Revelations from Patch 4.4

[Remedi]

something to point out

Solus said that he was sleeping till Lahabrea blew it, it might indicate that he came out of hiding only after the events of ARF, which would mean that the Varis we meet in the sea of clouds was the real Varis and only after that he became essentially a slave to the scheme of Solus, this would also explain the difference that can be felt and the loyalty of Regula

About the rest

I don't understand if they are implying that the burn died because of what the allagans did to send azys lla and dalamud into the sky, considering that what Solus said about it being dead because of the primals might aswell be considered false, we might say that it was allagans yet again the cause, but I might be wrong. That aside it was good to finally see that they shown us the allagans ruins, that they teased at fanfest, of azim steppe (azys, azim .....I wonder), afterall the allagans did conquer the whole world, they are bound to have ruins everywhere.
A pityt that the depletion of aether everywhere was only alluded I suppose it's reserved for the expansion or 4.5, but with the archons in their situation who knows, perhaps they are sidelining all of them by the end of 4.5 to get us to a new low for the expansion.

I think that the black rose part was just a way to confirm to us that the shadow hunter is Gaius, his speech patterns really tells us so, perhaps even Alphinaud realized. It didn't really move their plot, but it's a confirmation

[ObsidianFire]

something to point out

Solus said that he was sleeping till Lahabrea blew it, it might indicate that he came out of hiding only after the events of ARF, which would mean that the Varis we meet in the sea of clouds was the real Varis and only after that he became essentially a slave to the scheme of Solus, this would also explain the difference that can be felt and the loyalty of Regula

I like this idea a lot.

When Varis found out about Solus will end up determining a lot of how I fell about Varis, I think. Because if he didn't know about Solus until after ARF... yeah, everything we see in the Sea of Clouds (and probably Regula's orders during Sephirot) is him without any pressure being put on him. Not that he can't change his mind later, but still. It would say something about what he was planning to do with the Garlean Empire before he started being manipulated.

About the rest

I don't understand if they are implying that the burn died because of what the allagans did to send azys lla and dalamud into the sky, considering that what Solus said about it being dead because of the primals might aswell be considered false, we might say that it was allagans yet again the cause, but I might be wrong. That aside it was good to finally see that they shown us the allagans ruins, that they teased at fanfest, of azim steppe (azys, azim .....I wonder), afterall the allagans did conquer the whole world, they are bound to have ruins everywhere.
A pityt that the depletion of aether everywhere was only alluded I suppose it's reserved for the expansion or 4.5, but with the archons in their situation who knows, perhaps they are sidelining all of them by the end of 4.5 to get us to a new low for the expansion.

I think that the black rose part was just a way to confirm to us that the shadow hunter is Gaius, his speech patterns really tells us so, perhaps even Alphinaud realized. It didn't really move their plot, but it's a confirmation

On the Burn

Solus saying the Burn is a result of primal summoning is a classic case of Ascian manipulation. Only it's him manipulating everyone in the Garlean Empire. As far as we can tell, there never was any primal summoning in the Burn to begin with. The Allagans purposely drained an entire area of aether to hack of pieces of it for Azys Lla. They just didn't turn off the aether drain afterwards.

[Alleo]

About the MSQ discussion

I like this idea a lot.

When Varis found out about Solus will end up determining a lot of how I fell about Varis, I think. Because if he didn't know about Solus until after ARF... yeah, everything we see in the Sea of Clouds (and probably Regula's orders during Sephirot) is him without any pressure being put on him. Not that he can't change his mind later, but still. It would say something about what he was planning to do with the Garlean Empire before he started being manipulated.

Well Solus did say that he was happy that his job was done but got called back by Elidibus because of Lahabreas mistake so I do believe that he was not there to influence Varis after Solus "death". If we count Lahas death as the mess up then he only came back into the picture after Thordans death, maybe even later than that because Elidibus still had the WoD. They were his new players to create the next calamity so I see no reason to him already calling Solus back. Thus Varis should have had at least a time where he established himself and thanks to some sources like the theater group we do know that he does censorship, something that even Solus did not do.

So I dont think that his hands were tied all the time. Heck I am not really sure if his hands are completely tied at all. Yes he is in a harder place but only because Elidbus got hands on his sons body. This is a problem for him and may be why he is displeased. We learned from Thancred that Zenos is important for him (strange how he still showed no remorse for his death) because of infighting. This way Elidibus is a bit of a threat because showing the people that his son is not truly alive anymore could lead to conflict and maybe even have the people question if Varis is also working with them. But again this only happened at the end of 4.0. Before that we have no clue if Elidibus was strongly in his politic and how much power he wielded.

