Quote Originally Posted by Fenral View Post
The Exarch ended up being this weird mashup of Desch and Xande (FFIII editions), I wrote up something a bit after he was revealed (speculative, so I got some stuff wrong), so I imagine this was probably the best way they had to reconcile those polar opposites.
Having played FFIII now (minus actually defeating the Cloud of Darkness and getting to the ending) I don't see much parallel between the Exarch and Xande but I do think he's taking some degree of inspiration from the original Doga - at a superficial level, he's the old mentor-mage in a red cloak, but also the penultimate "gather heroes to help you in your moment of need" thing stuck out to me as parallel to the Exarch calling up heroes to help us fight Hades.