Ophiuchus. As the Ascian names and numbers - eg, Lahabrea corresponds to the 12th - are very much ripped directly from Ivalice, that leaves Zodiark as the 13th, representing Ophiuchus. So there's our direct connection, it's being shoved pretty blatantly in our faces. This is where totally-not-Elidibus-or-his-servant comes into play; the name easily implies he could be Elidibus, or a simple Lesser Ascian follower of Elidibus, as he says he is.

The master-servant relationship in most lines from Unukalhai clears up nothing on if it's Elidibus or a Lesser Ascian. A Lesser Ascian is a servant to his/her Ascian Overlord master; an Overlord is a servant to Zodiark. It's not terribly different from those who serve Hydaelyn, like us, on the Overlords' parts, so don't take it too literally. From what we've seen. Lesser Ascians more directly a serve their Overlord than Zodiark, going about more mundane duties, such as empowering the beast tribes and gifting them the ability to summon primals as we've seen demonstrated in the 2.X Extreme primal series, while the Overlord does other things.

We do know, factually, that Elidibus mentions he wants to Triad dealt with from his quote at the end of 3.1:
Our fates were ordained long ago, Archon. The Garleans are no exception. Nor the Triad. You know what must be done.

After this line in 3.1, if you speak with Urianger in the Sands, he mentions that, even though he knows now that the world is destined to head towards a terrible fate without interference, it is still within their ability to fight it, as if Elidibus is directly showing him how he can do so.

Urianger is seen in 3.2 helping us with Unukalhai's quests, which is quite odd, considering he almost never comes to us directly on primal quests. I'm personally of the belief that now that he is seeing the truth in Elidibus' words.

To further evidence that it's Elidibus involved, remember, in 3.0, the only time we see Elidibus is during the epilogue. What does he say? He needs to clean up after Lahabrea and Igeyorhm. What was the mess that Lahabrea and Igeyorhm left? Thordan attempting to awaken the Triad, hence why he was in the ARF, that's where the Triad core is.

Please note here that I am not making any judgments on why Elidibus wants the Triad dealt with and removed from the picture, that's another theory and not really related to who Unukalhai is, but Elidibus does for some reason or the other. I have my theories that I've posted everywhere, this post is not about that.

Finally, I'm not sure if they changed this when they changed the Ravana and Bismarck quests in 3.1 because I finished them in 3.0, but in order to fight against them again, Unukalhai gifts you items that are relics so ancient even the tribes themselves didn't even know they still existed. Where is a Spoken, let alone a child, going to find such items, let alone know what they are and can be used for?

So. If I've not at least convinced you he's either an Ascian or directly related to them I don't think anything can and you're probably going to be ignoring the evidence that's piling up in search of an undefended alternative.

The issue from there then, is he Elidibus? Is he a Lesser Ascian? Or is he just an Echo user in the service of Elidibus?

I believe it's possible to rule out the last simply because he appears to us as a child. If he appeared to us as an adult, we could not. You'll notice when he speaks to Regula, it's demeaning, not in the sense that Unukalhai is arrogant, but in the sense that he does not view an adult in the way a child views an adult. Krile also notes he's incredibly serene, to the point that no child is. Serenity is almost never an adjective that anyone applies to children of Unukalhai's [host's] age.

There's further evidence of this when you speak with Unukalhai again after the 3.2 Sephirot quest set. He notes that Y'shtola can see changes in aether and hence why it may lead to distrust about who he is. But as far as we know, we've no evidence that Y'shtola can sense an Echo user from a normal individual simply based upon their 'aura.' What she can probably sense is an Ascian in a host due to the way the internal aether flow is (likely) changed.

From there, it's either Elidibus using a child's body, or a separate lesser Ascian using the corpse of a child, because from the SMN questline, lessers can only inhabit corpses.

Personality-wise, building from the serenity comment, you'll notice Unukalhai layers praise on you quite frequently, buttering you up, so to speak. This is very similar to what Elidibus does in 2.1. Elidibus is an Emissary, it's his duty to smooth over negotiations with diplomacy; it makes sense that Unukalhai, as either Elidibus himself or his servant, would share these same traits.

My crackpot is that the Lesser Ascian servant takes on traits of the master, given how all of Lahabrea's servants have a very distinct personality similar to Lahabrea's, where Unukalhai has a personality more similar to Elidibus. I've no real evidence beyond that, though, hence being crackpot, which is something I indulge in quite frequently.

So. Why do I believe he's a Lesser Ascian and not Elidibus? Simply because I'm inclined to trust Unukalhai is who he says he is. He says he serves a friend. Zodiark is not your friend. However, in your shared goal of ridding Eorzea of the Triad, Elidibus is. For now - as Urianger puts it.

Now, on to Krile's assessment:

The first thing you'll notice when you see the dialogue is that Krile assumes she is right. Unukalhai doesn't really confirm or deny anything. She can't even see his features, so maybe there was something intended in the dialogue that implies it, but all he basically says in return is "Is that so.?"

Her assumption lines:

Just what are you hiding beneath that mask of yours? Hmmm... A longing for hope. An appetite for power. A lingering sense of regret.
And do I detect a desire to test your strength against a certain hero...?