Solus might have been the old emporer but he is official death. He died as an old man thus he cant just show up again. People would not trust him and should not side with him so I can only truly see him as dangerous by creating conflict inside Garlemald by helping the rebells if Varis does not do what they want. But seemingly they dont want to have fights inside Garlemald (maybe that would not give enough energy to create a calamity) and maybe thats even the reason why both Ascians controll Varis now.

We are also shown that Elidibus still does not act completely on his own will. He asked for Varis permisson to act as Zenos but Varis did not give him one. Thus he could not attack. That shows that he still has enough power left. And if his people are really that important to him, why does he do cencorship, why does he kill opponents? Why did he not stop the plan with Doma?

So as long as we dont find out that he was fighting against them the whole time I will still remain negative towards him. Because he was still the person that outright said that he wants to kill all the beast tribes and anyone that can summon primals (Which would probably be against the plan of the Ascians since primal summoning is great for their goal). He still called other savages, he still does not allow certain opinions under his rule and he still gave his okay to shot down a Garlean ship just because they were his opponents. Just because we have Ascian involvement does not suddenly mean that he was never okay with any of that. Because if he cant say or do anything about this, how should he realistically be able to work with Alphinaud for example?

Maybe his view is simply that men alone should be mighty thus he would have still conquered the lands and tried to destroy primals and is just annoyed that he has the ascian on his side or that his country just grew that fast because of them. (Heck we dont even have informations on when he learned about his grandfather. He could have known it all the time or he simply learned it after the death of his son. Or somewhere inbetween.)

Its just way to early to give him a white vest just because he might be controlled now (and it really depends if he is even that much controlled).

What we do know right now is that Garlemald only exists as a playground for the Ascians and to grow chaos and to create calamities (thus our hint about the empire itself - not the people living in it- being evil is right) and that their leader right now is influenced by them. We do not know if maybe they truly have the same goals (like Solus has hinted) or if Varis wants something completely different. All we know is that Solus was not always there, that Elidibus still asked for permission to start another attack and did not get one because of some doubts. We do not know what doubts he has. Maybe he really wants peace, maybe he just wants to rule the world without Ascians by his side or maybe he is just annoyed that Elidibus used a primal at Doma (against his wishes) and now does not want to work with them anymore. Anything else is speculation. So it would be the best to not write that others lack an understanding in seeing nuance just because they see it different. Maybe he is a good person and will work together with us, maybe not. But at least the infos we do have right now dont lean towards the first imo, and if it happens maybe more in a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of way.

Big post over. Just had this flying around my head the whole day and wanted to post it.

[Rosenoire]

Varis and Zenos:

We learned from Thancred that Zenos is important for him (strange how he still showed no remorse for his death) because of infighting.

For me, Varis' callousness about his son's death makes so much more sense now than after the end of 4.0, because my take away was that Zenos hasn't truly been his son for a long time. Whenever Elidibus decided that Zenos would be an "irreplaceable test subject" and gave him the artificial Echo, I think it drove him insane. It makes perfect sense that Varis stopped thinking of him as his son when he realized that he was a monster, and as he noted, "monsters don't belong on thrones". As I mentioned earlier, it also makes me wonder about the circumstances of Zenos' birth. Did Solus suggest that Varis might make a better choice of heir if he had an heir of his own, fully anticipating that a child would be a useful tool, or potential host for another Ascian?

Its just way to early to give him a white vest just because he might be controlled now (and it really depends if he is even that much controlled).

I'm certainly not ready to call Varis a good guy, but I do have some sympathy for him that I definitely didn't previously. Yes, he's ruthless--he'd have to be to claw his way to the top of the Empire. But then he finds out that his grandfather was a meat puppet for an embodiment of Chaos and that everything he thought was true about the founding of the Empire was probably a lie. At some point his son is given an experimental treatment that turns him into a maniacal killing machine. His only real friend gets killed. I'm thinking censoring artists was largely out of spite and a desire to damage something his grand-Ascian liked. That's still not good, but it is understandable.

I liked the idea that the Empire's problems were due to human failings rather than shadowy manipulation from evil overlords. But I do appreciate that Varis now feels less like he came from the Generic Final Fantasy Evil Emperor factory and more like a character with some depth and shades of grey.

[Alleo]

My answers about Varis and Zenos (10 character limit ftw)

Varis and Zenos:

For me, Varis' callousness about his son's death makes so much more sense now than after the end of 4.0, because my take away was that Zenos hasn't truly been his son for a long time.

