The questions I want EW to answer the most: WHY and HOW was the world sundered?

[Cleretic]

How true is this really though? What flaws is the Crystarium supposed to have, they're too reliant on the Exarch? What flaws were Nym or Amdapor supposed to have, they participated in a war? What flaws were the dragons supposed to have, Nidhogg was too suspicious? Not every society is given some deep intrinsic flaw or sin that justifies it's downfall.

The big flaw of the Crystarium is that ultimately is more a structural one; it's a civilization that only works if every single person is doing exactly their assigned part, honestly and selflessly. Pretty much all the Facet questlines show how the infrastructure of the entire city is exceptionally bad at handling even things as minor as stubborn older workers, and it crashes into the MSQ when a huge amount of the workforce wants to quit and go be heroes.

Nym and Amdapor run into a different problem in that they haven't really gotten enough focus to really call out their flaws, but with Amdapor the implication is very loud that they were the ones that actually caused the Sixth Umbral Calamity; be it intentional or not, they were the ones that set off the Elementals, and their implied contact with Sin Eaters is a concern too. With Nym their weird perfection actually does bother me, but the implication does appear that Nym was the side most ready to fight such a war (they just didn't expect it to be so asymmetrical), which casts some aspersions about their intentions.

The dragons are easy: stupidly temperamental and with a perilously long memory. It's not just Nidhogg's rage; it's Hraesvelgr's depression, and even Tiamat's grief. Not only do they hold on to their emotions for insanely long, but they're so powerful that they rarely have reason to listen to those smaller than them.

They don't write a civilization without some form of dark shadow somewhere on it. Especially because, as quoted by Theodoric, they don't want to write pure 'good-versus-evil' anymore; since they wouldn't have written Amaurot as purely good, where are the flaws in its perfect facade?

And as much as I hate Hythlodaeus, we can't dismiss him as a 'speaker of nonsense' just because that's what his name meant in a centuries-old novel. Everything he says is treated as true and accurate; we're in trouble if we throw it away.

[Vyrerus]

I've sort of got two hunches or feelings. They're just feelings though, so no need to ruminate them.

One feeling I've got is that FFXIV doesn't have a lot of FFIX references, mainly because FFIX was such a big Final Fantasy reference compendium in the first place. It does have some, but not many of the big ones. With how Ozma is related to both the civilizations of Mhach and Sharlayan though, what with them keeping a proto-Ozma in the Baldesion Arsenal, I feel like we're getting more IX associations.

I can't help but think that what may have been wrong with the Lifestream, and what may be the impetus to kill everything is the idea that another planet wants/needs to replace our Lifestream with theirs. Rather than mere War being the upsetting catalyst as in IX, there's a more direct/technical method. The towers. The Ancients wouldn't have been aware of it, in the same way the characters in IX aren't aware of it until it's practically spelled out for them by Garland, in spite of traversing Oeilvert. This would make Fandaniel a Kuja, but peraps a Kuja that actually wants to fulfill his master's ambition. Also with how great Emet painted up the Ancients to be, it would make for a hell of a final boss to fight something from a civilization that was capable of fooling and ending even them.

Like I said though, just a feeling.

The other feeling I have is a little more personal. I've been replaying FFXI, and I'd never really focused on the specifics of its story so intensely before. I'm not as far along as I'd like to be, neither in recording it nor in playing it, but I'm at a point where I would very much like to see its story referenced in XIV. Particularly the Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions. The reason why has to do with the fact that Square in the past has already written complex civilizations with grey motives. In this particular instance, the Ancients were known as the Zilart. They had the, "Whisper of the Soul." Which as explained is telepathy on the scale that they could also feel each others emotions directly and also share spiritual visions and the like. One of their Prince's has a vision at one of the Mothercrystals of Vana'diel, showing him Paradise. The Whisper of the Soul shares this vision with all other Zilarts. The Zilart society had a problem though. Some individuals were started to become afflicted with an inner darkness which they dubbed, "The Emptiness." It eroded their ability to hear, "The Whisper of the Soul" to the extent that it was effectively eliminated.

These Zilart were cast out of the society and dubbed the, "Kuluu." In order to survive they entered into pacts with the Terrestrial Avatars of the elemental forces(Eidolons, basically), and were able to thrive because of it. This happened prior to the Prince's vision, and due to the Kuluu actually thriving apart from the Zilart, the Zilart subjugated them. Deciding to re-include them into their society, they gave them special pendants that allowed them an artificial means to hear The Whisper of the Soul. When the prince's had their vision, the Kuluu shared the knowledge with the Terrestrial Avatars, who warned the Kuluu that the Zilart needed to be stopped. The beings of Vana'diel and Vana'diel itself are imperfect, so opening the Gates of Paradise would destroy every life and everything.