His response?
...Is that what your gifts tell you?

Can we draw assumptions from that? I'm not sure. I wouldn't risk it, because it's easy enough to twist.

As I said, it may be that he doesn't want to challenge the Warrior of Light, he simply expects he must.

A longing for hope? Regret? These are extremely vague and could describe literally any character in the game. Including ours. And the search for power is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, after all, we do it in every class quest from 30-60. In my opinion, Krile isn't very good at judging personalities, she could very much be describing our character or, say, Thancred, with those same adjectives.

The interesting thing about this scene is that we have Unukalhai's point of view with Regula, rather than ours. So when he makes a comment regarding the Garleans, it's like 'yeah, he's totally right, they're going to interfere!' -but then you forget that no one else, including your character, saw Regula there, which made everyone distrustful of Unukalhai when they didn't need to be. We saw what he saw, we know he's speaking the truth regarding the Garleans. But to the Scions? That's an almost unnatural form of precognition. I just thought this was an neat form of storytelling.

But I digress.

Who do I think Unukalhai is?
Well, as I said, I'm of the belief that Echo users can ascend to Lesser Ascians under the right circumstances with a proper catalyst, of which we know nothing about, due to the cutscene with the Sahagin Elder and particular dialogue in the level 60 SMN quest.

So I believe that at one point he was a mortal Echo user and he did fail at his purpose, which ended in his death. But in doing so, became an Ascian. Does he want to be an Ascian? We don't know; they may be unwilling thralls that serve their Overlord. Lesser Ascians are so interesting and I'd absolutely love more information on them sooner rather than later.

All I can say with a certainty at this point is that Cutest Ascian is shaping up to be our sympathetic Ascian that may give us some moral grey areas with them regarding our character. And that's exactly what I've wanted from the beginning when Elidibus was introduced.

Ascian showing something like fear and drawing his mage staff just because a garlean legatus shows up? Did any Ascian ever draw a weapon in affect to defend himself?

That's exactly what Lesser Ascians do. Chalice is the only exception. The Lesser Ascians in the level 60 SMN quests all user player weapons and animations.

[Neophyte]

I don't buy this Unukalhai => (lesser) Ascian, just because of the last cutscene involving him.
An Ascian showing something like fear and drawing his mage staff just because a garlean legatus shows up? Did any Ascian ever draw a weapon on impulse, to defend himself? I don't think so and I think Unukalhai acted all human.

Also this mask-thing... 1) If it's a morphed Elidibus, why wear a mask? Can't you change your face (what we've never seen before anyway), too?
2) If it's anyone else, we won't meet (or haven't met yet) in other circumstances, why wear a mask?

I don't remember precisly, but was it Unukalhai's mask which was picked up from the table in the end of MSQ? I just don't buy this 'an Ascian who dresses up physically, to hide his identity', because.. rly?

[Frederick22]

I don't buy this Unukalhai => (lesser) Ascian, just because of the last cutscene involving him.
An Ascian showing something like fear and drawing his mage staff just because a garlean legatus shows up? Did any Ascian ever draw a weapon on impulse, to defend himself? I don't think so and I think Unukalhai acted all human.

Also this mask-thing... 1) If it's a morphed Elidibus, why wear a mask? Can't you change your face (what we've never seen before anyway), too?
2) If it's anyone else, we won't meet (or haven't met yet) in other circumstances, why wear a mask?

I don't remember precisly, but was it Unukalhai's mask which was picked up from the table? I just don't buy this 'an Ascian who dresses up physically, to hide his identity', because.. rly?

Its beacuse of the significate of the word "Unukalhai", that everyone has so many doubts about the kid.

[CyrilLucifer]

snip?

You're a SMN, come on now. Everything you've said there is answered in the SMN questline. I replied to you above about the weapons, but yes, Lesser Ascians use weapons. Chalice is the only one that doesn't - he's the exception, not the rule. Don't you remember fighting them? You kill off the rest of Lahabrea's Lesser servants alongside Chalice; one uses a Sword (unsurprisingly Sword), the other uses a BLM staff like Unukalhai.

As for the masks - because Lesser Ascians wear masks. Keep in mind they need to inhabit corpses, this likely has something to do with the decay on their face. Though I really think it's more symbolic than anything to do with the condition of the bodies they inhabit. But all Lesser Ascians have the full face mask. We have yet to see an exception under any circumstance when they're robed. The one exception was from 1.0 and things were...different back then. We don't even know if it was a Lesser Ascian.

You seem to be confounding Lesser Ascians and Overlords, I'm not sure why you think they're "dressing up" at all. Can you elaborate on this statement with the above information in mind?

But Unukalhai doesn't show fear to Regula. Where are you getting that? He draws his weapon. That's all.
Read the dialogue again. He's defending himself, but fear? No. Quite the opposite, he tells Regula off.

I doubt it. You Garleans never learn. You covet the means to enslave primals─but in your headlong dash to control that which you do not understand, you show less wisdom than the very beast tribes that summoned them!

As for the mask, no it's different. The mask in the ending sequence is a halfmask, Unukalhai's is full.
Edit: To Frederick, it's a lot, lot more than that. I have a huge post edited up there with evidence. Also, look at the last page for some quotes.