Do we know that Zenos was not mad before he got the resonant? Because for me it seems like he was already quite battle hungry in the echo cutscenes and Fordola at least only got it in SB after they got Krile and used her echo. I did read up that Zenos was the only one that was for the exerpiments in the court but wouldnt Varis as the emporer be able to just end it if he had big doubts about that? Also if it was Zenos that was for this experiment wouldnt it make more sense that it was him that used himself as a test subject? Elidibus might have influenced them a bit but we saw that he does have to ask for permission to do something, even in the body of Zenos, and before Zenos death he had no body that we know of thus should have not been able to force anything. So imo we dont know if Varis was fine with the experiments but he at least should have known about it (otherwise what kind of emporer is he if he does not know about such things happening) and should have been able to stop it (just like he did not start the next part of the war even with Elidibus right there). Thats why I am also quite skeptic about giving Varis any sympathy. Maybe he was fine with all of it until he saw that they might go behind their own words or maybe after Elidibus wore his own sons body. And as long as we dont know this I still see him as part of the problem. If SE goes another way fine, then I will have to eat my words (and nothing wrong with that because we are always just speculating on a story that are not shown fully) but right now he is still the person that restricts the freedom of speech, that allowed experiments to happen under his rule, that sent out troopes to kill the opponents and that had nothing against the Ascians plan until they summoned a primal, so he just does not create much sympathy in me.

Also since we learned that Zenos was important because having a heir stopped any fighting inside Garlemald so him being untouched by his death is still strange to me. No matter on how he saw his son, if Elidibus had not worn him as his new suit the message of his death would have gone out somewhere in the future thus could have created more unrest. Thus my surprise.

(And just to be sure: I never said that Varis could not have some good points but at least for me the bad thing that we know of [we will see if they are true or not] always were worse for me thus he was evil in my eyes. But being evil does not mean imo that he does not have the ability to feel doubt or have any nuance just that he was never someone that I would side with and that should be gone for a better future for the world. And as long as we dont get to see truly good things from him or learn that he never wanted anything bad for anyone, I will continue to believe that way. Because SE had shown that they are completely fine with making Garlemald as a country into being evil by letting it only exist to create chaos. Thus I remain skeptic if Varis wont just be another villian.)

[Remedi]

On the Burn

Solus saying the Burn is a result of primal summoning is a classic case of Ascian manipulation. Only it's him manipulating everyone in the Garlean Empire. As far as we can tell, there never was any primal summoning in the Burn to begin with. The Allagans purposely drained an entire area of aether to hack of pieces of it for Azys Lla. They just didn't turn off the aether drain afterwards.

On this topic, there's something about 1.0

If I remember correctly there was a cutscene in 1.0, where the MC was seeing a group of garleans that were like mindcontrolling some lalafells I think and telling them to go against the eikons, maybe SE is finally using that plot point (it was during the first scenario of 1.0 btw) and implying that they were servants of Solus that were corrupting ppl to sic them in killing primals, afterall ascians have always said after each kill of a primal it is actually making hydaelyn weaker. Perhaps Solus' shadow is much deeper than we realize

Edit: FOUND IT! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps-giTboFpc From 14:20 minutes

The speech of the centurion clearly doesn't sound very garleanish to me

[Anonymoose]

On this topic, there's something about 1.0
The speech of the centurion clearly doesn't sound very garleanish to me[/hb]

If I recall correctly, he was using Gaius-approved indoctrination techniques, showing a group of children what the world could become if the primals were not stopped and riling them up to take the fight to the beast tribes. I love that speech because it totally holds up. You could rally a Garlean legion with that today and it's still true.

[AmemeAmeklin]

On Dotharli beliefs...

The Dotharl believe that if you kill yourself in the House of the Crooked Coin, you remove your soul from the reincarnation cycle. The idea that it isn't just Ascian/Echo users' souls that can float around after death and attach to a body but everyone is intriguing...but more interesting to me right now is the idea that perhaps all those Dotharli who killed themselves on the statue (who removes the bodies?!) actually had their aether integrated into it.

We already know it's possible for souls to follow others around post-demise, ex: Haurchefant and Ysayle appeared to help us save Estinien. For the Dotharl reincarnation cycle to be true, their children would have to be without a soul at conception, meaning they are all technically just empty vessels waiting around for a soul, meaning no new souls are generated. Sometimes, they say, a soul from another tribe or place is reborn as a Dotharl (to explain unfamiliar souls).

It was an interesting concept before but now I really wonder how much of it is actually true and what connections Nhaama/Azim have to the facts we currently know about gods, deities, kami, and ancient civilizations...

[Iscah]

...as we know that [Ascians] require a host to manifest on this star.