The Kuluu went to war with the Zilart again, this time fully aided by the eidolons, and they managed to stop the devices the Zilart were using to channel and unite the Mothercrystals' energy. It caused an event known as, "The Meltdown." The energy cascaded out over the crystal line, destroying most of Zilart civilization, and sending a magical sort of radiation over the planet. This caused the surviving Kuluu to mutate into Tonberries. Some Zilart and Kuluu survived intact due to bunkers with stasis pods.

The Zilart wanted to become one with the Gods. The Kuluu didn't like the price.

Perhaps a smattering of both, with IX more heavily layered on top awaits us in 15 days. Referentially, of course. XIV is its own thing. Aside from its many reused assets from XI.

[Darkstride]

Hythlodaeus being the 'Speaker of Nonsense' could also be a playful reference to his personality. He has an established friendship with Emet-Selch and Azem, teasing both in the manner a close friend is prone to get away with.

It also wouldn't be the first time that a reference was 'reversed'. Doma's river, in FFVI, is poisoned by Kefka. Doma's river, in FFXIV, is exploited as a means to flood Doma Castle in order to more readily attack Yotsuyu and her forces.

The Hythlodaeus we see is also a phantom created by Emet Selch. He even says that he's not entirely sure if he acts of his volition or by the will of his creator. While I don't think that means he is untruthful, it does mean that he may be an idealized version of Hythlodaeus based on Emet Selch's thoughts and emotions. His real self may have been more "nonsense", but this version exists to perpetuate a memory. In that regard, I'd say Hythlodaeus' truthfulness and trustworthiness would be comparable to Emet Selch/Hades.

[KageTokage]

This would make Fandaniel a Kuja, but peraps a Kuja that actually wants to fulfill his master's ambition.

When thinking back on his little line of "The time has come to fulfill your dream! My dream! To rid those wretched creatures of their meaningless existence!", his total lack of attention towards Zenos while speaking it makes me wonder if he wasn't referring him at all.

Moreso because Zenos just wants to fight us and doesn't specifically care about the whole "cause the end of the world" thing; he just knows it's a good way to get our attention and possibly a necessary part of getting at Zodiark.

[Veloran]

The big flaw of the Crystarium is that ultimately is more a structural one; it's a civilization that only works if every single person is doing exactly their assigned part, honestly and selflessly. Pretty much all the Facet questlines show how the infrastructure of the entire city is exceptionally bad at handling even things as minor as stubborn older workers, and it crashes into the MSQ when a huge amount of the workforce wants to quit and go be heroes.

I'm not so sure that's true. Any system will have issues if people are being actively uncooperative, and throughout the Facet quests and even people leaving their jobs to pursue heroism the Crystarium doesn't really face crisis, it's merely less efficient than it could be. This is very far from a "dark shadow".

Nym and Amdapor run into a different problem in that they haven't really gotten enough focus to really call out their flaws, but with Amdapor the implication is very loud that they were the ones that actually caused the Sixth Umbral Calamity; be it intentional or not, they were the ones that set off the Elementals, and their implied contact with Sin Eaters is a concern too. With Nym their weird perfection actually does bother me, but the implication does appear that Nym was the side most ready to fight such a war (they just didn't expect it to be so asymmetrical), which casts some aspersions about their intentions.

With Amdapor, we have no strong reason to think ill of them. At most we can say that through the timey nature of the rift they glimpsed Sin Eaters and make some guardian statues in their likenesses - The Elementals weren't even the cause of the Calamity, that was merely a misconception on the part of the survivors it seems. And Nym is even less dubious, we cannot simply say that because they had good tacticians in their ranks that they were some warlike culture. Just the opposite, we lack evidence for them even engaging in battle beyond defending their island.

The dragons are easy: stupidly temperamental and with a perilously long memory. It's not just Nidhogg's rage; it's Hraesvelgr's depression, and even Tiamat's grief. Not only do they hold on to their emotions for insanely long, but they're so powerful that they rarely have reason to listen to those smaller than them.

I would say that this is hardly them being written with some dark societal flaw, it's literally just their biology and perception of time. Also they seem to have no issue with listening to others, it's merely that the betrayal which in their eyes was very recent has led some of them to be disinclined towards heeding empty words. And in the course of Heavensward that's all reversed anyway.

