Fan Fest Lore Revelations [Spoilers]

[KageTokage]

The dungeon looks to be the war-torn battlefield where the allied nations presumably intercept the Garlean counterstrike and is the same place where the WoL was fighting Elidibus in the trailer.

It seems like we're walking in on the conflict well after it's already started.

[LineageRazor]

So there is this uncomfortable implication that if our actions are responsible for the possibility of this hypothetical Flood of Light, that means we have been helping people too much. Which in turn means we should have stood by in some cases and let horrible things happen in the name of "balance", which is kind of, well, "kill your abusive mother and then yourself" Sophia-level.

(Not quite at "as all things must be" level, though.)

The other way I can see the writers spinning this is that if we've helped people in this specific way instead of the way we did, then we could have avoided the Flood of Light, but that just makes it based on unfairly arbitrary rules that we could not have known.

You've struck at the heart of what has always annoyed me about the "Balance of Light and Darkness" thing. Balance implies a certain amount of "dark actions" are both allowable and necessary. If "dark actions" involve harming people then the whole idea of balance is appalling - basically, human sacrifices are necessary to stave off a Flood of Light. If "dark actions" do not necessarily involve harming people, then what exactly are they? Basically, they're whatever the authors decide, and as players we have no way of knowing until they tell us. (Not that we're given any choice in the matter regardless - we go where the story line railroads us, even if we know the things we're doing are bad in the long run.)

Is there a transcript of the lore Q&A anyway? That's what I came here looking for, before I got caught up in discussing the trailer.

To be honest, I was expecting to see discussion of that in this thread, as well! I don't know of any transcript, but I do recall three of them. (Two because they were the two questions I posted, and the third, because it was, er, memorable.) The following is the gist:

Q. Why were the two guards in the Zenos/Varis/Solus cutscene trusted with witnessing all the free talk about the Ascian origins of the Empire?

A. They were vetted.

Q. After possessing a mortal, can an Ascian leave that mortal voluntarily? Or must they be forced out through death (or alternative methods like the Blade of Light).

A. Yes, they can leave voluntarily, and this and a bunch of other Ascian revelations will be prominent in the next expansion. (Also, dev answer was "Why not both?" leading me to believe they didn't really understand the question.)

As tickled as I was to see my questions make the cut, I was a bit disappointed by the first answer! I guess there's really nothing special about the guards. The second was interesting. It does imply that Solus really did settle in for the long haul by choice, not necessity.

As for the other question I remember:

Q. Is Aphinaud actually half Lalafell? (Included: a half dozen pictures comparing Alphinaud to Lalafell and young and grown Elezen.)

A. HAHAHAHAHAHA! (It was noted, they did not say, "no".)

The dungeon looks to be the war-torn battlefield where the allied nations presumably intercept the Garlean counterstrike and is the same place where the WoL was fighting Elidibus in the trailer.

It seems like we're walking in on the conflict well after it's already started.

It's my personal prediction that this dungeon is in THE FUTURE. In the next patch, the voice that's been stealing away the Scions' consciousnesses will succeed in doing the same for the WoL, and will take us to the Bad Future represented by the Gimlet Dark. We'll then run the dungeon, and be returned to our body in the past, having witnessed first-hand the horrors we need to prevent.

That's just a guess, however!

See this is the part a lot of people are making what i believe to be a mistake in their logic. It's not the good deeds we did that done that. It's also not any “bad” deeds many people would like to pin down on us. I believe our mistake was pointed out very clearly in the OG Warriors of Darkness arc: Primals and Ascians are somehow fundamental in maintaining an equilibrium and the way we have been dealing with them is what is gonna gives us troubles.

It's worth pointing out that the way we've been dealing with Primals is something that has the Ascian Stamp of Approval. In early cutscenes, the Ascians make it clear that the WoL's actions in dispatching Primals are All According to The Plan, and when Elidibus brings the Warriors of Darkness in, he sets them to work doing exactly the same thing. So, if the Ascians are after Balance, and they APPROVE of the way we put down Primals, then putting down Primals the way we do is probably not contrary to Balance.