I've forgotten the details of the "how Ascians work" information - does it say for sure that they need to be within a host at all times? Or are they perhaps just a lot more vulnerable without one. (Not trying to prove you wrong, just trying to reconcile that information with what we've seen happen.)

The Black Rose:

Gaius suspects that the Ascians are responsible for making use of the Black Rose. This could very well be true, though I reckon there's another viable alternative. Zenos. The original one, that is. He did have access to pretty much everything in Ala Mhigo after all...and he's depraved enough to use it on a whim, perhaps in an effort to lure the Warrior of Light for another confrontation in the hope that he can get the true death that he desires? Even if the original Zenos is unrelated to the use of the poison, the fact that he did not show up at all in the latest batch of MSQ's makes me even more certain that he'll be dealt with as the final boss of 4.5 - as a loose end to tie up.

I'm not sure it would be Zenos's way to use poison like that. Given his 'thrillseeking' mindset and love of swordfighting, if he wanted to kill an entire encampment of people, I feel like he'd do it himself.

Also it seems like a very long shot to do that out in the middle of nowhere on the off chance that the Warrior of Light happens to stumble across it. It would be different if it was in an area we're active in, or we were already on his trail and he wants to get us riled up.

I always thought that was his Uncle Titus' casket?

I don't think it was ever said that Titus had died? The only death directly talked about is Solus, and then it shows the coffin and Varis spitting on it. I assumed it was therefore Solus, and it set Varis up in a negative light in his introduction. It wasn't until reading other people's discussions here that I heard it might be Titus instead, which made more sense (at the time), assuming we were supposed to read between the lines that Varis 'won' the war of succession because Titus had died / was assassinated.

It also doesn't help that we (the players, not the WoL) know what Zodiark looks like. He looks like Hydaelyn's dark purple twin. I'd kind of expect to see him if he was the one talking to us...

Do we know that for sure? Or has it just been assumed that dark crystal was "Hydaelyn's opposite" Zodiark?

I interpreted it as a vision of Hydaelyn being corrupted somehow.

about Solus

so is that the real solus or ascian possed solus im confused

I took it to be "the Ascian who was possessing the person named Solus throughout most-if-not-all of his military career and reign as emperor" who is now 'freed' from that body, but still essentially is the person who built and ruled the Garlean empire all this time.

On Dotharli beliefs...

The Dotharl believe that if you kill yourself in the House of the Crooked Coin, you remove your soul from the reincarnation cycle. The idea that it isn't just Ascian/Echo users' souls that can float around after death and attach to a body but everyone is intriguing...but more interesting to me right now is the idea that perhaps all those Dotharli who killed themselves on the statue (who removes the bodies?!) actually had their aether integrated into it.

I took it as the person jumping into the chasm, and presumably being absorbed entirely into the pool of aether.

And a random thought:

Because I clearly have my priorities straight... at whatever point we have the Scions 'recovering after getting their souls back', I wonder if we get to see Urianger's face properly again? I'd wondered prettymuch from the start of the game what he looked like, so it was good to finally see him without his hood and goggles in the Warriors of Darkness arc (once I'd gotten over the shock of it being him). Was just getting kind of used to it and then he was back to usual.

This may also be part of why I want Estinien to get back into the story. Still getting used to him with that appearance and connecting it up mentally to Edgy Heavensward Dragoon, because we only ever see him briefly and then he's off again. Still, it's been nicer replaying HW with my alt knowing what he actually looks like, being able to picture him reacting to things more easily, because it was bothering me throughout my first time around. (But I do also want him back because he's an interesting character.)

[Lauront]

I've forgotten the details of the "how Ascians work" information - does it say for sure that they need to be within a host at all times? Or are they perhaps just a lot more vulnerable without one. (Not trying to prove you wrong, just trying to reconcile that information with what we've seen happen.)

It's a good question and I've not been able to find a solid answer, as the lorebook is somewhat nebulous on their true nature. They certainly don't need to be in a host to exist, and we know this because if their host dies, the Overlords at the very least can simply vanish away to safety through the power of the crystal of Darkness, in the Aetherial Rift - weaker Ascians don't seem to share this power, perhaps due to their lack of adequately developed mastery over their Echo. The Overlords don't even appear to even be more vulnerable without a host - not unless you catch them right after defeating them in their host form, have the means to trap them and the means to slay them through concentrated use of aether. However, I think they do need a host to manifest their powers in different worlds to their own, and this is something which we probably don't fully understand as yet. Bear in mind that most of our knowledge on them is based on prior encounters, and therefore most likely incomplete. I am fully expecting Elidibus and "Solus" to be full of surprises.