They don't write a civilization without some form of dark shadow somewhere on it. Especially because, as quoted by Theodoric, they don't want to write pure 'good-versus-evil' anymore; since they wouldn't have written Amaurot as purely good, where are the flaws in its perfect facade?

I'm not saying Amaurot was purely good, but again there is a huge gap between that notion and "they deserved it". Moreover, the story isn't Amaurot vs anyone and even it's last remnants in the Ascians are basically already done for, so what sense does it make to retroactively write Amaurot to be far darker after the only people that would care about it's image are already dead? If the story isn't supposed to just be "good versus evil", then writing what has already been preconceived as the evil side for years to be more evil after they're already done for is doing nothing but propping up a black-and-white dichotomy without even being able to leverage the drama of doing so because it can't be held up to the faces of anybody it's relevant to.

[dreamfisher]

... I'm not saying Amaurot was purely good, but again there is a huge gap between that notion and "they deserved it". ...

People are taking speculative liberties in order to bridge gaps like this.

As was made clear multiple times in this thread, there's a lot we don't know. For all we know, someone who assumes (I would advise against making these assumptions, personally) that the sundering is a tale of sin being reasonably punished via karmic justice could be entirely correct, or they coooouuuuld be equating an Autumn harvest to genocide.

Probably not the best choice of words on my part, given the recent Reaper reveal.

[Lauront]

When thinking back on his little line of "The time has come to fulfill your dream! My dream! To rid those wretched creatures of their meaningless existence!", his total lack of attention towards Zenos while speaking it makes me wonder if he wasn't referring him at all.

Moreso because Zenos just wants to fight us and doesn't specifically care about the whole "cause the end of the world" thing; he just knows it's a good way to get our attention and possibly a necessary part of getting at Zodiark.

I agree, he doesn't seem to be referencing Zenos at all at that point. At most Zenos seems like a useful tool to him. We know from comparing it to other language versions that this "dreamer" is indeed not Zenos as well, but I think they've written it in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking he is talking to and about Zenos, particularly in the EN version. In context, it makes little sense, becauses while Zenos has some nihilistic aspects to him, it's not his main wish.

*snip*

I think IX is particularly apposite. I've mentioned in the past what references from it they might be invoking, but the red and blue orbs above Hydaelyn's staff, while also featuring in IV, touch on a reference that has a particularly strong plot in IX, one which involved one world dying for the sake of another. I don't think they will just copy/paste either of IX or XI, or indeed any other FF/SE game, but there are a lot of things you can glean from XI that seem to be repeating in XIV. My mind is on a similar track as yours regarding the IX stuff and how it will feed into XIV. My guess is IX for inspiration for the crisis's origin (maybe mixed in with some otherworldly horror like Jenova/Lavos), X for the aftermath and conflict between the two Primals, and XI (COP) for some of what is to come in EW, but threaded into one another, plus of course references from others, like the obvious case of IV, to which I imagine there will be many references in EW.

My guess about the IX component though is that they might do a slight reversal here. I've mentioned before that one possibility as to what Hydaelyn might do is act to enervate new life forming in the Aetherial Sea (tying into Lahabrea's comments about her in the Praetorium.) It's notable that, while the Source denizens enjoy denser souls than those of other shards, they're still not distinctive beyond having more innate raw potential soul power and are otherwise not too alike to the unsundered ancients. Furthermore, they can still use magic, summon etc., so while not as powerful as the ancients, if you combine enough mortals, you can still bring about some potent aetheric creations; plus, we know that ability to use magic has an inherent tendency to predispose towards faith in the setting (which is also why Garleans tend towards atheism.) It's conceivable that most mortals are sundered ancients, with a vision of the Final Days sparking a fraction of their suppressed powers.

Why? Speculative answer: Because, in her/her summoners' belief it may be necessary to suppress whatever elements reside within man, be it the potential for creation magicks, or the "darkness" that accumulates through anxiety, or whatever, from being usable as a fuel for a repeat of the Final Days. Now add to this the observation that, in spite of the Sundering, mortals still possess such powers, albeit through further workarounds, like using crystals to perform summonings, etc., and perhaps you have the Garleans as an experiment (much as the mortal races served as containers for the emptiness in XI), to see if there is a way to contain such powers completely by blocking them at the corporeal level. Plus the Garleans have their own artificial form of the Echo, devised by one of their own scientists. Reminds me a bit of the Whisper of the Soul. On that whole topic, these unconfirmed Dragonsong lyrics remind me a lot of what unfolded in XI, when it speaks of sight of the ancient world projected through dreams. Sticking with XI and its 2 world theme, but also going back to IX, there's also the question posed here, which you could ask of the origin of the Final Days...