[YianKutku]

To be honest, I was expecting to see discussion of that in this thread, as well! I don't know of any transcript, but I do recall three of them. (Two because they were the two questions I posted, and the third, because it was, er, memorable.) The following is the gist:

Yeah, I didn't take screenshots of most of the slides of the Lore Panel Q&A, because as Matt Hilton pointed out, anyone just looking at joke-y answers on the slides will be very confused.

Based on my half-asleep summaries on Discord (2:30am Keynote, then 6:30am Lore Panel) though:

• Garlean third eyes are hard like keratin.
• There will be more lore-focused side stuff like Tales Of/From The X on the Lodestone and the Postmoogle questline. At least, that's the plan.
• Raen lore is basically Hingashi lore. As in, the two are effectively equivalent. (In other words, no Raen-specific lore that isn't part of Hingan lore.)
• The two guards at the end of 4.4 are merely very high-ranking and thoroughly vetted for their trustworthiness and discretion, despite Koji Fox's attempts to create an overwrought backstory for them.
• Aetherially conductive inks in magical tattoos is totally a thing, and is used all the time. This is in the Lorebook 2, as part of the MNK gear examples.
• The last queen of Ala Mhigo (ie Theodoric's queen) is probably from somewhere in the Black Shroud, given that the critters in the Royal Gardens are variants of ones found in the Black Shroud. Koji Fox goes "more information soon", and implies that there's a pretty interesting story there.
• Aulus mal Asina is "dead", but nobody believes the lore team about character deaths anyway, so that can probably be amended to be "dead today".
• There are plans in the future to introduce more subraces of the playable races to NPCs, although players will probably just be stuck with the two per race we now have. (The "joke" answer on the slide was that a six foot tall Lalafell is now a possibility.)
• Koji Fox went into the history of the Padjals, but nothing we didn't already know, and I think the implication is that for now the Padjals we see are the ones that exist currently, and the total number that ever existed is "less than you can count on three Simpsons hands" (whatever that means). I could be mistaken.
• Alphinaud may or may not be half Lalafell.
• The known crew of the Galadion have Elezen names because there was a ship of Elezen adventurers that was in trouble, when the Galadion (itself fleeing Aerslant) happened by and picked them up. The Elezen were so grateful that they offered to join the crew and be navigators, and that's why while the story of Limsa Lominsa's founding involves Roegadyn on the Galadion, there were also Elezen there.
• Regula's real face (ie under his helmet) was never actually decided, dev-wise. Koji Fox jokes that it could be time for a new fan contest to fix that.
• Ascian hosts don't have to die for the Ascian to leave (although it's implied that it will take some convincing to accomplish this), and more information will be coming in Shadowbringers.
• Vampire myths exist in Eorzea in the same way vampire myths exist here in RL; there may not have been actual bloodsucking vampires, but the myth is widespread enough that that the concept gets applied to names like vampire plants and vampire bats.

Then they went into creating The Vegetarian.

[Fenral]

Well, a big problem I have with the whole "balance" shtick is that we still haven't seen any indication that it's tipping too far one way or the other (on the Source, our own world). Yes the Burn is a good illustration of what an aether-bleached (Light-flooded) world will end up like and yes we've been told time and again that primals drain the land's aether... but other than the unresolved aether readings from before Wilred was killed and the deaspected crystals Y'shtola found mirroring those from before the Calamity, we have no evidence anything strange is going on.

There are simply too many unknowns to figure out much at the moment (which was the intent).

We've been seeing more indications of spontaneous aether depletion since the latest patch. Without veering too far into "Hydaelyn is evil territory," it's possible we've been inadvertently feeding her the land's aether as we grow stronger. It may be possible that the balance needs to be maintained between more than just two points, with the land itself as a possible third (which would also throw a wrench in the "Hydaelyn == planet" hypothesis and pave the way for more concrete answers). Man as the fourth to give it a proper second axis?