So far, until now, there has been no repeat of the Final Days, but Fandaniel has now decided to pull the lever of what was attempted in ancient times and failed then, and with the unsundered out the way, he is free to repeat without opposition. It's interesting to muse about how Hydaelyn might react in such a case and what counter-measures she might deem necessary... both primals served to buy them time but my thought is that their warring and the sundering of the world all meant the true origin has never been identified or disposed of, and primals have their directives to follow...

[Cilia]

Amaurot's flaw was that it was complacent.

We know from Emet-Selch's testimony (backed up with evidence) that Amaurot was a virtual paradise: a city-state (or just state outright) with no strife, virtual equity, and everyone living in peace and contentment. This is exactly what brought about its fall long before the Final Days, let alone the Sundering.

The Sound affected other areas of the planet before Amaurot... but they seemed mostly unconcerned about it except in the academic sense, performing some experiments and trying to come up with a plan, but nothing concrete (even though phantom Amaurot is taken from the day just before). The Amaurotine way of life offering nothing but comfort meant that when the Final Days actually reached them and stressed them beyond their limit, they had absolutely no idea what to do - despite their supposed perfection - and resorted to mass sacrifice to create an artificial deity who fixed the symptoms of the problem. Then faced with a changed world, the Amaurotines (or at least the Conclave, which enjoyed overwhelming popular support on the issue anyway) decided the best thing to do would be to return to the former status quo at great cost to the rest of the planet (whether that included sentient life or not is... kind of irrelevant to my point), which aside from trying to control the future of the planet and everyone on it sets a very dangerous precedent; more importantly it shows Amaurot's unwillingness or inability to accept change, a desire to exist and be in control forever, and a conceited belief that their own lives far outweigh all others (sentiments still shown by the Ascians).

It's not for just a(nother) XII reference the leader of the faction opposing the idea was named Venat, I don't think.

In other words... Amaurot fell the moment it embraced the impossible concept of perfection, unwilling or unable to adapt to change due to the peace and contentment enjoyed by its citizens. For all its glory and majesty, Amaurot was ultimately a dead end for civilization. The Final Days and Sundering just pushed it over the edge, whatever the cause of the former may have been.

That's not to say the Final Days or Sundering were necessarily "their own fault," that they "deserved [either]," that there was seedy stuff going on behind the scenes we just aren't aware of yet because the phantom Amaurot we visited was entirely tinted by Emet-Selch's nostalgia, or even that "good" or "evil" factor into this in any way. Just that Amaurot was not perfect - and in fact the unending peace and contentment enjoyed by its citizens is precisely why it wasn't.

P.S. We don't have enough information on every in-game civilization (past or present) to identify its shortcomings, but they're all bound to have some provided enough information. We know less about Skalla than we do about Amaurot, though, so...

[Veloran]

The Sound affected other areas of the planet before Amaurot... but they seemed mostly unconcerned about it except in the academic sense, performing some experiments and trying to come up with a plan, but nothing concrete (even though phantom Amaurot is taken from the day just before).

I'm not sure I understand this argument given that we do know they were attempting to find out the cause and stop it. And even if we look at phantom Amaurot, it seems to me that the recreation is something of an amalgamation of the city over a period of time rather than literally being set the day before their doom. I mean you have some Amaurotines talking about how some city on another continent has been struck by some unknown catastrophe, and others just down the road talking about the nature of the Sound and how Amaurot is about to be the last victim of the Final Days. Clearly it's not a straight snapshot.

[Lauront]

The way the argument is being put makes it seem as if Zodiark was just a last minute reaction, as opposed to the product of much research...

Yes, having to deploy him through sacrifice was probably not the original intention (the way the guardian force was summoned at the end of Akadaemia Anyder seemed to be more of an emergency protocol), but the star was being hollowed inside-out through the crisis. To arrive at the conclusion that they were complacent about it requires some assumptions to be made, much like it does in Sharlayan's case to be honest.



At least based on the textual sources available, nothing suggests they were unconcerned about it except in an academic sense; indeed, the language of "mounting threat" rather pushes against it, and what this suggests instead is they took it quite seriously, were attempting to understand it and develop an effective counter-measure. They may have ended up devising the wrong solution to the problem ultimately (considering its elusive nature), and grown too invested in it (and I'd say this applies in both cases of primal summoning, not just Zodiark), but nothing there really fits with any of the characterisation given amounting to a lack of concern...