The wording in the Shadowbringers synopsis implies to me that the WoL vs. Elidibus fight is just the start of the events that led to a calamity in another history (Presumably that of the first shard's), so I don't think things actually went bad until well into the campaign against the Garleans or after it was over.

Shards aren't parallel worlds or alternate timelines, though. The Ascians also travel between the shards, so there isn't another Elidibus out there. Just the one.

I really shouldn't be starting mobage conversations on a board intended for the lore...

I'll be moving my eponymous "alt" (actually my original character from 2010) to the Primal datacenter in the next round of free transfers. Seems like a good place for Lore/other discussion.

[Cilia]

In regards to Astral / Umbral Eras...

What constitutes the fall into an Umbral Era is a Calamity, cut and dry.

What constitutes the rise into an Astral Era is... decidedly less so. The GC leaders declaring the 7th Umbral Era was over was, yes, little more than a PR move not based in anything scientific because there's no known scientific measurement for what marks the transition.

(This was mentioned in an interview somewhere; I can't recall which one or have a source, but I do remember this.)

We've been seeing more indications of spontaneous aether depletion since the latest patch. Without veering too far into "Hydaelyn is evil territory," it's possible we've been inadvertently feeding her the land's aether as we grow stronger. It may be possible that the balance needs to be maintained between more than just two points, with the land itself as a possible third (which would also throw a wrench in the "Hydaelyn == planet" hypothesis and pave the way for more concrete answers). Man as the fourth to give it a proper second axis?

Well... in fairness, conflating Hydaelyn-the-planet with Hydaelyn-the-goddess might be just a bit of a stretch. It makes logical sense, but Lahabrea speaks of them as if they are separate entities before engaging us directly in the Praetorium. It's Lahabrea so he can't be fully trusted - duly noted - but it's there.

"Like a parasite, [Hydaelyn] must be burned out if the planet is to recover."
-Roughly. Perhaps we'll see what he meant.

My original way of reaching that hypothesis was by using the crystals of IX as a base; though they can't speak, they are the terminus of all souls on a given planet. If Hydaelyn is "all made one," it would stand to reason She serves a similar purpose... perhaps the point of Calamities, then, isn't to cause planetary devastation, but mass death - create an influx of souls so great Hydaelyn simply can't process them all and the strain breaks down one of Her walls?

Hmm...

[zuzu-bq]

Is it me or Shadowbringers intro guitar seems a lot like a sped up Prelurde played on strings.

[Alleluia]

Is it me or Shadowbringers intro guitar seems a lot like a sped up Prelurde played on strings.

It parallels it, I think. I don't know if its sped up, specifically. But yeah, I hear the connection, too.

[WhiteArchmage]

[*]Koji Fox went into the history of the Padjals, but nothing we didn't already know, and I think the implication is that for now the Padjals we see are the ones that exist currently, and the total number that ever existed is "less than you can count on three Simpsons hands" (whatever that means). I could be mistaken.

Less than 12, Simpsons charactes have 4 fingers on each hand. I hope it means ever existed "at the same time" otherwise we're talking very few Padjali in history since we currently have just over half a dozen living ones.

[Dualblade]

Less than 12, Simpsons charactes have 4 fingers on each hand. I hope it means ever existed "at the same time" otherwise we're talking very few Padjali in history since we currently have just over half a dozen living ones.

If I remember correctly Padjal also have longer life-spans compared to the rest of the mortal races. Probably still been more than 12 overall but depending on how long they can live I could see there still being under 100 total throughout the existance of Padjals.

[Rocl]

If I remember correctly Padjal also have longer life-spans compared to the rest of the mortal races. Probably still been more than 12 overall but depending on how long they can live I could see there still being under 100 total throughout the existance of Padjals.

Padjali only began to appear after the Pact of Gelmorra during the Sixth Astral Era, right? So it's been under two millenia and for a people who live for centuries.... about a dozen doesn't seem too bad?